CC Science → Sensored City

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Citizen Sourced Data: “We routinely submit data to others and then worry about liberating the data from the silos. What if we could invert the model? What if collected data were first put into a completely free and open repository accessible to everyone so anyone could build applications with the data? What if the data itself were free so everyone could have an equal opportunity to create and even monetize their creativity? Funded by a generous grant from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, we intend to do just that.
Partnering with Manylabs, a San Francisco-based sensor tools and education nonprofit, and Urban Matter, Inc., a Brooklyn-based design studio, and in collaboration with the City of Louisville, Kentucky, and Propeller Health, maker of a mobile platform for respiratory health management, we will design, develop and install a network of sensor-based hardware that will collect environmental information at high temporal and spatial scales and store it in a software platform designed explicitly for storing and retrieving such data.
Further, we will design, create and install a public data art installation that will be powered by the data we collect thereby communicating back to the public what has been collected about them.”

Atlas of Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New book edited by Paul Knox:  “More than half the world’s population lives in cities, and that proportion is expected to rise to three-quarters by 2050. Urbanization is a global phenomenon, but the way cities are developing, the experience of city life, and the prospects for the future of cities vary widely from region to region. The Atlas of Cities presents a unique taxonomy of cities that looks at different aspects of their physical, economic, social, and political structures; their interactions with each other and with their hinterlands; the challenges and opportunities they present; and where cities might be going in the future.
Each chapter explores a particular type of city—from the foundational cities of Greece and Rome and the networked cities of the Hanseatic League, through the nineteenth-century modernization of Paris and the industrialization of Manchester, to the green and “smart” cities of today. Expert contributors explore how the development of these cities reflects one or more of the common themes of urban development: the mobilizing function (transport, communication, and infrastructure); the generative function (innovation and technology); the decision-making capacity (governance, economics, and institutions); and the transformative capacity (society, lifestyle, and culture)….
Table of Contents;  Introduction[PDF] pdf-icon“

Killer Apps in the Gigabit Age

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New Pew report By , and : “The age of gigabit connectivity is dawning and will advance in coming years. The only question is how quickly it might become widespread. A gigabit connection can deliver 1,000 megabits of information per second (Mbps). Globally, cloud service provider Akamai reports that the average global connection speed in quarter one of 2014 was 3.9 Mbps, with South Korea reporting the highest average connection speed, 23.6 Mbps and the US at 10.5 Mbps.1
In some respects, gigabit connectivity is not a new development. The US scientific community has been using hyper-fast networks for several years, changing the pace of data sharing and enabling levels of collaboration in scientific disciplines that were unimaginable a generation ago.
Gigabit speeds for the “average Internet user” are just arriving in select areas of the world. In the US, Google ran a competition in 2010 for communities to pitch themselves for the construction of the first Google Fiber network running at 1 gigabit per second—Internet speeds 50-100 times faster than the majority of Americans now enjoy. Kansas City was chosen among 1,100 entrants and residents are now signing up for the service. The firm has announced plans to build a gigabit network in Austin, Texas, and perhaps 34 other communities. In response, AT&T has said it expects to begin building gigabit networks in up to 100 US cities.2 The cities of Chattanooga, Tennessee; Lafayette, Louisiana; and Bristol, Virginia, have super speedy networks, and pockets of gigabit connectivity are in use in parts of Las Vegas, Omaha, Santa Monica, and several Vermont communities.3 There are also other regional efforts: Falcon Broadband in Colorado Springs, Colorado; Brooklyn Fiber in New York; Monkey Brains in San Francisco; MINET Fiber in Oregon; Wicked Fiber in Lawrence, Kansas; and Sonic.net in California, among others.4 NewWave expects to launch gigabit connections in 2015 in Poplar Bluff, Missouri Monroe, Rayville, Delhi; and Tallulah, Louisiana, and Suddenlink Communications has launched Operation GigaSpeed.5
In 2014, Google and Verizon were among the innovators announcing that they are testing the capabilities for currently installed fiber networks to carry data even more efficiently—at 10 gigabits per second—to businesses that handle large amounts of Internet traffic.
To explore the possibilities of the next leap in connectivity we asked thousands of experts and Internet builders to share their thoughts about likely new Internet activities and applications that might emerge in the gigabit age. We call this a canvassing because it is not a representative, randomized survey. Its findings emerge from an “opt in” invitation to experts, many of whom play active roles in Internet evolution as technology builders, researchers, managers, policymakers, marketers, and analysts. We also invited comments from those who have made insightful predictions to our previous queries about the future of the Internet. (For more details, please see the section “About this Canvassing of Experts.”)…”

Open Data Beyond the Big City

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

at PBS MediaShift: “…Open data is the future — of how we govern, of how public services are delivered, of how governments engage with those that they serve. And right now, it is unevenly distributed. I think there is a strong argument to be made that data standards can provide a number of benefits to small and midsized municipal governments and could provide a powerful incentive for these governments to adopt open data.
One way we can use standards to drive the adoption of open data is to partner with companies like Yelp, Zillow, Google and others that can use open data to enhance their services. But how do we get companies with 10s and 100s of millions of users to take an interest in data from smaller municipal governments?
In a word – standards.

Why do we care about cities?

When we talk about open data, it’s important to keep in mind that there is a lot of good work happening at the federal, state and local levels all over the country — plenty of states and even counties doing good things on the open data front, but for me it’s important to evaluate where we are on open data with respect to cities.
States typically occupy a different space in the service delivery ecosystem than cities, and the kinds of data that they typically make available can be vastly different from city data. State capitals are often far removed from our daily lives and we may hear about them only when a budget is adopted or when the state legislature takes up a controversial issue.
In cities, the people that represent and serve us us can be our neighbors — the guy behind you at the car wash, or the woman who’s child is in you son’s preschool class. Cities matter.
As cities go, we need to consider carefully that importance of smaller cities — there are a lot more of them than large cities and a non-trivial number of people live in them….”

The View From Your Window Is Worth Cash to This Company

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Eric Jaffe in Atlantic CityLab: “A city window overlooking the street has always been a score in its own right, what with so many apartments stuck opening onto back alleys and dumpsters and fire escapes. And now, a company wants to straight up monetize the view. New York startup Placemeter is paying city residents up to $50 a month for street views captured via old smartphones. The idea is to quantify sidewalk life in the service of making the city a more efficient place.

“Measuring data about how the city moves in real time, being able to make predictions on that, is definitely a good way to help cities work better,” says founder Alex Winter. “That’s the vision of Placemeter—to build a data platform where anyone at any time can know how busy the city is, and use that.”
Here’s how it works: City residents send Placemeter a little information about where they live and what they see from their window. In turn, Placemeter sends participants a kit (complete with window suction cup) to convert their unused smartphone into a street sensor, and agrees to pay cash so long as the device stays on and collects data. The more action outside—the more shops, pedestrians, traffic, and public space—the more the view is worth.
On the back end, Placemeter converts the smartphone images into statistical data using proprietary computer vision. The company first detects moving objects (the green splotches in the video below) and classifies them either as people or as 11 types of vehicles or other common urban elements, such as food carts. A second layer of analysis connects this movement with behavioral patterns based on the location—how many cars are speeding down a street, for instance, or how many people are going into a store….
Efforts to quantify city life with big data aren’t new, but where Placemeter’s clear advance is its ability to count pedestrians. Cities often track sidewalk traffic with little more than a hired hand and a manual clicker and spot locations. With its army of smartphone eyes, Placemeter promises a much wider net of real-time data dynamic enough to recognize not only that a person exists but also that person’s behavior, from walking speed to retail interest to general interaction with streets or public spaces…”

Google’s Waze announces government data exchange program with 10 initial partners

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Josh Ong at TheNextWeb blog: “Waze today announced “Connected Citizens,” a new government partnership program that will see both parties exchange data in order to improve traffic conditions.

For the program, Waze will provide real-time anonymized crowdsourced traffic data to government departments in exchange for information on public projects like construction, road sensors, and pre-planned road closures.

The first 10 partners include:

  • Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • Barcelona, Spain and the Government of Catalonia
  • Jakarta, Indonesia
  • Tel Aviv, Israel
  • San Jose, Costa Rica
  • Boston, USA
  • State of Florida, USA
  • State of Utah, USA
  • Los Angeles County
  • The New York Police Department (NYPD)

Waze has also signed on five other government partners and has received applications from more than 80 municipal groups. The company ran an initial pilot program in Rio de Janeiro where it partnered with the city’s traffic control center to supplement the department’s sensor data with reports from Waze users.

At an event celebrating the launch, Di-Ann Eisnor, head of Growth at Waze noted that the data exchange will only include public alerts, such as accidents and closures.

“We don’t share anything beyond that, such as where individuals are located and who they are,” she said.

Eisnor also made it clear that Waze isn’t selling the data. GPS maker TomTom came under fire several years ago after customers learned that the company had sold their data to police departments to help find the best places to put speed traps.

“We keep [the data] clean by making sure we don’t have a business model around it,” Eisnor added.

Waze will requires that new Connected Citizens partners “prove their dedication to citizen engagement and commit to use Waze data to improve city efficiency.”…”

Paris awaits result of referendum on how to spend €20m of city budget

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

in The Guardian: “Given €20m (£15.5m) of taxpayers’ money, what would Parisians do to improve their city? The final answer is expected after voting closes on Wednesday in the French capital’s first “participatory budget”.
City-dwellers of all ages and nationalities were given the chance to choose from 15 projects, including walls of vegetation, pop-up swimming pools and mini “learning gardens” in schools. The most popular will be included in the 2015 city’s spending plan. Work will begin on them in January.
The city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, said allowing people to decide the destination of 5% of the city hall investment budget every year from now until 2020 was “handing the keys of the budget to the citizens”.
Parisians were given a week to vote, either online or at mairies (council buildings) in each of the city’s 20 arrondissements.
As voting ended on Wednesday, the most popular choices reflected concern with the environment and the shortage of green spaces in the city centre, and a desire to breathe new life into its gloomiest corners.
A €2m project to cover at least 40 “blind” walls with plants to cheer up local areas and create a “microclimate and biodiversity” had received the most votes.
The second most popular was a €1.5m scheme to use derelict and abandoned areas around and under the périphérique – the city’s ring road – for concerts, exhibitions, film projections and other community events.
Third was a €1m project to introduce “learning gardens” in all infant and primary schools….
There are similar “participative democracy” schemes in hundreds of cities, including Toronto, Canada, and Porto Alegre in Brazil, which was the first to introduce it, in 1989, as well as in smaller communes in France. However, nowhere else is believed to have allotted such a significant sum of public money.
Hidalgo said the idea was “a new tool for citizens to participate allowing all Parisians to propose and choose projects that will make the Paris of tomorrow. They can have a real effect on local life. I see it as a major democratic innovation.”

A Vision for Happier Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Post by at the Huffington Post:“…Governments such as Bhutan and Venezuela are creating departments of happiness, and in both the US and UK, ‘nudge’ teams have been set up to focus on behavioral psychology. This gets more interesting when we bring in urban planning and neuroscience research, which shows that community aesthetics are a key contributor to our happiness at the same time positive emotions can change our thoughts, and lead to changes in our behaviors.
It was only after moving to New York City that I realized all my experiences… painting, advising executive boards, creative workshops, statistics and writing books about organizational change…gave me a unique set of tools to create the Dept. of Well Being and start a global social impact initiative, which is powered by public art installations entitled Happy Street Signs™.
New York City got the first Happy Street Signs last November. I used my paintings containing positive phrases like “Honk Less Love More” and “New York Loves You” to manufacture 200 government-specification street signs. They were then installed by a team of fifty volunteers around Manhattan and Brooklyn in 90 minutes. Whilst it was unofficial, the objective was to generate smiles for New Yorkers and then survey reactions. We got clipboards out and asked over 600 New Yorkers if they liked the Happy Street Signs and if they wanted more: 92.5 percent of those people said yes!…”

Uncovering State And Local Gov’s 15 Hidden Successes

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Emily Jarvis at GovLoop: “From garbage trucks to vacant lots, cities and states are often tasked with the thankless job of cleaning up a community’s mess. These are tasks that are often overlooked, but are critical to keeping a community vibrant.
But even in these sometimes thankless jobs, there are real innovations happening. Take Miami-Dade County where they are using hybrid garbage trucks to save the community millions of dollars in fuel every year and make the environment a little cleaner. Or head over to Milwaukee where the city is turning vacant and abandoned lots into urban farms.
There are just two of the fifteen examples, GovLoop uncovered in our new guide, From the State House to the County Clerk – 15 Challenges and Success Stories.
We have broken the challenges into four categories:

  • Internal Best Practices
  • Tech Challenges
  • Health and Safety
  • Community Engagement and Outreach

Here’s another example, the open data movement has the potential to effect governing and civic engagement at the state and local government levels. But today very few agencies are actively providing open data. In fact, only 46 U.S. cities and counties have open data sites. One of the cities on the leading edge of the open data movement is Fort Worth, Texas.

“When I came into office, that was one of my campaign promises, that we would get Fort Worth into this century on technology and that we would take a hard look at open records requests and requests for data,” Mayor Betsy Price said in an interview with the Star-Telegram. “It goes a lot further to being transparent and letting people participate in their government and see what we are doing. It is the people’s data, and it should be easy to access.”

The website, data.fortworthtexas.gov, offers data and documents such as certificates of occupancy, development permits and residential permits for download in several formats, including Excel and PDF. Not all datasets are available yet — the city said its priority was to put the most-requested data on the portal first. Next up? Crime data, code violations, restaurant ratings and capital projects progress.

City officials’ ultimate goal is to create and adopt a full open data policy. As part of the launch, they are also looking for local software developers and designers who want to help guide the open data initiative. Those interested in participating can sign up online to receive more information….”