New workshop paper by C. A. Le Dantec in HCOMP 2014/Citizen + X: Workshop on Volunteer-based Crowdsourcing in Science, Public Health and Government, Pittsburgh, PA. November 2, 2014: “Within the past five years, a new form of technology -mediated public participation that experiments with crowdsourced data production in place of community discourse has emerged. Examples of this class of system include SeeClickFix, PublicStuff, and Street Bump, each of which mediate feedback about local neighborhood issues and help communities mobilize resources to address those issues. The experiments being playing out by this new class of services are derived from a form of public participation built on the ideas of smart cities where residents and physical environments are instrumented to provide data to improve operational efficiency and sustainability (Caragliu, Del Bo, and Nijkamp 2011). Ultimately, smart cities is the application to local government all the efficiencies that computing has always promised—efficiencies of scale, of productivity, of data—minus the messiness and contention of citizenship that play out through more traditional modes of public engagement and political discourse.
The question then, is what might it look like to incorporate more active forms of civic participation and issue advocacy in an app- and data-driven world? To begin to explore this question, my students and I have developed a smartphone app as part of a larger regional planning partnership with the City of Atlanta and the Atlanta Regional Commission. The app, called Cycle Atlanta, enables cyclists to record their ride data —where they have gone, why they went there, what kind of cyclist they are— in an effort to both generate data for planners developing new bicycling infrastructure and to broaden public participation and input in the creation of those plans…”
Plenario
About Plenario: “Plenario makes it possible to rethink the way we use open data. Instead of being constrained by the data that is accessible and usable, let’s start by formulating our questions and then find the data to answer them. Plenario makes this easy by tying together all datasets on one map and one timeline—because in the real world, everything affects everything else…
The problem
Over the past few years, levels of government from the federal administration to individual municipalities like the City of Chicago have begun embracing open data, releasing datasets publicly for free. This movement has vastly increased the amount of data available, but existing platforms and technologies are designed mainly to view and access individual datasets one at a time. This restriction contradicts decades of research contending that no aspect of the urban landscape is truly isolated; in today’s cities, everything is connected to everything else.
Furthermore, researchers are often limited in the questions they can ask by the data available to answer them. It is not uncommon to spend 75% of one’s time locating, downloading, cleaning, and standardizing the relevant datasets—leaving precious little resources for the important work.
What we do
Plenario is designed to take us from “spreadsheets on the web”1 to truly smart open data. This rests on two fundamental breakthroughs:
1) Allow users to assemble and download data from multiple, independent data sources, such as two different municipal data portals, or the federal government and a privately curated dataset.
2) Unite all datasets along a single spatial and temporal index, making it possible to do complex aggregations with one query.
2) Unite all datasets along a single spatial and temporal index, making it possible to do complex aggregations with one query.
With these advances, Plenario allows users to study regions over specified time periods using all relevant data, regardless of original source, and represent the data as a single time series. By providing a single, centralized hub for open data, the Plenario platform enables urban scientists to ask the right questions with as few constraints as possible….
being implemented by the Urban Center for Computation and Data and DataMade“
CityBeat: Visualizing the Social Media Pulse of the City
“CityBeat is a an academic research project set to develop an application that sources, monitors and analyzes hyper-local information from multiple social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter in real time.
This project was led by researchers at the Jacobs Institute at Cornell Tech, in collaboration with the The New York World (Columbia Journalism School), Rutgers University, NYU, and Columbia University….
If you are interested in the technical details, we have published several papers detailing the process of building CityBeat. Enjoy your read!
Xia C., Schwartz, R., Xie K., Krebs A., Langdon A., Ting J. and Naaman M., CityBeat: Real-time Social Media Visualization of Hyper-local City Data. In Proceedings, WWW 2014, Seoul, Korea, April 2014. [PDF]
Xie K., Xia C., Grinberg N., Schwartz R., and Naaman M., Robust detection of hyper-local events from geotagged social media data. In Proceedings of the 13th Workshop on Multimedia Data Mining in KDD, 2013. [PDF]
Schwartz, R., Naaman M., Matni, Z. (2013) Making Sense of Cities Using Social Media: Requirements for Hyper-Local Data Aggregation Tools. In Proceedings, WCMCW at ICWSM 2013, Boston, USA, July 2013. [PDF]
Smart Inclusive Cities: How New Apps, Big Data, and Collaborative Technologies Are Transforming Immigrant Integration
New report by Meghan Benton for the Migration Policy Institute: “The spread of smartphones—cellphones with high-speed Internet access and geolocation technology—is transforming urban life. While many smartphone apps are largely about convenience, policymakers are beginning to explore their potential to address social challenges from disaster response to public health. And cities, in North America and Europe alike, are in the vanguard in exploring creative uses for these apps, including how to improve engagement.
For disadvantaged and diverse populations, accessing city services through a smartphone can help overcome language or literacy barriers and thus increase interactions with city officials. For those with language needs, smartphones allow language training to be accessed anywhere and at any time. More broadly, cities have begun mining the rich datasets that smartphones collect, to help attune services to the needs of their whole population. A new crop of social and civic apps offer new tools to penetrate hard-to-reach populations, including newly arrived and transient groups.
While these digital developments offer promising opportunities for immigrant integration efforts, smartphone apps’ potential to address social problems should not be overstated. In spite of potential shortcomings, since immigrant integration requires a multipronged policy response, any additional tools—especially inexpensive ones—should be examined.
This report explores the kinds of opportunities smartphones and apps are creating for the immigrant integration field. It provides a first look at the opportunities and tradeoffs that smartphones and emerging technologies offer for immigrant integration, and how they might deepen—or weaken—city residents’ sense of belonging…” (Download Report)
Mapping the Next Frontier of Open Data: Corporate Data Sharing
Stefaan Verhulst at the GovLab (cross-posted at the UN Global Pulse Blog): “When it comes to data, we are living in the Cambrian Age. About ninety percent of the data that exists today has been generated within the last two years. We create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data on a daily basis—equivalent to a “new Google every four days.”
All of this means that we are certain to witness a rapid intensification in the process of “datafication”– already well underway. Use of data will grow increasingly critical. Data will confer strategic advantages; it will become essential to addressing many of our most important social, economic and political challenges.
This explains–at least in large part–why the Open Data movement has grown so rapidly in recent years. More and more, it has become evident that questions surrounding data access and use are emerging as one of the transformational opportunities of our time.
Today, it is estimated that over one million datasets have been made open or public. The vast majority of this open data is government data—information collected by agencies and departments in countries as varied as India, Uganda and the United States. But what of the terabyte after terabyte of data that is collected and stored by corporations? This data is also quite valuable, but it has been harder to access.
The topic of private sector data sharing was the focus of a recent conference organized by the Responsible Data Forum, Data and Society Research Institute and Global Pulse (see event summary). Participants at the conference, which was hosted by The Rockefeller Foundation in New York City, included representatives from a variety of sectors who converged to discuss ways to improve access to private data; the data held by private entities and corporations. The purpose for that access was rooted in a broad recognition that private data has the potential to foster much public good. At the same time, a variety of constraints—notably privacy and security, but also proprietary interests and data protectionism on the part of some companies—hold back this potential.
The framing for issues surrounding sharing private data has been broadly referred to under the rubric of “corporate data philanthropy.” The term refers to an emerging trend whereby companies have started sharing anonymized and aggregated data with third-party users who can then look for patterns or otherwise analyze the data in ways that lead to policy insights and other public good. The term was coined at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, in 2011, and has gained wider currency through Global Pulse, a United Nations data project that has popularized the notion of a global “data commons.”
Although still far from prevalent, some examples of corporate data sharing exist….
Help us map the field
A more comprehensive mapping of the field of corporate data sharing would draw on a wide range of case studies and examples to identify opportunities and gaps, and to inspire more corporations to allow access to their data (consider, for instance, the GovLab Open Data 500 mapping for open government data) . From a research point of view, the following questions would be important to ask:
- What types of data sharing have proven most successful, and which ones least?
- Who are the users of corporate shared data, and for what purposes?
- What conditions encourage companies to share, and what are the concerns that prevent sharing?
- What incentives can be created (economic, regulatory, etc.) to encourage corporate data philanthropy?
- What differences (if any) exist between shared government data and shared private sector data?
- What steps need to be taken to minimize potential harms (e.g., to privacy and security) when sharing data?
- What’s the value created from using shared private data?
We (the GovLab; Global Pulse; and Data & Society) welcome your input to add to this list of questions, or to help us answer them by providing case studies and examples of corporate data philanthropy. Please add your examples below, use our Google Form or email them to us at [email protected]”
Five Cities Selected As Winners in Bloomberg Philanthropies 2014 Mayors Challenge
Bloomberg Philanthropies: “Grand Prize Winner Barcelona Aims to Create Digital and Community ‘Trust Network’ for Each of its At-Risk Elderly Residents
Athens, Greece; Kirklees in Yorkshire, UK; Stockholm, Sweden; and Warsaw, Poland Also Win Funds for Innovative Solutions to Pressing Urban Challenges
Bloomberg Philanthropies today announced the winners in its 2014 Mayors Challenge, an ideas competition that encourages cities to generate innovative ideas that solve major challenges and improve city life – and that have the potential to spread to other cities.
Barcelona will receive the Mayors Challenge Grand Prize for Innovation and €5 million toward its proposal to create a digital and community ‘trust network’ for each of its at-risk elderly residents. Mayors Challenge innovation prizes also were awarded to Athens, Greece, Kirklees in Yorkshire, UK, Stockholm in Sweden, and Warsaw in Poland. Each of which will receive €1 million to support implementation of their unique ideas. The winners proposed solutions that address some of Europe’s most critical issue areas: unemployment, energy efficiency, obesity, aging and improving the overall effectiveness and efficiency of government. The ideas are further described below.
“To meet the biggest challenges of the 21st century, city leaders must think creatively and be unafraid to try new things – and the Mayors Challenge is designed to help them do that,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies. “We received great proposals from all over Europe, and the competition over the past year has been fierce. The decision for our selection committee was not easy, but the five winning ideas we announced today represent the best of the best, and all have the potential to improve lives. Cities are shaping the future of our planet, and Bloomberg Philanthropies is committed to helping mayors pioneer new innovations – and to helping their most promising ideas spread around the world.”…
Barcelona, Spain: Collaborative Care Networks for Better Aging
More than one in five Barcelona residents is over 65, and by 2040, one in four will be. As lives grow longer, Barcelona – like many cities globally – is grappling with new health problems and debilitating social isolation. To address this growing problem, Barcelona will use digital and low-tech strategies to create a network of family members, friends, neighbors, social workers, and volunteers who together make up a “trust network” for each at-risk elderly resident. This will help identify gaps in care, enable coordination of support, and promote quality of life….
Further detail and related elements for this year’s Mayors Challenge can be found here. “
Journey tracking app will use cyclist data to make cities safer for bikes
Springwise: “Most cities were never designed to cater for the huge numbers of bikes seen on their roads every day, and as the number of cyclists grows, so do the fatality statistics thanks to limited investment in safe cycle paths. While Berlin already crowdsources bikers’ favorite cycle routes and maps them through the Dynamic Connections platform, a new app called WeCycle lets cyclists track their journeys, pooling their data to create heat maps for city planners.
Created by the UK’s TravelAI transport startup, WeCycle taps into the current consumer trend for quantifying every aspect of life, including journey times. By downloading the free iOS app, London cyclists can seamlessly create stats each time they get on their bike. They app runs in the background and uses the device’s accelerometer to smartly distinguish walking or running from cycling. They can then see how far they’ve traveled, how fast they cycle and every route they’ve taken. Additionally, the app also tracks bus and car travel.
Anyone that downloads the app agrees that their data can be anonymously sent to TravelAI, creating an accurate and real-time information resource. It aims to create tools such as heat maps and behavior monitoring for cities and local authorities to learn more about how citizens are using roads to better inform their transport policies.
WeCycle follows in the footsteps of similar apps such as Germany’s Radwende and the Toronto Cycling App — both released this year — in taking a popular trend and turning into data that could help make cities a safer place to cycle….Website: www.travelai.info“
From #Ferguson to #OfficerFriendly
Susan Crawford at Bloomberg View: “In the tiny town of Jun, Spain, (population: 3,000) meeting rooms in city hall have their own Twitter accounts. When residents want to reserve them, they send a direct message via Twitter; when it’s time, the door to the room unlocks automatically in response to a tweet. Jun’s mayor, Jose Antonio Rodriguez, says he coordinates with other public servants via Twitter. Residents routinely tweet about public services, and city hall answers. Every police officer in Jun has a Twitter handle displayed on his uniform.
Now the New York Police Department, the largest in the U.S., is starting a broad social media initiative to get every precinct talking and listening online via Twitter, to both serve citizens and manage police personnel. The question is whether the kind of positive, highly local responsiveness the residents of Jun expect is possible across all parts of local government — not just from the police — in a big city. If it works, the benefits to the public from this kind of engagement could be enormous.
In the age of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner‘s in New York, when police abuses can be easily documented by citizens wielding smartphones, relationships between police departments and the communities they serve can quickly become strained. And social media use by the police runs the risk of being initially dismissed as a publicity stunt. But after decades of losing the trust of important New York City communities, this step may help the department gain civic support.
There will be bumps along the way. Last spring, the NYPD kicked off a social media campaign, asking people to share photos accompanied by the Twitter hashtag #myNYPD. Within 24 hours the hashtag was famous worldwide, as activists posted pictures of clashes between residents and the police. But Commissioner Bill Bratton brushed off the criticism, calling the pictures old news and saying the media event was not going to cause the NYPD to change its plans to be active on social media. “I welcome the attention,” he said.
Bratton will roll out a long list of social media efforts this week. The NYPD is training its dozens of commanding officers to understand and use Twitter on their own, both to ask questions and to respond timely to comments and concerns. For example, police in New York City spend a lot of time looking for missing people; now they will be able to get assistance from eyes on the street…”
Online Petitions Proposed to Offer New Yorkers a New Way to Speak Out
in The New York Times: “Since introducing a petition site in 2011 and promising to respond to any request that received enough signatures, the White House has been compelled to release its beer recipe, inform Texas that it would not be permitted to secede and weigh the merits of a “Death Star” for national defense.
“The administration,” the response to that petition read, “does not support blowing up planets.”
So it is perhaps with some trepidation that New York City lawmakers consider a local model: an online petition system that would allow residents to ask anything they want of their public officials and, with sufficient support, receive a response.
“Not everyone can go to a public hearing,” said the bill’s sponsor, Councilman James Vacca, Democrat of the Bronx. “This would be a way for people to register their views collectively.”
The proposal to create something resembling a Reddit for the body politic was introduced on Wednesday by Mr. Vacca and referred to the City Council’s Committee on Technology, of which he is chairman. Spokesmen for Mayor Bill de Blasio and Melissa Mark-Viverito, the Council speaker, said their offices were reviewing the bill.
Mr. Vacca’s office said the petition system would be the first of its kind on the municipal level anywhere, a claim that could not be immediately confirmed. Under his bill, the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications would determine the threshold number of electronic signatures that would prompt a response. The department would also be asked to establish the website, creating a system that “allows city agencies or public authorities to post public responses” to the petitions….
Dick Dadey, the executive director of Citizens Union, a civic group, called the petition proposal “a novel idea” worthy of debate. But he sounded several notes of caution, wondering whether the setup might be subject to manipulation, favoring “a preordained outcome directed by public officials” on a given issue….”
How Open Data Is Transforming City Life
Joel Gurin, The GovLab, at Techonomy: “Start a business. Manage your power use. Find cheap rents, or avoid crime-ridden neighborhoods. Cities and their citizens worldwide are discovering the power of “open data”—public data and information available from government and other sources that can help solve civic problems and create new business opportunities. By opening up data about transportation, education, health care, and more, municipal governments are helping app developers, civil society organizations, and others to find innovative ways to tackle urban problems. For any city that wants to promote entrepreneurship and economic development, open data can be a valuable new resource.
The urban open data movement has been growing for several years, with American cities including New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington in the forefront. Now an increasing number of government officials, entrepreneurs, and civic hackers are recognizing the potential of open data. The results have included applications that can be used across many cities as well as those tailored to an individual city’s needs.
At first, the open data movement was driven by a commitment to transparency and accountability. City, state, and local governments have all released data about their finances and operations in the interest of good government and citizen participation. Now some tech companies are providing platforms to make this kind of city data more accessible, useful, and comparable. Companies like OpenGov and Govini make it possible for city managers and residents to examine finances, assess police department overtime, and monitor other factors that let them compare their city’s performance to neighboring municipalities.
Other new businesses are tapping city data to provide residents with useful, practical information. One of the best examples is NextBus, which uses metropolitan transportation data to tell commuters when to expect a bus along their route. Commuter apps like this have become common in cities in the U.S. and around the world. Another website, SpotCrime, collects, analyzes, and maps crime statistics to tell city dwellers which areas are safest or most dangerous and to offer crime alerts. And the Chicago-based Purple Binder helps people in need find city healthcare services. Many companies in the Open Data 500, the study of open data companies that I direct at the GovLab at NYU, use data from cities as well as other sources….
Some of the most ambitious uses of city data—with some of the greatest potential—focus on improving education. In Washington, the nonprofit Learn DC has made data about public schools available through a portal that state agencies, community organizations, and civic hackers can all use. They’re using it for collaborative research and action that, they say, has “empowered every DC parent to participate in shaping the future of the public education system.”…”