Access, Signal, Action: Data Stewardship Lessons from Valencia’s Floods

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Marta Poblet, Stefaan Verhulst, and Anna Colom: “Valencia has a rich history in water management, a legacy shaped by both triumphs and tragedies. This connection to water is embedded in the city’s identity, yet modern floods test its resilience in new ways.

During the recent floods, Valencians experienced a troubling paradox. In today’s connected world, digital information flows through traditional and social media, weather apps, and government alert systems designed to warn us of danger and guide rapid responses. Despite this abundance of data, a tragedy unfolded last month in Valencia. This raises a crucial question: how can we ensure access to the right data, filter it for critical signals, and transform those signals into timely, effective action?

Data stewardship becomes essential in this process.

In particular, the devastating floods in Valencia underscore the importance of:

  • having access to data to strengthen the signal (first mile challenges)
  • separating signal from noise
  • translating signal into action (last mile challenges)…(More)”.

Ignorance: A Global History

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Peter Burke: “Throughout history, every age has thought of itself as more knowledgeable than the last. Renaissance humanists viewed the Middle Ages as an era of darkness, Enlightenment thinkers tried to sweep superstition away with reason, the modern welfare state sought to slay the “giant” of ignorance, and in today’s hyperconnected world seemingly limitless information is available on demand. But what about the knowledge lost over the centuries? Are we really any less ignorant than our ancestors?
 
In this highly original account, Peter Burke examines the long history of humanity’s ignorance across religion and science, war and politics, business and catastrophes. Burke reveals remarkable stories of the many forms of ignorance—genuine or feigned, conscious and unconscious—from the willful politicians who redrew Europe’s borders in 1919 to the politics of whistleblowing and climate change denial. The result is a lively exploration of human knowledge across the ages, and the importance of recognizing its limits…(More)”.

Democracy Theatre & Performance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by David Wiles: “Democracy… is actually a form of theatre. In making his case, the author deftly investigates orators at the foundational moments of ancient and modern democracy, demonstrating how their performative skills were used to try to create a better world. People often complain about demagogues, or wish that politicians might be more sincere. But to do good, politicians (paradoxically) must be hypocrites – or actors. Moving from Athens to Indian independence via three great revolutions – in Puritan England, republican France and liberal America – the book opens up larger questions about the nature of democracy. When in the classical past Plato condemned rhetoric, the only alternative he could offer was authoritarianism. Wiles’ bold historical study has profound implications for our present: calls for personal authenticity, he suggests, are not an effective way to counter the rise of populism…(More)”

‘We were just trying to get it to work’: The failure that started the internet

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Scott Nover: “At the height of the Cold War, Charley Kline and Bill Duvall were two bright-eyed engineers on the front lines of one of technology’s most ambitious experiments. Kline, a 21-year-old graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Duvall, a 29-year-old systems programmer at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), were working on a system called Arpanet, short for the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Funded by the US Department of Defense, the project aimed to create a network that could directly share data without relying on telephone lines. Instead, this system used a method of data delivery called “packet switching” that would later form the basis for the modern internet.

It was the first test of a technology that would change almost every facet of human life. But before it could work, you had to log in.

Kline sat at his keyboard between the lime-green walls of UCLA’s Boelter Hall Room 3420, prepared to connect with Duvall, who was working a computer halfway across the state of California. But Kline didn’t even make it all the way through the word “L-O-G-I-N” before Duvall told him over the phone that his system crashed. Thanks to that error, the first “message” that Kline sent Duvall on that autumn day in 1969 was simply the letters “L-O”…(More)”.

Beached Plastic Debris Index; a modern index for detecting plastics on beaches

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jenna Guffogg et al: “Plastic pollution on shorelines poses a significant threat to coastal ecosystems, underscoring the urgent need for scalable detection methods to facilitate debris removal. In this study, the Beached Plastic Debris Index (BPDI) was developed to detect plastic accumulation on beaches using shortwave infrared spectral features. To validate the BPDI, plastic targets with varying sub-pixel covers were placed on a sand spit and captured using WorldView-3 satellite imagery. The performance of the BPDI was analysed in comparison with the Normalized Difference Plastic Index (NDPI), the Plastic Index (PI), and two hydrocarbon indices (HI, HC). The BPDI successfully detected the plastic targets from sand, water, and vegetation, outperforming the other indices and identifying pixels with <30 % plastic cover. The robustness of the BPDI suggests its potential as an effective tool for mapping plastic debris accumulations along coastlines…(More)”.

More-than-human governance experiments in Europe

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Claudia Chwalisz & Lucy Reid: “There is a growing network of people and places exploring and practising how governance and policy design can draw on more-than-human intelligences.

‘More-than-human’ was initially coined by David Abram in his 1997 book The Spell of the Sensuous. The term refers to the animate earth and the impossibility of separating our human- ness from our relationship with it. Our exploration related to governance has been around how we might meaningfully consider our relationship with the living world when taking decisions.

We have undertaken a short exploratory research project to learn who is conducting new governance experiments in Europe to begin to map the field, learn from best practices, and share these findings…

There were three main types of approaches to applying the idea of more-than-human governance in practice, sometimes with an overlap:

  • Rights-based;
  • Representation-focused, and 
  • Artistic.

We identified four key groups we felt were missing from our initial research and discussions:

  • Indigenous voices;
  • More non-specialists and artists;
  • A few critical voices, and
  • People using technology in novel ways that reshape our relationship with the living world…(More)”

Privacy during pandemics: Attitudes to public use of personal data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Eleonora Freddi and Ole Christian Wasenden: “In this paper we investigate people’s attitudes to privacy and sharing of personal data when used to help society combat a contagious disease, such as COVID-19. Through a two-wave survey, we investigate the role of personal characteristics, and the effect of information, in shaping privacy attitudes. By conducting the survey in Norway and Sweden, which adopted very different strategies to handle the COVID-19 pandemic, we analyze potential differences in privacy attitudes due to policy changes. We find that privacy concern is negatively correlated with allowing public use of personal data. Trust in the entity collecting data and collectivist preferences are positively correlated with this type of data usage. Providing more information about the public benefit of sharing personal data makes respondents more positive to the use of their data, while providing additional information about the costs associated with data sharing does not change attitudes. The analysis suggests that stating a clear purpose and benefit for the data collection makes respondents more positive about sharing. Despite very different policy approaches, we do not find any major differences in privacy attitudes between Norway and Sweden. Findings are also similar between the two survey waves, suggesting a minor role for contextual changes…(More)”

Voice and Access in AI: Global AI Majority Participation in Artificial Intelligence Development and Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Sumaya N. Adan et al: “Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly emerging as one of the most transformative technologies in human history, with the potential to profoundly impact all aspects of society globally. However, access to AI and participation in its development and governance is concentrated among a few countries with advanced AI capabilities, while the ‘Global AI Majority’ – defined as the population of countries primarily encompassing Africa, Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, and parts of Eastern Europe – is largely excluded. These regions, while diverse, share common challenges in accessing and influencing advanced AI technologies.

This white paper investigates practical remedies to increase voice in and access to AI governance and capabilities for the Global AI Majority, while addressing the security and commercial concerns of frontier AI states. We examine key barriers facing the Global AI Majority, including limited access to digital and compute infrastructure, power concentration in AI development, Anglocentric data sources, and skewed talent distributions. The paper also explores the dual-use dilemma of AI technologies and how it motivates frontier AI states to implement restrictive policies.

We evaluate a spectrum of AI development initiatives, ranging from domestic model creation to structured access to deployed models, assessing their feasibility for the Global AI Majority. To resolve governance dilemmas, we propose three key approaches: interest alignment, participatory architecture, and safety assurance…(More)”.

The need for climate data stewardship: 10 tensions and reflections regarding climate data governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Stefaan Verhulst: “Datafication—the increase in data generation and advancements in data analysis—offers new possibilities for governing and tackling worldwide challenges such as climate change. However, employing data in policymaking carries various risks, such as exacerbating inequalities, introducing biases, and creating gaps in access. This paper articulates 10 core tensions related to climate data and its implications for climate data governance, ranging from the diversity of data sources and stakeholders to issues of quality, access, and the balancing act between local needs and global imperatives. Through examining these tensions, the article advocates for a paradigm shift towards multi-stakeholder governance, data stewardship, and equitable data practices to harness the potential of climate data for the public good. It underscores the critical role of data stewards in navigating these challenges, fostering a responsible data ecology, and ultimately contributing to a more sustainable and just approach to climate action and broader social issues…(More)”.