Eastern Asia

Website Seeks to Make Government Data Easier to Sift Through

Curated on April 5, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Steve Lohr at the New York Times: “For years, the federal government, states and some cities have enthusiastically made vast troves of data open to the public. Acres of paper records on demographics, public health, traffic patterns, energy consumption, family incomes and many other topics have been digitized and posted on the web.

This abundance of data can be a gold mine for discovery and insights, but finding the nuggets can be arduous, requiring special skills.

A project coming out of the M.I.T. Media Lab on Monday seeks to ease that challenge and to make the value of government data available to a wider audience. The project, called Data U S A, bills itself as “the most comprehensive visualization of U.S. public data.” It is free, and its software code is open source, meaning that developers can build custom applications by adding other data.

Cesar A. Hidalgo, an assistant professor of media arts and sciences at the M.I.T. Media Lab who led the development of Data USA, said the website was devised to “transform data into stories.” Those stories are typically presented as graphics, charts and written summaries….Type “New York” into the Data USA search box, and a drop-down menu presents choices — the city, the metropolitan area, the state and other options. Select the city, and the page displays an aerial shot of Manhattan with three basic statistics: population (8.49 million), median household income ($52,996) and median age (35.8).

Lower on the page are six icons for related subject categories, including economy, demographics and education. If you click on demographics, one of the so-called data stories appears, based largely on data from the American Community Survey of the United States Census Bureau.

Using colorful graphics and short sentences, it shows the median age of foreign-born residents of New York (44.7) and of residents born in the United States (28.6); the most common countries of origin for immigrants (the Dominican Republic, China and Mexico); and the percentage of residents who are American citizens (82.8 percent, compared with a national average of 93 percent).

Data USA features a selection of data results on its home page. They include the g ender w age g ap in Connecticut; the r acial b reakdown of po verty in Flint, Mich.; the wages of p hysicians and s urgeons across the United States; and the institutions that award the most c omputer s cience degrees….(More)

Crowdsourcing Human Rights

Curated on March 30, 2016May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Faisal Al Mutar at The World Post: “The Internet has also allowed activists to access information as never before. I recently joined the Movements.org team, a part of the New York-based organization, Advancing Human Rights. This new platform allows activists from closed societies to connect directly with people around the world with skills to help them. In the first month of its launch, thousands of activists from 92 countries have come to Movements.org to defend human rights.

Movements.org is a promising example of how technology can be utilized by activists to change the world. Dissidents from some of the most repressive dictatorships — Russia, Iran, Syria and China — are connecting with individuals from around the globe who have unique skills to aid them.

Here are just a few of the recent success stories:

A leading Saudi expert on combatting state-sponsored incitement in textbooks posted a request to speak with members of the German government due to their strict anti-hate-speech laws. A former foundation executive connected him with senior German officials.

A secular Syrian group posted a request for PR aid to explain to Americans that the opposition is not comprised solely of radical elements. The founder of a strategic communication firm based in Los Angeles responded and offered help.

A Yemeni dissident asked for help creating a radio station focused on youth empowerment. He was contacted by a Syrian dissident who set up Syrian radio programs to offer advice.

Journalists from leading newspapers offered to tell human rights stories and connected with activists from dictatorships.

A request was created for a song to commemorate the life of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russia tax lawyer who died in prisoner. A NYC-based song-writer created a beautiful song and activists from Russia (including a member of Pussy Riot) filmed a music video of it.

North Korean defectors posted requests to get information in and out of their country and technologists posted offers to help with radio and satellite communication systems.

A former Iranian political prisoner posted a request to help sustain his radio station which broadcasts into Iran and helps keep information flowing to Iranians.

There are more and more cases everyday….(More)”

Data Mining Reveals the Four Urban Conditions That Create Vibrant City Life

Curated on March 25, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Emerging Technology from the arXiv: “Lack of evidence to city planning has ruined cities all over the world. But data-mining techniques are finally revealing the rules that make cities successful, vibrant places to live. …Back in 1961, the gradual decline of many city centers in the U.S. began to puzzle urban planners and activists alike. One of them, the urban sociologist Jane Jacobs, began a widespread and detailed investigation of the causes and published her conclusions in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a controversial book that proposed four conditions that are essential for vibrant city life.

Jacobs’s conclusions have become hugely influential. Her ideas have had a significant impact on the development of many modern cities such as Toronto and New York City’s Greenwich Village. However, her ideas have also attracted criticism because of the lack of empirical evidence to back them up, a problem that is widespread in urban planning.
Today, that looks set to change thanks to the work of Marco De Nadai at the University of Trento and a few pals, who have developed a way to gather urban data that they use to test Jacobs’s conditions and how they relate to the vitality of city life. The new approach heralds a new age of city planning in which planners have an objective way of assessing city life and working out how it can be improved.
In her book, Jacobs argues that vibrant activity can only flourish in cities when the physical environment is diverse. This diversity, she says, requires four conditions. The first is that city districts must serve more than two functions so that they attract people with different purposes at different times of the day and night. Second, city blocks must be small with dense intersections that give pedestrians many opportunities to interact. The third condition is that buildings must be diverse in terms of age and form to support a mix of low-rent and high-rent tenants. By contrast, an area with exclusively new buildings can only attract businesses and tenants wealthy enough to support the cost of new building. Finally, a district must have a sufficient density of people and buildings.

While Jacobs’s arguments are persuasive, her critics say there is little evidence to show that these factors are linked with vibrant city life. That changed last year when urban scientists in Seoul, South Korea, published the result of a 10-year study of pedestrian activity in the city at unprecedented resolution. This work successfully tested Jacobs’s ideas for the first time.
However, the data was gathered largely through pedestrian surveys, a process that is time-consuming, costly, and generally impractical for use in most modern cities.
De Nadai and co have come up with a much cheaper and quicker alternative using a new generation of city databases and the way people use social media and mobile phones. The new databases include OpenStreetMap, the collaborative mapping tool; census data, which records populations and building use; land use data, which uses satellite images to classify land use according to various categories; Foursquare data, which records geographic details about personal activity; and mobile-phone records showing the number and frequency of calls in an area.
De Nadai and co gathered this data for six cities in Italy—Rome, Naples, Florence, Bologna, Milan, and Palermo.
Their analysis is straightforward. The team used mobile-phone activity as a measure of urban vitality and land-use records, census data, and Foursquare activity as a measure of urban diversity. Their goal was to see how vitality and diversity are correlated in the cities they studied. The results make for interesting reading….(More)

A new data viz tool shows what stories are being undercovered in countries around the world

Curated on March 21, 2016October 24, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Jospeh Lichterman at NiemanLab: “It’s a common lament: Though the Internet provides us access to a nearly unlimited number of sources for news, most of us rarely venture beyond the same few sources or topics. And as news consumption shifts to our phones, people are using even fewer sources: On average, consumers access 1.52 trusted news sources on their phones, according to the 2015 Reuters Digital News Report, which studied news consumption across several countries.

To try and diversify people’s perspectives on the news, Jigsaw — the techincubator, formerly known as Google Ideas, that’s run by Google’s parentcompany Alphabet — this week launched Unfiltered.News, an experimentalsite that uses Google News data to show users what topics are beingunderreported or are popular in regions around the world.

Unfiltered.News’ main data visualization shows which topics are most reported in countries around the world. A column on the right side of the page highlights stories that are being reported widely elsewhere in the world, but aren’t in the top 100 stories on Google News in the selected country. In the United States yesterday, five of the top 10 underreported topics, unsurprisingly, dealt with soccer. In China, Barack Obama was the most undercovered topic….(More)”

The 4 Types of Cities and How to Prepare Them for the Future

Curated on March 1, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

John D. Macomber at Harvard Business Review: “The prospect of urban innovation excites the imagination. But dreaming up what a “smart city” will look like in some gleaming future is, by its nature, a utopian exercise. The messy truth is that cities are not the same, and even the most innovative approach can never achieve universal impact. What’s appealing for intellectuals in Copenhagen or Amsterdam is unlikely to help millions of workers in Jakarta or Lagos. To really make a difference, private entrepreneurs and civic entrepreneurs need to match projects to specific circumstances. An effective starting point is to break cities into four segments across two distinctions: legacy vs. new cities, and developed vs. emerging economies. The opportunities to innovate will differ greatly by segment.

Segment 1: Developed Economy, Legacy City
Examples: London, Detroit, Tokyo, Singapore

Characteristics: Any intervention in a legacy city has to dismantle something that existed before — a road or building, or even a regulatory authority or an entrenched service business. Slow demographic growth in developed economies creates a zero-sum situation (which is part of why the licensed cabs vs Uber/Lyft contest is so heated). Elites live in these cities, so solutions arise that primarily help users spend their excess cash. Yelp, Zillow, and Trip Advisor are examples of innovations in this context.
Implications for city leaders: Leaders should try to establish a setting where entrepreneurs can create solutions that improve quality of life — without added government expense. …

Implications for entrepreneurs: Denizens of developed legacy cities have discretionary income. …

Segment 2: Emerging Economy, Legacy City
Examples: Mumbai, São Paolo, Jakarta

Characteristics: Most physical and institutional structures are already in place in these megacities, but with fast-growing populations and severe congestion, there is an opportunity to create value by improving efficiency and livability, and there is a market of customers with cash to pay for these benefits.

Implications for city leaders: Leaders should loosen restrictions so that private finance can invest in improvements to physical infrastructure, to better use what already exists. …

Implications for entrepreneurs: Focus on public-private partnerships (PPP). …

Segment 3: Emerging Economy, New City
Examples: Phu My Hung, Vietnam; Suzhou, China; Astana, Kazakhstan; Singapore (historically)

Characteristics: These cities tend to have high population growth and high growth rates in GDP per capita, demographic and economic tailwinds that help to boost returns. The urban areas have few existing physical or social structures to dismantle as they grow, hence fewer entrenched obstacles to new offerings. There is also immediate ROI for investments in basic services as population moves in, because they capture new revenues from new users. Finally, in these cities there is an important chance to build it right the first time, notably with respect to the roads, bridges, water, and power that will determine both economic competitiveness and quality of life for decades. The downside? If this chance is missed, new urban agglomerations will be characterized by informal sprawl and new settlements will be hard to reach after the fact with power, roads, and sanitation.
Implications for city leaders: Leaders should first focus on building hard infrastructure that will support services such as schools, hospitals, and parks. …

Implications for entrepreneurs: In these cities, it’s too soon to think about optimizing existing infrastructure or establishing amusing ways for wealthy people to spend their disposable income. …

Segment 4: Developed Economy, New City
Examples and characteristics: Such cities are very rare. All the moment, almost all self-proclaimed “new cities” in the developed world are in fact large, integrated real-estate developments with an urban theme, usually in close proximity to a true municipality. Examples of these initiatives include New Songdo City in South Korea, Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, and Hafen City Hamburg in Germany.

Implications for city leaders: These satellites of existing metropolises compete for jobs and to attract talented participants in the creative economy. ….

Implications for entrepreneurs: Align with city leaders on services that are important to knowledge workers, and help build the cities’ brand. ….

Cities are different. So are solutions….(More)

Another Tale of Two Cities: Understanding Human Activity Space Using Actively Tracked Cellphone Location Data

Curated on February 17, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Yang Xu et al: “Activity space is an important concept in geography. Recent advancements of location-aware technologies have generated many useful spatiotemporal data sets for studying human activity space for large populations. In this article, we use two actively tracked cellphone location data sets that cover a weekday to characterize people’s use of space in Shanghai and Shenzhen, China. We introduce three mobility indicators (daily activity range, number of activity anchor points, and frequency of movements) to represent the major determinants of individual activity space. By applying association rules in data mining, we analyze how these indicators of an individual’s activity space can be combined with each other to gain insights of mobility patterns in these two cities. We further examine spatiotemporal variations of aggregate mobility patterns in these two cities. Our results reveal some distinctive characteristics of human activity space in these two cities: (1) A high percentage of people in Shenzhen have a relatively short daily activity range, whereas people in Shanghai exhibit a variety of daily activity ranges; (2) people with more than one activity anchor point tend to travel further but less frequently in Shanghai than in Shenzhen; (3) Shenzhen shows a significant north–south contrast of activity space that reflects its urban structure; and (4) travel distance in both cities is shorter around noon than in regular work hours, and a large percentage of movements around noon are associated with individual home locations. This study indicates the benefits of analyzing actively tracked cellphone location data for gaining insights of human activity space in different cities….(More)”

How Citizen Science Changed the Way Fukushima Radiation is Reported

Curated on February 14, 2016May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Ari Beser at National Geographic: “It appears the world-changing event didn’t change anything, and it’s disappointing,”said Pieter Franken, a researcher at Keio University in Japan (Wide Project), the MIT Media Lab (Civic Media Centre), and co-founder of Safecast, a citizen-science network dedicated to the measurement and distribution of accurate levels of radiation around the world, especially in Fukushima. “There was a chance after the disaster for humanity to innovate our thinking about energy, and that doesn’t seem like it’s happened. But what we can change is the way we measure the environment around us.”

Franken and his founding partners found a way to turn their email chain, spurred by the tsunami, into Safecast; an open-source network that allows everyday people to contribute to radiation-monitoring.

“We literally started the day after the earthquake happened,” revealed Pieter. “A friend of mine, Joi Ito, the director of MIT Media Lab, and I were basically talking about what Geiger counter to get. He was in Boston at the time and I was here in Tokyo, and like the rest of the world, we were worried, but we couldn’t get our hands on anything. There’s something happening here, we thought. Very quickly as the disaster developed, we wondered how to get the information out. People were looking for information, so we saw that there was a need. Our plan became: get information, put it together and disseminate it.”

An e-mail thread between Franken, Ito, and Sean Bonner, (co-founder of CRASH Space, a group that bills itself as Los Angeles’ first hackerspace), evolved into a network of minds, including members of Tokyo Hackerspace, Dan Sythe, who produced high-quality Geiger counters, and Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s former Chief Technical Officer. On April 15, the group that was to become Safecast sat down together for the first time. Ozzie conceived the plan to strap a Geiger counter to a car and somehow log measurements in motion. This would became the bGeigie, Safecast’s future model of the do-it-yourself Geiger counter kit.

Armed with a few Geiger counters donated by Sythe, the newly formed team retrofitted their radiation-measuring devices to the outside of a car. Safecast’s first volunteers drove up to the city of Koriyama in Fukushima Prefecture, and took their own readings around all of the schools. Franken explained, “If we measured all of the schools, we covered all the communities; because communities surround schools. It was very granular, the readings changed a lot, and the levels were far from academic, but it was our start. This was April 24, 6 weeks after the disaster. Our thinking changed quite a bit through this process.”

With the DIY kit available online, all anyone needs to make their own Geiger counter is a soldering iron and the suggested directions.

Since their first tour of Koriyama, with the help of a successful Kickstarter campaign, Safecast’s team of volunteers have developed the bGeigie handheld radiation monitor, that anyone can buy on Amazon.com and construct with suggested instructions available online. So far over 350 users have contributed 41 million readings, using around a thousand fixed, mobile, and crowd-sourced devices….(More)

China’s Biggest Polluters Face Wrath of Data-Wielding Citizens

Curated on December 14, 2015May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Bloomberg News: “Besides facing hefty fines, criminal punishments and the possibility of closing, the worst emitters in China risk additional public anger as new smartphone applications and lower-cost monitoring devices widen access to data on pollution sources.

The Blue Map app, developed by the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs with support from the SEE Foundation and the Alibaba Foundation, provides pollution data from more than 3,000 large coal-power, steel, cement and petrochemical production plants. Origins Technology Ltd. in July began sale of the Laser Egg, a palm-sized air quality monitor used to track indoor and outdoor air quality by measuring fine particulate matter in the air.

“Letting people know the sources of regional pollution will help the push for control over emissions of every chimney,” said Ma Jun, the founder and director of the Beijing-based IPE.

The phone map and Laser Egg are the latest levers in prying control over information on air quality from the hands of the few to the many, and they’re beginning to weigh on how officials respond to the issue. Numerous smartphone applications, including those developed by SINA Corp. and Moji Fengyun (Beijing) Software Technology Development Co., now provide people in China with real-time access to air quality readings, essentially democratizing what was once an information pipeline available only to the government.

“China’s continuing struggle to control and reduce air pollution exemplifies the government’s fear that lifestyle issues will mutate into demands for political change,” said Mary Gallagher, an associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan.

Even the government is getting in on the act. The Ministry of Environmental Protection rolled out a smartphone application called “Nationwide Air Quality” with the help ofWuhan Juzheng Environmental Science & Technology Co. at the end of 2013.

“As citizens know more about air pollution, more pressure will be put on the government,” said Xu Qinxiang, a technology manager at Wuhan Juzheng. “This will urge the government to control pollutant sources and upgrade heavy industries.”

Laser Egg

Sources of air quality data come from the China National Environment Monitoring Center, local environmental protection bureaus and non-Chinese sources such as the U.S. Embassy’s website in Beijing, Xu said.

Air quality is a controversial subject in China. Since 2012, the public has pushed the government to move more quickly than planned to begin releasing data measuring pollution levels — especially of PM2.5, the particulates most harmful to human health.

The reading was 267 micrograms per cubic meter at 10 a.m. Monday near Tiananmen Square, according to the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center. The World Health Organization cautions against 24-hour exposure to concentrations higher than 25.

The availability of data appears to be filling a need, especially with the arrival of colder temperatures and the associated smog that blanketed Beijing and northern Chinarecently….

“With more disclosure of the data, everyone becomes more sensitive, hoping the government can do something,” Li Yajuan, a 27-year-old office secretary, said in an interview in Beijing’s Fuchengmen area. “It’s our own living environment after all.”

Efforts to make products linked to air data continue. IBM has been developing artificial intelligence to help fight Beijing’s toxic air pollution, and plans to work with other municipalities in China and India on similar projects to manage air quality….(More)”

Forging Trust Communities: How Technology Changes Politics

Curated on December 4, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Irene S. Wu: “Bloggers in India used social media and wikis to broadcast news and bring humanitarian aid to tsunami victims in South Asia. Terrorist groups like ISIS pour out messages and recruit new members on websites. The Internet is the new public square, bringing to politics a platform on which to create community at both the grassroots and bureaucratic level. Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies from more than ten countries, Irene S. Wu’s Forging Trust Communities argues that the Internet, and the technologies that predate it, catalyze political change by creating new opportunities for cooperation. The Internet does not simply enable faster and easier communication, but makes it possible for people around the world to interact closely, reciprocate favors, and build trust. The information and ideas exchanged by members of these cooperative communities become key sources of political power akin to military might and economic strength.

Wu illustrates the rich world history of citizens and leaders exercising political power through communications technology. People in nineteenth-century China, for example, used the telegraph and newspapers to mobilize against the emperor. In 1970, Taiwanese cable television gave voice to a political opposition demanding democracy. Both Qatar (in the 1990s) and Great Britain (in the 1930s) relied on public broadcasters to enhance their influence abroad. Additional case studies from Brazil, Egypt, the United States, Russia, India, the Philippines, and Tunisia reveal how various technologies function to create new political energy, enabling activists to challenge institutions while allowing governments to increase their power at home and abroad.

Forging Trust Communities demonstrates that the way people receive and share information through network communities reveals as much about their political identity as their socioeconomic class, ethnicity, or religion. Scholars and students in political science, public administration, international studies, sociology, and the history of science and technology will find this to be an insightful and indispensable work….(More)”