The Digital Footprint of Europe’s Refugees

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Pew Research Center: “Migrants leaving their homes for a new country often carry a smartphone to communicate with family that may have stayed behind and to help search for border crossings, find useful information about their journey or search for details about their destination. The digital footprints left by online searches can provide insight into the movement of migrants as they transit between countries and settle in new locations, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of refugee flows between the Middle East and Europe.1

Refugees from just two Middle Eastern countries — Syria and Iraq — made up a combined 38% of the record 1.3 million people who arrived and applied for asylum in the European Union, Norway and Switzerland in 2015 and a combined 37% of the 1.2 million first-time asylum applications in 2016. Most Syrian and Iraqi refugees during this period crossed from Turkey to Greece by sea, before continuing on to their final destinations in Europe.

Since many refugees from Syria and Iraq speak Arabic as their native, if not only, language, it is possible to identify key moments in their migration by examining trends in internet searches conducted in Turkey using Arabic, as opposed to the dominant Turkic languages in that country. For example, Turkey-based searches for the word “Greece” in Arabic closely mirror 2015 and 2016 fluctuations in the number of refugees crossing the Aegean Sea to Greece. The searches also provide a window into how migrants planned to move across borders — for example, the search term “Greece” was often combined with “smuggler.” In addition, an hourly analysis of searches in Turkey shows spikes in the search term “Greece” during early morning hours, a typical time for migrants making their way across the Mediterranean.

Comparing online searches with migration data

This report’s analysis compares data from internet searches with government and international agency refugee arrival and asylum application data in Europe from 2015 and 2016. Internet searches were captured from Google Trends, a publicly-available analytical tool that standardizes search volume by language and location over time. The analysis examines searches in Arabic, done in Turkey and Germany, for selected words such as “Greece” or “German” that can be linked to migration patterns. For a complete list of search terms employed, see the methodology. Google releases hourly, daily and weekly search data.

Google does not release the actual number of searches conducted but provides a metric capturing the relative change in searches over a specified time period. The metric ranges from 0 to 100 and indicates low- or high-volume search activity for the time period. Predicting or deciphering human behavior from the analysis of internet searches has limitations and remains experimental. But, internet search data does offer a potentially promising way to explore migration flows crossing international borders.

Migration data cited in this report come from two sources. The first is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which provides data on new arrivals into Greece on a monthly basis. The second is first-time asylum applications from Eurostat, Europe’s statistical agency. Since both Syrian and Iraqi asylum seekers have had fairly high acceptance rates in Europe, it is likely that most Syrian and Iraqi migrants entering during 2015 and 2016 were counted by UNHCR and applied for asylum with European authorities.

The unique circumstances of this Syrian and Iraqi migration — the technology used by refugees, the large and sudden movement of refugees and language groups in transit and destination countries — presents a unique opportunity to integrate the analysis of online searches and migration data. The conditions that permit this type of analysis may not apply in other circumstances where migrants are moving between countries….(More)”

Social Network for Doctors to Transform Medical Crowdsourcing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “SERMO, a global social network for physicians has expanded its footprint globally to revolutionize medical crowdsourcing. SERMO is now open to physicians on all seven continents, delivering on its promise from day one to unite physicians from every corner of the globe, ensuring the free flow of expert information amongst physicians.

Now available in more than 150 countries, physicians from both rural and urban areas, in developed and developing nations, can be exposed to the same expertise from their peers, providing an even higher level of care to their patients.

According to one orthopedic surgeon from Greece, SERMO offers “Exciting doctor interactions, is very helpful with difficult cases and always prompts us with very interesting social topics and discussions. It is a form of collective intelligence that allows individuals to achieve more than they could on their own.”

Combined with last month’s Drug Ratings launch, physicians will now be able to evaluate prescription drugs, in addition to communicating with peers and solving tough patient cases. These tools are revolutionizing the way physicians exchange and obtain information, as well as offer personalized care to their patients. With over 300,000 drug ratings gathered since the beta launch began last year, Ratings enables doctors globally to share prescription drug treatment experiences with their peers, transforming how physicians around the world make prescribing decisions in their daily practice.

SERMO’s membership has grown from 130,000 in 2012, when SERMO merged with WorldOne, to 650,000 total members prior to today’s expansion – now, the network includes close to 800,000 physicians….(More)”.

Inspecting Algorithms for Bias

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Matthias Spielkamp at MIT Technology Review: “It was a striking story. “Machine Bias,” the headline read, and the teaser proclaimed: “There’s software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it’s biased against blacks.”

ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize–winning nonprofit news organization, had analyzed risk assessment software known as COMPAS. It is being used to forecast which criminals are most likely to ­reoffend. Guided by such forecasts, judges in courtrooms throughout the United States make decisions about the future of defendants and convicts, determining everything from bail amounts to sentences. When ProPublica compared COMPAS’s risk assessments for more than 10,000 people arrested in one Florida county with how often those people actually went on to reoffend, it discovered that the algorithm “correctly predicted recidivism for black and white defendants at roughly the same rate.”…

After ProPublica’s investigation, Northpointe, the company that developed COMPAS, disputed the story, arguing that the journalists misinterpreted the data. So did three criminal-justice researchers, including one from a justice-reform organization. Who’s right—the reporters or the researchers? Krishna Gummadi, head of the Networked Systems Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Saarbrücken, Germany, offers a surprising answer: they all are.

Gummadi, who has extensively researched fairness in algorithms, says ProPublica’s and Northpointe’s results don’t contradict each other. They differ because they use different measures of fairness.

Imagine you are designing a system to predict which criminals will reoffend. One option is to optimize for “true positives,” meaning that you will identify as many people as possible who are at high risk of committing another crime. One problem with this approach is that it tends to increase the number of false positives: people who will be unjustly classified as likely reoffenders. The dial can be adjusted to deliver as few false positives as possible, but that tends to create more false negatives: likely reoffenders who slip through and get a more lenient treatment than warranted.

Raising the incidence of true positives or lowering the false positives are both ways to improve a statistical measure known as positive predictive value, or PPV. That is the percentage of all positives that are true….

But if we accept that algorithms might make life fairer if they are well designed, how can we know whether they are so designed?

Democratic societies should be working now to determine how much transparency they expect from ADM systems. Do we need new regulations of the software to ensure it can be properly inspected? Lawmakers, judges, and the public should have a say in which measures of fairness get prioritized by algorithms. But if the algorithms don’t actually reflect these value judgments, who will be held accountable?

These are the hard questions we need to answer if we expect to benefit from advances in algorithmic technology…(More)”.

Governments and Citizens in the Digital Age

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

European Commission: “In 2009, the Ministerial Declaration on eGovernment was adopted in Malmö, Sweden, uniting EU member states around a comprehensive programme for administrative reform and digital government. Now, as the government of Estonia prepares to take over the presidency of the Council of the European Union, EU Member States look again at the renewed prospects for restoring public trust in the digital age and unleashing the power of the Internet towards better public services and easier citizen/state interaction.

At the High-Level Roundtable on the European Union Ministerial Declaration on Digital Government, delegations from 13 member states met to discuss a “concept paper” prepared by the Lisbon Council.

It spelled out three areas for highlight:

  1. the “once-only” principle
  2. open government
  3. eIdentity and security

Delegations promised to take up the discussion in the Council of the European Union, but they want to hear from you, too. If you haven’t already, please visit www.ideas4digitalgov.eu, where you will find a commentable version of The 2017 Ministerial Declaration on Digital Government: Key Principles and Guidelines, the “thought paper” launched at the high-level roundtable.

Let us know what you think. The consultation is open and the results, if successful, will contribute to a new Ministerial Declaration on Digital Government to be adopted at the Council of the European Union informal meeting in Autumn, 2017. (More information)”

Applying Public Opinion in Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Scott Edward Bennett: “…explores how public opinion is used to design, monitor and evaluate government programmes in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Using information collected from the media and from international practitioners in the public opinion field, as well as interviews in each of the 4 countries, the author describes how views of public opinion and governance differ significantly between elites and the general public. Bennett argues that elites generally risk more by allowing the creation of new data, fearing that its analysis may become public and create communications and political problems of various kinds. The book finds evidence that recent conservative governments in several countries are changing their perspective on the use of public opinion, and that conventional public opinion studies are facing challenges from the availability of other kinds of information and new technologies….(More)”

Europol introduce crowdsourcing to catch child abusers

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

LeakofNations: “The criminal intelligence branch of the European Union, known as Europol, have started a campaign called #TraceAnObject which uses social media crowdsourcing to detect potentially-identifying objects in material that depicts child abuse….

Investigative crowdsourcing has gained traction in academic and journalistic circles in recent years, but this represents the first case of government bureaus relying on social media people-power to conduct more effective analysis.

Journalists are increasingly relying on a combination of high-end computing to organise terabytes of data and internet cloud hubs that allow a consortium of journalists from around the world to share their analysis of the material. In the Panama Papers scoop the Australian software Nuix was used to analyse, extract, and index documents into an encrypted central hub in which thousands of journalists from 80 countries were able to post their workings and assist others in a forum-type setting. This model was remarkably efficient; over 11.5 million documents, dating back to the 1970’s, were analysed in less than a year.

The website Zooinverse has achieved huge success in creating public participation on academic projects, producing the pioneering game Foldit, where participants play with digital models of proteins. The Oxford University-based organisation has now engaged over 1 million volunteers, and has has significant successes in astronomy, ecology, cell biology, humanities, and climate science.

The most complex investigations still require thousands of hours of straightforward tasks that cannot be computerised. The citizen science website Planet Four studies conditions on Mars, and needs volunteers to compare photographs and detect blotches on Mars’ surface – enabling anyone to feel like Elon Musk, regardless of their educational background.

Child abuse is something that incites anger in most people. Crowdsourcing is an opportunity to take the donkey-work away from slow bureaucratic offices and allow ordinary citizens, many of whom felt powerless to protect children from these vile crimes, to genuinely progress cases that will make children safer.

Zooinverse proves that the public are hungry for this kind of work; the ICIJ project model of a central cloud forum shows that crowdsourcing across international borders allows data to be interpreted more efficiently. Europol’s latest idea could well be a huge success.

Even the most basic object could potentially provide vital clues to the culprit’s identity. The most significant items released so far include a school uniform complete with ID card necktie, and a group of snow-covered lodges….(More) (see also #TraceAnObject).

The Internet Doesn’t Have to Be Bad for Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Tom Simonite at MIT Technology Review: “Accusations that the Internet and social media sow political division have flown thick and fast since recent contentious elections in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has even pledged to start working on technology that will turn the energy of online interactions into a more positive force (see “We Need More Alternatives to Facebook”).

Tiny, largely self-funded U.S. startup Pol.is has been working on a similar project longer than Zuckerberg and already has some promising results. The company’s interactive, crowdsourced survey tool can be used to generate maps of public opinion that help citizens, governments, and legislators discover the nuances of agreement and disagreement on contentious issues that exist. In 2016, that information helped the government of Taiwan break a six-year deadlock over how to regulate online alcohol sales, caused by entrenched, opposing views among citizens on what rules should apply.

“It allowed different sides to gradually see that they share the same underlying concern despite superficial disagreements,” says Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s digital minister. The island’s government now routinely sends out Pol.is surveys using Facebook ads, and to special-interest groups. It has also used the system to help thrash out what rules should apply to Airbnb rentals and mobile ride-hailing services such as Uber.

Pol.is’s open-source software is designed to serve up interactive online surveys around a particular issue. People are shown a series of short statements about aspects of a broader issue—for example, “Uber drivers should need the same licenses cab drivers do”—and asked to click to signal that they agree or disagree. People can contribute new statements of their own for others to respond to. The tangle of crisscrossing responses is used to automatically generate charts that map out different clusters of opinion, making it easy to see the points on which people tend to overlap or disagree.

Alternativet, a progressive Danish political party with nine members of parliament, is piloting Pol.is as a way to give its members a more direct role in formulating policy. Jon Skjerning-Rasmussen, a senior process coordinator with the party, says the way Pol.is visualizations are shared with people as they participate in a survey—letting them see how their opinions compare with those of others—helps people engage with the tool….(More).

Digital footprint helps refugees get a bank account

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “An innovative banking solution from Taqanu uses customers’ digital history to allow them to prove their identity rather than traditional paperwork. The application, which will be globally available once it launches, means those that find it difficult to gain access to the necessary paperwork to do things like set up a bank account or rent accommodation, may now be able to using their mobile phones.

Earlier this year Taqanu was presented and discussed at the G20 High Level Forum for Forcibly Displaced Persons(FDPs), an event leading up to the Final G20 meeting in July 2017. The event brought together a diverse range of stakeholders including financial regulators and policymakers. The new banking solution faces huge regulation obstacles, but if approved it would be a big breakthrough in places like Germany, where you are required to have a bank account in order to take out any type of tenancy agreement.

It could be a major turning point for disenfranchised communities and refugees who often flea their homes with nothing, and are then faced with obstacles in settling in a new country. Taqanu’s founder Balázs Némethi, drew from his own experiences attempting to apply for bank accounts in foreign countries and wanted to make the process easier for people likely to have limited access to documentation.

The app has already attracted attention from some major players in the tech world, including Microsoft who are particularly interested in the company’s humanitarian values. It joins a whole host of other digital solutions including the mobile banking app which helps low-income migrant workers in the Middle East and the Dutch business incubator helping refugees to integrate through educational and entrepreneurial activities…(More)”

Citizen Science and Alien Species in Europe

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
European Commission: “Citizen Science programs aim at creating a bridge between science and the general public, actively involving citizens in research projects. In this way, citizen scientists can work side by side with experts, contributing to the increase of scientific knowledge, addressing local, national and international issues that need scientific support and having the potential to influence policy-making.
The EU Regulation 1143/2014 on Invasive Alien Species (IAS) acknowledges the important role public awareness and active involvement of the citizens have for the successful implementation of the Regulation. Thus, Citizen Science could bring an important contribution to the early detection and monitoring of invasive alien species, as, in order to adopt efficient control measures, it is necessary to know the presence and distribution of these species as soon as possible.
With the new website section we want to disseminate information about how citizens can be involved in activities aimed at protecting European biodiversity, awareness raising, sharing news, examples and developments from the emerging field of Citizen Science.
If you are interested in becoming a citizen scientist and want to help monitor invasive alien species (IAS) in your region, you can use our App “Invasive Alien Species Europe” to report the 37 IAS of Union Concern.
Furthermore, we have compiled a list of European Citizen Science projects dealing with alien species. The list is not exhaustive and is open for improvement …(More)”.

Future Libraries

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

ARUP: “Libraries are going through a renaissance, both in terms of the social infrastructure they provide and in terms of a diversification of the services and experiences offered. In corporate environments they are playing an increasingly important role in the provision of collaborate workspace and innovation. In communities they are evolving into hubs for education, health, entertainment and work….

This report brings to light significant trends that will influence the future of public, academic and corporate libraries and outlines the implications on their design, operation and user experience. It is the result of a collective exploration through series of workshop events held in London, Melbourne, San Francisco and Sydney, attended by experts in the design and management of libraries. This piece of research presents a glimpse into the future. It explores what we may expect to see as the physical and the digital arena continues to evolve and aims to serve as a foundation for further discussion around the future role of libraries in the communities they serve….(More)”