We are finally getting better at predicting organized conflict

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Tate Ryan-Mosley at MIT Technology Review: “People have been trying to predict conflict for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. But it’s hard, largely because scientists can’t agree on its nature or how it arises. The critical factor could be something as apparently innocuous as a booming population or a bad year for crops. Other times a spark ignites a powder keg, as with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in the run-up to World War I.

Political scientists and mathematicians have come up with a slew of different methods for forecasting the next outbreak of violence—but no single model properly captures how conflict behaves. A study published in 2011 by the Peace Research Institute Oslo used a single model to run global conflict forecasts from 2010 to 2050. It estimated a less than .05% chance of violence in Syria. Humanitarian organizations, which could have been better prepared had the predictions been more accurate, were caught flat-footed by the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in March 2011. It has since displaced some 13 million people.

Bundling individual models to maximize their strengths and weed out weakness has resulted in big improvements. The first public ensemble model, the Early Warning Project, launched in 2013 to forecast new instances of mass killing. Run by researchers at the US Holocaust Museum and Dartmouth College, it claims 80% accuracy in its predictions.

Improvements in data gathering, translation, and machine learning have further advanced the field. A newer model called ViEWS, built by researchers at Uppsala University, provides a huge boost in granularity. Focusing on conflict in Africa, it offers monthly predictive readouts on multiple regions within a given state. Its threshold for violence is a single death.

Some researchers say there are private—and in some cases, classified—predictive models that are likely far better than anything public. Worries that making predictions public could undermine diplomacy or change the outcome of world events are not unfounded. But that is precisely the point. Public models are good enough to help direct aid to where it is needed and alert those most vulnerable to seek safety. Properly used, they could change things for the better, and save lives in the process….(More)”.

Artificial intelligence: From expert-only to everywhere

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Deloitte: “…AI consists of multiple technologies. At its foundation are machine learning and its more complex offspring, deep-learning neural networks. These technologies animate AI applications such as computer vision, natural language processing, and the ability to harness huge troves of data to make accurate predictions and to unearth hidden insights (see sidebar, “The parlance of AI technologies”). The recent excitement around AI stems from advances in machine learning and deep-learning neural networks—and the myriad ways these technologies can help companies improve their operations, develop new offerings, and provide better customer service at a lower cost.

The trouble with AI, however, is that to date, many companies have lacked the expertise and resources to take full advantage of it. Machine learning and deep learning typically require teams of AI experts, access to large data sets, and specialized infrastructure and processing power. Companies that can bring these assets to bear then need to find the right use cases for applying AI, create customized solutions, and scale them throughout the company. All of this requires a level of investment and sophistication that takes time to develop, and is out of reach for many….

These tech giants are using AI to create billion-dollar services and to transform their operations. To develop their AI services, they’re following a familiar playbook: (1) find a solution to an internal challenge or opportunity; (2) perfect the solution at scale within the company; and (3) launch a service that quickly attracts mass adoption. Hence, we see Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and China’s BATs launching AI development platforms and stand-alone applications to the wider market based on their own experience using them.

Joining them are big enterprise software companies that are integrating AI capabilities into cloud-based enterprise software and bringing them to the mass market. Salesforce, for instance, integrated its AI-enabled business intelligence tool, Einstein, into its CRM software in September 2016; the company claims to deliver 1 billion predictions per day to users. SAP integrated AI into its cloud-based ERP system, S4/HANA, to support specific business processes such as sales, finance, procurement, and the supply chain. S4/HANA has around 8,000 enterprise users, and SAP is driving its adoption by announcing that the company will not support legacy SAP ERP systems past 2025.

A host of startups is also sprinting into this market with cloud-based development tools and applications. These startups include at least six AI “unicorns,” two of which are based in China. Some of these companies target a specific industry or use case. For example, Crowdstrike, a US-based AI unicorn, focuses on cybersecurity, while Benevolent.ai uses AI to improve drug discovery.

The upshot is that these innovators are making it easier for more companies to benefit from AI technology even if they lack top technical talent, access to huge data sets, and their own massive computing power. Through the cloud, they can access services that address these shortfalls—without having to make big upfront investments. In short, the cloud is democratizing access to AI by giving companies the ability to use it now….(More)”.

Geolocation Data for Pattern of Life Analysis in Lower-Income Countries

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Eduardo Laguna-Muggenburg, Shreyan Sen and Eric Lewandowski: “Urbanization processes in the developing world are often associated with the creation of informal settlements. These areas frequently have few or no public services exacerbating inequality even in the context of substantial economic growth.

In the past, the high costs of gathering data through traditional surveying methods made it challenging to study how these under-served areas evolve through time and in relation to the metropolitan area to which they belong. However, the advent of mobile phones and smartphones in particular presents an opportunity to generate new insights on these old questions.

In June 2019, Orbital Insight and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Arab States Human Development Report team launched a collaborative pilot program assessing the feasibility of using geolocation data to understand patterns of life among the urban poor in Cairo, Egypt.

The objectives of this collaboration were to assess feasibility (and conditionally pursue preliminary analysis) of geolocation data to create near-real time population density maps, understand where residents of informal settlements tend to work during the day, and to classify universities by percentage of students living in informal settlements.

The report is organized as follows. In Section 2 we describe the data and its limitations. In Section 3 we briefly explain the methodological background. Section 4 summarizes the insights derived from the data for the Egyptian context. Section 5 concludes….(More)”.

The Urban Computing Foundation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About: “The Urban Computing Foundation is a neutral forum for accelerating open source and community development that improves mobility, safety, road infrastructure, traffic congestion and energy consumption in connected cities.

As cities and transportation networks evolve into ever-more complicated systems, urban computing is emerging as an important field to bridge the divide between engineering, visualization, and traditional transportation systems analysis. These advancements are dependent on compatibility among many technologies across different public and private organizations. The Foundation provides the forum to collaborate on a common set of open source tools for developers building autonomous vehicles and smart infrastructure.

The Urban Computing Foundation’s mission is to enable developers, data scientists, visualization specialists and engineers to improve urban environments, human life quality, and city operation systems.build connected urban infrastructure. We do this through an open governance model that encourages participation and technical contribution, and by providing a framework for long term stewardship by companies and individuals invested in open urban computing’s success….(More)”.

Leveraging Private Data for Public Good: A Descriptive Analysis and Typology of Existing Practices

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New report by Stefaan Verhulst, Andrew Young, Michelle Winowatan. and Andrew J. Zahuranec: “To address the challenges of our times, we need both new solutions and new ways to develop those solutions. The responsible use of data will be key toward that end. Since pioneering the concept of “data collaboratives” in 2015, The GovLab has studied and experimented with innovative ways to leverage private-sector data to tackle various societal challenges, such as urban mobility, public health, and climate change.

While we have seen an uptake in normative discussions on how data should be shared, little analysis exists of the actual practice. This paper seeks to address that gap and seeks to answer the following question: What are the variables and models that determine functional access to private sector data for public good? In Leveraging Private Data for Public Good: A Descriptive Analysis and Typology of Existing Practices, we describe the emerging universe of data collaboratives and develop a typology of six practice areas. Our goal is to provide insight into current applications to accelerate the creation of new data collaboratives. The report outlines dozens of examples, as well as a set of recommendations to enable more systematic, sustainable, and responsible data collaboration….(More)”

City Innovation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report and interactive map by CityLab, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the OECD: “New Innovation helps local governments create an ecosystem that promotes experimentation and creativity to improve the public welfare of residents in cities around the world.

City governments are ushering in a new era of local public sector innovation that promotes experimentation and flexibility, and also takes into account the social needs of citizens to manage evolving urban systems. The goal of this report is to understand how municipalities can enhance their ability to use innovation to deliver better results for their residents….

This site identifies and shares how cities around the world are investing in innovation, to ensure they’re constantly assessing and improving how they’re tackling problems and improving the lives of residents. This map is based on an initial survey of cities in OECD and non-OECD countries. The city information reflects data gathered from the city administration at the time of the survey….(More)”

Beyond the Valley

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Ramesh Srinivasan: “How to repair the disconnect between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us: toward a more democratic internet.

In this provocative book, Ramesh Srinivasan describes the internet as both an enabler of frictionless efficiency and a dirty tangle of politics, economics, and other inefficient, inharmonious human activities. We may love the immediacy of Google search results, the convenience of buying from Amazon, and the elegance and power of our Apple devices, but it’s a one-way, top-down process. We’re not asked for our input, or our opinions—only for our data. The internet is brought to us by wealthy technologists in Silicon Valley and China. It’s time, Srinivasan argues, that we think in terms beyond the Valley.

Srinivasan focuses on the disconnection he sees between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us. The recent Cambridge Analytica and Russian misinformation scandals exemplify the imbalance of a digital world that puts profits before inclusivity and democracy. In search of a more democratic internet, Srinivasan takes us to the mountains of Oaxaca, East and West Africa, China, Scandinavia, North America, and elsewhere, visiting the “design labs” of rural, low-income, and indigenous people around the world. He talks to a range of high-profile public figures—including Elizabeth Warren, David Axelrod, Eric Holder, Noam Chomsky, Lawrence Lessig, and the founders of Reddit, as well as community organizers, labor leaders, and human rights activists. To make a better internet, Srinivasan says, we need a new ethic of diversity, openness, and inclusivity, empowering those now excluded from decisions about how technologies are designed, who profits from them, and who are surveilled and exploited by them….(More)”

Handbook of Research on Politics in the Computer Age

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Ashu M. G. Solo: “Technology and particularly the Internet have caused many changes in the realm of politics. Aspects of engineering, computer science, mathematics, or natural science can be applied to politics. Politicians and candidates use their own websites and social network profiles to get their message out. Revolutions in many countries in the Middle East and North Africa have started in large part due to social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Social networking has also played a role in protests and riots in numerous countries. The mainstream media no longer has a monopoly on political commentary as anybody can set up a blog or post a video online. Now, political activists can network together online.

The Handbook of Research on Politics in the Computer Age is a pivotal reference source that serves to increase the understanding of methods for politics in the computer age, the effectiveness of these methods, and tools for analyzing these methods. The book includes research chapters on different aspects of politics with information technology, engineering, computer science, or math, from 27 researchers at 20 universities and research organizations in Belgium, Brazil, Cape Verde, Egypt, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Portugal, and the United States of America. Highlighting topics such as online campaigning and fake news, the prospective audience includes, but is not limited to, researchers, political and public policy analysts, political scientists, engineers, computer scientists, political campaign managers and staff, politicians and their staff, political operatives, professors, students, and individuals working in the fields of politics, e-politics, e-government, new media and communication studies, and Internet marketing….(More)”.

The Precision Farming Revolution

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by James E. Addicott: “This book examines the precision farming revolution in Somerset, England. It reveals the reasons why local farmers invested in autonomous systems and traces the outcomes of adoption. It describes the local and global drivers of the fourth industrial revolution, from world population growth, climatic and ecological crises, profit driven farming and government agri-tech grants, to the Space Race era. A new cultural method of intelligence, ideas and thinking, new organisational and control powers, was precisely what precision farming offered farmers and off-farm firms, who were able to remotely monitor and control natural environments and aspects of on-farm activities. As a result of local farmers opting into precision farming systems the power dynamics of industrial agriculture were reorganised and this book will offer readers an understanding of how and why….(More)”.

Comparative Constitution Making

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Hanna Lerner and David Landau: “In a seminal article more than two decades ago, Jon Elster lamented that despite the large volume of scholarship in related fields, such as comparative constitutional law and constitutional design, there was a severe dearth of work on the process and context of constitution making. Happily, his point no longer holds. Recent years have witnessed a near-explosion of high-quality work on constitution-making processes, across a range of fields including law, political science, and history. This volume attempts to synthesize and expand upon this literature. It offers a number of different perspectives and methodologies aimed at understanding the contexts in which constitution making takes place, its motivations, the theories and processes that guide it, and its effects. The goal of the contributors is not simply to explain the existing state of the field, but also to provide new research on these key questions.

Our aims in this introduction are relatively modest. First, we seek to set up some of the major questions treated by recent research in order to explain how the chapters in this volume contribute to them. We do not aim to give a complete state of the field, but we do lay out what we see as several of the biggest challenges and questions posed by recent scholarship. …(More)”.