Report by Michael Lawrence and Megan Shipman: “Polycrisis analysis reveals the complex and systemic nature of the world’s problems, but it can also help us pursue “positive pathways” to better futures. This report outlines the sorts of systems changes required to avoid, mitigate, and navigate through polycrisis given the dual nature of crises as harmful disasters and opportunities for transformation. It then examines the progression between three prominent approaches to systems change—leverage points, tipping points, and multi-systemic stability landscapes—by highlighting their advances and limitations. The report concludes that new tools like Cross-Impact Balance analysis can build on these approaches to help navigate through polycrisis by identifying stable and desirable multi-systemic equilibria…(More)”
Government + research + philanthropy: How cross-sector partnerships can improve policy decisions and action
Paper by Jenni Owen: “Researchers often lament that government decision-makers do not generate or use research evidence. People in government often lament that researchers are not responsive to government’s needs. Yet there is increasing enthusiasm in government, research, and philanthropy sectors for developing, investing in, and sustaining government-research partnerships that focus on government’s use of evidence. There is, however, scant guidance about how to do so. To help fill the gap, this essay addresses (1) Why government-research partnerships matter; (2) Barriers to developing government-research partnerships; (3) Strategies for addressing the barriers; (4) The role of philanthropy in government-research partnerships. The momentum to develop, invest in, and sustain cross-sector partnerships that advance government’s use of evidence is exciting. It is especially encouraging that there are feasible and actionable strategies for doing so…(More)”.
How Philanthropy Can Make Sure Data Is Used to Help — Not Harm
Article by Ryan Merkley: “We are living in an extractive data economy. Every day, people generate a firehose of new data on hundreds of apps and services. These data are often sold by data brokers indiscriminately, embedded into user profiles for ad targeting, and used to train large language models such as Chat GPT. Communities and individuals should benefit from data made by and about them, but they don’t.
That needs to change. A report released last month by the Aspen Institute, where I work, calls on foundations and other donors to lead the way in addressing these disparities and promoting responsible uses of data in their own practices and in the work of grantees. Among other things, it suggests that funders encourage grantees to make sure their data accurately represents the communities they serve and support their efforts to make that data available and accessible to constituents…(More)”.
This free app is the experts’ choice for wildfire information
Article by Shira Ovide: “One of the most trusted sources of information about wildfires is an app that’s mostly run by volunteers and on a shoestring budget.
It’s called Watch Duty, and it started in 2021 as a passion project of a Silicon Valley start-up founder, John Mills. He moved to a wildfire-prone area in Northern California and felt terrified by how difficult it was to find reliable information about fire dangers.
One expert after another said Watch Duty is their go-to resource for information, including maps of wildfires, the activities of firefighting crews, air-quality alerts and official evacuation orders…
More than a decade ago, Mills started a software company that helped chain restaurants with tasks such as food safety checklists. In 2019, Mills bought property north of San Francisco that he expected to be a future home. He stayed there when the pandemic hit in 2020.
During wildfires that year, Mills said he didn’t have enough information about what was happening and what to do. He found himself glued to social media posts from hobbyists who compiled wildfire information from public safety communications that are streamed online.
Mills said the idea for Watch Duty came from his experiences, his discussions with community groups and local officials — and watching an emergency services center struggle with clunky software for dispatching help.
He put in $1 million of his money to start Watch Duty and persuaded people he knew in Silicon Valley to help him write the app’s computer code. Mills also recruited some of the people who had built social media followings for their wildfire posts.
In the first week that Watch Duty was available in three California counties, Mills said, the app had tens of thousands of users. In the past month, he said, Watch Duty has hadroughly 1.1 million users.
Watch Duty is a nonprofit. Members who pay $25 a year have access to extra features such as flight tracking for firefighting aircraft.
Mills wants to expand Watch Duty to cover other types of natural disasters. “I can’t think of anything better I can do with my life than this,” he said…(More)”.
Artificial Intelligence Opportunities for State and Local Departments Of Transportation
Report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: “Artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized various areas in departments of transportation (DOTs), such as traffic management and optimization. Through predictive analytics and real-time data processing, AI systems show promise in alleviating congestion, reducing travel times, and enhancing overall safety by alerting drivers to potential hazards. AI-driven simulations are also used for testing and improving transportation systems, saving time and resources that would otherwise be needed for physical tests…(More)”.
The Social Value of Hurricane Forecasts
Paper by Renato Molina & Ivan Rudik: “What is the impact and value of hurricane forecasts? We study this question using newly-collected forecast data for major US hurricanes since 2005. We find higher wind speed forecasts increase pre-landfall protective spending, but erroneous under-forecasts increase post-landfall damage and rebuilding expenditures. Our main contribution is a new theoretically-grounded approach for estimating the marginal value of forecast improvements. We find that the average annual improvement reduced total per-hurricane costs, inclusive of unobserved protective spending, by $700,000 per county. Improvements since 2007 reduced costs by 19%, averaging $5 billion per hurricane. This exceeds the annual budget for all federal weather forecasting…(More)”.
Using ChatGPT to Facilitate Truly Informed Medical Consent
Paper by Fatima N. Mirza: “Informed consent is integral to the practice of medicine. Most informed consent documents are written at a reading level that surpasses the reading comprehension level of the average American. Large language models, a type of artificial intelligence (AI) with the ability to summarize and revise content, present a novel opportunity to make the language used in consent forms more accessible to the average American and thus, improve the quality of informed consent. In this study, we present the experience of the largest health care system in the state of Rhode Island in implementing AI to improve the readability of informed consent documents, highlighting one tangible application for emerging AI in the clinical setting…(More)”.
Blueprints for Learning
Report by the Data Foundation: “The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (Evidence Act) required the creation of learning agendas for the largest federal agencies. These agendas outline how agencies will identify and answer priority questions through data and evidence-building activities. The Data Foundation undertook an analysis of the agendas to understand how they were developed and plans for implementation as part of the 5-Year milestone of the Evidence Act.
The analysis reveals both progress and areas for improvement in the development and use of learning agendas. All but one large agency produced a publicly-available learning agenda, demonstrating a significant initial effort. However, several challenges were identified:
- Limited detail on execution and use: Many learning agendas lacked specifics on how the identified priority questions would be addressed or how the evidence generated would be used.
- Variation in quality: Agencies diverged in the comprehensiveness and clarity of their agendas, with some providing more detailed plans than others.
- Resource constraints: The analysis suggests that a lack of dedicated resources may be hindering some agencies’ capacity to fully implement their learning agendas…(More)”.
Why the future of democracy could depend on your group chats
Article by Nathan Schneider: “I became newly worried about the state of democracy when, a few years ago, my mother was elected president of her neighborhood garden club.
Her election wasn’t my worry – far from it. At the time, I was trying to resolve a conflict on a large email group I had created. Someone, inevitably, was being a jerk on the internet. I had the power to remove them, but did I have the right? I realized that the garden club had in its bylaws something I had never seen in nearly all the online communities I had been part of: basic procedures to hold people with power accountable to everyone else.
The internet has yet to catch up to my mother’s garden club.
When Alexis de Tocqueville toured the United States in the early 1830s, he made an observation that social scientists have seen over and over since: Democracy at the state and national levels depends on everyday organizations like that garden club. He called them “schools” for practicing the “general theory of association.” As members of small democracies, people were learning to be citizens of a democratic country.
How many people experience those kinds of schools today?
People interact online more than offline nowadays. Rather than practicing democracy, people most likely find themselves getting suspended from a Facebook group they rely on with no reason given or option to appeal. Or a group of friends join a chat together, but only one of them has the ability to change its settings. Or people see posts from Elon Musk inserted into their mentions on X, which he owns. All of these situations are examples of what I call “implicit feudalism.”…(More)”.
close.city
About: “Proximity governs how we live, work, and socialize. Close is an interactive travel time map for people who want to be near the amenities that matter most to them. Close builds on two core principles:
- Different people will prioritize being near different amenities
- A neighborhood is only as accessible as its most distant important amenity
When you select multiple amenities in Close, the map shows the travel time to the furthest of those amenities. You can set your preferred travel mode to get to each amenity. Walking + Public Transit, Biking or Combined. Close is currently in public beta, with more features and destination types coming over the next few months. The reliability of destinations will continually improve as new data sources and user feedback are incorporated. Close is built and maintained by Henry Spatial Analysis. You can stay up-to-date on the latest improvements to Close by subscribing to the newsletter. How to use Close – Close includes travel time information for cities across the United States. To view a different location, select the search icon on the top left of the screen and enter a city or county name. To access map details, including a link to this About page, click the menu icon in the top left corner of the map…(More)”