The tiny digital camera on every smartphone has had real impact on African lives

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Calestous Juma at Quartz: “…The first major impact of the technology on African users was to expand global connectivity by making it possible for the youth to access information that was collected using the technology via the Internet.

African engineers have been able use such information to design their own technologies suited to local condition. In 2016 Arthur Zhang, a young Cameroonian medical engineering was awarded the $37,000 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation by the UK Royal Academy of Engineering. Zhang invented the Cardiopad, a tablet computer takes heart readings and sends them to a heart specialist using the Internet.

Zhang was trained in electronic engineering but gained much of the relevant medical knowledge by watching video online, many which had been posted using digital camera. Many more young Africans are following in Zhang footprints in using such material to acquire knowledge that is available through their regular university courses….

In agriculture, farmers can how take diseased images of the leaves of their crops and share them with scientists around the world for identification and advice. Such digital imaging research is an important addition to other agricultural used of mobile phones that constitute low-cost agricultural extension approaches.

Young African engineers are making extensive use of mobile phones for disease diagnosis. Ugandan researchers developed a jacket that diagnoses pneumonia faster than the standard methods used by doctors. Imaging technologies offer additional ways to expand the range of diagnosis for a wide range of diseases.

In low-cost eye are, for example, EyeNetra uses smartphones as a platform to capture the refractive power of the lenses in eyeglasses. EyeNetra is planning to deploy its technology in Nigeria. It has distributed units to be piloted in Gabon, Gambia, Kenya, Morocco, Rwanda, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

There have been concerns that the emerging era of personalized medicine will create a “health divide” between the industrialized and emerging worlds. This is mainly because of human genetic diversity influences the choice of treatment options. Smartphones are becoming as a low-cost way to pre-empt the emergence such a divide.

Climate change is going to force African scientists to study afresh alternations in the microscopic world. With as little as $15 Micro Phone Lens it will soon be possible to turn a regular smartphone into a microscope that capture images and videos at a magnification range of 15-60 times using the phone’s digital zoom feature. The add-on will inspire a new generation of explorers and scientists….(More)”

What Does Big Data Mean For Sustainability?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Saurabh Tyagi at Sustainable Brands: “Everything around us is impacted by big data today. The phenomenon took shape earlier in this decade and there are now a growing number of compelling ways in which big data analytics is being applied to solve real-world problems….Out of the many promises of big data, environment sustainability is one of the most important ones to implement and maintain. Why so?

Climate change has moved to the top of the list of global risks, affecting every country and disrupting economies. While a major part of this damage is irreversible, it is still possible with use of a wide range of technological measures to control the global increase in temperature. Big data can generate useful insights that can be as relevant towards fostering environment sustainability as they have been to other sectors such as healthcare.

Understanding operations

Big data’s usefulness is in its ability to help businesses understand and act on the environmental impacts of their operations. Some of these are within their boundaries while others are outside their direct control. Previously, this information was dispersed across different formats, locations and sites. However, now businesses are trying to make out the end-to-end impact of their operations throughout the value chain. This includes things that are outside of their direct control, including raw material sourcing, employee travels, product disposal, and the like.

Assessing environmental risks

Big data is also useful in assessing environmental risks. For example, Aqueduct is an interactive water-risk mapping tool from the World Resources Institute that monitors and calculates water risk anywhere in the world based on various parameters related to the water’s quantity, quality and other changing regulatory issue in that area. With this free online, users can choose the factors on which they want to focus and also zoom in at a particular location.

Big data is also enabling environmental sustainability by helping us to understand the demand for energy and food as the world population increases and climate change reduces these resources by every passing year.

Optimizing resource usage

Another big contribution of big data to the corporate world is its ability to help them optimize usage of resources. At the Initiative for Global Environment Leadership (IGEL) conference in 2014, David Parker, VP of Big Data for SAP, discussed how Italian tire company Pirelli uses SAP’s big data management system, HANA, to optimize its inventory. The company uses data generated by sensors in its tires globally to reduce waste, increase profits and reduce the number of defective tires going to landfills, thus doing its bit for environment. Similarly, Dutch energy company Alliander uses HANA to maintain the grid’s peak efficiency, which in turn increases profits and reduces environmental impact. While at one time it used to take 10 weeks for the company to optimize the grid, now it takes only three days to accomplish the same; a task which Alliander used to do once in a year now can be accomplished once every month….

Big data helps better regulation

Big data can also be integrated into government policies to ensure better environmental regulation. Governments can now implement the latest sensor technology and adopt real-time reporting of environmental quality data. This data can be used monitor the emissions of large utility facilities and if required put some regulatory framework in place to regularize the emissions. The firms are given complete freedom to experiment and chose the best possible mean of achieving the required result….(More)”

Numbers and the Making of Us: Counting and the Course of Human Cultures

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Cover: Numbers and the Making of Us in HARDCOVERBook by Caleb Everett: “Carved into our past, woven into our present, numbers shape our perceptions of the world and of ourselves much more than we commonly think. Numbers and the Making of Us is a sweeping account of how numbers radically enhanced our species’ cognitive capabilities and sparked a revolution in human culture. Caleb Everett brings new insights in psychology, anthropology, primatology, linguistics, and other disciplines to bear in explaining the myriad human behaviors and modes of thought numbers have made possible, from enabling us to conceptualize time in new ways to facilitating the development of writing, agriculture, and other advances of civilization.

Number concepts are a human invention—a tool, much like the wheel, developed and refined over millennia. Numbers allow us to grasp quantities precisely, but they are not innate. Recent research confirms that most specific quantities are not perceived in the absence of a number system. In fact, without the use of numbers, we cannot precisely grasp quantities greater than three; our minds can only estimate beyond this surprisingly minuscule limit.

Everett examines the various types of numbers that have developed in different societies, showing how most number systems derived from anatomical factors such as the number of fingers on each hand. He details fascinating work with indigenous Amazonians who demonstrate that, unlike language, numbers are not a universal human endowment. Yet without numbers, the world as we know it would not exist….(More)”.

DataCollaboratives.org – A New Resource on Creating Public Value by Exchanging Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Recent years have seen exponential growth in the amount of data being generated and stored around the world. There is increasing recognition that this data can play a key role in solving some of the most difficult public problems we face.

However, much of the potentially useful data is currently privately held and not available for public insights. Data in the form of web clicks, social “likes,” geo location and online purchases are typically tightly controlled, usually by entities in the private sector. Companies today generate an ever-growing stream of information from our proliferating sensors and devices. Increasingly, they—and various other actors—are asking if there is a way to make this data available for the public good. There is an ongoing search for new models of corporate responsibility in the digital era around data toward the creation of “data collaboratives”.

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Today, the GovLab is excited to launch a new resource for Data Collaboratives (datacollaboratives.org). Data Collaboratives are an emerging form of public-private partnership in which participants from different sectors — including private companies, research institutions, and government agencies — exchange data to help solve public problems.

The resource results from different partnerships with UNICEF (focused on creating data collaboratives to improve children’s lives) and Omidyar Network (studying new ways to match (open) data demand and supply to increase impact).

Natalia Adler, a data, research and policy planning specialist and the UNICEF Data Collaboratives Project Lead notes, “At UNICEF, we’re dealing with the world’s most complex problems affecting children. Data Collaboratives offer an exciting opportunity to tap on previously inaccessible datasets and mobilize a wide range of data expertise to advance child rights around the world. It’s all about connecting the dots.”

To better understand the potential of these Collaboratives, the GovLab collected information on dozens of examples from across the world. These many and diverse initiatives clearly suggest the potential of Data Collaboratives to improve people’s lives when done responsibly. As Stefaan Verhulst, co-founder of the GovLab, puts it: “In the coming months and years, Data Collaboratives will be essential vehicles for harnessing the vast stores of privately held data toward the public good.”

In particular, our research to date suggests that Data Collaboratives offer a number of potential benefits, including enhanced:

  • Situational Awareness and Response: For example, Orbital Insights and the World Bank are using satellite imagery to measure and track poverty. This technology can, in some instances, “be more accurate than U.S. census data.”
  • Public Service Design and Delivery: Global mapping company, Esri, and Waze’s Connected Citizen’s program are using crowdsourced traffic information to help governments design better transportation.
  • Impact Assessment and Evaluation: Nielsen and the World Food Program (WFP) have been using data collected via mobile phone surveys to better monitor food insecurity in order to advise the WFP’s resource allocations….(More)

Rethinking how we collect, share, and use development results data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Development Gateway: “The international development community spends a great deal of time, effort, and money gathering data on thousands of indicators embedded in various levels of Results Frameworks. These data comprise outputs (school enrollment, immunization figures), program outcomes (educational attainment, disease prevalence), and, in some cases, impacts (changes in key outcomes over time).

Ostensibly, we use results data to allocate resources to the places, partners, and programs most likely to achieve lasting success. But is this data good enough – and is it used well enough – to genuinely increase development impact in priority areas?

Experience suggests that decision-makers at all levels may often face inadequate, incorrect, late, or incomplete results data. At the same time, a figurative “Tower of Babel” of both project-level M&E and program-level outcome data can make it difficult for agencies and organizations to share and use data effectively. Further, potential users may not have the skills, resources, or enabling environment to meaningfully analyze and apply results data to decisions. With these challenges in mind, the development community needs to re-think its investments in results data, making sure that the right users are able to collect, share, and use this information to maximum effect.

Our Initiative

To this end, Development Gateway (DG), with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to “diagnose” the results data ecosystem in three countries, identifying ways to improve data quality, sharing, and use in the health and agriculture sectors. Some of our important questions include:

  • Quality: Who collects data and how? Is data quality adequate? Does the data meet actual needs? How much time does data collection demand? How can data collection, quality, and reporting be improved?
  • Sharing: How can we compare results data from different donors, governments, and implementers? Is there demand for comparability? Should data be shared more freely? If so, how?
  • Use: How is results data analyzed and used to inform actual policies and plans? Does (or can) access to results data improve decision-making? Do the right people have the right data? How else can (or should) we promote data use?…(More)”

Introducing the Agricultural Open Data Package: BETA Version

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

PressRelease: “GODAN, Open Data for Development (OD4D) Network, Open Data Charter, and the Open Data Institute are pleased to announce the release of the Agricultural Open Data Package: BETA version. …The Agriculture Open Data Package (http://AgPack.info) has been designed to help governments get to impact with open data in the agriculture sector. This practical resource provides key policy areas, key data categories, examples datasets, relevant interoperability initiatives, and use cases that policymakers and other stakeholders in the agriculture sector or open data should focus on, in order to address food security challenges.

The Package is meant as a source of inspiration and an invitation to start a national open data for agriculture initiative.

In the Package we identify fourteen key categories of data and discuss the effort it will take for a government to make this data available in a meaningful way. …

The Package also highlights more than ten use cases (the number is growing) demonstrating how open data is being harnessed to address sustainable agriculture and food security around the world. Examples include:

  • mapping water points to optimise scarce resource allocation in Burkina Faso

  • surfacing daily price information on multiple food commodities across India

  • benchmarking agricultural productivity in the Netherlands

Where relevant we also highlight applicable interoperability initiatives, such as open contracting, international aid transparency initiative (IATI), and global product classification (GPC) standards.

We recognise that the agriculture sector is diverse, with many contextual differences affecting scope of activities, priorities and capacities. In the full version of the Agricultural Open Data Package we discuss important implementation considerations such as inter-agency coordination and resourcing to develop an appropriate data infrastructure and a healthy data ‘ecosystem’ for agriculture….(More)”

Africa’s health won’t improve without reliable data and collaboration

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

,  and  at the Conversation: “…Africa has a data problem. This is true in many sectors. When it comes to health there’s both a lack of basic population data about disease and an absence of information about what impact, if any, interventions involving social determinants of health – housing, nutrition and the like – are having.

Simply put, researchers often don’t know who is sick or what people are being exposed to that, if addressed, could prevent disease and improve health. They cannot say if poor sanitation is the biggest culprit, or if substandard housing in a particular region is to blame. They don’t have the data that explains which populations are most vulnerable.

These data are required to inform development of innovative interventions that apply a “Health in All Policies” approach to address social determinants of health and improve health equity.

To address this, health data need to be integrated with social determinant data about areas like food, housing, and physical activity or mobility. Even where population data are available, they are not always reliable. There’s often an issue of compatability: different sectors collect different kinds of information using varying methodologies.

Different sectors also use different indicators to collect information on the same social determinant of health. This makes data integration challenging.

Without clear, focused, reliable data it’s difficult to understand what a society’s problems are and what specific solutions – which may lie outside the health sector – might be suitable for that unique context.

Scaling up innovations

Some remarkable work is being done to tackle Africa’s health problems. This ranges from technological innovations to harnessing indigenous knowledge for change. Both approaches are vital. But it’s hard for these to be scaled up either in terms of numbers or reach.

This boils down to a lack of funding or a lack of access to funding. Too many potentially excellent projects remain stuck at the pilot phase, which has limited value for ordinary people…..

Governments need to develop health equity surveillance systems to overcome the current lack of data. It’s also crucial that governments integrate and monitor health and social determinants of health indicators in one central system. This would provide a better understanding of health inequity in a given context.

For this to happen, governments must work with public and private sector stakeholders and nongovernmental organisations – not just in health, but beyond it so that social determinants of health can be better measured and captured.

The data that already exists at sub-national, national, regional and continental level mustn’t just be brushed aside. It should be archived and digitised so that it isn’t lost.

Researchers have a role to play here. They have to harmonise and be innovative in the methodologies they use for data collection. If researchers can work together across the breadth of sectors and disciplines that influence health, important information won’t slip through the cracks.

When it comes to scaling up innovation, governments need to step up to the plate. It’s crucial that they support successful health innovations, whether these are rooted in indigenous knowledge or are new technologies. And since – as we’ve already shown – health issues aren’t the exclusive preserve of the health sector, governments should look to different sectors and innovative partnerships to generate support and funding….(More)”

Governance and Service Delivery: Practical Applications of Social Accountability Across Sectors

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Derick W. Brinkerhoff, Jana C. Hertz, and Anna Wetterberg: “…Historically, donors and academics have sought to clarify what makes sectoral projects effective and sustainable contributors to development. Among the key factors identified have been (1) the role and capabilities of the state and (2) the relationships between the state and citizens, phenomena often lumped together under the broad rubric of “governance.” Given the importance of a functioning state and positive interactions with citizens, donors have treated governance as a sector in its own right, with projects ranging from public sector management reform, to civil society strengthening, to democratization (Brinkerhoff, 2008). The link between governance and sectoral service delivery was highlighted in the World Bank’s 2004 World Development Report, which focused on accountability structures and processes (World Bank, 2004).

Since then, sectoral specialists’ awareness that governance interventions can contribute to service delivery improvements has increased substantially, and there is growing recognition that both technical and governance elements are necessary facets of strengthening public services. However, expanded awareness has not reliably translated into effective integration of governance into sectoral programs and projects in, for example, health, education, water, agriculture, or community development. The bureaucratic realities of donor programming offer a partial explanation…. Beyond bureaucratic barriers, though, lie ongoing gaps in practical knowledge of how best to combine attention to governance with sector-specific technical investments. What interventions make sense, and what results can reasonably be expected? What conditions support or limit both improved governance and better service delivery? How can citizens interact with public officials and service providers to express their needs, improve services, and increase responsiveness? Various models and compilations of best practices have been developed, but debates remain, and answers to these questions are far from settled. This volume investigates these questions and contributes to building understanding that will enhance both knowledge and practice. In this book, we examine six recent projects, funded mostly by the United States Agency for International Development and implemented by RTI International, that pursued several different paths to engaging citizens, public officials, and service providers on issues related to accountability and sectoral services…(More)”

Open data aims to boost food security prospects

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Mark Kinver at BBC News: “Rothamsted Research, a leading agricultural research institution, is attempting to make data from long-term experiments available to all.

In partnership with a data consultancy, is it developing a method to make complex results accessible and useable.

The institution is a member of the Godan Initiative that aims to make data available to the scientific community.

In September, Godan called on the public to sign its global petition to open agricultural research data.

“The continuing challenge we face is that the raw data alone is not sufficient enough on its own for people to make sense of it,” said Chris Rawlings, head of computational and systems biology at Rothamsted Research.

“This is because the long-term experiments are very complex, and they are looking at agriculture and agricultural ecosystems so you need to know a lot of about what the intention of the studies are, how they are being used, and the changes that have taken place over time.”

However, he added: “Even with this level of complexity, we do see significant number of users contacting us or developing links with us.”

One size fits all

The ability to provide open data to all is one of the research organisation’s national capabilities, and forms a defining principle of its web portal to the experiments carried out at its North Wyke Farm Platform in North Devon.

Rothamsted worked in partnership with Tessella, a data consultancy, on the data collected from the experiments, which focused on livestock pastures.

The information being collected, as often as every 15 minutes, includes water run-off levels, soil moisture, meteorological data, and soil nutrients, and this is expected to run for decades.

“The data is quite varied and quite diverse, and [Rothamsted] wants to make to make this data available to the wider research community,” explained Tessella’s Andrew Bowen.

“What Rothamsted needed was a way to store it and a way to present it in a portal in which people could see what they had to offer.”

He told BBC News that there were a number of challenges that needed to be tackled.

One was the management of the data, and the team from Tessella adopted an “agile scrum” approach.

“Basically, what you do is draw up a list of the requirements, of what you need, and we break the project down into short iterations, starting with the highest priority,” he said.

“This means that you are able to take a more exploratory approach to the process of developing software. This is very well suited to the research environment.”…(More)”

Self-organised scientific crowds to remedy research bureaucracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 at EuroScientist: “Imagine a world without peer review committees, project proposals or activity reports. Imagine a world where research funds seamlessly flow where they are best employed, like nutrients in a food-web or materials in a river network. Many scientists would immediately signup to live in such a world.

The Netherlands is set to become the place where this academic paradise will be tested, in the next few years. In July 2016, the Dutch parliament approved a motion related to implementing alternative funding procedures to alleviate the research bureaucracy, which is increasingly burdening scientists. Here EuroScientistinvestigates whether the self-organisation power of the scientific community could help resolve one of researchers’ worse burden.

Self-organisation

The Dutch national funding agency is planning to adopt a radically new system to allocate part of its funding, promoted by ecologist Marten Sheffer, who is professor of aquatic ecology and water quality management at Wageningen University and Research Centre. Under the proposed approach, funds would intially be evenly divided among all scientists in the country. Then, they would each have to allocate half of what they have received to the person who, in their opinion, is the most deserving scientist in their network. Then, the process would be iterated.

The promoters of the system believe that the “wisdom of the crowd” of the scientific community would assigning more funds to the most deserving scientists among them; with minimal amount of paperwork. The Dutch initiative is part of a broader effort to use a scientific approach to improve science.

In other words, it is part of a trend aiming to employ scientific evidence to tweak the social mechanisms of academia. Specifically, findings from what is known as complexity research are increasingly brought forward as a way of reducing bureaucracy, removing red tape, and maximising the time scientists spend in thinking….

Abandoning the current bureaucratic, top-down system to evaluate and fund research, based on labour-intensive peer-review, may not be too much of a loss. “Peer-review is an imperfect, fragile mechanism. Our simulations show that assigning funds at random would not distort too much the results of the traditional mechanism,” says Flaminio Squazzoni, an economist at the University of Brescia, Italy, and the coordinator of the PEERE-New Frontiers of Peer Review COST action.

In reality peer-review is never quite neutral. “If scientists behave perfectly, then peer review works,” Squazzoni explains, “but if strategic motivations are taken into account, like saving time or competition, then the results are worse than random.” Squazzoni believes that automation, economic incentives, or the creation of professional reviewers may improve the situation….(More)”