Satellites can advance sustainable development by highlighting poverty

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Cordis: “Estimating poverty is crucial for improving policymaking and advancing the sustainability of a society. Traditional poverty estimation methods such as household surveys and census data incur huge costs however, creating a need for more efficient approaches.

With this in mind, the EU-funded USES project examined how satellite images could be used to estimate household-level poverty in rural regions of developing countries. “This promises to be a radically more cost-effective way of monitoring and evaluating the Sustainable Development Goals,” says Dr Gary Watmough, USES collaborator and Interdisciplinary Lecturer in Land Use and Socioecological Systems at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

Land use and land cover reveal poverty clues

To achieve its aims, the project investigated how land use and land cover information from satellite data could be linked with household survey data. “We looked particularly at how households use the landscape in the local area for agriculture and other purposes such as collecting firewood and using open areas for grazing cattle,” explains Dr Watmough.

The work also involved examining satellite images to determine which types of land use were related to household wealth or poverty using statistical analysis. “By trying to predict household poverty using the land use data we could see which land use variables were most related to the household wealth in the area,” adds Dr Watmough.

Overall, the USES project found that satellite data could predict poverty particularly the poorest households in the area. Dr Watmough comments: “This is quite remarkable given that we are trying to predict complicated household-level poverty from a simple land use map derived from high-resolution satellite data.”

A study conducted by USES in Kenya found that the most important remotely sensed variable was building size within the homestead. Buildings less than 140 m2 were mostly associated with poorer households, whereas those over 140 m2 tended to be wealthier. The amount of bare ground in agricultural fields and within the homestead region was also important. “We also found that poorer households were associated with a shorter number of agricultural growing days,” says Dr Watmough….(More)”.

This surprising, everyday tool might hold the key to changing human behavior

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Annabelle Timsit at Quartz: “To be a person in the modern world is to worry about your relationship with your phone. According to critics, smartphones are making us ill-mannered and sore-necked, dragging parents’ attention away from their kids, and destroying an entire generation.

But phones don’t have to be bad. With 4.68 billion people forecast to become mobile phone users by 2019, nonprofits and social science researchers are exploring new ways to turn our love of screens into a force for good. One increasingly popular option: Using texting to help change human behavior.

Texting: A unique tool

The short message service (SMS) was invented in the late 1980s, and the first text message was sent in 1992. (Engineer Neil Papworth sent “merry Christmas” to then-Vodafone director Richard Jarvis.) In the decades since, texting has emerged as the preferred communication method for many, and in particular younger generations. While that kind of habit-forming can be problematic—47% of US smartphone users say they “couldn’t live without” the device—our attachment to our phones also makes text-based programs a good way to encourage people to make better choices.

“Texting, because it’s anchored in mobile phones, has the ability to be with you all the time, and that gives us an enormous flexibility on precision,” says Todd Rose, director of the Mind, Brain, & Education Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “When people lead busy lives, they need timely, targeted, actionable information.”

And who is busier than a parent? Text-based programs can help current or would-be moms and dads with everything from medication pickup to childhood development. Text4Baby, for example, messages pregnant women and young moms with health information and reminders about upcoming doctor visits. Vroom, an app for building babies’ brains, sends parents research-based prompts to help them build positive relationships with their children (for example, by suggesting they ask toddlers to describe how they’re feeling based on the weather). Muse, an AI-powered app, uses machine learning and big data to try and help parents raise creative, motivated, emotionally intelligent kids. As Jenny Anderson writes in Quartz: “There is ample evidence that we can modify parents’ behavior through technological nudges.”

Research suggests text-based programs may also be helpful in supporting young children’s academic and cognitive development. …Texts aren’t just being used to help out parents. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have also used them to encourage civic participation in kids and young adults. Open Progress, for example, has an all-volunteer community called “text troop” that messages young adults across the US, reminding them to register to vote and helping them find their polling location.

Text-based programs are also useful in the field of nutrition, where private companies and public-health organizations have embraced them as a way to give advice on healthy eating and weight loss. The National Cancer Institute runs a text-based program called SmokefreeTXT that sends US adults between three and five messages per day for up to eight weeks, to help them quit smoking.

Texting programs can be a good way to nudge people toward improving their mental health, too. Crisis Text Line, for example, was the first national 24/7 crisis-intervention hotline to conduct counseling conversations entirely over text…(More).

Open Data Use Case: Using data to improve public health

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chris Willsher at ODX: “Studies have shown that a large majority of Canadians spend too much time in sedentary activities. According to the Health Status of Canadians report in 2016, only 2 out of 10 Canadian adults met the Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines. Increasing physical activity and healthy lifestyle behaviours can reduce the risk of chronic illnesses, which can decrease pressures on our health care system. And data can play a role in improving public health.

We are already seeing examples of a push to augment the role of data, with programs recently being launched at home and abroad. Canada and the US established an initiative in the spring of 2017 called the Healthy Behaviour Data Challenge. The goal of the initiative is to open up new methods for generating and using data to monitor health, specifically in the areas of physical activity, sleep, sedentary behaviour, or nutrition. The challenge recently wrapped up with winners being announced in late April 2018. Programs such as this provide incentive to the private sector to explore data’s role in measuring healthy lifestyles and raise awareness of the importance of finding new solutions.

In the UK, Sport England and the Open Data Institute (ODI) have collaborated to create the OpenActive initiative. It has set out to encourage both government and private sector entities to unlock data around physical activities so that others can utilize this information to ease the process of engaging in an active lifestyle. The goal is to “make it as easy to find and book a badminton court as it is to book a hotel room.” As of last fall, OpenActive counted more than 76,000 activities across 1,000 locations from their partner organizations. They have also developed a standard for activity data to ensure consistency among data sources, which eases the ability for developers to work with the data. Again, this initiative serves as a mechanism for open data to help address public health issues.

In Canada, we are seeing more open datasets that could be utilized to devise new solutions for generating higher rates of physical activity. A lot of useful information is available at the municipal level that can provide specifics around local infrastructure. Plus, there is data at the provincial and federal level that can provide higher-level insights useful to developing methods for promoting healthier lifestyles.

Information about cycling infrastructure seems to be relatively widespread among municipalities with a robust open data platform. As an example, the City of Toronto, publishes map data of bicycle routes around the city. This information could be utilized in a way to help citizens find the best bike route between two points. In addition, the city also publishes data on indoor, outdoor, and post and ring bicycle parking facilities that can identify where to securely lock your bike. Exploring data from proprietary sources, such as Strava, could further enhance an application by layering on popular cycling routes or allow users to integrate their personal information. And algorithms could allow for the inclusion of data on comparable driving times, projected health benefits, or savings on automotive maintenance.

The City of Calgary publishes data on park sports surfaces and recreation facilities that could potentially be incorporated into sports league applications. This would make it easier to display locations for upcoming games or to arrange pick-up games. Knowing where there are fields nearby that may be available for a last minute soccer game could be useful in encouraging use of the facilities and generating more physical activity. Again, other data sources, such as weather, could be integrated with this information to provide a planning tool for organizing these activities….(More)”.

The ‘Datasphere’, Data Flows Beyond Control, and the Challenges for Law and Governance

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Paper by Jean-Sylvestre Bergé, Stephane Grumbach and Vincenzo Zeno-Zencovich: “The flows of people, goods and capital, which have considerably increased in recent history, are leading to crises (e.g., migrants, tax evasion, food safety) which reveal the failure to control them. Much less visible, and not yet included in economic measurements, data flows have increased exponentially in the last two decades, with the digitisation of social and economic activities. A new space – Datasphere – is emerging, mostly supported by digital platforms which provide essential services reaching half of the world’s population directly. Their control over data flows raises new challenges to governance, and increasingly conflicts with public administration.

In this paper, we consider the need and the difficulty of regulating this emerging space and the different approaches followed on both sides of the Atlantic. We distinguish between three situations. We first consider data at rest, which is from the point of view of the location where data are physically stored. We then consider data in motion, and the issues related to their combination. Finally, we investigate data in action, that is data as vectors of command of legal or illegal activities over territories, with impacts on economy and society as well as security, and raise governance challenges.

The notion of ‘Datasphere’ proposes a holistic comprehension of all the ‘information’ existing on earth, originating both in natural and socio-economic systems, which can be captured in digital form, flows through networks, and is stored, processed and transformed by machines. It differs from the ‘Cyberspace’, which is mostly concerned with the networks, the technical instruments (from software and protocols to cables and data centers) together with the social activities it allows, and to what extent they could/should be allowed.

The paper suggests one – out of the many possible – approach to this new world. Clearly it would be impossible to delve in depth into all its facets, which are as many as those of the physical world. Rather, it attempts to present how traditional legal notions could be usefully managed to put order in a highly complex environment, avoiding a piecemeal approach that looks only at details….(More)”.

The Magic of “Multisolving”

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Elizabeth Sawin at Stanford Social Innovation Review: “In Japan, manufacturing facilities use “green curtains”—living panels of climbing plants—to clean the air, provide vegetables for company cafeterias, and reduce energy use for cooling. A walk-to-school program in the United Kingdom fights a decline in childhood physical activity while reducing traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. A food-gleaning program staffed by young volunteers and families facing food insecurity in Spain addresses food waste, hunger, and a desire for sustainability.

Each of these is a real-life example of what I call “multisolving”—where people pool expertise, funding, and political will to solve multiple problems with a single investment of time and money. It’s an approach with great relevance in this era of complex, interlinked, social and environmental challenges. But what’s the best formula for implementing projects that tackle many problems at once?

Climate Interactive, which uses systems analysis to help people address climate change, recently completed a year-long study of multisolving for climate and health. We learned there is no one-size-fits-all recipe, but we did identify three operating principles and three practices that showed up again and again in the projects we studied. What’s more, anyone wanting to access the power of cross-sectoral partnership can adopt them….(More)”.

How Charities Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Boost Impact

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Nicole Wallace at the Chronicle of Philanthropy: “The chaos and confusion of conflict often separate family members fleeing for safety. The nonprofit Refunite uses advanced technology to help loved ones reconnect, sometimes across continents and after years of separation.

Refugees register with the service by providing basic information — their name, age, birthplace, clan and subclan, and so forth — along with similar facts about the people they’re trying to find. Powerful algorithms search for possible matches among the more than 1.1 million individuals in the Refunite system. The analytics are further refined using the more than 2,000 searches that the refugees themselves do daily.

The goal: find loved ones or those connected to them who might help in the hunt. Since Refunite introduced the first version of the system in 2010, it has helped more than 40,000 people reconnect.

One factor complicating the work: Cultures define family lineage differently. Refunite co-founder Christopher Mikkelsen confronted this problem when he asked a boy in a refugee camp if he knew where his mother was. “He asked me, ‘Well, what mother do you mean?’ ” Mikkelsen remembers. “And I went, ‘Uh-huh, this is going to be challenging.’ ”

Fortunately, artificial intelligence is well suited to learn and recognize different family patterns. But the technology struggles with some simple things like distinguishing the image of a chicken from that of a car. Mikkelsen believes refugees in camps could offset this weakness by tagging photographs — “car” or “not car” — to help train algorithms. Such work could earn them badly needed cash: The group hopes to set up a system that pays refugees for doing such work.

“To an American, earning $4 a day just isn’t viable as a living,” Mikkelsen says. “But to the global poor, getting an access point to earning this is revolutionizing.”

Another group, Wild Me, a nonprofit created by scientists and technologists, has created an open-source software platform that combines artificial intelligence and image recognition, to identify and track individual animals. Using the system, scientists can better estimate the number of endangered animals and follow them over large expanses without using invasive techniques….

To fight sex trafficking, police officers often go undercover and interact with people trying to buy sex online. Sadly, demand is high, and there are never enough officers.

Enter Seattle Against Slavery. The nonprofit’s tech-savvy volunteers created chatbots designed to disrupt sex trafficking significantly. Using input from trafficking survivors and law-enforcement agencies, the bots can conduct simultaneous conversations with hundreds of people, engaging them in multiple, drawn-out conversations, and arranging rendezvous that don’t materialize. The group hopes to frustrate buyers so much that they give up their hunt for sex online….

A Philadelphia charity is using machine learning to adapt its services to clients’ needs.

Benefits Data Trust helps people enroll for government-assistance programs like food stamps and Medicaid. Since 2005, the group has helped more than 650,000 people access $7 billion in aid.

The nonprofit has data-sharing agreements with jurisdictions to access more than 40 lists of people who likely qualify for government benefits but do not receive them. The charity contacts those who might be eligible and encourages them to call the Benefits Data Trust for help applying….(More)”.

Big Data for the Greater Good

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Ali Emrouznejad and Vincent Charles: “This book highlights some of the most fascinating current uses, thought-provoking changes, and biggest challenges that Big Data means for our society. The explosive growth of data and advances in Big Data analytics have created a new frontier for innovation, competition, productivity, and well-being in almost every sector of our society, as well as a source of immense economic and societal value. From the derivation of customer feedback-based insights to fraud detection and preserving privacy; better medical treatments; agriculture and food management; and establishing low-voltage networks – many innovations for the greater good can stem from Big Data. Given the insights it provides, this book will be of interest to both researchers in the field of Big Data, and practitioners from various fields who intend to apply Big Data technologies to improve their strategic and operational decision-making processes….(More)”.

City-as-a-Service

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Circle Economy: Today during the WeMakeThe.City festival, Circle Economy launched the ‘City-as-a-Service’ publication, which offers a first glimpse into the ‘circular city of the future’. This publication is an initial and practical exploration of how service models will shape the way in which societal needs can be met in a future urban environment and how cities can take a leadership role in a transition towards a circular economy….

Housing, nutrition, mobility, and clothing are primary human needs and directly linked to material extraction. For each of these needs, Circle Economy has examined the potential impacts that service models can have.

By subscribing to a car-sharing service, for example, consumers are able to choose smaller, cheaper and more efficient cars when driving solo. In the Netherlands alone, this would save 2,200 kton of CO2 annually and will reduce annual spending on motoring by 10%. For textiles, a service model could potentially help us avoid “bad buys” that are never worn, which would result in a 15% cost saving for consumers and 23 kton of CO2 in the Netherlands. …

In an increasingly urban world, cities have to play a leading role to drive sustainable transitions and will lead the way on delivering the positive effects of a circular economy – and hence help to close the circularity gap. The circular economy offers a clear roadmap towards realizing the low-carbon, human-centered and prosperous circular city of the future. The ‘City-As-A-Service’ vision is a key next step into this promising future. Ultimately, service models could be a game changer for cities. In fact, city governments can influence this by providing the right boundary conditions and incentives in their policymaking…..(More)”.

4 reasons why Data Collaboratives are key to addressing migration

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Stefaan Verhulst and Andrew Young at the Migration Data Portal: “If every era poses its dilemmas, then our current decade will surely be defined by questions over the challenges and opportunities of a surge in migration. The issues in addressing migration safely, humanely, and for the benefit of communities of origin and destination are varied and complex, and today’s public policy practices and tools are not adequate. Increasingly, it is clear, we need not only new solutions but also new, more agile, methods for arriving at solutions.

Data are central to meeting these challenges and to enabling public policy innovation in a variety of ways. Yet, for all of data’s potential to address public challenges, the truth remains that most data generated today are in fact collected by the private sector. These data contains tremendous possible insights and avenues for innovation in how we solve public problems. But because of access restrictions, privacy concerns and often limited data science capacity, their vast potential often goes untapped.

Data Collaboratives offer a way around this limitation.

Data Collaboratives: A new form of Public-Private Partnership for a Data Age

Data Collaboratives are an emerging form of partnership, typically between the private and public sectors, but often also involving civil society groups and the education sector. Now in use across various countries and sectors, from health to agriculture to economic development, they allow for the opening and sharing of information held in the private sector, in the process freeing data silos up to serve public ends.

Although still fledgling, we have begun to see instances of Data Collaboratives implemented toward solving specific challenges within the broad and complex refugee and migrant space. As the examples we describe below suggest (which we examine in more detail Stanford Social Innovation Review), the use of such Collaboratives is geographically dispersed and diffuse; there is an urgent need to pull together a cohesive body of knowledge to more systematically analyze what works, and what doesn’t.

This is something we have started to do at the GovLab. We have analyzed a wide variety of Data Collaborative efforts, across geographies and sectors, with a goal of understanding when and how they are most effective.

The benefits of Data Collaboratives in the migration field

As part of our research, we have identified four main value propositions for the use of Data Collaboratives in addressing different elements of the multi-faceted migration issue. …(More)”,

Citizen-generated evidence for a more sustainable and healthy food system

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Research Report by Bill Vorley:  “Evidence generation by and with low-income citizens is particularly important if policy makers are to improve understanding of people’s diets and the food systems they use, in particular the informal economy. The informal food economy is the main route for low-income communities to secure their food, and is an important source of employment, especially for women and youth. The very nature of informality means that the realities of poor people’s lives are often invisible to policymakers. This invisibility is a major factor in exclusion and results in frequent mismatches between policy and local realities. This paper focuses on citizen-generated evidence as a means for defending and improving the food system of the poor. It clearly outlines a range of approaches to citizen-generated evidence including primary data collection and citizen access to and use of existing information….(More)”.