international development

Geospatial big data and cartography: research challenges and opportunities for making maps that matter

Curated on March 14, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Anthony C. Robinson et al in the International Journal Of Cartography; “Geospatial big data present a new set of challenges and opportunities for cartographic researchers in technical, methodological and artistic realms. New computational and technical paradigms for cartography are accompanying the rise of geospatial big data. Additionally, the art and science of cartography needs to focus its contemporary efforts on work that connects to outside disciplines and is grounded in problems that are important to humankind and its sustainability. Following the development of position papers and a collaborative workshop to craft consensus around key topics, this article presents a new cartographic research agenda focused on making maps that matter using geospatial big data. This agenda provides both long-term challenges that require significant attention and short-term opportunities that we believe could be addressed in more concentrated studies….(More)”.

Bit By Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age

Curated on March 6, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Open Review of Book by Matthew J. Salganik: “In the summer of 2009, mobile phones were ringing all across Rwanda. In addition to the millions of calls between family, friends, and business associates, about 1,000 Rwandans received a call from Joshua Blumenstock and his colleagues. The researchers were studying wealth and poverty by conducting a survey of people who had been randomly sampled from a database of 1.5 million customers from Rwanda’s largest mobile phone provider. Blumenstock and colleagues asked the participants if they wanted to participate in a survey, explained the nature of the research to them, and then asked a series of questions about their demographic, social, and economic characteristics.

Everything I have said up until now makes this sound like a traditional social science survey. But, what comes next is not traditional, at least not yet. They used the survey data to train a machine learning model to predict someone’s wealth from their call data, and then they used this model to estimate the wealth of all 1.5 million customers. Next, they estimated the place of residence of all 1.5 million customers by using the geographic information embedded in the call logs. Putting these two estimates together—the estimated wealth and the estimated place of residence—Blumenstock and colleagues were able to produce high-resolution estimates of the geographic distribution of wealth across Rwanda. In particular, they could produce an estimated wealth for each of Rwanda’s 2,148 cells, the smallest administrative unit in the country.

It was impossible to validate these estimates because no one had ever produced estimates for such small geographic areas in Rwanda. But, when Blumenstock and colleagues aggregated their estimates to Rwanda’s 30 districts, they found that their estimates were similar to estimates from the Demographic and Health Survey, the gold standard of surveys in developing countries. Although these two approaches produced similar estimates in this case, the approach of Blumenstock and colleagues was about 10 times faster and 50 times cheaper than the traditional Demographic and Health Surveys. These dramatically faster and lower cost estimates create new possibilities for researchers, governments, and companies (Blumenstock, Cadamuro, and On 2015).

In addition to developing a new methodology, this study is kind of like a Rorschach inkblot test; what people see depends on their background. Many social scientists see a new measurement tool that can be used to test theories about economic development. Many data scientists see a cool new machine learning problem. Many business people see a powerful approach for unlocking value in the digital trace data that they have already collected. Many privacy advocates see a scary reminder that we live in a time of mass surveillance. Many policy makers see a way that new technology can help create a better world. In fact, this study is all of those things, and that is why it is a window into the future of social research….(More)”

UK’s Digital Strategy

Curated on March 6, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Executive Summary: “This government’s Plan for Britain is a plan to build a stronger, fairer country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few. …Our digital strategy now develops this further, applying the principles outlined in the Industrial Strategy green paper to the digital economy. The UK has a proud history of digital innovation: from the earliest days of computing to the development of the World Wide Web, the UK has been a cradle for inventions which have changed the world. And from Ada Lovelace – widely recognised as the first computer programmer – to the pioneers of today’s revolution in artificial intelligence, the UK has always been at the forefront of invention. …

Maintaining the UK government as a world leader in serving its citizens online

From personalised services in health, to safer care for the elderly at home, to tailored learning in education and access to culture – digital tools, techniques and technologies give us more opportunities than ever before to improve the vital public services on which we all rely.

The UK is already a world leader in digital government,⁷ but we want to go further and faster. The new Government Transformation Strategy published on 9 February 2017 sets out our intention to serve the citizens and businesses of the UK with a better, more coherent experience when using government services online – one that meets the raised expectations set by the many other digital services and tools they use every day. So, we will continue to develop single cross-government platform services, including by working towards 25 million GOV.UK Verify users by 2020 and adopting new services onto the government’s GOV.UK Pay and GOV.UK Notify platforms.

We will build on the ‘Government as a Platform’ concept, ensuring we make greater reuse of platforms and components across government. We will also continue to move towards common technology, ensuring that where it is right we are consuming commodity hardware or cloud-based software instead of building something that is needlessly government specific.

We will also continue to work, across government and the public sector, to harness the potential of digital to radically improve the efficiency of our public services – enabling us to provide a better service to citizens and service users at a lower cost. In education, for example, we will address the barriers faced by schools in regions not connected to appropriate digital infrastructure and we will invest in the Network of Teaching Excellence in Computer Science to help teachers and school leaders build their knowledge and understanding of technology. In transport, we will make our infrastructure smarter, more accessible and more convenient for passengers. At Autumn Statement 2016 we announced that the National Productivity Investment Fund would allocate £450 million from 2018-19 to 2020-21 to trial digital signalling technology on the rail network. And in policing, we will enable police officers to use biometric applications to match fingerprint and DNA from scenes of crime and return results including records and alerts to officers over mobile devices at the crime scene.

Unlocking the power of data in the UK economy and improving public confidence in its use

As part of creating the conditions for sustainable growth, we will take the actions needed to make the UK a world-leading data-driven economy, where data fuels economic and social opportunities for everyone, and where people can trust that their data is being used appropriately.

Data is a global commodity and we need to ensure that our businesses can continue to compete and communicate effectively around the world. To maintain our position at the forefront of the data revolution, we will implement the General Data Protection Regulation by May 2018. This will ensure a shared and higher standard of protection for consumers and their data.

Democracy at Work: Moving Beyond Elections to Improve Well-Being

Curated on March 4, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Michael Touchton, Natasha Borges Sugiyama and Brian Wampler in the American Political Science Review: “How does democracy work to improve well-being? In this article, we disentangle the component parts of democratic practice—elections, civic participation, expansion of social provisioning, local administrative capacity—to identify their relationship with well-being. We draw from the citizenship debates to argue that democratic practices allow citizens to gain access to a wide range of rights, which then serve as the foundation for improving social well-being. Our analysis of an original dataset covering over 5,550 Brazilian municipalities from 2006 to 2013 demonstrates that competitive elections alone do not explain variation in infant mortality rates, one outcome associated with well-being. We move beyond elections to show how participatory institutions, social programs, and local state capacity can interact to buttress one another and reduce infant mortality rates. It is important to note that these relationships are independent of local economic growth, which also influences infant mortality. The result of our thorough analysis offers a new understanding of how different aspects of democracy work together to improve a key feature of human development….(More)”.

Handbook of Big Data Technologies

Curated on March 4, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Handbook by Albert Y. Zomaya and Sherif Sakr: “…offers comprehensive coverage of recent advancements in Big Data technologies and related paradigms. Chapters are authored by international leading experts in the field, and have been reviewed and revised for maximum reader value. The volume consists of twenty-five chapters organized into four main parts. Part one covers the fundamental concepts of Big Data technologies including data curation mechanisms, data models, storage models, programming models and programming platforms. It also dives into the details of implementing Big SQL query engines and big stream processing systems. Part Two focuses on the semantic aspects of Big Data management including data integration and exploratory ad hoc analysis in addition to structured querying and pattern matching techniques. Part Three presents a comprehensive overview of large scale graph processing. It covers the most recent research in large scale graph processing platforms, introducing several scalable graph querying and mining mechanisms in domains such as social networks. Part Four details novel applications that have been made possible by the rapid emergence of Big Data technologies such as Internet-of-Things (IOT), Cognitive Computing and SCADA Systems. All parts of the book discuss open research problems, including potential opportunities, that have arisen from the rapid progress of Big Data technologies and the associated increasing requirements of application domains.
Designed for researchers, IT professionals and graduate students, this book is a timely contribution to the growing Big Data field. Big Data has been recognized as one of leading emerging technologies that will have a major contribution and impact on the various fields of science and varies aspect of the human society over the coming decades. Therefore, the content in this book will be an essential tool to help readers understand the development and future of the field….(More)”

Cities need to innovate to survive. Here are four ways they can do it

Curated on March 2, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Alice Charles: “…The World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Cities chronicled a list of Top 10 Urban Innovations from around the world, that are providing best practice examples of how cities are creating innovative solutions to a variety of urban problems.

Within these innovations, four principles surface again and again. They can be seen as a core framework to find innovative solutions to complex urban problems:

Unleashing spare capacity: Many innovations cleverly make use of existing yet underutilized resources. Airbnb, for example, enables the renting out of unused private homes; co-locating schools and recreational facilities enables public-private sharing of space; and the circular economy provides opportunities to reuse, recycle and upcycle.
Cutting out the peaks: From electricity and water to roads and public transport, upwards of 20% of capacity sits idle for much of the time ready to cope with demand peaks; cutting out these peaks with technology-enabled demand management or innovative pricing structures can significantly limit the burden on financial and natural resources.
Small-scale infrastructure thinking: Cities will always need large-infrastructure projects, but sometimes small-scale infrastructure – from cycle lanes and bike sharing to the planting of trees for climate change adaptation – can also have a big impact on an urban area.
People-centred innovation: The best way to improve a city is by mobilizing its citizens. From smart traffic lights to garbage taxes, innovations in technology, services and governance are not ends in themselves but means to shape the behaviour and improve the lives of the city’s inhabitants. All innovations should be centred on the citizen, adhering to the principles of universal design and usable by people of all ages and abilities.

Cities are expected to provide a better standard of living, increase community cohesion, wellness and happiness while progressing towards sustainable development. To be successful in meeting these requirements, cities need to transform their strategies to include innovation and enable the convergence of the digital and physical dimensions. Cities need to support the design and development of cutting-edge solutions and processes in collaboration with the private sector, scientific research institutions, academia, citizens and start-ups, to maintain the competitive edge, while progressing towards better performance and urban service deliveries….(More)”

Open innovation in the public sector

Curated on February 28, 2017May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Sabrina Diaz Rato in OpenDemocracy: “For some years now, we have been witnessing the emergence of relational, cross-over, participative power. This is the territory that gives technopolitics its meaning and prominence, the basis on which a new vision of democracy – more open, more direct, more interactive – is being developed and embraced. It is a framework that overcomes the closed architecture on which the praxis of governance (closed, hierarchical, one-way) have been cemented in almost all areas. The series The ecosystem of open democracy explores the different aspects of this ongoing transformation….

How can innovation contribute to building an open democracy? The answer is summed up in these ten connectors of innovation.

placing innovation and collective intelligence at the center of public management strategies,
aligning all government areas with clearly-defined goals on associative platforms,
shifting the frontiers of knowledge and action from the institutions to public deliberation on local challenges,
establishing leadership roles, in a language that everyone can easily understand, to organize and plan the wealth of information coming out of citizens’ ideas and to engage those involved in the sustainability of the projects,
mapping the ecosystem and establishing dynamic relations with internal and, particularly, external agents: the citizens,
systematizing the accumulation of information and the creative processes, while communicating progress and giving feedback to the whole community,
preparing society as a whole to experience a new form of governance of the common good,
cooperating with universities, research centers and entrepreneurs in establishing reward mechanisms,
aligning people, technologies, institutions and the narrative with the new urban habits, especially those related to environmental sustainability and public services,
creating education and training programs in tune with the new skills of the 21st century,
building incubation spaces for startups responding to local challenges,
inviting venture capital to generate a satisfactory mix of open innovation, inclusive development policies and local productivity.

Two items in this list are probably the determining factors of any effective innovation process. The first has to do with the correct decision on the mechanisms through which we have pushed the boundaries outwards, so as to bring citizen ideas into the design and co-creation of solutions. This is not an easy task, because it requires a shared organizational mentality on previously non-existent patterns of cooperation, which must now be sustained through dialog and operational dynamics aimed at solving problems defined by external actors – not just any problem.

Another key aspect of the process, related to the breaking down of the institutional barriers that surround and condition action frameworks, is the revaluation of a central figure that we have not yet mentioned here: the policy makers. They are not exactly political leaders or public officials. They are not innovators either. They are the ones within Public Administration who possess highly valuable management skills and knowledge, but who are constantly colliding against the glittering institutional constellations that no longer work….(More)”

From big data to smart data: FDA’s INFORMED initiative

Curated on February 28, 2017October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Sean Khozin, Geoffrey Kim & Richard Pazdur in Nature: “….Recent advances in our understanding of disease mechanisms have led to the development of new drugs that are enabling precision medicine. For example, the co-development of kinase inhibitors that target ‘driver mutations’ in metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with companion diagnostics has led to substantial improvements in the treatment of some patients. However, growing evidence suggests that most patients with metastatic NSCLC and other advanced cancers may not have tumours with single driver mutations. Furthermore, the generation of clinical evidence in genomically diverse and geographically dispersed groups of patients using traditional trial designs and multiple competing therapies is becoming more costly and challenging.

Strategies aimed at creating new efficiencies in clinical evidence generation and extending the benefits of precision medicine to larger groups of patients are driving a transformation from a reductionist approach to drug development (for example, a single drug targeting a driver mutation and traditional clinical trials) to a holistic approach (for example, combination therapies targeting complex multiomic signatures and real-world evidence). This transition is largely fuelled by the rapid expansion in the four dimensions of biomedical big data, which has created a need for greater organizational and technical capabilities (Fig. 1). Appropriate management and analysis of such data requires specialized tools and expertise in health information technology, data science and high-performance computing. For example, efforts to generate clinical evidence using real-world data are being limited by challenges such as capturing clinically relevant variables from vast volumes of unstructured content (such as physician notes) in electronic health records and organizing various structured data elements that are primarily designed to support billing rather than clinical research. So, new standards and quality-control mechanisms are needed to ensure the validity of the design and analysis of studies based on electronic health records.

Figure 1: Conceptual map of technical and organizational capacity for biomedical big data.

From Nairobi to Manila, mobile phones are changing the lives of bus riders

Curated on February 26, 2017May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Shomik Mehnidrata at Transport for Development Blog: “Every day around the world, millions of people rely on buses to get around. In many cities, these services carry the bulk of urban trips, especially in Africa and Latin America. They are known by many different names—matatus, dalalas, minibus taxis, colectivos, diablos rojos, micros, etc.—but all have one thing in common: they are either hardly regulated… or not regulated at all. Although buses play a critical role in the daily life of many urban dwellers, there are a variety of complaints that have spurred calls for improvement and reform.

However, we are now witnessing a different, more organic kind of change that is disrupting the world of informal buses using ubiquitous cheap sensors and mobile technology. One hotbed of innovation is Nairobi, Kenya’s bustling capital. Two years ago, Nairobi made a splash in the world of urban transport by mapping all the routes of informal matatus. Other countries have sought to replicate this model, with open source tools and crowdsourcing supporting similar efforts in Mexico, Manila, and beyond. Back in Nairobi, the Magic Bus app helps commuters use sms services to reserve and pay for seats in matatus; in September 2016, MagicBus’ potential for easing commuter pain in the Kenyan capital was rewarded with a $1 million prize. Other programs implemented in collaboration with insurers and operators are experimenting with on-board sensors to identify and correct dangerous driver behavior such as sudden braking and acceleration. Ma3Route, also in Nairobi (there is a pattern here!) used crowdsourcing to identify dangerous drivers as well as congestion. At the same time, operators are upping their game: using technology to improve system management, control and routing in La Paz, and working with universities to improve their financial planning and capabilities in Cape Town.

Against this backdrop, the question is then: can these ongoing experimental initiatives offer a coherent alternative to formal reform? …(More)”.

Data in public health

Curated on February 21, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Jeremy Berg in Science: “In 1854, physician John Snow helped curtail a cholera outbreak in a London neighborhood by mapping cases and identifying a central public water pump as the potential source. This event is considered by many to represent the founding of modern epidemiology. Data and analysis play an increasingly important role in public health today. This can be illustrated by examining the rise in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), where data from varied sources highlight potential factors while ruling out others, such as childhood vaccines, facilitating wise policy choices…. A collaboration between the research community, a patient advocacy group, and a technology company (www.mss.ng) seeks to sequence the genomes of 10,000 well-phenotyped individuals from families affected by ASD, making the data freely available to researchers. Studies to date have confirmed that the genetics of autism are extremely complicated—a small number of genomic variations are closely associated with ASD, but many other variations have much lower predictive power. More than half of siblings, each of whom has ASD, have different ASD-associated variations. Future studies, facilitated by an open data approach, will no doubt help advance our understanding of this complex disorder….

A new data collection strategy was reported in 2013 to examine contagious diseases across the United States, including the impact of vaccines. Researchers digitized all available city and state notifiable disease data from 1888 to 2011, mostly from hard-copy sources. Information corresponding to nearly 88 million cases has been stored in a database that is open to interested parties without restriction (www.tycho.pitt.edu). Analyses of these data revealed that vaccine development and systematic vaccination programs have led to dramatic reductions in the number of cases. Overall, it is estimated that ∼100 million cases of serious childhood diseases have been prevented through these vaccination programs.

These examples illustrate how data collection and sharing through publication and other innovative means can drive research progress on major public health challenges. Such evidence, particularly on large populations, can help researchers and policy-makers move beyond anecdotes—which can be personally compelling, but often misleading—for the good of individuals and society….(More)”