Paper by Hambleton, R.: “For a variety of reasons the notion of the smart city has grown in popularity and some even claim that all cities now have to be ‘smart’. For example, some digital enthusiasts argue that advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are ushering in a new era in which pervasive electronic connections will inevitably lead to significant changes that make cities more liveable and more democratic. This paper will cast a critical eye over these claims. It will unpack the smart city rhetoric and show that, in fact, three competing perspectives are struggling for ascendancy... (More >)
Privacy Identity Innovation: Innovator Spotlight
pii2014: “Every year, we invite a select group of startup CEOs to present their technologies on stage at Privacy Identity Innovation as part of the Innovator Spotlight program. This year’s conference (pii2014) is taking place November 12-14 in Silicon Valley, and we’re excited to announce that the following eight companies will be participating in the pii2014 Innovator Spotlight: * BeehiveID – Led by CEO Mary Haskett, BeehiveID is a global identity validation service that enables trust by identifying bad actors online BEFORE they have a chance to commit fraud. * Five – Led by CEO Nikita Bier, Five is... (More >)
Chicago uses big data to save itself from urban ills
Aviva Rutkin in the New Scientist: “THIS year in Chicago, some kids will get lead poisoning from the paint or pipes in their homes. Some restaurants will cook food in unsanitary conditions and, here and there, a street corner will be suddenly overrun with rats. These kinds of dangers are hard to avoid in a city of more than 2.5 million people. The problem is, no one knows for certain where or when they will pop up. The Chicago city government is hoping to change that by knitting powerful predictive models into its everyday city inspections. Its latest project,... (More >)
Training Students to Extract Value from Big Data
New report by the National Research Council: “As the availability of high-throughput data-collection technologies, such as information-sensing mobile devices, remote sensing, internet log records, and wireless sensor networks has grown, science, engineering, and business have rapidly transitioned from striving to develop information from scant data to a situation in which the challenge is now that the amount of information exceeds a human’s ability to examine, let alone absorb, it. Data sets are increasingly complex, and this potentially increases the problems associated with such concerns as missing information and other quality concerns, data heterogeneity, and differing data formats. The nation’s... (More >)
Ebola: Can big data analytics help contain its spread?
Matthew Wall at BBC News: “While emergency response teams, medical charities and non-governmental organisations struggle to contain the virus, could big data analytics help? A growing number of data scientists believe so…. Mobile phones, widely owned in even the poorest countries in Africa, are proving to be a rich source of data in a region where other reliable sources are sorely lacking. Orange Telecom in Senegal handed over anonymised voice and text data from 150,000 mobile phones to Flowminder, a Swedish non-profit organisation, which was then able to draw up detailed maps of typical population movements in the region.... (More >)
Big Thinkers. Big Data. Big Opportunity: Announcing The LinkedIn Economic Graph Challeng
Deepak Agarwal at Linkedin Official Blog: “LinkedIn’s vision is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Facilitating economic empowerment is a big task that will require bold thinking by smart, passionate individuals and groups. Today, we’re kicking off an initiative that aims to encourage this type of big thinking: the LinkedIn Economic Graph Challenge. The LinkedIn Economic Graph Challenge is an idea that emerged from the development of the Economic Graph, a digital mapping of the global economy, comprised of a profile for every professional, company, job opportunity, the skills required to obtain those opportunities,... (More >)
New Technology and the Prevention of Violence and Conflict
Report edited by Francesco Mancini for the International Peace Institute: “In an era of unprecedented interconnectivity, this report explores the ways in which new technologies can assist international actors, governments, and civil society organizations to more effectively prevent violence and conflict. It examines the contributions that cell phones, social media, crowdsourcing, crisis mapping, blogging, and big data analytics can make to short-term efforts to forestall crises and to long-term initiatives to address the root causes of violence. Five case studies assess the use of such tools in a variety of regions (Africa, Asia, Latin America) experiencing different types of... (More >)
The Web Observatory: A Middle Layer for Broad Data
New paper by Tiropanis Thanassis, Hall Wendy, Hendler James, and de Larrinaga Christian in Big Data: “The Web Observatory project1 is a global effort that is being led by the Web Science Trust,2 its network of WSTnet laboratories, and the wider Web Science community. The goal of this project is to create a global distributed infrastructure that will foster communities exchanging and using each other’s web-related datasets as well as sharing analytic applications for research and business web applications.3 It will provide the means to observe the digital planet, explore its processes, and understand their impact on different sectors... (More >)
The View From Your Window Is Worth Cash to This Company
Eric Jaffe in Atlantic CityLab: “A city window overlooking the street has always been a score in its own right, what with so many apartments stuck opening onto back alleys and dumpsters and fire escapes. And now, a company wants to straight up monetize the view. New York startup Placemeter is paying city residents up to $50 a month for street views captured via old smartphones. The idea is to quantify sidewalk life in the service of making the city a more efficient place. “Measuring data about how the city moves in real time, being able to make predictions... (More >)
Building a Smarter University Big Data, Innovation, and Analytics
New book edited by Jason E. Lane : “The Big Data movement and the renewed focus on data analytics are transforming everything from healthcare delivery systems to the way cities deliver services to residents. Now is the time to examine how this Big Data could help build smarter universities. While much of the cutting-edge research that is being done with Big Data is happening at colleges and universities, higher education has yet to turn the digital mirror on itself to advance the academic enterprise. Institutions can use the huge amounts of data being generated to improve the student learning... (More >)
