DATA – Page 402 – The Living Library

Cities want to get smarter, so why is it taking so long?

Curated on February 23, 2016August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Kevin Ebi at Smart Cities Council: “Most cities and utilities want to get smarter. They see the smart cities movement as delivering more than some incremental improvement. They see it as a meaningful transformation — one that delivers far more than just some cost savings.

Despite all that, the latest Black & Veatch Strategic Directions: U.S. Smart City/Smart Utility Report finds they plan to move slower — not faster — to become smarter. But understanding the obstacles can help you overcome them.

First, the good news
Cities don’t need to be sold on the idea of becoming smarter. More than 90% see the smart cities movement as being transformational with long-term lasting impacts.

Nearly 80% believe it should start with initiatives that have lasting benefits — even if that work is largely behind the scenes (and therefore less likely for the public to notice.) A similar number also believe that data analytics will significantly improve decision making. And nearly all believe it’s a comprehensive effort; it’s more than just buying some new technology.

The smart cities revolution is also inclusive. More than three-quarters say that energy, water and telecommunications providers should play a leadership role in smart cities initiatives — they shouldn’t be relegated to a supporting role.

And growing numbers see smart cities initiatives as something more than just a vehicle to cut costs. This year, more respondents — cities leaders and utilities alike — see the potential to become more sustainable, better manage community resources and to attract business investment.

But there’s also room for improvement
Despite clearly understanding the value of smart cities initiatives, the survey finds respondents are losing faith the transition can happen quickly. Last year, the study found that nearly 1 in 5 thought the smart cities model would be widespread in American cities within the next five years. This year, not even 1 in 10 believe that timeline is achievable.

Instead, more than a third now believe the implementation could take a decade. Nearly a quarter believe it could take 15 years. More than 80% believe the U.S. is lagging the world in the smart cities revolution.

What’s holding them back
Part of the problem may be a big knowledge gap. While people responding to the survey say they understand the potential, more than half say their city still doesn’t understand what it means to be a “smart city.”

And while half the cities and utilities are assessing their readiness — a third are even working on roadmaps — nearly two-thirds still don’t understand where the payoff point is. That may be adding to the money woes….(More)”

Crowd2Map Tanzania

Curated on February 22, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

“Crowd2Map Tanzania is a new crowdsourcing initiative aimed at creating a comprehensive map ofTanzania, including detailed depictions of all of its villages, roads and public resources (such as schools, shops, offices etc.) in OpenStreetMap and/or Google Maps, both of which are sadly rather poor at the moment. (For a convincing example, see our post about a not-so-blank-as-map-suggests Zeze village here.)

…In February 2016, Crowd2Map Tanzania was one of the 7 projects selected in the Open Seventeenchallenge, which rallies the public to use open data as a means of achieving the 17 SustainableDevelopment Goals as proposed but the UN in September 2015! We are now excited to carry on with the helpof O17 partners – Citizen Cyberlab, The GovLab, ONE and SciFabric! We’re tackling Goal 11: creatingsustainable cities & communities and Goal 4: education through technology….(More)

Forecasting Domestic Violence: A Machine Learning Approach to Help Inform Arraignment Decisions

Curated on February 22, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Richard A. Berk, Susan B. Sorenson and Geoffrey Barnes in the The Journal of Empirical Legal Studies: “Arguably the most important decision at an arraignment is whether to release an offender until the date of his or her next scheduled court appearance. Under the Bail Reform Act of 1984, threats to public safety can be a key factor in that decision. Implicitly, a forecast of “future dangerousness” is required. In this article, we consider in particular whether usefully accurate forecasts of domestic violence can be obtained. We apply machine learning to data on over 28,000 arraignment cases from a major metropolitan area in which an offender faces domestic violence charges. One of three possible post-arraignment outcomes is forecasted within two years: (1) a domestic violence arrest associated with a physical injury, (2) a domestic violence arrest not associated with a physical injury, and (3) no arrests for domestic violence. We incorporate asymmetric costs for different kinds of forecasting errors so that very strong statistical evidence is required before an offender is forecasted to be a good risk. When an out-of-sample forecast of no post-arraignment domestic violence arrests within two years is made, it is correct about 90 percent of the time. Under current practice within the jurisdiction studied, approximately 20 percent of those released after an arraignment for domestic violence are arrested within two years for a new domestic violence offense. If magistrates used the methods we have developed and released only offenders forecasted not to be arrested for domestic violence within two years after an arraignment, as few as 10 percent might be arrested. The failure rate could be cut nearly in half. Over a typical 24-month period in the jurisdiction studied, well over 2,000 post-arraignment arrests for domestic violence perhaps could be averted….(More)”

The city as platform

Curated on February 18, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

The report of the 2015 Aspen Institute Roundtable on Information Technology: “In the age of ubiquitous Internet connections, smartphones and data, the future vitality of cities is increasingly based on their ability to use digital networks in intelligent, strategic ways. While we are accustomed to thinking of cities as geophysical places governed by mayors, conventional political structures and bureaucracies, this template of city governance is under great pressure to evolve. Urban dwellers now live their lives in all sorts of hyper-connected virtual spaces, pulsating with real-time information, intelligent devices, remote-access databases and participatory crowdsourcing. Expertise is distributed, not centralized. Governance is not just a matter of winning elections and assigning tasks to bureaucracies; it is about the skillful collection and curation of information as a way to create new affordances for commerce and social life.

Except among a small class of vanguard cities, however, the far-reaching implications of the “networked city” for economic development, urban planning, social life and democracy, have not been explored in depth. The Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program thus convened an eclectic group of thirty experts to explore how networking technologies are rapidly changing the urban landscape in nearly every dimension. The goal was to learn how open networks, onlinecooperation and open data can enhance urban planning and administration, and more broadly, how they might improve economic opportunity and civic engagement. The conference, the 24th Annual Aspen Roundtable on Information Technology, also addressed the implications of new digital technologies for urban transportation, public health and safety, and socio-economic inequality….(Download the InfoTech 2015 Report)”

Exploring the economic value of open government data

Curated on February 18, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Fatemeh Ahmadi Zeleti et al in Government Information Quarterly: “Business models for open data have emerged in response to the economic opportunities presented by the increasing availability of open data. However, scholarly efforts providing elaborations, rigorous analysis and comparison of open data models are very limited. This could be partly attributed to the fact that most discussions on Open Data Business Models (ODBMs) are predominantly in the practice community. This shortcoming has resulted in a growing list of ODBMs which, on closer examination, are not clearly delineated and lack clear value orientation. This has made the understanding of value creation and exploitation mechanisms in existing open data businesses difficult and challenging to transfer. Following the Design Science Research (DSR) tradition, we developed a 6-Value (6-V) business model framework as a design artifact to facilitate the explication and detailed analysis of existing ODBMs in practice. Based on the results from the analysis, we identify business model patterns and emerging core value disciplines for open data businesses. Our results not only help streamline existing ODBMs and help in linking them to the overall business strategy, but could also guide governments in developing the required capabilities to support and sustain the business models….(More)”

Zika Emergency Puts Open Data Policies to the Test

Curated on February 18, 2016May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Larry Peiperl and Peter Hotez at PLOS: “The spreading epidemic of Zika virus, with its putative and alarming associations with Guillain-Barre syndrome and infant microcephaly, has arrived just as several initiatives have come into place to minimize delays in sharing the results of scientific research.

In September 2015, in response to concerns that research publishing practices had delayed access tocrucial information in the Ebola crisis, the World Health Organization convened a consultation “[i]nrecognition of the need to streamline mechanisms of data dissemination—globally and in as close toreal-time as possible” in the context of public health emergencies.

Participating medical journal editors, representing PLOS,BMJ and Nature journals and NEJM, provided a statement that journals should not act to delay access to data in a public health emergency: “In such scenarios,journals should not penalize, and, indeed, shouldencourage or mandate public sharing of relevant data…”

In a subsequent Comment in The Lancet, authors frommajor research funding organizations expressed supportfor data sharing in public health emergencies. TheInternational Committee of Medical Journal Editors(ICMJE), meeting in November 2015, lent further support to the principles of the WHO consultation byamending ICMJE “Recommendations” to endorse data sharing for public health emergencies of anygeographic scope.

Now that WHO has declared Zika to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, responses from these groups in recent days appear consistent with their recent declarations.

The ICMJE has announced that “In light of the need to rapidly understand and respond to the globalemergency caused by the Zika virus, content in ICMJE journals related to Zika virus is being made freeto access. We urge other journals to do the same. Further, as stated in our Recommendations, in theevent of a public health emergency (as defined by public health officials), information with immediateimplications for public health should be disseminated without concern that this will preclude subsequentconsideration for publication in a journal.”(www.icmje.org, accessed 9 Feburary 2016)

WHO has implemented special provisions for research manuscripts relevant to the Zika epidemic thatare submitted to WHO Bulletin; such papers “will be assigned a digital object identifier and posted onlinein the “Zika Open” collection within 24 hours while undergoing peer review. The data in these papers willthus be attributed to the authors while being freely available for reader scrutiny and unrestricted use”under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY IGO 3.0).

At PLOS, where open access and data sharing apply as matter of course, all PLOS journals aim toexpedite peer review evaluation, pre-publication posting, and data sharing from research relevant to theZika outbreak. PLOS Currents Outbreaks offers an online platform for rapid publication of preliminaryresults, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases has committed to provide priority handling of Zika reports ingeneral, and other PLOS journals will prioritize submissions within their respective scopes. The PLOSZika Collection page provides central access to relevant and continually updated content from acrossthe PLOS journals, blogs, and collaborating organizations.

Today, the Wellcome Trust has issued a statement urging journals to commit to “make all content concerning the Zika virus free to access,” and funders to “require researchers undertaking work relevant to public health emergencies to set in place mechanisms to share quality-assured interim and final data as rapidly and widely as possible, including with public health and research communities and the World Health Organisation.” Among 31 initial signatories are such journals and publishers as PLOS, Springer Nature, Science journals, The JAMA Network, eLife, the Lancet, and New England Journal ofMedicine; and funding organizations including Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UK Medical ResearchCouncil, US National Institutes of Health, Wellcome Trust, and other major national and internationalresearch funders.

This policy shift prompts reconsideration of how we publish urgently needed data during a public health emergency….(More)”

Civic hacking as data activism and advocacy: A history from publicity to open government data

Curated on February 18, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Andrew R Schrock in New Media and Society: “The civic hacker tends to be described as anachronistic, an ineffective “white hat” compared to more overtly activist cousins. By contrast, I argue that civic hackers’ politics emerged from a distinct historical milieu and include potentially powerful modes of political participation. The progressive roots of civic data hacking can be found in early 20th-century notions of “publicity” and the right to information movement. Successive waves of activists saw the Internet as a tool for transparency. The framing of openness shifted in meaning from information to data, weakening of mechanisms for accountability even as it opened up new forms of political participation. Drawing on a year of interviews and participant observation, I suggest civic data hacking can be framed as a form of data activism and advocacy: requesting, digesting, contributing to, modeling, and contesting data. I conclude civic hackers are utopian realists involved in the crafting of algorithmic power and discussing ethics of technology design. They may be misunderstood because open data remediates previous forms of openness. In the process, civic hackers transgress established boundaries of political participation….(More)”

Data Could Help Scholars Persuade, If Only They Were Willing to Use It

Curated on February 17, 2016August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paul Basken at the Chronicle of Higher Education: “Thanks to what they’ve learned from university research, consultants like Matthew Kalmans have become experts in modern political persuasion. A co-founder of Applecart, a New York data firm, Mr. Kalmans specializes in shaping societal attitudes by using advanced analytical techniques to discover and exploit personal connections and friendships. His is one of a fast-growing collection of similar companies now raising millions of dollars, fattening businesses, and aiding political campaigns with computerized records of Facebook exchanges, high-school yearbooks, even neighborhood gossip.

Applecart uses that data to try to persuade people on a range of topics by finding voices they trust to deliver endorsements. “You can use this sort of technology to get people to purchase insurance at higher rates, get people to purchase a product, get people to do all sorts of other things that they might otherwise not be inclined to do,” said Mr. Kalmans, a 2014 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. And in building such a valuable service, he’s found that the intellectual underpinnings are often free. “We are constantly reading academic papers to get ideas on how to do things better,” Mr. Kalmans said. That’s because scholars conduct the field experiments and subsequent tests that Mr. Kalmans needs to build and refine his models. “They do a lot of the infrastructural work that, frankly, a lot of commercial companies don’t have the in-house expertise to do,” he said of university researchers. Yet the story of Applecart stands in contrast to the dominant attitude and approach among university researchers themselves. Universities are full of researchers who intensively study major global problems such as environmental destruction and societal violence, then stop short when their conclusions point to the need for significant change in public behavior.

Some in academe consider that boundary a matter of principle rather than a systematic failure or oversight. “The one thing that we have to do is not be political,” Michael M. Crow, the usually paradigm-breaking president of Arizona State University, said this summer at a conference on academic engagement in public discourse. “Politics is a process that we are informing. We don’t have to be political to inform politicians or political actors.” But other academics contemplate that stance and see a missed opportunity to help convert the millions of taxpayer dollars spent on research into meaningful societal benefit. They include Dan M. Kahan, a professor of law and of psychology at Yale University who has been trying to help Florida officials cope with climate change. Mr. Kahan works with the four-county Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, which wants to redesign roads, expand public transit, and build pumping stations to prepare for harsher weather. But Mr. Kahan says he and his Florida partners have had trouble getting enough

But Mr. Kahan says he and his Florida partners have had trouble getting enough policy makers to seriously consider the scale of the problem and the necessary solutions. It’s frustrating, Mr. Kahan said, to see so much university research devoted to work inside laboratories on problems like climate, and comparatively little spent on real-world needs such as sophisticated messaging strategies. “There really is a kind of deficit in the research relating to actually operationalizing the kinds of insights that people have developed from research,” he said. That deficit appears to stem from academic culture, said Utpal M. Dholakia, a professor of marketing at Rice University whose work involves testing people’s self-control in areas such as eating and shopping. He then draws conclusions about whether regulations or taxes aimed at changing behaviors will be effective. Companies find advanced personal behavioral data highly useful, said Mr. Dholakia, who works on the side to help retailers devise sales strategies. But his university, he said, appears more interested in seeing him publish his findings than take the time to help policy makers make real-world use of them. “My dean gets very worried if I don’t publish a lot.” Because universities h

That deficit appears to stem from academic culture, said Utpal M. Dholakia, a professor of marketing at Rice University whose work involves testing people’s self-control in areas such as eating and shopping. He then draws conclusions about whether regulations or taxes aimed at changing behaviors will be effective. Companies find advanced personal behavioral data highly useful, said Mr. Dholakia, who works on the side to help retailers devise sales strategies. But his university, he said, appears more interested in seeing him publish his findings than take the time to help policy makers make real-world use of them. “My dean gets very worried if I don’t publish a lot.” …(More)