Crowdsourcing a Collective Sense of Place

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jenkins A., Croitoru A., Crooks A.T., Stefanidis A. in PLOS: “Place can be generally defined as a location that has been assigned meaning through human experience, and as such it is of multidisciplinary scientific interest. Up to this point place has been studied primarily within the context of social sciences as a theoretical construct. The availability of large amounts of user-generated content, e.g. in the form of social media feeds or Wikipedia contributions, allows us for the first time to computationally analyze and quantify the shared meaning of place. By aggregating references to human activities within urban spaces we can observe the emergence of unique themes that characterize different locations, thus identifying places through their discernible sociocultural signatures. In this paper we present results from a novel quantitative approach to derive such sociocultural signatures from Twitter contributions and also from corresponding Wikipedia entries. By contrasting the two we show how particular thematic characteristics of places (referred to herein as platial themes) are emerging from such crowd-contributed content, allowing us to observe the meaning that the general public, either individually or collectively, is assigning to specific locations. Our approach leverages probabilistic topic modelling, semantic association, and spatial clustering to find locations are conveying a collective sense of place. Deriving and quantifying such meaning allows us to observe how people transform a location to a place and shape its characteristics….(More)”

Technology for Transparency: Cases from Sub-Saharan Africa

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 at Havard Political Review: “Over the last decade, Africa has experienced previously unseen levels of economic growth and market vibrancy. Developing countries can only achieve equitable growth and reduce poverty rates, however, if they are able to make the most of their available resources. To do this, they must maximize the impact of aid from donor governments and NGOs and ensure that domestic markets continue to diversify, add jobs, and generate tax revenues. Yet, in most developing countries, there is a dearth of information available about industry profits, government spending, and policy outcomes that prevents efficient action.

ONE, an international advocacy organization, has estimated that $68.6 billion was lost in sub-Saharan Africa in 2012 due to a lack of transparency in government budgeting….

The Importance of Technology

Increased visibility of problems exerts pressure on politicians and other public sector actors to adjust their actions. This process is known as social monitoring, and it relies on citizens or public agencies using digital tools, such as mobile phones, Facebook, and other social media sites to spot public problems. In sub-Saharan Africa, however, traditional media companies and governments have not shown consistency in reporting on transparency issues.

New technologies offer a solution to this problem. Philip Thigo, the creator of an online and SMS platform that monitors government spending, said in an interview with Technology for Transparency, “All we are trying to do is enhance the work that [governments] do. We thought that if we could create a clear channel where communities could actually access data, then the work of government would be easier.” Networked citizen media platforms that rely on the volunteer contributions of citizens have become increasingly popular. Given that in most African countries less than 10 percent of the population has Internet access, mobile-device-based programs have proven the logical solution. About 30 percent of the population continent-wide has access to cell phones.

Lova Rakotomalala, a co-founder of an NGO in Madagascar that promotes online exposure of social grassroots projects, told the HPR, “most Malagasies will have a mobile phone and an FM radio because it helps them in their daily lives.” Rakotomalala works to provide workshops and IT training to people in regions of Madagascar where Internet access has been recently introduced. According to him, “the amount of data that we can collect from social monitoring and transparency projects will only grow in the near future. There is much room for improvement.”

Kenyan Budget Tracking Tool

The Kenyan Budget Tracking Tool is a prominent example of how social media technology can help obviate traditional transparency issues. Despite increased development assistance and foreign aid, the number of Kenyans classified as poor grew from 29 percent in the 1970s to almost 60 percent in 2000. Noticing this trend, Philip Thigo created an online and SMS platform called the Kenyan Budget Tracking Tool. The platform specifically focuses on the Constituencies Development Fund, through which members of the Kenyan parliament are able to allocate resources towards various projects, such as physical infrastructure, government offices, or new schools.

This social monitoring technology has exposed real government abuses. …

Another mobile tool, Question Box, allows Ugandans to call or message operators who have access to a database full of information on health, agriculture, and education.

But tools like Medic Mobile and the Kenyan Budget Tracking Tool are only the first steps in solving the problems that plague corrupt governments and underdeveloped communities. Improved access to information is no substitute for good leadership. However, as Rakotomalala argued, it is an important stepping-stone. “While legally binding actions are the hammer to the nail, you need to put the proverbial nail in the right place first. That nail is transparency.”…(More)

Automating power: Social bot interference in global politics

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Samuel C. Woolley at First Monday: “Over the last several years political actors worldwide have begun harnessing the digital power of social bots — software programs designed to mimic human social media users on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Increasingly, politicians, militaries, and government-contracted firms use these automated actors in online attempts to manipulate public opinion and disrupt organizational communication. Politicized social bots — here ‘political bots’ — are used to massively boost politicians’ follower levels on social media sites in attempts to generate false impressions of popularity. They are programmed to actively and automatically flood news streams with spam during political crises, elections, and conflicts in order to interrupt the efforts of activists and political dissidents who publicize and organize online. They are used by regimes to send out sophisticated computational propaganda. This paper conducts a content analysis of available media articles on political bots in order to build an event dataset of global political bot deployment that codes for usage, capability, and history. This information is then analyzed, generating a global outline of this phenomenon. This outline seeks to explain the variety of political bot-oriented strategies and presents details crucial to building understandings of these automated software actors in the humanities, social and computer sciences….(More)”

New Orleans Gamifies the City Budget

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Kelsey E. Thomas at Next City: “New Orleanians can try their hand at being “mayor for a day” with a new interactive website released by the Committee for a Better New Orleans Wednesday.

The Big Easy Budget Game uses open data from the city to allow players to create their own version of an operating budget. Players are given a digital $602 million, and have to balance the budget — keeping in mind the government’s responsibilities, previous year’s spending and their personal priorities.

Each department in the game has a minimum funding level (players can’t just quit funding public schools if they feel like it), and restricted funding, such as state or federal dollars, is off limits.

CBNO hopes to attract 600 players this year, and plans to compile the data from each player into a crowdsourced meta-budget called “The People’s Budget.” Next fall, the People’s Budget will be released along with the city’s proposed 2017 budget.

Along with the budgeting game, CBNO released a more detailed website, also using the city’s open data, that breaks down the city’s budgeted versus actual spending from 2007 to now and is filterable. The goal is to allow users without big data experience to easily research funding relevant to their neighborhoods.

Many cities have been releasing interactive websites to make their data more accessible to residents. Checkbook NYC updates more than $70 billion in city expenses daily and breaks them down by transaction. Fiscal Focus Pittsburgh is an online visualization tool that outlines revenues and expenses in the city’s budget….(More)”

Open data and the API economy: when it makes sense to give away data

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 at ZDNet: “Open data is one of those refreshing trends that flows in the opposite direction of the culture of fear that has developed around data security. Instead of putting data under lock and key, surrounded by firewalls and sandboxes, some organizations see value in making data available to all comers — especially developers.

The GovLab.org, a nonprofit advocacy group, published an overview of the benefits governments and organizations are realizing from open data, as well as some of the challenges. The group defines open data as “publicly available data that can be universally and readily accessed, used and redistributed free of charge. It is structured for usability and computability.”…

For enterprises, an open-data stance may be the fuel to build a vibrant ecosystem of developers and business partners. Scott Feinberg, API architect for The New York Times, is one of the people helping to lead the charge to open-data ecosystems. In a recent CXOTalk interview with ZDNet colleague Michael Krigsman, he explains how through the NYT APIs program, developers can sign up for access to 165 years worth of content.

But it requires a lot more than simply throwing some APIs out into the market. Establishing such a comprehensive effort across APIs requires a change in mindset that many organizations may not be ready for, Feinberg cautions. “You can’t be stingy,” he says. “You have to just give it out. When we launched our developer portal there’s a lot of questions like, are people going to be stealing our data, questions like that. Just give it away. You don’t have to give it all but don’t be stingy, and you will find that first off not that many people are going to use it at first. you’re going to find that out, but the people who do, you’re going to find those passionate people who are really interested in using your data in new ways.”

Feinberg clarifies that the NYT’s APIs are not giving out articles for free. Rather, he explains, “we give is everything but article content. You can search for articles. You can find out what’s trending. You can almost do anything you want with our data through our APIs with the exception of actually reading all of the content. It’s really about giving people the opportunity to really interact with your content in ways that you’ve never thought of, and empowering your community to figure out what they want. You know while we don’t give our actual article text away, we give pretty much everything else and people build a lot of really cool stuff on top of that.”

Open data sets, of course, have to worthy of the APIs that offer them. In his post, Borne outlines the seven qualities open data needs to have to be of value to developers and consumers. (Yes, they’re also “Vs” like big data.)

  1. Validity: It’s “critical to pay attention to these data validity concerns when your organization’s data are exposed to scrutiny and inspection by others,” Borne states.
  2. Value: The data needs to be the font of new ideas, new businesses, and innovations.
  3. Variety: Exposing the wide variety of data available can be “a scary proposition for any data scientist,” Borne observes, but nonetheless is essential.
  4. Voice: Remember that “your open data becomes the voice of your organization to your stakeholders.”
  5. Vocabulary: “The semantics and schema (data models) that describe your data are more critical than ever when you provide the data for others to use,” says Borne. “Search, discovery, and proper reuse of data all require good metadata, descriptions, and data modeling.”
  6. Vulnerability: Accept that open data, because it is so open, will be subjected to “misuse, abuse, manipulation, or alteration.”
  7. proVenance: This is the governance requirement behind open data offerings. “Provenance includes ownership, origin, chain of custody, transformations that been made to it, processing that has been applied to it (including which versions of processing software were used), the data’s uses and their context, and more,” says Borne….(More)”

Selected Readings on Data and Humanitarian Response

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

By Prianka Srinivasan and Stefaan G. Verhulst *

The Living Library’s Selected Readings series seeks to build a knowledge base on innovative approaches for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of governance. This curated and annotated collection of recommended works on the topic of data and humanitarian response was originally published in 2016.

Data, when used well in a trusted manner, allows humanitarian organizations to innovate how to respond to emergency events, including better coordination of post-disaster relief efforts, the ability to harness local knowledge to create more targeted relief strategies, and tools to predict and monitor disasters in real time. Consequently, in recent years both multinational groups and community-based advocates have begun to integrate data collection and evaluation strategies into their humanitarian operations, to better and more quickly respond to emergencies. However, this movement poses a number of challenges. Compared to the private sector, humanitarian organizations are often less equipped to successfully analyze and manage big data, which pose a number of risks related to the security of victims’ data. Furthermore, complex power dynamics which exist within humanitarian spaces may be further exacerbated through the introduction of new technologies and big data collection mechanisms. In the below we share:

  • Selected Reading List (summaries and hyperlinks)
  • Annotated Selected Reading List
  • Additional Readings

Selected Reading List  (summaries in alphabetical order)

Data and Humanitarian Response

Risks of Using Big Data in Humanitarian Context

Annotated Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)

Karlsrud, John. “Peacekeeping 4.0: Harnessing the Potential of Big Data, Social Media, and Cyber Technologies.” Cyberspace and International Relations, 2013. http://bit.ly/235Qb3e

  • This chapter from the book “Cyberspace and International Relations” suggests that advances in big data give humanitarian organizations unprecedented opportunities to prevent and mitigate natural disasters and humanitarian crises. However, the sheer amount of unstructured data necessitates effective “data mining” strategies for multinational organizations to make the most use of this data.
  • By profiling some civil-society organizations who use big data in their peacekeeping efforts, Karlsrud suggests that these community-focused initiatives are leading the movement toward analyzing and using big data in countries vulnerable to crisis.
  • The chapter concludes by offering ten recommendations to UN peacekeeping forces to best realize the potential of big data and new technology in supporting their operations.

Mancini, Fancesco. “New Technology and the prevention of Violence and Conflict.” International Peace Institute, 2013. http://bit.ly/1ltLfNV

  • This report from the International Peace Institute looks at five case studies to assess how information and communications technologies (ICTs) can help prevent humanitarian conflicts and violence. Their findings suggest that context has a significant impact on the ability for these ICTs for conflict prevention, and any strategies must take into account the specific contingencies of the region to be successful.
  • The report suggests seven lessons gleaned from the five case studies:
    • New technologies are just one in a variety of tools to combat violence. Consequently, organizations must investigate a variety of complementary strategies to prevent conflicts, and not simply rely on ICTs.
    • Not every community or social group will have the same relationship to technology, and their ability to adopt new technologies are similarly influenced by their context. Therefore, a detailed needs assessment must take place before any new technologies are implemented.
    • New technologies may be co-opted by violent groups seeking to maintain conflict in the region. Consequently, humanitarian groups must be sensitive to existing political actors and be aware of possible negative consequences these new technologies may spark.
    • Local input is integral to support conflict prevention measures, and there exists need for collaboration and awareness-raising with communities to ensure new technologies are sustainable and effective.
    • Information shared between civil-society has more potential to develop early-warning systems. This horizontal distribution of information can also allow communities to maintain the accountability of local leaders.

Meier, Patrick. “Digital humanitarians: how big data is changing the face of humanitarian response.” Crc Press, 2015. http://amzn.to/1RQ4ozc

  • This book traces the emergence of “Digital Humanitarians”—people who harness new digital tools and technologies to support humanitarian action. Meier suggests that this has created a “nervous system” to connect people from disparate parts of the world, revolutionizing the way we respond to humanitarian crises.
  • Meier argues that such technology is reconfiguring the structure of the humanitarian space, where victims are not simply passive recipients of aid but can contribute with other global citizens. This in turn makes us more humane and engaged people.

Robertson, Andrew and Olson, Steve. “Using Data Sharing to Improve Coordination in Peacebuilding.” United States Institute for Peace, 2012. http://bit.ly/235QuLm

  • This report functions as an overview of a roundtable workshop on Technology, Science and Peace Building held at the United States Institute of Peace. The workshop aimed to investigate how data-sharing techniques can be developed for use in peace building or conflict management.
  • Four main themes emerged from discussions during the workshop:
    • “Data sharing requires working across a technology-culture divide”—Data sharing needs the foundation of a strong relationship, which can depend on sociocultural, rather than technological, factors.
    • “Information sharing requires building and maintaining trust”—These relationships are often built on trust, which can include both technological and social perspectives.
    • “Information sharing requires linking civilian-military policy discussions to technology”—Even when sophisticated data-sharing technologies exist, continuous engagement between different stakeholders is necessary. Therefore, procedures used to maintain civil-military engagement should be broadened to include technology.
    • “Collaboration software needs to be aligned with user needs”—technology providers need to keep in mind the needs of its users, in this case peacebuilders, in order to ensure sustainability.

United Nations Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development. “A World That Counts, Mobilizing the Data Revolution.” 2014. https://bit.ly/2Cb3lXq

  • This report focuses on the potential benefits and risks data holds for sustainable development. Included in this is a strategic framework for using and managing data for humanitarian purposes. It describes a need for a multinational consensus to be developed to ensure data is shared effectively and efficiently.
  • It suggests that “people who are counted”—i.e., those who are included in data collection processes—have better development outcomes and a better chance for humanitarian response in emergency or conflict situations.

Katie Whipkey and Andrej Verity. “Guidance for Incorporating Big Data into Humanitarian Operations.” Digital Humanitarian Network, 2015. http://bit.ly/1Y2BMkQ

  • This report produced by the Digital Humanitarian Network provides an overview of big data, and how humanitarian organizations can integrate this technology into their humanitarian response. It primarily functions as a guide for organizations, and provides concise, brief outlines of what big data is, and how it can benefit humanitarian groups.
  • The report puts forward four main benefits acquired through the use of big data by humanitarian organizations: 1) the ability to leverage real-time information; 2) the ability to make more informed decisions; 3) the ability to learn new insights; 4) the ability for organizations to be more prepared.
  • It goes on to assess seven challenges big data poses for humanitarian organizations: 1) geography, and the unequal access to technology across regions; 2) the potential for user error when processing data; 3) limited technology; 4) questionable validity of data; 5) underdeveloped policies and ethics relating to data management; 6) limitations relating to staff knowledge.

Risks of Using Big Data in Humanitarian Context
Crawford, Kate, and Megan Finn. “The limits of crisis data: analytical and ethical challenges of using social and mobile data to understand disasters.” GeoJournal 80.4, 2015. http://bit.ly/1X0F7AI

  • Crawford & Finn present a critical analysis of the use of big data in disaster management, taking a more skeptical tone to the data revolution facing humanitarian response.
  • They argue that though social and mobile data analysis can yield important insights and tools in crisis events, it also presents a number of limitations which can lead to oversights being made by researchers or humanitarian response teams.
  • Crawford & Finn explore the ethical concerns the use of big data in disaster events introduces, including issues of power, privacy, and consent.
  • The paper concludes by recommending that critical data studies, such as those presented in the paper, be integrated into crisis event research in order to analyze some of the assumptions which underlie mobile and social data.

Jacobsen, Katja Lindskov (2010) Making design safe for citizens: A hidden history of humanitarian experimentation. Citizenship Studies 14.1: 89-103. http://bit.ly/1YaRTwG

  • This paper explores the phenomenon of “humanitarian experimentation,” where victims of disaster or conflict are the subjects of experiments to test the application of technologies before they are administered in greater civilian populations.
  • By analyzing the particular use of iris recognition technology during the repatriation of Afghan refugees to Pakistan in 2002 to 2007, Jacobsen suggests that this “humanitarian experimentation” compromises the security of already vulnerable refugees in order to better deliver biometric product to the rest of the world.

Responsible Data Forum. “Responsible Data Reflection Stories: An Overview.” http://bit.ly/1Rszrz1

  • This piece from the Responsible Data forum is primarily a compilation of “war stories” which follow some of the challenges in using big data for social good. By drawing on these crowdsourced cases, the Forum also presents an overview which makes key recommendations to overcome some of the challenges associated with big data in humanitarian organizations.
  • It finds that most of these challenges occur when organizations are ill-equipped to manage data and new technologies, or are unaware about how different groups interact in digital spaces in different ways.

Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora. “The humanitarian cyberspace: shrinking space or an expanding frontier?” Third World Quarterly 37:1, 17-32, 2016. http://bit.ly/1PIiACK

  • This paper analyzes the shift toward more technology-driven humanitarian work, where humanitarian work increasingly takes place online in cyberspace, reshaping the definition and application of aid. This has occurred along with what many suggest is a shrinking of the humanitarian space.
  • Sandvik provides three interpretations of this phenomena:
    • First, traditional threats remain in the humanitarian space, which are both modified and reinforced by technology.
    • Second, new threats are introduced by the increasing use of technology in humanitarianism, and consequently the humanitarian space may be broadening, not shrinking.
    • Finally, if the shrinking humanitarian space theory holds, cyberspace offers one example of this, where the increasing use of digital technology to manage disasters leads to a contraction of space through the proliferation of remote services.

Additional Readings on Data and Humanitarian Response

* Thanks to: Kristen B. Sandvik; Zara Rahman; Jennifer Schulte; Sean McDonald; Paul Currion; Dinorah Cantú-Pedraza and the Responsible Data Listserve for valuable input.

Elements of a New Ethical Framework for Big Data Research

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“The Berkman Center is pleased to announce the publication of a new paper from the Privacy Tools for Sharing Research Data project team. In this paper, Effy Vayena, Urs Gasser, Alexandra Wood, and David O’Brien from the Berkman Center, with Micah Altman from MIT Libraries, outline elements of a new ethical framework for big data research.

Emerging large-scale data sources hold tremendous potential for new scientific research into human biology, behaviors, and relationships. At the same time, big data research presents privacy and ethical challenges that the current regulatory framework is ill-suited to address. In light of the immense value of large-scale research data, the central question moving forward is not whether such data should be made available for research, but rather how the benefits can be captured in a way that respects fundamental principles of ethics and privacy.

The authors argue that a framework with the following elements would support big data utilization and help harness the value of big data in a sustainable and trust-building manner:

  • Oversight should aim to provide universal coverage of human subjects research, regardless of funding source, across all stages of the information lifecycle.

  • New definitions and standards should be developed based on a modern understanding of privacy science and the expectations of research subjects.

  • Researchers and review boards should be encouraged to incorporate systematic risk-benefit assessments and new procedural and technological solutions from the wide range of interventions that are available.

  • Oversight mechanisms and the safeguards implemented should be tailored to the intended uses, benefits, threats, harms, and vulnerabilities associated with a specific research activity.

Development of a new ethical framework with these elements should be the product of a dynamic multistakeholder process that is designed to capture the latest scientific understanding of privacy, analytical methods, available safeguards, community and social norms, and best practices for research ethics as they evolve over time.

The full paper is available for download through the Washington and Lee Law Review Online as part of a collection of papers featured at the Future of Privacy Forum workshop Beyond IRBs: Designing Ethical Review Processes for Big Data Research held on December 10, 2015, in Washington, DC….(More)”

The Bottom of the Data Pyramid: Big Data and the Global South

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Payal Arora at the International Journal of Communication: “To date, little attention has been given to the impact of big data in the Global South, about 60% of whose residents are below the poverty line. Big data manifests in novel and unprecedented ways in these neglected contexts. For instance, India has created biometric national identities for her 1.2 billion people, linking them to welfare schemes, and social entrepreneurial initiatives like the Ushahidi project that leveraged crowdsourcing to provide real-time crisis maps for humanitarian relief.

While these projects are indeed inspirational, this article argues that in the context of the Global South there is a bias in the framing of big data as an instrument of empowerment. Here, the poor, or the “bottom of the pyramid” populace are the new consumer base, agents of social change instead of passive beneficiaries. This neoliberal outlook of big data facilitating inclusive capitalism for the common good sidelines critical perspectives urgently needed if we are to channel big data as a positive social force in emerging economies. This article proposes to assess these new technological developments through the lens of databased democracies, databased identities, and databased geographies to make evident normative assumptions and perspectives in this under-examined context….(More)”.

When open data is a Trojan Horse: The weaponization of transparency in science and governance

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Karen E.C. Levy and David Merritt Johns in Big Data and Society: “Openness and transparency are becoming hallmarks of responsible data practice in science and governance. Concerns about data falsification, erroneous analysis, and misleading presentation of research results have recently strengthened the call for new procedures that ensure public accountability for data-driven decisions. Though we generally count ourselves in favor of increased transparency in data practice, this Commentary highlights a caveat. We suggest that legislative efforts that invoke the language of data transparency can sometimes function as “Trojan Horses” through which other political goals are pursued. Framing these maneuvers in the language of transparency can be strategic, because approaches that emphasize open access to data carry tremendous appeal, particularly in current political and technological contexts. We illustrate our argument through two examples of pro-transparency policy efforts, one historical and one current: industry-backed “sound science” initiatives in the 1990s, and contemporary legislative efforts to open environmental data to public inspection. Rules that exist mainly to impede science-based policy processes weaponize the concept of data transparency. The discussion illustrates that, much as Big Data itself requires critical assessment, the processes and principles that attend it—like transparency—also carry political valence, and, as such, warrant careful analysis….(More)”

Mapping a flood of new data

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Rebecca Lipman at Economist Intelligence Unit Perspectives on “One city tweets to stay dry: From drones to old-fashioned phone calls, data come from many unlikely sources. In a disaster, such as a flood or earthquake, responders will take whatever information they can get to visualise the crisis and best direct their resources. Increasingly, cities prone to natural disasters are learning to better aid their citizens by empowering their local agencies and responders with sophisticated tools to cut through the large volume and velocity of disaster-related data and synthesise actionable information.

Consider the plight of the metro area of Jakarta, Indonesia, home to some 28m people, 13 rivers and 1,100 km of canals. With 40% of the city below sea level (and sinking), and regularly subject to extreme weather events including torrential downpours in monsoon season, Jakarta’s residents face far-too-frequent, life-threatening floods. Despite the unpredictability of flooding conditions, citizens have long taken a passive approach that depended on government entities to manage the response. But the information Jakarta’s responders had on the flooding conditions was patchy at best. So in the last few years, the government began to turn to the local population for help. It helped.

Today, Jakarta’s municipal government is relying on the web-based PetaJakarta.org project and a handful of other crowdsourcing mobile apps such as Qlue and CROP to collect data and respond to floods and other disasters. Through these programmes, crowdsourced, time-sensitive data derived from citizens’ social-media inputs have made it possible for city agencies to more precisely map the locations of rising floods and help the residents at risk. In January 2015, for example, the web-based Peta Jakarta received 5,209 reports on floods via tweets with detailed text and photos. Anytime there’s a flood, Peta Jakarta’s data from the tweets are mapped and updated every minute, and often cross-checked by Jakarta Disaster Management Agency (BPBD) officials through calls with community leaders to assess the information and guide responders.

But in any city Twitter is only one piece of a very large puzzle. …

Even with such life-and-death examples, government agencies remain deeply protective of data because of issues of security, data ownership and citizen privacy. They are also concerned about liability issues if incorrect data lead to an activity that has unsuccessful outcomes. These concerns encumber the combination of crowdsourced data with operational systems of record, and impede the fast progress needed in disaster situations….Download the case study .”