Crowdsourcing the fight against mosquitos

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

YahooFinance: “That smartphone in your pocket could hold the cure for malaria, dengue and the Zika virus, a noted Stanford University scientist says.

Manu Prakash has a history of using oddball materials for medical research. His latest project, Abuzz, uses sound. Specifically, he asks regular citizens to capture and record mosquitoes. There are 30 unique species, and each has a different wingbeat pattern.

The big idea is to use algorithms to match sample recordings with disease-carrying species, and then recommend strategies to control the population.

Weird science, sure, but don’t knock it. In this age of massive amounts of compute and abundant sensors, dreamers are doing what should be impossible. They are replicating expensive research tools with inexpensive, makeshift solutions. Solutions that can, in many cases, save lives.

In this case, citizen-scientists capture a mosquito in a plastic bottle, poke a hole in the cap and record the buzzing with their phone. Then they send the digital file off to Prakash and his team.

It’s not the first time the Indian-born professor of bioengineering has made something from almost nothing.

In 2013, he saw a centrifuge being used as a doorstop at a Ugandan clinic. The expensive medical device had been donated by well-meaning researchers. But the village had no electricity.

So, Prakash put on his problem-solving hat. He later developed the Paperfuge.

Inspired by a toy whirligig, the paper-and-string device can separate blood cells from plasma. At a cost of 20 cents, the instrument is perfect for “diagnosis in the field,” Prakash told a TED conference audience.

And that’s just one example of how a little innovation can go a long way, for not a lot of money.

While visiting remote clinics in India and Thailand, he noticed expensive microscopes were collecting dust on shelves. They were too bulky to carry into the field. In 2014, his team showed off Foldscope, an inexpensive, lightweight microscope inspired by origami….(More)”.

Europol introduce crowdsourcing to catch child abusers

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

LeakofNations: “The criminal intelligence branch of the European Union, known as Europol, have started a campaign called #TraceAnObject which uses social media crowdsourcing to detect potentially-identifying objects in material that depicts child abuse….

Investigative crowdsourcing has gained traction in academic and journalistic circles in recent years, but this represents the first case of government bureaus relying on social media people-power to conduct more effective analysis.

Journalists are increasingly relying on a combination of high-end computing to organise terabytes of data and internet cloud hubs that allow a consortium of journalists from around the world to share their analysis of the material. In the Panama Papers scoop the Australian software Nuix was used to analyse, extract, and index documents into an encrypted central hub in which thousands of journalists from 80 countries were able to post their workings and assist others in a forum-type setting. This model was remarkably efficient; over 11.5 million documents, dating back to the 1970’s, were analysed in less than a year.

The website Zooinverse has achieved huge success in creating public participation on academic projects, producing the pioneering game Foldit, where participants play with digital models of proteins. The Oxford University-based organisation has now engaged over 1 million volunteers, and has has significant successes in astronomy, ecology, cell biology, humanities, and climate science.

The most complex investigations still require thousands of hours of straightforward tasks that cannot be computerised. The citizen science website Planet Four studies conditions on Mars, and needs volunteers to compare photographs and detect blotches on Mars’ surface – enabling anyone to feel like Elon Musk, regardless of their educational background.

Child abuse is something that incites anger in most people. Crowdsourcing is an opportunity to take the donkey-work away from slow bureaucratic offices and allow ordinary citizens, many of whom felt powerless to protect children from these vile crimes, to genuinely progress cases that will make children safer.

Zooinverse proves that the public are hungry for this kind of work; the ICIJ project model of a central cloud forum shows that crowdsourcing across international borders allows data to be interpreted more efficiently. Europol’s latest idea could well be a huge success.

Even the most basic object could potentially provide vital clues to the culprit’s identity. The most significant items released so far include a school uniform complete with ID card necktie, and a group of snow-covered lodges….(More) (see also #TraceAnObject).

Microtasking: Redefining crowdsourcing practices in emergency management

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Poblet, Marta; Fitzpatrick, Mari and Chhetri, Prem: “…examines the roles, types and forms of virtual microtasking for emergency information management in order to better understand collective intelligence mechanisms and the potential for logistics response. Using three case studies this paper reviews the emerging body of knowledge in microtasking practices in emergency management to demonstrate how crowd-sourced information is captured and processed during emergency events to provide critical intelligence throughout the emergency cycle. It also considers the impact of virtual information collection, collation and management on traditional humanitarian operations and relief efforts.

Based on the case studies the emergent forms of microtasking for emergency information management were identified. Opportunities for continuities, adaptations and innovations are explained. The contribution of virtual microtasking extends to all supply chain strategic domains to help maximise resource use and optimise service delivery response….(More)”

Gamified Crowdsourcing: Conceptualization, Literature Review, and Future Agenda

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Benedikt Morschheuser, Juho Hamari, Jonna Koivisto and Alexander Maedche in International Journal of Human-Computer Studies: “Two parallel phenomena are gaining attention in human-computer interaction research: gamification and crowdsourcing. Because crowdsourcing’s success depends on a mass of motivated crowdsourcees, crowdsourcing platforms have increasingly been imbued with motivational design features borrowed from games; a practice often called gamification. While the body of literature and knowledge of the phenomenon have begun to accumulate, we still lack a comprehensive and systematic understanding of conceptual foundations, knowledge of how gamification is used in crowdsourcing, and whether it is effective. We first provide a conceptual framework for gamified crowdsourcing systems in order to understand and conceptualize the key aspects of the phenomenon. The paper’s main contributions are derived through a systematic literature review that investigates how gamification has been examined in different types of crowdsourcing in a variety of domains. This meticulous mapping, which focuses on all aspects in our framework, enables us to infer what kinds of gamification efforts are effective in different crowdsourcing approaches as well as to point to a number of research gaps and lay out future research directions for gamified crowdsourcing systems. Overall, the results indicate that gamification has been an effective approach for increasing crowdsourcing participation and the quality of the crowdsourced work; however, differences exist between different types of crowdsourcing: the research conducted in the context of crowdsourcing of homogenous tasks has most commonly used simple gamification implementations, such as points and leaderboards, whereas crowdsourcing implementations that seek diverse and creative contributions employ gamification with a richer set of mechanics….(More)”.

 

Making cities wiser – Crowdsourcing for better decisions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Maarit Kahila and Anna Broberg at FIG: “The need in urban planning to make knowledge-driven decisions has spurred the creation of new solutions to gather and utilize insight from residents. Participatory planning has often been realized through workshops and during face-to-face encounters, but little of the knowledge gathered in these situations is of use in further urban planning and city development. New technological innovations, such as map-based public participation tools, support gathering information that matters and makes cities wiser. Interaction with citizens not only creates information, but supports also learning and innovation building, and creates trusts.

Technological innovations like Maptionnaire help gather information that makes cities wiser. Maptionnaire is a leading solution for collecting, analyzing and discussing resident insight on a map. With the help of Maptionnaire, various cities have been able to change their modus operandi. Through these learning processes actors from different sectors of the city are brought together to create joint understanding of the possibilities of public participation. Cities have started to value and use resident input as an equally important part of its knowledge base for planning. There is a great potential for more efficient use of participatory tools to make processes smoother and to save money. Future development work is needed to further facilitate knowledge transfer from residents to the use of planners and other city officials.

In our presentation we will present different innovative case studies from Finland and abroad where Maptionnaire has been used to support two-way communication in different phases of planning processes. Based on our findings we will draft a new public participation model that assist the effective gathering of experiential knowledge from inhabitants, provide high quality place-based data for various analysis and informs participants about the stage and goals of the planning process more innovatively….(More)”.

Updated N.Y.P.D. Anti-Crime System to Ask: ‘How We Doing?’

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Al Baker in the New York Times: “It was a policing invention with a futuristic sounding name — CompStat — when the New York Police Department introduced it as a management system for fighting crime in an era of much higher violence in the 1990s. Police departments around the country, and the world, adapted its system of mapping muggings, robberies and other crimes; measuring police activity; and holding local commanders accountable.

Now, a quarter-century later, it is getting a broad reimagining and being brought into the mobile age. Moving away from simple stats and figures, CompStat is getting touchy-feely. It’s going to ask New Yorkers — via thousands of questions on their phones — “How are you feeling?” and “How are we, the police, doing?”

Whether this new approach will be mimicked elsewhere is still unknown, but as is the case with almost all new tactics in the N.Y.P.D. — the largest municipal police force in the United States by far — it will be closely watched. Nor is it clear if New Yorkers will embrace this approach, reject it as intrusive or simply be annoyed by it.

The system, using location technology, sends out short sets of questions to smartphones along three themes: Do you feel safe in your neighborhood? Do you trust the police? Are you confident in the New York Police Department?

The questions stream out every day, around the clock, on 50,000 different smartphone applications and present themselves on screens as eight-second surveys.

The department believes it will get a more diverse measure of community satisfaction, and allow it to further drive down crime. For now, Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill is calling the tool a “sentiment meter,” though he is open to suggestions for a better name….(More)”.

Harnessing Science, Technology and Innovation to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Featured innovations for the second STI Forum: “…The theme of the 2017 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) is “Eradicating poverty and promoting prosperity in a changing world“, and the Member States have decided that the HLPF 2017 shall focus on six SDGs (1, 2, 3, 5, 9 and 14) in addition to SDG 17 that will be considered at each HLPF. In this context, the following topic may be considered for the STI Forum 2017: “Science, Technology and Innovation for a Changing World – Focus on SDGs 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, and 14“….

The second Call for Innovations was launched for the sharing of innovations that provide solutions targeted to these six SDGs. Innovators from around the world were invited to submit their scientific and technological solutions to the challenges posed by the six SDGs.The Call for Innovations is now closed. More than 110 inspiring innovations from all the globe were submitted through the Global Innovations Exchange platform.The following outstanding innovators were selected to attend the STI Forum 2017 at UNHQ and showcase their solutions:

Going Digital: Restoring Trust In Government In Latin American Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Carlos Santiso at The Rockefeller Foundation Blog: “Driven by fast-paced technological innovations, an exponential growth of smartphones, and a daily stream of big data, the “digital revolution” is changing the way we live our lives. Nowhere are the changes more sweeping than in cities. In Latin America, almost 80 percent of the population lives in cities, where massive adoption of social media is enabling new forms of digital engagement. Technology is ubiquitous in cities. The expectations of Latin American “digital citizens” have grown exponentially as a result of a rising middle class and an increasingly connected youth.

This digital transformation is recasting the relation between states and citizens. Digital citizens are asking for better services, more transparency, and meaningful participation. Their rising expectations concern the quality of the services city governments ought to provide, but also the standards of integrity, responsiveness, and fairness of the bureaucracy in their daily dealings. A recent study shows that citizens’ satisfaction with public services is not only determined by the objective quality of the service, but also their subjective expectations and how fairly they consider being treated….

New technologies and data analytics are transforming the governance of cities. Digital-intensive and data-driven innovations are changing how city governments function and deliver services, and also enabling new forms of social participation and co-creation. New technologies help improve efficiency and further transparency through new modes of open innovation. Tech-enabled and citizen-driven innovations also facilitate participation through feedback loops from citizens to local authorities to identify and resolve failures in the delivery of public services.

Three structural trends are driving the digital revolution in governments.

  1. The digital transformation of the machinery of government. National and city governments in the region are developing digital strategies to increase connectivity, improve services, and enhance accountability. According to a recent report, 75 percent of the 23 countries surveyed have developed comprehensive digital strategies, such as Uruguay Digital, Colombia’s Vive Digital or Mexico’s Agenda Digital, that include legally recognized digital identification mechanisms. “Smart cities” are intensifying the use of modern technologies and improve the interoperability of government systems, the backbone of government, to ensure that public services are inter-connected and thus avoid having citizens provide the same information to different entities. An important driver of this transformation is citizens’ demands for greater transparency and accountability in the delivery of public services. Sixteen countries in the region have developed open government strategies, and cities such as Buenos Aires in Argentina, La Libertad in Peru, and Sao Paolo in Brazil have also committed to opening up government to public scrutiny and new forms of social participation. This second wave of active transparency reforms follows a first, more passive wave that focused on facilitating access to information.
  1. The digital transformation of the interface with citizens. Sixty percent of the countries surveyed by the aforementioned report have established integrated service portals through which citizens can access online public services. Online portals allow for a single point of access to public services. Cities, such as Bogotá and Rio de Janeiro, are developing their own online service platforms to access municipal services. These innovations improve access to public services and contribute to simplifying bureaucratic processes and cutting red-tape, as a recent study shows. Governments are resorting to crowdsourcing solutions, open intelligence initiatives, and digital apps to encourage active citizen participation in the improvement of public services and the prevention of corruption. Colombia’s Transparency Secretariat has developed an app that allows citizens to report “white elephants” — incomplete or overbilled public works. By the end of 2015, it identified 83 such white elephants, mainly in the capital Bogotá, for a total value of almost $500 million, which led to the initiation of criminal proceedings by law enforcement authorities. While many of these initiatives emerge from civic initiatives, local governments are increasingly encouraging them and adopting their own open innovation models to rethink public services.
  1. The gradual mainstreaming of social innovation in local government. Governments are increasingly resorting to public innovation labs to tackle difficult problems for citizens and businesses. Governments innovation labs are helping address “wicked problems” by combining design thinking, crowdsourcing techniques, and data analytics tools. Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, and Uruguay, have developed such social innovation labs within government structures. As a recent report notes, these mechanisms come in different forms and shapes. Large cities, such as Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Quito, Rio de Janeiro, and Montevideo, are at the forefront of testing such laboratory mechanisms and institutionalizing tech-driven and citizen-centered approaches through innovation labs. For example, in 2013, Mexico City created its Laboratorio para la Ciudad, as a hub for civic innovation and urban creativity, relying on small-case experiments and interventions to improve specific government services and make local government more transparent, responsive, and receptive. It spearheaded an open government law for the city that encourages residents to participate in the design of public policies and requires city agencies to consider those suggestions…..(More)”.

When Crowdsourcing Works (And Doesn’t Work) In The Law

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

LawXLab: “Crowdsourcing has revolutionized several industries.  Wikipedia has replaced traditional encyclopedias.  Stack Overflow houses the collective knowledge of software engineering.  And genealogical information stretches back thousands of years.  All due to crowdsourcing.

These successes have led to several attempts to crowdsource the law.  The potential is enticing.  The law is notoriously difficult to access, especially for non-lawyers.  Amassing the collective knowledge of the legal community could make legal research easier for lawyers, and open the law to lay people, reshaping the legal industry and displacing traditional powers like Westlaw and Lexis. As one legal crowdsourcing site touted, “No lawyer is smarter than all lawyers.”

But crowdsourcing the law has proved difficult.  The list of failed legal crowdsourcing sites is long.  As one legal commentator noted, “The legal Web is haunted by the spirits of the many crowdsourced sites that have come and gone.” (Ambrogi http://goo.gl/ZPuXh8).  …

There are several aspects of the law that make crowdsourcing difficult.  First, the base of contributors is not large.  According to the ABA, there were only 1.3 million licensed lawyers in 2015. (http://goo.gl/kw6Kab).  Second, there is no ethos of sharing information, like there is in other fields.  To the contrary, there is a tradition of keeping information secret, enshrined in rules regarding privilege, work product protection, and trade secrets.  Legal professionals disclose information with caution.

Every attempt to crowdsource the law, however, has not been a failure.  And the successes chart a promising path forward.  While lawyers will not go out of their way to crowdsource the law, attempts to weave crowdsourcing into activities that legal professionals already perform have achieved promising results.

For example, Casetext’s WeCite initiative has proved immensely successful.  When a judge cites another case in a published opinion, WeCite asks the reader to characterize case references as (1) positive, (2) referencing, (3) distinguishing, or (4) negative.  In 9 months, Casetext’s community had crowdsourced “over 300,000 citator entries.” (CALI https://goo.gl/yT9mc4.)  CaseText used these entries to fuel its flagship product, CARA.  CARA uses those crowdsourced citation entries to suggest other cases for litigators to cite.

The key to WeCite’s success is that it weaved crowdsourcing into an activity that lawyers and law students were already doing–reading cases.  All the reader needed to do was click a button to signify how the case was cited–a minor detour.

Another example is CO/COUNSEL, a site that crowdsources visual maps of the law. The majority of CO/COUNSEL’s crowdsourced contributions come from law school classes.  Teachers use the site as a teaching tool.  Classes map the law during the course of a semester as a learning activity.  In a few months, CO/COUNSEL received over 10,000 contributions.  As with WeCite, using CO/COUNSEL was not a big detour for professors.  It fit into an activity they were performing already–teaching….(More)”.

SeeClickFix Empowers Citizens by Connecting Them to Their Local Governments

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Ben Berkowitz and Jean-Paul Gagnon in Democratic Theory: “SeeClickFix began in 2009 when founder and present CEO Ben Berkowitz spotted a piece of graffiti in his New Haven, Connecticut, neighborhood. After calling numerous departments at city hall in a bid to have the graffiti removed, Berkowitz felt no closer to fixing the problem. Confused and frustrated, his emotions resonated with what many citizens in real- existing democracies feel today (Manning 2015): we see problems in public and want to fix them but can’t. This all too habitual inability for “common people” to fix problems they have to live with on a day-to-day basis is a prelude to the irascible citizen (White 2012), which, according to certain scholars (e.g., Dean 1960; Lee 2009), is itself a prelude to political apathy and a citizen’s alienation from specific political institutions….(More)”