Crowd-Sourcing – Page 33 – Public Intelligence Blog

Zooniverse — The Answer to Big (Crisis) Data?

Both humanitarian and development organizations are completely unprepared to deal with the rise of “Big Crisis Data” & “Big Development Data.” But many still hope that Big Data is but an illusion. Not so, as I’ve already blogged here, here and here. This explains why I’m on a quest to tame the Big Data Beast. Enter Zooniverse. I’ve been a huge fan of Zooniverse for as long as I can remember, and certainly long before I first mentioned them in this post from two years ago. Zooniverse is a citizen science platform that evolved from GalaxyZoo in 2007. Today, Zooniverse “hosts more than a dozen projects which allow volunteers to participate in scientific research” (1). So, why do I have a major “techie crush” on Zooniverse?

Oh let me count the ways. Zooniverse interfaces are absolutely gorgeous, making them a real pleasure to spend time with; they really understand user-centered design and motivations. The fact that Zooniverse is conversent in multiple disciplines is incredibly attractive. Indeed, the platform has been used to produce rich scientific data across multiple fields such as astronomy, ecology and climate science. Furthermore, this citizen science beauty has a user-base of some 800,000 registered volunteers—with an average of 500 to 1,000 new volunteers joining every day! To place this into context, the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF), a digital humanitarian group has about 1,000 volunteers in total. The open source Zooniverse platform also scales like there’s no tomorrow, enabling hundreds of thousands to participate on a single deployment at any given time. In short, the software supporting these pioneering citizen science projects is well tested and rapidly customizable.

. . . . . . . . . .

One of the most attractive features of many microtasking platforms such as Zooniverse is quality control. Think of slot machines. The only way to win big is by having three matching figures such as the three yellow bells in the picture above (righthand side). Hit the jackpot and the coins will flow. Get two out three matching figures (lefthand side), and some slot machines may toss you a few coins for your efforts. Microtasking uses the same approach. Only if three participants tag the same picture of a galaxy as being a spiral galaxy does that data point count. (Of course, you could decide to change the requirement from 3 volunteers to 5 or even 20 volunteers). This important feature allows micro-tasking initiatives to ensure a high standard of data quality, which may explain why many Zooniverse projects have resulted in major scientific break-throughs over the years.

Read full post.

2013/03/242013/03/26

Patrick Meier: GeoFeedia: Ready for Digital Disaster Response

Crowd-Sourcing, Geospatial

GeoFeedia: Ready for Digital Disaster Response

GeoFeedia was not originally designed to support humanitarian operations. But last year’s blog post on the potential of GeoFeedia for crisis mapping caught the interest of CEO Phil Harris. So he kindly granted the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF) free access to the platform. In return, we provided his team with feedback on what features (listed here) would make GeoFeedia more useful for digital disaster response. This was back in summer 2012. I recently learned that they’ve been quite busy since. Indeed, I had the distinct pleasure of sharing the stage with Phil and his team at this superb conference on social media for emergency management. After listening to their talk, I realized it was high time to publish an update on GeoFeedia, especially since we had used the tool just two months earlier in response to Typhoon Pablo, one of the worst disasters to hit the Philippines in the past 100 years.

Read full article with graphics.

2013/03/202013/03/26

Patrick Meier: A Research Framework for Next Generation Humanitarian Technology and Innovation

Architecture, Crowd-Sourcing, Data, Geospatial, P2P / Panarchy

A Research Framework for Next Generation Humanitarian Technology and Innovation

Humanitarian donors and organizations are increasingly championing innovation and the use of new technologies for humanitarian response. DfID, for example, is committed to using “innovative techniques and technologies more routinely in humanitarian response” (2011). In a more recent strategy paper, DfID confirmed that it would “continue to invest in new technologies” (2012). ALNAP’s important report on “The State of the Humanitarian System” documents the shift towards greater innovation, “with new funds and mechanisms designed to study and support innovation in humanitarian programming” (2012). A forthcoming land-mark study by OCHA makes the strongest case yet for the use and early adoption of new technologies for humanitarian response (2013).

These strategic policy documents are game-changers and pivotal to ushering in the next wave of humanitarian technology and innovation. That said, the reports are limited by the very fact that the authors are humanitarian professionals and thus not necessarily familiar with the field of advanced computing. The purpose of this post is therefore to set out a more detailed research framework for next generation humanitarian technology and innovation—one with a strong focus on information systems for crisis response and management.

Read full article with many links.

2013/03/142013/03/26

Patrick Meier: Analyzing Tweets — Mumbai Attack

Advanced Cyber/IO, Crowd-Sourcing, Geospatial

Analyzing Tweets Posted During Mumbai Terrorist Attacks

Over 1 million unique users posted more than 2.7 million tweets in just 3 days following the triple bomb blasts that struck Mumbai on July 13, 2011. Out of these, over 68,000 tweets were “original tweets” (in contrast to retweets) and related to the bombings. An analysis of these tweets yielded some interesting patterns. (Note that the Ushahidi Map of the bombings captured ~150 reports; more here).

One unique aspect of this study (PDF) is the methodology used to assess the quality of the Twitter dataset. The number of tweets per user was graphed in order to test for a power law distribution. The graph below shows the log distri-bution of the number of tweets per user. The straight lines suggests power law behavior. This finding is in line with previous research done on Twitter. So the authors conclude that the quality of the dataset is comparable to the quality of Twitter datasets used in other peer-reviewed studies.

Read full article with graphs and more link.

2013/03/132013/03/26

Michel Bauwens: Spanish P2P WIkispring on March 20

Crowd-Sourcing, P2P / Panarchy

The Spanish P2P Wikisprint on March 20

Next Wednesday, March 20, a fascinating new stage in transnational cooperation will arrive when scores of commoners in twenty countries take part in a Spanish P2P Wikisprint, a coordinated effort to document and map the myriad peer to peer initiatives that exist in Latin America and Spain.

The effort, hosted by the P2P Foundation, was originally going to be held in Spain only, but word got around in the Hispanic world, and presto, an inter-continental P2P collaboration was declared! (A Spanish-language version of the event can be found here.)

As described by Bernardo Gutiérrez on the P2P Foundation blog, the Wikisprint will bring together an indigenous collective in Chiapas with a co-working space of Quito; a crowdfunding platform in Barcelona with the open data movement of Montevideo; a hacktivist group in Madrid with permaculturists in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas; and a community of free software developers in Buenos Aires with Lima-based city planners; among many others.

The Wikisprint will map the various Spanish experiences around the commons, open innovation, co-creation, transparency, co-design, 3D printing, free license, p2politics, among other things. It will also feature debates, lectures, screenings, speeches, self-media coverage, workshops, network visualizations and videos.

Continue reading “Michel Bauwens: Spanish P2P WIkispring on March 20”

2013/03/02

Rickard Falkvinge: Chapter Two for Swarmwise Tactical Manual to Changing the World

Crowd-Sourcing, P2P / Panarchy

Swarmwise – The Tactical Manual To Changing The World. Chapter Two.

Swarm Management: Launching a swarm is an intense event, where you can get hundreds or thousands of new colleagues in less than a day. You have a very short window for appreciating their interest, or they will take it elsewhere.

[Chapter one of the book is here. Chapter two picks up after having done due diligence whether the numbers work out to create a swarm.]

EXTRACT:

My point here is, if you’re thinking hard about how to gather a swarm for your idea:

Don’t worry about advertising.

Word of mouth is much more efficient than any campaign can ever be, but that requires that your idea – or rather, your presentation of it – meets four criteria: Tangible, Credible, Inclusive, and Epic.

Tangible: You need to post an outline of the goals you intend to meet, when, and how.
Credible: After having presented your daring goal, you need to present it as totally doable. Bonus points if nobody has done it before.
Inclusive: There must be room for participation by every spectator who finds it interesting, and they need to realize this on hearing about the project.
Epic: Finally, you must set out to change the entire world for the better – or at least make a major improvement for a lot of people.

If these four steps are good, then the swarm will form by itself. Quite rapidly, in the twenty-odd cases I have observed firsthand. Very rapidly. On the other hand, if these four components are not good enough, no amount of advertising or whitewashing is going to create the volunteer activist power that you want.

Learn more.

2013/02/272013/03/01

Eagle: Concentration camp survivor, Resistance fighter and the man who inspired the Occupy movement: Stephane Hessel dies at age of 95

Civil Society, Commercial Intelligence, Crowd-Sourcing, Cultural Intelligence, Economics/True Cost, Ethics

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

Concentration camp survivor, Resistance fighter and the man who inspired the Occupy movement: Stephane Hessel dies at age of 95

A German by birth, he was imprisoned in Nazi camps during World War II
At the camps he was waterboarded during torture sessions
Time for Outrage became an inspiration for Occupy Wall Street movement

Jill Reilly

MailOnline, 27 February 2013

Stephane Hessel, the concentration camp survivor who inspired the Occupy Wall Street movement has died aged 95.

Mr Hessel who was a member of the French resistance passed away overnight in Paris according to his wife.

As a spy for the French Resistance, he survived the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald by assuming the identity of a French prisoner who was already dead.

As a diplomat, he helped write the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

And at age 93, after a distinguished but relatively anonymous life, he published a slim pamphlet that even he expected would be little more than a vanity project.

But Mr Hessel's 32-page Time for Outrage sold millions of copies across Europe, tapping into a vein of popular discontent with capitalism and transforming him into an intellectual superstar within weeks.

Translated into English, the pocket-sized book became a source of inspiration for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In the book, Mr Hessel urges young people to take inspiration from the anti-Nazi resistance to which he once belonged and rally against what he saw as the newest evil: The love of money.

Read rest of article.

This controversial, impassioned call-to-arms for a return to the ideals that fueled the French Resistance has sold millions of copies worldwide since its publication in France in October 2010. Rejecting the dictatorship of world financial markets and defending the social values of modern democracy, 93-old Stéphane Hessel — Resistance leader, concentration camp survivor, and former UN speechwriter — reminds us that life and liberty must still be fought for, and urges us to reclaim those essential rights we have permitted our governments to erode since the end of World War II.

“This slim but powerful volume answered the public's need for a voice to articulate popular resentment of ruling-class ruthlessness, police brutality, stark income disparities, banking and political corruption, and victimization of the poor and immigrants.” (The Nation )

“INDIGNEZ-VOUS! is creating the sort of stir in France Emile Zola did in 1898, when he published J'Accuse!” (The National Post )

“Like a song you hum or a film you recommend to friends, INDIGNEZ-VOUS! crystallises the spirit of the time. To buy it is a militant act, a gesture towards community and participation in a collective emotion.” (Liberation )

‘The book urges the French, and everyone else, to recapture the wartime spirit of resistance to the Nazis by rejecting the “insolent, selfish” power of money and markets and by defending the social “values of modern democracy”. (The Independent )

Also See:

Indignez Vous!/Time for Outrage! translations (FREE) – Version 1 | Version 2 (pdf)

Audio interview with Stephane Hessel

Category: Crowd-Sourcing

Patrick Meier: Zooniverse — The Answer to Big (Crisis) Data?