SlideShare a Scribd company logo
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME
     PSFK Presents



     FUTURE OF
UBIQUITOUS SENSORS TO MONITOR
MUNICIPAL STRUCTURES
HP Labs has announced a project they’ve dubbed the CeNSE          HTTP://WWW.HPL.HP.COM/RESEARCH/INTELLIGENT_INFRASTRUCTURE/

(Central Nervous System for the Earth), an attempt to build a




     REAL-TIME
planet-wide infrastructure built from billions of small, cheap,
and durable sensors. These sensors will be able to attach to
bridges and buildings to warn of structural strains or inclem-
ent weather conditions, and will be scattered along roadsides
to monitor traffic and road conditions.




 A                       REPORT
      CO N S U LTI N G
                                                                                                                           Prepared by
                                                                                                                           PSFK for
                                                                                                                           United Nations
WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                       1
                                                                                                                           Global Pulse
PSFK presents
FUTURE OF REAL-TIME                                            prepared for


                                                                              CO N S U LTI N G




                          CONTENTS
         Prepared by
         PSFK for         INTRODUCTION                                  1
         United Nations   KEY IMPLICATIONS                              4
         Global Pulse
                          KEY TRENDS
                          1.   HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS                    7
                          2.   PERSONAL CENSUS                          17
                          3.   SOCIAL SENTIMENT                         27
                          4.   SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING            37
                          5.   MOBILE COMMUNITIES                       47
                          6.   INSTANT MAPPING                          57
                          7.   CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY                      67
                          8.   TIMELINE NARRATIVES                      77
                          9.   INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE               87
                          10. NETWORKING NATURE                         97
                          11. DATA DEMOCRACY                            107
                          ABOUT                                         116
INTRODUCTION                                                                                          prepared for


                                                                                                                               CO N S U LTI N G




Evolving data-rich technologies are providing organizations,         a large and small scale. While others are putting this technology
governments and businesses with a rapid way to monitor the           to use to instantly map geography, layer in information from
well-being of communities and individuals without significant         other data streams and create context and narrative where none
infrastructure or spend. For those organizations whose success       previously existed.
is dependent on the ability to quickly recognize and react to        The proliferation of low-cost sensors has created a network of
high-risk situations, the proliferation of rapid access to “good     intelligent infrastructure that can allow for the monitoring of
enough” information is proving invaluable.                           changing conditions and statuses in both natural and urban
Often, services can leverage the existing infrastructure created     environments.
around the internet to provide low cost access to information in
                                                                     We hope that this document prepared for the UnitedNations
real-time. Through this data democracy, decisions can be made
                                                                     Global Pulse Team provides insights into the opportunities
at unparalleled speed.
                                                                     available through the increased volume of “good enough”
The change we are witnessing is being driven by the growing          data and real-time analysis. But the report doesn’t end
volume of data produced each day by ordinary people. By              here—please join the discussion and share your ideas online
releasing information about themselves and their environments        using #FutureOfRealTime or one of the hashtags presented
that has been captured through mobile phones and other digital       in each section of this report. Together, we can broaden our
platforms, people are acting as human sensor networks. These         knowledge base, highlight change for good, and inspire people,
individual data points, when collectively placed in context, can     organizations and governments to make things better.
provide insight into a variety of situations.

Social media is another tool that is being used to monitor the
well-being of communities. Online buzz around certain subjects
can serve as an indicator of group sentiment, providing insights                        Piers Fawkes
that are relevant offline and pointing to actions that can be taken                      Founder & President
to remedy problems as they arise.                                                       PSFK

Simple solutions are developing that allow people to connect
rapidly across mobile networks. Government and aid-
organizations are putting this newfound ability to use by creating
temporary networked communities to handle situations on both
                                                                                                                                              1
INTRODUCTION                                                                                           prepared for


                                                                                                                                  CO N S U LTI N G




This report has been developed for              PSFK PROCESS                                 ABOUT PSFK
the United Nations Global Pulse team,           At the core of PSFK’s trends research        PSFK is the go-to source for new ideas and
a project whose goal is to support              methodology is a robust qualitative          inspiration for readers around the world.
governments in understanding what               process called Grounded Theory
is happening to their most vulnerable           Analysis, in which trends are identified by   The New York City based trends and
populations in real-time.                       uncovering patterns within a large data      innovation company publishes a daily
                                                set. Over the course of several weeks in     news site, provides research and business
We intend for it to be openly shared            late 2010 and early 2011, a global team      consultancy, manages a network of
around the globe between communities,           of PSFK researchers in places ranging        experts, and hosts idea-generating
development agencies, academia                  from New York to Nigeria, gathered           events. PSFK aims to inspire readers,
and other organizations. Its aim is to          hundreds of examples of innovation that      clients and guests to make things better—
highlight the opportunities that exist for      matched our brief. In an effort to refine     whether that’s better products, better
organizations, large or small. In particular,   the trends identified and gain deeper         services, better lives or a better world.
the “left field” examples of data capture        insight into the forces driving them, PSFK   www.psfk.com
and use are published in hope of                interviewed dozens of experts coming
showcasing how organizations can leap-                                                       ABOUT GLOBAL PULSE
                                                from fields of aid, business, governmental
frog IT investment and still significantly                                                    The Global Pulse initiative works
                                                policy and technology.
improve the monitoring capabilities.                                                         closely with UN Member States and
                                                To develop PSFK’s Future of Real-Time        other development partners to improve
BRIEF                                           report, we responded to a brief set by       evidence-based decision making and
PSFK’s key objective was to identify trends     the Global Pulse team aimed at exploring     close the information gap between the
in information monitoring allowing for          emerging ideas around the world.             onset of a global crisis and the availability
quicker reaction. Key areas of investigation                                                 of actionable information to protect
included developments in data (e.g.             Each section in this document is a           the vulnerable.
new types of data, emerging sources);           separate trend identified through PSFK’s      www.unglobalpulse.org
communication (e.g. feedback loops,             pattern recognition process, which
community-to-community); tools; and             includes supporting insights from experts
institutional use of real-time technologies.    and a broad range of implications for
                                                every type of reader.
                                                                                                                                                2
FOREWORD                                                                                            prepared for


                                                                                                                            CO N S U LTI N G




THE IMPORTANCE OF REAL-TIME
ACCORDING TO THE UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL PULSE TEAM

Closing the information gap for decision    We are in the midst of a technological        In the past decade, we have witnessed
makers is an ambitious goal that will       revolution. Every day we learn of exciting    the rise of the open source software
require the UN’s collective expertise,      new tools for collecting, analyzing, map-     movement. Technology experts around
both that of Member States and that         ping, and visualizing information. Accord-    the world are volunteering their time,
of UN agencies. The Global Pulse is an      ing to a recent report by the International   expertise, and innovative ideas to create
initiative to support governments in        Telecommunications Union, a mobile            technology tools that are free for anyone
understanding what is happening to their    phone signal now covers nearly 90% of         to use. We believe we have an opportu-
most vulnerable populations in real-time.   the world’s population.                       nity to harness this collective force for
To make this possible, governments need                                                   innovation by providing this community
access to real-time information on the      Technology innovation is transforming our     with an exciting role in helping us build
welfare of their populations. They need     lives—and accelerating global development.    the technology toolkit that will power
new technologies to collect, filter, and     Some of the most dramatic innovations         Global Pulse.
analyze this information in order to know   concerning the use of technology are tak-
when populations may be feeling the         ing place in the Global South.
early impacts of external shocks. And
they need to develop the capacity to        In order to assemble these tools into a
use real-time information to make policy    powerful analytical toolkit for govern-
decisions.                                  ments, we believe that it would be most
                                            cost-effective to take a non-traditional
                                            approach to leverage the reach and
                                            convening power of the UN in a new way.
                                            Outsourcing the development of the sys-
                                            tem to external consultants, the current
                                            proscribed method for dealing with this
                                            type of issue, would not achieve the level
                                            of innovation required for success. We
                                            believe in a more direct approach.                                                            3
KEY IMPLICATIONS                                                                                      prepared for


                                                                                                                                CO N S U LTI N G




KEY IMPLICATIONS FORM THE TEAM AT GLOBAL PULSE

FUTURE OF MOBILE                              DATA-DRIVEN                                  DATA EXHAUST TO
TECHNOLOGY                                    DEVELOPMENT                                  DETECT EARLY SIGNALS

Mobile phones are now being used to           We live in a new information age,            As communities in the developing
send remittances, redeem food vouchers,       where innovation is accelerating at a        world increasingly adopt and use these
provide guidance to new mothers, share        breathtaking pace. Today, there are          technologies, they are beginning to
agricultural price information between        new tools to capture and use data            generate ambient data as by-products of
farmers and offer educational assistance      that have never before been applied          their everyday activities. This “information
to children. To monitor and evaluate          to development. Mobile phones, for           exhaust” may hold the key to detecting
the performance of these services,            example, are increasingly playing a          early signals of emerging vulnerabilities
government ministries and UN agencies         critical role in global development and      or incipient harm. The explosion in the
often collect statistical information about   humanitarian crisis response. Mobile         volume and diversity of data has been
how these services are used. We believe       phones in the developing world are not       met by advances in methodologies to help
that through deeper analysis of this data,    only being used to speed up collection of    make sense of it all. New tools exist to
governments will be able to detect the        household surveys and census data, but       collect, filter, integrate, fuse, analyze, map
early signals that vulnerable populations     also by farmers to share price information   and visualize information.
may be in trouble. Once a pattern of          with potential buyers, by community
concern has emerged, governments will         health workers to request lab diagnostics
be able to rapidly send teams to those        for patients, and by ordinary citizens to
communities to conduct household              report on problems in their communities.
surveys, and collect the statistical
evidence needed for policy responses. We
also see enormous progress with the use
of mobile phones and other technologies
to accelerate the collection of data that
was previously collected and documented
in print.
                                                                                                                                              4
KEY IMPLICATIONS                                                                                        prepared for


                                                                                                                                   CO N S U LTI N G




KEY IMPLICATIONS FROM THE TEAM AT GLOBAL PULSE

TARGETING DEVELOPMENT                           TECHNOLOGY TO CLOSE                          PROTECTING COUNTRIES
RESOURCES MORE EFFECTIVELY                      THE INFORMATION GAP                          AGAINST DEVELOPMENT REVERSALS


The current climate of increasing fiscal         While many of the most vulnerable            In an age of increasing global volatility,
austerity and limited resources is being felt   communities in developing countries are      hard-won development gains are in
by decision makers at every level. Real-        still outside mobile phone coverage, there   danger of being eroded much faster
time information, drawn from a variety of       is little doubt that Southern innovation     than in the past. Real-time actionable
sources, can allow leaders to better plan       in the use of mobile technologies is         information can help the international
and target interventions in times of crisis     booming. Many private sector actors          community to detect the impact of a
to ensure that populations most at risk are     are driving this Southern information        crisis early on when there is still time to
the first to receive support.                    revolution. The enormous opportunity         prevent irreversible harm.
                                                presented by these emerging markets
                                                will inevitably lead to lower costs and
                                                greater accessibility to technologies and
                                                information services, even in communities
                                                where today it seems unimaginable.
                                                These emerging technologies represent
                                                an extraordinary opportunity to close
                                                the information gap and provide the
                                                data needed to protect the world’s most
                                                vulnerable populations.




                                                                                                                                                 5
HUMAN
SENSOR
                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”




NETWORKS
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments




                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
Mobile populations passively sharing location-related data
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments




                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS                                            IMPLICATIONS

An increasing number of personal technologies are equipped       •   Citizens become participants in data collection without
with sensors that have the capacity to collect geographically-       having to alter normal routines.
tagged data while people simply go about their daily rou-
tines. Phones, laptops and cars equipped with sensors such       •   Passive research seamlessly integrates into daily life;
as GPS receivers and accelerometers can collect, share and           reflects the actual needs and behaviors of communities.
analyze this data in real-time. This passive feedback system
                                                                 •   Increased volume, frequency and type of data enables
requires minimal infrastructure and transforms people into
                                                                     greater efficiency; ability to tailor products and services.
sensory nodes with little effort on their part.
                                                                 •   The efficiency of existing personal technology is
                                                                     maximized leading to a reduced need to build costly
                                                                     technological infrastructure.

                                                                 •   Value can be derived from nearly any action or activity.
                                                                     A walk down a street can generate meaningful data for
                                                                     an organization.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                       7
HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS                                                                     prepared for


                                                                                                                       CO N S U LTI N G




CONVERTING BIKES INTO MOBILE          WEARABLE DEVICE MONITORS ENVIRONMENTAL   ASTHMA INHALER MONITORS AIR QUALITY
SENSING UNITS                         CONDITIONS

                               8




NETWORKED PERSONAL LAPTOPS PROVIDES   CROWD SOURCED TURN-BY-TURN NAVIGATION    TAXI DRIVERS USED TO FIND FASTEST DRIVING ROUTE
EARTHQUAKE ALERTS




Mobile populations passively sharing location-related data
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

CONVERTING BIKES INTO MOBILE SENSING UNITS

The Copenhagen Wheel concept transforms ordinary bicycles          Riders can access this data through their phone and even
into mobile sensing units that can map pollution levels, traf-     share the information with their community, contributing to
fic congestion, and road conditions in real-time. As a person       a dynamic database of real-time environmental conditions.
cycles, the wheel’s sensing unit captures their effort level and   WWW.SENSEABLE.MIT.EDU/COPENHAGENWHEEL

information about immediate surroundings, including: road
conditions, carbon monoxide, NOx, noise, ambient temperature
and relative humidity.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                     9
HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS                                                                            prepared for


                                                                                                                          CO N S U LTI N G




WEARABLE DEVICE MONITORS ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS

French technology company, Sensaris, has developed a             These devices are intended for use by groups of
wearable device that monitors environmental conditions           individuals looking to contribute to larger community-
for its user. Sensors detect levels of air quality, noise, and   oriented applications, including city noise mapping
humidity, mapping these alongside accelerometer and              and urban planning initiatives.
GPS data.                                                        WWW.SENSARIS.COM




                                                                                                                                        10
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

ASTHMA INHALER MONITORS AIR QUALITY

The Spiroscout is a small GPS-enabled device designed by       By aggregating this anonymous, voluntarily-shared data about
Asthmapolis that attaches to the end of people’s inhalers,     asthma, Asthmapolis provides people with the latest information
automatically capturing time and location of symptoms each     about asthma in their communities, and helps scientists and
time an inhaler is used. The Spiroscout connects to a user’s   public health agencies to target interventions designed to
PC through a USB, transferring information directly to the     reduce the burden of asthma sufferers.
organization’s website.                                        WWW.ASTHMAPOLIS.COM




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                     11
HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS                                                                          prepared for


                                                                                                                        CO N S U LTI N G




NETWORKED PERSONAL LAPTOPS
PROVIDE EARTHQUAKE ALERTS
Participants simply download free software that runs in       The goal is to provide a better understanding of earthquakes,
the background, notifying a central server when they record   while giving early warning to schools, emergency response
tremors above a 4.0 magnitude.                                systems, and others.
                                                              QCN.STANFORD.EDU




                                                                                                                                      12
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

CROWD SOURCED TURN-BY-TURN NAVIGATION

Waze is a mobile application that uses data from drivers’ mobile   The system suggests daily routes based on driving patterns
phones to create crowd sourced maps and give turn-by-turn          and social input to provide a real-time view of traffic conditions
driving directions.                                                such as road accidents, traffic jams, weather hazards and even
                                                                   speed trap locations.
                                                                   WWW.WAZE.COM




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                      13
HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS                                                                                prepared for


                                                                                                                           CO N S U LTI N G




TAXI DRIVERS USED TO FIND FASTEST DRIVING ROUTE

Researchers from Microsoft have been testing a new method           look longer because it takes unexpected side streets. By ana-
for generating faster driving path suggestions by tapping into      lyzing GPS data from 33,000 Beijing taxis over the course of
the expertise of local cab drivers and monitoring their GPS         3 months, researchers were able to determine optimal routes,
trajectories. While current drive-time predictions rely on the      ultimately reducing drive times by 16%.
length of road and the posted speed limit, cabbies reliably         WWW.RESEARCH.MICROSOFT.COM/EN-US/PROJECTS/TDRIVE

select the fastest path to a destination, even if the route might




                                                                                                                                         14
JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON
HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS
                                                                                  prepared for


                                                                                                     CO N S U LTI N G




                     “With participatory sensing, individuals and community members act as data
                      collectors and as data users. This data helps groups understand what’s going
                      on in their specific context, create evidence for change, or tell a story.”
                      Deborah Estrin
                      Director of Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS)
                      Professor of Computer Science, UCLA



                     “Metcalfe’s law says the value of a network is proportional to the square of the
                      number of connected nodes. As new nodes are added to our networks, both
                      mechanical (sensors) and human observers (like Project Noah members), we
                      slowly build a data network that has the capability to reflect the ever changing
                      tides of life on earth. In one sense it becomes a 911 service for the planet, in that
                      cries for help that previously went unnoticed, can now be heard.”
                      Martin Ceperley
                      Chief Technology Officer, Networked Organisms



                     JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS
                     Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other
                     social media networks using #HumanSensorNetworks




                                                                                                                  15
PERSONAL
CENSUS
                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
Individual insights facilitate collective knowledge

                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments




                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

PERSONAL CENSUS                                                  IMPLICATIONS

Growing access to mobile technology around the world now         •   Citizens can understand their well-being through
enables an unprecedented monitoring of an individual’s cur-          the collection and interpretation of personal data.
rent state of being. Mobile phones and tablet PCs can be
directed to collect personal data, giving individuals deeper     •   Communities can leverage data and analysis to
levels of insight into their habits and behaviors. Through a         receive deep levels of insight about the collective
variety of platforms, people can actively collect and measure        habits and behaviors of peers.
information about what they’re doing, their health, and even
                                                                 •   People can be incentivized to self-monitor through
their mood. They can also share this information anonymously
                                                                     comparison, or benchmarking.
with a larger network so that it can be analyzed at a local or
even national level—allowing organizations to monitor relative   •   Validated personal experience through exploration
health of communities and respond to their changing needs.           of shared community data.

                                                                 •   A deeper and more holistic understanding
                                                                     of communities enables a more fair allocation of
                                                                     resources and faster response times.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                               17
PERSONAL CENSUS                                                                                   prepared for




INTIMATE DETAILS PROVIDE POPULATION STATISTICS   PERSONAL FINANCE SITE SHOWS           UNDERSTANDING HAPPINESS ACROSS THE UK
                                                 COMMUNITY SPENDING HABITS




APP AGGREGATES WEB BEHAVIOR                      CHEAP AND DISCRETE MOBILE STD TESTS   ONLINE TOOL INSTANTLY VISUALIZES
                                                                                       PERSONAL CONNECCTIONS




Individual insights facilitate collective knowledge

                                                                                                                               18
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

INTIMATE DETAILS PROVIDE POPULATION STATISTICS

The online dating site OKCupid is no longer simply in the     about interpersonal relationships spanning race, gender,
business of matching like-minded individuals. Based on        and sexuality—uncovering social dynamics previously left
hundreds of millions of user interactions, intimate details   only to speculation.
from over 3.5 million anonymous users are being converted     BLOG.OKCUPID.COM

into data to generate incredibly insightful statistics




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                             19
PERSONAL CENSUS                                                                                  prepared for


                                                                                                                         CO N S U LTI N G




PERSONAL FINANCE SITE SHOWS COMMUNITY
SPENDING HABITS
Personal finance site Bundle.com aggregates financial              This information is also mined in order to recommend
data from the US Government, Citi Bank and other third party     restaurants based on the purchases of similar spenders
providers to give users access to accurate, real-time spending   and to estimate change in expense if moving to other cities.
comparisons. With this data, users can explore average trans-    WWW.BUNDLE.COM

action amounts and locations in categories such as shopping,
food and drink, and transportation.




                                                                                                                                      20
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

UNDERSTANDING HAPPINESS ACROSS THE UK

Mappiness is a research project and mobile application             how they’re feeling, who they’re with, what they’re doing and
developed by the London School of Economics with the goal          where they are (users can even submit photos). This data is sent
of understanding how people’s happiness is affected by their       anonymously and securely to the group’s database, along with
local environment—air pollution, noise, green spaces, and so on.   an approximate location from the phone’s GPS and a noise-level
Participants are prompted one or more times a day to answer        measure, where it can be aggregated and analyzed.
questions related to their emotional state,                        WWW.MAPPINESS.ORG.UK




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                     21
PERSONAL CENSUS                                                                                       prepared for


                                                                                                                              CO N S U LTI N G




APP AGGREGATES WEB BEHAVIOR

Voyurl is a browser-based platform currently under development        By aggregating data, this tool has the potential to provide
that will allow users to passively share their web surfing behaviors   insight about what online content is being used, as well as
and view the browsing behaviors of others—in real-time. The           which topics are trending and where.
idea of the service is to enable users to actually see the data       WWW.VOYURL.COM

they create online and help find ways to derive value from it.




                                                                                                                                           22
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

CHEAP AND DISCRETE MOBILE STD TESTS

Similar to pregnancy testing kits, new devices are in development    By aggregating this personal data anonymously, health organiza-
that can diagnose if someone has an STD. Those who suspect that      tions will be better equipped to understand the sexual health and
they have been infected will be able to place urine or saliva onto   well-being of populations in a particular area. The developers of
a computer chip and plug it into their smartphone to receive a       the chip plan on distributing the input devices through vending
diagnosis within minutes.                                            machines for as little as $1.
                                                                     WWW.UKCRC.ORG




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                         23
PERSONAL CENSUS                                                                                    prepared for


                                                                                                                            CO N S U LTI N G




ONLINE TOOL INSTANTLY VISUALIZES PERSONAL CONNECTIONS

Business and career networking platform LinkedIn has developed    people who have more connections (and typically more sway)
an experimental tool called InMaps that sifts through all of an   in specific clusters with larger fonts. By aggregating and explor-
individual’s connections, detects the relationships between       ing similar connections across other existing networks such as
them, and groups them into different network clusters so that     families and friends, there is the potential to use this technology
anyone can see the depth of their connections in one interface.   for understanding group health or quickly connecting people
InMaps provides insight into who the major connections,           during a crisis.
bridges and influencers are in any network, by differentiating     INMAPS.LINKEDINLABS.COM




                                                                                                                                         24
JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON
PERSONAL CENSUS
                                                                                prepared for


                                                                                                     CO N S U LTI N G




                     “Making data public is less interesting to me than the capacity of the public
                      to make data. I think that when one goes through the process of trying to
                      measure something, one actually begins to understand how one directly
                      affects that process, or what potential one has to facilitate change.”
                      Usman Haque
                      Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments




                     “Data gathered from typically offline devices, such as the Withings Scale, is
                      great because it doesn’t involve a change in behavior, but simply a new sensor.”
                      Andrew Kortina
                      Co-Founder, Venmo




                     “Information coming from the ground and from the crowd has a great deal
                      of relevance. Traditionally, we look at information as something that comes
                      from a top-down perspective; from a media organization, a corporation or
                      a government. Nowadays, it’s information that flows from the bottom-up
                      that’s changing the world.”
                      Erik Hersman
                      Co-Founder, Ushahidi



                     JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON PERSONAL CENSUS
                     Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other
                     social media networks using #PersonalCensus
                                                                                                                 25
SOCIAL
SENTIMENT
                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
Online buzz as indicator of offline status

                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments




                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

SOCIAL SENTIMENT                                                 IMPLICATIONS

The use of online social networks has spread around the world.   •   The ubiquity of social media platforms has led to a
People connect with one another through regular updates on           democratization of the medium, enabling it to be used
computers and mobile devices. When analyzed in bulk, it is           as a social barometer.
possible to calculate the current status of entire communities
and identify changes happening in real-time through web-         •   New types of data, such as photo-uploads, can be
based and social media search queries. This conversational           tapped to add dimensionality.
data can also be used to predict what lies ahead.
                                                                 •   Adding the texture of information created from
                                                                     every-day social interactions can provide new ways
                                                                     to explore human needs and behaviors.

                                                                 •   Massive quantities of data can be held up against historic
                                                                     models to allow policy makers and planners to prepare for
                                                                     contingencies that might otherwise be invisible.

                                                                 •   Real-time information has allowed us to move beyond
                                                                     correlation to prediction.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                 27
SOCIAL SENTIMENT                                                                                           prepared for




ONLINE SEARCH QUERIES PREDICT SPREAD OF GLOBAL   USING LAWS OF PHYSICS TO FORECAST SUCCESS OF   SEARCH ENGINE IDENTIFIES PATTERNS TO PREDICT
FLU                                              MARKETING CAMPAIGNS                            FUTURE EVENTS




ONLINE BUZZ ACCURATELY PREDICTS BOX OFFICE       FACEBOOK AS PROXY FOR POLITICAL ELECTIONS      STATUS UPDATES PREDICT ROMANTIC CHANGE
REVENUE




Online buzz as indicator of offline status

                                                                                                                                               28
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

ONLINE SEARCH QUERIES PREDICT
SPREAD OF GLOBAL FLU
There is a close relationship between how many people search      Google Flu Trends use these search queries to estimate
for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu        current flu activity around the world in near real-time.
symptoms. Before visiting a clinic, many flu sufferers visit web   WWW.GOOGLE.ORG/FLUTRENDS

sites for information about symptoms and remedies.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                29
SOCIAL SENTIMENT                                                                                 prepared for


                                                                                                                         CO N S U LTI N G




USING LAWS OF PHYSICS TO FORECAST SUCCESS
OF MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
Leveraging the concepts of velocity and acceleration from         Facebook sign-ups, Harper claims to be able to calculate
the world of physics, Jason Harper of the digital ad agency       whether a mass marketing campaign will reach its overall
Organic, is using social media analytics to predict the success   goals within the first few days of its launch.
of marketing campaigns. Using calculus to compute the velocity,   WWW.ORGANIC.COM

or rate of change, of tweets, blog mentions, and




                                                                                                                                      30
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

SEARCH ENGINE IDENTIFIES PATTERNS TO
PREDICT FUTURE EVENTS
Recorded Future is a new search engine that utilizes real-time         developments, and social functions, the system is able to
internet monitoring in order to predict the future. Using linguistic   identify invisible patterns and connections between events
tools that identify events concerning national security, economic      and people that shape the future.
                                                                       WWW.RECORDEDFUTURE.COM




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                        31
SOCIAL SENTIMENT                                                                               prepared for


                                                                                                                      CO N S U LTI N G




ONLINE BUZZ ACCURATELY PREDICTS
BOX OFFICE REVENUE
A recent study by Sitaram Asur and Bernardo Huberman has       By analyzing the rate at which movie-related tweets are gener-
shown that Twitter can be used to forecast box-office revenue   ated, the researchers found they were able to predict box-office
for movies.                                                    revenue more accurately than traditional methods.
                                                               WWW.ARXIV.ORG/ABS/1003.5699




                                                                                                                                   32
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

FACEBOOK AS PROXY FOR POLITICAL ELECTIONS

The ubiquity of Facebook has made it an accurate barometer         In the Senate, their snapshot of 19 races proved that 81% of
for national sentiment—including election outcomes. During         candidates with the most Facebook fans won their contests.
the recent US political elections, the Facebook political team’s   WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/USPOLITICS

initial analysis of 98 House races showed that 74% of candidates
with the most Facebook fans won their contests.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                      33
SOCIAL SENTIMENT                                                                               prepared for


                                                                                                                    CO N S U LTI N G




STATUS UPDATES PREDICT ROMANTIC CHANGE

By scraping Facebook status updates for the words “break     in the weeks leading up to spring break, right before the start
up” or “broken up” over the course of a year, interaction    of the summer holiday and a few of weeks before Christmas.
designers David McCandless and Lee Byron were able to        WWW.INFORMATIONISBEAUTIFUL.NET

chart out the most likely times couples will break up. The   WWW.LEEBYRON.COM

majority of break ups occur three times in the year:




                                                                                                                                 34
JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON                                                           prepared for
SOCIAL SENTIMENT
                                                                                                 CO N S U LTI N G




                     “When data is published with greater frequency, it makes sense that we’ll
                      be able to predict seasonal trends.”
                      Andrew Kortina
                      Co-Founder, Venmo




                     “Predictive systems could be used to anticipate demand for commodities, goods,
                      and services—helping businesses optimize what they’re producing and having
                      tighter feedback loops. Rather than trying to convince people they need some-
                      thing, producers could respond to what people are actually saying.”
                      Andrew Hoppin
                      Chief Information Officer, New York State Senate



                     “If you have information in multiple dimensions, you can begin to understand the
                      dynamics of complex socio-technical systems. Through better understanding we
                      can better predict future change.”
                      Deborah Estrin
                      Director of Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS)
                      Professor of Computer Science, UCLA




                     JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON SOCIAL SENTIMENT
                     Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other
                     social media networks using #SocialSentiment
                                                                                                             35
SEE
SOMETHING,
                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”




TEXT
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments




                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think




SOMETHING
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments



Active reporting for collective well-being
                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING                                     IMPLICATIONS

Systems that track change can leverage power of people.           •   Promotes civic engagement by lowering barrier
Crowd-sourced services that allow people to report on the situ-       of entry, allowing individual voices to be heard.
ation around them are ensuring communities’ collective well-
being by rapidly documenting potentially harmful incidents.       •   Mobile technology gives a voice to disenfranchised
                                                                      or marginalized groups.
Often using mobile phone technology, these information
                                                                  •   Systems can be tailored to the needs of those
monitoring systems not only provide real-time, location specific
                                                                      specifically affected by them.
data, but also boost civic engagement by establishing direct
channels of communication from the ground up.                     •   Real-time systems provide the ability to actively
                                                                      respond to and mitigate problems.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                               37
SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING                                                                          prepared for




TRACKING SEXUAL HARASSMENT                  SNAP PICTURES TO SEND COMPLAINTS TO THE CITY    CITIZEN SCIENTISTS BUILD NETWORK OF
                                                                                            LOCAL PLANTS AND ANIMALS




CROWDSOURCING REPORTS FOLLOWING OIL SPILL   PROJECT GATHERS REPORTS ON PEOPLE’S GOOD ACTS   PUBLIC FRUIT MAPPING




Active reporting for collective well-being

                                                                                                                                  38
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

TRACKING SEXUAL HARASSMENT

HarassMap is a system in Egypt for reporting sexual harass-    By empowering individuals to act, the system serves as an
ment via SMS. The tool gives women a way to anonymously        advocacy, prevention, and response tool, highlighting the
report icidents as soon as they happen, by instantly mapping   severity and pervasiveness of the problem.
the reports online.                                            WWW.HARASSMAP.ORG




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                               39
SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING                                                                      prepared for


                                                                                                                            CO N S U LTI N G




SNAP PICTURES TO SEND COMPLAINTS TO THE CITY

CitySourced is a real-time citizen engagement platform           (public safety, quality of life, environmental issues, etc.) and
that makes it easy for citizens to complain to city hall about   report them for quick resolution and increased accountability.
anything from graffiti to drug dealers in their neighborhoods.    WWW.CITYSOURCED.COM

The mobile application provides a free, simple, and intuitive
platform empowering residents to identify civic issues




                                                                                                                                         40
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

CITIZEN SCIENTISTS BUILD NETWORK OF LOCAL
PLANTS AND ANIMALS
Noah is a tool that nature lovers can use to document              provide key data to researchers on topics like invasive species
local wildlife in their area, creating a platform that research    and migration patterns. Users can earn badges as they add to
groups can use to harness the power of citizen scientists. Users   their findings, bringing a game element into the experience and
can photograph, tag, identify and learn about the plants and       promoting participation.
animals they see around them. The aggregation of this infor-       WWW.NETWORKEDORGANISMS.COM

mation allows people to compare notes, track sightings and




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                         41
SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING                                                                      prepared for


                                                                                                                           CO N S U LTI N G




CROWDSOURCING REPORTS FOLLOWING OIL SPILL

Following the Gulf Coast Oil Spill in 2010, the Oil Reporter open   Data collected through the Oil Reporter mobile application was
data initiative was launched by Crisis Commons to enhance re-       managed by San Diego State University’s Visualization Center in
covery efforts by using real-time check-ins and ground reports.     order to provide visualization tools and products based on the
Users could upload photos and videos to note oil, harmed wild-      Oil Reporter data.
life sightings, and much more.                                      WWW.OILREPORTER.ORG




                                                                                                                                        42
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

PROJECT GATHERS REPORTS ON PEOPLE’S GOOD ACTS

Hero Reports is a project from MIT’s Center for Future Civic     People report these events through the group’s site,
Media that asks citizens to report on the moments when other     providing a brief description, location, images and any
people make a difference. These can be pointing out small acts   other relevant information. The project is currently running
of kindness such as giving up a seat for a pregnant woman to     in six cities, including New York, Boston and Juarez.
acts of courage like assisting in a car accident.                WWW.HEROREPORTS.ORG




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                    43
SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING                                                                        prepared for


                                                                                                                            CO N S U LTI N G




PUBLIC FRUIT MAPPING

Fallen Fruit is a service that creates maps of fruit trees growing   Maps are free from copyright and distributed both
on or over public property. Participants in the project track        physically and digitally. Communities can use these
detailed information about the location and growth of fruit          resources to find and identify fruit growing publicly
trees, which feeds into comprehensive initiatives to visualize       in local neighborhoods.
shared food resources within communities.                            WWW.FALLENFRUIT.ORG




                                                                                                                                         44
JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON
SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING                                                    prepared for


                                                                                                  CO N S U LTI N G




                     “We’re enrolling young people who have cell phones and asking them simple
                      things like, “Is the water point in your village working today?” The collected data
                      is analyzed then re-distributed through agreements with newspaper, radio, and
                      TV stations, so that the young person in the village who actually collected the
                      information feels connected on a national level. By doing this, we not only inform
                      them of their entitlements, but engage them in a process of monitoring them.”
                      Sharad Sapra
                      UNICEF County Representative, Uganda

                     “We look at people and their mobile phones as a very interesting opportunity to
                      allow individuals and communities to engage in systematic data collection that
                      documents and addresses important things in their lives.”
                      Deborah Estrin
                      Director of Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS)
                      Professor of Computer Science, UCLA


                     “The data is captured in real-time. You’re not going around and asking people to
                      give retrospective reports. You’re asking people, in the moment, what’s going on
                      with them right now.”
                      Deborah Estrin
                      Director of Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS)
                      Professor of Computer Science, UCLA




                     JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING
                     Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other
                     social media netowrks using #SeeSomethingTextSomething
                                                                                                              45
MOBILE
COMMUNITIES
                    “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                     people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                     it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                     at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                     the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                     —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
Building and maintaining virtual communities with simple technology

                    “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                     people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                     it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                     at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                     the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                     —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments




                    “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                     people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                     it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                     at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                     the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                     —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

MOBILE COMMUNITIES                                              IMPLICATIONS

The simplicity and ubiquity of mobile phones makes them         •   Regular tasks become faster through individually-owned,
an ideal platform for organizing communities and coordinating       mobile technology. Speed not only changes response
efforts in response to an event. During times of crisis, or         time, but fundamentally changes the nature of the tasks,
simply for strengthening existing communities, handsets             and relationships of those involved.
can function as a conduit for collaboration and connectivity.
Through new applications and services, networks between         •   Systems should be easily adopted; viable for social use,
people can be established at the touch of a button.                 yet equipped for crisis management.

                                                                •   Through these fast-forming, often temporary communi-
                                                                    ties, vital information and alerts can quickly be
                                                                    communicated to large, dispersed populations, ensuring
                                                                    that all citizens remain in the loop.

                                                                •   These connections fundamentally change the nature
                                                                    of people’s interactions and expand what is possible. Le-
                                                                    veraging the power of the directed, collaborative
                                                                    effort from a community can bring about real change.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                   47
MOBILE COMMUNITIES                                                                       prepared for




COLLABORATION TOOL FACILITATES   MOBILE MAILING LISTS                          TEMPORARY NETWORKS BUILT AROUND ANY EVENT
ON-THE-GROUND COMMUNICATION




REAL-TIME TEAM UPDATES           USING THE MOBILE WEB TO CONNECT COMMUNITIES   PERSONAL “CLOUD PHONE” SERVICE
                                                                               FOR RURAL USERS WITHOUT A HANDSET




Building and maintaining virtual communities with simple technology

                                                                                                                           48
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

COLLABORATION TOOL FACILITATES
ON-THE-GROUND COMMUNICATION
GeoChat is a service for coordinating the efforts of different   Through this system, on-the-ground help can ensure
relief organizations. It lets team members interact to           an organized, rapid response following a crisis.
maintain shared geospatial awareness of who is doing             WWW.INSTEDD.ORG

what where—over any device, on any platform, over any
network, using SMS, email, or a web browser.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                          49
MOBILE COMMUNITIES                                                                               prepared for


                                                                                                                          CO N S U LTI N G




MOBILE MAILING LISTS

Patatat lets groups form information communities through text   When someone replies, these messages are also sent
messages. Using a web browser, users enter a list of phone      to everyone on the list, creating a reliable method for
numbers, Patatat will then broadcast messages to the entire     group communication.
group via SMS.                                                  WWW.PATATAT.COM




                                                                                                                                       50
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

TEMPORARY NETWORKS BUILT AROUND ANY EVENT

Fast Society is an iPhone application that makes it easy      The interface makes it easy for these groups to share
for people to place contacts into an instant, short-term      conversation during shows, without having to maintain
group within the app for group text messaging and one-touch   the group afterwards.
conference calling.                                           WWW.FASTSOCIETY.COM




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                          51
MOBILE COMMUNITIES                                             prepared for


                                                                                  CO N S U LTI N G




REAL-TIME TEAM UPDATES

Boarrd is a free, highly-customizable dashboard app
that helps keep a project or team up to date on all relevant in-
formation. Users can create public or private status boards and
pull data from various sources including, RSS feeds, Twitter,
Facebook, Flickr and even weather channels.
WWW.BOARRD.COM




                                                                                               52
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

USING THE MOBILE WEB TO CONNECT COMMUNITIES

Motribe is a platform that enables individuals and small groups to   Users can build and own a fully-featured social network
build and manage their own mobile social communities. Based in       optimized for the mobile web and can even activate plugins that
Cape Town, South Africa, Motribe is facilitating self-organization   include blogs, photo sharing, and real-time chatrooms.
on the mobile web by giving people the ability to meet others        WWW.MOTRIBE.COM

who share common interests and connect with them through
their mobile devices.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                       53
MOBILE COMMUNITIES                                                                                  prepared for


                                                                                                                            CO N S U LTI N G




PERSONAL “CLOUD PHONE” SERVICE FOR RURAL
USERS WITHOUT A HANDSET
MXShare enables people who cannot afford to buy a handset to        The system also manages the subscriber’s offline activity, tracking
have their own “Cloud Phone” with their own number. Subscrib-       missed calls, sending notification alerts to friends or nearby vil-
ers can access their account using a borrowed handset and enter     lage phone operators. Phone owners who lend their handsets also
a network code. The system requires no special hardware and         receive a small credit as an incentive for sharing.
works on all basic handsets in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.   WWW.MOVIRTU.COM




                                                                                                                                         54
JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON
MOBILE COMMUNITIES
                                                                                prepared for


                                                                                                CO N S U LTI N G




                    “There are a few very simple approaches to keeping people engaged. First, you
                     do things that matter to them. Second, you let them see the data and learn from
                     it. Third, you tie it into social media, and rely on game mechanics to make it
                     fun. I think we will also start see some form of micro-payment system begin to
                     emerge—like frequent flyer miles, or perhaps even actual payments.”
                     Deborah Estrin
                     Director of Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS)
                     Professor of Computer Science, UCLA

                    “There is a lot more information being captured and shared than we can actually
                     handle. During the recent Tanzanian elections,our platform was quickly overrun
                     with the number of SMS messages coming into the system—5,000 in one day.
                     It’s quickly moving from information collection, to the ability to curate that
                     information effectively.”
                     Erik Hersman
                     Co-Founder, Ushahidi

                    “How do you create a small business model around a data collection system?
                     One of the ideas that we are exploring is like a frequent flier program. If you
                     participate in collecting data, you get a few minutes of free talk time, which
                     you can use yourself or sell to others. If you share even more information, you
                     get a solar cell phone charger, which you can then use to charge other people’s
                     phones. It’s important to look for innovative approaches that can make micro
                     business models out of these small things.”
                     Sharad Sapra
                     UNICEF Country Representative, Uganda


                    JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON MOBILE COMMUNITIES
                    Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other                                        55
                    social media networks using #MobileCommunities
INSTANT
MAPPING
                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
Local tools for creating a shared visual experience

                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments




                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

INSTANT MAPPING                                                   IMPLICATIONS

Maps are a universal tool that have the ability to convey         •   Maps contain a universal language. They are easily
significant quantities of information, often transcending              understood by people of all languages and literacy levels.
language and cultural barriers. This intuitive nature has made
maps the medium of preference for creating a shared visual        •   Open and accessible tools help ensure that maps
experience. A growing number of open source tools and lo-fi            remain a relevant and useful resource for locals and
solutions offer local communities the ability to rapidly gener-       visitors alike by enabling flexible solutions that can
ate maps and provide real-time instructions for navigating            easily evolve alongside the changing face of any region.
uncharted or changing landscapes. This type of information
                                                                  •   Collaborative mapping initiatives encourage citizens
becomes invaluable for individuals during times of crisis as
                                                                      to learn more about their surroundings and get involved
they try to gain insights into their own communities.
                                                                      with their local communities through the exploration of
                                                                      unfamilar neighborhoods and environments.

                                                                  •   Simple mapping systems can serve as valuable
                                                                      navigation tools for areas without established
                                                                      roadways or infrastructure.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                     57
INSTANT MAPPING                                                                             prepared for




LO-FI SOLUTION FOR AERIAL MAPPING   REMOTE CONTROL AIRPLANE CREATES LOCAL MAPS   OPEN SOURCE CARTOGRAPHY




COMMUNITY BASED MAPPING PROJECT     ONLINE MARKETPLACE FOR GEO-DATA              PICTURE-BASED NAVIGATION




Local tools for creating a shared visual experience

                                                                                                              58
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

LO-FI SOLUTION FOR AERIAL MAPPING

Grassroots Mapping is a series of participatory mapping proj-      The resulting images are geotagged and stitched into maps
ects focused on communities involved in land disputes. Initiated   which are 100x higher resolution that those offered by Google
by the MIT Media Lab‘s Center for Future Civic Media, the proj-    and available at an extremely low cost. These maps have been
ect utilizes balloons, kites, and other simple and inexpensive     used to support residents’ claims to land title and most recently
tools to produce aerial imagery, inverting the traditional power   to document the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in order to assess
structure of cartography.                                          the situation and assist with the response.
                                                                   WWW.GRASSROOTSMAPPING.ORG




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                       59
INSTANT MAPPING                                                                                prepared for


                                                                                                                       CO N S U LTI N G




REMOTE CONTROL AIRPLANE CREATES LOCAL MAPS

The Swinglet CAM is a safe and easy-to-use flying camera that      With simple drag & drop functions, it is possible to
takes high-resolution pictures automatically—plus it can take     pre-program—as well as update during the flight—the position,
off, fly and land all on its own. The drone can be programmed to   altitude and behavior of the unmanned drone. In addition to
follow a pre-determined flight path based on a maximum of 20       mapping, potential applications include traffic updating,
GPS coordinates with an operational range of up to 12.5 miles.    security, crop and species monitoring.
                                                                  WWW.SENSEFLY.COM




                                                                                                                                    60
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

OPEN SOURCE CARTOGRAPHY

OpenStreetMap is a collaborative project to create a freely      and government sources has greatly increased both the
editable map of the world. The initial map data was built from   speed and accuracy of this work. When large datasets are
scratch by volunteers performing systematic ground surveys       available, a technical team will manage the conversion and
using a handheld GPS unit and a notebook, digital camera,        importing of the data.
or a voice recorder. More recently, the availability of aerial   WWW.OPENSTREETMAP.ORG

photography and other data from commercial




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                  61
INSTANT MAPPING                                                                                prepared for


                                                                                                                        CO N S U LTI N G




COMMUNITY-BASED MAPPING PROJECT

Tendermaps is an experiment in informal, community-based      They are encouraged to define the region with three broad
cartography where people define their neighborhood by creat-   factors in mind: the paths they take, the things they love,
ing hand-drawn maps. Community members are handed blank       and the location of their community.
maps and asked to define the neighborhood by marking up the    WWW.TENDERMAPS.COM

maps with colored markers.




                                                                                                                                     62
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

ONLINE MARKETPLACE FOR GEO-DATA

SimpleGeo is a service that aims to help developers index,   The goal is to give developers the tools to quickly build location
interpret, and consume location data. Described as “iTunes   services without worrying about having the money to license from
for geodata,” the Colorado based start-up plans to create    a large database or having to quickly scale to create their own.
a wide sampling of geographic datasets and technologies      WWW.SIMPLEGEO.COM

that developers can access.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                 63
INSTANT MAPPING                                                                                   prepared for


                                                                                                                          CO N S U LTI N G




PICTURE-BASED NAVIGATION

BreadCrumbz is a mobile navigation application that creates       The result is a personalized, picture-based map that users can
directional routes on the fly. Users create new routes by taking   share with others.
geotagged pictures as they travel to visually mark their path.    WWW.BCRUMBZ.COM

Images can be tagged and annotated with arrows or other signs
to provide additional context.




                                                                                                                                       64
JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON
INSTANT MAPPING
                                                                                prepared for


                                                                                               CO N S U LTI N G




                    “Maps provide a snapshot understanding, a simplified understanding,
                     but they’re not the only way. From the beginning at Ushahidi, we worked
                     with maps and time-lines together. We think that time and space are
                     both relevant for real-time information.”
                     Erik Hersman
                     Co-Founder, Ushahidi




                    “It’s all about situational awareness. If you can tell what’s going on around
                     you, and can get alerts from your neighbor about what’s going on around them,
                     you have a much better understanding of what’s actually going on. Therefore,
                     decision-making power is increased when you have relevant information.”
                     Erik Hersman
                     Co-Founder, Ushahidi




                    “We try to use metaphors that are familiar to people—and terms in which they are
                     already thinking. So maps are an obvious medium.”
                     Deborah Estrin
                     Director of Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS)
                     Professor of Computer Science, UCLA




                    JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON INSTANT MAPPING
                    Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other
                    social media networks using #InstantMapping
                                                                                                           65
CONTEXT
CARTOGRAPHY
                    “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                     people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                     it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                     at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                     the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                     —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
Creating information landscapes though the union of data and place

                    “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                     people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                     it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                     at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                     the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                     —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments




                    “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                     people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                     it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                     at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                     the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                     —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY                                                  IMPLICATIONS

Through the union of data and location, multiple layers              •   Information gives decision makers at an institutional
of real-time information can be displayed geographically,                level quick and accurate information.
providing enhanced situational context for ground crews and
policy makers alike. Highly specific types of information can         •   Rapidly changing/evolving strategies can be
be especially useful on a large scale to help facilitate decision-       geographically mapped and used to influence
making processes at the level of businesses,                             approachest to a response.
institutions and governments.
                                                                     •   The union of data with place helps ensure that resources
                                                                         are being distributed equitably across a region and that
                                                                         they’re tracked while en route to a destination.

                                                                     •   By understanding where an event or situation originated,
                                                                         response organizations are better equipped to manage or
                                                                         prevent similar events from occuring in the future.

                                                                     •   Mapping the scale of distant events alongside familar
                                                                         environments promotes greater understanding through
                                                                         local context.

                                                                     •   Knowing what is happening at any given time becomes
                                                                         more meaningful when this information is also linked
                                                                         to place.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                        67
CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY                                                                                prepared for




GLOBAL HEALTH BASED ON LOCAL INFORMATION   CREATIVE DATA OVERLAYS ON INTERACTIVE MAPS   VISUALIZING COMPLEX SOCIAL AND POLITICAL DATA




SHARED VISUAL EXPERIENCE FOR               PUTTING SOCIAL ENTERPRISE ON THE MAP         MAPS CREATED AROUND MAJOR EVENTS
DISASTER RESPONSE TEAMS




Creating information landscapes though the union of data and place

                                                                                                                                        68
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

GLOBAL HEALTH BASED ON LOCAL INFORMATION

HealthMap brings together disparate data sources to achieve         Through an automated text processing system, the data
a unified and comprehensive view of the current global state         is aggregated by disease and displayed by location for
of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal         user-friendly access to the original alert.
health. The website integrates outbreak data of varying reliabil-   WWW.HEALTHMAP.ORG

ity, ranging from news sources to curated personal accounts to
validated official alerts.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                 69
CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY                                                                                prepared for


                                                                                                                              CO N S U LTI N G




CREATIVE DATA OVERLAYS ON INTERACTIVE MAPS

Polymaps is an open-source JavaScript library of controls that     Polymaps can load data at a full range of scales, so it
simplifies and standardizes the creation of interactive online      is ideal for showing information starting from a country
maps. Created as a collaboration between Stamen Design and         level, and descending to states, cities, neighborhoods,
SimpleGeo, the goal of the project is to better support complex,   and individual streets.
large-scale data overlays.                                         WWW.POLYMAPS.ORG




                                                                                                                                           70
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

VISUALIZING COMPLEX SOCIAL AND POLITICAL DATA

The Spatial Information Design Lab at Columbia University spe-       geography. This helps researchers and advocates communi-
cializes in visualizing complex political and social data, such as   cate information clearly, responsibly, and provocatively. By
incarceration rates and financial expenditures, to help re-envi-      reorganizing data using visualization techniques, and locating
sion the relationship between architecture, criminal justice, and    it geographically, they attempt to correlate disparate items of
community investment. The lab works with data about space—           information and open new spaces for action and options for
numeric data combined with narratives and images to design           intervention.
compelling visual presentations that link social data with           WWW.SPATIALINFORMATIONDESIGNLAB.ORG




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                           71
CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY                                                                             prepared for


                                                                                                                         CO N S U LTI N G




SHARED VISUAL EXPERIENCE FOR DISASTER RESPONSE TEAMS

San Diego State University’s Immersive Visualization Center    hospitals, refugee camps and other data rarely available to
(Viz Lab) is a Navy-sponsored organization that produces       responders. These 3-D representations give command center
geographic renderings for first responders around the globe.    employees more accurate and detail-rich images than 2-D maps
Using imagery collected by defense agencies and other types    afford, providing responders with an increased level of situ-
of government organizations, the Viz Lab is able to generate   ational awareness.
interactive maps depicting damaged locations,                  WWW.EMERGENCYMGMT.COM/DISASTER/VIZ-LAB-RESPONDERS-DISASTERS.HTML




                                                                                                                                      72
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

PUTTING SOCIAL ENTERPRISE ON THE MAP

iuMap is an online directory that interfaces with Google Maps.      and critical information to help the social enterprise com-
Culling together organizations as diverse as health, education,     munity learn from successes, failures and challenges, so that
fair trade crafts, and water, the map’s goal is to centralize and   decisions can be made more easily, quickly, and cheaply.
codify the functions of these organizations in one, concrete        WWW.IUMAP.ORG

hub. The map was created as a response to the lack of central-
ized information, a place where one could find easily digestible




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                        73
CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY                                                                                   prepared for


                                                                                                                               CO N S U LTI N G




MAPS CREATED AROUND MAJOR EVENTS

Dimensions is an experimental prototype for the BBC that           Some of these “Dimensions” can be physically experienced as
is designed to provide a human scale to events and places in       short, size-accurate walks, that allow individuals to get a first-
history in terms that any person can understand and experi-        hand point of view and appreciation of the distances involved.
ence. This is accomplished by overlaying the size of historical    WWW.HOWBIGREALLY.COM

events, locations and objects onto satellite views of a person’s
city or neighborhood.




                                                                                                                                            74
JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON
CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY
                                                                                  prepared for


                                                                                                    CO N S U LTI N G




                    “The biggest challenge is to cut down the delay on basic actionable data.
                     On the ground, it’s micro-level data that is most useful. We are looking for
                     data that comes frequently and in large numbers. We’re not looking at any
                     data that cannot be connected to a relevant context in very simple terms.”
                     Sharad Sapra
                     UNICEF Country Representative, Uganda



                    “Data without context is meaningless. You get a whole bunch of numbers,
                     a whole bunch of locations, a whole bunch of news. But if there’s no context,
                     data is meaningless.”
                     Adam Leibsohn
                     Founder, Voyurl




                    “The minute an observation is made, it is geo-coded, time-stamped, uploaded
                     to a database, put on a chart, as well as on a map, with no manual intervention.
                     The data doesn’t sit dormant—the data goes straight from a human making an
                     observation to a proper visualization.”
                     Deborah Estrin
                     Director of Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) /
                     Professor of Computer Science, UCLA




                    JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY
                    Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other
                    social media networks using #ContextCartography
                                                                                                                75
TIMELINE
NARRATIVES
                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
Reconstructing temporal events to create richer narratives

                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments




                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

TIMELINE NARRATIVES                                            IMPLICATIONS

A critical component of any response to a complex situation    •   An up-to-date timeline that is scalable to the
is a firm understanding of how that particular event has            moment creates instant prioritization of responses
unfolded. Because online and offline discussions take place         and allocation of resources.
around every major event, analyzing these conversations can
provide valuable insights into how and when things occurred.   •   The ability to track a conversation over time provides
Studying these instant histories helps organizations under-        useful trend information that can be used to form timely
stand how best to respond and provides dues as to how to           and appropriate responses.
prevent similar situations in the future.
                                                               •   Comprehension of the history of an event, and what
                                                                   lead to its occurrence provides useful insights for
                                                                   conflict resolution.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                  77
TIMELINE NARRATIVES                                                                                prepared for




ANALYZING HOW NEWS CHANGES OVER TIME   OPEN SOURCE PLATFORMS FOR                        REAL-TIME SOCIAL MEDIA SEARCH AND ANALYSIS
                                       VIEWING TEMPORAL DATA




CROWD SOURCED CRISIS INFORMATION       VISUALIZING 311 CALLS ACCORDING TO TIME OF DAY   SEARCH AND REPLAY ONLINE CONVERSATIONS




Reconstructing temporal events to create richer narratives

                                                                                                                                     78
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

ANALYZING HOW NEWS CHANGES OVER TIME

Time Explorer is designed to help users discover how              to explore not only how topics evolved in the past, but also
entities such as people and locations associated with a           how they will continue to evolve in the future.
query change over time. By searching time expressions             WWW.FBMYA01.BARCELONAMEDIA.ORG:8080/FUTURE

extracted automatically from text, the application allows users




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                     79
TIMELINE NARRATIVES                                                                                prepared for


                                                                                                                        CO N S U LTI N G




OPEN SOURCE PLATFORM FOR VIEWING TEMPORAL DATA

Time Flow is an open-source platform currently under develop-     It offers an easy way to chart actual documentation of events,
ment to help journalists analyze online temporal data. Designed   to provide more detailed, accurate and therefore less inflamma-
by Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg of Flowing Media,        tory media coverage.
the application offers a variety of view modes to explore data,   WWW.FLOWINGMEDIA.COM/TIMEFLOW.HTML

including timelines, calendars, lists, and tables.




                                                                                                                                     80
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

REAL-TIME SOCIAL MEDIA SEARCH AND ANALYSIS

Social Mention is a social media search and analysis platform   It allows users to easily track and measure what people are
that aggregates user generated content from across the web      saying across the social media landscape about a given event,
into a single stream of information.                            at any given time.
                                                                WWW.SOCIALMENTION.COM




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                    81
TIMELINE NARRATIVES                                                                                 prepared for


                                                                                                                             CO N S U LTI N G




CROWD SOURCED CRISIS INFORMATION

Ushahidi is an open-source platform that provides a mechanism       Designed to bring awareness to crisis situations or
for local observers to submit updates about critical events using   other incidents, the platform can easily be customized
mobile phones or the web. In addition to providing relevant         for a variety locales and needs.
real-time date, this information is woven together to create a      WWW.USHAHIDI.COM

temporal and geospatial archive of events.




                                                                                                                                          82
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

VISUALIZING 311 CALLS ACCORDING TO TIME OF DAY

311 is New York City’s phone number for government               Over a two week period in September 2010, 34,522 complaints
information and non-emergency services. The system fields         were entered into a visualization tool—the most common were
approximately 50,000 calls a day from New Yorkers who want       then plotted by time of day.
to find out about everything from school closings and recycling   WWW.OPEN311.ORG

rules to noise complaints and lost property.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                               83
TIMELINE NARRATIVES                                                                              prepared for


                                                                                                                         CO N S U LTI N G




SEARCH AND REPLAY ONLINE CONVERSATIONS

Blogs and micro-blogs, create a constant online conversation      in time and “replay” what people were saying publicly about a
about breaking news, people and places. Tweets and other up-      topic on Twitter, Facebook, and other form of social media—just
dates provide a history of commentary that can provide valuable   select the year, month or day to view updates from that specific
insights into what’s happened and how people have reacted.        time period.
With Google’s Real-Time search, users can zoom to any point       WWW.GOOGLE.COM




                                                                                                                                      84
JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON
TIMELINE NARRATIVES
                                                                                prepared for


                                                                                                     CO N S U LTI N G




                    “Even with the democratization of technology, intermediaries still
                     remain important for gathering and acting on the information provided
                     by individuals.”
                     Chris Anderson
                     Editor, Wired




                    “You need to make data accessible to make it useful—that’s why you see a
                     lot of visualizations default to maps or time-lines. The mental construct and
                     visual language is immediately, and globally recognizable.”
                     Adam Leibsohn
                     Founder, Voyurl




                   JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON TIMELINE NARRATIVES
                   Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other
                   social media networks using #TimelineNarratives




                                                                                                                 85
INTELLIGENT
INFRASTRUCTURE
                  “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                   people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                   it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                   at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                   the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                   —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
Resource management through smart systems

                  “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                   people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                   it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                   at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                   the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                   —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments




                  “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                   people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                   it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                   at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                   the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                   —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE                                      IMPLICATIONS

Low cost, reliable sensor technology is being integrated        •   Local communities immediately benefit from understanding
into urban environments such as buildings, bridges and              which resources are available for sharing.
roads, generating massive amounts of data. This access
to real-time information enables governments, communities       •   Volume and frequency of input allows municipalities
and individuals to receive information in real-time                 to make more informed decisions relating to energy
and make faster, more informed decisions.                           needs and urban planning. Ability to identify macro/micro
                                                                    usage trends.
Functioning like a central nervous system for the built envi-
                                                                •   Better able to manage structures, monitor decay and
ronment, these smart systems connect the real and virtual
                                                                    prevent accidents.
worlds using knowledge gleaned from data to optimize and
automate all types of processes.                                •   Resources like energy and traffic systems can
                                                                    be dynamically managed in real-time allowing for
                                                                    reaction to changing patterns in the data.

                                                                •   Communities can better understand their behavior
                                                                    and the impact it has on their neighborhoods.

                                                                •   The volume and frequency of input allows municipalities to
                                                                    identify macro and micro trends in population behavior.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                     87
INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE                                                                    prepared for




UBIQUITOUS SENSORS                       BUILDING SELF-MONITORS USE OF RESOURCES   WIRELESS PARKING SYSTEM
MONITOR MUNICIPAL STRUCTURES                                                       HIGHLIGHTS AVAILABLE SPOTS




GPS ENABLED TRACKING OF CITY RESOURCES   WIDGETS SEND ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION    DATA BROKERAGE FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS




Resource management through smart systems

                                                                                                                               88
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

UBIQUITOUS SENSORS MONITOR MUNICIPAL STRUCTURES

HP Labs has announced a project they’ve dubbed          These sensors will be able to attach to bridges and buildings to
CeNSE (Central Nervous System for the Earth), an        warn of structural strains or inclement weather conditions, and
attempt to develop a planet-wide infrastructure built   will be scattered along roadsides to monitor traffic and road
from billions of small, cheap, and durable sensors.     conditions.
                                                        WWW.HPL.HP.COM/RESEARCH/INTELLIGENT_INFRASTRUCTURE




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                               89
INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE                                                                           prepared for


                                                                                                                             CO N S U LTI N G




BUILDING SELF-MONITORS USE OF RESOURCES

IBM has specially designed its headquarters in France to lower      and monitor the overall use of water to provide different rates
its environmental footprint through intelligent consumption of      of flow as individual areas of the building approach predeter-
utilities. Sensors automatically regulate the lighting and indoor   mined limits.
temperature depending on the external environment to reduce         WWW.IBM.COM/SMARTERPLANET/US/EN/GREEN_BUILDINGS/IDEAS

unnecessary use of electricity,




                                                                                                                                          90
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

WIRELESS PARKING SYSTEM
HIGHLIGHTS AVAILABLE SPOTS
San Francisco has embedded sensors below the streets to track       The city is also able to use that information for dynamic
the location of available parking spots in real-time. Sensor data   meter pricing, discouraging driving when vehicle traffic
is uploaded wirelessly to the SFpark data feed, which makes the     is too high.
information available to the public via street signs and a mobile   WWW.SFPARK.ORG

application.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                    91
INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE                                                                       prepared for


                                                                                                                         CO N S U LTI N G




GPS ENABLED TRACKING OF CITY RESOURCES

Trash Track is a celebrated project by the SENSEable City        The project also hoped to provide municipalities with
Lab at MIT that explored how to help city residents see the      insights into the process, pointing to potential inefficiencies
path of trash after it left their homes. By placing RFID tags    in the current system.
on trash, and following its path with both cellular triangula-   WWW.SENSEABLE.MIT.EDU/TRASHTRACK

tion and GPS, residents were provided a map of their trash’s
journey—providing them with a better understanding of the
“removal chain” and their impact on the environment.




                                                                                                                                      92
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

WIDGETS SEND ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION

SensedIn is a sensor-based media site that allows users to stay    The result is a real-time picture of temperature, weather, and
in touch with the world around them by posting data collected      other environmental conditions from any plugged-in location.
from live sensors on the internet. Individuals can connect their   SENSEDIN.BLOGSPOT.COM

sensors to just about any object and stream all the data to cor-
responding widgets that are embedded in personal webpages.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                        93
INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE                                                                       prepared for


                                                                                                                         CO N S U LTI N G




DATA BROKERAGE FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS

Pachube is a data brokerage platform for capturing                 Pachube provides a pathway for linking multiple objects to-
information from any object connected to the web.                  gether, enabling buildings, interactive environments, networked
It enables users to store, share and discover real-time            energy meters, virtual worlds and mobile sensor devices to
sensor, energy and environmental data from objects,                engage each other in real time.
devices and buildings around the world. Users can either input a   WWW.PACHUBE.COM

feed or use one of the feeds available.




                                                                                                                                      94
JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON
INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE
                                                                                   prepared for


                                                                                                     CO N S U LTI N G




                     “Technological networks of free flowing data allow us, as a society, to have eyes
                      and ears around the globe, feeding information into the collective consciousness
                      and conscience. As we gradually build our sensing capabilities, we are laying the
                      groundwork of an infrastructure that will lead to a better understanding of the
                      complex dynamics and correlations of the world we live in.”
                      Martin Ceperley
                      Chief Technology Officer, Networked Organisms

                     “Development dollars continue to be pumped into building new “things” instead
                      of maintaining what they already have. Things get built, work for a year, then
                      break and never get repaired because there is no communication platform to
                      alert the proper authorities. FLOW created a sensor network connecting all the
                      wells and pumps in Africa to counter just that...”
                      Andrew Hoppin
                      Chief Information Officer, New York State Senate


                     “There has been a lot of excitement about public transit data opening up—citizens
                      are making applications to make their use of public transit more efficient by creating
                      better tools for viewing schedules in real-time, on the go. Aggregating macro-data
                      about these systems could be helpful in urban planning and allocating resources for
                      new systems.”
                      Andrew Kortina
                      Co-Founder, Venmo


                      JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE
                      Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other
                      social media networks using #IntelligentInfrastructure
                                                                                                                 95
NETWORKING
NATURE
                   “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                    people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                    it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                    at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                    the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                    —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
Connecting people with the planet

                   “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                    people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                    it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                    at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                    the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                    —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments




                   “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                    people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                    it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                    at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                    the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                    —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

NETWORKING NATURE                                            IMPLICATIONS

Monitoring change in nature can provide insights into both   •   Wired plants and crops can report on their health
environmental and human change. By connecting the natural        and indicate the correct time to harvest.
world to the internet, communities and organizations are
better able to monitor and respond to nature’s ebb and flow   •   Audio sensing can detect minor changes in the environ-
in real-time.                                                    ment to warn of avalanches, mudslides or earthquakes.

                                                             •   Citizens become engaged in creating two-way
                                                                 data flows; use information to better understand
                                                                 their immediate surroundings.

                                                             •   Communities reconnect with nature and understand
                                                                 their impact better.

                                                             •   Heightened awareness of natural cycles increases
                                                                 ability to determine long and short term trends.

                                                             •   Real-time weather information enables businesses
                                                                 to work with nature and minimize inefficiencies.

                                                             •   Better ablility to monitor invasive species and deal with
                                                                 cross border issues.

                                                             •   Natural sensors can be used to increase agricultural yields.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                 97
NETWORKING NATURE                                                                                   prepared for




TREE TALKS ABOUT ITS LIVING CIRCUMSTANCES   ACOUSTIC SENSORS DETECT LANDSLIDES            AUDIO FEEDBACK FROM THE DEEP OCEAN




REAL-TIME CROP MANAGEMENT SYSTEM            NETWORKED TECHNOLOGIES MONITOR OCEAN HEALTH   NETWORKED PLANTS OFFSET CARBON FOOTPRINT




Connecting people with the planet

                                                                                                                                     98
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

TREE TALKS ABOUT ITS LIVING CIRCUMSTANCES

A 100 year old Belgian tree has been given the means to        Collected data is converted into human language and sent as
speak and share its opinion about its surroundings. The tree   regular updates to followers on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Face-
has been connected to a fine dust meter, ozone meter, light     book, and Soundcloud.
meter, weather station, webcam, and microphone.                WWW.TALKING-TREE.COM




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                     99
NETWORKING NATURE                                                                                prepared for


                                                                                                                          CO N S U LTI N G




ACOUSTIC SENSORS DETECT LANDSLIDES

Engineers at Loughborough University in the UK have             A network of sensors are buried in a hillside, registering move-
developed sensors that monitor soil acoustics and are capable   ments in the soil by listening for tiny amounts of noise caused by
of predicting landslides.                                       the friction of particles against one another. Once triggered, the
                                                                systems sound an alarm.
                                                                WWW.LBORO.AC.UK




                                                                                                                                     100
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

AUDIO FEEDBACK FROM THE DEEP OCEAN

10 hydrophones located in various European bodies of water        An algorithm filters different frequencies in the signal to
have been connected to a live feed. The LIDO (Listening to the    identify specific sounds, including the songs of twenty-six
Deep Ocean Environment) project’s primary aim is to record and    different species of whales and dolphins, as well as noise
archive noises eminating from the seaover a long period of time   from human activities.
so that researchers can study the effects of human activity on    WWW.LISTENTOTHEDEEP.NET

whales and dolphins.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                   101
NETWORKING NATURE                                                                               prepared for


                                                                                                                    CO N S U LTI N G




REAL-TIME CROP MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

 PepsiCo is testing a new web-based crop management          Based on this data, they can better determine when to
system that is intended to help farmers produce more while   irrigate and how much water to use, cutting down on waste
using less water. Developed in partnership with Cambridge    and carbon emissions.
University Farms, the i-crop technology collates data from   WWW.PEPSICO.CO.UK/FARMING/FUTURE-OF-FARMING/I-CROP

farming activity, soil moisture probes and local weather
stations, which farmers can access online.




                                                                                                                               102
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

NETWORKED TECHNOLOGIES MONITOR OCEAN HEALTH

The Integrated Marine Observing System is an array of     satellite remote sensing to gather a variety of real-time
connected technologies developed by Australian climate    information such as water temperature and salinity, and
and ocean scientists to monitor nearly one-third of the   study their effects on marine health. All data collected
world’s oceans. The network employs sensor floats and      by IMOS is available for free online.
autonomous underwater vehicles, which combine with        WWW.IMOS.ORG.AU

sensor tagged animals, moored scientific stations and




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                          103
NETWORKING NATURE                                                                                     prepared for


                                                                                                                                CO N S U LTI N G




NETWORKED PLANTS OFFSET CARBON FOOTPRINT

The Natural Fuse System builds a person-to-person commu-         plugged into it, the plant can connect to its network of fel-
nity around environmental consciousness by establishing a        low plants to outsource the carbon-offsetting. By networking
city-wide network of electronically-assisted plants, which act   them together, the plants are able to share their capacity and
both as energy providers and circuit breakers. Each plant is     take advantage of a carbon-sinking surplus in the system that
equipped with a standard power socket, and if a single user’s    results from the fact that not all of the Natural Fuses will be in
plant isn’t capable of offsetting the device                     use at any one time.
                                                                 WWW.NATURALFUSE.ORG




                                                                                                                                           104
JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON
NETWORKING NATURE
                                                                               prepared for


                                                                                                    CO N S U LTI N G




                    “When people get more involved in the process of measuring things like
                     temperature, or environmental aspects, over long periods of time, they
                     become more attuned to other cyclical aspects of nature; the diurnal cycle,
                     the monthly cycle, the annual cycles, and hopefully, better understand their
                     capacity to effect change upon them.”
                     Usman Haque
                     Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments


                    “Our society is using more technology than ever to monitor the pulse of the
                    natural world, sharing data and observations with a speed never before possible.
                    Invasive species, and their effects, can now be closely identified, studied, and
                    remedied before widespread ecosystem troubles emerge—allowing ample time
                    to enact policies to help mitigate further damage.”
                     Martin Ceperley
                     Chief Technology Officer, Networked Organisms


                    “By fostering a global network of nature watchers, we are extending the internet’s
                     reach and immediacy beyond the human species. As members grow, I envision an
                     army of citizen scientists, ready to use their cameras and mobile phones to tackle
                     the latest issues at a moment’s notice.”
                     Martin Ceperley
                     Chief Technology Officer, Networked Organisms




                    JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON NETWORKING NATURE
                    Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other
                    social media networks using #NetworkingNature
                                                                                                              105
DATA
DEMOCRACY
                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
Institutional accountability through open policies

                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments




                     “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in
                      people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think
                      it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look
                      at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of
                      the data they’ve created in their local environment.”
                      —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

DATA DEMOCRACY                                                   IMPLICATIONS

City administrations, institutions, and companies are pub-       •   Citizens are given the access and agency to engage
licly sharing data generated within their systems to add             with the data that specifically influences them.
new levels of transparency and accountability. Access to
this information not only strengthens civic engagement, but      •   Communities are empowered to leverage local data
establishes a collaborative agenda at all levels of government       and build bespoke services.
that empowers citizens through greater access and agency.
                                                                 •   Increased transparency and accountability.

                                                                 •   Transparency facilitates confidence. Turns
                                                                     citizens/consumers into collaborators, uncovering
                                                                     new perspectives and potential applications not
                                                                     previously considered.

                                                                 •   Open data, and open source technology, provide
                                                                     the infrastructure backbone necessary to run a scalable,
                                                                     global and yet, ultimately localized system.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                107
DATA DEMOCRACY                                                                                          prepared for




EMPOWERING DEVELOPING COUNTRIES          OPENING UP ELECTIONS IN AFGHANISTAN                 GERMAN GOVERNMENT MAKES FEDERAL
WITH THEIR OWN DATA                                                                          BUDGET EASY TO UNDERSTAND




SHARING PUBLIC HEALTH OPERATIONAL DATA   MAKING IT EASY TO BUY AND SHARE DATA OF ALL TYPES   GOOGLE SERVICE BRINGS DATA TO LIFE




Institutional accountability through open policies

                                                                                                                                  108
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

EMPOWERING DEVELOPING COUNTRIES WITH THEIR OWN DATA

The Ujima Project offers journalists, NGOs, and concerned citi-       The project operates on the premise of reverse transparency,
zens access to a collection of databases, documents and other         acquiring information on foreign aid, developmental contracts,
resources that are not typically publicly available. The aim of the   weapon sales, lobbying, and other activities from outside
project is to bring transparency to the workings of governments,      sources—predominantly the United States and the European
multinational, non-governmental organizations and business            Union—and providing it in an easily searchable format.
enterprises in developing countries.                                  WWW.UJIMA-PROJECT.ORG




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                           109
DATA DEMOCRACY                                                                                     prepared for


                                                                                                                          CO N S U LTI N G




OPENING UP ELECTIONS IN AFGHANISTAN

AfghanistanElectionData.org was created by the National Demo-        The number of votes are shown down to the level of
cratic Institute, in partnership with Development Seed, to make      an individual ballot box.
data from national elections in Afghanistan more accessible and      WWW.AFGHANISTANELECTIONDATA.ORG

transparent. The tool allows users to browse the raw vote count
from the recent election on a national view and quickly drill down
to a provincial, district, or even polling center view.




                                                                                                                                      110
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

GERMAN GOVERNMENT MAKES FEDERAL BUDGET EASY TO UNDERSTAND

Offener Haushalt (German for “open household budget”),          Additionally, the platform allows users to comment on
is an online platform that allows the federal budget to be      individual budget items.
explored in a treemap structure. Data is displayed as nested    WWW.OFFENERHAUSHALT.DE

rectangles, where the size of each box is proportional to the
percentage of data, making it incredibly easy to comprehend
big picture spending.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                            111
DATA DEMOCRACY                                                                                   prepared for


                                                                                                                          CO N S U LTI N G




SHARING PUBLIC HEALTH OPERATIONAL DATA

With the aim of improving the capacity of public health       This produces better analytical research in the global public
professionals, The Center for Health Market Innovations is    health sector. By analyzing the success of various approaches,
collecting operational data from innovative health programs   the publicly accessible site facilitates the exchange of knowledge
around the world. The site currently profiles hundreds         and the creation of strategic linkages among key stakeholders.
of private sector programs and allows practitioners and       WWW.HEALTHMARKETINNOVATIONS.ORG

researchers to filter, map, export, and add to the data set.




                                                                                                                                       112
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME

MAKING IT EASY TO BUY AND SHARE DATA OF ALL TYPES

Infochimps is an Austin based start-up that is organizing all    The service is free up to 100,000 API calls per month, with
of the world’s free and commercial datasets. In addition to      the highest price tier set at $4,000 a month providing up to
aggregating social media, web analytics, and government          15 million API calls.
data, the site also allows users to upload their own datasets.   WWW.INFOCHIMPS.COM

The company charges different rates for access to these APIs
depending on how often developers access them.




WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                                    113
DATA DEMOCRACY                                                                                      prepared for


                                                                                                                            CO N S U LTI N G




GOOGLE SERVICE BRINGS DATA TO LIFE

The Google Public Data Explorer is an experimental                 Students, journalists and policy makers can play with the tool
visualization tool that helps people comprehend data and           to create visualizations of public data, link to them, or embed
statistics through rich visualizations. The free service enables   them in their own webpages.
users to mash up data using line graphs, bar graphs, maps          WWW.GOOGLE.COM/PUBLICDATA

and bubble charts. Each graph and visualization is dynamic,
so users can watch them change over time, select new topics,
highlight different entries, and alter the scale.




                                                                                                                                        114
JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON
DATA DEMOCRACY
                                                                                prepared for


                                                                                                      CO N S U LTI N G




                    “Citizenship is much more than just having a passport or a birth certificate.
                     Citizenship is engaging in the development process and in issues that affect
                     people’s lives—it’s as simple as aggregating data and putting it in public domain.”
                     Sharad Sapra
                     UNICEF Country Representative, Uganda




                    “Government is woefully inefficient right now. Better information management
                     and more open information creation and sharing could be silver bullets to destroy
                     the deficits. Efficiency through transparency seems to be the theme here.”
                     Andrew Hoppin
                     Chief Information Officer, New York State Senate




                    “Every service that captures data is hell bent on capturing as much of it as
                     it can and keeping it in it’s own little walled garden. But when you keep that
                     data in walled gardens, you limit it’s true potential.”
                     Adam Leibsohn
                     Founder, Voyurl




                     JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON DATA DEMOCRACY
                     Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other
                     social media networks using #DataDemocracy

                                                                                                                 115
PSFK presents
 FUTURE OF REAL-TIME


ABOUT PSFK                                  FUTURE OF REAL-TIME TEAM              CONTACT

PSFK is the world’s go-to source for        PROJECT DIRECTOR                      Jeff Weiner, PSFK
new ideas and inspiration.                  Piers Fawkes, PSFK                    Director of Business Development
                                            piers@psfk.com                        jeff.weiner@psfk.com
The New York City based trends and          646.520.4672                          646.520.4665
innovation company publishes a daily
news site, provides research and business   Chris van der Walt, UN Global Pulse   466 Broome St.
consultancy, manages a network of           Strategic Communications Advisor      2nd Floor
experts, and hosts idea-generating          vanderwalt@un.org                     New York, NY 10013 USA
events. PSFK aims to inspire readers,                                             www.psfk.com
clients and guests to make things better—   LEAD CONSULTANT
whether that’s better products, better      Jeff Squires
                                                                                  FOR COPIES OF THIS REPORT VISIT:
services, better lives or a better world.
                                                                                  www.psfk.com/future-of-real-time
                                            RESEARCH & ANALYSIS
www.psfk.com                                Scott Lachut
www.purplelist.com                          Francisco Hui
                                            Dan Gould                             Version 1.0
                                            Kyle Studstill                        February 1, 2011
                                            Dory Carr-Harris
                                            Jamie Clawson
                                            Jackie Rangel


                                            PHOTOGRAPHY
                                            Louis Caldarola
                                            www.louiscaldarola.com


WWW.PSFK.COM                                                                                                         116

More Related Content

PDF
The future of real time information
PDF
Experimenting with Big Data and AI to Support Peace and Security
PDF
Social Media and Forced Displacement: Big Data Analytics and Machine Learning...
PDF
PSFK Future Of Real-Time Information
PDF
Global Pulse Annual Report 2013
PDF
Big Data For Development A Primer
PDF
Using Data and New Technology for Peacemaking, Preventive Diplomacy, and Peac...
PDF
A Guide to Data Innovation for Development - From idea to proof-of-concept
The future of real time information
Experimenting with Big Data and AI to Support Peace and Security
Social Media and Forced Displacement: Big Data Analytics and Machine Learning...
PSFK Future Of Real-Time Information
Global Pulse Annual Report 2013
Big Data For Development A Primer
Using Data and New Technology for Peacemaking, Preventive Diplomacy, and Peac...
A Guide to Data Innovation for Development - From idea to proof-of-concept

What's hot (20)

PDF
The State of Mobile Data for Social Good
PDF
Proceedings from International Conference on Data Innovation For Policy Makers
PDF
Mobile Data for Development Primer
PDF
Data for Better Lives presentation
PDF
Big datafordevelopment un-globalpulsejune2012
PDF
UN Global Pulse Annual Report 2017
PDF
UN Global Pulse Annual Report 2014
PPTX
"Big Data for Development: Opportunities & Challenges” - UN Global Pulse
PDF
Using Machine Learning to Analyse Radio Content in Uganda
PDF
Big Data for Development and Humanitarian Action: Towards Responsible Governa...
PDF
2016 Annual Report - UN Global Pulse
PDF
Gender Equality and Big Data. Making Gender Data Visible
PDF
Track 2 progress report 2015-2016 Pulse Lab Kampala
PDF
Data privacy and security in ICT4D - Meeting Report
PDF
2015 Annual Report Pulse Lab Kampala
DOCX
Big Data, Democratized Analytics and International Development
PDF
The Radio Content Analysis - Tool Overview
PDF
Global Pulse Magazine - Fall 2011
PDF
Big data, democratized analytics and deep context,
PDF
Data Innovation: Generating Climate Solutions Event
The State of Mobile Data for Social Good
Proceedings from International Conference on Data Innovation For Policy Makers
Mobile Data for Development Primer
Data for Better Lives presentation
Big datafordevelopment un-globalpulsejune2012
UN Global Pulse Annual Report 2017
UN Global Pulse Annual Report 2014
"Big Data for Development: Opportunities & Challenges” - UN Global Pulse
Using Machine Learning to Analyse Radio Content in Uganda
Big Data for Development and Humanitarian Action: Towards Responsible Governa...
2016 Annual Report - UN Global Pulse
Gender Equality and Big Data. Making Gender Data Visible
Track 2 progress report 2015-2016 Pulse Lab Kampala
Data privacy and security in ICT4D - Meeting Report
2015 Annual Report Pulse Lab Kampala
Big Data, Democratized Analytics and International Development
The Radio Content Analysis - Tool Overview
Global Pulse Magazine - Fall 2011
Big data, democratized analytics and deep context,
Data Innovation: Generating Climate Solutions Event
Ad

Viewers also liked (20)

PDF
Review of smart sensor networks for environment monitoring
PDF
Smart Sensor Configuration for Security System Automation Using FPGA
PPT
Wearable biosensors-1222865689459971-8 (1)
PPT
531 biosensors
PDF
Body Adapted Wearable Bio Sensor
PPTX
Smart sensors and their Application
PPT
Bluetooth based-smart-sensor-network
PPTX
next generation smart sensor
PPTX
Smart sensor technology in healthcare & protection
PPT
Smart materials
PPTX
Proximity sensor
PPTX
Cytotechniques
PPTX
Smart materials
PPTX
IoT in Healthcare
PDF
Futuristic World with Sensors and Smart Devices [ Electronics Rocks'14
PPT
Smart materials.. smart ppt
PPT
Biofertilizers
PDF
25 Most Interesting Medical MEMS and Sensors Projects
PPT
Approach to head ct
PPTX
Design Thinking is Killing Creativity
Review of smart sensor networks for environment monitoring
Smart Sensor Configuration for Security System Automation Using FPGA
Wearable biosensors-1222865689459971-8 (1)
531 biosensors
Body Adapted Wearable Bio Sensor
Smart sensors and their Application
Bluetooth based-smart-sensor-network
next generation smart sensor
Smart sensor technology in healthcare & protection
Smart materials
Proximity sensor
Cytotechniques
Smart materials
IoT in Healthcare
Futuristic World with Sensors and Smart Devices [ Electronics Rocks'14
Smart materials.. smart ppt
Biofertilizers
25 Most Interesting Medical MEMS and Sensors Projects
Approach to head ct
Design Thinking is Killing Creativity
Ad

Similar to Future of Real-Time (20)

PDF
The Echo Project
PDF
The Connected Republic 2.0: New Possibilities & New Value for the Public Sector
PDF
ISCRAM2009 Sensemaking and Information Management in Humanitarian Disaster Re...
 
PPT
Nevro net call for action en july30th
PDF
PSFK presents Future Of Health
PDF
Futureofhealth slideshareversion-100801104636-phpapp01[1]
PDF
00 12-06 the national virtual observatory
PPT
InSTEDD - Where 2.0
PPT
InSTEDD Where 2.0
PDF
Mobile Phones Connecting Efforts to Tackle Infectious Disease| Lancet
ODP
Web 2.0 Technology Building Situational Awareness: Free and Open Source Too...
PDF
Datanauts: Open Innovation & Earth Observation (Proposal)
PDF
The new flow of information
PDF
Developing a Shared Vision for the Future
PDF
Sharing Advisory Board newsletter #8
PDF
ENoLL FAO Workshop Francisco Molinari 2
PPTX
Rdaeu russia_fg_1_july2014_final
PDF
NeuroWeb Roadmap: Results of Foresight & Call for Action
PPTX
Smart Data for you and me: Personalized and Actionable Physical Cyber Social ...
PDF
HunchWorks: Combining Human Expertise and Big Data
The Echo Project
The Connected Republic 2.0: New Possibilities & New Value for the Public Sector
ISCRAM2009 Sensemaking and Information Management in Humanitarian Disaster Re...
 
Nevro net call for action en july30th
PSFK presents Future Of Health
Futureofhealth slideshareversion-100801104636-phpapp01[1]
00 12-06 the national virtual observatory
InSTEDD - Where 2.0
InSTEDD Where 2.0
Mobile Phones Connecting Efforts to Tackle Infectious Disease| Lancet
Web 2.0 Technology Building Situational Awareness: Free and Open Source Too...
Datanauts: Open Innovation & Earth Observation (Proposal)
The new flow of information
Developing a Shared Vision for the Future
Sharing Advisory Board newsletter #8
ENoLL FAO Workshop Francisco Molinari 2
Rdaeu russia_fg_1_july2014_final
NeuroWeb Roadmap: Results of Foresight & Call for Action
Smart Data for you and me: Personalized and Actionable Physical Cyber Social ...
HunchWorks: Combining Human Expertise and Big Data

Recently uploaded (20)

PDF
CIFDAQ's Market Insight: SEC Turns Pro Crypto
PDF
Dropbox Q2 2025 Financial Results & Investor Presentation
PDF
Advanced Soft Computing BINUS July 2025.pdf
PDF
TokAI - TikTok AI Agent : The First AI Application That Analyzes 10,000+ Vira...
PDF
Electronic commerce courselecture one. Pdf
PPTX
breach-and-attack-simulation-cybersecurity-india-chennai-defenderrabbit-2025....
PDF
Per capita expenditure prediction using model stacking based on satellite ima...
PDF
Modernizing your data center with Dell and AMD
PDF
Machine learning based COVID-19 study performance prediction
PPTX
VMware vSphere Foundation How to Sell Presentation-Ver1.4-2-14-2024.pptx
PDF
NewMind AI Monthly Chronicles - July 2025
PPT
“AI and Expert System Decision Support & Business Intelligence Systems”
PDF
7 ChatGPT Prompts to Help You Define Your Ideal Customer Profile.pdf
PDF
How UI/UX Design Impacts User Retention in Mobile Apps.pdf
PDF
Empathic Computing: Creating Shared Understanding
PDF
Shreyas Phanse Resume: Experienced Backend Engineer | Java • Spring Boot • Ka...
PPTX
20250228 LYD VKU AI Blended-Learning.pptx
PDF
Mobile App Security Testing_ A Comprehensive Guide.pdf
PDF
Advanced methodologies resolving dimensionality complications for autism neur...
PDF
Peak of Data & AI Encore- AI for Metadata and Smarter Workflows
CIFDAQ's Market Insight: SEC Turns Pro Crypto
Dropbox Q2 2025 Financial Results & Investor Presentation
Advanced Soft Computing BINUS July 2025.pdf
TokAI - TikTok AI Agent : The First AI Application That Analyzes 10,000+ Vira...
Electronic commerce courselecture one. Pdf
breach-and-attack-simulation-cybersecurity-india-chennai-defenderrabbit-2025....
Per capita expenditure prediction using model stacking based on satellite ima...
Modernizing your data center with Dell and AMD
Machine learning based COVID-19 study performance prediction
VMware vSphere Foundation How to Sell Presentation-Ver1.4-2-14-2024.pptx
NewMind AI Monthly Chronicles - July 2025
“AI and Expert System Decision Support & Business Intelligence Systems”
7 ChatGPT Prompts to Help You Define Your Ideal Customer Profile.pdf
How UI/UX Design Impacts User Retention in Mobile Apps.pdf
Empathic Computing: Creating Shared Understanding
Shreyas Phanse Resume: Experienced Backend Engineer | Java • Spring Boot • Ka...
20250228 LYD VKU AI Blended-Learning.pptx
Mobile App Security Testing_ A Comprehensive Guide.pdf
Advanced methodologies resolving dimensionality complications for autism neur...
Peak of Data & AI Encore- AI for Metadata and Smarter Workflows

Future of Real-Time

  • 1. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME PSFK Presents FUTURE OF UBIQUITOUS SENSORS TO MONITOR MUNICIPAL STRUCTURES HP Labs has announced a project they’ve dubbed the CeNSE HTTP://WWW.HPL.HP.COM/RESEARCH/INTELLIGENT_INFRASTRUCTURE/ (Central Nervous System for the Earth), an attempt to build a REAL-TIME planet-wide infrastructure built from billions of small, cheap, and durable sensors. These sensors will be able to attach to bridges and buildings to warn of structural strains or inclem- ent weather conditions, and will be scattered along roadsides to monitor traffic and road conditions. A REPORT CO N S U LTI N G Prepared by PSFK for United Nations WWW.PSFK.COM 1 Global Pulse
  • 2. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME prepared for CO N S U LTI N G CONTENTS Prepared by PSFK for INTRODUCTION 1 United Nations KEY IMPLICATIONS 4 Global Pulse KEY TRENDS 1. HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS 7 2. PERSONAL CENSUS 17 3. SOCIAL SENTIMENT 27 4. SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING 37 5. MOBILE COMMUNITIES 47 6. INSTANT MAPPING 57 7. CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY 67 8. TIMELINE NARRATIVES 77 9. INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE 87 10. NETWORKING NATURE 97 11. DATA DEMOCRACY 107 ABOUT 116
  • 3. INTRODUCTION prepared for CO N S U LTI N G Evolving data-rich technologies are providing organizations, a large and small scale. While others are putting this technology governments and businesses with a rapid way to monitor the to use to instantly map geography, layer in information from well-being of communities and individuals without significant other data streams and create context and narrative where none infrastructure or spend. For those organizations whose success previously existed. is dependent on the ability to quickly recognize and react to The proliferation of low-cost sensors has created a network of high-risk situations, the proliferation of rapid access to “good intelligent infrastructure that can allow for the monitoring of enough” information is proving invaluable. changing conditions and statuses in both natural and urban Often, services can leverage the existing infrastructure created environments. around the internet to provide low cost access to information in We hope that this document prepared for the UnitedNations real-time. Through this data democracy, decisions can be made Global Pulse Team provides insights into the opportunities at unparalleled speed. available through the increased volume of “good enough” The change we are witnessing is being driven by the growing data and real-time analysis. But the report doesn’t end volume of data produced each day by ordinary people. By here—please join the discussion and share your ideas online releasing information about themselves and their environments using #FutureOfRealTime or one of the hashtags presented that has been captured through mobile phones and other digital in each section of this report. Together, we can broaden our platforms, people are acting as human sensor networks. These knowledge base, highlight change for good, and inspire people, individual data points, when collectively placed in context, can organizations and governments to make things better. provide insight into a variety of situations. Social media is another tool that is being used to monitor the well-being of communities. Online buzz around certain subjects can serve as an indicator of group sentiment, providing insights Piers Fawkes that are relevant offline and pointing to actions that can be taken Founder & President to remedy problems as they arise. PSFK Simple solutions are developing that allow people to connect rapidly across mobile networks. Government and aid- organizations are putting this newfound ability to use by creating temporary networked communities to handle situations on both 1
  • 4. INTRODUCTION prepared for CO N S U LTI N G This report has been developed for PSFK PROCESS ABOUT PSFK the United Nations Global Pulse team, At the core of PSFK’s trends research PSFK is the go-to source for new ideas and a project whose goal is to support methodology is a robust qualitative inspiration for readers around the world. governments in understanding what process called Grounded Theory is happening to their most vulnerable Analysis, in which trends are identified by The New York City based trends and populations in real-time. uncovering patterns within a large data innovation company publishes a daily set. Over the course of several weeks in news site, provides research and business We intend for it to be openly shared late 2010 and early 2011, a global team consultancy, manages a network of around the globe between communities, of PSFK researchers in places ranging experts, and hosts idea-generating development agencies, academia from New York to Nigeria, gathered events. PSFK aims to inspire readers, and other organizations. Its aim is to hundreds of examples of innovation that clients and guests to make things better— highlight the opportunities that exist for matched our brief. In an effort to refine whether that’s better products, better organizations, large or small. In particular, the trends identified and gain deeper services, better lives or a better world. the “left field” examples of data capture insight into the forces driving them, PSFK www.psfk.com and use are published in hope of interviewed dozens of experts coming showcasing how organizations can leap- ABOUT GLOBAL PULSE from fields of aid, business, governmental frog IT investment and still significantly The Global Pulse initiative works policy and technology. improve the monitoring capabilities. closely with UN Member States and To develop PSFK’s Future of Real-Time other development partners to improve BRIEF report, we responded to a brief set by evidence-based decision making and PSFK’s key objective was to identify trends the Global Pulse team aimed at exploring close the information gap between the in information monitoring allowing for emerging ideas around the world. onset of a global crisis and the availability quicker reaction. Key areas of investigation of actionable information to protect included developments in data (e.g. Each section in this document is a the vulnerable. new types of data, emerging sources); separate trend identified through PSFK’s www.unglobalpulse.org communication (e.g. feedback loops, pattern recognition process, which community-to-community); tools; and includes supporting insights from experts institutional use of real-time technologies. and a broad range of implications for every type of reader. 2
  • 5. FOREWORD prepared for CO N S U LTI N G THE IMPORTANCE OF REAL-TIME ACCORDING TO THE UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL PULSE TEAM Closing the information gap for decision We are in the midst of a technological In the past decade, we have witnessed makers is an ambitious goal that will revolution. Every day we learn of exciting the rise of the open source software require the UN’s collective expertise, new tools for collecting, analyzing, map- movement. Technology experts around both that of Member States and that ping, and visualizing information. Accord- the world are volunteering their time, of UN agencies. The Global Pulse is an ing to a recent report by the International expertise, and innovative ideas to create initiative to support governments in Telecommunications Union, a mobile technology tools that are free for anyone understanding what is happening to their phone signal now covers nearly 90% of to use. We believe we have an opportu- most vulnerable populations in real-time. the world’s population. nity to harness this collective force for To make this possible, governments need innovation by providing this community access to real-time information on the Technology innovation is transforming our with an exciting role in helping us build welfare of their populations. They need lives—and accelerating global development. the technology toolkit that will power new technologies to collect, filter, and Some of the most dramatic innovations Global Pulse. analyze this information in order to know concerning the use of technology are tak- when populations may be feeling the ing place in the Global South. early impacts of external shocks. And they need to develop the capacity to In order to assemble these tools into a use real-time information to make policy powerful analytical toolkit for govern- decisions. ments, we believe that it would be most cost-effective to take a non-traditional approach to leverage the reach and convening power of the UN in a new way. Outsourcing the development of the sys- tem to external consultants, the current proscribed method for dealing with this type of issue, would not achieve the level of innovation required for success. We believe in a more direct approach. 3
  • 6. KEY IMPLICATIONS prepared for CO N S U LTI N G KEY IMPLICATIONS FORM THE TEAM AT GLOBAL PULSE FUTURE OF MOBILE DATA-DRIVEN DATA EXHAUST TO TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT DETECT EARLY SIGNALS Mobile phones are now being used to We live in a new information age, As communities in the developing send remittances, redeem food vouchers, where innovation is accelerating at a world increasingly adopt and use these provide guidance to new mothers, share breathtaking pace. Today, there are technologies, they are beginning to agricultural price information between new tools to capture and use data generate ambient data as by-products of farmers and offer educational assistance that have never before been applied their everyday activities. This “information to children. To monitor and evaluate to development. Mobile phones, for exhaust” may hold the key to detecting the performance of these services, example, are increasingly playing a early signals of emerging vulnerabilities government ministries and UN agencies critical role in global development and or incipient harm. The explosion in the often collect statistical information about humanitarian crisis response. Mobile volume and diversity of data has been how these services are used. We believe phones in the developing world are not met by advances in methodologies to help that through deeper analysis of this data, only being used to speed up collection of make sense of it all. New tools exist to governments will be able to detect the household surveys and census data, but collect, filter, integrate, fuse, analyze, map early signals that vulnerable populations also by farmers to share price information and visualize information. may be in trouble. Once a pattern of with potential buyers, by community concern has emerged, governments will health workers to request lab diagnostics be able to rapidly send teams to those for patients, and by ordinary citizens to communities to conduct household report on problems in their communities. surveys, and collect the statistical evidence needed for policy responses. We also see enormous progress with the use of mobile phones and other technologies to accelerate the collection of data that was previously collected and documented in print. 4
  • 7. KEY IMPLICATIONS prepared for CO N S U LTI N G KEY IMPLICATIONS FROM THE TEAM AT GLOBAL PULSE TARGETING DEVELOPMENT TECHNOLOGY TO CLOSE PROTECTING COUNTRIES RESOURCES MORE EFFECTIVELY THE INFORMATION GAP AGAINST DEVELOPMENT REVERSALS The current climate of increasing fiscal While many of the most vulnerable In an age of increasing global volatility, austerity and limited resources is being felt communities in developing countries are hard-won development gains are in by decision makers at every level. Real- still outside mobile phone coverage, there danger of being eroded much faster time information, drawn from a variety of is little doubt that Southern innovation than in the past. Real-time actionable sources, can allow leaders to better plan in the use of mobile technologies is information can help the international and target interventions in times of crisis booming. Many private sector actors community to detect the impact of a to ensure that populations most at risk are are driving this Southern information crisis early on when there is still time to the first to receive support. revolution. The enormous opportunity prevent irreversible harm. presented by these emerging markets will inevitably lead to lower costs and greater accessibility to technologies and information services, even in communities where today it seems unimaginable. These emerging technologies represent an extraordinary opportunity to close the information gap and provide the data needed to protect the world’s most vulnerable populations. 5
  • 8. HUMAN SENSOR “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” NETWORKS —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look Mobile populations passively sharing location-related data at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
  • 9. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS IMPLICATIONS An increasing number of personal technologies are equipped • Citizens become participants in data collection without with sensors that have the capacity to collect geographically- having to alter normal routines. tagged data while people simply go about their daily rou- tines. Phones, laptops and cars equipped with sensors such • Passive research seamlessly integrates into daily life; as GPS receivers and accelerometers can collect, share and reflects the actual needs and behaviors of communities. analyze this data in real-time. This passive feedback system • Increased volume, frequency and type of data enables requires minimal infrastructure and transforms people into greater efficiency; ability to tailor products and services. sensory nodes with little effort on their part. • The efficiency of existing personal technology is maximized leading to a reduced need to build costly technological infrastructure. • Value can be derived from nearly any action or activity. A walk down a street can generate meaningful data for an organization. WWW.PSFK.COM 7
  • 10. HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS prepared for CO N S U LTI N G CONVERTING BIKES INTO MOBILE WEARABLE DEVICE MONITORS ENVIRONMENTAL ASTHMA INHALER MONITORS AIR QUALITY SENSING UNITS CONDITIONS 8 NETWORKED PERSONAL LAPTOPS PROVIDES CROWD SOURCED TURN-BY-TURN NAVIGATION TAXI DRIVERS USED TO FIND FASTEST DRIVING ROUTE EARTHQUAKE ALERTS Mobile populations passively sharing location-related data
  • 11. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME CONVERTING BIKES INTO MOBILE SENSING UNITS The Copenhagen Wheel concept transforms ordinary bicycles Riders can access this data through their phone and even into mobile sensing units that can map pollution levels, traf- share the information with their community, contributing to fic congestion, and road conditions in real-time. As a person a dynamic database of real-time environmental conditions. cycles, the wheel’s sensing unit captures their effort level and WWW.SENSEABLE.MIT.EDU/COPENHAGENWHEEL information about immediate surroundings, including: road conditions, carbon monoxide, NOx, noise, ambient temperature and relative humidity. WWW.PSFK.COM 9
  • 12. HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS prepared for CO N S U LTI N G WEARABLE DEVICE MONITORS ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS French technology company, Sensaris, has developed a These devices are intended for use by groups of wearable device that monitors environmental conditions individuals looking to contribute to larger community- for its user. Sensors detect levels of air quality, noise, and oriented applications, including city noise mapping humidity, mapping these alongside accelerometer and and urban planning initiatives. GPS data. WWW.SENSARIS.COM 10
  • 13. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME ASTHMA INHALER MONITORS AIR QUALITY The Spiroscout is a small GPS-enabled device designed by By aggregating this anonymous, voluntarily-shared data about Asthmapolis that attaches to the end of people’s inhalers, asthma, Asthmapolis provides people with the latest information automatically capturing time and location of symptoms each about asthma in their communities, and helps scientists and time an inhaler is used. The Spiroscout connects to a user’s public health agencies to target interventions designed to PC through a USB, transferring information directly to the reduce the burden of asthma sufferers. organization’s website. WWW.ASTHMAPOLIS.COM WWW.PSFK.COM 11
  • 14. HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS prepared for CO N S U LTI N G NETWORKED PERSONAL LAPTOPS PROVIDE EARTHQUAKE ALERTS Participants simply download free software that runs in The goal is to provide a better understanding of earthquakes, the background, notifying a central server when they record while giving early warning to schools, emergency response tremors above a 4.0 magnitude. systems, and others. QCN.STANFORD.EDU 12
  • 15. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME CROWD SOURCED TURN-BY-TURN NAVIGATION Waze is a mobile application that uses data from drivers’ mobile The system suggests daily routes based on driving patterns phones to create crowd sourced maps and give turn-by-turn and social input to provide a real-time view of traffic conditions driving directions. such as road accidents, traffic jams, weather hazards and even speed trap locations. WWW.WAZE.COM WWW.PSFK.COM 13
  • 16. HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS prepared for CO N S U LTI N G TAXI DRIVERS USED TO FIND FASTEST DRIVING ROUTE Researchers from Microsoft have been testing a new method look longer because it takes unexpected side streets. By ana- for generating faster driving path suggestions by tapping into lyzing GPS data from 33,000 Beijing taxis over the course of the expertise of local cab drivers and monitoring their GPS 3 months, researchers were able to determine optimal routes, trajectories. While current drive-time predictions rely on the ultimately reducing drive times by 16%. length of road and the posted speed limit, cabbies reliably WWW.RESEARCH.MICROSOFT.COM/EN-US/PROJECTS/TDRIVE select the fastest path to a destination, even if the route might 14
  • 17. JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS prepared for CO N S U LTI N G “With participatory sensing, individuals and community members act as data collectors and as data users. This data helps groups understand what’s going on in their specific context, create evidence for change, or tell a story.” Deborah Estrin Director of Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) Professor of Computer Science, UCLA “Metcalfe’s law says the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected nodes. As new nodes are added to our networks, both mechanical (sensors) and human observers (like Project Noah members), we slowly build a data network that has the capability to reflect the ever changing tides of life on earth. In one sense it becomes a 911 service for the planet, in that cries for help that previously went unnoticed, can now be heard.” Martin Ceperley Chief Technology Officer, Networked Organisms JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON HUMAN SENSOR NETWORKS Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other social media networks using #HumanSensorNetworks 15
  • 18. PERSONAL CENSUS “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments Individual insights facilitate collective knowledge “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
  • 19. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME PERSONAL CENSUS IMPLICATIONS Growing access to mobile technology around the world now • Citizens can understand their well-being through enables an unprecedented monitoring of an individual’s cur- the collection and interpretation of personal data. rent state of being. Mobile phones and tablet PCs can be directed to collect personal data, giving individuals deeper • Communities can leverage data and analysis to levels of insight into their habits and behaviors. Through a receive deep levels of insight about the collective variety of platforms, people can actively collect and measure habits and behaviors of peers. information about what they’re doing, their health, and even • People can be incentivized to self-monitor through their mood. They can also share this information anonymously comparison, or benchmarking. with a larger network so that it can be analyzed at a local or even national level—allowing organizations to monitor relative • Validated personal experience through exploration health of communities and respond to their changing needs. of shared community data. • A deeper and more holistic understanding of communities enables a more fair allocation of resources and faster response times. WWW.PSFK.COM 17
  • 20. PERSONAL CENSUS prepared for INTIMATE DETAILS PROVIDE POPULATION STATISTICS PERSONAL FINANCE SITE SHOWS UNDERSTANDING HAPPINESS ACROSS THE UK COMMUNITY SPENDING HABITS APP AGGREGATES WEB BEHAVIOR CHEAP AND DISCRETE MOBILE STD TESTS ONLINE TOOL INSTANTLY VISUALIZES PERSONAL CONNECCTIONS Individual insights facilitate collective knowledge 18
  • 21. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME INTIMATE DETAILS PROVIDE POPULATION STATISTICS The online dating site OKCupid is no longer simply in the about interpersonal relationships spanning race, gender, business of matching like-minded individuals. Based on and sexuality—uncovering social dynamics previously left hundreds of millions of user interactions, intimate details only to speculation. from over 3.5 million anonymous users are being converted BLOG.OKCUPID.COM into data to generate incredibly insightful statistics WWW.PSFK.COM 19
  • 22. PERSONAL CENSUS prepared for CO N S U LTI N G PERSONAL FINANCE SITE SHOWS COMMUNITY SPENDING HABITS Personal finance site Bundle.com aggregates financial This information is also mined in order to recommend data from the US Government, Citi Bank and other third party restaurants based on the purchases of similar spenders providers to give users access to accurate, real-time spending and to estimate change in expense if moving to other cities. comparisons. With this data, users can explore average trans- WWW.BUNDLE.COM action amounts and locations in categories such as shopping, food and drink, and transportation. 20
  • 23. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME UNDERSTANDING HAPPINESS ACROSS THE UK Mappiness is a research project and mobile application how they’re feeling, who they’re with, what they’re doing and developed by the London School of Economics with the goal where they are (users can even submit photos). This data is sent of understanding how people’s happiness is affected by their anonymously and securely to the group’s database, along with local environment—air pollution, noise, green spaces, and so on. an approximate location from the phone’s GPS and a noise-level Participants are prompted one or more times a day to answer measure, where it can be aggregated and analyzed. questions related to their emotional state, WWW.MAPPINESS.ORG.UK WWW.PSFK.COM 21
  • 24. PERSONAL CENSUS prepared for CO N S U LTI N G APP AGGREGATES WEB BEHAVIOR Voyurl is a browser-based platform currently under development By aggregating data, this tool has the potential to provide that will allow users to passively share their web surfing behaviors insight about what online content is being used, as well as and view the browsing behaviors of others—in real-time. The which topics are trending and where. idea of the service is to enable users to actually see the data WWW.VOYURL.COM they create online and help find ways to derive value from it. 22
  • 25. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME CHEAP AND DISCRETE MOBILE STD TESTS Similar to pregnancy testing kits, new devices are in development By aggregating this personal data anonymously, health organiza- that can diagnose if someone has an STD. Those who suspect that tions will be better equipped to understand the sexual health and they have been infected will be able to place urine or saliva onto well-being of populations in a particular area. The developers of a computer chip and plug it into their smartphone to receive a the chip plan on distributing the input devices through vending diagnosis within minutes. machines for as little as $1. WWW.UKCRC.ORG WWW.PSFK.COM 23
  • 26. PERSONAL CENSUS prepared for CO N S U LTI N G ONLINE TOOL INSTANTLY VISUALIZES PERSONAL CONNECTIONS Business and career networking platform LinkedIn has developed people who have more connections (and typically more sway) an experimental tool called InMaps that sifts through all of an in specific clusters with larger fonts. By aggregating and explor- individual’s connections, detects the relationships between ing similar connections across other existing networks such as them, and groups them into different network clusters so that families and friends, there is the potential to use this technology anyone can see the depth of their connections in one interface. for understanding group health or quickly connecting people InMaps provides insight into who the major connections, during a crisis. bridges and influencers are in any network, by differentiating INMAPS.LINKEDINLABS.COM 24
  • 27. JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON PERSONAL CENSUS prepared for CO N S U LTI N G “Making data public is less interesting to me than the capacity of the public to make data. I think that when one goes through the process of trying to measure something, one actually begins to understand how one directly affects that process, or what potential one has to facilitate change.” Usman Haque Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments “Data gathered from typically offline devices, such as the Withings Scale, is great because it doesn’t involve a change in behavior, but simply a new sensor.” Andrew Kortina Co-Founder, Venmo “Information coming from the ground and from the crowd has a great deal of relevance. Traditionally, we look at information as something that comes from a top-down perspective; from a media organization, a corporation or a government. Nowadays, it’s information that flows from the bottom-up that’s changing the world.” Erik Hersman Co-Founder, Ushahidi JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON PERSONAL CENSUS Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other social media networks using #PersonalCensus 25
  • 28. SOCIAL SENTIMENT “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments Online buzz as indicator of offline status “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
  • 29. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME SOCIAL SENTIMENT IMPLICATIONS The use of online social networks has spread around the world. • The ubiquity of social media platforms has led to a People connect with one another through regular updates on democratization of the medium, enabling it to be used computers and mobile devices. When analyzed in bulk, it is as a social barometer. possible to calculate the current status of entire communities and identify changes happening in real-time through web- • New types of data, such as photo-uploads, can be based and social media search queries. This conversational tapped to add dimensionality. data can also be used to predict what lies ahead. • Adding the texture of information created from every-day social interactions can provide new ways to explore human needs and behaviors. • Massive quantities of data can be held up against historic models to allow policy makers and planners to prepare for contingencies that might otherwise be invisible. • Real-time information has allowed us to move beyond correlation to prediction. WWW.PSFK.COM 27
  • 30. SOCIAL SENTIMENT prepared for ONLINE SEARCH QUERIES PREDICT SPREAD OF GLOBAL USING LAWS OF PHYSICS TO FORECAST SUCCESS OF SEARCH ENGINE IDENTIFIES PATTERNS TO PREDICT FLU MARKETING CAMPAIGNS FUTURE EVENTS ONLINE BUZZ ACCURATELY PREDICTS BOX OFFICE FACEBOOK AS PROXY FOR POLITICAL ELECTIONS STATUS UPDATES PREDICT ROMANTIC CHANGE REVENUE Online buzz as indicator of offline status 28
  • 31. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME ONLINE SEARCH QUERIES PREDICT SPREAD OF GLOBAL FLU There is a close relationship between how many people search Google Flu Trends use these search queries to estimate for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu current flu activity around the world in near real-time. symptoms. Before visiting a clinic, many flu sufferers visit web WWW.GOOGLE.ORG/FLUTRENDS sites for information about symptoms and remedies. WWW.PSFK.COM 29
  • 32. SOCIAL SENTIMENT prepared for CO N S U LTI N G USING LAWS OF PHYSICS TO FORECAST SUCCESS OF MARKETING CAMPAIGNS Leveraging the concepts of velocity and acceleration from Facebook sign-ups, Harper claims to be able to calculate the world of physics, Jason Harper of the digital ad agency whether a mass marketing campaign will reach its overall Organic, is using social media analytics to predict the success goals within the first few days of its launch. of marketing campaigns. Using calculus to compute the velocity, WWW.ORGANIC.COM or rate of change, of tweets, blog mentions, and 30
  • 33. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME SEARCH ENGINE IDENTIFIES PATTERNS TO PREDICT FUTURE EVENTS Recorded Future is a new search engine that utilizes real-time developments, and social functions, the system is able to internet monitoring in order to predict the future. Using linguistic identify invisible patterns and connections between events tools that identify events concerning national security, economic and people that shape the future. WWW.RECORDEDFUTURE.COM WWW.PSFK.COM 31
  • 34. SOCIAL SENTIMENT prepared for CO N S U LTI N G ONLINE BUZZ ACCURATELY PREDICTS BOX OFFICE REVENUE A recent study by Sitaram Asur and Bernardo Huberman has By analyzing the rate at which movie-related tweets are gener- shown that Twitter can be used to forecast box-office revenue ated, the researchers found they were able to predict box-office for movies. revenue more accurately than traditional methods. WWW.ARXIV.ORG/ABS/1003.5699 32
  • 35. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME FACEBOOK AS PROXY FOR POLITICAL ELECTIONS The ubiquity of Facebook has made it an accurate barometer In the Senate, their snapshot of 19 races proved that 81% of for national sentiment—including election outcomes. During candidates with the most Facebook fans won their contests. the recent US political elections, the Facebook political team’s WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/USPOLITICS initial analysis of 98 House races showed that 74% of candidates with the most Facebook fans won their contests. WWW.PSFK.COM 33
  • 36. SOCIAL SENTIMENT prepared for CO N S U LTI N G STATUS UPDATES PREDICT ROMANTIC CHANGE By scraping Facebook status updates for the words “break in the weeks leading up to spring break, right before the start up” or “broken up” over the course of a year, interaction of the summer holiday and a few of weeks before Christmas. designers David McCandless and Lee Byron were able to WWW.INFORMATIONISBEAUTIFUL.NET chart out the most likely times couples will break up. The WWW.LEEBYRON.COM majority of break ups occur three times in the year: 34
  • 37. JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON prepared for SOCIAL SENTIMENT CO N S U LTI N G “When data is published with greater frequency, it makes sense that we’ll be able to predict seasonal trends.” Andrew Kortina Co-Founder, Venmo “Predictive systems could be used to anticipate demand for commodities, goods, and services—helping businesses optimize what they’re producing and having tighter feedback loops. Rather than trying to convince people they need some- thing, producers could respond to what people are actually saying.” Andrew Hoppin Chief Information Officer, New York State Senate “If you have information in multiple dimensions, you can begin to understand the dynamics of complex socio-technical systems. Through better understanding we can better predict future change.” Deborah Estrin Director of Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) Professor of Computer Science, UCLA JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON SOCIAL SENTIMENT Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other social media networks using #SocialSentiment 35
  • 38. SEE SOMETHING, “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” TEXT —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think SOMETHING it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments Active reporting for collective well-being “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
  • 39. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING IMPLICATIONS Systems that track change can leverage power of people. • Promotes civic engagement by lowering barrier Crowd-sourced services that allow people to report on the situ- of entry, allowing individual voices to be heard. ation around them are ensuring communities’ collective well- being by rapidly documenting potentially harmful incidents. • Mobile technology gives a voice to disenfranchised or marginalized groups. Often using mobile phone technology, these information • Systems can be tailored to the needs of those monitoring systems not only provide real-time, location specific specifically affected by them. data, but also boost civic engagement by establishing direct channels of communication from the ground up. • Real-time systems provide the ability to actively respond to and mitigate problems. WWW.PSFK.COM 37
  • 40. SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING prepared for TRACKING SEXUAL HARASSMENT SNAP PICTURES TO SEND COMPLAINTS TO THE CITY CITIZEN SCIENTISTS BUILD NETWORK OF LOCAL PLANTS AND ANIMALS CROWDSOURCING REPORTS FOLLOWING OIL SPILL PROJECT GATHERS REPORTS ON PEOPLE’S GOOD ACTS PUBLIC FRUIT MAPPING Active reporting for collective well-being 38
  • 41. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME TRACKING SEXUAL HARASSMENT HarassMap is a system in Egypt for reporting sexual harass- By empowering individuals to act, the system serves as an ment via SMS. The tool gives women a way to anonymously advocacy, prevention, and response tool, highlighting the report icidents as soon as they happen, by instantly mapping severity and pervasiveness of the problem. the reports online. WWW.HARASSMAP.ORG WWW.PSFK.COM 39
  • 42. SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING prepared for CO N S U LTI N G SNAP PICTURES TO SEND COMPLAINTS TO THE CITY CitySourced is a real-time citizen engagement platform (public safety, quality of life, environmental issues, etc.) and that makes it easy for citizens to complain to city hall about report them for quick resolution and increased accountability. anything from graffiti to drug dealers in their neighborhoods. WWW.CITYSOURCED.COM The mobile application provides a free, simple, and intuitive platform empowering residents to identify civic issues 40
  • 43. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME CITIZEN SCIENTISTS BUILD NETWORK OF LOCAL PLANTS AND ANIMALS Noah is a tool that nature lovers can use to document provide key data to researchers on topics like invasive species local wildlife in their area, creating a platform that research and migration patterns. Users can earn badges as they add to groups can use to harness the power of citizen scientists. Users their findings, bringing a game element into the experience and can photograph, tag, identify and learn about the plants and promoting participation. animals they see around them. The aggregation of this infor- WWW.NETWORKEDORGANISMS.COM mation allows people to compare notes, track sightings and WWW.PSFK.COM 41
  • 44. SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING prepared for CO N S U LTI N G CROWDSOURCING REPORTS FOLLOWING OIL SPILL Following the Gulf Coast Oil Spill in 2010, the Oil Reporter open Data collected through the Oil Reporter mobile application was data initiative was launched by Crisis Commons to enhance re- managed by San Diego State University’s Visualization Center in covery efforts by using real-time check-ins and ground reports. order to provide visualization tools and products based on the Users could upload photos and videos to note oil, harmed wild- Oil Reporter data. life sightings, and much more. WWW.OILREPORTER.ORG 42
  • 45. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME PROJECT GATHERS REPORTS ON PEOPLE’S GOOD ACTS Hero Reports is a project from MIT’s Center for Future Civic People report these events through the group’s site, Media that asks citizens to report on the moments when other providing a brief description, location, images and any people make a difference. These can be pointing out small acts other relevant information. The project is currently running of kindness such as giving up a seat for a pregnant woman to in six cities, including New York, Boston and Juarez. acts of courage like assisting in a car accident. WWW.HEROREPORTS.ORG WWW.PSFK.COM 43
  • 46. SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING prepared for CO N S U LTI N G PUBLIC FRUIT MAPPING Fallen Fruit is a service that creates maps of fruit trees growing Maps are free from copyright and distributed both on or over public property. Participants in the project track physically and digitally. Communities can use these detailed information about the location and growth of fruit resources to find and identify fruit growing publicly trees, which feeds into comprehensive initiatives to visualize in local neighborhoods. shared food resources within communities. WWW.FALLENFRUIT.ORG 44
  • 47. JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING prepared for CO N S U LTI N G “We’re enrolling young people who have cell phones and asking them simple things like, “Is the water point in your village working today?” The collected data is analyzed then re-distributed through agreements with newspaper, radio, and TV stations, so that the young person in the village who actually collected the information feels connected on a national level. By doing this, we not only inform them of their entitlements, but engage them in a process of monitoring them.” Sharad Sapra UNICEF County Representative, Uganda “We look at people and their mobile phones as a very interesting opportunity to allow individuals and communities to engage in systematic data collection that documents and addresses important things in their lives.” Deborah Estrin Director of Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) Professor of Computer Science, UCLA “The data is captured in real-time. You’re not going around and asking people to give retrospective reports. You’re asking people, in the moment, what’s going on with them right now.” Deborah Estrin Director of Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) Professor of Computer Science, UCLA JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON SEE SOMETHING, TEXT SOMETHING Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other social media netowrks using #SeeSomethingTextSomething 45
  • 48. MOBILE COMMUNITIES “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments Building and maintaining virtual communities with simple technology “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
  • 49. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME MOBILE COMMUNITIES IMPLICATIONS The simplicity and ubiquity of mobile phones makes them • Regular tasks become faster through individually-owned, an ideal platform for organizing communities and coordinating mobile technology. Speed not only changes response efforts in response to an event. During times of crisis, or time, but fundamentally changes the nature of the tasks, simply for strengthening existing communities, handsets and relationships of those involved. can function as a conduit for collaboration and connectivity. Through new applications and services, networks between • Systems should be easily adopted; viable for social use, people can be established at the touch of a button. yet equipped for crisis management. • Through these fast-forming, often temporary communi- ties, vital information and alerts can quickly be communicated to large, dispersed populations, ensuring that all citizens remain in the loop. • These connections fundamentally change the nature of people’s interactions and expand what is possible. Le- veraging the power of the directed, collaborative effort from a community can bring about real change. WWW.PSFK.COM 47
  • 50. MOBILE COMMUNITIES prepared for COLLABORATION TOOL FACILITATES MOBILE MAILING LISTS TEMPORARY NETWORKS BUILT AROUND ANY EVENT ON-THE-GROUND COMMUNICATION REAL-TIME TEAM UPDATES USING THE MOBILE WEB TO CONNECT COMMUNITIES PERSONAL “CLOUD PHONE” SERVICE FOR RURAL USERS WITHOUT A HANDSET Building and maintaining virtual communities with simple technology 48
  • 51. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME COLLABORATION TOOL FACILITATES ON-THE-GROUND COMMUNICATION GeoChat is a service for coordinating the efforts of different Through this system, on-the-ground help can ensure relief organizations. It lets team members interact to an organized, rapid response following a crisis. maintain shared geospatial awareness of who is doing WWW.INSTEDD.ORG what where—over any device, on any platform, over any network, using SMS, email, or a web browser. WWW.PSFK.COM 49
  • 52. MOBILE COMMUNITIES prepared for CO N S U LTI N G MOBILE MAILING LISTS Patatat lets groups form information communities through text When someone replies, these messages are also sent messages. Using a web browser, users enter a list of phone to everyone on the list, creating a reliable method for numbers, Patatat will then broadcast messages to the entire group communication. group via SMS. WWW.PATATAT.COM 50
  • 53. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME TEMPORARY NETWORKS BUILT AROUND ANY EVENT Fast Society is an iPhone application that makes it easy The interface makes it easy for these groups to share for people to place contacts into an instant, short-term conversation during shows, without having to maintain group within the app for group text messaging and one-touch the group afterwards. conference calling. WWW.FASTSOCIETY.COM WWW.PSFK.COM 51
  • 54. MOBILE COMMUNITIES prepared for CO N S U LTI N G REAL-TIME TEAM UPDATES Boarrd is a free, highly-customizable dashboard app that helps keep a project or team up to date on all relevant in- formation. Users can create public or private status boards and pull data from various sources including, RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and even weather channels. WWW.BOARRD.COM 52
  • 55. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME USING THE MOBILE WEB TO CONNECT COMMUNITIES Motribe is a platform that enables individuals and small groups to Users can build and own a fully-featured social network build and manage their own mobile social communities. Based in optimized for the mobile web and can even activate plugins that Cape Town, South Africa, Motribe is facilitating self-organization include blogs, photo sharing, and real-time chatrooms. on the mobile web by giving people the ability to meet others WWW.MOTRIBE.COM who share common interests and connect with them through their mobile devices. WWW.PSFK.COM 53
  • 56. MOBILE COMMUNITIES prepared for CO N S U LTI N G PERSONAL “CLOUD PHONE” SERVICE FOR RURAL USERS WITHOUT A HANDSET MXShare enables people who cannot afford to buy a handset to The system also manages the subscriber’s offline activity, tracking have their own “Cloud Phone” with their own number. Subscrib- missed calls, sending notification alerts to friends or nearby vil- ers can access their account using a borrowed handset and enter lage phone operators. Phone owners who lend their handsets also a network code. The system requires no special hardware and receive a small credit as an incentive for sharing. works on all basic handsets in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. WWW.MOVIRTU.COM 54
  • 57. JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON MOBILE COMMUNITIES prepared for CO N S U LTI N G “There are a few very simple approaches to keeping people engaged. First, you do things that matter to them. Second, you let them see the data and learn from it. Third, you tie it into social media, and rely on game mechanics to make it fun. I think we will also start see some form of micro-payment system begin to emerge—like frequent flyer miles, or perhaps even actual payments.” Deborah Estrin Director of Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) Professor of Computer Science, UCLA “There is a lot more information being captured and shared than we can actually handle. During the recent Tanzanian elections,our platform was quickly overrun with the number of SMS messages coming into the system—5,000 in one day. It’s quickly moving from information collection, to the ability to curate that information effectively.” Erik Hersman Co-Founder, Ushahidi “How do you create a small business model around a data collection system? One of the ideas that we are exploring is like a frequent flier program. If you participate in collecting data, you get a few minutes of free talk time, which you can use yourself or sell to others. If you share even more information, you get a solar cell phone charger, which you can then use to charge other people’s phones. It’s important to look for innovative approaches that can make micro business models out of these small things.” Sharad Sapra UNICEF Country Representative, Uganda JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON MOBILE COMMUNITIES Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other 55 social media networks using #MobileCommunities
  • 58. INSTANT MAPPING “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments Local tools for creating a shared visual experience “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
  • 59. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME INSTANT MAPPING IMPLICATIONS Maps are a universal tool that have the ability to convey • Maps contain a universal language. They are easily significant quantities of information, often transcending understood by people of all languages and literacy levels. language and cultural barriers. This intuitive nature has made maps the medium of preference for creating a shared visual • Open and accessible tools help ensure that maps experience. A growing number of open source tools and lo-fi remain a relevant and useful resource for locals and solutions offer local communities the ability to rapidly gener- visitors alike by enabling flexible solutions that can ate maps and provide real-time instructions for navigating easily evolve alongside the changing face of any region. uncharted or changing landscapes. This type of information • Collaborative mapping initiatives encourage citizens becomes invaluable for individuals during times of crisis as to learn more about their surroundings and get involved they try to gain insights into their own communities. with their local communities through the exploration of unfamilar neighborhoods and environments. • Simple mapping systems can serve as valuable navigation tools for areas without established roadways or infrastructure. WWW.PSFK.COM 57
  • 60. INSTANT MAPPING prepared for LO-FI SOLUTION FOR AERIAL MAPPING REMOTE CONTROL AIRPLANE CREATES LOCAL MAPS OPEN SOURCE CARTOGRAPHY COMMUNITY BASED MAPPING PROJECT ONLINE MARKETPLACE FOR GEO-DATA PICTURE-BASED NAVIGATION Local tools for creating a shared visual experience 58
  • 61. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME LO-FI SOLUTION FOR AERIAL MAPPING Grassroots Mapping is a series of participatory mapping proj- The resulting images are geotagged and stitched into maps ects focused on communities involved in land disputes. Initiated which are 100x higher resolution that those offered by Google by the MIT Media Lab‘s Center for Future Civic Media, the proj- and available at an extremely low cost. These maps have been ect utilizes balloons, kites, and other simple and inexpensive used to support residents’ claims to land title and most recently tools to produce aerial imagery, inverting the traditional power to document the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in order to assess structure of cartography. the situation and assist with the response. WWW.GRASSROOTSMAPPING.ORG WWW.PSFK.COM 59
  • 62. INSTANT MAPPING prepared for CO N S U LTI N G REMOTE CONTROL AIRPLANE CREATES LOCAL MAPS The Swinglet CAM is a safe and easy-to-use flying camera that With simple drag & drop functions, it is possible to takes high-resolution pictures automatically—plus it can take pre-program—as well as update during the flight—the position, off, fly and land all on its own. The drone can be programmed to altitude and behavior of the unmanned drone. In addition to follow a pre-determined flight path based on a maximum of 20 mapping, potential applications include traffic updating, GPS coordinates with an operational range of up to 12.5 miles. security, crop and species monitoring. WWW.SENSEFLY.COM 60
  • 63. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME OPEN SOURCE CARTOGRAPHY OpenStreetMap is a collaborative project to create a freely and government sources has greatly increased both the editable map of the world. The initial map data was built from speed and accuracy of this work. When large datasets are scratch by volunteers performing systematic ground surveys available, a technical team will manage the conversion and using a handheld GPS unit and a notebook, digital camera, importing of the data. or a voice recorder. More recently, the availability of aerial WWW.OPENSTREETMAP.ORG photography and other data from commercial WWW.PSFK.COM 61
  • 64. INSTANT MAPPING prepared for CO N S U LTI N G COMMUNITY-BASED MAPPING PROJECT Tendermaps is an experiment in informal, community-based They are encouraged to define the region with three broad cartography where people define their neighborhood by creat- factors in mind: the paths they take, the things they love, ing hand-drawn maps. Community members are handed blank and the location of their community. maps and asked to define the neighborhood by marking up the WWW.TENDERMAPS.COM maps with colored markers. 62
  • 65. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME ONLINE MARKETPLACE FOR GEO-DATA SimpleGeo is a service that aims to help developers index, The goal is to give developers the tools to quickly build location interpret, and consume location data. Described as “iTunes services without worrying about having the money to license from for geodata,” the Colorado based start-up plans to create a large database or having to quickly scale to create their own. a wide sampling of geographic datasets and technologies WWW.SIMPLEGEO.COM that developers can access. WWW.PSFK.COM 63
  • 66. INSTANT MAPPING prepared for CO N S U LTI N G PICTURE-BASED NAVIGATION BreadCrumbz is a mobile navigation application that creates The result is a personalized, picture-based map that users can directional routes on the fly. Users create new routes by taking share with others. geotagged pictures as they travel to visually mark their path. WWW.BCRUMBZ.COM Images can be tagged and annotated with arrows or other signs to provide additional context. 64
  • 67. JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON INSTANT MAPPING prepared for CO N S U LTI N G “Maps provide a snapshot understanding, a simplified understanding, but they’re not the only way. From the beginning at Ushahidi, we worked with maps and time-lines together. We think that time and space are both relevant for real-time information.” Erik Hersman Co-Founder, Ushahidi “It’s all about situational awareness. If you can tell what’s going on around you, and can get alerts from your neighbor about what’s going on around them, you have a much better understanding of what’s actually going on. Therefore, decision-making power is increased when you have relevant information.” Erik Hersman Co-Founder, Ushahidi “We try to use metaphors that are familiar to people—and terms in which they are already thinking. So maps are an obvious medium.” Deborah Estrin Director of Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) Professor of Computer Science, UCLA JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON INSTANT MAPPING Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other social media networks using #InstantMapping 65
  • 68. CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments Creating information landscapes though the union of data and place “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
  • 69. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY IMPLICATIONS Through the union of data and location, multiple layers • Information gives decision makers at an institutional of real-time information can be displayed geographically, level quick and accurate information. providing enhanced situational context for ground crews and policy makers alike. Highly specific types of information can • Rapidly changing/evolving strategies can be be especially useful on a large scale to help facilitate decision- geographically mapped and used to influence making processes at the level of businesses, approachest to a response. institutions and governments. • The union of data with place helps ensure that resources are being distributed equitably across a region and that they’re tracked while en route to a destination. • By understanding where an event or situation originated, response organizations are better equipped to manage or prevent similar events from occuring in the future. • Mapping the scale of distant events alongside familar environments promotes greater understanding through local context. • Knowing what is happening at any given time becomes more meaningful when this information is also linked to place. WWW.PSFK.COM 67
  • 70. CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY prepared for GLOBAL HEALTH BASED ON LOCAL INFORMATION CREATIVE DATA OVERLAYS ON INTERACTIVE MAPS VISUALIZING COMPLEX SOCIAL AND POLITICAL DATA SHARED VISUAL EXPERIENCE FOR PUTTING SOCIAL ENTERPRISE ON THE MAP MAPS CREATED AROUND MAJOR EVENTS DISASTER RESPONSE TEAMS Creating information landscapes though the union of data and place 68
  • 71. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME GLOBAL HEALTH BASED ON LOCAL INFORMATION HealthMap brings together disparate data sources to achieve Through an automated text processing system, the data a unified and comprehensive view of the current global state is aggregated by disease and displayed by location for of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal user-friendly access to the original alert. health. The website integrates outbreak data of varying reliabil- WWW.HEALTHMAP.ORG ity, ranging from news sources to curated personal accounts to validated official alerts. WWW.PSFK.COM 69
  • 72. CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY prepared for CO N S U LTI N G CREATIVE DATA OVERLAYS ON INTERACTIVE MAPS Polymaps is an open-source JavaScript library of controls that Polymaps can load data at a full range of scales, so it simplifies and standardizes the creation of interactive online is ideal for showing information starting from a country maps. Created as a collaboration between Stamen Design and level, and descending to states, cities, neighborhoods, SimpleGeo, the goal of the project is to better support complex, and individual streets. large-scale data overlays. WWW.POLYMAPS.ORG 70
  • 73. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME VISUALIZING COMPLEX SOCIAL AND POLITICAL DATA The Spatial Information Design Lab at Columbia University spe- geography. This helps researchers and advocates communi- cializes in visualizing complex political and social data, such as cate information clearly, responsibly, and provocatively. By incarceration rates and financial expenditures, to help re-envi- reorganizing data using visualization techniques, and locating sion the relationship between architecture, criminal justice, and it geographically, they attempt to correlate disparate items of community investment. The lab works with data about space— information and open new spaces for action and options for numeric data combined with narratives and images to design intervention. compelling visual presentations that link social data with WWW.SPATIALINFORMATIONDESIGNLAB.ORG WWW.PSFK.COM 71
  • 74. CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY prepared for CO N S U LTI N G SHARED VISUAL EXPERIENCE FOR DISASTER RESPONSE TEAMS San Diego State University’s Immersive Visualization Center hospitals, refugee camps and other data rarely available to (Viz Lab) is a Navy-sponsored organization that produces responders. These 3-D representations give command center geographic renderings for first responders around the globe. employees more accurate and detail-rich images than 2-D maps Using imagery collected by defense agencies and other types afford, providing responders with an increased level of situ- of government organizations, the Viz Lab is able to generate ational awareness. interactive maps depicting damaged locations, WWW.EMERGENCYMGMT.COM/DISASTER/VIZ-LAB-RESPONDERS-DISASTERS.HTML 72
  • 75. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME PUTTING SOCIAL ENTERPRISE ON THE MAP iuMap is an online directory that interfaces with Google Maps. and critical information to help the social enterprise com- Culling together organizations as diverse as health, education, munity learn from successes, failures and challenges, so that fair trade crafts, and water, the map’s goal is to centralize and decisions can be made more easily, quickly, and cheaply. codify the functions of these organizations in one, concrete WWW.IUMAP.ORG hub. The map was created as a response to the lack of central- ized information, a place where one could find easily digestible WWW.PSFK.COM 73
  • 76. CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY prepared for CO N S U LTI N G MAPS CREATED AROUND MAJOR EVENTS Dimensions is an experimental prototype for the BBC that Some of these “Dimensions” can be physically experienced as is designed to provide a human scale to events and places in short, size-accurate walks, that allow individuals to get a first- history in terms that any person can understand and experi- hand point of view and appreciation of the distances involved. ence. This is accomplished by overlaying the size of historical WWW.HOWBIGREALLY.COM events, locations and objects onto satellite views of a person’s city or neighborhood. 74
  • 77. JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY prepared for CO N S U LTI N G “The biggest challenge is to cut down the delay on basic actionable data. On the ground, it’s micro-level data that is most useful. We are looking for data that comes frequently and in large numbers. We’re not looking at any data that cannot be connected to a relevant context in very simple terms.” Sharad Sapra UNICEF Country Representative, Uganda “Data without context is meaningless. You get a whole bunch of numbers, a whole bunch of locations, a whole bunch of news. But if there’s no context, data is meaningless.” Adam Leibsohn Founder, Voyurl “The minute an observation is made, it is geo-coded, time-stamped, uploaded to a database, put on a chart, as well as on a map, with no manual intervention. The data doesn’t sit dormant—the data goes straight from a human making an observation to a proper visualization.” Deborah Estrin Director of Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) / Professor of Computer Science, UCLA JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON CONTEXT CARTOGRAPHY Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other social media networks using #ContextCartography 75
  • 78. TIMELINE NARRATIVES “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments Reconstructing temporal events to create richer narratives “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
  • 79. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME TIMELINE NARRATIVES IMPLICATIONS A critical component of any response to a complex situation • An up-to-date timeline that is scalable to the is a firm understanding of how that particular event has moment creates instant prioritization of responses unfolded. Because online and offline discussions take place and allocation of resources. around every major event, analyzing these conversations can provide valuable insights into how and when things occurred. • The ability to track a conversation over time provides Studying these instant histories helps organizations under- useful trend information that can be used to form timely stand how best to respond and provides dues as to how to and appropriate responses. prevent similar situations in the future. • Comprehension of the history of an event, and what lead to its occurrence provides useful insights for conflict resolution. WWW.PSFK.COM 77
  • 80. TIMELINE NARRATIVES prepared for ANALYZING HOW NEWS CHANGES OVER TIME OPEN SOURCE PLATFORMS FOR REAL-TIME SOCIAL MEDIA SEARCH AND ANALYSIS VIEWING TEMPORAL DATA CROWD SOURCED CRISIS INFORMATION VISUALIZING 311 CALLS ACCORDING TO TIME OF DAY SEARCH AND REPLAY ONLINE CONVERSATIONS Reconstructing temporal events to create richer narratives 78
  • 81. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME ANALYZING HOW NEWS CHANGES OVER TIME Time Explorer is designed to help users discover how to explore not only how topics evolved in the past, but also entities such as people and locations associated with a how they will continue to evolve in the future. query change over time. By searching time expressions WWW.FBMYA01.BARCELONAMEDIA.ORG:8080/FUTURE extracted automatically from text, the application allows users WWW.PSFK.COM 79
  • 82. TIMELINE NARRATIVES prepared for CO N S U LTI N G OPEN SOURCE PLATFORM FOR VIEWING TEMPORAL DATA Time Flow is an open-source platform currently under develop- It offers an easy way to chart actual documentation of events, ment to help journalists analyze online temporal data. Designed to provide more detailed, accurate and therefore less inflamma- by Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg of Flowing Media, tory media coverage. the application offers a variety of view modes to explore data, WWW.FLOWINGMEDIA.COM/TIMEFLOW.HTML including timelines, calendars, lists, and tables. 80
  • 83. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME REAL-TIME SOCIAL MEDIA SEARCH AND ANALYSIS Social Mention is a social media search and analysis platform It allows users to easily track and measure what people are that aggregates user generated content from across the web saying across the social media landscape about a given event, into a single stream of information. at any given time. WWW.SOCIALMENTION.COM WWW.PSFK.COM 81
  • 84. TIMELINE NARRATIVES prepared for CO N S U LTI N G CROWD SOURCED CRISIS INFORMATION Ushahidi is an open-source platform that provides a mechanism Designed to bring awareness to crisis situations or for local observers to submit updates about critical events using other incidents, the platform can easily be customized mobile phones or the web. In addition to providing relevant for a variety locales and needs. real-time date, this information is woven together to create a WWW.USHAHIDI.COM temporal and geospatial archive of events. 82
  • 85. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME VISUALIZING 311 CALLS ACCORDING TO TIME OF DAY 311 is New York City’s phone number for government Over a two week period in September 2010, 34,522 complaints information and non-emergency services. The system fields were entered into a visualization tool—the most common were approximately 50,000 calls a day from New Yorkers who want then plotted by time of day. to find out about everything from school closings and recycling WWW.OPEN311.ORG rules to noise complaints and lost property. WWW.PSFK.COM 83
  • 86. TIMELINE NARRATIVES prepared for CO N S U LTI N G SEARCH AND REPLAY ONLINE CONVERSATIONS Blogs and micro-blogs, create a constant online conversation in time and “replay” what people were saying publicly about a about breaking news, people and places. Tweets and other up- topic on Twitter, Facebook, and other form of social media—just dates provide a history of commentary that can provide valuable select the year, month or day to view updates from that specific insights into what’s happened and how people have reacted. time period. With Google’s Real-Time search, users can zoom to any point WWW.GOOGLE.COM 84
  • 87. JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON TIMELINE NARRATIVES prepared for CO N S U LTI N G “Even with the democratization of technology, intermediaries still remain important for gathering and acting on the information provided by individuals.” Chris Anderson Editor, Wired “You need to make data accessible to make it useful—that’s why you see a lot of visualizations default to maps or time-lines. The mental construct and visual language is immediately, and globally recognizable.” Adam Leibsohn Founder, Voyurl JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON TIMELINE NARRATIVES Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other social media networks using #TimelineNarratives 85
  • 88. INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments Resource management through smart systems “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
  • 89. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE IMPLICATIONS Low cost, reliable sensor technology is being integrated • Local communities immediately benefit from understanding into urban environments such as buildings, bridges and which resources are available for sharing. roads, generating massive amounts of data. This access to real-time information enables governments, communities • Volume and frequency of input allows municipalities and individuals to receive information in real-time to make more informed decisions relating to energy and make faster, more informed decisions. needs and urban planning. Ability to identify macro/micro usage trends. Functioning like a central nervous system for the built envi- • Better able to manage structures, monitor decay and ronment, these smart systems connect the real and virtual prevent accidents. worlds using knowledge gleaned from data to optimize and automate all types of processes. • Resources like energy and traffic systems can be dynamically managed in real-time allowing for reaction to changing patterns in the data. • Communities can better understand their behavior and the impact it has on their neighborhoods. • The volume and frequency of input allows municipalities to identify macro and micro trends in population behavior. WWW.PSFK.COM 87
  • 90. INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE prepared for UBIQUITOUS SENSORS BUILDING SELF-MONITORS USE OF RESOURCES WIRELESS PARKING SYSTEM MONITOR MUNICIPAL STRUCTURES HIGHLIGHTS AVAILABLE SPOTS GPS ENABLED TRACKING OF CITY RESOURCES WIDGETS SEND ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION DATA BROKERAGE FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS Resource management through smart systems 88
  • 91. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME UBIQUITOUS SENSORS MONITOR MUNICIPAL STRUCTURES HP Labs has announced a project they’ve dubbed These sensors will be able to attach to bridges and buildings to CeNSE (Central Nervous System for the Earth), an warn of structural strains or inclement weather conditions, and attempt to develop a planet-wide infrastructure built will be scattered along roadsides to monitor traffic and road from billions of small, cheap, and durable sensors. conditions. WWW.HPL.HP.COM/RESEARCH/INTELLIGENT_INFRASTRUCTURE WWW.PSFK.COM 89
  • 92. INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE prepared for CO N S U LTI N G BUILDING SELF-MONITORS USE OF RESOURCES IBM has specially designed its headquarters in France to lower and monitor the overall use of water to provide different rates its environmental footprint through intelligent consumption of of flow as individual areas of the building approach predeter- utilities. Sensors automatically regulate the lighting and indoor mined limits. temperature depending on the external environment to reduce WWW.IBM.COM/SMARTERPLANET/US/EN/GREEN_BUILDINGS/IDEAS unnecessary use of electricity, 90
  • 93. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME WIRELESS PARKING SYSTEM HIGHLIGHTS AVAILABLE SPOTS San Francisco has embedded sensors below the streets to track The city is also able to use that information for dynamic the location of available parking spots in real-time. Sensor data meter pricing, discouraging driving when vehicle traffic is uploaded wirelessly to the SFpark data feed, which makes the is too high. information available to the public via street signs and a mobile WWW.SFPARK.ORG application. WWW.PSFK.COM 91
  • 94. INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE prepared for CO N S U LTI N G GPS ENABLED TRACKING OF CITY RESOURCES Trash Track is a celebrated project by the SENSEable City The project also hoped to provide municipalities with Lab at MIT that explored how to help city residents see the insights into the process, pointing to potential inefficiencies path of trash after it left their homes. By placing RFID tags in the current system. on trash, and following its path with both cellular triangula- WWW.SENSEABLE.MIT.EDU/TRASHTRACK tion and GPS, residents were provided a map of their trash’s journey—providing them with a better understanding of the “removal chain” and their impact on the environment. 92
  • 95. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME WIDGETS SEND ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION SensedIn is a sensor-based media site that allows users to stay The result is a real-time picture of temperature, weather, and in touch with the world around them by posting data collected other environmental conditions from any plugged-in location. from live sensors on the internet. Individuals can connect their SENSEDIN.BLOGSPOT.COM sensors to just about any object and stream all the data to cor- responding widgets that are embedded in personal webpages. WWW.PSFK.COM 93
  • 96. INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE prepared for CO N S U LTI N G DATA BROKERAGE FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS Pachube is a data brokerage platform for capturing Pachube provides a pathway for linking multiple objects to- information from any object connected to the web. gether, enabling buildings, interactive environments, networked It enables users to store, share and discover real-time energy meters, virtual worlds and mobile sensor devices to sensor, energy and environmental data from objects, engage each other in real time. devices and buildings around the world. Users can either input a WWW.PACHUBE.COM feed or use one of the feeds available. 94
  • 97. JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE prepared for CO N S U LTI N G “Technological networks of free flowing data allow us, as a society, to have eyes and ears around the globe, feeding information into the collective consciousness and conscience. As we gradually build our sensing capabilities, we are laying the groundwork of an infrastructure that will lead to a better understanding of the complex dynamics and correlations of the world we live in.” Martin Ceperley Chief Technology Officer, Networked Organisms “Development dollars continue to be pumped into building new “things” instead of maintaining what they already have. Things get built, work for a year, then break and never get repaired because there is no communication platform to alert the proper authorities. FLOW created a sensor network connecting all the wells and pumps in Africa to counter just that...” Andrew Hoppin Chief Information Officer, New York State Senate “There has been a lot of excitement about public transit data opening up—citizens are making applications to make their use of public transit more efficient by creating better tools for viewing schedules in real-time, on the go. Aggregating macro-data about these systems could be helpful in urban planning and allocating resources for new systems.” Andrew Kortina Co-Founder, Venmo JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other social media networks using #IntelligentInfrastructure 95
  • 98. NETWORKING NATURE “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments Connecting people with the planet “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
  • 99. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME NETWORKING NATURE IMPLICATIONS Monitoring change in nature can provide insights into both • Wired plants and crops can report on their health environmental and human change. By connecting the natural and indicate the correct time to harvest. world to the internet, communities and organizations are better able to monitor and respond to nature’s ebb and flow • Audio sensing can detect minor changes in the environ- in real-time. ment to warn of avalanches, mudslides or earthquakes. • Citizens become engaged in creating two-way data flows; use information to better understand their immediate surroundings. • Communities reconnect with nature and understand their impact better. • Heightened awareness of natural cycles increases ability to determine long and short term trends. • Real-time weather information enables businesses to work with nature and minimize inefficiencies. • Better ablility to monitor invasive species and deal with cross border issues. • Natural sensors can be used to increase agricultural yields. WWW.PSFK.COM 97
  • 100. NETWORKING NATURE prepared for TREE TALKS ABOUT ITS LIVING CIRCUMSTANCES ACOUSTIC SENSORS DETECT LANDSLIDES AUDIO FEEDBACK FROM THE DEEP OCEAN REAL-TIME CROP MANAGEMENT SYSTEM NETWORKED TECHNOLOGIES MONITOR OCEAN HEALTH NETWORKED PLANTS OFFSET CARBON FOOTPRINT Connecting people with the planet 98
  • 101. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME TREE TALKS ABOUT ITS LIVING CIRCUMSTANCES A 100 year old Belgian tree has been given the means to Collected data is converted into human language and sent as speak and share its opinion about its surroundings. The tree regular updates to followers on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Face- has been connected to a fine dust meter, ozone meter, light book, and Soundcloud. meter, weather station, webcam, and microphone. WWW.TALKING-TREE.COM WWW.PSFK.COM 99
  • 102. NETWORKING NATURE prepared for CO N S U LTI N G ACOUSTIC SENSORS DETECT LANDSLIDES Engineers at Loughborough University in the UK have A network of sensors are buried in a hillside, registering move- developed sensors that monitor soil acoustics and are capable ments in the soil by listening for tiny amounts of noise caused by of predicting landslides. the friction of particles against one another. Once triggered, the systems sound an alarm. WWW.LBORO.AC.UK 100
  • 103. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME AUDIO FEEDBACK FROM THE DEEP OCEAN 10 hydrophones located in various European bodies of water An algorithm filters different frequencies in the signal to have been connected to a live feed. The LIDO (Listening to the identify specific sounds, including the songs of twenty-six Deep Ocean Environment) project’s primary aim is to record and different species of whales and dolphins, as well as noise archive noises eminating from the seaover a long period of time from human activities. so that researchers can study the effects of human activity on WWW.LISTENTOTHEDEEP.NET whales and dolphins. WWW.PSFK.COM 101
  • 104. NETWORKING NATURE prepared for CO N S U LTI N G REAL-TIME CROP MANAGEMENT SYSTEM PepsiCo is testing a new web-based crop management Based on this data, they can better determine when to system that is intended to help farmers produce more while irrigate and how much water to use, cutting down on waste using less water. Developed in partnership with Cambridge and carbon emissions. University Farms, the i-crop technology collates data from WWW.PEPSICO.CO.UK/FARMING/FUTURE-OF-FARMING/I-CROP farming activity, soil moisture probes and local weather stations, which farmers can access online. 102
  • 105. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME NETWORKED TECHNOLOGIES MONITOR OCEAN HEALTH The Integrated Marine Observing System is an array of satellite remote sensing to gather a variety of real-time connected technologies developed by Australian climate information such as water temperature and salinity, and and ocean scientists to monitor nearly one-third of the study their effects on marine health. All data collected world’s oceans. The network employs sensor floats and by IMOS is available for free online. autonomous underwater vehicles, which combine with WWW.IMOS.ORG.AU sensor tagged animals, moored scientific stations and WWW.PSFK.COM 103
  • 106. NETWORKING NATURE prepared for CO N S U LTI N G NETWORKED PLANTS OFFSET CARBON FOOTPRINT The Natural Fuse System builds a person-to-person commu- plugged into it, the plant can connect to its network of fel- nity around environmental consciousness by establishing a low plants to outsource the carbon-offsetting. By networking city-wide network of electronically-assisted plants, which act them together, the plants are able to share their capacity and both as energy providers and circuit breakers. Each plant is take advantage of a carbon-sinking surplus in the system that equipped with a standard power socket, and if a single user’s results from the fact that not all of the Natural Fuses will be in plant isn’t capable of offsetting the device use at any one time. WWW.NATURALFUSE.ORG 104
  • 107. JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON NETWORKING NATURE prepared for CO N S U LTI N G “When people get more involved in the process of measuring things like temperature, or environmental aspects, over long periods of time, they become more attuned to other cyclical aspects of nature; the diurnal cycle, the monthly cycle, the annual cycles, and hopefully, better understand their capacity to effect change upon them.” Usman Haque Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments “Our society is using more technology than ever to monitor the pulse of the natural world, sharing data and observations with a speed never before possible. Invasive species, and their effects, can now be closely identified, studied, and remedied before widespread ecosystem troubles emerge—allowing ample time to enact policies to help mitigate further damage.” Martin Ceperley Chief Technology Officer, Networked Organisms “By fostering a global network of nature watchers, we are extending the internet’s reach and immediacy beyond the human species. As members grow, I envision an army of citizen scientists, ready to use their cameras and mobile phones to tackle the latest issues at a moment’s notice.” Martin Ceperley Chief Technology Officer, Networked Organisms JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON NETWORKING NATURE Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other social media networks using #NetworkingNature 105
  • 108. DATA DEMOCRACY “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments Institutional accountability through open policies “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments “By having many low-quality sensors dispersed over a large area, perhaps in people’s mobile phones, we can create a distributed network of sensors. I think it’s important to avoid the debate over whether that’s good data or not, and look at it more in terms of the capacity for the participants to start to make sense of the data they’ve created in their local environment.” —Usman Haque, Founder and CEO, Pachube / Connected Environments
  • 109. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME DATA DEMOCRACY IMPLICATIONS City administrations, institutions, and companies are pub- • Citizens are given the access and agency to engage licly sharing data generated within their systems to add with the data that specifically influences them. new levels of transparency and accountability. Access to this information not only strengthens civic engagement, but • Communities are empowered to leverage local data establishes a collaborative agenda at all levels of government and build bespoke services. that empowers citizens through greater access and agency. • Increased transparency and accountability. • Transparency facilitates confidence. Turns citizens/consumers into collaborators, uncovering new perspectives and potential applications not previously considered. • Open data, and open source technology, provide the infrastructure backbone necessary to run a scalable, global and yet, ultimately localized system. WWW.PSFK.COM 107
  • 110. DATA DEMOCRACY prepared for EMPOWERING DEVELOPING COUNTRIES OPENING UP ELECTIONS IN AFGHANISTAN GERMAN GOVERNMENT MAKES FEDERAL WITH THEIR OWN DATA BUDGET EASY TO UNDERSTAND SHARING PUBLIC HEALTH OPERATIONAL DATA MAKING IT EASY TO BUY AND SHARE DATA OF ALL TYPES GOOGLE SERVICE BRINGS DATA TO LIFE Institutional accountability through open policies 108
  • 111. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME EMPOWERING DEVELOPING COUNTRIES WITH THEIR OWN DATA The Ujima Project offers journalists, NGOs, and concerned citi- The project operates on the premise of reverse transparency, zens access to a collection of databases, documents and other acquiring information on foreign aid, developmental contracts, resources that are not typically publicly available. The aim of the weapon sales, lobbying, and other activities from outside project is to bring transparency to the workings of governments, sources—predominantly the United States and the European multinational, non-governmental organizations and business Union—and providing it in an easily searchable format. enterprises in developing countries. WWW.UJIMA-PROJECT.ORG WWW.PSFK.COM 109
  • 112. DATA DEMOCRACY prepared for CO N S U LTI N G OPENING UP ELECTIONS IN AFGHANISTAN AfghanistanElectionData.org was created by the National Demo- The number of votes are shown down to the level of cratic Institute, in partnership with Development Seed, to make an individual ballot box. data from national elections in Afghanistan more accessible and WWW.AFGHANISTANELECTIONDATA.ORG transparent. The tool allows users to browse the raw vote count from the recent election on a national view and quickly drill down to a provincial, district, or even polling center view. 110
  • 113. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME GERMAN GOVERNMENT MAKES FEDERAL BUDGET EASY TO UNDERSTAND Offener Haushalt (German for “open household budget”), Additionally, the platform allows users to comment on is an online platform that allows the federal budget to be individual budget items. explored in a treemap structure. Data is displayed as nested WWW.OFFENERHAUSHALT.DE rectangles, where the size of each box is proportional to the percentage of data, making it incredibly easy to comprehend big picture spending. WWW.PSFK.COM 111
  • 114. DATA DEMOCRACY prepared for CO N S U LTI N G SHARING PUBLIC HEALTH OPERATIONAL DATA With the aim of improving the capacity of public health This produces better analytical research in the global public professionals, The Center for Health Market Innovations is health sector. By analyzing the success of various approaches, collecting operational data from innovative health programs the publicly accessible site facilitates the exchange of knowledge around the world. The site currently profiles hundreds and the creation of strategic linkages among key stakeholders. of private sector programs and allows practitioners and WWW.HEALTHMARKETINNOVATIONS.ORG researchers to filter, map, export, and add to the data set. 112
  • 115. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME MAKING IT EASY TO BUY AND SHARE DATA OF ALL TYPES Infochimps is an Austin based start-up that is organizing all The service is free up to 100,000 API calls per month, with of the world’s free and commercial datasets. In addition to the highest price tier set at $4,000 a month providing up to aggregating social media, web analytics, and government 15 million API calls. data, the site also allows users to upload their own datasets. WWW.INFOCHIMPS.COM The company charges different rates for access to these APIs depending on how often developers access them. WWW.PSFK.COM 113
  • 116. DATA DEMOCRACY prepared for CO N S U LTI N G GOOGLE SERVICE BRINGS DATA TO LIFE The Google Public Data Explorer is an experimental Students, journalists and policy makers can play with the tool visualization tool that helps people comprehend data and to create visualizations of public data, link to them, or embed statistics through rich visualizations. The free service enables them in their own webpages. users to mash up data using line graphs, bar graphs, maps WWW.GOOGLE.COM/PUBLICDATA and bubble charts. Each graph and visualization is dynamic, so users can watch them change over time, select new topics, highlight different entries, and alter the scale. 114
  • 117. JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON DATA DEMOCRACY prepared for CO N S U LTI N G “Citizenship is much more than just having a passport or a birth certificate. Citizenship is engaging in the development process and in issues that affect people’s lives—it’s as simple as aggregating data and putting it in public domain.” Sharad Sapra UNICEF Country Representative, Uganda “Government is woefully inefficient right now. Better information management and more open information creation and sharing could be silver bullets to destroy the deficits. Efficiency through transparency seems to be the theme here.” Andrew Hoppin Chief Information Officer, New York State Senate “Every service that captures data is hell bent on capturing as much of it as it can and keeping it in it’s own little walled garden. But when you keep that data in walled gardens, you limit it’s true potential.” Adam Leibsohn Founder, Voyurl JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON DATA DEMOCRACY Add your thoughts and ideas on Twitter and other social media networks using #DataDemocracy 115
  • 118. PSFK presents FUTURE OF REAL-TIME ABOUT PSFK FUTURE OF REAL-TIME TEAM CONTACT PSFK is the world’s go-to source for PROJECT DIRECTOR Jeff Weiner, PSFK new ideas and inspiration. Piers Fawkes, PSFK Director of Business Development piers@psfk.com jeff.weiner@psfk.com The New York City based trends and 646.520.4672 646.520.4665 innovation company publishes a daily news site, provides research and business Chris van der Walt, UN Global Pulse 466 Broome St. consultancy, manages a network of Strategic Communications Advisor 2nd Floor experts, and hosts idea-generating vanderwalt@un.org New York, NY 10013 USA events. PSFK aims to inspire readers, www.psfk.com clients and guests to make things better— LEAD CONSULTANT whether that’s better products, better Jeff Squires FOR COPIES OF THIS REPORT VISIT: services, better lives or a better world. www.psfk.com/future-of-real-time RESEARCH & ANALYSIS www.psfk.com Scott Lachut www.purplelist.com Francisco Hui Dan Gould Version 1.0 Kyle Studstill February 1, 2011 Dory Carr-Harris Jamie Clawson Jackie Rangel PHOTOGRAPHY Louis Caldarola www.louiscaldarola.com WWW.PSFK.COM 116