50. INF2102-03: ODDTO13
# Preface Open Data Day 2013 happened on February 23rd. In Toronto. London. Buenos Aires. And oh about 67 other cities around the world. I first heard about the initiative from Mary Beth (@bethmaru), one of the founders of Open Data Day when she came to visit Toronto in February. So I was very happy when I was asked to help out that day thanks to Arndis (@arndis) from Urban Digital (@UrbanDigitalTO). In Toronto it was a day full of workshops, talks, and hacking.
I had a lot of fun! Trying to make sense of my notes however was not. So I've also provided performance-enhancing links. Parse, process, and analyse at will. Here it all is. # OPEN DATA DAY TORONTO 2013 # SHERAZ KHAN Open Data Day 2013 presentation Online interactive maps - Crowdsourced democracity - The purpose: service, analysis , collection, engagement, informing, art ### EXAMPLES
The DemocraCity Project WhatWasThere One Million Tweet Map Hailo Save the Rain Toronto Sound Map Rebuild Your Community # BETH WILSON CITY BUDGET MAPPING ENTHUSIAST - Social planning Toronto Chloropleth map tdsb - Low income has cut services - Least marginalized schools were affected (using the TDSB index, looking at earning opportunities with ranking schools) - Services are already disproportionately located in city - City of Toronto data consortium - purchasing that data - Can look at CT vs wards vs political ridings boundaries - KPMG did a study that reproduced the map - Income mapping - public information sensitivity ### The problem: - Data is never natural - there is always an angle - A stumbling block is for the government at a political level to embrace open data without information presented within a certain context _the government analyses the data for you_ - A folsom set of data would make it easy to drill down to sources - Spending council - voting transparency - Details of motion - clause context matters for constituents - Approach neutrality by providing as much info as possible # TABS Toronto Tabs Toronto # LIGHTNING TALKS Jason WHITE - TRANSIT ACCESSIBILITY Ellie MARSHALL - MYCITYHALL.CA OPEN NORTH Chris PENROSE - YOUTH ASSET MAPPING Devon MEUNIER - AJAH TOOLS FOR FUNDRAISERS Morgan PEERS - BIG PICTURE Diederik VAN LIERE - a love story of big and small data Julie BOGDANOWICZ - facemap toronto BREAK Helen KULA - mars data catalyst Sheyda SANEINEJAD - TRACKING TORONTO TICKER Anil PATEL- THE SHARING IMPERATIVE Raed SHARIF - GOVT DATA IN SOUTH AFRICA Kevin BRANIGAN - MY TTC++ Sean CRAWFORD and Tammer KAMELZ - QUANDL Dawn BUIE - Neighbourhood Planning Wendy SMITH - PARKLOT # JASON WHITE - TRANSIT WALKABILITY ANALYSIS Transit Reliability Access to Transit A Cross City Comparison # Ellie Marshall Project # Chris PENROSE - YOUTH ASSET MAPPING # Devon MEUNIER - AJAH TOOLS FOR FUNDRAISERS # Morgan PEERS - BIG PICTURE Big Picture Links # Diederik VAN LIERE - a love story of big and small data # JULIE BOGDANOWICZ - FACEMAP TORONTO - Presenting data in clearest way possible - moving from complexity to overview - Look at Otto Neurath _the symbols create an interesting visual language_ - Maps from 1920s, abstraction of reality - Kartograph - Beyond statistics in mapping in general it is an arbitrary exercise ### David Hulchanski: neighbourhood change - UFT social worker 3 cities in toronto - map of blue red white - shows the middle class is disappearing represents immediate data - with stats and mapping there's a disconnect to the way laypeople look and navigate information - to some there is an intimidation factor in looking and reading maps and statistics - 3 cities map using photos of people not reading well - white lane (middle) dominant - try to represent 3 cities with photos of people - photo on subway white faces middle city 1 - not white faces city 3 at edges - Hulchanski map predict 2025 appears more uniform as opposed to the diversity in the 1970s - mixed map " ### Facemap: - A low tech design approach to mapping data - Representing 3 cities stats more immediately with photography - Going to subway stations and taking photographs of people - If the project matures it will go into more accurate detail - Map represented by percentages of population. There is an ethical line straddling, issues of racial profiling
_This is a cool idea, hope they can use real faces_ ### Transportation Projects: - myttc.ca - Trying to consider the interoperation of data - The innovation lab: when you look at things on the periphery at a glance. Instead it brings things to your attention, not only at your choice. hear streetcars shaking use speakers and see - Open paths # HELEN KULA - MARS Data Catalyst - The unlock data initiative. Health data is challenging to work with and to access because there are a number of privacy issues. The goal is to generate insight and inform decision making around innovation. - Tracking the money flow and innovation especially around startups. Accelerators and incubators. Currently we have little knowledge of the startup landscape in province, the data landscape around this is patchy at best. - They are doing data development work, negotiating partnership with 17 regional innovation centres - Trying to pool data linkages and integrate with others sources of data crunch base, angel list, commercial sources, to generate a more robust view of startup activaty in province - Special interest in energy and health - Open data outcomes with energy process consumption - Innovation data - the million dollar question is what does this look like? How do you capture it? - It can mean different things. Here they focus on startups and ecosystems that sits around those - organizations support like mars, funders focus oct programs venture capitalists, angel investors, policymakers # SHEYDA SANEINEJAD - TRACKING TORONTO TICKER The Innovation Lab - The ticker for stocks, sports - Here it would track something more important things using open data that are happening in Toronto, trends of how Toronto is doing as a city economically, socially, environmentally - What measure or policy in place to determine what is good or bad who decides - Numbers are not in the periphery, the city will think about why some things increase or decrease - A physical ticker display gateway to toronto - union station airport - People will stand in line find to out how doing as a city (building stats, sewage, pollution, etc) - An online ticker can be customizable audience/ website indicators turn off and on _Should you let people turn things off or customize what they want to see? Information silos? Or maybe select a portion of the ticker to customize_ - Currently the data feed is not automatic, open data updated by going and put data in the background sheet, a prototype idea is to develop the process automatically - The innovation lab is a volunteer group no affiliation to the City of Toronto # ANIL PATEL - timeraiser Planning Presentations Repository IT Linkedin Box Planning & IT Timeraiser - Principles: agile open web movement, takes non-profit work to a whole new level of transparency and efficiency - Good governance leads to better decisions - Responds quickly to change - Shows how non profits interact work like open web - Tracks all costs from batteries to beer - The burden of paperwork and what does it mean - Cost revenue ratio - Web assets, capacity ability testing tools transactions - Document workflow - Tools to use - See a lot of good governance tools speed dating prep where emphasis - Timeraiser's mission is to creatively connect people with causes they care about. In reality volunteers and people involved in donations expend many hours and resources and are burnt out - A new non-capitalist society _Prospects through events_ # RAED SHARIF - Govt data in S. Africa - Government data can save lives - But there is no accountability or transparency for planning projects - It is very difficult to find data in S. Africa, even harder to access it. Likely you would find a brief summary of the db or a db wouldn't even exist - of the requests for data, 60% not answered and from those requests that were answered, many (?%) were rejected - another issue is data in pdf files - how to manic put in map see enter manual - After going through all that, trust/reliability of data - Context of global south issues tribalism - NGO CiviC Centre Global South (Egypt, Lebanon, Kenya) - Crowdsourcing applications like ushahidi can't work because it is not easy to get to scaleable level of infrastructure. Issues like road banning are really becoming more of a trend # Kevin Branigan & Kieran - My TTC ++ My TTC++ Branigan - Was using open trip planner, decided to make their own - Have a ridiculous amount of data - 10 000 bus stops 3 million times from bus schedules - Had to interpolate stop times between stops - Service summaries vehicles allocated each window time frame headway minutes etc - Debug data see vehicles where move quick interpolate airport or subway - Simulation compression artefacts - Data: Went all subway count all stairs - 10 000 stairs, entrances, elevators - Accolades from Brad Ross (on Twitter he said 'cool') -Organizational agility could be dangerous. Possible repurcussions: deception by trip planner # Sean Crawford - QUANDL Open Data Day 2013 Quandl - Questions that require data - A search engine for numerical data - 2.5 million datasets, doubling total dataset every 3 months, numerical data on set easy to find and use - When you find the raw data that you are looking for, there is a lot of work left to do. 30 min per dataset in finding, processing, cleaning - How does it work? - You can download data in a multitude formats, API visualizations, & more features - Quandl goes to original data source, fetches raw data, translates it into usable format instantly - an instant productivity gain - System for copyright, license, all data they have is open and accessible, no need to check yourself -Will premium data be licensable later? - Fields or domains Quandl focus - catch all, strongest datasets in finance, demographics, global datasets, economics - Take dataset pull into R to analyze - Health data - all and more data hopefully coming _I hope they chronicle this experience_ - Do you take sets manually or pull in? Quandl uses Q bots - data exists in pdfs, broken web pages, etc Q bots crawlers parses and pulls in automatically - Dataset will track updates, revisions knows when to constantly grab new data to pull in - Quandl archives previous data so even if dataset ceases to exist it will exist in quandl - The data library or finds immediately interprets data - potentially a data library, wikipedia for data - Search goes to data library or original source - Will go to their library and exact same time the source makes updated data # Wendy Smith - Parklot Project Parklot Project - The Parklot Project looks at a number of historical features of Toronto: disappeared/disappearing creeks, land grants - Usage of open data? Much of it is primary research - The map tells a land transaction story - Tools: google fusion tables, created a db in excel and built online on fusion tables - Then give the table coordinates address plot markers on map # WORKSHOPS, HACKATHON REVIEW # Karen Smith Workshop Presentation # Andrew Lovett-Barron - HACKATHON IDEAS 1. Neighbourhood cheatsheet - a guide that shows local neighbourhood interests to newcomers - aggregate data from sources - filters data down to use - communication problem: how to make data relevant to a lot of people - location quick and easy cheat sheet - Information that is contextual to you in seconds 2. Local Layer Library - A community bake oven, find out when events happen and access to those events. There is no one place to go and find out - Local organization participation - Problem there are sources of data but existing in diff formats cannot centralize - Start physical/expand to cultural events - For instance, this app can extend to public art like finding murals in the city Other great ideas: MeshCities Great Lakes Map Crisis Mappers
