The Role of Open Data in Choosing Neighborhood

To what extent is it important to get familiar with our environment?

If we think about how the world surrounding us has changed throughout the years, it is not so unreasonable that, while walking to work, we might encounter some new little shops, restaurants, or gas stations we had never noticed before. Likewise, how many times did we wander about for hours just to find green spaces for a run? And the only one we noticed was even more polluted than other urban areas!

Citizens are not always properly informed about the evolution of the places they live in. And that is why it would be crucial for people to be constantly up-to-date with accurate information of the neighborhood they have chosen or are going to choose.

(Image source: London Evening Standard)

- See more at: http://blog.okfn.org/2014/11/14/the-role-of-open-data-in-choosing-neighborhood/#sthash.Mu7lX6sn.dpuf

Free urban data -- what's it good for?

		IMAGE: Big Data, published quarterly in print and online, facilitates and supports the efforts of researchers, analysts, statisticians, business leaders, and policymakers to improve operations, profitability, and communications within... Click here for more information.

New Rochelle, October 29, 2014 –Cities around the world are increasingly making urban data freely available to the public. But is the content or structure of these vast data sets easy to access and of value? A new study of more than 9,000 data sets from 20 cities presents encouraging results on the quality and volume of the available data and describes the challenges and benefits of analyzing and integrating these expanding data sets, as described in an article in Big Data, the highly innovative, peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The Open Access article is available free on the Big Data website.

In the article "Structured Open Urban Data: Understanding the Landscape," Luciano Barbosa and Marcos Vieira, IBM Research, Brazil, and Kien Pham, Claudio Silva, and Juliana Freire, New York University School of Engineering and NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress, NY, present several promising findings. These include a steadily increasing volume of open urban data, the ability to integrate different data sets, and the finding that much of the available data is published in standard types of formats. The authors also discuss the main challenges that make it difficult to take full advantage of these data sources.

"Big urban data is a powerful new phenomenon that has the potential to transform everyday lives of hundreds of millions of people quickly via personal devices that integrate, filter, and create useful personalized information. This paper documents the sources and value of these data," saysBig Data Editor-in-Chief Vasant Dhar, Co-Director, Center for Business Analytics, Stern School of Business, New York University.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-10/mali-fud102914.php