Urban data science activities at the University of Washington, presented at the Urban@UW kickoff event. http://urban.uw.edu/

1. ß
Urban Data Science @ UW

2. 2
“It’s a great time to be a data geek.”
-- Roger Barga, Microsoft Research
“The greatest minds of my generation are trying
to figure out how to make people click on ads”
-- Jeff Hammerbacher, co-founder, Cloudera

3. The Fourth Paradigm
1. Empirical + experimental
2. Theoretical
3. Computational
4. Data-Intensive
Jim Gray
7/13/2015 Bill Howe, UW 3

4. “All across our campus, the process of discovery will increasingly rely on
researchers’ ability to extract knowledge from vast amounts of data… In order
to remain at the forefront, UW must be a leader in advancing these
techniques and technologies, and in making [them] accessible to researchers
in the broadest imaginable range of fields.”
2005-2008
In other words:
• Data-driven discovery will be ubiquitous
• UW must be a leader in inventing the
capabilities
• UW must be a leader in translational
activities – in putting these capabilities to
work
• It’s about intellectual infrastructure (human capital) and software
infrastructure (shared tools and services – digital capital)

5. A 5-year, US$37.8 million cross-institutional
collaboration to create a data science environment
5
2014

6. 7/13/2015 Bill Howe, UW 7
Data Science Kickoff Session:
137 posters from 30+ departments and units

7. 8
PIs on Moore/Sloan effort
+ eScience Institute
Steering Committee
+ UW participants in
February 7 Data Science
poster session
Broad collaborations

8. Establish a virtuous cycle
• 6 working groups, each with
• 3-6 faculty from each institution

9. 10
Assessing Community Well-Being
Third-Place Technologies
Optimization of King County Metro Paratransit
Computer Science & Engineering
Predictors of Permanent Housing for Homeless Families
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Open Sidewalk Graph for Accessible Trip Planning
Electrical Engineering

10. 11
1. Form a City/University collaboration within their respective
community memorialized in a Memorandum of
Understanding;
2. Appoint a representative from each partner responsible for
maintaining the collaboration;
3. Through the collaboration, identify and undertake at least
three research, development and deployment projects
within the coming year (by May 2016);
4. Participate as a founding member of the Metro Lab
Network through workshops and other knowledge sharing
activities (see Metro Lab Network SUMMARY).

11. Seattle crime map using open data, UW EE ugrad
Jay Feng

12. 13

13. 14
Charlie Catlett

14. OneBusAway:
Transit Traveler Information
Systems
Alan Borning
Dept of Computer Science and
Engineering
University of Washington
Design Use Build – University of
Washington

15. University of Washington

16. University of Washington
Usage
 Started as a grad student project by Brian
Ferris and Kari Watkins; became their PhD
dissertations
 Over 100,000 unique weekly users in Puget
Sound
 Deployments in Atlanta, Tampa, versions in
New York and Detroit; experimental
deployment in Washington DC
 Goal: OneBusAway Foundation to provide
long-term stability and support

17. University of Washington
18