Seth Flaxman presents on CityRank (www.cityrank.ch) at DD4D (www.dd4d.net) in Paris in June 2009
Abstract:
"In the context of data on cities, we present an example of how to make statistics relevant and meaningful to non-expert users. While the cities of the world are emerging as key players in global processes, from climate change to migration, the body of data on the cities of the world is neither extensive nor well-organized. Towards the end of organizing, understanding, and presenting this data, we have created an online framework called CityRank. To make this data relevant to users, CityRank allows users to upload new data sets and create and share personalized rankings of cities based on the data included in CityRank’s data repository."
MediaEval 2016 - LAPI @ 2016 Retrieving Diverse Social Images Task: A Pseudo-...multimediaeval
Presenter: Bogdan Boteanu,
LAPI @ 2016 Retrieving Diverse Social Images Task: A Pseudo-Relevance Feedback Diversification Perspective In Working Notes Proceedings of the MediaEval 2016 Workshop, Hilversum, Netherlands, October 20-21, CEUR-WS.org (2016) by Bogdan Boteanu, Mihai G. Constantin, Bogdan Ionescu
Paper: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1739/MediaEval_2016_paper_20.pdf
Video: https://youtu.be/mDI8Z31p7TY
Abstract: In this paper we present the results achieved during the 2016 MediaEval Retrieving Diverse Social Images Task, using an approach based on pseudo-relevance feedback, in which human feedback is replaced by an automatic selection of images. The proposed approach is designed to have in priority the diversification of the results, in contrast to most of the existing techniques that address only the relevance. Diversification is achieved by exploiting a hierarchical clustering scheme followed by a diversification strategy. Methods are tested on the benchmarking data and results are analyzed. Insights for future work conclude the paper.
Social Media and reputation: what you can learn from big companiesAddison Group
A presentation we made for Project DigitISE, who hosted 'Get the Digital Edge', a series of workshops and seminars for University of Westminster students exploring digital literacy skills and employability.
We look at what online reputation is, why it matters, and how social media can affect it. By examining these questions in the light of FTSE100 activity on social media channels, we ask what it means for the individual.
MediaEval 2016 - LAPI @ 2016 Retrieving Diverse Social Images Task: A Pseudo-...multimediaeval
Presenter: Bogdan Boteanu,
LAPI @ 2016 Retrieving Diverse Social Images Task: A Pseudo-Relevance Feedback Diversification Perspective In Working Notes Proceedings of the MediaEval 2016 Workshop, Hilversum, Netherlands, October 20-21, CEUR-WS.org (2016) by Bogdan Boteanu, Mihai G. Constantin, Bogdan Ionescu
Paper: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1739/MediaEval_2016_paper_20.pdf
Video: https://youtu.be/mDI8Z31p7TY
Abstract: In this paper we present the results achieved during the 2016 MediaEval Retrieving Diverse Social Images Task, using an approach based on pseudo-relevance feedback, in which human feedback is replaced by an automatic selection of images. The proposed approach is designed to have in priority the diversification of the results, in contrast to most of the existing techniques that address only the relevance. Diversification is achieved by exploiting a hierarchical clustering scheme followed by a diversification strategy. Methods are tested on the benchmarking data and results are analyzed. Insights for future work conclude the paper.
Social Media and reputation: what you can learn from big companiesAddison Group
A presentation we made for Project DigitISE, who hosted 'Get the Digital Edge', a series of workshops and seminars for University of Westminster students exploring digital literacy skills and employability.
We look at what online reputation is, why it matters, and how social media can affect it. By examining these questions in the light of FTSE100 activity on social media channels, we ask what it means for the individual.
Presentation by Phil Smart to the Geotourism Workshop of SEGRA 2015 about the Gondwana Fossil Walk and other geotourism developments at Ulladulla, New South Wales
Geotourism is emerging as an exciting new element within the overall experiential tourism mix. This presentation details some new resaerch findings from Australia.
This was the updated presentation that was intended for AgileDC 2014; there will be some aspects here that I will pull for my proposed session for Agile2015.
Social Network Mining has been an area of interesting research due to billions of people using social media. Community detection is identified as one of the major issues of a social network. Here, a new approach has been presented for community detection which is greedy as well as incremental in nature. The approach is tested on standard datasets and the results are presented as well as analyzed
Geolocated Foursquare data: where we areLaura Varisco
Case studies and relative research protocols for projects that use geolocated foursquare data for add value, identify patterns and help social cooperation
Presentation by Phil Smart to the Geotourism Workshop of SEGRA 2015 about the Gondwana Fossil Walk and other geotourism developments at Ulladulla, New South Wales
Geotourism is emerging as an exciting new element within the overall experiential tourism mix. This presentation details some new resaerch findings from Australia.
This was the updated presentation that was intended for AgileDC 2014; there will be some aspects here that I will pull for my proposed session for Agile2015.
Social Network Mining has been an area of interesting research due to billions of people using social media. Community detection is identified as one of the major issues of a social network. Here, a new approach has been presented for community detection which is greedy as well as incremental in nature. The approach is tested on standard datasets and the results are presented as well as analyzed
Geolocated Foursquare data: where we areLaura Varisco
Case studies and relative research protocols for projects that use geolocated foursquare data for add value, identify patterns and help social cooperation
NG2S: A Study of Pro-Environmental Tipping Point via ABMsKan Yuenyong
A study of tipping point: much less is known about the most efficient ways to reach such transitions or how self-reinforcing systemic transformations might be instigated through policy. We employ an agent-based model to study the emergence of social tipping points through various feedback loops that have been previously identified to constitute an ecological approach to human behavior. Our model suggests that even a linear introduction of pro-environmental affordances (action opportunities) to a social system can have non-linear positive effects on the emergence of collective pro-environmental behavior patterns.
MobiGIS 2016 workshop report: The Fifth ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop...Reza Nourjou, Ph.D.
MobiGIS 2016 workshop report: The Fifth ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Mobile Geographic Information Systems: San Francisco, California, USA - October 31, 2016
Шерон Хаар "Кластеры знаний: урбанистика университетского кампуса в городе XX...mosurban
Sharon Haar - Knowledge Clusters: Campus Urbanism in the 21st Century City
Шерон Хаар "Кластеры знаний: урбанистика университетского кампуса в городе XXI века"
From Argument Mapping to Argument Mining, and BackEDV Project
Talk slides for the 2014 SICSA Workshop on Argument Mining (Dundee, 9-10 July 2014). The talk presents our group's work in the context of argument mining and offers some challenges and applications.
Web Observatories, e-Research and the Importance of Collaboration. WST 2014 Webinar series, 20th March 2014
See Web Science Trust http://webscience.org/
Deep Qualia: Philosophy of Statistics, Deep Learning, and Blockchain
Deep learning: What is it, why is it important, and what do I need to know?
The aim of this talk is to discuss deep learning as an advanced computational method and its philosophical implications. Computing is a fundamental model by which we are understanding more about ourselves and the world. We think that reality is composed of patterns, which can be detected by machine learning methods.
Deep learning is a complexity optimization technique in which algorithms learn from data by modeling high-level abstractions and assigning probabilities to nodes as they characterize the system and make predictions. An important challenge in deep learning is that these methods work in certain domains (image, speech, and text recognition), but we do not have a good explanation for why, which impedes a wider application of these solutions.
Another recent advance in computational methods is blockchain technology which allows the secure transfer of assets and information, and the automated coordination of operations via a trackable remunerative ledger and smart contracts (automatically-executing Internet-based programs).
This talk looks at how deep learning technology, particularly as coupled with blockchain systems, might be used to produce a new kind of global computing platform. The goal is for blockchain deep learning systems to address higher-dimensional computing challenges that require learning and dynamic response in domains such as economics and financial risk, epidemiology, social modeling, public health (cancer, aging), dark matter, atomic reactions, network-modeling (transportation, energy, smart cities), artificial intelligence, and consciousness.
OpenML.org: Networked Science and IoT Data Streams by Jan van Rijn, Universit...EuroIoTa
OpenML enables truly collaborative machine learning. Scientists can post important data, inviting anyone to help analyze it. OpenML structures and organizes all results online to show the state of the art and push progress.
OpenML is being integrated in most popular machine learning environments, so you can automatically upload all your data, code, and experiments. And if you develop new tools, there's an API for that, plus people to help you.
OpenML allows you to search, compare, visualize, analyze and download all combined results online. Explore the state of the art, improve it, build on it, ask questions and start discussions
Network analysis: People and open source communitiesDawn Foster
Data and code: https://github.com/geekygirldawn/oscon_2015
The real magic in any community comes from the people. I will show you tools and techniques for performing network analysis, to look at the people in your community along with the relationships between them. Why settle for boring numbers and line charts to describe your community when you can do cool visualizations that show how people connect within your open source community?
Similar to CityRank.ch: Visualizing Global Cities (20)
State of ICS and IoT Cyber Threat Landscape Report 2024 previewPrayukth K V
The IoT and OT threat landscape report has been prepared by the Threat Research Team at Sectrio using data from Sectrio, cyber threat intelligence farming facilities spread across over 85 cities around the world. In addition, Sectrio also runs AI-based advanced threat and payload engagement facilities that serve as sinks to attract and engage sophisticated threat actors, and newer malware including new variants and latent threats that are at an earlier stage of development.
The latest edition of the OT/ICS and IoT security Threat Landscape Report 2024 also covers:
State of global ICS asset and network exposure
Sectoral targets and attacks as well as the cost of ransom
Global APT activity, AI usage, actor and tactic profiles, and implications
Rise in volumes of AI-powered cyberattacks
Major cyber events in 2024
Malware and malicious payload trends
Cyberattack types and targets
Vulnerability exploit attempts on CVEs
Attacks on counties – USA
Expansion of bot farms – how, where, and why
In-depth analysis of the cyber threat landscape across North America, South America, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East
Why are attacks on smart factories rising?
Cyber risk predictions
Axis of attacks – Europe
Systemic attacks in the Middle East
Download the full report from here:
https://sectrio.com/resources/ot-threat-landscape-reports/sectrio-releases-ot-ics-and-iot-security-threat-landscape-report-2024/
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
Search and Society: Reimagining Information Access for Radical FuturesBhaskar Mitra
The field of Information retrieval (IR) is currently undergoing a transformative shift, at least partly due to the emerging applications of generative AI to information access. In this talk, we will deliberate on the sociotechnical implications of generative AI for information access. We will argue that there is both a critical necessity and an exciting opportunity for the IR community to re-center our research agendas on societal needs while dismantling the artificial separation between the work on fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics in IR and the rest of IR research. Instead of adopting a reactionary strategy of trying to mitigate potential social harms from emerging technologies, the community should aim to proactively set the research agenda for the kinds of systems we should build inspired by diverse explicitly stated sociotechnical imaginaries. The sociotechnical imaginaries that underpin the design and development of information access technologies needs to be explicitly articulated, and we need to develop theories of change in context of these diverse perspectives. Our guiding future imaginaries must be informed by other academic fields, such as democratic theory and critical theory, and should be co-developed with social science scholars, legal scholars, civil rights and social justice activists, and artists, among others.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
Essentials of Automations: Optimizing FME Workflows with ParametersSafe Software
Are you looking to streamline your workflows and boost your projects’ efficiency? Do you find yourself searching for ways to add flexibility and control over your FME workflows? If so, you’re in the right place.
Join us for an insightful dive into the world of FME parameters, a critical element in optimizing workflow efficiency. This webinar marks the beginning of our three-part “Essentials of Automation” series. This first webinar is designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to utilize parameters effectively: enhancing the flexibility, maintainability, and user control of your FME projects.
Here’s what you’ll gain:
- Essentials of FME Parameters: Understand the pivotal role of parameters, including Reader/Writer, Transformer, User, and FME Flow categories. Discover how they are the key to unlocking automation and optimization within your workflows.
- Practical Applications in FME Form: Delve into key user parameter types including choice, connections, and file URLs. Allow users to control how a workflow runs, making your workflows more reusable. Learn to import values and deliver the best user experience for your workflows while enhancing accuracy.
- Optimization Strategies in FME Flow: Explore the creation and strategic deployment of parameters in FME Flow, including the use of deployment and geometry parameters, to maximize workflow efficiency.
- Pro Tips for Success: Gain insights on parameterizing connections and leveraging new features like Conditional Visibility for clarity and simplicity.
We’ll wrap up with a glimpse into future webinars, followed by a Q&A session to address your specific questions surrounding this topic.
Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your FME expertise and drive your projects to new heights of efficiency.
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
Software Delivery At the Speed of AI: Inflectra Invests In AI-Powered QualityInflectra
In this insightful webinar, Inflectra explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming software development and testing. Discover how AI-powered tools are revolutionizing every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design and prototyping to testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Learn about:
• The Future of Testing: How AI is shifting testing towards verification, analysis, and higher-level skills, while reducing repetitive tasks.
• Test Automation: How AI-powered test case generation, optimization, and self-healing tests are making testing more efficient and effective.
• Visual Testing: Explore the emerging capabilities of AI in visual testing and how it's set to revolutionize UI verification.
• Inflectra's AI Solutions: See demonstrations of Inflectra's cutting-edge AI tools like the ChatGPT plugin and Azure Open AI platform, designed to streamline your testing process.
Whether you're a developer, tester, or QA professional, this webinar will give you valuable insights into how AI is shaping the future of software delivery.
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the notifications, alerts, and approval requests using Slack for Bonterra Impact Management. The solutions covered in this webinar can also be deployed for Microsoft Teams.
Interested in deploying notification automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...
CityRank.ch: Visualizing Global Cities
1. Visualizing Global Citiesa dynamic tool for exploring indices of cities Seth Flaxman École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Joint workwith Jeffrey Huang, Xavier Comtesse, & John Stephenson
20. The Solution Chicago New York London Geneva 25 112.5 18.8 54.2 31.3 50 Based on the rank aggregation algorithm in “Learning to rank with combinatorial Hodge theory” by Xiaoye Jiang, Lek-Heng Lim, Yuan Yao, Yinyu Ye, 2008.
25. How can any of this be rigorous with varying definitions of what constitutes a “city?” Further, what exactly makes a city “global?” Doesn’t letting users generate their own rankings undermine the authority of indicators? Does the current economic crisis diminish the importance of cities? How might the general public find this information or creating their own rankings useful?
26. references State of the World's Cities 2008-2009: Harmonious Cities, United Nations Human Settlements Programme, October 2008, www.unhabitat.org Globalization and World Cities Research Network, www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc Learning to rank with combinatorial Hodge theory, www.arxiv.org More online: www.cityrank.ch/learn
You can find CityRank online at www.cityrank.ch. I’ll show a live demo a bit later, but in short, the idea of CityRank is that it is a repository of data on cities and it allows users to interact with this data by building their own rankings of cities. Here’s a view of the gallery of CityRank where various users have saved the rankings of cities that they created.
Now let me give you a brief outline of my talk.I’m going to talk about cities, why they’re interesting, why we should care about them, and why they’re becoming increasingly important in understanding the world.I am going to talk about the various types of data available on cities.Of course, I’m going to talk more about our tool, CityRank.If you are playing with it right now online, remember you will have plenty of time after my talk. Finally, I’ll end with some thoughts for future research.
Now, why cities?
This is a photograph of Istanbul from space. The land mass that you see on the left is Europe, the land mass you see on the right is Asia.Istanbul and its surrounding urban area have a population of 12.5 million, larger than the country of Greece. The reddish-gray patches are the result of centuries of urban sprawl;A settlement from 6500 BCE was discovered recently during construction of a rail tunnel in the city, linking Europe and Asia.How can we understand this region’s role connecting two continents? Istanbul has been a bridge between east and west much longer than this region has been a part of the modern State of Turkey, so we would not want to answer this question by looking at Turkey. Istanbul has been part of other large political bodies over its long history, empires have come and gone over thousands of years. What has remained is the city and what has been constant about the city, even as its name and rulers have changed, is its role as a connector. In the network of the cities of the world, Istanbul has a role to play because of its unique geography, and it continues to play that role as an important world city, the modern state of Turkey aside.
So let’s return to today and where we are right now. This is Paris from space. The UN is calling the 21st century the ”Century of the City” -- last year as you’ve probably heard for the first time in human history more than 50% of the world’s population was living in cities. [source: State of the World’s Cities 2008/2009 - Harmonious Cities – http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/getPage.asp?page=bookView&book=2562] By 2050, the world’s population as a whole is projected to be 70% urban.Cities are where we live and where we work. They’re where we make policy and where we make art. Cities are where politcal activity is organized. Cities are where economic activity is generated and cities are also where greenhouse gases are generated. I am not arguing that states do not matter; they do, but cities matter as well, and the way they are organized effects half the world’s population at least. They’re worth trying to understand.
Towards that end, let me talk about what sorts of data are available on cities, sources we considered drawing upon in creating a ranking of cities, which is let me remind you, where this all is headed. The take away message from this section is that as a whole, the body of data on the world’s cities is sorely lacking.
Now first, as you might expect, there are indeed a great deal of statistics on cities.Cities collect these statistics themselves, countries collect data on their cities, and of course NGOs, academics, and other organizations contribute as well. There are at least two challenging problems with city statistics.The first problem is in definitions. What’s a city? Urban agglomerations, metropolitan areas, and even city boundaries are not precise terms, which makes talking about the population of a city hard. And if population is hard, consider an index of higher education in which we assign institutions to cities—this assignment is not always obvious; we might all agree that Harvard and MIT belong with Boston, not Cambridge, but does my school, 60 kms from Geneva and in another canton belong with Geneva?The second problem is in the usability and compare-ability of data. Even if cities or organizations have data to share, the task of assembling relevant, accurate data collected using the same methodology on a comprehensive set of the cities of the world is very hard.For this second problem, we believe that with the Internet there is a great, if unrealized, potential for coordination and collaboration, and we’re hoping CityRank can spur that.
Moving from statistics to indicators, which are usually based in whole or in part on statistics. There are dozens if not hundreds of indicators for countries. Shown here is the is 2009 Global Peace Index. These types of indicators garner a lot of media attention and cover a lot of ground. [Source: http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/]These indicators are most useful when they’re updated regularly, their methodologies are transparent, and the input data sources and final results are freely available. So what about indicators for cities? Unfortunately, the number of city indicators is quite limited, especially when compared to the number of country indicators. And few are regularly updated. There are no more than two dozen city indicators out there.There’s a caveat to what I’m saying, which is that if you’re interested in specific countries, like the United States, or if you’re interested in cities within the European Union, say, then there are indicators out there. But the situation is bleak for the world as a whole.
So what is out there? And how good is it? Many if not most indicators are created by consulting groups for industry, so often full data is only available at a prohibitive price for researchers, and even if some data is available to the public, methodologies are often not published. For example, the consulting group Mercer compiles a Quality of Living Index every year, garnering press headlines for the 50 top cities. But as they readily admit, their stated goal is to help “governments and major companies place employees” not the kind of focus that would be useful for comparing the quality of life in cities for inhabitants in general.The City of London publishes a Global Financial Centres Index and MasterCard publishes a Worldwide Centers of Commerce Index.There is some academic work as well, like the Digital Governance in Municipalities Worldwide study and the various academic studies from the Globalization and World Cities Research Network at Loughborough University.But the problem is clear--where are the indicators on cultural production or innovation? Intellectual and academic achievements? Environmental sustainability? Health of residents?They just don’t exist. Yet. But we’re hoping someone will create them, and we’re hoping CityRank can help with that.
So I’ve told you about indicators and statistics, and the problems with both when it comes to cities.A final point I’d like to mention is that indicators and statistics are themselves limited in understanding the roles that world cities play in the network of cities. PJ Taylor of the World Cities Research Network makes the critical point that the correct analytical methodology is not to look inside a city, and count the number of lawyers or bankers or NGOs. Instead, it’s to look at a city’s position in the network of cities around the globe. Analyzing position in a network means looking at the connections, the ties, between cities. Alas, this data is in very short supply. There is data on flights between airports, a nice visualization of which is shown here, there’s data on Multinational Corporation headquarters and their branches and there’s data on advanced service firms. But that’s basically it. So in sum, there’s stats but there’s plenty of space for more and better coordination, there’s indicators, but not many and not with good coverage, and there’s network data, which I just told you about.
OK. Now I will turn to our contribution, the CityRank tool. Our research had three goals:- First, we wanted to get a handle on the problems with city data I just outlined, share that knowledge with others, and begin thinking about a framework for collaboration to address those problemsSecond, we hope that CityRank is an example of empowering users to interact with data that is meaningful to them in straightforward waysThird, we wanted to experiment with the idea of rank aggregation and specifically with a new algorithm that was just published in the last year