Data-Pop Alliance’s “OPAL for Humanitarian Action (OPAL4HA)” project was selected by the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Innovation Accelerator as one of four early-stage projects to join its Humanitarian Innovation Accelerator Programme (HIAP), out of 379 applications from 85 countries. The 6-month selection process involved participating in a Bootcamp and pitching to the HIAP team and funders along 16 finalists in … Read More
Our “Overview and Outlook 2022-2024” is Out!
Download the “Overview and Outlook 2022-2024” Report 10 Year Anniversary Edition Finding appropriate metrics to summarize a decade of work by and at Data-Pop Alliance is not easy. It could be the number of projects completed (over 100), of our publications (92), of countries where we have worked (over 30), or partners we have collaborated with (countless). It could also … Read More
LWL #39 The Data Police: How AI and Big Data are Reshaping Crime Prevention
LINKS WE LIKE #39 Imagine being able to detect crime hotspots in your city, use facial recognition software to match camera footage from a robbery with a database of images, or even predict the likelihood of a crime (including time and location) before it occurs. While this might sound like science fiction (Minority Report, which came out 20 years ago, … Read More
The CODE for Building Participatory and Ethical Data Projects
DISCUSSION PIECE This piece was published with the support and as part of the Data Values Project (#DataValues) launched by the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, of which Data-Pop Alliance is a founding member. Photo: Rawpixel (Shutterstock) What’s the best strategy for ensuring development projects adhere to ethical guidelines? It’s a complex question as answers may vary by sector … Read More
Addressing the Unrealized Potential of MD4D
DISCUSSION PIECE Piece originally published on DIAL’s website. Last week, the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) and Data Pop Alliance made public a free online handbook on Mobile Data for Development (MD4D), available here on the DIAL Online Catalog, as a result of a 10-month collaboration between both organizations. (Note: You can navigate the handbook through your web browser, as well … Read More
New Report Series: Assessment of Impacts and Implications of COVID-19 in Four Sub-Saharan African Countries
Data-Pop Alliance (DPA) is glad to share the main outputs of a year-long collaboration with four UNDP Country Offices in sub-Saharan Africa in the form of four reports titled Impacts and Implications of COVID-19 in Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, South Sudan and Togo. These reports, developed as part of UNDP’s technical leadership of the UN system’s framework for the socio-economic response … Read More
Paper “Sharing is Caring: Four Key Requirements for Sustainable Private Data Sharing and Use for Public Good”
How can data be used for the benefit of society without violating privacy? A paper by Data-Pop Alliance and Vodafone Institute describes four requirements.
Introducing the Complete Paper Series: “Big Data to Address Global Development Challenges”
These 4 research papers were developed in collaboration with and funded by the Agence française de développement (AFD) between 2016 and 2019 under a joint research programme with Data-Pop Alliance and research partners titled “Strengthening the evidence-base for leveraging Big Data to address global development challenges”. The starting point was the realization, in 2016, that ‘we’ still had little hard academic evidence … Read More
Harnessing Big Data and Artificial Intelligence for Development Effectiveness
Originally published by Southern Voice January 21, 2019. By Emmanuel Letouzé and Micol Stock The development effectiveness landscape has been significantly transformed since the two major milestones of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005 and the 2008 Accra Agenda for Action. On the political economy side, the transition from the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the recent rise … Read More
Overview of Data-Pop Alliance-United Nations Systems Staff College Training Course on “Leveraging Big Data for Sustainable Development” in Nairobi June 27-29, 2017
[This post has been updated to include the supporting pedagogical material] Data-Pop Alliance ran a 3-day training workshop from June 27-29, 2017 on “Leveraging Big Data for sustainable development” at the United Nations Office at Nairobi (UNON) in partnership with the United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC), as part of a comprehensive program to respond to major ‘Big Data literacy’ and data science needs and … Read More
Algorithms and the Social Fabric: Accountability, Governance and Ethics
Algorithms are profoundly changing the world we live in; they seem to be everywhere, yet often hidden and generally poorly understood by the general public. They are referred to as ‘black boxes,’ concealing sophisticated mechanisms that crunch citizen-consumers’ data to make predictions that turn into prescriptions, and lock these subjects into their condition. However, the rise of algorithms may also … Read More
Open Algorithms: A New Paradigm for Using Private Data for Social Good
The term “datafication” was coined to describe the consequences of the digital revolution: the growing generation, collection and storage of digital information concerning all aspects of the physical world (including earth activity, weather, climate, and biosphere), human lives and activities (including DNA, vital signs, consumption, and credit scores), and societal patterns (including communications, economic activity, and mobility).
Promoting a “People-Centered” Data Revolution at the World Humanitarian Summit—and Beyond
Data-Pop Alliance will co-host two side events during the first World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) held in Istanbul, Turkey this week: a remote side event with UNOCHA in New York on May 23rd, and an official WHS side event in Istanbul with UNDP, UNICEF and WFP, on May 24th. Both events will deal with the applications and implications of data and … Read More
Big Data and Migration, Part 1
This is the first in a series of blog posts on our ongoing work exploring the applications and implications of Big Data and migration. People have always been on the move—whether to seek refuge from war and persecution, find jobs and create businesses, flee in the aftermath of natural disasters, or get a degree somewhere else. From country to city, … Read More
Taming the Data Storm to Shape a Human-Centered Data Revolution: Contextualizing and Announcing Digitising Europe’s Stakeholders’ Dialogues
While the Library of Alexandria was once believed to contain the sum of human knowledge around the third century B.C.E, it is now near impossible to quantify and increasingly difficult to store the volume of data generated by humans as a result of the advent of digital technologies and societies.
“A new and sometimes awkward relationship” on Big Data and Human Rights should be Further Explored
The AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Sciences) Science and Human Rights Coalition organized a 2-day conference on ‘Big Data and Human Rights’ on January 15 and 16 in Washington DC, where Data-Pop Alliance’s co-founders Emmanuel Letouzé and Patrick Vinck (who also serves on AAAS’ Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility) presented their perspectives on this critical yet still … Read More
A few Big Data Bites
Big data: early years and foundational pieces An early mention of the upcoming “Industrial Revolution of data” can be found in a blog by Joe Hellerstein, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. It was published in November 2008, a few months after Wired had claimed that ‘data deluge’ would signify “the end of theory” and make the … Read More
Key Facts & Figures on Big Data and Call Detail Records
What is big data, and could it transform development policy? Emmanuel Letouzé takes a close look at this emerging field. In just a few years ‘big data’ have affected industries and activities from marketing and advertising to intelligence gathering and law enforcement, stirring much excitement and scepticism. With policymaking increasingly looking like big data’s next frontier, is this phenomenon — … Read More
Data “Inflation” Table
Unit Size What it means Bit (b) 1 or 0 Short for “binary digit”, after the binary code (1 or 0) computers use to store and process data—including text, numbers, images, videos, etc. Byte (B) 8 bits Enough information to create a number or an English letter in computer code. It is the basic unit of computing. Kilobyte (KB) 1,000, … Read More
