COLOMBIA
Overview
Latin America is one of the most urban regions in the world, with around 80% of its population living in cities. Colombia follows the region’s pattern with around 70% of urban population in the country. Nonetheless, in recent years, urban areas have faced a rise in insecurity and violence. Particularly main cities like Cali, Medellín and Bogotá deal with high levels of insecurity in terms of, for instance, homicides, theft and burglary. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, places like Bogotá experienced surges in domestic violence against women, as seen in the 230% increase in calls received by the city’s assistance phone line for women.
At the same time, Colombia is one of the leading countries in Latin America in data integration to public offices, and is the first country in the region to create a public policy for the use of big data that aims to have 100% of public archives digitalized and published by 2022. It’s in this landscape that Data-Pop Alliance has established a strong network of national, international, and regional partner organizations fostering a fruitful collaborative environment in Colombia, helping catalyze the advancement of projects such as the ones featured below.
National Big Data Strategy for Colombia
Technical assistance project to the Department of National Planning (DNP) of Colombia and Innpulsa, to support the development of Colombia’s first ever national Big Data strategy to be presented to the President of Colombia in 2018.
Ciudata Segura
A project at Brigham and Women’s Physicians Organization and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, as part of Data-Pop Alliance, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The main objective of this project is to generate sophisticated analyses about urban crime and violence in LAC cities, starting in Colombia.
OPAL Project
Colombia is one of the pilot countries of the Open Algorithms (OPAL) project. The aim during the pilot phase is to develop a Beta platform and a suite of open algorithms, all accessible and open source, as well as training and engagement activities around the platform.
Identifying hotspots of domestic violence against women in São Paulo and Bogotá
Our goal with this project is to use an innovative approach to identify geographical areas where women could be at most-risk of experiencing violence in the domestic setting, by leveraging traditional and non traditional sources of data in two Latin American cities: São Paulo (12.2 million inhabitants) and Bogotá (7.4 million inhabitants).
The project also seeks to generate key insights about the factors that are at play when VaW takes place, during and after a pandemic such as COVID-19. This involves building a statistical VaW risk model and a data visualization tool. A workshop and partnerships with key stakeholders from across sectors will further contribute to ensure the incidence and sustainability of the project.
Capacity Building
In December 2016, Data-Pop Alliance ran a 3-day training workshop “Leveraging Big Data for sustainable development” in Bogotá in partnership with the United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC), as part of our Global Training Program.
Another edition of the workshop was held in Bogotá in May 2019. For more information, please contact: vcasasbuenas@datapopalliance.org
Research
“Characterizing and Analyzing Urban Dynamics in Bogotá and Medellin”
Bruno Lepri (Fondazione Bruno Kessler), Marco De Nadai (Fondazione Bruno Kessler), Jacopo Staiano (Sorbonne Universités), Daniele Quercia (Bell Labs)
“Opportunities and Requirements for Leveraging Big Data for Official Statistics and the SDGs in Latin America”
Funded by the World Bank in partnership with Colombia’s Administrative Department of National Statistics (DANE)
Laboratorio Urbano Bogotá
Data-Pop Alliance, the Economic Development Secretary of Bogotá (SDDE) and the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce (CCB) signed a collaboration agreement in May 2016 to jointly establish an Urban Lab Bogotá. The Lab is envisaged as an open space of interaction and collaborative work aiming to result in innovative, applicable, and replicable data-driven solutions for the city of Bogotá. This space seeks to be at the forefront of people-centered public innovation, by creating solutions in an inclusive manner, engaging the public and private sectors, academia, and above all, citizens. The LabUrbano is hosted at Logyca.
Periodic Table of Data Tools
Hosted on laburbano.org, interactive platform gathering numerous methods and tools for collecting, storing, processing, analyzing, sharing, transmitting and visualizing data. Please note that the platform is still under construction.
Click to view a beta version.
BogOData
Hosted on laburbano.org, BogOData is one of the first platforms containing both public and private information about the city. Citizens have access to over 100 databases, covering different topics, in an open format. The platform was developed with the support of OpenDataSoft.
Click to learn more
Lab Urbano partners:
