Big Data and Privacy: Understanding the Possibilities and Pitfalls of the Data Revolution in Germany

As the first event paper in the digitising Europe’s series, this event paper captures the major key themes emerging from our events in Berlin in November 2015. The Berlin workshop and public forum focused on the possibilities and pitfalls
of using Big Data analytics for economic growth and public good. Bringing together German academic institutions, think tanks, businesses and other thought-leaders, … Read More

“Quantifying the Data Deluge and the Data Drought”

This Technical Note was written by Martin Hilbert. Funding for this paper was generously provided by the World Bank. Data-Pop Alliance is currently developing this note as one of the three inputs for the World Bank’s 2016 World Development Report: “Digital Dividends” (forthcoming).  This paper investigates how the world’s Big Data capacity can be understood in terms of the world’s … Read More

Cartagena Data Festival

Data-Pop Alliance organized this event in April 2015 along with other partner organizations such as ODI, PARIS21, UNFPA, Africa Gathering, and many others.  The Cartagena Data Festival was a three-day event in April 2015 that brought together more than 300 researchers, experts, policy advocates, and data visualization designers, to convene on ideas, innovations, and partnerships that drive a data revolution. The event … Read More

“Moves on the Street: Classifying Crime Hotspots Using Aggregated Anonymized Data on People Dynamics”

This Empirical Paper was written by Andrey Bogomolov, Bruno Lepri, Jacopo Staiano, Emmanuel Letouzé, Nuria Oliver, Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland, and Fabio Pianesi, in collaboration with the World Bank Group, BKF, and Telefónica.  Using a multimodal, data-driven, and place-centric approach, researchers were able to predict high- and low-concentrated crime hotspots throughout London. The findings, published in September 2015, make predictions using … Read More

Big Data and Human Rights AAAS SRHRL Conference

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 participated in panel discussion.  The AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition, created in January 2009, brings together scientists, engineers, and … Read More

“Big Data and Development: An Overview”

This White Paper was written by Emmanuel Letouzé in collaboration with SciDev.net and the World Bank Group. “Big Data and Development: An Overview” describes the fundamental nature of Big Data as an ecosystem and how it engages with society. The Big Data ecosystem is stimulated by a supply for data and analytics capacities and the demand for better, faster, and … Read More

“The Law, Politics and Ethics of Cell Phone Data Analytics”

This paper is a Data-Pop Alliance White Paper. It was written by Emmanuel Letouzé and Patrick Vinck, in collaboration with the World Bank Group and the D4D team. “The Law, Politics and Ethics of Cell Phone Data Analytics” examines Call Detail Records (CDRs), a record that includes among other data, the starting time of the call (or message), its duration, … Read More

“Official Statistics, Big Data, and Human Development”

This White Paper was written by Johannes Jütting and Emmanuel Letouzé, in collaboration with PARIS21.  The White Paper aims to contribute to the ongoing and future debate about the relationships between Big Data, official statistics and development—primarily by revisiting and reframing the terms and parameters of this debate. Most current discussions on Big Data mainly focus on if and how … Read More

Reflections on Big Data & the Sustainable Development Goals: Measuring & Achieving Development Progress in the Big Data Era

This Working Note was written by Emmanuel Letouzé and served as an input to the Big Data and SDGs Chapter of the 2015 Global Sustainable Development Report. Whether and how Big Data could loosely “contribute to the SDGs”—in other words, and in broad terms, the collision and intersection of these two hot topics in the public development discourse—has received significant … Read More