Re: Use Case: BetaNYC 3/5

Hoi,


> Don't you think we should create some use cases focused on the usage of
> PROV-O, QB, DCAT, ORG... ?
>
This sounds a bit awkward to me. I would have expected that the usage of
the vocabulary would be derived from the use-cases, and not the inverse.
If we make up use-cases to the aim of illustrating some best practices
these BP may be disconnected from the concrete happenings...
Rather, if we would like an existing use-case to use some vocabulary
instead of something of their own we can suggest this change and try to get
it implemented, and/or understand why this situation exists.

Cheers,
Christophe


>
> Best,
> Ig
>
>
> 2014-03-06 12:51 GMT-03:00 Steven Adler <adler1@us.ibm.com>:
>
> Last night, I attended another BetaNYC Hackathon in Brooklyn, where I met
>> another group of passionate citizens developing, and learning to develop,
>> fascinating apps for Smarter Cities.  This week we were about 15 people in
>> the room, and we started with a lightning round of "what are you working
>> on" descriptions from project leads.  There were only three people in the
>> room who had participated in the hackathon the week prior, and this is
>> pretty normal.  BetaNYC has 1600 developers registered in their network and
>> every week coders rotate in and out of meetups and projects in an endless
>> and unplanned cycle that continuously inspires creativity and motivation by
>> showcasing new projects.
>>
>>
>>
>> The first project we heard about came from a local nonprofit called Tomorrow
>> Lab <http://tomorrow-lab.com/>, who have designed hardware that measures
>> how many bikes travel on streets they measure.  It uses simple hardware and
>> open source software that connects two sensors with a pneumatic tube that
>> measures impressions for weight and axel distance that differentiates
>> between bikes and cars.  Its called WayCount.  The text below is from their
>> website.  In the room we discussed how WayCount data could be combined with
>> NYPD crash reports to more accurately identify the spots in NYC where bike
>> accidents per bike numbers occur and identify ways to remediate.
>>
>> WayCount is a platform for crowd-sourcing massive amounts of near
>> real-time automobile and bicycle traffic data from a nodal network of
>> inexpensive hardware devices.   For the first time ever, you can gather
>> accurate volume, rate, and speed measurements of automobiles and bicycles,
>> then easily upload and map the information to a central online database.
>>  The WayCount device works like other traffic counters, but has two key
>> differences: lower cost and open data. At 1/5th price of the least
>> expensive comparible product, WayCount is affordable. The WayCount Data
>> Uploader allows you to seamlessly upload and map your latest traffic count
>> data, making it instantly available to anyone online.
>>
>> Collectively, the WayCount user community has the potential to build a
>> rich repository of traffic count data for bike paths, city alley ways,
>> neighborhood streets, and busy boulevards from around the world. With a
>> better understanding of automobile and bicycle ridership patterns, we can
>> inform the design of better cities and towns.
>>
>> The WayCount platform is an important addition to the process of
>> measuring the impact of transportation design, and creating livable streets
>> by adding bicycle lanes, public spaces, and developing smart transportation
>> management systems. By creating open-data, we can increase governmental
>> transparency, and provide constituencies with the essential data they need
>> to advocate for rational and necessary improvements to the design,
>> maintenance, and policy of transportation systems.
>>
>> The hardware and software of the WayCount device and website were
>> designed and engineered by Tomorrow Lab.
>>
>> WayCount devices are currently for sale on the website, *WayCount.com*<http://waycount.com/>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> We also discussed some ideas to provide policy makers with better sources
>> of Open Data to guide policy discussions, and then broke up into four
>> groups focusing on different projects.  One group discussed how to save the
>> New York Library on 42nd Street from the imminent transformation of its
>> main reading room and function as a lending library.  Another group scraped
>> web pages for NYPD crash data for an app comparing accident rates across
>> the 5 boroughs.  Some people just spent time talking about who they are and
>> what they want to work on, what they want to learn, and how to get more
>> involved.
>>
>> I spent an hour with a young programmer who had worked on the NYC
>> Property Tax Map I shared with you last week.  He showed me a Chrome Plugin
>> he is working on that provides data about leading politicians whenever
>> their names are mentioned on a webpage.  It is called Data Explorer for US
>> Politics and it provides some nifty data on things like campaign
>> contributions compared to committee assignments.
>>
>>
>>
>> I asked him where he got his data and he showed me DBpedia<http://dbpedia.org/About>,
>> which "is a crowd-sourced community effort to extract structured
>> information from *Wikipedia* <http://wikipedia.org/> and make this
>> information available on the Web. DBpedia allows you to ask sophisticated
>> queries against Wikipedia, and to link the different data sets on the
>> Web to Wikipedia data. We hope that this work will make it easier for the
>> huge amount of information in Wikipedia to be used in some new interesting
>> ways. Furthermore, it might inspire new mechanisms for navigating, linking,
>> and improving the encyclopedia itself. "
>>
>> Then I asked him how he knows that DBpedia data is accurate and reliable
>> and he just looked at me.  "It's on the internet..."  Yeah, and so where
>> weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  But they were only on the internet
>> and never in Iraq.  And herein lies a huge problem about Open Data on the
>> Web; there is no corroboration of fact, no metadata describing where it
>> came from, how it was derived, calculated, presented.  No one attests to
>> its veracity, yet we all use it on faith which just ain't good enough.
>>
>> This is why we have the W3C Data on the Web Best Practices Working Group<https://www.w3.org/2013/dwbp/wiki/Main_Page>- to create new vocabulary and metadata standards that attach citations and
>> lineage, attestations and data quality metrics to Open Data so that
>> everyone can understand where it came from, how much to trust it, and even
>> how to improve it.
>>
>> At the end of the evening, we also discussed IBM Smarter Cities, the
>> Portland System Dynamics Demo, and the possibility of hosting a BetaNYC
>> meetup at IBM on 590 Madison Avenue.  It was a fascinating evening and I
>> encourage all to check out the links provided in this writeup and get out
>> and join a meetup near you.
>>
>> Talk to you tomorrow.
>>
>> Best Regards,
>>
>> Steve
>>
>> Motto: "Do First, Think, Do it Again"
>>
>>
>
>
> --
>
> Ig Ibert Bittencourt
> Professor Adjunto III - Universidade Federal de Alagoas (UFAL)
> Vice-Coordenador da Comissão Especial de Informática na Educação
> Líder do Centro de Excelência em Tecnologias Sociais
> Co-fundador da Startup MeuTutor Soluções Educacionais LTDA.
>



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