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Ben Snaith

If We're Not Careful, Tech Could Hurt the Fight against COVID-19 - Scientific American ... - 0 views

  • Call out the risks of new technologies. Understanding technologies often makes you uniquely equipped to explain their risks. Investigate the technologies others are proposing, make sure you understand them, and if necessary sound the alarm bells.
  • Respond to technological and nontechnological calls to action.
  • Finally, consider whom your project shifts power away from and whom it shifts power to. Ownership of data is a form of power: Do you provide meaningful opt-in to data collection? Whom are you giving access to this data?
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • 4. How does your technology shift power?
  • As an example, see this paper on the privacy implications of contact tracing and the authors’ explicit statement of how their ideas should and should not be used. In many cases, your technology’s limitations mean it should not influence policy decisions; state this up front and repeat it as necessary. 
  • these spaces often obscure the voices of the most vulnerable—including communities without access to technology; people who are unhoused, in nursing homes or in prisons; and those who cannot speak freely. Find people and organizations that center vulnerable communities. Listen carefully. What do they think is most pressing? Do they want you to build your technology for them, with them, or not at all?
    • fionntan
       
      Interesting to think about this mobility data. What is and isn't collected about vulnerable people?
    • Ben Snaith
       
      agree. we made this point in a mobility policy consultation, so I can recycle some thinking
  • 1. Are you listening to experts and vulnerable communities?
Ben Snaith

Apples and pears? Comparing Google and Apple mobility data | Urban Big Data Centre - 0 views

  • The measures have quite different underlying methodologies. Details are very scant, but it is clear that Apple base their measures on requests for directions while Google base theirs on mobile phone locations.
Ben Snaith

Graphing the Pandemic Economy by Michael Spence & Chen Long - Project Syndicate - 0 views

  • To be sure, mobility is only one indicator of economic contraction. Risk avoidance by individuals, companies, and other institutions also could play a role in depressing economic activity, even in the absence of mandated lockdowns. But as a variable that captures the state of economic activity, mobility has several major advantages.
  • First, it is one of the few big-data metrics that both captures current activities and is available in more than 130 economies on a daily basis. Second, it is an endogenous variable, in the sense that it reflects both the impact of lockdowns and people’s choices, which often are motivated by risk aversion. And, third, it appears to capture a substantial portion of GDP variation across economies and over time.
olivierthereaux

CovidJSON | Standards based GeoJSON data model for infection data - 0 views

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    A proposed data standard (GeoJSON data model) for exchanging data for viral infection tests, contact events used for contact tracing and regional infection statistics. The model is based on OGC/ISO Observations & measurements Standard (OGC O&M, ISO 19156) concepts. Created specifically for recording and exchanging data on SARS-CoV-2 infection tests, but likely applicable also to describing test data for detecting other infectious diseases too.
fionntan

Italian contact tracing app open source on GitHub - 0 views

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    Immuni is a technological solution that centres on an iOS and Android smartphone app. It helps us to fight the COVID-19 epidemic by notifying users at risk of carrying the virus as early as possible-even when they are asymptomatic. These users can then isolate themselves to avoid infecting others, and seek medical advice. Immuni's design and development are based on six main principles: utility, accessibility, accuracy, privacy, scalability, and transparency.
Ben Snaith

When there's an app that can save lives, there will be no need to download it out of a ... - 0 views

  • Still, it can’t do any harm to download the app, right? Actually, no. Unless the government compels employers to pay people to quarantine for 14 days every time they receive an alert, people may feel pressured to ignore the alerts and keep working, even if that risks their health and that of their contacts. Also, not every worker is entitled to sick pay. Those are policy problems, not an app problem, but if we don’t solve them, the app won’t work and the virus will continue to spread.
Ben Snaith

Safe distancing tool for rail and metro operators launched - Smart Cities World - 0 views

  • It shows how people move into, out of and between stations, average wait times, and even occupancy on trains. It monitors crowd density in specific areas, such as concourse, stairwell, platform and carriage, and can be expanded to provide station-wide density and flow insights.
  • Alarms and actions are triggered when threshold limits are reached, enabling rapid responses, like directing passenger flows, closing turnstiles and updating digital signage, among others. In addition, operators could also improve their sanitation responsiveness, directing teams to where cleaning is most needed.
  • To help passengers plan their journeys, operators can also share data via websites, apps and other platforms. This information enables travellers to choose a less-crowded station or platform or alter their travel time to reduce risks and maintain social distance.
Ben Snaith

About this Project | COVID-19 County Social Distancing Reporter - 0 views

  • In achieving these goals, we started by applying our experience at Camber and the experience of the epidemiological teams, and taking into account the differences between aggregated human movements that are predictable and movements that are not, notably socialization. Presenting both radius of gyration and entropy gives a more complete picture of socialization patterns within a county. For example, a high RoG and low entropy could indicate a population that needs to travel far to go to work or the grocery store, but are otherwise staying home; a low RoG and high entropy could indicate a more dense area where people are staying near home but are still moving in their neighborhood. Both are important signals needing different interventions.*
    • Ben Snaith
       
      yo @fionntan this seems helpful, I just don't really get it
  • In collaboration with epidemiologists within the COVID-19 Mobility Data Network including the Harvard School of Public Health, Direct Relief, Princeton, and many others, we built this dashboard as an enhanced offering to public health officials that builds further on others’ early work product. This effort provides a more accurate and actionable understanding of the effectiveness of social distancing and other policy interventions aimed at reducing or slowing the spread of COVID-19.
  • In developing this dashboard, we began with several goals. First, we worked with public-health researchers to understand what they needed and provide them with the most-important data and metrics. Second, we worked with experts to ensure that we used privacy-forward practices in developing these metrics. Finally, we aim to iterate based on new information and feedback from the public and researchers to continue to aid the fight against COVID-19.
Ben Snaith

Statistics Estonia: people stay in one location 20 hours per day on average - Statistic... - 0 views

  • Statistics Estonia’s mobility analysis revealed that since the emergency situation and movement restrictions were implemented, people living in Estonia stay in their main location 20 hours per day on average. The distance covered in one day as well as the number of trips has decreased. The revised analysis shows that the share of people staying in their main location has increased by 16 percentage points, which means that an estimated 200,000 more people have stayed local.
  • For the mobility analysis, Statistics Estonia used aggregate tables of the movement analysis of mobile phone numbers, which were received from mobile operators. These were used as the basis for calculating the rate for staying local for the whole country.
fionntan

Use of apps in the COVID-19 response and the loss of privacy protection | Nature Medicine - 0 views

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    Mobile apps provide a convenient source of tracking and data collection to fight against the spread of COVID-19. We report our analysis of 50 COVID-19-related apps, including their use and their access to personally identifiable information, to ensure that the right to privacy and civil liberties are protected.
Ben Snaith

Greater Manchester STILL doesn't know how many people are testing positive for COVID-19... - 0 views

  • But one exasperated local source said the problem lay with the data itself, which they said cannot currently be broken down to local level and therefore cannot be usefully shared with councils.
  • The Department of Health and Social Care said it was 'actively working on a solution to share anonymised data with our stakeholders', with councils a top priority. It said it had been engaging with the Local Government Association on the issue.
  • It is understood Greater Manchester is now trying to persuade the government to merge the two testing systems together in a partnership, so that public health departments can get hold of all the relevant results.
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