Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Houston Looks for a Smarter, More Equitable Path to Hurricane Recovery

    The city of Houston is changing its approach to measuring the full scope of damage from Hurricane Harvey so it can get help where it is most needed and improve future flood mitigation. Using data from numerous sources, Civis Analytics found unmet housing needs were far greater than initially recorded and low-income areas were hit disproportionately harder, even though recovery funding often goes to areas with higher housing values. Now city officials are working to implement solutions based on the data in order to allocate limited funds where they will be most effective.

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  • Digital Platform Uses Peer Pressure To Motivate Young Adults To Vote In Election

    VoteCrew is a digital messaging platform that brings together friends and acquaintances into online teams who pledge to vote and then are held accountable by their peers. The platform was created to increase voter turnout in people 35 and under by using peer pressure. The platform has 2,256 members in 308 teams across the country on about 30 college campuses. Preliminary results show its members voted at a higher rate than the demographic group more broadly, although it is too early to accurately evaluate its impact.

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  • The California Indigenous Peoples Using Fire for Agroforestry

    The Karuk and Yoruk tribes use prescribed burning to keep land healthy and encourage the growth of traditional foods and medicines. New resources and partnerships are helping to bring back small-scale fires and revive important cultural practices.

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  • Sexual-Harassment-Reporting Apps Help Stop Abuse in Global City Streets

    Using data collection and visualization, apps like SafeCity, HarassMap, and #WalkFreely are crowdsourcing locations where individuals have been sexually harassed or assaulted so that others know to take precautions. Some operate on a global scale, others locally, but what they all offer is a platform for people to share their story and hopefully prevent it from happening again. Such apps have led to action from community members, the media, and officials who have taken notice of the high rates in certain places and taken action.

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  • The Crime Machine, Part II

    CompStat seemed like a miracle of technology and data when it was rolled out in New York City in the 1990s. Crime dropped as police leadership demanded precincts report every crime and what they were doing about it at weekly meetings where they were pressured to conform to this new system. But this also resulted in police distorting actual crime data to avoid reporting crimes in their districts and the push for increased police activity resulted in cops targeting minorities for minor offenses.

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  • The Crime Machine, Part I

    The creation of CompStat fostered a huge drop in crime rates in New York City by the 1990s. The idea came from an odd and obsessive transit cop was to track every single crime daily in every precinct and use that data to systematically go after everything from murders to low-level crimes once ignored by police. It was a drastic shift in the way NYPD worked and was credited with making the city far safer, but was also flawed.

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  • Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

    Amazon trashed its automated resume-reviewing software after the company discovered that the software had taught itself to discriminate against women applicants. The situation shows the limits of machine learning in human resources.

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  • This crowdsourced map helps people find the kind of bathroom they need

    Road trips are hard for people who have special needs when it comes to using the restroom, whether that be for health or gender or other reasons. Inspired to make a change after having a daughter with a specific type of illness, Christina Ingoglia, who has a GIS background, created a crowdsourced “Restroom Map” where users can note inclusive restrooms to better improve the travel experience for many, with up to 260 spots plotted so far.

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  • Kenya's Government Is Evicting Indigenous People. Tech Helps Them Fight Back.

    Kenya's indigenous communities are fighting the government's attempts to seize the land they live on using an app called This is My Backyard, or TIMBY. The app helps users to securely encrypt videos and pictures that can then be used for legal and publicity purposes, allowing community members to gather evidence and hold leaders accountable.

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  • "Integrity Idol"

    With support from Accountability Lab and Transparency International, seven countries have held “Integrity Idol” contests to recognize their most honest and helpful public servants. Winners have become people others want to emulate. The contests help fight corruption and inspire civic participation.

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