Global Pulse is predicated on the understanding that today “new data” is being generated as a by-product of people’s activities at a rate that is unprecedented in human history. That deluge of passively produced data may hold insights about how, for better or worse, people’s lives are impacted by shocks like volatility in food and fuel prices.
Part of Global Pulse’s approach is learning how to...
Last year, we launched a large-scale mobile phone based survey to ask people from five countries in different regions of the world how they are dealing with the effects of the global economic crisis. In June of this year we partnered with Visualizing.org to host “Giving Voice to the Vulnerable through Data and Design”: a challenge to visualize the voices of vulnerable populations in times of...
Global Pulse is looking for signals that could be used as proxy indicators for collective changes in human behaviors in response to the early impacts of crises. In addition to our hypothesis about mobile services as sensors, another potentially valuable type of data is that generated by information seeking behaviors - specifically, by what people search for online.
An individual search is a...
We are very excited to announce "Giving Voice to the Vulnerable Through Data and Design," a 6-week challenge with Visualizing.org, to visualize results from an SMS survey on how people are coping with the economic downturn in 5 countries.
Last year we worked with MobileActive.org to implement a mobile phone based survey gathering bottom-up information from everyday citizens in order to gain a...
The use of mobile phones for quick-time data collection is proliferating around the world. To get a better understanding of the scale and scope of these new data collection efforts, the Global Pulse initiative partnered with MobileActive.org, a global network of people using mobile technology for social change, to conduct a survey of present and planned mobile data collection efforts. The survey...
This article is part of a special Global Pulse Guest Blogger Series: “Data Mining for Development: Methodological Innovations & Challenges.”
Vanessa Frias-Martinez, PhD is a scientific researcher in the Data Mining and User Modeling Group at Telefonica Research in Madrid, Spain. Her main interest is in technologies for emerging markets and sustainable development. Her research combines...
How do you find indicators for changes human well-being in “big data”? How do you know which “digital signals” are relevant enough to warrant further investigation? These questions are at the core of Global Pulse’s research.
The video below, from Global Pulse’s 8 November briefing to the UN General Assembly, provides a succinct overview of five research projects we completed with our partners (...
Global Pulse is excited to announce its contribution to a unique new iPad app, called “PopTech: World Rebalancing,” which is available now from the Apple app store. The interactive app was developed by PopTech, and incorporates some of the preliminary results from Global Pulse’s Global Snapshot of Wellbeing project, a collaboration with Jana to experiment with replicating the standards of...
Prepared for the United Nations Global Pulse team, the Future of Real-Time Report identifies key trends emerging around the capture and transmission of real-time information streams.
Evolving data-rich technologies are providing organizations, governments and businesses with a rapid way to monitor the well-being of communities and individuals without significant infrastructure or spend. For...