City of Mesa Newsroom Announcement

Mesa department director appointed to EPA committee 08-22-2016 at 12:53:00 PM Source: http://www.mesanow.org City of Mesa Environmental Management & Sustainability Director Scott Bouchie has been appointed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPAs) Local Government Advisory Committee. [image to the left from Phoenix GoGreen] The Local Government Advisory Committee (LGAC) is composed primarily of elected and appointed local officials, along with several state representatives and environmental interest groups from across the country. The LGAC provides advice and recommendations that assist the EPA in developing a stronger partnership with local governments through building state and local capacity to deliver environmental services and programs. Blogger's note: Mr. Bouchie might have a very full plate to deal with chronic non-attainment here in Mesa and Maricopa County for violating EPA Clean Air Standards. For more than ten days [including yesterday] High Pollution Ozone Alerts have been in effect. The ultimate goal of the LGAC is to provide the citizens of the United States with more efficient and effective environmental protection at the community, state and federal level. The LGAC crafts its advice through the help of four workgroups and a Small Communities Advisory subcommittee. The workgroups include:

Air, Climate and Energy Workgroup Cleaning up Our Communities Workgroup Expanding the Conversation (Environmental Justice) Workgroup Protecting America's Waters Workgroup Scott Bouchie was appointed to two workgroups, Air, Climate and Energy and Protecting America's Waters, and is the only representative from Arizona serving on the committee. City of Mesa Councilmember Dave Richins recently ended his term on the national committee where he served for four years. Bouchie has worked in the municipal arena for twenty years focusing on air quality, water quality, renewables, energy efficiency, resource conservation and resource recovery. His position at the City of Mesa has required him to be on both sides of the equation [Blogger'sNote: usually not a good idea] - as someone who is regulating activities and as someone who is responsible for assuring compliance, or being regulated by EPA requirements. "I am so excited to represent Mesa on this committee," Scott Bouchie said. "Arizona is an extraordinary environment with unique challenges related to dust, heat and water. My experience with each of these topics will make me a strong advocate for developing creative and innovative strategies and policies that take into account both the environmental and fiscal sides of the issues."  [Blogger's Note: don't we hear this same old stuff in the words italicized all the time??] The Air, Climate and Energy workgroup focuses on improving air quality, taking action on climate change, and promoting clean, renewable energy sources. The Protecting America's Waters workgroup focuses on ways that communities and EPA can ensure that we have adequate, safe water resources to support a healthy population and vibrant economy. The LGAC requires multiple online meetings and an annual trip to EPA headquarters in Washington D.C. Environmental Management & Sustainability Contact: Mariano Reyes Tel. 480-644-5005mariano.reyes@mesaaz.gov

Progressive Pie

My man Pie is at it again!
Assumption is the mother of fuck-UPS

Published on Aug 21, 2016

Views: 12,347

Theresa May is not a progressive politician just because she's a woman.

Infinite People | Daily tous les jours | Walrus Talks

This is the group that did the design and installation for "Mesa Musical Shadows" [a $431,000 contract] at the North Campus entry to Mesa Arts Center that's getting toasted in our sizzling scorching heat . . . it is not featured in this.

Published on Aug 9, 2016

Views: only 1!

From The Walrus Talks How to Animate a City (Montreal 2015)

Cities for People, Not Just Cars | Brent Toderian | Walrus Talks

Reconsider traffic infrastructure . . .

Published on Aug 9, 2016

Views: 57

 

From The Walrus Talks Resilience (Saskatoon 2015)

Re | Big Data, Cloud & Internet of Things

 



Fast-changing, human-driven events like expansion of cities and creation of assets for transportation are very vulnerable to old data. Any person who has been misled by car navigation systems can testify to the fact that the digital road network on their device is often out of date and does not show new features.
The need of the hour therefore is for speed of data delivery and crunching.
Where does this data come from and how can it be used in real-time or near-real-time for decision making?
Find out for yourself in this month’s Geospatial World magazine.
The Continuum: Big Data, Cloud & Internet of Things

By Arup Dasgupta August 17, 2016

If geospatial systems have to remain relevant in a fast-changing world, then data sources that go beyond imagery and maps must become a part of the analysts’ armory. Big Data, its analytics in the Cloud and the final Internet of Things are what the future holds.

Q: How many big data scientists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: Just a minute. Let me run the algorithm


Natural resources as well as social, political and economic activities have a strong bearing on the outcome of projects such as growth of cities, building of infrastructure and even a farmer’s decision to plant a specific crop. If geospatial systems have to remain relevant in a fast-changing world, then data sources that go beyond imagery and maps must become a part of the analyst’s armory.
Enter the world of Big Data, Big Data Analytics and Internet of Things.

More data is not always more intelligent data

“The rate at which we are generating data is rapidly outpacing our ability to analyze it,” says Dr. Patrick Wolfe, Data Scientist at the University College of London. “The trick here is to turn these massive data streams from a liability into a strength.” The extent to which we are missing extraordinarily valuable data analytic opportunities is incredible: right now, only 0.5% of our information is analyzed. We have more data, but it is not always more intelligent data. Part of the problem with Big Data is that it is not valuable until it is understood. “You have to start with a question and not with the data,” stresses Andreas Weigend, Lecturer at UC Berkeley. “The fact that data gets collected is a good thing,” he adds, but what we really need is to figure out what problems we can solve with it.. . ."

“Our world is ever changing and fresh and dynamic applications that are a combination of content, workflow, analytics and experience can be used in any area of application where we need to sense this change,” elaborates Atanu Sinha, Director, Hexagon Geospatial, India & SAARC. Hexagon, for instance, already has Smart M.Apps to analyze green space, road areas, crime incidents, snow cover, forest burn ratio, iron oxide index in rocks, crop health, UAV data processing and so on.

Read more >> http://www.geospatialworld.net/article/the-continuum-big-data-cloud-and-internet-of-things/ 

Real Future: Predictive Policing (Episode 12)

Published on Mar 24, 2016

Views: 105,555

From citizens capturing police brutality on their smartphones to police departments using surveillance drones, technology is changing our relationship to the law.
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One of the newest policing tools is called PredPol. It's a software program that uses big data to predict where crime is most likely to happen, down to the exact block. Dozens of police departments around the country are already using PredPol, and officers say it helps reduce crime by up to 30%. But some skeptics are worried that despite its futuristic promise, PredPol and similar tools might inflame relationships between local police departments and communities of color.
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In this episode of REAL FUTURE, Alexis Madrigal visits the Santa Cruz Police Department, where officers are already using PredPol to augment their old-fashioned police work. And he asks: as crime-fighting goes digital, is there a risk of relying too heavily on an algorithm?
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Watch REAL FUTURE on Fusion (Mondays at 10 p.m. Eastern), or on Apple TV or Roku.
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More REAL FUTURE episodes: http://www.realfuture.tv

PredPol: What Is It?

Official Police Business: Does predictive policing actually work?    

Crime forecasting tools are taking off, but good data is hard to find
By Matt Stroud on May 4, 2016 12:04 pm   @MattStroud
  
Official Police Business is a weekly column and newsletter by reporter Matt Stroud about new developments in police technology, and the ways technology is changing law enforcement — think body cameras, cell-site simulators, surveillance systems, and electroshock weapons. Sign up to receive OPB in your email every Wednesday at officialpolicebusiness.com, or check for it here at The Verge.

Hunchlab's predictive policing, explained
Video >>  https://volume.vox-cdn.com/embed/ae6a05d46?placement=article&tracking=article%3Amiddle&player_type=null&start_time=null#ooid=VsM3FtMDE6nBxlgrY9L3T-H8BJkYGv4m

Predictive policing is everywhere . . . private company PredPol is supposedly helping police to identify where property crimes and robberies might occur. As those cities’ predictive programs have gotten more and more attention, police chiefs have done their best to get in on the action. . .
But does predictive policing actually work?
One study —touted seemingly every time a police department decides to contract with PredPol — shows that PredPol’s software can lead to a 7.4 percent reduction in "crime volume."
But that study was carried out by two of PredPol’s founders, P. Jeffrey Brantingham, and George Mohler, who sit on the company’s board of directors.
> What’s more, a French researcher replicated that study and found that police could get the same results if they sent officers to crime hotspots instead of paying to use predictive software.
It’s with similar skepticism that Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at the University of the District of Columbia, decided to take a hard look at predictive policing. In a paper titled "Policing Predictive Policing," forthcoming in the Washington University Law Review, Ferguson provides perhaps the most comprehensive critique of predictive policing yet published. His goal: encouraging lawmakers to scrutinize technology that "has far outpaced any legal or political accountability and has largely escaped academic scrutiny."
After delving into the history of predictive policing and the literature that’s studied it, Ferguson lays out an exhaustive list of "vulnerabilities" that any official should consider before signing onto a so-called predictive program. Those vulnerabilities include questions about how the Big Data feeding these programs are gathered; how those data are used; who’s accountable for how the predictive tools influence policing; how those tools are implemented; and more. To cite his most basic example: if crimes are reported in a specific geographic location, that doesn’t necessarily mean more crimes are happening there — or that crimes aren’t happening elsewhere. It could mean that police tend to be stationed nearby, or that police specifically target that area, or that people there tend to call-in crimes more frequently. But predictive software has no way of knowing that, and can thus lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ferguson quotes former Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Hanni Fakhoury: "[I]f the data is biased to begin with and based on human judgment, then the results the algorithm is going to spit out will reflect those biases."

"There is no real hope of going back"

Though predictive policing is spreading to police departments all over the world and "there is no real hope of going back," he writes, officials need to understand what they’re signing up for before they contract with PredPol, HunchLab, or any other company selling the Minority Report police solution.
There’s still not a ton of literature about the effectiveness of predictive policing. (There’s only really been one independent study; it was conducted by RAND researchers and its results were inconclusive.) But as Ferguson pointed out to me in an email last week, officials need someone other than police chiefs and company representatives to tell them about whether predictive policing works. "My hope was [this article will be] handed to mayors and city council members when someone proposes buying a predictive policing system."

. . . We’ll see if that’s the case.

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/4/11583204/official-police-business-predictive-policing-paper