Rice Seminar Public Lecture: "Data for a Public Good" by Sarah Williams

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Big data will not change the world unless it is collected any synthesized into tools that have a public benefit. In this talk Sarah Williams will illustrate projects from her research lab, the Civic Data Design Lab @ MIT, that have transformed data into visualizations that have had an effect on policy reform. From her work on the Digital Matatus project in Nairobi Kenya, where she created the first map of the informal transit system to her work on in on measuring Air Quality in Beijing, to more recent work investigating the Ghost Cities in China. Williams will show how collecting data, visualizing it, and opening up to anyone to use can leverage the power of data to create real policy change. 

This lecture is part of the 2016-17 Rice seminar Lecture Series.