A New Era of Data Collaboration in South African Cities
South African cities are entering a new era of data collaboration, driven by the increasing availability and importance of data in urban planning and development. This collaborative approach involves various stakeholders, including government agencies, private companies, non-profit organisations like Open Cities Lab and community organisations, working together to collect, analyse, and share data for the […]
What Makes Cities Catalysts of Change?
Cities are not just the heartbeat of our global society but also the crucible of innovation and change. Beyond the obvious economic reasons, cities play a pivotal role in development initiatives and improving this world. Why do cities matter? Have you asked yourself this question? Cities are not just the heartbeat of our global society […]
Approximately 50% of water losses are unaccounted for in eThekwini — how can we solve this problem?
More than 50% of the water that is purchased by eThekwini Municipality from Umgeni Water is unaccounted for. In the 2021/2022 period this loss amounted to R1.8 billion (225,739,779 m3). These numbers highlight the need for a solution in the metering infrastructure used by the municipality. eThekwini’s smart metering strategy is to: More than 50% […]
Dexter: The Media Monitoring Machine
Dexter was conceived in 2015 by Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) for two key reasons. Firstly to ensure that there was one place for MMA to capture and access all the data used for media monitoring and analysis and secondly, to harness the rapidly developing power of artificial intelligence thus making monitoring faster and more reliable. […]
How Your Vote Counts
South African local elections are set for Monday 1 November 2021. You can check your voter registration details here. South Africa’s local government election system is based on a proportional representation system that combines “first past the post” ward representative, making up half of council, with representatives of parties making up the other half. This is […]
Building Inclusive Cities
The idea of an “Inclusive City” is not new. The notion that cities should be able to serve all citizens equally and in a way that breaks down structural inequalities and disparities has been a topic of debate and on city agendas across the world since the early 2000s. With the United Nations leading the […]
Developing a Data Platform for Cities: Multiple Data-sources
In my previous post, “Developing a Data Platform for Cities: An Introduction”, I described four major challenges that data-science within cities often faces and here I will focus on the first of these: Data sets are often disparate and/or siloed, thereby reducing a user’s ability to utilise multiple sources in an analysis I believe that […]
Developing A Data Platform for Cities: An Introduction
In November 2016, Open Data Durban (ODD) embarked on its largest project to date, the first phase of development for a data exploration and management platform targeted at city officials. This project, the South African Cities Open Data Almanac (SCODA) was done as a continuation of a proof-of-principle web-app built for the South African Cities Network (SACN) and saw collaboration […]