UrbaNe Workshop @ ACM CoNEXT 2012

December 10, 2012
Nice, France

CoNEXT
ACM CoNEXT 2012 → Workshops → UrbaNe → Keynotes

Keynote Abstracts and Short Bio’s of Keynote Speakers

A new paradigm for electricity distribution during crises

Speaker: Daniel Kofman (Telecom ParisTech / CTO of RAD Data Communications)
Time: 9:15–10:00

ABSTRACT

The service model of utilities has been very stable during decades; it is characterized by a high level of robustness and by a lack of flexibility that becomes evident in case of crises leading to a scarcity of energy supply. The evolution of users needs calls for new service models. As an example, the evolution of lifestyles and of professional activities brings forward the concept of critical loads for residential users. Typically the load generated by medical appliances that enable for example kidney dialysis at home will require special electricity provisioning during crises. In this talk we first identify several drawbacks of the current service model and the present architecture and then we propose a general new paradigm as well as specific approaches to better manage power distribution during crises. For that purpose, we leverage the capabilities of several emerging technologies and systems, including smart grid solutions and Internet of Things systems.

Urban*: Crowdsourcing for the good of London

Speaker: Daniele Quercia (University of Cambridge) Time: 10:00–10:45

ABSTRACT

For the last year or so, some of us have been working on studying social media in the context of London. By combining what Twitter users in a variety of London neighborhoods talk about with census data, we showed that certain topics are correlated (positively and negatively) with neighborhood deprivation. Users in more deprived neighborhoods tweet about wedding parties, matters expressed in Spanish/Portuguese, and celebrity gossips. By contrast, those in less deprived neighborhoods tweet about vacations, professional use of social media, environmental issues, sports, and health issues. More recently, we launched two crowdsourcing websites. First, we launched urbanopticon.org, which extracts Londoners’ mental images of the city. By testing which places are remarkable and unmistakable and which places represent faceless sprawl, we are able to draw the recognizability map of London [](http://bit.ly/HgvqZ7). The site has attracted tens of thousands of players, and I will show you few preliminary results. Second, a couple of weeks ago, we launched urbangems.org, which crowdsources quiet, beauty and happiness in the context of a city. The aim is to identify the visual cues that are generally associated with concepts difficult to define such beauty, happiness, quietness, or even deprivation [](http://bit.ly/QWo40z). Few days ago the site has been awarded the A.T. Kearney Scholarship and will be shortly featured in falling-walls.com 2012 in Berlin.