Introducing living dhaka, a social technology experiment to measure activity in the city

tiger tags

Living Dhaka

a tiger tag is just a piece of paper with a qr code embedded with a unique but anonymous id e.g. bengaltiger445

when an individual carries it, he or she becomes a tiger who can then be tracked by smartphone carrying volunteers.

one scan can log a host of information on those tigers

4:59 pm (time)

23.70, 90.44 (location)

walking (transport mode)

smiling(happiness)

which can then be sent into the cloud and aggregrated to produce measurements like the following which we tested at mit

where the tigers roamed

Living Showcase at MIT | Nov 17, 2011

when the tigers came and went, how long they stayed

what the tigers were interested in the relationship btwn what they liked and where it was

located

6 smartphones, 8 volunteers, 140 tigers total cost - $200 (t-shirts, printing zebra tags, phones borrowed)

development time – 4 (long) days, 1-2 people

Living Showcase at MIT | Nov 17, 2011

50 smartphones, 100 volunteers, x tigers? total cost - $10-20,000

we’d like to measure things not normally measured (e.g. pedestrian flows, bus ridership,

cycle rickshaw flows) and understand how both the measurements themselves and the social process of measurement is received by the city

development time – 2 months

Living Dhaka | week of January12, 2012

Old Dhaka Pedestrian Density & Flows

10 AM 1 PM 6 PM

experimental design 50 scanners at 25 fixed nodes 3 separate scanning times color of dots = high no. of scans/minute

(LARGER SCALE)

Living Dhaka | week of January12, 2012

main pedestrian corridors

(MEDIUM SCALE)

6 PM

Firmgate Bus Ridership and Speeds

experimental design 50 scanners @ 6 fixed nodes size of colors represents number of people alighting from those stops from farmgate speed calculated by average of consecutive scans

<5 km/h

5-10 km/h

10-15 km/h

Living Dhaka | week of January12, 2012

tap-ins

estimated speeds

tap-outs

(MEDIUM SCALE)

8 PM

Dhanmondi Lake Happiness and Density Map

experimental design 50 roaming scanners 1 scanning time at peak time blue color = places of highest number of happy people

Living Dhaka | week of January12, 2012

favorite spots

did this experiment work? would data change your mind?

Before After

we’d like to measure before and after an experiment that improves car-free travel*

Living Dhaka | week of January12, 2012

* are there any experiments that improve car-free travel in dhaka that can be measured in mid-january?

Living Dhaka | week of January12, 2012

Albert Ching is an aspiring urban innovator, a lifelong Hawaiian and former Googler based in Mountain View, Hyderabad and Singapore. Albert is enduring the frigid cold of Boston to help cities innovate, specifically by using the proliferation of information technologies to solve transport problems in South and Southeast Asia. He is a researcher for the Singapore-MIT Alliance’s Future of Urban Mobility project. www.mrching.blogspot.com

Muntasir Mamun Imran is a nature lover, adventure-trekker, and an experienced social entrepreneur from Bangladesh. He is the co-founder of Kewkradong Bangladesh, country coordinator for the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup, and Organizer of the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour. He has organized cycling rides throughout Bangladesh including the Sir Edmund Hillary Ride, the Ride for Green, and the LiveStrong Ride. www.muntasirmamun.com/

Collaborators

Stephen Kennedy is a designer and artist formerly based in Atlanta with a background in Industrial Design from Georgia Tech. At first a reluctant transplant to Boston, Stephen has enjoyed trying to escape frigid New England by working as a hybrid planner-designer on signage initiatives in New Orleans, greenway planning in the Bronx, urban realm technology in Thessaloniki, and participatory planning in Indonesia. His focus is on both physical planning and spatial information design. www.stephenjameskennedy.com

P. Chris Zegras is the Ford Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Transportation at MIT. His research interests include the influence of the built environment on individual travel behavior, transportation infrastructure and system financing, indicators of sustainable transportation, and mitigating transportation greenhouse gas emissions. On these and other related topics, he has consulted widely, including for the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Canadian, German, US, and Peruvian Governments, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and the United Nations Center for Regional Development.

Zia Wadud is an Associate Professor in Civil Engineering at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). Zia completed his PhD from Imperial College London in Civil Engineering Policy in 2008 as a Commonwealth Scholar and held research positions at the University of Cambridge and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Zia’s current research interests are in modeling and valuation of policy interventions in the transportation and environment sector (including climate change policy), modeling energy demand and assessing risk and vulnerability in the context of broader Civil Engineering topics.

Advisors

inspired by the bengal tiger and stripe spotter

appendix

mobile phones smartphones

cars

Dhaka today

auto lock-in line (10-20%)

window of opportunity

48%

1%

<1%

Jakarta

Bangkok

Sydney Chicago

time

pene

trat

ion

why dhaka? small window of opportunity to avoid car-centric development but need creative solutions that employ a limited number of smartphones

We have big ambitions . . .

zebra tags

Can the mayor of Dhaka run his city like an MIT scientist managing a lab of experiments?

Data à Decisions

People à Data à Visualizations à rebranding car alternatives + the city à Decisions

Experiments -> measurement (through people and phones) à Iteration à Remeasurement à new experiments à repeat à rinse -> repeat faster

Feelings à Decisions we are here

where we’d like cities to be

2 MEASUREMENT

3 IMPACT

4 SUSTAINABLE

1 SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY

Social will people in dhaka want to be measured? in what format? how should volunteers be organized and motivated? technology will the technology work as planned in dhaka? how fast can the system be rapidly iterated on and deployed?

measure pre- and post- experiments how to tell if there is a difference? measure things otherwise difficult to measure how often the rich and poor meet make visible the invisible pedestrians, cycle rickshaws, the poor, the aged

data -> decisions people à data à visualizations à rebranding car alternatives + the city à decisions experiments -> measurement (through people and phones) à Iteration à Remeasurement à new experiments à repeat à rinse -> repeat faster

start

finish

zebra tags as a store of commercial value integration with mobile payments incentives to motivate users to scan value to local businesses and transport providers

but there’s a lot we don’t know

1 PRINT QR BADGES

3 SCAN CITIZENS IN

TARGET AREA

4 REGISTER CITIZENS AT

NOTABLE POINTS

2 DISTRIBUTE TO CITIZENS

OUTSIDE TARGET AREA

Measurement Process

Living Dhaka | week of January12, 2012

3 FIXED vs. FLEXIBLE

SCANNERS

4 SIZE OF MEASUREMENT

AREA

Measurement Variables

1 NO. OF SCANNERS

2 SCANNING TIME

target is 50 10 teams of 5

target is <1 second

peak capacity = 50 x 60 = 300 data points per minute, or 18,000 per hour

fixed

flexible

single street or few blocks

large neighborhood or street network

Living Dhaka | week of January12, 2012

The Urban Launchpad is a MIT-started social mission-driven company / research lab aspiring to accelerate experimentation and innovation in cities

through rapid prototyping and performance measurement on an urban scale