On Saturday 3rd March we’re getting together for the Energy and Climate Hackday to data-wrangle and build apps around energy and climate data. All skills and interest groups are welcome: developer, data journalist, economist, climate scientist, environmentalist or an interested citizen.

• When: Saturday 3rd March, 11am GMT (12pm CET/6am EST) to ~7pm GMT (8pm CET/3pm EST)
• Where: Online (IRC, Skype) and also in person in London – ThoughtWorks Ltd., 9th Floor Berkshire House, 168-173 High Holborn, London, WC1V 7AA
• Who: Anyone! All skills are necessary and welcomed: coding, writing, illustrating, climate modelling or having concerns about the environment?
• How: Sign up on the MeetUp page and on the Etherpad.

Hackday Challenges:

• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions: DECC 2050 Pathways Calculator with representatives from DECC, who would like to develop an international version of the application.

• An app, which visualises different energy indicators for all countries from the WorldBank database, as in Europe’s Energy.

• Visualisation of deforestation data with a world map, which tracks changes in forest area and land use as well as carbon dioxide emissions… also relate them to economic indicators?

• Your ideas…

DataParty prior to the event:

You are also welcome to join the Energy and Climate DataParty on the February, 29th to data mine and mash up climate and energy data. Researchers and graduate students, who have worked on environment-related topics are also invited to share their dissertation datasets on theDataHub.

If you are interested in co-organising this event and have ideas about other challenges to take place during the Hackday, you are more than welcome!

This post is by Velichka Dimitrova, Coordinator for the Economics Working Group at the Open Knowledge Foundation.

On Saturday 28th January we’re getting together for an Open Economics Hackday where we’ll be be wrangling data and building apps related to economics — all are welcome!

• When: Saturday 28th January, 11am GMT (12pm CET/6am EST) to ~7pm GMT (8pm CET/3pm EST)
• Sign up on the MeetUp page.
• Some people will also be around on Friday 27th (same times)
• Where: Online (IRC, Skype) and also in person in London – meet us at the public space coffee area in the main hall on floor G of the Barbican.
• Who: Anyone! Coder, data wrangler, economists, illustrator or writer …
• And here is the Etherpad.

As with all hackdays, exactly what gets work on gets decided on the day (you can add suggestions to the etherpad). However, one particular idea, which we could become a submission to Apps4Italy, is set out below.

One Idea for What We’ll Work On: ProgressVote

One of the most fundamental questions in economic research is: how do we measure social progress? Policy makers have come up with alternative measures accounting for environmental impacts, inequality, happiness and other indicators of human development.

However, the multiplicity of factors has caused another problem – how do we decide on the importance of each individual factor in a composite index? They could be either equally important (such as in the HDI) or they could be given different weights.

In our last project YourTopia – which was one of the winners of last year’s World Bank Apps4Development Prize – we offered one possible solution by letting you decide on which dimensions and aspects of economic development to prioritize.

However there are limitations to such an approach: faced with a myriad of technical indicators people are often overwhelmed by the complexity: Does life expectancy at birth matter more than the inflation rate or the M2 money supply? And what does M2 money supply even mean?

In ProgressVote, we’d like to improve on YourTopia in a variety of ways:

First, by combining proxy voting with the crowd-based Yourtopia approach: Instead of voting for indicators, people vote for expert statements that interpret the dashboard of variables. By doing so, it is hoped to strike a balance between expert judgements and the interpretation of the general public: Experts may be more able to interpret technical data, but in the end it is the citizens who decide which expert statement to endorse.

Second, we’d like to add support time series — so you can see how progress (or lack of it) has evolved over time — as well as better geo support — for example, so it is possible to look at regions as well as countries have performed (consider Italy for instance).

Interested? Then come join us on Saturday 28th January!