Social network analysis used to convict slumlords
Jan 19, 2012 12:27 am • Permalink 
In working with tenants to help their city attorney convict a group of slumlords, an economic justice organization collected public data on housing violations that were going unfixed. They tried standard mind mapping and organization software, but the relationships were too complex to unearth anything useful. So they eventually used social network analysis, revealing money exchanging hands in such a way that allowed owners to strip the value from buildings without actually fixing them.
The analysis results, combined with the city's investigation, allowed key convictions and court-awarded finances for tenants to move elsewhere.
Sounds like a good reason for Data Without Borders.
[Valdis Krebs via kottke]
High resolution biomass map, at management scale
Jan 18, 2012 05:37 am • Permalink 
In 2010, NASA released a map that shows world forest heights. Robert Simmon, using data from The Woods Hole Research Center, has produced an even higher resolution map, down to the management scale:
In the end, the research team was able to construct a map with higher resolution and more precise detail than any large-scale map of forest biomass ever made. The map reveals the checkerboard patterns of logging in the old growth of the Pacific Northwest and the highly managed tree farms of the Southeast. In the Midwest, trees outline the rivers and the edges between farms, while forests re-emerge on land that was once cleared for crops. In the Mid-Atlantic and New England, lands that were stripped bare in the early years of the nation are now tree-covered again—though with many urban developments amidst the forest.
[NASA | Thanks, Michael]
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