Join us on Tuesday, April 10 at 12:00 p.m. EDT for a webinar to launch BRTdata.org, the most comprehensive public database of bus rapid transit (BRT) systems around the world. Register for the webinar here.

The new website was created by the Across Latitudes and Cultures – Bus Rapid Transit (ALC-BRT CoE) Centre of Excellence and EMBARQ, in collaboration with the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The panel of experts will include:

Dario Hidalgo, EMBARQ Director of Research and Practice
Aileen Carrigan, EMBARQ Senior Associate
Juan Carlos Muñoz, ALC-BRT CoE Director
Tali Trigg, IEA Energy Analyst

To learn more, read the official press release and our previous coverage.

Size and density are influential in determining the livability of a city. Photo by Magalie L'Abbé.

Earlier this year, we wrote about the symbolism of October 31 in marking the day the world population reached 7 billion people. A design firm based in Boston, Mass., Fathom Information Design, created “Dencity,” a map of global population density as the world reaches this important milestone. The map uses different size and color circles to represent the distribution of population and density around the world. Larger and darker circles show areas with fewer people. Smaller and brighter circles represent more crowded areas.

The map doesn’t tell us anything new, but instead, confirms the spatial distribution of population and density that we have known for quite some time. Eastern Asia has the densest and most populated geography in the world. “The largest city in the world is Shanghai, with over 23 million people as of 2010,” Fathom explains. “China is home to six of the twenty most populous cities in the world, more than any other country.”

India and Pakistan are right behind China in terms of density and population. “Delhi and Karachi are the second and third most populous cities in the world,” Fathom adds. “The two countries are almost uniformly dense until they hit geographic boundaries such as the Himalayas to the north, or political boundaries such as Afghanistan to the west.”

Larger, darker circles show areas with fewer people, while smaller, brighter circles highlight crowded cities. Design by Fathom.

Density is an important factor determining quality of life, as we saw from the livability ranking report the Economist Intelligence Unit published earlier this year. An important finding of the report was distinguishing the common ground between livable cities as their size and density. Read more about this report here.

Fathom’s “Dencity” maps are available for purchase on the company’s website. Click here to access.

The company has also used other interesting visualizations to display data, like population aging and the frequency of health concerns.  Click here to see the company’s data visualization portfolio.

Photo by Foxymoron.

This weekend, the Desarrollando América Latina Hackathon will take place across six countries: Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. The event focuses on solving social problems using web applications and public data. The goal of the event is to create innovative solutions to problems across education, public safety and budget—theme areas identified and selected by civil society organizations and governmental actors. The event will take place on December 3 and 4, where web developers will convene for 30 consecutive hours to find digital solutions to social problems. Connected by video conferencing, developers will be organized in teams representing their respective countries.

Transportation is among the regional problems developers will tackle during the hackathon event. In fact, one example of how transportation systems can improve with the use of open data comes from Development Seed’s work with mapping transit data in Ayacucho, Peru. We previously wrote about Development Seed’s mapping work here, here, here and here. For this project, the company created maps of the public bus routes in Ayacucho, making otherwise inaccessible data files available to the public in an aesthetically pleasing way.

Mapping transportation-specific data can be a tremendous source of information for city planners, especially in helping them understand commuter behavior, as well as areas of a city that need better or more frequent service. “Looking at just transit data, it’s now possible to assess city traffic, identify where traffic lights are needed, and simply show tourists how to get to the best local restaurants,” says Ian Ward of Development Seed. “New information can be cataloged, such as intersections with heavy pedestrian traffic, allowing city planners to better direct changes and new traffic and pedestrian signals.” Even if the data’s visualization simply points to long-held belief of certain transport behavior, such maps can at least clearly identify the behavior and become a concrete basis for educated policy.

Below is an interactive map of Development Seed’s Ayacucho transit map. Explore the routes by zooming in and out, and panning across the map.

Is your city a leader in innovative thinking? Photo by Thorsten Becker.

Did you catch yesterday’s Twitter chat on what it takes to be a smarter city? To promote its 2012 Smarter Cities Challenge, IBM hosted a discussion with Stanley S. Litow, IBM’s vice president of corporate citizenship and corporate affairs and president of IBM’s Foundation, on Twitter.

The Smarter Cities Challenge is a $50 million grant program where IBM’s top technical experts provide consultations and advice to 100 cities over three years. The program provides selected cities access to elite expertise on a variety of issues facing urban centers, like transportation, social services, recreation, education, energy and sustainability.

The 2011 recipients of the Smarter Cities Challenge included cities like Johannesburg, South Africa; Edmonton, Canada; Guadalajara, Mexico; Providence, Rhode Island; Delhi, India; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Helsinki, Finland. In order to receive the funds and the expertise, the cities had to be prepared to match IBM’s investment with their own commitment of time and resources. The submissions that were favored included urban concerns that could be addressed using “smarter” technologies, the availability of data, and cities that demonstrated a record of innovative problem solving.

Does your city have an urban concern that can be addressed through innovative technology? Learn more and apply for the 2012 Smarter Cities Challenge here.

Follow the Twitter conversation on what makes a city smarter here.

Do you have what it takes to influence smart transportation policy with inspiring data visualization? Photo by Elif Ayiter/Alpha Auer/..../.

The United States Department of Transportation and the Transportation Research Board are sponsoring a data visualization competition, understanding that informed decision-making, based on sound data and analysis, is the cornerstone in crafting effective transportation policies and investments. The competition is an attempt to encourage students to examine data visualization options to help decision makers make informed policy  and investment decisions that support transportation safety and economic development.

To enter the competition, students are expected to create a data visualization product that addresses critical transportation policy or investments, such as whether there is a strong relationship between transportation-related deaths and safety campaigns or how much influence engineering improvements have on collisions. For more topic ideas and data leads, go here.

The visualization can focus on national trends in transportation, as well as local issues. The entries will be judged on four elements:

• Creativity and aesthetics of data visualization
• Success in translating multiple data sets into relevant visual information
• Relevance to the goal areas of better understanding policy or investment problems related to transportation safety or economic development
• Demonstrate value in assisting decision makers

The deadline for submissions is in two weeks on Monday, October 31, 2011. The entries, in addition to receiving a critique from a panel of federal transportation experts, will also be open to the public for voting. The two best overall submissions will be awarded a $2,000 scholarship each and the one submission with the highest number of votes from the public will be given the title of “People’s Choice.”

Find more information on how to enter the competition here.

Photos by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New York

Metropolitan Transportation Authority, New York City’s public transit authority, revealed a new interactive touch-screen kiosk with real-time service status on Monday.  The project, “On the Go! Travel Station,” also provides escalator and elevator status information, trip planning resources and local neighborhood maps, as well as news and weather updates. This is a good example of an effective user information system, which we highlight as one of the eight key elements of branding, marketing and communications for public transport in our publication, “From Here to There: A Creative Guide to Making Public Transport the Way to Go.”

MTA launched the project in the Bowling Green station, along subway lines 4 and 5, and, if successful, will expand the project to a total of five subway stations and commuter rail hubs in the upcoming weeks. The project is currently in a pilot phase and will remain that way for the next 180 days.

The kiosk is a sleek, stainless structure that holds a large screen. According to DownTownExpress, MTA did not have to place any upfront investments for the project. Cisco developed the travel station and is funding it through advertisements that will display on the kiosks. Though MTA was not responsible for footing the bill, it will pay for labor, explains Nick Judd of Tech President.

Judd also brings up an interesting point while discussing the element of privacy in location-aware technology that is becoming more and more omnipresent in our daily lives. “These are some of the first real-world digital interventions that many people will see in their daily commutes, but theorists and thinkers have been chewing for some time on how they will change our lives as they become more ubiquitous,” Judd explains.

He gives the example of New York City taxi cabs that now carry small screens that show advertisements to a captive audience—“a potentially lucrative opportunity,” Judd says. He also gives the example of vending machines in Japan that use facial recognition software that make inferences on your demographics and accordingly suggest beverages for you to buy.

Judd does acknowledge that his concerns have more to do with “what might happen” rather than “what is,” yet his argument is still intriguing.

Judd also touches on New York City’s recent efforts in replacing single-space parking meters with Muni-Meters that keep track of all on-street parking on a block. In a conversation with Adam Greenfield, founder of the urban design firm Urbanscale, Greenfield tells Judd about the implications of collecting and using this kind of data. “You’re beginning to pull information off of real people’s real use of the real city,” Greenfield says, all in order to cater services more specifically.

Where do your thoughts lie on this issue? How much information is too much?