”TRANSPARENCY” CATEGORY

This category deals with ideas using data that is freely available.

Increasing amounts of previously closed or proprietary data are becoming free. This includes for example weather and geographical data.  There may be differing opinions on many issues, for example on what types of data should be truly free; who should pay for the data (because nothing is ever truly “free”); are there privacy issues that need to be considered; can free access provide some unexpected risks (for example aiding criminal activities).

As an internal division of labor, for the most part the ”Transparency” section of Zygomatica does not go deeply into these issues and controversies. They are handled  under the “opacity” category. This section deals with information that is already essentially open or should soon be. The work will be divided into projects that focus on particular issues. At the moment, there is just one such ongoing project.

INDIVIDUAL PROJECTS

Project: Open weather data. With improvements in the quality of amateur weather stations and government openness, more and more real-time weather data is becoming available on the Internet. There are many open questions about data quality in particular, but there is clearly room for completely new types of applications. We focus less on the “serious” uses of such data, since those are under active work in many quarters already and we have little to add. Rather, we generally try to focus on applications that may seem trivial or even ridiculous. Lessons learned from such projects might have use elsewhere.