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Crowdsource your carbon: power plant mapping project seeks location, CO2 data

Amanda Alvarez — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:37:26 +0000

A citizen science project based at Arizona State University has put out a call for data: they want eagle-eyed environmentalists to help map power plants on Google Maps. The leader of the Ventus project, a carbon emissions modeler, wants to use the crowdsourced data to improve global carbon cycle models.

The estimated 30,000 power plants worldwide account for about 40 percent of global carbon emissions. While about 80 percent of these plants can be found on a map, there are still unknowns about what these plants are doing, like what fuel they use and how much electricity they generate. The ASU scientists hope to source this information by turning Ventus into a competition: the player who provides the most useable information within the first year will get a trophy and be included as an author on a research publication, plus (according to the website) gain serious street cred “among our very elite, newly-formed global group of citizen scientist enviro-nerds.”

To contribute to Ventus, users are asked to input the exact location of a power plant, its carbon dioxide emissions, what fuel it uses, and its electricity output. Not all of these pieces of information are needed, and users can also edit existing information for 25,000 power plants that have already been mapped, using data from the Center for Global Development. The researchers are specifically hoping to target people who live near or work at power plants, especially the thousands of new facilities in the developing world about which little data exist.

Using Ventus’ Google Maps interface seems simple enough, but as Nature News points out, a previous crowdsourcing effort to map dams wasn’t all that successful. But if the power plant data does start pouring in, researchers should be able to better track fossil fuel emissions, and apply this knowledge to tackle one of the largest contributors to climate change.

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Waze navigates users to exclusive discounts on gas

Ryan Kim — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 13:00:30 +0000

Waze, the crowdsourced traffic app, isn’t just trying to save people some time. It’s now in the business of saving people money too. The company is unveiling a discount fuel service that lets users receive five to 10 cents off each gallon they buy from more than 200,000 gas stations across the country. It’s part of a new live gas prices functionality that allows users to update each other on the latest gas prices at various stations they spot while on the road.

The new real-time gas prices features adds more utility to the Waze app, which is nice, but there are other apps that surface this information. Waze’s appeal is that it has crowd-sourced data, so it might be more accurate in some cases, but it also means the prices might be out of date until someone updates it.

The discount component, however, is more interesting because it really brings a new dimension to the Waze service, letting people not just navigate to the lowest priced option but actually find places that have offers only for Waze users. And it also demonstrates how Waze will make revenue off the free app. The company will be building a revenue model from location-based advertising, allowing certain advertisers to reach its growing base of 19 million users with relevant offers for things along their route.

With the gas program, users will be alerted to nearby discounts on their Waze map. When they go in, they will need to present a coupon generated by the app to the employees inside. That ensures that users will have their coupon visually inspected but it also encourages them to buy something else, which is another benefit for participating gas stations. Waze is not disclosing the exact business details of its advertising deals.

Waze has struck relationships with individually-owned gas stations and regional retailers who own a lot of stations. Vitners, which owns more than a 100 Shell stations in California; Kum & Go, which has more than 400 stations in the midwest; and Hess, which has 1,300 stations on the east coast, are some of the partners. Five states, including New Jersey, actually prohibit discounts on gasoline, so Waze is looking at offering coupons on food or other items to users in those states.

Waze has been set on not charging its users, which is fitting since users contribute to the service by providing anonymous location data. But as it grows, Waze is turning into a very appealing location-based platform for advertisers. It has a big dedicated user base who can be reached by local offers that are presented in the context of their regular drives.

Waze is hoping that it can turn its ability to lead more users into stores into a significant revenue source. During a promotion for the Nintendo 3DS last year, Waze ran a mini-game that awarded people points and entered them in a drawing when they drove to nearby stores that offered the portable gaming system. Waze said 6.3 percent of its users participated in the program and drove to a store.

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Waze arms TV stations with crowdsourced traffic data

Ryan Kim — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:08:04 +0000

Waze, a crowdsourced traffic data app, had its big coming-out moment during LA’s “Carmageddon,” a weekend-long closure of one the city’s busiest freeways in July. The startup partnered with the local ABC affiliate and provided critical data about actual traffic patterns, even on surface streets.

The partnership proved beneficial for both parties, helping Waze boost its LA community by 70 percent in one week while providing ABC7 with fresh data and a way to engage app-savvy users. Now Waze is formally opening up a broadcast partner program to replicate that relationship and offer its services to TV stations around the country. It is launching with 12 partners, including stations in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas and Philadelphia.

Waze, which has zoomed to 9 million users from 2.2 million a year ago, lets users share their anonymous traffic data with the service, so the entire community can benefit by seeing the overall traffic patterns in their area. Now, with the new broadcast partner program, TV stations can tap into this data and present it on air using an iPad version of the app. Instead of just providing information from sensors or cameras, which monitor mostly freeways, Waze data shows how people are moving on regular streets too.

Waze partners will be able to set up branded commuter groups within the app, and they will ultimately be able to turn to dedicated users to get insight about actual traffic conditions. In LA, for example, the ABC7 Traffic Spotters group has about 3,400 active members among the 450,000 Waze users in LA, who contribute for a chance to have their report shown live on TV.

Di-Ann Eisnor, the VP of partnerships and platforms for Waze, said the partner program is a validation of the importance of crowdsourced reporting and shows how broadcasters and social services can engage in a mutually beneficial relationship. Just as broadcasters have turned to social channels like Twitter and Facebook to both push out information and pull in data, Waze is hoping to become a trusted tool for broadcasters to engage their users.

“It was the Carmageddon moment where we realized that broadcast stations want to use us,” Eisnor told me. “Broadcast stations are getting social and this is an interesting case of how can they can use social not just for real time feedback from the road but for audience engagement.”

Eisnor declined to share any financial details about the partnerships, saying it is primarily a distribution agreement. She said Waze can see a doubling or tripling of users in an area when a station starts using Waze. Stations can get up and running on Waze in one or two weeks, she said. Waze recently raised $30 million in funding.

I think partnerships like this will increasingly be an option for TV stations. There is only so much they can do on dwindling budgets, but by turning on deals like this, they can get great real-time data and a chance to deepen their relationship with users.

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