In his latest book, former National Geographic and Time photojournalist Rick Smolan, who is best known for The Day in the Life series, features more than one hundred powerful stories from around the world about scientists, innovators and others using big data to improve medicine, conserve energy, track the weather and more.

MacArthur Fellow Shwetak Patel developed a sensor that can help homeowners determine which appliances are the biggest energy hogs.

The book, titled The Human Face of Big Data, hit shelves last month but on Tuesday Smolan and his partner Jennifer Erwitt released an iPad app that puts an interactive twist on about half of the book’s stories, with extra videos, charts and graphics. For example, in a story about how MacArthur Fellow and University of Washington computer science professor Shwetak Patel developed a sensor that can help homeowners determine which appliances are the biggest energy hogs, the app lets users tap on images of different appliances to see their energy load. Or in a piece about the global online collective art project The Johnny Cash Project, which combined fans’ illustrations of Cash into one video, iPad users can click on the individual pictures to see video of them being drawn. (You can see five of the stories from the book here, as well as a description of the project from my colleague Derrick Harris here.) All earnings from the app, which costs $2.99, will be donated to the nonprofit Charity: Water.

In addition to launching the iPad app on Tuesday, Smolan and his team sent copies of the book to 10,000 of the world’s most influential people, from President Barack Obama and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to Oprah Winfrey and Actor Robin Williams to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

In October, the project hosted global events to bring journalists and big data innovators together. It also released Android and iOS apps that ask people around the world a set of questions about their beliefs, aspirations and lifestyles and then let them compare responses.

Earlier this fall, Smolan told me he believes big data is currently where the Internet was in 1993 but could change society in even bigger ways. While the government and corporations are considering its impact, he said he worries that ordinary people aren’t pondering about how big data could affect their lives.

“One of the goals  [of the project] was to get people thinking and talking about this world of big data while it’s still in its early formation stages,” he said.

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• Google: Google might be the biggest big data company of them all, and it used everything in its toolbox yesterday to create probably the most comprehensive tool available for tracking Sandy’s progress — its Superstorm Sandy Crisis Map. Not only does it collect, display and layer weather data from a number of sources, but it also includes video feeds from various locations, evacuation routes, emergency centers and traffic conditions (note: embedded map is interactive).

• Palantir: Secretive Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup Palantir doesn’t often talk about what it’s up to, but customer Direct Relief issued a press release on Monday explaining how Palantir’s technology helps the agency prepare — and continue to monitor — its efforts to donate medical supplies ahead of storms, including Sandy. Here’s how it explained its efforts heading into yesterday’s landfall:

“Working with analytical and data visualization tools from technology partner, Palantir, Direct Relief is able to to pinpoint clinic partners located in socially vulnerable areas and in flood risk zones near Hurricane Sandy’s path. Palantir’s tools allow Direct Relief to pull together massive amounts of information sources into a common framework to better understand, visualize, plan, and manage for complex emergencies in near real-time.

“… Offers of supplies were sent to more than 300 partners in the path of the storm and along evacuation routes.”

• SiSense: SiSense is a business intelligence startup headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, that boasts one of the fastest in-memory data analysis platforms around. On Monday, the company showed off what its product, called Prism, can do with a little weather data. The resulting interactive dashboard — which the company claims took less than an hour to build and uses open data from Data.gov — won’t help anybody track Sandy’s progress, but could help companies looking to avoid natural disasters find the safest places to locate their companies or critical data center assets.

• Datum Companies: A Greenwich, Conn., company called Datum Companies on Friday (we’ll assume the timing isn’t entirely coincidental) launched its flagship catastrophe-prediction platform called Eurus. Designed for customers in the insurance industries, the cloud service uses a variety of advanced statistical methods, as well as machine learning algorithms, to predict the likelihood of and monetary losses associated with natural disasters. Built on the Cassandra NoSQL database, the platform stores and collects billions of data points that it uses to train its predictive models.

Of course, parties interested in turning a profit aren’t the only ones whose data expertise proves effective in the case of natural disasters. We might also start paying more attention to the computer models from meteorology researchers, which proved remarkably accurate in predicting Sandy’s evolution from a coastal hurricane into an inland post-tropical storm. Assuming new, better satellites do actually launch later this decade to power future models, they might combine with next-generation commercial big data products and open data sets to provide some very useful data about how and when disasters will hit, how bad the effects might be, and how best to prepare.

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The former National Geographic and TIME photographer, who is best known for the Day in the Life book series, has spent his career using imagery to document -– and inspire reflection about -– the changing world.

Rick Smolan, President and CEO, Against All Odds Productions

In his latest project, The Human Face of Big Data, he shares more than 100 stories (culled from an initial list of 1,000) that reveal the concrete, mind-blowingly powerful ways big data is changing how we consume energy, receive healthcare, monitor animal migration, track the weather and more.

As my colleague Derrick Harris recently wrote, the project doesn’t just include a book, but iOS and Android apps that collect data from people around the world and then let users compare information on beliefs and aspirations. (When the book comes out on Nov. 20, people will be able to search and filter the data to see global patterns.) This week, the project also hosted events around the world to bring big data innovators and journalists together.

In looking at the landscape, Smolan told me that he thinks big data is where the Internet was in 1993, but it stands to have an even greater impact on society. Part of the project, he said, was meant to help a wider audience of people understand why big data matters.

“I’m worried that the people thinking about this are corporations and the government and not ordinary citizens,” he said. “One of the goals was to get people thinking and talking about this world of big data while it’s still in its early formation stages.”

Take a look at five examples of how big data is improving everyday life:

Risk-screening for heart attack patients

Researchers John Guttag and Collin Stultz (shown here) along with Zeeshan Syed have created a computer model to analyze formerly discarded EKG data of heart attack patients. Photo: Jason Grow 2012/The Human Face of Big Data

Using discarded EKG data from heart attack patients, researchers from MIT, the University of Michigan and Brigham and Women’s Hospital created a computer model that can help predict which heart attack patients are at risk of experiencing a second heart attack within the year. Through machine learning and data mining they found three EKG abnormalities that correlate with a higher risk of a second attack.

The key is that while traditional screening techniques (which miss about 70 percent of repeat heart attack cases) look at just 30 seconds of a patient’s EKG, the researchers’ model enables doctors to examine hours of EKG recordings to spot the high-risk indicators.

‘Magic Carpet’ patient monitoring

Developed by researchers at GE and Intel, the Magic Carpet prototype uses sensors in a home carpet to monitor the activity of seniors. It creates a baseline of normal movement -– from the usual time people get out of bed to the speed and pressure with which they walk -– and when it senses an abnormality, it sends an alert to loved ones. For now, wireless sensor-enabled system is too expensive for most people, but Smolan said that the basic idea is already evident in the Quantified Self-type gadgets that are gaining popularity. While some might think of self-monitoring devices as narcissistic naval-gazing, he said, they make people more aware and willing to change their behavior, which can improve their health in the long term.

Appliance-level home energy monitoring

Photo: Peter Menzel 2012/The Human Face of Big Data

As the presidential candidates debate how to rethink energy, perhaps they should consider this: the DVR consumes 11 percent of the average American household’s total power. That’s what MacArthur Fellow and University of Washington computer science professor Shwetak Patel learned through a device he developed.

Once it’s plugged in anywhere in a home, the sensor, called ElectriSense, can infer the unique digital signatures (the frequency of the electromagnetic interference) for different appliances to help homeowners see which appliances are the biggest energy hogs and learn how to conserve.

The technology isn’t yet available for purchase, but Belkin International has acquired the technology and the researchers expect them to release a commercial product soon.

Understanding traffic patterns with GPS data

Photo: R. Ian Lloyd 2012/The Human Face of Big Data

When it rains in Singapore, taxicabs are nearly impossible to come by. But it isn’t because they’re all full carting people around, it’s because the drivers have pulled over.

Through a study from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) comparing weather patterns and taxi activity in the city, researcher Oliver Senn realized that, counter-intuitively, cab drivers pull to the side of the road in inclement weather.

When he dug deeper, he realized that the reason stemmed from a decades-old taxi company policy that requires drivers to put up a $1,000 bond when they’re in an accident. When the policy was initially implemented, drivers could be cleared and returned the money the next day. But now that it can take months for drivers to get their money back, they choose to play it safe and stay off the roads when the risk is highest.

The policy is now being questioned in Singapore, and it shows how powerful data can be in helping cities around the world better understand and improve urban movement.

Early weather warnings

Weather alerts on the television and, increasingly, our smartphones are common in the U.S. But Earth Networks, the company behind the WeatherBug App, says that of the 7 billion people on the planet, 6 billion have never received an alert that could help them avoid severe weather.

Through the company’s tens of thousands of sensors around the world, it monitors temperature changes, wind and lightning to give people early alerts about inclement weather. Lightning, in particular, the company said, is a valuable leading indicator of severe weather and, through its growing network of sensors, it’s working to bring alerts to places like Africa, South America and Asia that don’t currently receive the same level of advance notice.

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The largest weather news and information provider is about to get bigger. The Weather Channel Companies (TWCC), parent of the cable network and weather.com, is acquiring San Francisco-based Weather Underground with a pledge to keep the oldest internet weather brand going. That includes keeping the staff intact along with wunderground.com and its mobile apps. No details on the price; the deal is expected close this summer.

In addition to users and traffic, the acquisition brings the larger company deep expertise in weather research and development along with a community-centric approach. Real estate, too — The Weather Channel plans to use the SF headquarters as a regional office, according to the announcement Monday afternoon.

It’s the latest move for Chairman and CEO David Kenny, who was hired in January in a surprise leadership change. His charge: to invest more in programming, digital assets and international expansion. Weather Underground fits squarely in that second bucket. The Weather Channel Companies is a joint venture of NBC Universal and PE firms Bain Capital and The Blackstone Group.

ComScore pegs the unduplicated number for the sites at 54.6 million uniques based on May 2012 traffic. TWC is by far the larger with 49.8 million uniques compared to Weather Underground’s 9.8 million; TWC also has the largest weather presence online, already more than double Weather Bug, the next largest. (See the chart below for more details.)

Weather Underground started at the University of Michigan in 1991 as “a menu-based telnet interface.” The name came from, yes, the radical student group that also came from that university and took its name from Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues. The formal company dates back to 1995, when it spun out of UM and launched on the web.

Credit: comScoreMediaMetrix

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Consumers will automatically be enrolled in the service, but can opt-out. There is no charge for the received text warning, even for customers that don’t pay for a messaging plan or pay per text.

In order to strike a balance between too much and not enough information, the NWS won’t send alerts for weather watches, which are only potential weather events. Instead, alerts are limited to warnings only; events that are mainly certain to happen in specific areas. No alerts will be sent for severe thunderstorm warnings as those are fairly common.

Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile have enabled the system nationwide, but for now AT&T is limiting it to New York City, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Ore, with expansion plans in the future. Most modern smartphones are already equipped for the system, although iPhones aren’t yet part of the program.

I like the idea here as it’s useful, informative, free and can help save lives. More of our news and information is coming from the device we have with us, not the radio or TV that we may or may not be paying attention to. And with more than half of the U.S. population owning a smartphone — and more joining those ranks every day — the connected handset may be the best venue for this important information.

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Stormpulse in use at the White House.

Weather isn’t an easy business, but it’s always there.

Stormpulse, which offers an easy-to-read weather map and monitoring service, is a pretty cool product with A-list clients. The company not only has 200 enterprise customers, but the White House Situation Room has called the team when the service has gone down terms changed, wondering what was up. It’s a pretty sweet place for a five-year-old business that’s seeking its first round of funding to be in. Matthew Wensing, the CEO and co-founder of the Austin, Texas-based company, explains the company’s origins as a lucky connection between technology, weather data and media interest in tracking extreme weather.

“Weather isn’t a trend; it’s always happening,” Wensing says. He said he started working on the service in 2004 mostly because he was living in Chicago and his family lived in South Florida, which was experiencing an active hurricane season. He wanted an easy way to track storms, and the technology at the time was pretty limited. So he spent about three years gathering the data around weather and trying to build a site that made it easy to see where storms would hit by bringing in mapping data to the weather information. In Sept. 2006, he quit his day job to start a company around his tinkering.

Hurricane Ike stormed their servers.

In Sept. 2008, he got a break thanks to Hurricane Ike, because the Houston Chronicle and other news sites had put a Stormpulse widget on their web pages and panicked Houstonians clicked through for more info. At that time, he had more than 900 media customers running the free version of the widget asking only for a link back to the Stormpulse site in return.

During Ike, hits on the web site went from about 1,000 a day to 2 million hits from 1.2 million unique visitors on the day before the storm was set to hit. While free media users and consumers that were paying for $50 annual accounts were okay, they weren’t the big opportunity Stormpulse was after. Wensing noticed that some of those consumer accounts belonged to big business customers such as FedEx or the White House, and so in April of this year, the site abandoned its consumer accounts and decided to focus on businesses.

“The hypothesis was that a lot of those people paying for consumer accounts were actually businesses that would pay 10 times more for the service,” Wensing said. “We had just never asked them to before.”

Now Wensing’s trying to get enterprise customers to pay more and sign several of their different employees up for weather monitoring with the idea that giving several operations managers access to these alerts beats paying someone to sit around watching The Weather Channel all day and hoping that person notifies the right people under the right circumstances when relevant weather hits. Businesses from shipping to retail to utilities care about the weather, and Stormpulse wants to go deep among a variety of those verticals.

Big data needs a better UI.

Wensing won’t disclose revenue, but Stormpulse has become cash flow positive, and he says he wants to raise money so he can hire people to focus on more features and products to make Stormpulse that much better and more lucrative. “We have more inbound sales than we have time to field,” says Wensing. Currently, the company has six employees.

Despite the emphasis on weather data– the site consolidates information from 25 different data sources and nine weather agencies — it’s the user interface and experience that Wensing believes is Stormpulse’s competitive advantage. “Data is a nice little moat around the business, but the bigger moat is the UI experience around that data,” he said.

Sure, today it’s hard to get weather data, but efforts to bring open data to the government, plus the existence of data markets such as the ones offered by Microsoft or Infochimps, means that weather data may not always be a pain to collect. Wensing says Stormpulse’s advantage is in presenting that data in a context-aware way for the user. So someone in Canada sees a different version of the site than someone in Texas, and someone in the path of a hurricane gets that information presented first as opposed to local weather.

Plus, he adds that weather isn’t an easy place to get mass distribution in,”It’s not super easy to get The Weather Channel to acknowledge you, and use you in a massive way. That’s a hard problem for startups, and we already have the attention and the market.”

As for the future, he’s excited about building storm forecasting products and building out the infrastructure that means Stormpulse can launch its service on new platforms and operating systems as new devices and OSes hit the market. It already has an iPad app and expects the Android version to hit in a month or so.

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The mouse. Apple may have brought the mouse to the masses, but with one multi-gesture swipe, it could flick it away forever. So many of the new features being introduced with OS X Lion will require complex gestures that replacing the mouse with a touchpad will be nearly essential.

The file system. Thanks to drag-and-drop sharing with AirDrop, and Documents in the Cloud available to all developers, Apple has threatened not only the flash drive, but also file systems themselves. Users won’t need to know where files go, because it will all happen automatically behind the scenes.

Paper and traditional newsstands. While I may not be ready to ditch my RSS readers just yet, I will be opening articles in mobile Safari far more often than I do now. With the ability to tweet, read and save multi-page articles in Safari, I may depend far less on RSS. I’ll also probably stop using Instapaper, and with the addition of Newsstand, I’ll transition from print to digital subscriptions much more quickly.

Desktop app launchers. Bringing the iOS-style app organization to OS X with Launchpad is a welcome addition. It could eliminate the need to use other launchers like Quicksilver, Alfred and Butler, especially when combined with Mission Control, the more versatile Exposé replacement.

To-do apps. In the same vein of getting things done more efficiently, the new Reminders app for iOS devices could make third-party to-do apps redundant. It all depends on how advanced your needs are, but Apple’s system has location and time-based notifications, so you can’t ask for much more.

BlackBerry Messenger and SMS. With Apple’s new iMessage service for any owner of an Apple device, the one remaining killer feature of BlackBerry devices  may be rendered inert. The remaining question is whether or not families will keep their SMS service with their carriers. Creating a way to direct message family and friends with other Apple devices, as well as deeply integrating Twitter into the iOS itself may eliminate that need, depending on what hardware your circle of friends and family is using.

Weather apps. I’m not a fan of the stock weather app that comes with iOS, but that’s about to change. With the integration of weather updates on the new notifications, and the added bonus of hourly forecasts, a lot of what I was looking for in third-party apps is taken care of.

Once again, Steve Jobs delivers the goods and has the tech world scrambling to keep up. But this time around, consumers might be the ones doing a little scrambling, too. Apple is aggressively moving to the cloud, which might throw some users unused to the concept for a loop, and the fact that Lion can only be downloaded might leave some of those without fast or dependable Internet connections behind. But Apple seems to have set its sights firmly on where tech is headed, and it’s willing to roll over existing offerings and services in order to get there.

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Of course, how weather feels is a subjective affair, but that’s the point of Weddar. It humanizes the weather report app by connecting real people to make weather more experiential, and creating an ongoing group conversation around what it’s like outside. It uses a crowdsourcing model to make weather reporting “hyper-local,” according to Weddar co-creator Ricardo Fonseca. Since people are doing their own reports, instead of depending on a service, weather reporting can happen “even in places where other services could not reach,” Fonseca says.

As someone who has and continues to use a wide variety of weather apps on my iOS devices and on my Mac, I can personally attest to how frustrating it can be to receive inaccurate reports from somewhat distant reporting stations. Here in Toronto, for instance, weather info often comes from Pearson Airport, which is a far cry from the city’s downtown. Weddar doesn’t provide specific temperature reporting, opting instead to let users choose from nine one-word descriptors (including Hot, Perfect, Freezing and OK) and four conditions (rain, snow, etc.) with three levels of strength each. Reports are then posted on a Google Map within the app alongside all others for the area. Checking in with what people in my immediate vicinity are saying about what it’s like outside, even if its only a report of the general conditions, seems like a considerable improvement over depending on automated reports that can’t convey experiential information.

Fonseca asserts that I’m not alone when I find cause for those kinds of complaints regarding traditional weather reporting. “Weather is one of the most important aspects in people’s lives,” he says. “People everywhere at anytime are talking about it. They’re never happy with weather reports and blame weather reporters for not being accurate.” That dissatisfaction is the key to Weddar’s success, according to Fonseca:

Long-term engagement will come from, we believe, the app being useful solving this issue for them. We see Weddar as “people powered” but you can also see it the other way around as “Power to the People.” People helping each other with accurate and personal reports is a powerful (and as we have been seeing, addictive) thing.

Fonseca and the Weddar team are also planning additional social features that will make the app even more useful, including photo sharing of current weather conditions. The app also employs a reward system that uses a user leaderboard to track the most engaged users. Even considering those elements, Fonseca says “the crucial thing for long-term [engagement] will be if people find the app useful in their daily life,” something he says they’ve seen promising evidence of during the beta and today with the official launch.

Fonseca and the entire Weddar team hail from Portugal, and he says they were inspired to create the app in the face of so much negative press about his home country regarding its financial woes. He and his team “wanted to do something cool and unleash it to the world to show people that Portugal is not only “IMF rescues, crisis and sun.’” The Weddar team completely bootstrapped the app’s development and creation in order to achieve that goal, and the app is currently free and also ad-free, but he stresses that they have a solid business plan in place that he says will be implemented “in a later stage of Weddar’s development.” For now, Fonseca’s plans for Weddar mainly involve reaching the most users possible, because “that’s the way the service will be useful to people.”

Right now, you’ll likely only see a lot of local reports if you’re based in Portugal, but it’s only day one. The clever interface and remarkably simple user experience provided by Weddar, along with the usefulness of its feature set guarantee we’ll see uptake expand steadily across the world as more people discover this App Store gem.

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One thing I miss about the home screen of the Samsung Galaxy Tab I briefly owned (there isn’t much) are the widgets that provide information without actually requiring a user to fully open an application. Apple only allows icons to be displayed on the home screen, and the only dynamic one of those is its own Calendar app. Third-party developers can’t use dynamic icons, and Apple doesn’t seem eager to give any other of its own first-party icons a dynamic makeover. Even its own Weather app always shows it as sunny, clear and 73 degrees, which can be annoying when it’s grey and hovering around zero with sleet falling everywhere. The only way to change an icon on the home screen is with a numbered badge, and that’s just how Fahrenheit and Celsius work.

Simply open the app, allow it to detect your location, and allow it to send push notifications. It’ll find the weather info for your area (which it displays in a very attractive interface, complete with three-hour forecast breakdowns and weather maps), and it’ll display the current temperature as a numbered badge on the app’s icon once you exit. Thanks to Apple’s iOS multitasking, it also updates the temperature every hour in the background.

Apple’s badge system doesn’t support negative numbers, so the apps provide a few different options for cold-weather climates. Either the app can display the negative temp as a positive number (so -3 would show as 3), you can display no temperature at all when it drops below zero, or the app can send a notification when the temperature swings into the negatives so you don’t get confused. Considering the software limitations, I think it’s a solid workaround.

Both Fahrenheit and Celsius are universal apps, so they’re optimized on both the iPhone and the iPad. Also remember that they’re distinct apps, so if you buy the wrong one, you’ll have to pay for the other to change units. Each only costs $0.99, though, so even if you do buy both it won’t break the bank. Plus, with both, you can have them side-by-side on your home screen for instant, at-a-glance temperature unit conversion.

I’d love some dynamically updating weather conditions in addition to the temperature, but until Apple makes some major changes to iOS, that’s not going to happen. For now, Fahrenheit and Celsius more than fit the bill, thanks in no small part to smart app icon design that makes it instantly apparent that the badge is telling you the current temperature. It may not be as fancy as an Android widget, but it’s simple, smart and it gets the job done.

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The relationships between weather and energy demand are obvious and well known. A hot stretch during the summer months will result in an elevated electricity load to keep air conditioners running. It follows that a cold winter will be accompanied by higher draws on natural gas, coal and heating oil stocks. In each of these cases, higher burn rates of fossil fuels equal higher concentrations of pollutants emitted to the atmosphere.

As a true smart grid is not a single technology but rather an ensemble of existing and forthcoming tools and services, the incorporation of better demand anticipation in cities with high population density can translate to more efficient use of raw materials like natural gas, coal and heating oil. The financial benefit associated with more efficient use of these resources can then be realized in two ways: first for the consumer and second for utilities.

For the consumer, optimizing the thermostat based on a combination of hourly temperature outlooks coupled with actual requirements (ie., when will we actually be in the building requiring the energy) can lower consumer’s energy bills. At the same time utilities that have a better handle on when and where the peak demand will occur can manage their raw material supply chain with better results, which has a direct line to improved margins. This is a key step in proactively reducing emissions without waiting for a regulation to attempt to enforce the same outcome.

As private and government weather forecasting services are continuously improving their projections of short term weather pattern, the return on the investment for smart grid developers can be seen in days, not seasons. It should be noted that using traditional forecasting techniques, the skill level associated with an hourly forecast for anything beyond a 8-10 day window still can be a limitation. However, there has been a significant improvement in hourly outlooks for days 1-7.

Even an incremental improvement in forecasting the hourly temperature, wind or solar profile up to one week out can result in significant savings across the grid, ranging from load assessment/fuel use, increased efficiencies for fuel blends with respect to utilities that incorporate intermittent supply sources (wind, solar), operational logistics and transmission savings, and optimizing preparation activities in the anticipation of severe weather events (heatwaves, cold snaps, etc). And these are only a few examples.

The level of technological sophistication of the grid operators and the degree to which the consumer is open to participate by sharing information regarding their consumption patterns will also enhance the financial and environmental benefits to all parties involved.

This column is just a starting point for discussions that examine weather, sensors, data, networks, and their combined influence on commerce, with particular focus on the effects these technologies will have on energy consumption. Over the last couple of years, there has been a heightened interest in this area from the applied research side, evidenced by new topics and sessions presented at the annual conferences of the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, and others. Investors, too, have been backing companies in the weather data space, including recently Google Ventures, Khosla Ventures and NEA’s support of weather insurance company WeatherBill.

My hope is that the weather space can capitalize on the emergence of tools and techniques which fall under the ‘big data’ umbrella, in the process, bringing some of these discussions to a broader audience while also helping readers understand how closely related their lives and decisions are to conditions in the atmosphere.

To learn more about smart grid opportunities come to our Green:Net event on April 21 in San Francisco.

Michael Ferrari is the VP, Research for Weather Trends International

Image courtesy of Ell Brown.

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