The Growing Use of Mobile Crowd-Sourcing Apps for Research Data

Using smartphones for data gathering gives many people pause. It's not just the sources and uses - but the access provided to others that is worrisome.

New uses of mobile crowd-sourcing apps may not entirely remove those doubts, but the research that comes from them may improve life in novel ways, including the fact that abandoned phones can still provide information.

Not just for finding the best bar or the quickest way out of a traffic jam, but for determining - often passively - the historical patterns that provide indices for why things happen, not just that they are happening.

From detecting illegal logging in the Brazilian rainforest to determining the sources of crowds who support football teams - whichever type of football you like - the use of mobile crowd-sourcing apps can help guide better resource management decision making in both the public and private sectors.

Assuming proper safeguards are instituted - yes, a big assumption - the benefits that flow from this type of analysis may far outweigh the negative consequences. JL

Peter Shadbolt reports in CNN:

With thousands of mini-reports coming in from around the internet, a mosaic of information can form a larger picture that can be used for many different purposes, from meteorology to car-sharing.
From avoiding traffic jams, to analyzing pedestrian flow patterns, to finding the best public toilet in town, crowdsourcing apps are showing that many smartphones make for light work.

With thousands of mini-reports coming in from around the internet, a mosaic of information can form a larger picture that can be used for many different purposes, from meteorology to car-sharing.

Using the intelligence of a vast interconnected organism, however, is nothing new: the venerable Oxford English Dictionary may in fact be the earliest example of crowdsourcing.

In the mid-19th century it made an open call for volunteers to log words and provide examples of their usage. Over a 70-year period, it received more than six million submissions.

Today, crowdsourcing is used in investing, in creative work and in funding start up projects.

App crowdsources your wedding album

How YOU can help with Flight 370 search

How Google crowdsources its maps

As with all good ideas, gaining a critical mass is a crucial element to its success. Even runaway hits such as BlaBlaCar -- the AirBnb of car travel -- initially struggled to gain a significant number of users.

But such incidents as a French transport strike in 2007 -- BlaBlaCar gained precious media coverage for being very much in business during the shutdown -- and the Icelandic volcano that grounded aircraft in 2010 played well for the company.

The wide availability of smartphones now makes it easier than ever to devote them to data gathering, with or without actual human intervention.

The Rainforest Connection transforms recycled cellphones into solar-powered surveillance devices that can detect illegal logging: placed high up in the forest canopy, they listen out for the sounds made by chainsaws and trigger immediate intervention by authorities.

In New York, a start up called Placemeter encourages citizens to suction-cup an old Android phone or an iPhone to a window, to send over a video feed of the street below. Placemeter uses the data - which they assure is completely anonymous and is never stored -- to infer pedestrian traffic patterns. This helps businesses market better and consumers can be made aware of waiting lines at shops or museum before even getting there.

Participants receive up to $50 per month, depending on the quality of the view from their window.

Crowdsourcing apps have been quick to gather pace in the U.S. and Europe -- where dealing in a marketplace with strangers is commonplace -- but slower in Asia where connections are still important.

While some strong start ups are doing well in the region -- freelancer platforms such as Coconala and Lancer in Japan and Zhubajie in China -- crowdsourcing is still in its infancy.

The challenge for crowdsourcing in Asia is that people tend to be more risk averse
Ping Wong, Hong Kong Internet Societ

"The challenge for crowdsourcing in Asia is that people tend to be more risk averse," says Ping Wong of the Hong Kong Internet Society. "They want to work with people they know or get a referral from friends.

"This cultural difference may take time to iron out before crowdsourcing can really take off in Asia."

In the meantime, European users can't get enough of apps such as Blablacar which are changing the public transport landscape. With a carefully designed service that calibrates the petrol money for spare seats in private cars, the app's owners say they are seeing it grow as a social phenomenon.

BlaBlaCar's Alec Dent told British media the company has even noticed spikes in searches for rides to Manchester before United home games.

"We thought it would be interesting to test the old joke that a lot of Manchester United fans live in Surrey," he was quoted as saying.

"And sure enough, there is a pattern of rides to and from Old Trafford around match days from the London area, especially Surrey."