Science

Where surveillance cameras work but the justice system doesn't

https://restofworld.org/2021/mexico-city-security-theater?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker

Madeleine Wattenbarger

Rest of World

19 January 2021

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Mexico City's 11-year-old video surveillance system, one of the most advanced in the world, was a massive investment in public safety: about $660 million to date to cover the city with more than 30,000 cameras and other devices. Like so much else in Mexico's law enforcement apparatus, it has done little to control crime but instead has become a tool of corruption and official impunity. While the cameras have helped keep tourists and elites safer, the vast majority of crimes go unreported and only a tiny number of police investigations benefit from the surveillance system.

Electric car batteries with five-minute charging times produced

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/19/electric-car-batteries-race-ahead-with-five-minute-charging-times?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker

Damian Carrington

The Guardian

19 January 2021

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Batteries that can be fully charged in five minutes have been created for the first time, allowing electric cars to recharge faster. The Israeli company StoreDot produced 1,000 of these new lithium-ion batteries, which can be recharged for 1,000 cycles while retaining 80 percent of the original capacity. It could be a few years before these batteries are mass produced, but the CEO of the company says their samples “demonstrates it is feasible and it’s commercially ready.”

In South Bend, Pete Buttigieg challenged a decades-old assumption that streets are for cars above all else

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/pete-buttigieg-south-bend/2021/01/15/6bb014b2-55d5-11eb-a08b-f1381ef3d207_story.html?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker

Ian Duncan

The Washington Post

16 January 2021

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Reconfiguring streets to slow automobile traffic through its downtown business district and encourage pedestrians and bicycling enlivened South Bend's street life and proved a boon to its restaurants and other businesses. Then-Mayor Pete Buttigieg pushed for the $25 million plan to make the streets safer and encourage people to spend more time and money in the area. The "smart streets" plan, like other cities' "complete streets" approaches, faced drivers' complaints about increased driving time. But Buttigieg and his supporters hope to push the concept when he runs the federal Transportation Department.

An Algorithm Is Helping a Community Detect Lead Pipes

https://www.wired.com/story/algorithm-helping-community-detect-lead-pipes?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker

Sidney Fussell

Wired

14 January 2021

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BlueConduit, an analytics startup, applies statistical models to identify neighborhoods and households that might have lead pipes. The models include dozens of factors, such as the age of the home and proximity of other homes where lead has been found, to help predict likely locations of lead pipes and create a ranking by likelihood that cities can use to prioritize which pipes to examine. In Flint, MI, about 70% of the homes identified using the models had lead pipes, compared to about 15% of homes where excavations did not use the model. The company is working with organizations in dozens of other cities.

The U.S. Could Make New Cars a Lot Less Deadly

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-06/u-s-new-car-safety-ratings-are-overdue-for-update?sref=EHcL0Cmk&utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker

David Zipper

CityLab

6 January 2021

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American cars made since the early 1980s have carried ratings from the federal New Car Assessment Program, showing how risky they are to human life in a crash. NCAP ratings motivated a host of safety enhancements by manufacturers. Since the 1990s, similar programs in the European Union, China, Australia, Korea, and Japan have also rated vehicles' risks to pedestrians and bicyclists, and their fatalities have dropped. Not so in the U.S., where industry resistance has stalled expansion of NCAP ratings. Advocates hope the Biden Transportation Department will finally expand the program.

After 3 years and $1.5 million devoted to testing rape kits, Alaska made one new arrest

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/lawless/2020/12/30/after-3-years-and-15-million-devoted-to-testing-rape-kits-alaska-made-one-new-arrest?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker

Kyle Hopkins

Anchorage Daily News

30 December 2020

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Despite hopes that testing a backlog of rape kits would reveal many new serial-rape suspects, Alaska's three-year push to test 568 kits under the federally funded Sexual Assault Kit Initiative led to only one new prosecution. The reasons the program fell short of expectations include a lack of usable DNA samples, errors by investigators, cases in which victims and suspects had died or victims no longer wished to proceed, or the kits revealed no evidence that wasn't previously known. Alaska is now footing the bill to test more kits, which contain physical evidence collected after a rape.