New App Alerts Users to Rising Rivers and Streams

Beyond its common application as a predictor of consumer purchasing behavior, AI can be utilized to tackle poverty issues, improve agricultural efficiency, and increase access to information for otherwise disconnected populations. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are putting global satellite photographs into a complex algorithm to gauge economic activity.

In a campaign to boost community interest in and use of urban wind power, city officials in Reno, Nevada, are helping consumers take the guesswork out of buying home turbines. Through an online consumer guide called the Green Energy Dashboard, potential buyers are able to track power output and durability of different turbines and determine which would be most efficient for their community.

State and County Departments of Transportation are building a second emergency evacuation road for Waikōloa Village (expected to be completed by September 2026 and cost $3.75 million) to provide an additional escape route to residents in one of the highest wildfire-risk areas in the U.S.

The National Education Association has launched a school-focused COVID-19 case tracker in the U.S., all thank to the efforts of a Kansas theater teacher. Alisha Morris started with an excel sheet and took to online searches to start logging the number of positive cases, first around her state, and later was tracking 48 U.S. states. By the time she handed off the data to the NEA, Morris, along with various volunteers "had logged over nearly 4,300 cases at more than 1,000 schools."

To reduce the rate of suicides in Oregon, a Washington County epidemiologist formed an unlikely collaboration with the county's death investigators in order to build a comprehensive pool of data about where and why suicides were taking place. The outcome was a better understanding of prevention tactics that included partnering with "motel clerks and housekeepers, animal shelter workers, pain clinic staffers and more" to teach warning signs and ways to respond.

Early warning systems allow communities to implement effective disaster preparedness. The Uganda National Integrated Early Warning System (U-NIEWS), disseminates forecasts—ranging from weather patterns to market prices for crops—in a bulletin. Data is collected across the country and bulletins go out on a national level, disseminated by local stakeholders through WhatsApp, radio, and other media.

Low-code applications assist in modernizing governmental software systems. A development platform that allows people who have little coding experience to easily digitize processes has allowed New Orleans and the Orleans Parish Communication District to streamline their 911 and 311 services, allowing citizens to track information and engage with government agencies more transparently.

In France, a digital transformation is taking place. To lay the groundwork, the country passed the Digital Republic Act in 2016, which mandated local and central government to publish documents and public data, a significant step toward transparency and open data. Government taskforce Etalab, which has attracted top tech talent, built on that foundation by launching data.gouv.fr, a portal that hosts over 40,000 public datasets, and other organizations have coordinated collaborative open data projects between cities.

True to hacker form, an MIT team wants "open-source agriculture," a technology that takes food production back from big corporations and makes it widely accessible. To this end, the OpenAg community, comprised of coders, horticulturalists, engineers, plant scientists, and teachers, is developing food computers. But the technology is still being developed, and the economics don't yet pencil out for profitability.

Technology has made it easier to fact-check speeches and interviews in real time. The organization Fullfact has made software that processes dialogue looking for claims and highlights whether those claims match verified data. The tools help fact-checkers contribute to public debate around the world.