This week is the Smart City Expo Bogota, and Datasketch will be at booth 2521 in Corferias, where we will explain how we believe that data (fair and committed) can help to improve cities. If you’re around, stop by and say hello. :-)

Since we’ve been updating the portfolio, we took the opportunity to tell you about three projects that help cities share data, understand its complexities and make it more interesting for their inhabitants. As always, if you have any ideas or projects that we can support you with, don’t hesitate to contact us.

CDMX - Open data includes visualization

Many cities and governments have open data portals that seek to promote a culture of transparency, participation and accountability. But more is needed to open; we must promote its use. To achieve this, we help the analysis with easy visualizations that can be created without programming or using another tool.

With this vision in mind, we have been working with the Digital Agency for Public Innovation of Mexico City, and together we have created the Ajolote System, which combines CKAN and the Datasketch Apps so that citizens, academia, journalists and public servants can easily and intuitively access and analyze CDMX data.

Explore CDMX data 🚀

Bogotá - An oasis of greenery in a concrete desert

“Trees of Bogotá” was one of the first data journalism projects and specials we did, highlighting the heritage and environmental importance they have in the city. Access to data was a challenge, but with patience and many requests for access to information, we put together a unique database in the region at the time.

To reach the maximum possible public, we created an app with visualizations, a tour, a catalog, a report, frequently asked questions and recordings of memories about the trees. All this happened five years ago, and we would love to update it in Bogotá and replicate it in other cities in Colombia and Latin America.

11 trees to get to know Bogotá 🌲

Chapinero - Discover the cultural spaces in your neighborhood

Our colleagues and allies from all over the region are delighted when they visit us and work at Casa Datasketch. They love the Chapinero neighborhood, where we are located, as well as Bogotá. This inspired us to promote culture in the area using data science, so we proposed the project “Rutas Caminables” within the call “Es Cultura Local” of the Instituto Distrital de las Artes, Idartes.

“Rutas Caminables” compiles and selects information on cultural and heritage interest in three routes that go through cultural spaces, galleries, stores, bookstores, architectural heritage and other sustainable tourism places in Chapinero. Everything is packaged in a mobile app that guides you, along with QR codes at points of interest, to link the urban space with the digital.

🏙️Get to know the walking routes

Prototype of the app. We continue to make improvements. 🔧

On the radar

• 🏛️ OGP’s Strategy 2023-2028 is now a reality | OGP
• 🎡 Search Roulette: visualize Google autocomplete suggestions | Search Roulette
• 🥷🏾 Your identity reconstructed from stolen data | ABC News
• 📝 AI is taking the jobs of Kenyans writing essays for U.S. college students | Rest of World
• 🗣️ AI tool that identifies an emotion with your voice and recommends a song with that mood | Hume AI

Thank you for reading. Share the newsletter with anyone interested and look us up if you have any projects or ideas you think we can collaborate on - see you in two weeks!