The Economist
Premise Data: Armed with smartphones, Colombians are taking on the local mozzies
If you see a pothole, smell gas or step in water from a burst main, you can report the details online immediately. Smartphones mean that any concerned citizen can help keep a city’s infrastructure in proper repair—in theory. In practice, a nudge is sometimes required. And in the case of a project organised by Premise, a company in San Francisco that analyses geographical data, that nudge is financial.
Premise, a recently formed firm, plans to make money by recruiting millions of observers. It will pay them each a fee to use their smartphones to gather whatever information is of interest to its customers about whichever country the observer happens to be in.
