@article {1400, title = {Give more data, awareness and control to individual citizens, and they will help COVID-19 containment}, year = {2021}, month = {2021/02/02}, abstract = {The rapid dynamics of COVID-19 calls for quick and effective tracking of virus transmission chains and early detection of outbreaks, especially in the {\textquotedblleft}phase 2{\textquotedblright} of the pandemic, when lockdown and other restriction measures are progressively withdrawn, in order to avoid or minimize contagion resurgence. For this purpose, contact-tracing apps are being proposed for large scale adoption by many countries. A centralized approach, where data sensed by the app are all sent to a nation-wide server, raises concerns about citizens{\textquoteright} privacy and needlessly strong digital surveillance, thus alerting us to the need to minimize personal data collection and avoiding location tracking. We advocate the conceptual advantage of a decentralized approach, where both contact and location data are collected exclusively in individual citizens{\textquoteright} {\textquotedblleft}personal data stores{\textquotedblright}, to be shared separately and selectively (e.g., with a backend system, but possibly also with other citizens), voluntarily, only when the citizen has tested positive for COVID-19, and with a privacy preserving level of granularity. This approach better protects the personal sphere of citizens and affords multiple benefits: it allows for detailed information gathering for infected people in a privacy-preserving fashion; and, in turn this enables both contact tracing, and, the early detection of outbreak hotspots on more finely-granulated geographic scale. The decentralized approach is also scalable to large populations, in that only the data of positive patients need be handled at a central level. Our recommendation is two-fold. First to extend existing decentralized architectures with a light touch, in order to manage the collection of location data locally on the device, and allow the user to share spatio-temporal aggregates{\textemdash}if and when they want and for specific aims{\textemdash}with health authorities, for instance. Second, we favour a longer-term pursuit of realizing a Personal Data Store vision, giving users the opportunity to contribute to collective good in the measure they want, enhancing self-awareness, and cultivating collective efforts for rebuilding society.}, isbn = {1572-8439}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-020-09572-w}, url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-020-09572-w}, author = {Mirco Nanni and Andrienko, Gennady and Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo and Boldrini, Chiara and Bonchi, Francesco and Cattuto, Ciro and Chiaromonte, Francesca and Comand{\'e}, Giovanni and Conti, Marco and Cot{\'e}, Mark and Dignum, Frank and Dignum, Virginia and Domingo-Ferrer, Josep and Ferragina, Paolo and Fosca Giannotti and Riccardo Guidotti and Helbing, Dirk and Kaski, Kimmo and Kert{\'e}sz, J{\'a}nos and Lehmann, Sune and Lepri, Bruno and Lukowicz, Paul and Matwin, Stan and Jim{\'e}nez, David Meg{\'\i}as and Anna Monreale and Morik, Katharina and Oliver, Nuria and Passarella, Andrea and Passerini, Andrea and Dino Pedreschi and Pentland, Alex and Pianesi, Fabio and Francesca Pratesi and S Rinzivillo and Salvatore Ruggieri and Siebes, Arno and Torra, Vicenc and Roberto Trasarti and Hoven, Jeroen van den and Vespignani, Alessandro} } @article {1404, title = {Human migration: the big data perspective}, journal = {International Journal of Data Science and Analytics}, year = {2020}, month = {2020/03/23}, pages = {1{\textendash}20}, abstract = {How can big data help to understand the migration phenomenon? In this paper, we try to answer this question through an analysis of various phases of migration, comparing traditional and novel data sources and models at each phase. We concentrate on three phases of migration, at each phase describing the state of the art and recent developments and ideas. The first phase includes the journey, and we study migration flows and stocks, providing examples where big data can have an impact. The second phase discusses the stay, i.e. migrant integration in the destination country. We explore various data sets and models that can be used to quantify and understand migrant integration, with the final aim of providing the basis for the construction of a novel multi-level integration index. The last phase is related to the effects of migration on the source countries and the return of migrants.}, isbn = {2364-4168}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s41060-020-00213-5}, url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007\%2Fs41060-020-00213-5}, author = {Alina Sirbu and Andrienko, Gennady and Andrienko, Natalia and Boldrini, Chiara and Conti, Marco and Fosca Giannotti and Riccardo Guidotti and Bertoli, Simone and Jisu Kim and Muntean, Cristina Ioana and Luca Pappalardo and Passarella, Andrea and Dino Pedreschi and Pollacci, Laura and Francesca Pratesi and Sharma, Rajesh} } @article {1302, title = {(So) Big Data and the transformation of the city}, journal = {International Journal of Data Science and Analytics}, year = {2020}, abstract = {The exponential increase in the availability of large-scale mobility data has fueled the vision of smart cities that will transform our lives. The truth is that we have just scratched the surface of the research challenges that should be tackled in order to make this vision a reality. Consequently, there is an increasing interest among different research communities (ranging from civil engineering to computer science) and industrial stakeholders in building knowledge discovery pipelines over such data sources. At the same time, this widespread data availability also raises privacy issues that must be considered by both industrial and academic stakeholders. In this paper, we provide a wide perspective on the role that big data have in reshaping cities. The paper covers the main aspects of urban data analytics, focusing on privacy issues, algorithms, applications and services, and georeferenced data from social media. In discussing these aspects, we leverage, as concrete examples and case studies of urban data science tools, the results obtained in the {\textquotedblleft}City of Citizens{\textquotedblright} thematic area of the Horizon 2020 SoBigData initiative, which includes a virtual research environment with mobility datasets and urban analytics methods developed by several institutions around Europe. We conclude the paper outlining the main research challenges that urban data science has yet to address in order to help make the smart city vision a reality.}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s41060-020-00207-3}, url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41060-020-00207-3}, author = {Andrienko, Gennady and Andrienko, Natalia and Boldrini, Chiara and Caldarelli, Guido and Paolo Cintia and Cresci, Stefano and Facchini, Angelo and Fosca Giannotti and Gionis, Aristides and Riccardo Guidotti and others} }