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How to Benefit from Data

1. Use data to solve societal challenges

If you want to solve societal challenges like climate change, you’ll  need the right data to make it happen. One way to discover relevant datasets and create new solutions is to join Open Data Hackdays. There you can work in interdisciplinary teams to develop new solutions for challenges you care about within two days.

2. Donate data for a greater good

You can donate your data for a greater purpose to enable innovation or solutions you deem valuable. Here are a few initiatives that you could support:

  1. [EN] Help to understand our nature: With PlantNet you can recognise and confirm all kinds of plants.
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  2. [DE, FR, EN, IT] Co-shape and use our maps: OpenStreetMap is not only open and non-profit, but also crowd-based.
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  3. [DE, FR, EN, IT] Donate your voice: Mozilla Voice trains an open and free voice recognition algorithm for everyone to use.

3. Analyse and visualise data

[EN] Using simple technological tools, anyone can analyze and visualize data. From Data to Wiz helps you to find the ideal visualisation for your data.

[DE, FR, EN, IT] Two helpful platforms to implement the visualization are Data Wrapper and Tableau.

[EN] Would you like to go one step further and enter the world of Data Science? This blogpost offers a detailed ranking of existing online courses.

4. Use open data apps

[DE, FR, EN, IT] Many valuable apps and insights are created from open data, e.g. the bathing weather index in order to discover the warmest spot to take a bath. You can discover them here.

5. Discover open datasets

On the Swiss open government data (OGD) platform «opendata.swiss» you can find over 7000 open datasets ranging from the distribution of alpine ibexes, aerial photographs and antenna sites to the monthly measured air quality and federal expenditure on dairy farming.

More helpful links

[DE] Lerne die Geschichte von offenen Daten in der Schweiz dank der Analyse von Jonas Ösch kennen.
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[DE] In diesem Video erklärt Code for Germany, wie sie engagierte Menschen zusammen bringen, um mit offenen Daten die Zivilgesellschaft zu stärken.
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[EN] A video on how data can be used for social good by the founder of DataKind, a community of data scientists supporting social change organisations.
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‍[EN, DE, FR] You are a data scientist or visualisation designer, who wants to use their skills to benefit the world? Join the Meetup group «Data Science for Good» in Basel.

[DE] Contribute to people-powered research. The Zooniverse enables everyone to take part in research in various fields ranging from galaxies, chimpanzees to Shakespeare. Discover opportunities unlock answers and contribute to real discoveries.

[DE, FR, EN, IT] Contribute your knowledge to Wikipedia or a dataset to Wikidata in order to strengthen open knowledge.

[EN] Data can help to visualise a bigger movement. The following examples allow you to share your story and thereby help to grasp a world wide development:
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  1. Visualising climate change: Through «My Climate Story» you can share your personal stories about local experiences of global climate change and browse through the resulting public storybank.
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  2. ‍Creating a living archive of queer experience: Queering the Map is a community-generated mapping project that geo-locates queer moments, memories and histories in relation to physical space.
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  3. ‍Tracking company behavior: WikiRate is a community of collaborative researchers; anyone can contribute. It enables a feedback system for companies by bringing together diverse minds to design, develop, discuss, hone, populate and share free and open data about corporate performance.

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