Crowdsolving Complex Problems

Millions of people are quietly running one of the largest health studies in history - not in clinics, but on their wrists and fingers. Every ring, watch, and tracker is a tiny sensor, streaming data that, when pooled together, creates enormous datasets fueling the next wave of AI-driven health insights. It’s funny to think how far we’ve come. Not too long ago, wearable tech meant a clunky pedometer clipped to your belt, dutifully counting steps until you got bored and tossed it in a drawer. Fast forward to 2025, and your jewelry doesn’t just judge your bedtime - it can survive a 25-hour Senate speech, log your stress while you argue policy, and even tell you that you’re not getting enough restorative sleep (as if you didn’t already know). When Senator Cory Booker stood (and stood… and stood) for  25 hours straight  to make the longest speech in Senate history, he wasn’t just breaking political records. He was also unintentionally stress-testing the Oura Ring. The poor device h...

In our latest podcast, we explore how a team tackled a deceptively simple yet expensive challenge: measuring parking usage in fast-growing communities. Their solution? A blend of pneumatic road tubes, portable traffic counters, and some smart Python scripting. Using Tellico Village as a testbed, the project highlights how communities can get accurate, actionable parking data without busting the budget or requiring constant manual observation. It’s a great case of data and practicality coming together to solve real problems. Stretching Rubber, Not Budgets: Accurate Parking Utilization on a Shoestring Your browser does not support the audio element. Other PODCASTs: https://aurametrix.com/podcasts REFERENCE Christopher K. Allsup. Stretching Rubber, Not Budgets: Accurate Parking Utilization on a Shoestring.   arXiv:2502.09877  [eess.SY]   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2502.09877    [Subm...

In the evolving landscape of master-planned communities, strategic decisions about amenities and infrastructure are traditionally made by a few, often based on assumptions about what residents might want. But what if we could democratize this process and let residents actively shape their community's future? Our latest paper, " Democratizing Strategic Planning in Master-Planned Communities ," presents a cutting-edge tool designed to do exactly that. Using data from brief online surveys, this tool captures residents' preferences on various large-scale projects—whether it's a new park, recreation center, or road expansion. The result? A detailed ranking of potential plans based on anticipated utilization, cost sensitivity, and risk assessment.  created for this post with ImageFX What makes this tool powerful is its foundation in utility theory, incorporating exponential models to reflect diminishing returns on investments in quality, cost, and risk mitigation. In e...

With the rise of crowdsourcing and the increasing popularity of platforms that allow individuals to collaborate and share information (knowingly or unknowingly), it's important to consider how these tools can be leveraged to advance health and medicine.  Crowdsourcing is used in medical research for clinical data collection, data analysis and clinical trials, as well as to crowdfund biomedical research.  The ‘crowd’, or large numbers of people, can be used to contribute knowledge inputs (and expert inputs in particular) to solve complex problems. Extreme citizen science and  quantified-self  movement would provide valuable data and insights. However, since active participation is limited, passive methods are more commonly used. Passive crowdsourcing refers to the process of collecting data or information from individuals without their explicit knowledge or consent, typically through the use of tracking technologies such as cookies or by analyzing data from...