Excerpted from Jonathan Watts :

Leonardo Eloi, left, and Ygor Barboza, pictured at Ipanema beach, have developed technology based on crowdsourcing to help city residents.? Photograph: Lianne Milton for the Observer

“Inequality, poor transport systems and excessive bureaucracy remain major obstacles but at the grass roots technology is arguably being used in the most innovative ways to address social problems. The expansion of wifi and 3G networks into the favela shantytowns has widened the access of residents to information, as well as providing a means for shantytown dwellers to inform the outside world of some of the problems they face.

A digital mapping programme uses cameras on kites to record areas of poor sanitation or pools of murky water where dengue-carrying mosquitoes breed. And a citizens group, Meu Rio, set up a CCTV camera outside a school threatened with demolition so activists could quickly be alerted if bulldozers arrived.

Its social network campaign, which attracted tens of thousands of followers, forced authorities to change their plans and showed how technology is being used by a wide range of government and non-government actors to influence policy.

Started in 2011, Meu Rio uses technology to mobilise Cariocas (residents of Rio) to influence public policy. Leonardo Eloi, who was among the founder members, says the group is building a decentralised network of lawyers, developers and other specialists who can help activists and NGOs to improve society.

“I want to create a community that is hacking for good,” he says. “A community of thinkers that provide technology at a low cost.”

Far more than just a click-and-forget campaign website, Meu Rio’s team analyses public policy proposals and helps connect members with city officials and focus email petitions. Designers and developers help to explain and amplify the message with videos, animation and infographics. The group also has a blog, which acts as a municipal watchdog by sending representatives to every city council meeting — something that most mainstream media organisations can no longer afford to do.

The organisation has successfully campaigned for greater government transparency and blocked a bill that would have allowed the government to secretly choose which business and infrastructure projects required environmental impact assessments. Famously, they also mobilised opposition to the planned closure of a public school, which was due to be demolished so that a new car park could be built for the Maracanã football stadium.

The city government has complained that Meu Rio is a tool for couch criticism rather than constructive governance. To prove them wrong, Eloi recently participated in a municipal “hackathon” competition to find technological applications that improve governance. Entering under his own name rather than Meu Rio, he was selected as the winner of the Grand Jury prize with a mobile phone app that helps drivers find parking spaces and alerts citizens when their cars are at risk of being towed away.

The software also allows them to notify police when their cars are broken into or scratched by flanelinha parking extortionists. Officials, drivers and pedestrians all stand to benefit from the savings in costs, time and pollution.

“It is all about collaboration. The crowd has its own intelligence,” says Eloi, who believes diversity is the city’s greatest asset.

“This is an important moment in Rio with lots of decision to be made. It’s time for citizens to be included in the decision-making process. This is a city with so much beauty, so many resources and awesome people. It would be perfect if it had a public policy that was really made by people for people. It’s much smarter to have 7 million minds and brains working on solutions instead of just the government.”

Using technology to address social problems is the goal of Robert Muggah, a Canadian who has found fertile ground in Rio de Janeiro’s increasingly wired and pacified favelas.

He is the founder of the Igarapé Institute, which is working with city authorities on a “smart policing” project using mobile-phone technology to make public security more transparent and accountable.

…

Favela communities will be more interested in the potential to reduce police abuses in a city that suffers an alarmingly high rate of killings by officers in the course of their duties.

Pilot programmes are now underway in Rocinha, the city’s biggest favela. If authorities approve, these will be scaled up in the coming weeks and the system could be introduced citywide later this year. Talks are also underway with authorities in Nairobi and Cape Town to adopt the system.

The project exemplifies the core goal of Igarapé, a non-profit organisation that works with partners from around the world, including Google Ideas, to use mobile technology to achieve socially useful ends.

Muggah is perhaps best known for his data-visualisations of the global trade in small arms and its link to murder rates and other crimes. He is also working with epidemiologists on a child security index that will analyse government data on young people’s experiences of violence in low-income communities. Other projects in development include a “big data” analysis of Twitter and Facebook postings before a recent wave of street protests to establish who are the prime movers, and a visualisation of data on money laundering and, eventually, timber extraction from the Amazon.

“Rio is an exciting place to test new technologies. Many people in government, the private sector and civil society are committed to evidence-based policy and action, and technology can help make this the norm.”