Biomass energy plants: see themselves as a cost-effective solution for farmers who need to get rid of dead trees and other woody waste that pose wildfire risks without openly burning them; they also produce energy
Utilities companies: looking for the "least-cost, best-fit" source of energy, don't care where it comes from just that it's reasonably priced
Farmers: need cheap ways to dispose of waste
Technology to dispose of woody waste from almond trees in ways other than open burning or biomass facilities doesn't exist yet, at least at the scale needed for massive almond orchards
Closures of biomass energy plants have forced SJVAPCD to allow more open burning of agricultural waste, which produces particulate matter and contributes to already severe air quality in the Central Valley
The authors review literature on the datafication of health, which they identify as the way through which health has been quantified on a number of different scales and registers. They focus primarily on the datafication of health in clinical health care and self-care practices, rather than medical research and public health infrastructures. From this literature, they identify three key themes: datafied power (the ways through which data permeates and exerts power over forms of life), living with data (focused on datafication as an intimate form of surveillance, and a technology of the self), and data-human mediations (which emphasizes the nonhuman elements mediating datafication dynamics and experiences—such as algorithms, data infrastructure and data itself).
In examining literature on datafied power, the authors acknowledge a lack of scholarship on understanding data and datafication in terms agency, rather than simply power and domination. For instance, data is sometimes mobilized in “creative and even pioneering ways (Rapp 2016)” (265).
They describe literature on “living with data” as increasingly focus examining the social, narrative, and affective dimensions of data practices and experiences (e.g. work on the “Quantified Self,” a group seeking self-knowledge through numbers – a form of relationality that might be described as datasociality). Some scholars have argued that data can render “‘feelings and problems more tangible and comparable” (Sharon & Zandbergen 2016, p. 11)” (267). Some have also acknowledged as well a “curious resonance between the vision of empowered, resisting individuals that many ethnographers of self-tracking celebrate, and the rhetoric of consumer empowerment found in discourses of digital health (Schull 2017, Sharon 2017)” (267).
The literature on data-human mediations emphasizes the agency, liveliness and/or performativity of nonhuman elements—essentially, how they structure and shape the possibilities for action. For instance: “as social expectations of normality and health become embedded in tracking devices’ target numbers, presentation of scores, and gamified incentives (Depper & Howe 2017, Whitson 2013), a “numerical ontology” comes to suffuse everyday practices and “the ways in which people relate to their own bodies” (Oxlund 2012, p. 53; see also Jethani 2015, p. 40)” (269). Perspectives and action can be enabled or disabled by wide variety of factors: the design and performativity of data technology software (user interface, operational and analytical algorithms), hardware (devices, sensors), data itself (as illustrated in different ways), and data infrastructures (labs, data centers, serve and cloud storage, and networks that organize how data is stored and circulated). An analytically constructive focus in this literature has emerged by applying the concept of “assemblage” as a way of tracing how data moves: “where it flows, where it finds impasses, how algorithms act on it along the way” (270).
Lastly, the authors identify scholarship on “data activism” as an emerging focus on exploring how data technology capacities might be employed to promote social justice, collective action, and political participation, as well as to challenged dominant norms and ideologies: “Individual self-tracking data, for instance, can have social and political potential when it is pooled to identify health inequalities, collective environmental exposure, or disparities in quality of life (Gabrys 2014).” (271)
The Origami Bridge is intended to solve the problem that occur when there are mass destructions with natural disasters such as floods or earthquakes that resulted in the destroy of the local bridge. Whereas the design is aimed to substitute the local bridges with temporary bridge, furthermore to improve the transportation within the area aftermath. The design also considers the time matters during a disaster environment.
The bridge is developed by a team led by Dr. Ichiro Ario from Hiroshima University (Institute of Engineering), Japan.
The development funding is not mentioned in the article or from the university sites. Therefore, personally will assume that the funding is raised by the university and relevant engineering associations.
Since the design used the aluminum alloy and steel as the main materials, the product cost should not be unaffordable for emergency uses. For the design, it is definitely attainable for the imagined user in a disaster situation.
The Origami Bridge (Mobile Bridge Version 4.0) is designed to use in the area that have been destroyed and yet need a temporary bridge in order to connect the transportation to other areas. So the design is intended to use in area that has earthquakes, floods or landslides.
The product is designed in the way that the portable bridge can be expand from a folded mode to a bridge length takes up to across a river. It expanded in a scissor-like (90° turned scissor lift) action, then slides out the decks with end-to-end to provide platforms for vehicles.
This design is “Made of aluminum alloy and steel, it’s lightweight and easy to transport, yet sturdy enough for cars to cross.” [1]