In cities all over Europe, buildings are treated as investments rather than as (increasingly rare) spaces for people to live in. Every year, tens of thousands of former family homes, industrial and office spaces are being vacated and demolished – most of them in order for speculators to build expensive replacements for buildings that could have been renovated much more cheaply. With the help of the crowd, investigative media house CORRECTIV launched a "demolition atlas" where people share information about planned demolitions and possible speculation. So far this has covered Switzerland, Germany and Greece, working with media partner, Solomon. In this session, we will show you how we reached thousands of people willing to participate, what kind of stories emerged, and look at how you can do the same in your country – no previous knowledge required.
In this session, we'll explore the methodology behind Newtral's data-driven investigation of flood-prone buildings and areas in Spain, which allowed the data team to find that at least 200,000 buildings in the country are vulnerable to flooding. The investigation didn't only rely on traditional soil or urban studies to identify flood-prone areas; it also used information from Spain's National Cadastral to gather the data, city by city, street by street, of all the buildings constructed in vulnerable or hazardous zones. We will share a model that can be replicated or scaled elsewhere in Europe, particularly in the Mediterranean region.
Attendees will learn how to source, process, and visualize cartographic data of urban typology to identify threatened areas. This session is suitable for beginners. Attendees should have Python installed, along with a code editor like Visual Studio Code. No coding knowledge is necessary - the code will be shared with you, and you can just follow along. If you use Windows, please install Ubuntu (not necessary for Mac users).
