[okfn-dev] [open-economics] Visualizing aid flows

Sat Feb 5 16:04:36 UTC 2011

Big +1 -- I think this is a great idea (and perhaps worth
cross-posting to the open-development list [1]).

You may also be interested that there's also work underway as part of
the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) to make
information on aid finance much more transparent (and to link with
actual projects):

<http://www.aidtransparency.net/>

(BTW there are a bunch of IATI people on the open-development mailing list ...)

Rufus

[1]: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-development

On 5 February 2011 13:48, Guo Xu <digitalepourpre at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> First, congrats to the great launch yesterday! Sorry I couldn't join
> you at the Transmediale, but I'm still recovering from a flu.
>
> Second, I just wanted to drop a mail to get some general feedback for
> a quick idea:
>
> Currently, I'm working for EUSECON
> (http://www.economics-of-security.eu/eusecon) and am writing a paper
> about the role of development aid as an instrument of security policy.
> I have been analyzing the bilateral aid flows across countries - the
> first thing you realize is that aid allocation is not only political
> but incredibly inconsistent even within the EU (e.g. Germany gives aid
> to China which gives aid to Sudan etc. pp.).
>
> It would be really interesting to visualize these relationships -
> currently, I'm just number-crunching them with huge matrices and
> statistical analyses. It would be really neat to display the aid
> confusion using a simple map depicting the flows. Basically, this
> could simply use the app Gregor has written for the energy project -
> one would only need to add a few minor adjustments, so I guess it
> would be fun and easy. It would also be a useful way to communicate
> this persisting problem to policy makers.
>
> I have most of the data lying around on my computer anyway, so I could
> easily convert them into the format required for the app.
>
> Anyway, let me know what you think.
>
> Guo
>
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>

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