The Orange D4D Senegal Challenge
- Details
- Written by Daouda Niang Diatta
The Orange D4D (Data for Development) Senegal Challenge.
The Orange "Data for Development" (D4D Senegal) challenge was an open innovation data challenge on anonymous call patterns of Orange’s mobile phone users in Senegal. The goal of the challenge was to help address society development questions in novel ways by contributing to the socio-economic development and well-being of the Senegalese population. Participants to the challenge are given access to four mobile phone datasets. The datasets are based on Call Detail Records (CDR) of phone calls and text exchanges between more than 9 million of Orange’s customers in Senegal between January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2013. In order to contribute to this challenge, an international research team, in which some NLAGA members have participated, have been built. The research project proposed by the team for this challenge is called SPOT (Spatial Planning and Optimization Technologies). It can be briefly described
as a set of mathematical optimization techniques and algorithms exploiting the datasets for taking better urban planning decisions. It can be traced to two previous projects dealing with similar topics :
- DAMA : funded by PREDIT (France, see http://tra2014.traconference.eu/papers/pdfs/TRA2014_Fpaper_20017.pdf)
- ORTRANS : funded by Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF, see https://www.auf.org/actualites/un-projet-finance-par-lauf-remporte-le-prix-D4D/)
After an open and hard competition, SPOT has been picked out as one of the winner of the data crossing prize of the challenge. On behalf of the D4D selection committee, it has been selected for a presentation at Boston on April the 10th, 2015 during a special session on the results obtained for this challenge at the NetMob (Analysis of Mobile Phone Datasets and Networks) Conference 2015 at the MIT MediaLab.
For additional details about this prize, see :
- the D4D challenge website : http://www.d4d.orange.com/fr/Accueil
- the SPOT article : https://www.dropbox.com/s/lxa9fe4dx0kkpmc/SPOT_D4D_SENEGAL_REPORT_V1.pdf?dl=0
- the netmob conference website : http://www.netmob.org/
The SPOT team is composed of :
- Serigne Gueye (SPOT project leader) : University of Avignon (UAPV), Laboratoire d'Informatique d'Avignon (LIA), France.
- Babacar M. Ndiaye (Task 6 coordinator of the NLAGA project) : UCAD, LMDAN, Senegal .
- Didier Josselin : UMR Espace – Equipe Avignon, France.
- Michael Poss : CNRS, LIRMM, Avignon, France
- Roger M. Faye : UCAD, ESP Dakar, LTI, Senegal.
- Philippe Michelon : UAPV, LIA, France.
- Cyrille Genre-Grandpierre : UMR Espace – Equipe, Avignon, France.
- Francesco Ciari : Institute for Transport Planning and Systems (IVT), Zurich, Switzerland.
- Mouhammadou A.M.T Baldé : UCAD, LMDAN, Senegal.
- Diaraf Seck (NLAGA project leader) : UCAD, LMDAN, Senegal.
Massive Open Online Cours on Evolution Equations
- Details
- Written by Daouda Niang Diatta
Massive Open Online Cours on Evolution Equations
This Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) hase been designed and taught by :Diaraf SECK, full professor at University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar in Senegal and Lead researcher of the project NLAGA funded by the Simons Foundation And Cedric VILLANI, Fields medal in 2010, full professor at Université de Lyon I in France and Director Institut Henri Poincaré (IHP) (Paris), France.
The fees of the MOOC have been supported by the University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar (Senegal), the Institute Henri Poincaré (Paris, France), the University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris, France), the University Sorbone (Paris France) and the University Claude Bernard of Lyon (France).
This MOOC is and will be very useful, for a lot of students and PhD students not belonging necessarily to NLAGA Project. It can be used by all PhD students from the Task 1 to the Task 8 of the NLAGA Project.
The aim is to produce a course and lecture notes from the master level to the PhD level on the topic of evolutions equations : the Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE) and Partial Differential Equations (PDE).
It is a project which the realization is in progress. And the first part of a series of courses on evolution équations is devoted to ODE and an introduction to Hamiltonian systems. Actually this course introduces the listener to the theory of differential equations. The ordinary differential equations are of universal use today, in all the sciences and in the industry. This course will help familiarize them with their language and theory, and to control the main techniques of qualitative study (behavior in time large, stability, approximation ... ). It is also a preparation for a course in partial differential equations, which are among the mathematical tools the most important and multifaceted of the contemporary world.
The course was started by a perspective on evolution equations, and then focused on the ordinary differential equations. It covered the following topics: local study, existence and uniqueness, qualitative study of the long-term behavior, introduction to modeling.
For more details see the following webpage.
A pdf version of the MOOC can be downloaded here.