Uploaded on 2016-04-12 by Cyborgopithecus

![Feng Chia night market, Taichung, Taiwan][1] [1]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14603648289357081.jpg 1) VISIBLE INFORMATION My picture is from the Feng Chia night market from Taichung, Taiwan. Like many night markets, Feng Chia packs a lot of people and information into a rather tight space. I distil the visible information as follows: a) Context (e.g. time and place): It's nighttime (duh) and still winter (note the outdoor clothing). The sign overarching the street helps to place the market near Feng Chia University. The neon signs provide further information about what is available at the market (unless you just ignore them due to sensory overload). b) Infrastructure: The space has certain measurable dimensions (e.g. width of streets and height of buildings). These influence how the space can be used. c) Demographics and behaviour: There is plenty of demographic information (age, sex, biometric etc) available from the (not necessarily representative) sample of people present in the photo. Walking is the preferred mode of locomotion, although the scooter hints at other means of transport used to travel to and from the location. The traffic moves in both directions, towards and away from the camera. d) Atmosphere: The viewer can get a sense of the hustle and bustle of the market, but also of the occasional pockets of calm suggested by the empty space at the foreground. It's also clear that the market is a place where primarily the young tend to come and socialise. But is it entirely safe (notice the person wearing the backpack back to front on the very left)? 2) INVISIBLE INFORMATION a) Energy consumption: This is an obvious one, given all the bright neon lights found all over the market. Although we do not instantaneously know how much energy they do consume, information like that should be easily available and could be modelled to help create knowledge about and means to address energy consumption. b) Experience of the place: Although any viewer can get a sense of the atmosphere by looking at the crowd and individuals, just by looking at the picture we cannot reliably know they actually are experiencing. 3) FROM INVISIBLE TO VISIBLE Continuing from the last point, there are ways we could gather data about how individual market-goers feel about their experience and use this data to improve the market. For example, we could use smartphone apps that prompt volunteers with questions such as: How do they feel during their visit? When are they the most and least happy? Do they feel safe? Such traditional census data could be supplemented with biometric monitoring data coupled with locational information to better understand how individuals react to their environment (e.g. by investigating the relationship between heart rate and hormone levels against crowding data). Given the popularity of night markets, this information would be relevant to vast numbers of people. However, it should be noted that verifying the causes for various data could have multiple explanations. For example, how to interpret heightened heart rates when they could mean a number of things varying from excitement to terror? Getting around such uncertainties could benefit fro