The latest outputs from researchers, alumni and friends at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA).
About a month ago, on 7th December 2016, DR Kingsley Purdam (Manchester) organised a one day workshop on citizen science, and in particular on citizen science from a social science methodological perspective. The day organised with the support of the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM). The purpose of the workshop/conference was to explore the … Continue reading Crowdsourcing the Future?
An aspect of collaborative projects is that they start slowly, and as they become effective and productive, they reached their end! The COST Energic (European Network for Research into Geographic Information Crowdsourcing) led to many useful activities, with some of them leading to academic papers. From COST Energic, we’ve got the European Handbook on Crowdsourced Geographic … Continue reading The Potential of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) in Future Transport Systems
When the new journal about Citizen Science established, one of the articles that the editorial team thought should be included is a paper that describe the development of associations dedicated to the practice of citizen science. There are now several of these: the Citizen Science Association (CSA), the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA), and the … Continue reading New paper: Associations for Citizen Science: Regional Knowledge, Global Collaboration
The “UCL Synergies podcasts” is series of interviews with researchers who are working on a shared problem from two disciplinary perspective. It is part of the activities to demonstrate how UCL addresses the grand challenges. The series itself is an excellent demonstration of the issues that come up in interdisciplinary research and you can find … Continue reading UCL Synergies podcast – Congo Citizen Science
The bi-annual Geographic Information Science conference is one of the focal point on the field. This year, it was held in Montreal. You can find my talk in a long and separate post. Here are some notes of talks that I took during the meeting. The conference started with reasons for the location, and a … Continue reading GIScience 2016 notes
The GIScience conference is being held every two years since 2000, and it is one of the main conferences in the field of Geographic Information Science (GIScience). It is a special honour to be invited to give a keynote talk, and so I was (naturally) very pleased to get an invitation to deliver such a talk … Continue reading Has GIScience Lost its Interdisciplinary Mojo?
During the Citizen Science conference in 2015, a group of us, under the enthusiastic encouragement of John Gallo started talking about a paper that will discuss the power of place in citizen science. John provides a very detailed account about the way that a discussion and inspiration during the conference led to the development of … Continue reading Leveraging the power of place in citizen science for effective conservation decision making – new paper
One of the facts about academic funding and outputs (that is, academic publications), is that there isn’t a simple relationship between the amount of funding and the number, size, or quality of outputs. One of the things that I have noticed over the years is that a fairly limited amount (about £4000-£10,000) are disproportionately effective. … Continue reading Patterns of contribution to citizen science biodiversity projects increase understanding of volunteers’ recording behaviour
I’ve mentioned the European Handbook for Crowdsourced Geographic Information in the last post, and explained how it came about. My contribution to the book is a chapter titled ‘Why is Participation Inequality Important?‘. The issue of participation inequality, also known as the 90:9:1 rule, or skewed contribution, has captured my interest for a while now. … Continue reading Published: Why is Participation Inequality Important?
COST ENERGIC is a network of researchers across Europe (and beyond) that are interested in research crowdsourced geographic information, also known as Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). The acronym stands for ‘Co-Operation in Science & Technology’ (COST) through ‘European Network Researching Geographic Information Crowdsourcing’ (ENREGIC). I have written about this programme before, through events such as twitter … Continue reading New book: European Handbook of Crowdsourced Geographic Information
As I’ve noted in the earlier post, I’ve travelled through central California in August, from San Francisco, to Los Angeles. Reading ‘Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction‘, made me think about citizen science, but this was my holiday – and for the past 4 years, as I finish setting the email away … Continue reading Opportunistic Citizen Science in central California
At the beginning of the year, I received an email from Mary Ellen Hannibal, asking for a clarification of the ‘extreme citizen science’ concept. Later on, Mary Ellen provided me with an early copy of ‘Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction‘, and asked if I will be willing to recommend … Continue reading Reading ‘Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction’ in place
Science Foo Camp (SciFoo) is an invitation based science unconference that is organised by O’Reilly media, Google, Nature, and Digital Science. Or put it another way, a weekend event (from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon), where 250 scientists, science communicators and journalists, technology people from area that relate to science, artists and ‘none of the … Continue reading Science Foo Camp 2016
The EveryAware book provided an opportunity to communicate the results of a research that Dr Charlene Jennett led, together with two Masters students: Joanne (Jo) Summerfield and Eleonora (Nora) Cognetti, with me as an additional advisor. The research was linked to the EveryAware, since Nora explored the user experience of WideNoise, the citizen science noise monitoring … Continue reading New paper: Usability and interaction dimensions of participatory noise and ecological monitoring
Since the first Eye on Earth conference in 2011, I started thinking that we’re moving to a new era in terms of relationships between experts and the public in terms of access to environmental information and it’s production. I also gave a talk about this issue in the Wilson Center in 2014. The three eras … Continue reading New Paper: The Three Eras of Environ-mental Information: the Roles of Experts and the Public
Gianfranco Gliozzo, who is completing his Engineering Doctorate at the Extreme Citizen Science group, written up his first case study and published it in ‘Ecology and Society’. Cited as Gliozzo, G., N. Pettorelli, and M. Haklay. 2016. Using crowdsourced imagery to detect cultural ecosystem services: a case study in South Wales, UK. Ecology and Society … Continue reading New paper: Using crowdsourced imagery to detect cultural ecosystem services: a case study in South Wales, UK
As part of the Esri User Conference, Dawn Wright, Esri Chief Scientist, organised a Science Symposium that gave an opportunity for those with interest in scientific use of Esri GIS to come together, discuss and meet. Dawn Wright opened and mentioned that the science symposium is aimed to bring people people from different areas: … Continue reading Esri User Conference – Science Symposium
The main Esri User conference starts with a plenary day, where all the participants (16,000 of them) join together for a set of presentation from 8:30 to 3:30 (with some breaks, of course). Below you’ll find some notes that I took during the day: The theme of the keynote was GIS – Enabling a Smarter … Continue reading Esri User Conference 2016 – plenary day
I’ve been working with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) since 1988. During the first 2 years, I wasn’t even aware that what we were doing was GIS – it was a mapping/inventory system that run on second generation PC (80286 processors) and was used to map facilities. Once I’ve discovered that this was a GIS, the … Continue reading Esri Education Conference 2016 – day 1
The slides below are from my keynote talk at the Esri Education User Conference 2016. The conference focused on creativity and its relevant to education and the utilisation of GIS (especially Esri software) at different levels of education. My talk explored the area of citizen science and extreme citizen science and the way geographical technologies … Continue reading Esri Education User Conference talk: Citizen Science & Geographical Technologies: creativity, learning, and engagement
At the beginning of the Challenging Risk project, the project team considered that before we go out and develop participatory tools to engage communities in earthquake and fire preparedness, we should check what is available. To achieve that, we have commissioned Enrica Verrucci to help us with the review, and later on other members of the … Continue reading New paper: Digital engagement methods for earthquake and fire preparedness
One of the joys of academic life is the opportunity to participate in summer schools – you get a group of researchers, from PhD students to experienced professors, to a nice place in the Italian countryside, and for a week the group focuses on a topic – discussing, demonstrating and trying it out. The Vespucci … Continue reading A review of volunteered geographic information quality assessment methods
The Participatory City is a new book, edited by Yasminah Beebeejaun , which came out in March and will be launched on the 1st June. The book gather 19 chapters that explore the concept of participation in cities of all shapes and sizes. As Yasminah notes, concern about participation has started in the 1960s and never gone … Continue reading The Participatory City & Participatory Sensing – new paper
Overleaf, ThinkCamp Challenge, collaborative writing – lots of jargon for a title – so let’s start by explaining them and I then cover what happened (that’s an Abstract). Background – what are Overleaf, ThinkCamp, and Challenge? (Introduction) Overleaf is a scientific technology company that offer a collaborative environment for writing scientific papers. Overlaf is based on LaTeX … Continue reading ECSA2016 ThinkCamp Challenge: how can Overleaf support collaborative writing between academics and citizen scientists?
[rough version – will be clean up soon!] Introduction and review of day 2 Muki Haklay University College London, UK Co-designing research projects: Citizen science meets stakeholder involvement Heribert Hofer IZW Berlin, Germany – Exploring stakeholders in citizen science, examples of co-design projects in ecology/conservation science. Looking at impacts on attitudes and behaviours of stakeholders. … Continue reading ECSA2016: Open Citizen Science – Day 3
[rough draft – will be corrected and updated later] The afternoon started with citizen science studies – with short talks and interactive session that was about Citizen Science Studies – Engaging with the participatory turn in the co-production of science and society Elevator talks & interactive session organised by Dana Mahr University of Geneva, CH; Anett Richter … Continue reading ECSA 2016: Open Citizen Science – Day 2 (Afternoon)
After the opening day (see morning and afternoon posts) and the reception under the dinosaur at the museum, the second day started with a series of keynotes: Introduction and review of day 1 Marisa Ponti University of Gothenburg, Sweden: we’re opening a second day of the conference, and we want to reconnect to the first … Continue reading ECSA2016: Open Citizen Science – Day 2 (Morning)
‘Citizen Science as Participatory Science‘ is one of the most popular posts that I have published here. The post is the core section of a chapter that was published in 2013 (the post itself was written in 2011). For the first European Citizen Science Association conference I was asked to give a keynote on the second … Continue reading Participatory [Citizen] Science
See the first post of the day here. After the afternoon break, the second afternoon panel was dedicated to started with Innovative approaches to civic engagement, learning & education Chair/Organiser: Taru Peltola French National Institute for Environmental and Agricultural Science and Research Michael J.O. Pocock Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, UK. Defined himself as an ecologist … Continue reading ECSA 2016: Open Science – Policy Innovation & Social Impact (Day 1 afternoon)
[I’m publishing it full of typos closer to live blogging – come back in a day to see a nice version ] The 19th May 2016 was a special day for the European Citizen Science Association, with the opening of the first conference of the organisation, focusing on the links between citizen science and open … Continue reading ECSA 2016: Open Science – Policy Innovation & Social Impact (Day 1 morning)
Thanks to an invitation from John Hammersley of OverLeaf I gave a talk at #FuturePub 7 event, which was dedicated to “New Developments in Scientific Collaboration Tech”. The evening was structured around 7 very short talks (about 5 minutes) so my slides are a very short introduction to citizen science (in this event, I would say that … Continue reading #FuturePub – Citizen Science, Open Science & scientific publications
The last 3 months were a gradual sigh of relief for the Extreme Citizen Science group (ExCites), Mapping for Change (MfC), and for me. As the UCL engineering website announced, the ExCiteS group, which I co-direct, secured funding through 3 research grants from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme (H2020), with enough funding to continue … Continue reading Securing funding and balancing efforts: a tale of 21 research applications
One of the advantages of working in a multi-disciplinary and culturally diverse group is that I can become co-author in languages that I do not speak. Carolina Comandulli, who is doing her PhD research in the Brazil/Peru border area, led on the writing of a paper on ‘Extreme Citizen Science’ – we have collaborated on the writing … Continue reading New Paper: Extreme Citizen Science – a new approach (in Portuguese)
The full details of new project is over on the Extreme Citizen Science blog (link below) so here is the two lines summary. Doing It Together Science (DITOs) is a three-year programme to increase public participation in scientific research and innovation across Europe. The project includes 11-partners and coordinated by UCL Extreme Citizen Science group. DITOs aims … Continue reading Introducing “Doing It Together Science” – an EU citizen science project
Now that the press release by the European Research Council (ERC) is out, it’s time to share the great news: The Extreme Citizen Science group has secured €2.5m from the ERC to continue our journey towards Intelligent Maps. Building on the work that we’ve done with the support of the EPSRC in Extreme Citizen Science, and the … Continue reading ERC Advanced Grant: Extreme Citizen Science: Analysis and Visualisation
Continuing with relevant posts from the Algorithmic Governance workshop , one of the speakers of the workshop, Anthony Behan explores on his blog Algorithmic Governance and its Discontents , and in particular he points that In a comprehensive and packed agenda, politics barely got a mention – but that too needs considerable discussion. John Danaher has done some … Continue reading Algorithmic Governance and its Discontents
These are the slides from my talk at the Algorithmic Governance workshop (for which there are lengthy notes in the previous post). The workshop explored the many ethical, legal and conceptual issues with the transition to Big Data and algorithm based decision-making. My contribution to the discussion is based on previous thoughts on environmental information … Continue reading Algorithmic governance in environmental information (or how technophilia shape environmental democracy)
The workshop ‘Algorithmic Governance’ was organised as an intensive one day discussion and research needs development. As the organisers Dr John Danaher and Dr Rónán Kennedy identified: ‘The past decade has seen an explosion in big data analytics and the use of algorithm-based systems to assist, supplement, or replace human decision-making. This is true in private industry and … Continue reading Algorithmic Governance Workshop (NUI Galway)
We have a new scholarship opening at the Extreme Citizen Science group for a PhD student who will research in Human Computer Interaction and Spatial Data Quality for Online Civic Engagement. The studentship is linked and contextualised by the European Union H2020 funded project, WeGovNow! . This project will focus on the use of digital technologies for effectively … Continue reading New PhD Opportunity: Human Computer Interaction and Spatial Data Quality for Online Civic Engagement
Living Maps review is a new online journal about maps, map making and thinking of mapping (I’m on the editorial board of the journal). As the launch email describes: “map making as a democratic medium for visual artists, writers, social researchers and community activists. The journal has its roots in the highly successful series of … Continue reading Living Maps Review launched today