The latest outputs from researchers, alumni and friends at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA).
It’s time to start thinking about the Citizen Science Association (CSA) conference in 2017, but conference don’t happen by themselves, so the CSA published CitSci2017: Call for leading volunteers – a call for the people who will form the core of the organising committee.
The journal Nature published today an editorial on citizen science, titled ‘Rise of the citizen scientist’. It is very good editorial that addresses, head-on, some of the concerns that are raised about citizen science, but it is also have a problematic ending. On the positive side, the editorial recognises that citizen scientists can do more than just data … Continue reading ‘Nature’ Editorial on Citizen Science
The Data and the City workshop will run on the 31st August and 1st September 2015, in Maynooth University, Ireland. It is part of the Programmable City project, led by Prof Rob Kitchin. My contribution to the workshop is titled Beyond quantification: a role for citizen science and community science in a smart city and is extending a short article from … Continue reading Beyond quantification: a role for citizen science and community science in a smart city
The final day of the ICCB/ECCB 2015 (see my notes on citizen science sessions from Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3) included a symposoium that was organised by Aletta Bonn and members of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) to explore the wider context of citizen science. The symposium title was Science-Society Dialogue – … Continue reading Science-Society Dialogue – from Citizen Science to Co-Design (ICCB/ECCB 2015 – Day 4)
The third day of the ICCB/ECCB 2015 (here are notes from first and second days) was packed with sessions about citizen science and local knowledge throughout the day (so this post is very very long!). It started with two sessions on citizen science / public participation in science that included the following talks: Citizen science online: … Continue reading Notes from ICCB/ECCB 2015 (Day 3) – Citizen Science, engaging local knowledge and urban areas
The second day of the ICCB/ECCB 2015 started with a session that focused on the use and interpretation of citizen science data. The Symposium Citizen Science in Conservation Science: the new paths, from data collection to data interpretation was organised by Nick Isaac and included the following talks: Bias, information, signal and noise in citizen science data … Continue reading Notes from ICCB/ECCB 2015 (Day 2) – Citizen Science data quality
These are my notes from the first day of the International Congress on Conservation Biology (ICCB) & the European Congress on Conservation Biology (ECCB) in Montpellier. I’ve took notes from some of the talks in 3 sessions about traditional knowledge, ‘Conservation 3.0′ and the citizen science posters. In the session on Traditional Knowledge and Conservation noteworthy … Continue reading Notes from ICCB/ECCB 2015 – Traditional ecological knowledge, Conservation 3.0 & citizen science
There are several applications that allow creating forms rapidly – such as Open Data Kit (ODK) or EpiCollect. Now, there is another offering from Esri, in the form of Survey123 app – which is explained in the video below. Survey123 is integrated into ArcGIS Online, so you need an ArcGIS account to use it (you … Continue reading Esri survey123 tool – rapid prototyping geographical citizen science tool
NighStcience 2015 in CRI-Paris, 10-11 July – Night Science is a mode of exploratory, innovative science, and as in previous years, it is an event that mixes talks with active hands-on experience. The event this year was marked by linking open innovation, social responsibility and entrepreneurship to science. The event was opened by as Francois … Continue reading NightScience 2015 – CRI Paris
Call for papers on a special issue on past, present and future of Participatory GIS and Public Participation in GIS. In the 1990s, participatory GIS (PGIS) and Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) emerged as an approach and tool to make geospatial technologies more relevant and accessible to marginalized groups. The goal has been to integrate the qualitative … Continue reading Call for papers – special issue of the Cartographic Journal on Participatory GIS
Back in February, my report ‘Citizen Science & Policy: a European Perspective‘ was published by the Wilson Centre in the US. As I was trying to make sense of the relevance of citizen science to policy making, I used a framework that included the level of geography, area of policy making and the type of … Continue reading Citizen Science and Policy – possible frameworks
The Citizen Cyberlab research project is asking for your help in understanding how citizen science projects can be designed to help you learn more about their scientific topic of the project, and making participation more interesting and useful for you. In addition to general understanding of why and how people take part in citizen sciences … Continue reading Making participation in citizen science interesting & useful – survey
On the last day of ECSITE 2015, the first session on the Future of Citizen Science focused on exploring citizen science with reference to Socientize White Paper on Citizen Science. Paulo Gama Mota started by covering the Socientize project. The project created a platform for citizen science projects, with the science museum of Coimbra providing … Continue reading ECSITE 2015 – Citizen Science & Participatory Practices
The ECSITE conference which was held in the beautiful MUSE museum in Trento, Italy is the annual gathering of the practitioners and researchers in the area of science museums and science centres. I attended two of the three days of the conference. The notes below are from some of the sessions that I joined, learning about … Continue reading ECSITE 2015 – food for curious minds (day 2)
COST Energic organised a second summer school that is dedicated to Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and citizen science. This time, the school was run by the Institute for Climate Change & Sustainable Development of the University of Malta. with almost 40 participants from across Europe and beyond (Brazil, New Zealand), and, of course, participants from … Continue reading COST Energic Summer School on VGI and Citizen Science in Malta
In the UK, every 5 years or so, there is a complex and expensive process that evaluates the work of academics in research institutions across the country, and rate them in terms of quality (see the infographics). The last round of this process was called ‘Research Evaluation Framework’ or REF for short. You don’t need … Continue reading Citizen Science in the Research Evaluation Framework impact studies
Originally posted on The GeographiGal:
It’s now a week since my viva, which flouted all my expectations in every possible way. I could not have prepared myself for so many of the questions I was asked or being so lost for words. I will forever be grateful to my examiners for reading my thesis and their suggestions/corrections;…
The COST Energic network is progressing in its 3rd year. The previous post showed one output from the action – a video that describe the links between volunteered geographic information and indigenous knowledge. The people who came to the meeting represent the variety of interest in crwodsourced geographic information, from people with background in Geography, … Continue reading COST ENERGIC meeting – Tallinn 21-22 May
The COST Energic network has been running now for 3 years, and one of the outputs from the network is the video below, which explore a very valuable form of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). This is information that is coming from participatory projects between researchers and indigenous communities, and this short film provide examples from Bolivia, British Columbia, … Continue reading VGI and indigenous knowledge – COST Energic Video
The COST Energic network (see VGIBox.eu ) is running a 2 day geolocated twitter chat, titled ‘Volunteered Geographic Information Day’ so the hashtag is #VGIDay. The conversation will take place on 14th and 15th May 2015, and we are universalists – join from anywhere in the world! Joining is easy – and require 3 steps: Follow the … Continue reading Spatial Conversation – #VGIday #COSTEnergic
As part of the activities of the Citizen Science Special Interest Group of the British Ecological Society (BES), Michael Pocock organised “A training event for citizen science: What you need to know, but no one told you!”. I was asked to lead a 30 minutes discussion on ethics and citizen science. This is a wide area, and … Continue reading Citizen Science and Ethics session (British Ecological Society – Citizen Science SIG)
This talk, by Professor Aletta Bonn from the end of March, provides an overview of what is needed to make citizen science more effective. While the research was done in Germany, many of her discussion points are relevant in other places. Especially interesting are the Q&A at the end (around 25 min) which demonstrate the … Continue reading Talk by Aletta Bonn on “Citizens create knowledge – knowledge creates citizens”
The last day of AAG 2015 is about citizen science and OpenStreetMap studies. The session Beyond motivation? Understanding enthusiasm in citizen science and volunteered geographic information was organised together with Hilary Geoghegan. We were interest to ‘explore and debate current research and practice moving beyond motivation, to consider the associated enthusiasm, materials and meanings of participating in citizen … Continue reading AAG 2015 – day 4 notes – Citizen Science & OpenStreetMap Studies
The sessions today covered Civic technology, citizen science, and the new directions in mapping – Open Source/Crowdsourcing/Big Data First, Civic technology: governance, equity and inclusion considerations, with Pamela Robinson – Ryerson University (Chair) and Peter A. Johnson – University of Waterloo, Teresa Scassa – University of Ottawa and Jon Corbett – University of British Columbia-Okanagan. The Discussant is Betsy Donald – … Continue reading AAG 2015 notes – day 3 – Civic Technology, Citizen Science, Crowdsourcing and mapping
The second day was dedicated to reflections on Public Participation GIS or Participatory GIS. The day was organised by Rina Ghose and Bandana Karr with some comments from Renee Sieber and me at some stage. It turned out to be an excellent symposium. The following are my notes from the different talks during the day. Jon … Continue reading AAG 2015 notes – day 2 – Public Participation GIS symposium
At 8:00 I’ve attended the Digital Connectivity, Inclusion, and Inequality at the World’s Economic Peripheries session asking ‘what difference people expect better connectivity to make at the world’s economic peripheries’. I took notes from the presentations of Nancy Ettlinger, Dorothea Kleine and Lisa Poggiali. Nancy Ettlinger analysed crwodsourcing from governance perspective – using Foucauldian analysis. She looks at … Continue reading AAG 2015 notes – day 1
The GIS Research UK conferences (GISRUK) are the annual gathering of the GIScience research community in the UK. While I have missed the last two (including the current one in Leeds), I have contributed to two papers that are presented in the conference. The first, ‘Participatory mapping for transformation: multiple visual representation of foodscapes and environment … Continue reading GISRUK 2015 papers: participatory mapping in Nairobi and mobile apps for Earthquake and Fire
Originally posted on Extreme Citizen Science blog:
Just a quick one from me, but we’re delighted to report that the newly published fourth edition of Wiley’s popular GIS textbook Geographic Information Science and Systems features an example of some of our work in the Congo Basin. Here we are in full-colour, double-page glory: ? ?…
In 2011-2012, together with Richard Treves, I was awarded a Google Faculty Research Award, and we were lucky to work with Paolo Battino for about a year, exploring how to use Google Earth tours for educational aims. The details of the projects and some reports from the project are available on Richard’s blog, who was leading … Continue reading New paper: Footprints in the sky – using student track logs in Google Earth to enhance learning
The Association of American Geographers conference is just around the corner – between 21 and 24 April, held in Chicago. I’ve already marked some sessions that I think worth noting (and was involved in the organisation of several sessions, too). Here is a list of interesting sessions, following suggestion to do so by David O’Sullivan and … Continue reading AAG sessions – Critical GIScience, GeoWeb and Citizen Science
At the request of Diana Sinton, the Executive Director of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS), I gave the seminar talk about the linkage between Geographic Information Science and Citizen Science. A detailed description of the talk and the slides are available here. The webinar announcement is at http://ucgis.org/ucgis-webinars/geographic-information-citizen-science-reciprocal-opportunities. The webinar was recorded, so … Continue reading UCGIS webinar [Geographic information | Citizen] Science: reciprocal opportunities
UCL organised a debate about fossil fuel divestment, with 7 knowledgeable speakers (all professors), raising argument for an against the suggestion that UCL should divest from fossil fuels and sell its £21million invested in the industry. In the room and on the panel there were more people who supported the motion than those who opposed it. … Continue reading UCL Fossil Fuel Divestment debate
A new book out about OpenStreetMap and Geographic Information Science. The book, which was edited by Jamal Jokar Arsanjani, Alexander Zipf, Peter Mooney, Marco Helbich is “OpenStreetMap in GISciene : Experiences, Research, and applications” contains 16 chapters on different aspects of OpenStreetMap in GIScience including 1) Data Management and Quality, 2) Social Context, 3) Network Modeling and … Continue reading OpenStreetMap in GIScience – Experiences, Research, and Applications
This post is about perceptions, engagement and the important of ‘participant-observation‘ approach in citizen science research. It start with a perception about volunteer computing. The act of participating in scientific project by downloading and installing software that will utilise unused processing cycles of your computer is, for me, part of citizen science. However, in different […]
Yesterday, Tenille Brown led a Twitter discussion as part of the Geothink consortium. Tenille opened with a question about liability and wrongful acts that can harm others First off we can look at the definition of “torts”- a tort refers to a wrongful act which results in injury to another person, etc #geothink — Tenille E. […]
The week that passed was full of citizen science – on Tuesday and Friday the citizen Science Association held its first Board meeting, and with the Citizen Science 2015 conference on Wednesday and Thursday, and to finish it all, on Friday afternoon a short meeting of a new project, Enhancing Informal Learning Through Citizen Science explored the directions […]
After a very full first day, the second day opened with a breakfast that provided opportunity to meet the board of the Citizen Science Association (CSA), and to have a nice way to talk with people who got up early (starting at 7am) for another full day of citizen science. Around the breakfast tables, new […]
San Jose is the location for the first citizen science association meeting, on the 11th and 12th February. The level of enthusiasm to citizen science by researchers and practitioners was palpable, even before the conference with an overwhelming number of submissions and abstract. In the end, the conference run with 7 parallel sessions, and many […]
The Open University, with support from Nominet Trust and UTC Sheffield have launched the nQuire-it.org website, which seem to have a great potential for running citizen science activities. The nQuire platform allows participants to create science inquiry ‘missions’. It is accompanied by an Android app called Sense-it that exposed all the sensors that are integrated in a smartphone and let […]
What does addresses got to do with economic theory and political dogma? turn out that quite a lot. As I was looking at the latest press release from the cabinet office, proudly announcing that the government is investing in (yet another) UK address database, I realised that the handling of UK addresses, those deceivingly simple […]