The latest outputs from researchers, alumni and friends at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA).
While in the past we have written about how we can use agent-based models to capture basic patterns of life, and even developed a simulations, but until now we have never really demonstrated how we go about this. However, at the SIGSPATIAL 2024 c…
Continue reading »At the end of May, the Citizen Science Association (CSA) celebrated its 10th year anniversary in its conference – C*Sci 2023, held at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona. The conference (22-26 May) provided the opportunity to meet face-to-face colleagues in the area of citizen science, which I haven’t had a chance to talk … Continue reading C*Sci 2023 and the new name of the (US) Citizen Science Association
Continue reading »Routes I created GPX route files for the challenge. These were created manually in QGIS, using the OpenStreetMap standard “Mapnik” render as a background, by drawing lines, with Google Street View imagery used to check restrictions. I split each team’s route into 12 stages (so 36 altogether), which were initially each just over 10km and […]
Continue reading »Routes I created GPX route files for the challenge. These were created manually in QGIS, using the OpenStreetMap standard “Mapnik” render as a background, by drawing lines, with Google Street View imagery used to check restrictions. I split each team’s route into 12 stages (so 36 altogether), which were initially each just over 10km and […]
Continue reading »Routes I created GPX route files for the challenge. These were created manually in QGIS, using the OpenStreetMap standard “Mapnik” render as a background, by drawing lines, with Google Street View imagery used to check restrictions. I split each team’s route into 12 stages (so 36 altogether), which were initially each just over 10km and […]
Continue reading »Blue Crow Media, long-time makers of bespoke themed maps of London and other places, have switched from their regular architecture focus and produced a lovely new map focusing on notable trees in the capital. There are around as many trees as people in…
Continue reading »This is an invitation to complete a survey that is available at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/7XN5MQG This survey will present you stories about different forms of public participation in research. Different activities within this area of public participation in research are now called “citizen science” and we would like to hear what your opinion is about each activity. … Continue reading Would you call this a citizen science activity?
Continue reading »A CRI-Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle workshop: created by Anshu (CRI long term fellow) and Simon (MNHN), from a meeting at the Galaxy community in Freiburg. I joined the design process and it was structured so the museum and the CRI present the systems that are being developed, with a scope for a discussion about lessons … Continue reading Platforms for citizen science
Continue reading »Fig. 7. Stimulus-Awareness-Activism (SA2) frameworkPreviously we have posted on how one can use new sources of data (e.g. Volunteered Geographical Information) to explore and understand the world around us, such as mass migration, urban form and …
Continue reading »Fig. 7. Stimulus-Awareness-Activism (SA2) frameworkPreviously we have posted on how one can use new sources of data (e.g. Volunteered Geographical Information) to explore and understand the world around us, such as mass migration, urban form and …
Continue reading »The second and last day of the conference (day 1 is covered here) started early, with a keynote: “Science society continuum: From ‘deficit model’ to social demand on research – the reform of science in progress” Lionel Larqué, FR – [physicist and head the collaboration of education, civil society organisations, and science. Influenced partnerships between science … Continue reading European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) 2018 Conference – day 2: Beyond the deficit model, inclusiveness, libraries, and
Continue reading »On the 27th April, UCL hosted a workshop on the “Lessons learned from Volunteers Interactions with Geographic Citizen Science“. The workshop description was as follows: “A decade ago, in 2007, Michael Goodchild defined volunteered geographic information (VGI) as ‘the widespread engagement of large numbers of private citizens, often with little in the way of formal … Continue reading Lessons learned from Volunteers Interactions with Geographic Citizen Science – Morning session
Continue reading »The Global Science Forum – National Experts on Science and Technology Indicators (GSF-NESTI) Workshop on “Reconciling Scientific Excellence and Open Science” (for which you can see the full report here) asked the question “What do we want out of science and how can we incentivise and monitor these outputs?”. In particular, the objective of the … Continue reading GSF-NESTI Open Science & Scientific Excellence workshop – researcher, participants, and institutional aspects
Continue reading »The OECD organised and hosted a Global Science Forum (GSF) and National Experts on Science and Technology Indicators (NESTI) Workshop on “Reconciling Scientific Excellence and Open Science: What do we want out of science and how can we incentivise and monitor these outputs?” (9 April, 2018, OECD). In agreement with the OECD Secretariat, the information … Continue reading OECD Open Science and Scientific Excellence Workshop – Paris
Continue reading »The Eilot region, near Eilat in Israel, is considered locally as a remote part of the Negev desert in Israel (it is about 3.5h drive from the population centres of Tel Aviv). It is an arid desert, with very sparse population – about 4000 people who live in communal settlements – mostly kibbutzim in an area … Continue reading Learning from the Arava Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research workshop
Continue reading »This week, in the “Introduction to Citizen Science & Scientific Crowdsourcing“, our focus was on data management, to complete the first part of the course (the second part starts in a week’s time since we have a mid-term “Reading Week” at UCL). The part that I’ve enjoyed most in developing was the segment that addresses … Continue reading Citizen Science & Scientific Crowdsourcing – week 5 – Data quality
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Regular readers of this site might of noticed that we have an interest in slums. In the past this has focused on modeling them from an agent-based perspective, comparing volunteered geographical information to more authoritative data on slums, to that …
Continue reading »Regular readers of this site might of noticed that we have an interest in slums. In the past this has focused on modeling them from an agent-based perspective, comparing volunteered geographical information to more authoritative data on slums, to that …
Continue reading »
Regular readers of this site might of noticed that we have an interest in slums. In the past this has focused on modeling them from an agent-based perspective, comparing volunteered geographical information to more authoritative data on slums, to that …
Continue reading »The first week of the “Introduction to Citizen Science and Scientific Crowdsourcing” course was dedicated to an introduction to the field of citizen science using the history, examples and typologies to demonstrate the breadth of the field. The second week was dedicated to the second half of the course name – crowdsourcing in general, and its … Continue reading Citizen Science & Scientific Crowdsourcing – week 2 – Google Local Guides
Continue reading »Citee has been producing technical T-shirts featuring maps of various cities around the world, including London, for the last year. They are currently crowdfunding for a new black version of the T-shirts, with the map detail overlaid in greys and whites. Citee were kind enough to send a sample of their existing London design, which […]
Continue reading »Today, Caren Cooper new book Citizen Science: How Ordinary People are Changing the Face of Discovery is going on sale in the UK. The book has been out in the USA for about a year, and it is a good point to review it. The library of citizen science books is growing – there are the more … Continue reading Caren Cooper’s Citizen Science: How Ordinary People are Changing the Face of Discovery
The book ‘Understanding Spatial Media‘ came out earlier this year. The project is the result of joint effort of the editors Rob Kitchin (NUI Maynooth, Ireland), Tracey P. Lauriault (Carleton University, Canada), and Matthew W. Wilson (University of Kentucky, USA). The book is filling the need to review and explain what happened in the part 20 years, with the increase use … Continue reading Chapter in ‘Understanding Spatial Media’ on VGI & Citizen Science
Deadline 28th July 2017 UCL Department of Geography and the Ordnance Survey are inviting applications for a PhD studentship to explore the internal systematic biases in crowd-sourced geographic information datasets (also known as Volunteered Geographic Information – VGI). The studentship provides an exciting opportunity for a student to work with Ordnance Survey on understanding the … Continue reading PhD studentship in collaboration with the Ordnance Survey – identifying systematic biases in crowdsourced geographic information
The Cambridge Conference is an event that is held every 4 years, organised by the Ordnance Survey, and it is a meeting of many heads of National Mapping Agencies who come together to discuss shared interests and learn from each other. The history of the conference is available here. This year, I was asked to … Continue reading Cambridge Conference 2017 – The Willing Volunteer
Results from our analysis show variability in coverage between all these datasets. RCMRD provided the most complete, albeit less current, coverage when taking into account the entire study area, while OSM and Map Maker showed a degradation of coverage as one moves from central Nairobi towards more rural areas. Further information including the abstract to our paper, some figures and full reference is given below.
Abstract:
With volunteered geographic information (VGI) platforms such as OpenStreetMap (OSM) becoming increasingly popular, we are faced with the challenge of assessing the quality of their content, in order to better understand its place relative to the authoritative content of more traditional sources. Until now, studies have focused primarily on developed countries, showing that VGI content can match or even surpass the quality of authoritative sources, with very few studies in developing countries. In this paper we compare the quality of authoritative (data from the Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development – RCMRD) and non-authoritative (data from OSM and Google’s Map Maker) road data in conjunction with population data in and around Nairobi, Kenya. Results show variability in coverage between all these datasets. RCMRD provided the most complete, albeit less current, coverage when taking into account the entire study area, while OSM and Map Maker showed a degradation of coverage as one moves from central Nairobi towards rural areas. Furthermore, OSM had higher content density in large slums, surpassing the authoritative datasets at these locations, while Map Maker showed better coverage in rural housing areas. These results suggest a greater need for a more inclusive approach using VGI to supplement gaps in authoritative data in developing nations.Keywords: Volunteered Geographic Information; Crowdsourcing; Road Networks; Population Data; Kenya
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| Road Coverage per km2 |
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| Pairwise difference in road coverage. Clockwise from top left: i) RCMRD 2011 versus Map Maker 2014; ii) RCMRD 2011 versus OSM 2011; iii) RCMRD 2011 versus OSM 2014; iv) OSM 2014 versus Map Maker 2014 (Red cells: first layer has higher coverage; Green cells: second layer has higher coverage). |
Full Reference:
Mahabir, R., Stefanidis, A., Croitoru, A., Crooks, A.T. and Agouris, P. (2017), “Authoritative and Volunteered Geographical Information in a Developing Country: A Comparative Case Study of Road Datasets in Nairobi, Kenya”, ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 6(1): 24, doi:10.3390/ijgi6010024.
As always any thoughts or comments about this work are welcome.
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Results from our analysis show variability in coverage between all these datasets. RCMRD provided the most complete, albeit less current, coverage when taking into account the entire study area, while OSM and Map Maker showed a degradation of coverage as one moves from central Nairobi towards more rural areas. Further information including the abstract to our paper, some figures and full reference is given below.
Abstract:
With volunteered geographic information (VGI) platforms such as OpenStreetMap (OSM) becoming increasingly popular, we are faced with the challenge of assessing the quality of their content, in order to better understand its place relative to the authoritative content of more traditional sources. Until now, studies have focused primarily on developed countries, showing that VGI content can match or even surpass the quality of authoritative sources, with very few studies in developing countries. In this paper we compare the quality of authoritative (data from the Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development – RCMRD) and non-authoritative (data from OSM and Google’s Map Maker) road data in conjunction with population data in and around Nairobi, Kenya. Results show variability in coverage between all these datasets. RCMRD provided the most complete, albeit less current, coverage when taking into account the entire study area, while OSM and Map Maker showed a degradation of coverage as one moves from central Nairobi towards rural areas. Furthermore, OSM had higher content density in large slums, surpassing the authoritative datasets at these locations, while Map Maker showed better coverage in rural housing areas. These results suggest a greater need for a more inclusive approach using VGI to supplement gaps in authoritative data in developing nations.Keywords: Volunteered Geographic Information; Crowdsourcing; Road Networks; Population Data; Kenya
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| Road Coverage per km2 |
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| Pairwise difference in road coverage. Clockwise from top left: i) RCMRD 2011 versus Map Maker 2014; ii) RCMRD 2011 versus OSM 2011; iii) RCMRD 2011 versus OSM 2014; iv) OSM 2014 versus Map Maker 2014 (Red cells: first layer has higher coverage; Green cells: second layer has higher coverage). |
Full Reference:
Mahabir, R., Stefanidis, A., Croitoru, A., Crooks, A.T. and Agouris, P. (2017), “Authoritative and Volunteered Geographical Information in a Developing Country: A Comparative Case Study of Road Datasets in Nairobi, Kenya”, ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 6(1): 24, doi:10.3390/ijgi6010024.
As always any thoughts or comments about this work are welcome.
Continue reading »
London’s street network appears on a new cycling jacket – when you shine a light at it! Showerspass, a Portland (Oregon)-based company, has unveiled two new versions of their Elite cycling jacket – “Hi-Vis” and “Torch” versions. Both of them contain MapReflect, which is a rather brilliant idea for using a map design as a […]
Continue reading »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?
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
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
This past semester I gave a new class at GMU entitled “Urban Analytics”. In a nutshell the class was about introducing students to a broad interdisciplinary field that focuses on the use of data to study cities. More specifcally the emphasis of the cla…
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This past semester I gave a new class at GMU entitled “Urban Analytics”. In a nutshell the class was about introducing students to a broad interdisciplinary field that focuses on the use of data to study cities. More specifcally the emphasis of the cla…
Continue reading »The Eye on Earth Summit, which was held in Abu Dhabi last week, allowed me to immerse myself in the topics that I’ve been researching for a long time: geographic information, public access to environmental information, participation, citizen science, and the role of all these in policy making. My notes (day 1 morning, day 1 afternoon, … Continue reading Environmental information: between scarcity/abundance and emotions/rationality
The Eye on Earth Summit, which was held in Abu Dhabi last week, allowed me to immerse myself in the topics that I’ve been researching for a long time: geographic information, public access to environmental information, participation, citizen science, and the role of all these in policy making. My notes (day 1 morning, day 1 afternoon, … Continue reading Environmental information: between scarcity/abundance and emotions/rationality
Originally posted on Geo: Geography and Environment:
By Renée Sieber (McGill University, Canada) and Muki Haklay (University College London, UK) Our recent paper, The epistemology(s) of volunteered geographic information: a critique, started from a discussion we had about changes within the geographic information science (GIScience) research communities over the past two decades. We’ve both been working in the…
Originally posted on Geo: Geography and Environment:
By Renée Sieber (McGill University, Canada) and Muki Haklay (University College London, UK) Our recent paper, The epistemology(s) of volunteered geographic information: a critique, started from a discussion we had about changes within the geographic information science (GIScience) research communities over the past two decades. We’ve both been working in the…
Eye on Earth (Day 2 – Morning) – moving to data supply The second day of Eye on Earth moved from data demand to supply . You can find my posts from day one, with the morning and the afternoon sessions. I have only partial notes on the plenary Data Revolution-data supply side, although I’ve posted separately the slides from … Continue reading Eye on Earth (Day 2 – Morning) – moving to data supply
Eye on Earth (Day 2 – Morning) – moving to data supply The second day of Eye on Earth moved from data demand to supply . You can find my posts from day one, with the morning and the afternoon sessions. I have only partial notes on the plenary Data Revolution-data supply side, although I’ve posted separately the slides from … Continue reading Eye on Earth (Day 2 – Morning) – moving to data supply
The afternoon of the first day of Eye on Earth (see previous post for an opening ceremony and the morning sessions) had multiple tracks. I selected to attend Addressing policy making demand for data; dialogue between decision makers and providers The speakers were asked to address four points that address issues of data quality control and … Continue reading Eye on Earth (Day 1 – afternoon)