The latest outputs from researchers, alumni and friends at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA).
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)
Four years after the first Eye on Earth Summit (see my reflections about the 2011 event here, and the Dublin meeting in 2013 here), the second summit is being held in Abu Dhabi. Eye on Earth is a meeting that is dedicated to the coordination of environmental information sharing at all scales so it can … Continue reading Eye on Earth (day 1 – morning) – opening and the need for data
Four years after the first Eye on Earth Summit (see my reflections about the 2011 event here, and the Dublin meeting in 2013 here), the second summit is being held in Abu Dhabi. Eye on Earth is a meeting that is dedicated to the coordination of environmental information sharing at all scales so it can … Continue reading Eye on Earth (day 1 – morning)
Considering how long Reneé Sieber (McGill University) and I know each other, and working in similar areas (participatory GIS, participatory geoweb, open data, socio-technical aspects of GIS, environmental information), I’m very pleased that a collaborative paper that we developed together is finally published. The paper ‘The epistemology(s) of volunteered geographic information: a critique‘ took some … Continue reading New paper: The epistemology(s) of volunteered geographic information: a critique
Considering how long Reneé Sieber (McGill University) and I know each other, and working in similar areas (participatory GIS, participatory geoweb, open data, socio-technical aspects of GIS, environmental information), I’m very pleased that a collaborative paper that we developed together is finally published. The paper ‘The epistemology(s) of volunteered geographic information: a critique‘ took some … Continue reading New paper: The epistemology(s) of volunteered geographic information: a critique
The Citizen Cyberlab Summit is the final event of the Citizen Cyberlab project. The name might sound grand, but the event itself was fairly intimate and focused, with about 40 participants from across the world. The aim of the event was to share the learning from the project and compare them to similar activities around the world. It … Continue reading Citizen Cyberlab Summit (day 1)
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
Thanks to invitations from UNIGIS and from Edinburgh Earth Observatory / AGI Scotland, I had an opportunity to reflect on how Geographic Information Science (GIScience) can contribute to citizen science, and what citizen science can contribute to GIScience. Despite the fact that it’s been 8 years since the term Volunteers Geographic Information (VGI) was coined, […]
The last day of the BES/Sfé meeting was in the mood of celebration, so a session dedicated to celebrating citizen science was in place. My notes from first day and the second day are in previous posts. These notes are long… Before the session, in a symposium on tree health, Michael Pocock (CEH) presented ‘Monitoring to […]
A citizens observatory is a concept that evolved at EU policy circles, defining the combination of participatory community monitoring, technology and governance structures that are needed to monitor/observe/manage an environmental issue. About two years ago, the EU FP7 funded 5 citizens observatory projects covering areas from water management to biodiversity monitoring. A meeting at Brussels was […]
If you have been reading the literature on citizen science, you must have noticed that many papers that describe citizen science start with an historical narrative, something along the lines of: As Silvertown (2009) noted, until the late 19th century, science was mainly developed by people who had additional sources of employment that allowed them […]
The Association of American Geographers is coordinating an effort to create an International Encyclopedia of Geography. Plans started in 2010, with an aim to see the 15 volumes project published in 2015 or 2016. Interestingly, this shows that publishers and scholars are still seeing the value in creating subject-specific encyclopedias. On the other hand, the weird […]
When you look at the discussions that are emerging around the term ‘Citizen Science‘, you can often find discussion about the ‘Citizen‘ part of the term. What about the ‘Science‘ part? This is something that once you start being involved in Citizen Science you are forced to contemplate. As Francois Grey like to note ‘Science is too important […]
As far as I can tell, Nelson et al. 2006 ‘Towards development of a high quality public domain global roads database‘ and Taylor & Caquard 2006 Cybercartography: Maps and Mapping in the Information Era are the first peer review papers that mention OpenStreetMap. Since then, OpenStreetMap received plenty of academic attention. More ‘conservative’ search engines such as ScienceDirect […]
Today, OpenStreetMap celebrates 10 years of operation as counted from the date of registration. I’ve heard about the project when it was in early stages, mostly because I knew Steve Coast when I was studying for my Ph.D. at UCL. As a result, I was also able to secured the first ever research grant that focused […]
The Vespucci initiative has been running for over a decade, bringing together participants from wide range of academic backgrounds and experiences to explore, in a ‘slow learning’ way, various aspects of geographic information science research. The Vespucci Summer Institutes are week long summer schools, most frequently held at Fiesole, a small town overlooking Florence. This year, the […]
LISA analysis of positional accuracy for the OSM data setBuilding upon our interest in volunteered geographic information (VGI) and extending our previous paper “Assessing Completeness and Spatial Error of Features in Volunteered Geographic…
Continue reading »
LISA analysis of positional accuracy for the OSM data setBuilding upon our interest in volunteered geographic information (VGI) and extending our previous paper “Assessing Completeness and Spatial Error of Features in Volunteered Geographic…
Continue reading »
LISA analysis of positional accuracy for the OSM data setBuilding upon our interest in volunteered geographic information (VGI) and extending our previous paper “Assessing Completeness and Spatial Error of Features in Volunteered Geographic…
Continue reading »