Participatory GIS, Volunteered Geographic Information and Citizen Science - GISRUK 2011

Participatory GIS, Volunteered Geographic Information and Citizen Science
Muki Haklay
‘Extreme Citizen Science’ group (ExCiteS)
Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering
UCL
GISRUK 2011, Portsmouth

Content
Participatory GIS (PPGIS, GIS-P…)
The rise of user-generated geographic content and Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI)
Citizen Science, Citizen Cyberscience and VGI
Extreme Citizen Science
Concepts, methodologies and techinques

Public Participation GIS
Emerged as a research area in the mid-1990s.
Started as an academic interest to open-up GIS to new range of users, based on social-theory based critique of GIS.
Has developed into a range of frameworks, procedures and techniques to allow public engagement with GIS.
North: urban/regional planning, environmental justice. South: Participatory Rural Appraisal, P3DM, Self enumeration.

The participation Ladder
PP in the final decision
PP in assessing Risks and
Recommending Solutions
Public Participation (PP) in
defining interests, actors and agenda
Restricted Participation
Public Right to Object
Informing the Public
Public Right to Know
(After Arnstein, 1969; Wiedemann and Femers, 1993)

GIS 2 / GIS, Too
GIS/2: A set of methods and instruments which emphasize process, and which are oriented toward communication about representations as much as toward the representations themselves.
A GIS/2 would increase emphasis on the role of participants in creation and evaluation of data.
GIS/2 would accommodate an equitable representation of diverse views, preserving contradiction, inconsistencies and disputes.
Outputs would reflect the standards and goals of the participants, rather than closeness of fit to standards of measurable accuracy.
A GIS/2 would be capable of managing and integrating all data components and participant contributions from one interface.
The GIS/2 would preserve and represent the history of its own development, and be more capable of handling time components than existing GIS.
Source: Schroeder, P. (1996) Criteria for the design of a GIS/2.

Wandle Valley Brownfield Project
1999 - Environment Agency funded project to evaluate the usefulness of GIS for brownfield regeneration
Rebekah Boott, Kate Heppell, Mordechai Haklay, Jeremy Morley -The use of GIS in brownfield redevelopment, GISRUK 2000

Participatory GIS – chauffeurs, facilitators and technology
Aurigi, A., Batty, S., Bloomfield, D., Boott, R., Clark, J., Haklay, M., Harrison, C., Heppell, K., Moreley, J. and Thornton, C. (1999), UCL Brownfield Research Network, University College London, London, UK, 42 pp

UCL BrownfiledResearch Network Workshop
Local knowledge, experience, memories:
Group 1 - 8 min. Anna operates the zoom-in option while drawing a very small box. As result, the software zooms into a very small area (large scale map). Deborah: “It is almost impossible to read it” {“Yeah” of agreement from other participants}. Rose: “cause that mean absolutely zero”. Deborah: “Unless you know exactly where you are…Is it actually possible to put street names on?”.

UBRN Workshop
Information integration:
Group 2 - 52 min. Kevin “the other thing that is probably important, is {the ability of GIS} to combine dissimilar things, things that you think are previously unrelated, and it seems to be the real power of the thing”. Malcolm notes that using too many data sets will “overwhelm the screen”.

Internet-based PPGIS
Virtual Slaithwaite – developed by the University of Leeds in 1998-1999.
Based on “Planning for Real”.
Carver, S., Evans, A., Kingston, R. and Turton, I. (2001) Public participation, GIS and cyberdemocracy:
evaluating on-line spatial decision support systems. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design.

Locating sites for Nuclear Waste
PGIS in larger scale analysis
Started in the early 1990s, a GIS-Based Multi-Criteria Analysis for the location of nuclear waste disposal
Allowed users to create their own weighted map
Evans, A., Kingston, R. and Carver, S. (2004) Democratic input into the nuclear waste disposal problem: the influence of geographical data on decision making examined through a web-based GIS. Journal of Geographical Systems

Source: Andy-Hudson Smith, Mike Batty
Hudson-Smith, A and Evans, S and Batty, M and Batty, S (2002) Online participation: the Woodberry Down experiment. Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (UCL), London, UK

GIS-P
Used for creating dialogue between local stakeholder, planners, modellers and policy makers – to improve decision outcomes
steve.cinderby@sei.se

PPGIS in E-government (Wandsworth 2001)
Haklay, M., and Tobón, C., 2003, Usability Evaluation and PPGIS: Towards a User-Centred Approach, IJGIS)17(6), 577-592

Listening to the City
Discussion on the design of Lower Manhattan after 9/11.
Participation exercise involving over 5,000 people, discussing general design ideas for the area.
Wide use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) during the consultation exercise.
Source: LMDC

Participatory GIS – first decade
From desktop to the Web
Experimentation with visualisation, representation and delivery
From research to practice in Local authorities and non-governmental organisation
Challenges with data access and technology

WEB MAPPING 2.0

Structural changes
1st May 2000 – President Clinton removes selective availability of GPS signal
Dot-com crash and the increase of broadband use
Data storage: from $10 (2000) to $0.5 (2005) per gigabyte
The acronym soup of AJAX: SOAP, XML, Javascript – and support in browsers (2004 – GPX)
Web services and simplified APIs
Usable, desktop like web applications
Haklay, M., Singleton, A., and Parker, C., 2008, Web mapping 2.0: the Neogeography of the Geoweb, Geography Compass

Mashups and new forms of geographic information
ChicagoCrime.org – one of the first Google Maps Mashups.
Form of civic intervention in the use of geographic information held by the authorities

Paolo Isoardi, 2006, Creation of London 21 Green Map using Google Maps API

Bottom Up Participatory GIS
Google My Maps ability is used to create a Green Map for the Transition Town Brixton project

Ellul, C., Haklay, M. Francis, L. And Rahemtulla, H., 2009, A Mechanism to Create Community Maps for Non-Technical users, The International Conference on Advanced Geographic Information Systems & Web Services – GEOWS 2009

Non-spatial User Generated Content

Spatially Implicit User Generated Content

Flickr– Locals (blue) vs. Tourists (red)
Source: Eric Fischer

Spatial User Generated Content

Google Map Maker

OpenStreetMap
User generated (Crowdsourced)
Wiki style
Open access to data and software
‘OpenStreetMap is a project aimed squarely at creating and providing free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them’
(Image source: OpenStreetMap)

VGI – from games to civic engagement

Geograph
Flickr
Picasa Web
Panoramio
Source: Vyron Antoniou, UCL

Population and completeness

Prosperity and completeness

VGI – characteristics
Participation:
Voluntary/involuntary
Passive/active engagement (citizens as platform for sensors to use of collective intelligence)
Information – from facts to perceptions
Geographical distribution – highly populated, central places and tourist attractions
Bias towards affluent areas (and participants)
Demographical analysis: high levels of educations, male dominance, technically savvy

Citizen Science
Volunteer rainfall observer Rick Grocke checks the rain gauge at Tanami Downs cattle station in the Northern Territory of Australia
Source: Audubon Cal.
Source: WMO–No. 919

Non-spatial citizen (cyber)science

GeographicCitizen Science
Source: BioScience 58(3) p. 195
Source: BioScience 58(3) p. 192

Aspects of Citizen Science/Cyberscience
Role of participants: Active vs. Passive
Aim of the system: Implicit vs. explicit
Level of engagement: platform vs. sensor vs. participant
Level of geographical/temporal engagement: everyday vs. targeted

Cultural problems
Citizen Scientists are perceived as untrustworthy
No ‘quality control’
Not professional
Evaluation mechanisms assume unskilled workers such as classifying each object three times (in Citizen Cyberscience)
But volunteer effort can improve the data

‘Extreme’ Citizen Science
Citizens can participate in defining the problems, envisioning possible projects and participate in the analysis
Can (and should) participate in the discussion of the results of what they’ve collected
Often, they are best placed to analyse the data
Source: Malcolm Eames, Jonas Mortensen, Maria Adebowale, IaraLudicissa 2009

‘Extreme’ Citizen Science

Levels of Citizen Science

Noise Mapping

Citizen Science / Participatory GIS
Noise Mapping forms are transferred to a computer map by digitising them in a GIS.

Eyjafjallajökull
Source: Wikimedia

Nursary
Community Centre
School
Scrap yard

PPGIS, VGI and Extreme Citizen Science
Scale of coverage and aim of the activity
Importance of local knowledge and understanding
The end use of the data, ownership and credit
Empowerment, inclusion/exclusion, marginalisation, participation
The role of Technology in shaping the activity

Credits and further details
Support for the research kindly provided by:
UCL Graduate School Research Fund,
ESRC grant R000238127 ‘Conserving Biodiversity That Matters: The Value of Brownfield Sites’
Wandsworth council (pathfinder for e-government scheme)
RGS/IBG Small Research Grant
UrbanBuzz: Building Sustainable Communities (HEFCE)
London Sustainability Exchange (LSx)
London 21 Sustainability Network
EPSPRC Challenging Engineering Award ‘Extreme Citizen Science’
Special thanks to the Wandsworth, Royal Docks and Pepys Estate communities
E-mail: m.haklay@ucl.ac.uk
Twitter: mhaklay
Povesham.wordpress.com
MappingForChange.org.uk

Wandle Valley Brownfield Project

Examples of Internet-based PPGIS
Woodberry Down regeneration plan, initiated by LB Hackney.
Andy Hudson-Smith from CASA, UCL developed this 2-3 years ago.
Allows local residents to explore different issues regarding the redevelopment plans and to engage in an online discussions about their preferences.
Source: Andy-Hudson Smith, Mike Batty

Wilderness Britain?
Source Carver & Evans, 2004

Towards a User Centred Design cycle
User Centred Design suits PPGIS projects!
Especially important in web-based projects
Part of iterative process
Slide 64/20

Engaging the Public in wind-farms siting
Wind-farm siting and public participation: combining participatory GIS, Multi-Criteria Analysis and an Argumentative Framework.
Evaluating how the use of participatory techniques influences the perceptions of the issues and the ways of addressing them.
©Ian Britton

MC-SDSS + AS
Individual
dimension
Social
interaction
MC-SDSS
AF
Public participation over the web

Classification of
feasible sites
Preferable
Acceptable
unacceptable
Aggregated preferences
Controversy map

consensus
conflict
Prototype development
Individual preference



map
entities
Debate around sites suitability/adequacy
Aggregated preferences
Controversy map
consensus
conflict
make reasoning publicly available, triggering critical analysis
consensus building and conflict resolution potential

Steve Evans, Rebekah Boott–London Environment Onlne (joint project Jackson Environment Institute, CASA, 1999-2000)

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Participatory GIS, Volunteered Geographic Information and Citizen Science - GISRUK 2011

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Participatory GIS, Volunteered Geographic Information and Citizen Science - GISRUK 2011 — Presentation Transcript