First Annual Canadian Homelessness Data Sharing Initiative
Calgary Homeless Foundation and The School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary
May 4, 2016, Officer’s Mess – Fort Calgary, Calgary, Alberta
OSi Geographic Information Research & Development Initiatives Launch
Ordnance Survey Ireland GI R&D Initiatives
Tuesday, 22 March 2016, 13:00 to 20:30 (GMT) , Maynooth University
ABSTRACT:
The central argument of this dissertation is that Canadian reality is conditioned by government data and their related infrastructures. Specifically, that Canadian geographical imaginations are strongly influenced by the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada. Both are long standing government institutions that inform government decision-making, and are normally considered to be objective and politically neutral. It is argued that they may also not be entirely politically neutral even though they may not be influenced by partisan politics, because social, technical and scientific institutions nuance objectivity. These institutions or infrastructures recede into the background of government operations, and although invisible, they shape how Canadian geography and society are imagined. Such geographical imaginations, it is argued, are important because they have real material and social effects. In particular, this dissertation empirically examines how the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada, as knowledge formation objects and as government representations, affect social and material reality and also normalize subjects. It is also demonstrated that the Ian Hacking dynamic Looping Effect framework of ‘Making Up People’ is not only useful to the human sciences, but is also an effective methodology that geographers can adapt and apply to the study of ‘Making Up Spaces’ and geographical imaginations. His framework was adapted to the study of the six editions of the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada between 1871 and 2011. Furthermore, it is shown that the framework also helps structure the critical examination of discourse, in this case, Foucauldian gouvernementalité and the biopower of socio-techno-political systems such as a national atlas and census, which are inextricably embedded in a social, technical and scientific milieu. As objects they both reflect the dominant value system of their society and through daily actions, support the dominance of this value system. While it is people who produce these objects, the infrastructures that operate in the background have technological momentum that also influence actions. Based on the work of Bruno Latour, the Atlas and the Canadian census are proven to be inscriptions that are immutable and mobile, and as such, become actors in other settings. Therefore, the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada shape and are shaped by geographical imaginations.
Note:
Interactivity and animation are lost when the slides are converted to PDF.
Abstract:
In a technological society such as Canada, it is suggested that a specialized kind of expert citizenship is needed (Andrew Feenberg). In the era of big data, others suggest that there is a need to learn how to read algorithms and to study its high priests and alchemists (Genevieve Bell). While, doing citizenship requires a political ethics of technology to thwart technological and quantitative fundamentalism (Darin Barney). Finally, in the midst of a data revolution we need to critically re-conceptualize data (Rob Kitchin). Quite simply, in today's Canada doing citizenship requires data literacy, technical, philosophical and political. Access to print media - books, government documents, academic journals - in libraries and archives enabled a literate society, the prerequisite of a democratic system. I argue that good governance in knowledge producing institutions, is to have technological experts, both data creators and preservers, working to store, manage, disseminate and preserve data so that we have the requisite artifacts to increase our literacy and build upon collected knowledge. Data literacy I suggest, is indispensable in the current democratic system, and that requires having access to data, data infrastructures - knowledge and technology - and dedicated skilled people and resources to sustainably care for them. I consider research data management to be our duty.
First Annual Canadian Homelessness Data Sharing Initiative
Calgary Homeless Foundation and The School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary
May 4, 2016, Officer’s Mess – Fort Calgary, Calgary, Alberta
OSi Geographic Information Research & Development Initiatives Launch
Ordnance Survey Ireland GI R&D Initiatives
Tuesday, 22 March 2016, 13:00 to 20:30 (GMT) , Maynooth University
ABSTRACT:
The central argument of this dissertation is that Canadian reality is conditioned by government data and their related infrastructures. Specifically, that Canadian geographical imaginations are strongly influenced by the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada. Both are long standing government institutions that inform government decision-making, and are normally considered to be objective and politically neutral. It is argued that they may also not be entirely politically neutral even though they may not be influenced by partisan politics, because social, technical and scientific institutions nuance objectivity. These institutions or infrastructures recede into the background of government operations, and although invisible, they shape how Canadian geography and society are imagined. Such geographical imaginations, it is argued, are important because they have real material and social effects. In particular, this dissertation empirically examines how the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada, as knowledge formation objects and as government representations, affect social and material reality and also normalize subjects. It is also demonstrated that the Ian Hacking dynamic Looping Effect framework of ‘Making Up People’ is not only useful to the human sciences, but is also an effective methodology that geographers can adapt and apply to the study of ‘Making Up Spaces’ and geographical imaginations. His framework was adapted to the study of the six editions of the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada between 1871 and 2011. Furthermore, it is shown that the framework also helps structure the critical examination of discourse, in this case, Foucauldian gouvernementalité and the biopower of socio-techno-political systems such as a national atlas and census, which are inextricably embedded in a social, technical and scientific milieu. As objects they both reflect the dominant value system of their society and through daily actions, support the dominance of this value system. While it is people who produce these objects, the infrastructures that operate in the background have technological momentum that also influence actions. Based on the work of Bruno Latour, the Atlas and the Canadian census are proven to be inscriptions that are immutable and mobile, and as such, become actors in other settings. Therefore, the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada shape and are shaped by geographical imaginations.
Note:
Interactivity and animation are lost when the slides are converted to PDF.
Abstract:
In a technological society such as Canada, it is suggested that a specialized kind of expert citizenship is needed (Andrew Feenberg). In the era of big data, others suggest that there is a need to learn how to read algorithms and to study its high priests and alchemists (Genevieve Bell). While, doing citizenship requires a political ethics of technology to thwart technological and quantitative fundamentalism (Darin Barney). Finally, in the midst of a data revolution we need to critically re-conceptualize data (Rob Kitchin). Quite simply, in today's Canada doing citizenship requires data literacy, technical, philosophical and political. Access to print media - books, government documents, academic journals - in libraries and archives enabled a literate society, the prerequisite of a democratic system. I argue that good governance in knowledge producing institutions, is to have technological experts, both data creators and preservers, working to store, manage, disseminate and preserve data so that we have the requisite artifacts to increase our literacy and build upon collected knowledge. Data literacy I suggest, is indispensable in the current democratic system, and that requires having access to data, data infrastructures - knowledge and technology - and dedicated skilled people and resources to sustainably care for them. I consider research data management to be our duty.
Presented by: Jean-Noe Landry (Open North) & Dr Tracey P. Lauriault (Carleton University) & Rachel Bloom (Open North)
Content Contributors: David Fewer CIPPIC, Mark Fox U. of Toronto, Stephen Letts (RA Carleton U.)
Partner Cities: City of Edmonton, City of Guelph, Ville de Montréal & City of Ottawa
Project Name: Open Smart Cities in Canada
Date: August 30, 2017
Abstract:
The Census is the only national public policy tool that collects data with a large enough sample size to report findings at small sub-municipal geographic scales. The loss of the long-form census may impede researchers and community based organizations from conducting neighbourhood analysis. Other surveys conducted by Statistics Canada do not have a large enough sample size to fill this gap. Canadians may be left with analyzes on a variety of public policy issues only at the city or metropolitan area scale. This would impede the ability for place based analysis and location specific action. Neighbourhood scale research using Census data will be discussed, The Cybercartographic Pilot Atlas of the Risk of Homelessness created at the Geomatics and Cartographic Research and other examples from community based research initiatives such as the Community Data Consortium will be presented. This will include maps and data about social issues in Canadian cities & metropolitan areas (e.g. Calgary, Toronto, Halton, Sault Ste. Marie, Hamilton, Ottawa, Montreal, & others) to demonstrate the importance of local analysis. The impact of the loss for evidence based decision making for communities in Canada’s will be the key element of the discussion.
Conference of Irish Geographies 2018
The Earth as Our Home
Automating Homelessness May 12, 2018
The research for these studies is funded by a European Research Council Advanced Investigator award ERC-2012-AdG-323636-SOFTCITY.
Cottbus Brandenburg University of Technology Lecture series on Smart RegionsCritically Assembling Data, Processes & Things: Toward and Open Smart CityJune 5, 2018
This lecture will critically focus on smart cities from a data based socio-technological assemblage approach. It is a theoretical and methodological framework that allows for an empirical examination of how smart cities are socially and technically constructed, and to study them as discursive regimes and as a large technological infrastructural systems.
The lecture will refer to the research outcomes of the ERC funded Programmable City Project led by Rob Kitchin at Maynooth University and will feature examples of empirical research conducted in Dublin and other Irish cities.
In addition, the lecture will discuss the research outcomes of the Canadian Open Smart Cities project funded by the Government of Canada GeoConnections Program. Examples will be drawn from five case studies namely about the cities of Edmonton, Guelph, Ottawa and Montreal, and the Ontario Smart Grid as well as number of international best practices. The recent Infrastructure Canada Canadian Smart City Challenge and the controversial Sidewalk Lab Waterfront Toronto project will also be discussed.
It will be argued that no two smart cities are alike although the technological solutionist and networked urbanist approaches dominate and it is suggested that these kind of smart cities may not live up to the promise of being better places to live.
In this lecture, the ideals of an Open Smart City are offered instead and in this kind of city residents, civil society, academics, and the private sector collaborate with public officials to mobilize data and technologies when warranted in an ethical, accountable and transparent way in order to govern the city as a fair, viable and livable commons that balances economic development, social progress and environmental responsibility. Although an Open Smart City does not yet exist, it will be argued that it is possible.
Experiences as a producer, consumer and observer of open dataProgCity
Peter Mooney, is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funded Research Fellow at the Department of Computer Science, NUI Maynooth. He has been working with the EPA on making environmental data publicly accessibly for the last ten years.
Presentation was part of The 1st Seminar of the ERC Funded Programmable City Project based at NIRSA, NUI Maynooth, Republic of Ireland.
Authors:
Tracey P. Lauriault, Programmable City Project, Maynooth University
Peter Mooney, Environmental Protection Agency Ireland and Department of Computer Science Maynooth University
Title:
Crowdsourcing: A Geographic Approach to Identifying Policy Opportunities and Challenges Toward Deeper Levels of Public Engagement
Presented:
The Internet, Policy and Politics Conference, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, September 25-26, 2014
See the abstract here:
http://ipp.oii.ox.ac.uk/2014/programme-2014/track-c-politics-of-engagement/community/tracey-p-lauriault-peter-mooney
Presentation #2:Open/Big Urban DataLessons Learned from the Programmable City ProjectMansion House, Dublin, May 9th, 201810am-2pmhttp://progcity.maynoothuniversity.ie/2018/03/lessons-for-smart-cities-from-the-programmable-city-project/
Canada is a data and technological society. There is no sector that is uninformed by data or unmediated by code, algorithms, software and infrastructure. Consider the Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities, and precision agriculture; or smart fisheries, forestry, and energy and of course governing. In a data based and technological society, leadership is the responsibility of all citizens, a parent, teacher, scholar, administrator, public servant, nurse and doctor, mayor and councillor, fisher, builder, business person, industrialist, MP, MLA, PM, and so on. In other words leadership is distributed and requires people power. This form of citizenship, according to Andrew Feenberg, Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology, requires agency, knowledge and the capacity to act or power. In this GovMaker Keynote I will introduce the concept of technological citizenship, I will discuss what principled public interest governing might look like, and how we might go about critically applying philosophy in our daily practice. In terms of practice I will discuss innovative policy and regulation such as the right to repair movement, EU legislation such as the right to explanation, data subjects and the right to access and also data sovereignty from a globalization and an indigenous perspective.
Online Petitioning Through Data Exploration and What We Found There: A Datase...Pablo Aragón
Dataset paper presented at ICWSM-18:
The Internet has become a fundamental resource for activism as it facilitates political mobilization at a global scale. Petition platforms are a clear example of how thousands of people around the world can contribute to social change. Avaaz.org, with a presence in over 200 countries, is one of the most popular of this type. However, little research has focused on this platform, probably due to a lack of available data.
In this work we retrieved more than 350K petitions, standardized their field values, and added new information using language detection and named-entity recognition. To motivate future research with this unique repository of global protest, we present a first exploration of the dataset. In particular, we examine how social media campaigning is related to the success of petitions, as well as some geographic and linguistic findings about the worldwide community of Avaaz.org. We conclude with example research questions that could be addressed with our dataset.
Social media has emerged as a powerful communication channel to promote actions and raise social awareness. Initiatives through social media are being driven by NGOs to increase the scope and effectiveness of their campaigns. In this paper, we describe the DaTactic2 campaign, which is both an offline and online initiative supported by Oxfam Intermón devised to gather activists and NGOs practitioners and create awareness on the importance of the 2014 European Parliament election. We provide details regarding the background of the campaign, as well as the objectives, the strategies that have been implemented and an empirical evaluation of its performance through an analysis of the impact on Twitter. Our findings show the effectiveness of bringing together relevant actors in an offline event and the high value of creating multimedia content in order to increase the scope and virality of the campaign.
Data Journalism and the Remaking of Data InfrastructuresLiliana Bounegru
Talk given at the “Evidence and the Politics of Policymaking” Conference, University of Bath, 14th September 2016, on the basis of my PhD research at the University of Groningen and University of Ghent.
http://www.bath.ac.uk/ipr/events/news-0230.html.
Civic Technologies: Research, Practice, and Open ChallengesPablo Aragón
Workshop – CSCW 2020 – October 17, 2020
Over the last years, civic technology projects have emerged around the world to advance open government and community action. Although Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) communities have shown a growing interest in researching issues around civic technologies, yet most research still focuses on projects from the Global North. The goal of this workshop is, therefore, to advance CSCW research by raising awareness for the ongoing challenges and open questions around civic technology by bridging the gap between researchers and practitioners from different regions.
The workshop will be organized around three central topics: (1) discuss how the local context and infrastructure affect the design, implementation, adoption, and maintenance of civic technology; (2) identify key elements of the configuration of trust among government, citizenry, and local organizations and how these elements change depending on the sociopolitical context where community engagement takes place; (3) discover what methods and strategies are best suited for conducting research on civic technologies in different contexts. These core topics will be covered across sessions that will initiate in-depth discussions and, thereby, stimulate collaboration between the CSCW research community and practitioners of civic technologies from both Global North and South.
Geographic Information Management TransformationPat Kenny
GI Management Transformation: from geometry to data-based relationships. - Dr Tracey P. Lauriault, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University & Programmable City, Maynooth University. Address given at Ordnance Survey Ireland GI R&D Initiatives, Tuesday, 22 March 2016, 13:00 to 20:30 (GMT), Maynooth University.
Danish Institute for Study Abroad
Communications:
New Media and Changing Communities
Dublin Visit
Tracey P. Lauriault
NIRSA Seminar Room
National University of Ireland Maynooth
2nd April 2015
Presented by: Jean-Noe Landry (Open North) & Dr Tracey P. Lauriault (Carleton University) & Rachel Bloom (Open North)
Content Contributors: David Fewer CIPPIC, Mark Fox U. of Toronto, Stephen Letts (RA Carleton U.)
Partner Cities: City of Edmonton, City of Guelph, Ville de Montréal & City of Ottawa
Project Name: Open Smart Cities in Canada
Date: August 30, 2017
Abstract:
The Census is the only national public policy tool that collects data with a large enough sample size to report findings at small sub-municipal geographic scales. The loss of the long-form census may impede researchers and community based organizations from conducting neighbourhood analysis. Other surveys conducted by Statistics Canada do not have a large enough sample size to fill this gap. Canadians may be left with analyzes on a variety of public policy issues only at the city or metropolitan area scale. This would impede the ability for place based analysis and location specific action. Neighbourhood scale research using Census data will be discussed, The Cybercartographic Pilot Atlas of the Risk of Homelessness created at the Geomatics and Cartographic Research and other examples from community based research initiatives such as the Community Data Consortium will be presented. This will include maps and data about social issues in Canadian cities & metropolitan areas (e.g. Calgary, Toronto, Halton, Sault Ste. Marie, Hamilton, Ottawa, Montreal, & others) to demonstrate the importance of local analysis. The impact of the loss for evidence based decision making for communities in Canada’s will be the key element of the discussion.
Conference of Irish Geographies 2018
The Earth as Our Home
Automating Homelessness May 12, 2018
The research for these studies is funded by a European Research Council Advanced Investigator award ERC-2012-AdG-323636-SOFTCITY.
Cottbus Brandenburg University of Technology Lecture series on Smart RegionsCritically Assembling Data, Processes & Things: Toward and Open Smart CityJune 5, 2018
This lecture will critically focus on smart cities from a data based socio-technological assemblage approach. It is a theoretical and methodological framework that allows for an empirical examination of how smart cities are socially and technically constructed, and to study them as discursive regimes and as a large technological infrastructural systems.
The lecture will refer to the research outcomes of the ERC funded Programmable City Project led by Rob Kitchin at Maynooth University and will feature examples of empirical research conducted in Dublin and other Irish cities.
In addition, the lecture will discuss the research outcomes of the Canadian Open Smart Cities project funded by the Government of Canada GeoConnections Program. Examples will be drawn from five case studies namely about the cities of Edmonton, Guelph, Ottawa and Montreal, and the Ontario Smart Grid as well as number of international best practices. The recent Infrastructure Canada Canadian Smart City Challenge and the controversial Sidewalk Lab Waterfront Toronto project will also be discussed.
It will be argued that no two smart cities are alike although the technological solutionist and networked urbanist approaches dominate and it is suggested that these kind of smart cities may not live up to the promise of being better places to live.
In this lecture, the ideals of an Open Smart City are offered instead and in this kind of city residents, civil society, academics, and the private sector collaborate with public officials to mobilize data and technologies when warranted in an ethical, accountable and transparent way in order to govern the city as a fair, viable and livable commons that balances economic development, social progress and environmental responsibility. Although an Open Smart City does not yet exist, it will be argued that it is possible.
Experiences as a producer, consumer and observer of open dataProgCity
Peter Mooney, is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funded Research Fellow at the Department of Computer Science, NUI Maynooth. He has been working with the EPA on making environmental data publicly accessibly for the last ten years.
Presentation was part of The 1st Seminar of the ERC Funded Programmable City Project based at NIRSA, NUI Maynooth, Republic of Ireland.
Authors:
Tracey P. Lauriault, Programmable City Project, Maynooth University
Peter Mooney, Environmental Protection Agency Ireland and Department of Computer Science Maynooth University
Title:
Crowdsourcing: A Geographic Approach to Identifying Policy Opportunities and Challenges Toward Deeper Levels of Public Engagement
Presented:
The Internet, Policy and Politics Conference, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, September 25-26, 2014
See the abstract here:
http://ipp.oii.ox.ac.uk/2014/programme-2014/track-c-politics-of-engagement/community/tracey-p-lauriault-peter-mooney
Presentation #2:Open/Big Urban DataLessons Learned from the Programmable City ProjectMansion House, Dublin, May 9th, 201810am-2pmhttp://progcity.maynoothuniversity.ie/2018/03/lessons-for-smart-cities-from-the-programmable-city-project/
Canada is a data and technological society. There is no sector that is uninformed by data or unmediated by code, algorithms, software and infrastructure. Consider the Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities, and precision agriculture; or smart fisheries, forestry, and energy and of course governing. In a data based and technological society, leadership is the responsibility of all citizens, a parent, teacher, scholar, administrator, public servant, nurse and doctor, mayor and councillor, fisher, builder, business person, industrialist, MP, MLA, PM, and so on. In other words leadership is distributed and requires people power. This form of citizenship, according to Andrew Feenberg, Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology, requires agency, knowledge and the capacity to act or power. In this GovMaker Keynote I will introduce the concept of technological citizenship, I will discuss what principled public interest governing might look like, and how we might go about critically applying philosophy in our daily practice. In terms of practice I will discuss innovative policy and regulation such as the right to repair movement, EU legislation such as the right to explanation, data subjects and the right to access and also data sovereignty from a globalization and an indigenous perspective.
Online Petitioning Through Data Exploration and What We Found There: A Datase...Pablo Aragón
Dataset paper presented at ICWSM-18:
The Internet has become a fundamental resource for activism as it facilitates political mobilization at a global scale. Petition platforms are a clear example of how thousands of people around the world can contribute to social change. Avaaz.org, with a presence in over 200 countries, is one of the most popular of this type. However, little research has focused on this platform, probably due to a lack of available data.
In this work we retrieved more than 350K petitions, standardized their field values, and added new information using language detection and named-entity recognition. To motivate future research with this unique repository of global protest, we present a first exploration of the dataset. In particular, we examine how social media campaigning is related to the success of petitions, as well as some geographic and linguistic findings about the worldwide community of Avaaz.org. We conclude with example research questions that could be addressed with our dataset.
Social media has emerged as a powerful communication channel to promote actions and raise social awareness. Initiatives through social media are being driven by NGOs to increase the scope and effectiveness of their campaigns. In this paper, we describe the DaTactic2 campaign, which is both an offline and online initiative supported by Oxfam Intermón devised to gather activists and NGOs practitioners and create awareness on the importance of the 2014 European Parliament election. We provide details regarding the background of the campaign, as well as the objectives, the strategies that have been implemented and an empirical evaluation of its performance through an analysis of the impact on Twitter. Our findings show the effectiveness of bringing together relevant actors in an offline event and the high value of creating multimedia content in order to increase the scope and virality of the campaign.
Data Journalism and the Remaking of Data InfrastructuresLiliana Bounegru
Talk given at the “Evidence and the Politics of Policymaking” Conference, University of Bath, 14th September 2016, on the basis of my PhD research at the University of Groningen and University of Ghent.
http://www.bath.ac.uk/ipr/events/news-0230.html.
Civic Technologies: Research, Practice, and Open ChallengesPablo Aragón
Workshop – CSCW 2020 – October 17, 2020
Over the last years, civic technology projects have emerged around the world to advance open government and community action. Although Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) communities have shown a growing interest in researching issues around civic technologies, yet most research still focuses on projects from the Global North. The goal of this workshop is, therefore, to advance CSCW research by raising awareness for the ongoing challenges and open questions around civic technology by bridging the gap between researchers and practitioners from different regions.
The workshop will be organized around three central topics: (1) discuss how the local context and infrastructure affect the design, implementation, adoption, and maintenance of civic technology; (2) identify key elements of the configuration of trust among government, citizenry, and local organizations and how these elements change depending on the sociopolitical context where community engagement takes place; (3) discover what methods and strategies are best suited for conducting research on civic technologies in different contexts. These core topics will be covered across sessions that will initiate in-depth discussions and, thereby, stimulate collaboration between the CSCW research community and practitioners of civic technologies from both Global North and South.
Geographic Information Management TransformationPat Kenny
GI Management Transformation: from geometry to data-based relationships. - Dr Tracey P. Lauriault, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University & Programmable City, Maynooth University. Address given at Ordnance Survey Ireland GI R&D Initiatives, Tuesday, 22 March 2016, 13:00 to 20:30 (GMT), Maynooth University.
Danish Institute for Study Abroad
Communications:
New Media and Changing Communities
Dublin Visit
Tracey P. Lauriault
NIRSA Seminar Room
National University of Ireland Maynooth
2nd April 2015
Tracey P. Lauriault (Programmable City team)
A genealogy of open data assemblages
Abstract: Evidence informed decision making, participatory public policy, government transparency and accountability, sustainable development, and data driven journalism were the initial drivers of making public data accessible. The access work of geomaticians, researchers, librarians, community developers and journalists has recently been recast as open data that includes a different set of actors. As open data matures as a practice, its principles, definitions and guidelines have been transformed into national performance indicators such as indexes, barometers, ratings and score cards; the private sector such as Gartner, McKinsey, and Deloitte are touting open data's innovation and business opportunities; while smart city initiatives offer tools and expertise to help government sense, monitor, measure and evaluate their cities. Open data today seems to have evolved far from its original ideals, even with civil society players such as Markets for Good, Sunlight Foundation, Open Knowledge Foundation, Code for America, and many others advocating for more social approaches. This talk proposes an assemblage approach to understanding open data and provides a genealogy of its development in different contexts and places.
Bio: Tracey P. Lauriault is a Programmable City Project Postdoctoral Researcher focussing on How are digital data generated and processed about cities and their citizens? She arrives from Canada where she was a researcher with the Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre, at Carleton University, where she investigated Data, Infrastructures and Geographical Imaginations, spatial data infrastructures, open data and the preservation of and access to research and geomatics data; legal and policy issues associated with geospatial, administrative and civil society data; and cybercartography. She is a a member of the international Research Data Alliance Legal (RDA) Interoperability Working Group, the Natural Resources Canada Roundtable on Geomatics Legal and Policy Interest Group. She is also actively engaged in public policy research as it pertains to open data and their related infrastructures.
AoIR 2017
Panel 17 Dorpat-Ewers, Tartu 9-10:30AM
Data Driven Ontology Practices
The Real world objects of Ordnance Survey Ireland
Abstract is available here: https://www.conftool.com/aoir2017/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=258&presentations=show
Seminar at CSAIL, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Date: Friday October 30, 2015. Time: 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm, Location: D463 (Star)
Abstract:
Today we are witnessing several shifts in scholarly practice, in and across multiple disciplines, as researchers embrace digital techniques to tackle established research questions in new ways and new questions afforded by digital and digitized collections, approaches, and technologies. Pervasive adoption of technology, coupled with the co-creation of new social processes, has created a new and complex space for scholarship where citizens both generate and analyse data as they interact at the intersection of the physical and digital. Drawing on a background in distributed computing, and adopting the lens of Social Machines, this talk discusses current activity in digital scholarship, framing it in its interdisciplinary settings.
Bio:
David De Roure is Professor of e-Research at University of Oxford, Director of the Oxford e-Research Centre, and chairs Oxford’s Digital Humanities research programme. He previously directed the Digital Social Research programme for the UK Economic and Social Research Council, and serves as a strategic advisor in new forms of data and realtime analytics. Trained in electronics and computer science, his career has involved interdisciplinary collaborations in chemistry, astrophysics, bioinformatics, social computing, digital libraries, and sensor networks. His personal research is in Computational Musicology, Web Science, and Internet of Things. He is a frequent speaker and writer on digital research and the future of scholarly communications. URL: http://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/people/dder
This presentation will discuss how the structured data, together with the semantically indexed/mined entities in semi-structured and unstructured data, are contributing to researches beyond libraries, especially in digital humanities. It aims to explore the opportunities and strategies to use, reuse, share, and effectively elaborate the smart data -- generated or to be generated -- in libraries.
AAG Session
4204 Data-based living: peopling and placing ‘big data
Tampa, Florida, April 11 2014
Tracey P. Lauriault and Rob Kitchin
National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA)
National University of Ireland at Maynooth (NUIM)
Implementing a new geospatial data discovery interface across a multi-institu...nacis_slides
NACIS 2016 Presentation
Nathan Piekielek, The Pennsylvania State University
James Whitacre, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Geographic information systems (GIS) have been commonly used mapping and analytic tools for more than twenty years. Early in this period, a lack of geospatial data often limited GIS users so that individuals were commonly producing geospatial data for their own use. More recently, the availability of geospatial data has increased dramatically so that the focus has shifted away from the data production efforts of individuals and towards large-scale multi-institution data documentation and discovery projects. In 2015, nine university members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC; aka Big Ten) began a collaborative effort to build and populate a geospatial data portal. The portal leverages the newest data documentation and discovery tools including GeoNetwork to create ISO metadata records and GeoBlacklight as the platform for a web-based discovery interface. A beta version of the portal is operational and will be described and demonstrated.
Open Data in a Big Data World: easy to say, but hard to do?LEARN Project
Presentation at 3rd LEARN workshop on Research Data Management, “Make research data management policies work”
Helsinki, 28 June 2016, by Sarah Callaghan, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Série de webinaires sur le gouvernement ouvert du Canada
L'équipe du #GouvOuvert est de retour avec un nouveau webinaire le 28 novembre! Nous allons discuter au sujet des #coulisses des #donnéesouvertes au avec la professeure
@TraceyLauriault
de
@Carleton_U
et
@JaimieBoyd
. Inscrivez-vous maintenant: http://ow.ly/UQvu50xabIb
Week 13 (Apr. 8) – Assemblages, Genealogies and Dynamic Nominalism
Course description:
The emphasis is to learn to envision data genealogically, as a social and technical assemblages, as infrastructure and reframe them beyond technological conceptions. During the term we will explore data, facts and truth; the power of data both big and small; governmentality and biopolitics; risk, probability and the taming of chance; algorithmic culture, dynamic nominalism, categorization and ontologies; the translation of people, space and social phenomena into and by data and software and the role of data in the production of knowledge.
This class format is a graduate MA seminar and a collaborative workshop. We will work with Ottawa Police Services and critically examine the socio-technological data assemblage of that institution. This includes a fieldtrip to the Elgin street station; a tour of the 911 Communication Centre and we will meet with data experts.
April 4, 2019, 17:30-19:30
IOG's Policy Crunch
Disruptive Innovation and Public Policy in the Digital Age event series
The Global Race in Digital Governance
https://iog.ca/events/the-global-race-in-digital-governance/
March 25, 2019, 9:30 AM
International Meeting of NAICS code Experts
Statistics Canada
Simon Goldberg Room, RH Coats building
100 Tunney’s Pasture Driveway
With research contributions by Ben Wright, Carleton University and Dustin Moores, University of Ottawa
Presented at the:
Canadian Aviation Safety Collaboration Forum
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
Montreal, QC
January 23, 2019
This presentation was made in real-time while attending the Forum. The objective was to observe and listen, and share some examples outside of this community that may provide insight about data sharing models with a focus on governance.
From Aspiration to Reality: Open Smart Cities
Open smart cities might become a reality for Canada. Globally there are a number of initiatives, programs, and practices that are open smart city like which means that it is possible to have an open, responsive and engaged city that is both socio-technologically enabled, but also one where there is receptivity to and a willingness to grow a critically informed type of technological citizenship (Feenberg). For an open smart city to exist, public officials, the private sector, scholars, civil society and residents and citizens require a definition and a guide to start the exercise of imagining what an open smart city might look like. There is much critical scholarship about the smart city and there are many counter smart city narratives, but there are few depictions of what engagement, participatory design and technological leadership might be. The few examples that do exist are project based and few are systemic. An open smart city definition and guide was therefore created by a group of stakeholders in such a way that it can be used as the basis for the design of an open smart city from the ground up, or to help actors shape or steer the course of emerging or ongoing data and networked urbanist forms (Kitchin) of smart cities to lead them towards being open, engaged and receptive to technological citizenship.
This talk will discuss some of the successes resulting from this Open Smart Cities work, which might also be called a form or engaged scholarship. For example the language for the call for tender of the Infrastructure Canada Smart City Challenge was modified to include as a requisite that engagement and openness be part of the submissions from communities. Also, those involved with the guide have been writing policy articles that critique either AI or the smart city while also offering examples of what is possible. These articles are being read by proponents of Sidewalk Labs in Toronto. Also, the global Open Data Conference held in Argentina in September of 2018 hosted a full workshop on Open Smart Cities and finally Open North is working toward developing key performance indicators to assess those shortlisted by Infrastructure Canada and to help those communities develop an Open Smart Cities submission. The objective of the talk is to demonstrate that it is actually possible to shift public policy on large infrastructure projects, at least, in the short term.
This week we will learn about user generated content (UGC), citizen science, crowdsourcing & volunteered geographic information (VGI). We will also discuss divergent views on data humanitarianism.
Financé par : GéoConnexions
Dirigé par : Nord Ouvert
Le noyau de l’équipe :
Rachel Bloom et Jean-Noé Landry, Nord Ouvert
Dr Tracey P. Lauriault, Carleton University
David Fewer, Clinique d’intérêt public et de politique d’Internet du Canada (CIPPIC)
Dr Mark Fox, University of Toronto
Assistant et assistante de recherche, Carleton University
Carly Livingstone
Stephen Letts
Open Smart City in Canada Project
Funded by: GeoConnections
Lead by: OpenNorth
Project core team:
Rachel Bloom & Jean-Noe Landry, Open North
Dr. Tracey P. Lauriault, Carleton University
David Fewer, LL.M., Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC)
Dr. Mark Fox, University of Toronto
Research Assistants Carleton University
Carly Livingstone
Stephen Letts
Introductory remarks
- Jean-Noe Landry, Executive Director, Open North
Webinar 2 includes:
- Summary of Webinar 1: E-Scan and Assessment of Smart -
Cities in Canada (listen at: http://bit.ly/2yp7H8k )
- Situating smart cities amongst current digital practices
- Towards guiding principles for Open Smart Cities
- Examples of international best practices from international cities
- Observations & Next Steps
Webinar Presenters:
- Rachel Bloom, Open North
- Dr Tracey P. Lauriault, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University
Content Contributors:
- David Fewer CIPPIC,
- Mark Fox U. of Toronto,
- Stephen Letts (RA Carleton U.)
Project Name:
- Open Smart Cities in Canada
Date:
- December 14, 2017
Government Information Day
Oct. 26, Library and Archives Canada
10:45 – 12:30 Government information & data ecosystem
Data Diversity & Data Cultures = Flexible Open by Default Policy
http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/about-us/events/Pages/2017/government-information-day.aspx
NOTE: The slides have animated images which are not interactive in a ppt
06-04-2024 - NYC Tech Week - Discussion on Vector Databases, Unstructured Data and AI
Discussion on Vector Databases, Unstructured Data and AI
https://www.meetup.com/unstructured-data-meetup-new-york/
This meetup is for people working in unstructured data. Speakers will come present about related topics such as vector databases, LLMs, and managing data at scale. The intended audience of this group includes roles like machine learning engineers, data scientists, data engineers, software engineers, and PMs.This meetup was formerly Milvus Meetup, and is sponsored by Zilliz maintainers of Milvus.
Analysis insight about a Flyball dog competition team's performanceroli9797
Insight of my analysis about a Flyball dog competition team's last year performance. Find more: https://github.com/rolandnagy-ds/flyball_race_analysis/tree/main
Unleashing the Power of Data_ Choosing a Trusted Analytics Platform.pdfEnterprise Wired
In this guide, we'll explore the key considerations and features to look for when choosing a Trusted analytics platform that meets your organization's needs and delivers actionable intelligence you can trust.
The Building Blocks of QuestDB, a Time Series Databasejavier ramirez
Talk Delivered at Valencia Codes Meetup 2024-06.
Traditionally, databases have treated timestamps just as another data type. However, when performing real-time analytics, timestamps should be first class citizens and we need rich time semantics to get the most out of our data. We also need to deal with ever growing datasets while keeping performant, which is as fun as it sounds.
It is no wonder time-series databases are now more popular than ever before. Join me in this session to learn about the internal architecture and building blocks of QuestDB, an open source time-series database designed for speed. We will also review a history of some of the changes we have gone over the past two years to deal with late and unordered data, non-blocking writes, read-replicas, or faster batch ingestion.
Levelwise PageRank with Loop-Based Dead End Handling Strategy : SHORT REPORT ...Subhajit Sahu
Abstract — Levelwise PageRank is an alternative method of PageRank computation which decomposes the input graph into a directed acyclic block-graph of strongly connected components, and processes them in topological order, one level at a time. This enables calculation for ranks in a distributed fashion without per-iteration communication, unlike the standard method where all vertices are processed in each iteration. It however comes with a precondition of the absence of dead ends in the input graph. Here, the native non-distributed performance of Levelwise PageRank was compared against Monolithic PageRank on a CPU as well as a GPU. To ensure a fair comparison, Monolithic PageRank was also performed on a graph where vertices were split by components. Results indicate that Levelwise PageRank is about as fast as Monolithic PageRank on the CPU, but quite a bit slower on the GPU. Slowdown on the GPU is likely caused by a large submission of small workloads, and expected to be non-issue when the computation is performed on massive graphs.
06-04-2024 - NYC Tech Week - Discussion on Vector Databases, Unstructured Data and AI
Round table discussion of vector databases, unstructured data, ai, big data, real-time, robots and Milvus.
A lively discussion with NJ Gen AI Meetup Lead, Prasad and Procure.FYI's Co-Found
Techniques to optimize the pagerank algorithm usually fall in two categories. One is to try reducing the work per iteration, and the other is to try reducing the number of iterations. These goals are often at odds with one another. Skipping computation on vertices which have already converged has the potential to save iteration time. Skipping in-identical vertices, with the same in-links, helps reduce duplicate computations and thus could help reduce iteration time. Road networks often have chains which can be short-circuited before pagerank computation to improve performance. Final ranks of chain nodes can be easily calculated. This could reduce both the iteration time, and the number of iterations. If a graph has no dangling nodes, pagerank of each strongly connected component can be computed in topological order. This could help reduce the iteration time, no. of iterations, and also enable multi-iteration concurrency in pagerank computation. The combination of all of the above methods is the STICD algorithm. [sticd] For dynamic graphs, unchanged components whose ranks are unaffected can be skipped altogether.
1. Ongoing Research in Data Studies
Data Day 3.0
Tuesday, 29 March 2016, 9:30 to 10:45, Carleton University
Dr Tracey P. Lauriault, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University & Programmable City Project, Maynooth University
2. Data Studies Vision
Unpack the complex assemblages that produce, circulate, share/sell
and utilise data in diverse ways
Chart the diverse work they do and their consequences for how the
world is known, governed and lived-in
Survey the wider landscape of data assemblages and how they
interact to form intersecting data products, services and markets and
shape policy and regulation
Rob Kitchin and Tracey P. Lauriault, Forthcoming, Toward a Critical Data Studies: Charting and Unpacking Data Assemblages and their Work, in J. Eckert,, A. Shears & J. Thatcher, Geoweb
and Big Data, University of Nebraska Press , Pre-Print http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2474112
3. How is the city translated into software and data?
Programmable City Project
Translation:
City into Code/Data
Transduction:
Code/Data Reshape City
THE CITYSOFTWARE/DATA
Discourses, Practices, Knowledge, Models
Mediation, Augmentation, Facilitation, Regulation
How do software and data reshape the city?Rob Kitchin, 2013
4. Socio-technological data assemblage
Material Platform
(infrastructure – hardware)
Code Platform
(operating system)
Code/algorithms
(software)
Data(base)
Interface
Reception/Operation
(user/usage)
Systems of thought
Forms of knowledge
Finance
Political economies
Governmentalities & legalities
Organisations and institutions
Subjectivities and communities
Marketplace
System/process
performs a task
Context
frames the system/task
Digital socio-technical assemblage
HCI, remediation studies
Critical code studies
Software studies
Critical data studies
New media studies
game studies
Critical Social Science
Science Technology Studies
Platform studies Places
Practices
Flowline/Lifecycle
Surveillance studies
Rob Kitchin, 2013
5. Knowledge Production
Tracey P. Lauriault, 2012, Data, Infrastructures and Geographical Imaginations. Ph.D. Thesis, Carleton University, Ottawa, http://curve.carleton.ca/theses/27431
Making up
Spaces and
People –
Modified Ian
Hacking
Dynamic
Nominalism
Framework
6. 3 Case Studies
1. Ontologizing the city
2. The making of homeless people
3. Open data
8. Ontologizing the City - From Old School National
Cartographic Based Classification toward a Rules Based
Real-World Object Oriented National Database
Object of Study
Data assemblage of OSi PRIME2
Examine how ‘real’ things are understood in
the new object oriented data model
Assess if these change how space is
modelled and then acted upon
Time frame
Jan. 2015-2018
Data Management and Ethics
ERC
Maynooth University
SSHRC Tri-Council
Case Study Outputs
Case study report
Data assemblage
Tracing the production of space
Genealogy from class to object
Academic publications
Funding
Programmable City Project
P.I. Prof. Rob Kitchin
NIRSA, Maynooth University
European Research Council Advanced
Investigator Award
ERC-2012-AdG-323636-SOFTCITY
9. Data Collection
Attend OSi & 1Spatial Road shows and public speaking events
One day coordinated field trip & group interviews at OSi Sligo
(survey data capture unit)
Examine the Prime & Prime2 flow lines
Real-time survey and data update of a building
1.5 months as an embedded researcher, OSi in Phoenix Park
One-on-one interviews with key actors (Transcribed audio recordings):
Group interview
Document Collection
Collection of objects across time for Dublin
10. Prime 2 Models and Concepts
Skin of the earth ‘real world’ object modelling
5 skin of the earth objects
Ways
Water
Vegetation
Artificial
Exposed
Z-Layer
Superimposed Objects
Segmentation &
Connectivity
GDF1 GDF2 centrelines
Sites & Locals
Boundaries
Links objects using
persistent ID’s
Form & Function
object classification
3D data storage
(CityGML LOD2)
Grouped
18. Models are also actors
Models shape
how the world is viewed
the world of work
tools & techniques
the structure of an organization
how organizations interconnect with others
Models augment space
Models are socially constructed
by people
21. Homeless case study scope
Object of Study:
A. Dublin Ireland:
Pathway Accommodation and Support System
(PASS)
Dublin Street Count
Central Statistics Office (CSO) national census
enumeration of the homeless.
B. Boston, MA, USA:
Homelessness Data Exchange (HDX) Housing
and Urban Development (HUD) Housing
Inventory Count (HIC)
Boston Health Commission Annual Street/Point-
in-Time (PIT) Count of Homelessness
US Census Bureau National Survey of Homeless
Assistance Providers and Clients (NSHAPC)
C. Ottawa, ON, Canada:
National Homelessness Information System
(HIFIS)
Ottawa Street Count
Statistics Canada national census enumeration of
the homeless.
Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM)
Municipal Data Collection Tool (MDCT)
indicators on Homelessness
Funding
Programmable City Project
P.I. Prof. Rob Kitchin
NIRSA, Maynooth University
European Research Council Advanced
Investigator Award
ERC-2012-AdG-323636-SOFTCITY
22. Homeless case study outputs
A. 3 site specific city case studies for comparative analysis
3 CS reports with accompanying data, information and literature including:
3 national homeless shelter intake software systems
3 city specific point in time street counts
3 national statistical agency censuses which enumerated people who are homeless
Interview recordings and transcripts from key informants
Repository of related grey literature
B. Data Assemblages
Data assemblage for each intake data system, street count and homeless census
Comparative analysis of these data assemblages
C. Construction of homeless people and homelessness
Application of the modified Ian Hacking framework to the making up of homeless people and spaces
3 homelessness data classification genealogies
Comparative analysis of genealogies
D. Academic Papers
24. Open data case study
Object of Study
A. Dublin, Republic of Ireland (NI)
B. Ottawa, ON & Montreal, QC, Canada
National, County Level Public Sector Data Portals
Academic Portals
Public, Academic and Private Sector Partnership
Portals/Initiatives
Open access to data initiatives
The private sector data dissemination on behalf & w/ the
public sector.
Research projects
Civil Society Initiatives
Initiatives that have shaped debates on openness &
transparency
Indicators & evaluation
Consultants/developers
Other actors
Tools & Instruments
Case Study Outputs:
A. 2 site specific city case studies
B. Data Assemblages & Landscape
C. Open Data discourse Analysis
D. Academic Papers
Funding
Programmable City Project
P.I. Prof. Rob Kitchin
NIRSA, Maynooth University
European Research Council Advanced
Investigator Award
ERC-2012-AdG-323636-SOFTCITY
28. Open Data Definitions (sample)
1959 Antarctic Treaty
1992 - UNCED – Agenda 21 Chapter 40,
Information for Decision Making
1996 Global Map
2002 – UNCED – Ageday 21 + 10 Down To Earth
2005 - Open Knowledge Foundation (OKNF) - 11
Principles (Licence specific)
2007 GEOSS - Data Sharing Principles for the
Global Earth Observing System of Systems
2007 - US Open Government Working Group - 8
principles of Open Government Data
2007 Science Commons Protocol for Implementing
Open Access Data
2007 Sunlight Foundation - 10 Principles for
Opening Up Government Informatio
2007 OECD, Principles and Guidelines for Access
to Research Data from Public Funding
2008 OECD, Recommendations on Public Sector
Information
2009 W3C - Publishing Open Government Data
2010 Tim Berners-Lee 5 Star of Open Data
2010 Panton Principles for Open Data in Science
2010 Ontario Information Privacy Commissioner -
7 Principles
2013 Open Economics Principles
US Association of Computing Machinery (USACM)
– Recommendations on Open Government
American Library Association (ALA) – Access to
Government Information Principles
31. Core courses
COMM 5225 (0.5) Critical Data Studies
DATA 5000: Introduction to Data Science
Electives
COMM 5203 (0.5) Communication,
Technology & Society
COMM 5224 (0.5) Internet Infrastructure &
Materialities
COMM 5221 (0.5) Science & the Making of
Knowledge
32. Acknowledgements
The research for these studies is funded by a
European Research Council Advanced Investigator
award ERC-2012-AdG-323636-SOFTCITY.
I would like to express my gratitude to Ordnance
Survey Ireland (OSi), Dublin City Council and the
Open Data Community in Ireland for generously
sharing their knowledge and time.
Editor's Notes
Slide image credit: http://www.frenchpayrollexpert.fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/database.jpg
Maps: Osi Website
In addition to these, and as part of the work being done on the Programmable City Project, with the need for all of these provocations the following are added to the Dalton and Thatcher Provocations. Now lets look at research frameworks.
Social construction of technology approach, where technology, society and culture are conceived as one of mutually shaping
The overall objectives of the project are to examine “how software makes a difference to contemporary urbanism”, and to analyze the city with “respect to four key urban practices - understanding, managing, working, and living in the city”.
Co-functioning heterogeneous elements of a large complex socio-technological system – these elements are loosely coupled
“As such, data-driven, networked urbanism is thoroughly political seeking to produce a certain kind of city.” (Kitchin, 2015)
Socio technological approach
Model creation, cartography, production, photogrammetry, map preservation, data re-engineering, budget, procurement and contracting, licencing and law, marketing, CTO, SDI managers, surveyors and gate keeper
One full day interview with data modeling & data re-engineering team, including consultants & project managers
As discussed in the data assemblage: contract, requirements, specifications, modeling descriptions, flow lines, budgets, org charts, strategy documents, working wiki, historical records, code, instruction manuals, guidebooks, photos of machinery, screen captures of systems
Places in Dublin as understood in the old and the new model, and as seen or captured in the new and the old technological systems
Fundamental change in the way the material world is classified and modelled
The world is no longer map sheets stitched together, organized as a grid, or layers of cartographic images, the world becomes a seamless, topologically consistent blanket of polygons covers the entire surface of Ireland w/no holes or gaps
This is transformative, Ireland is modelled into a topologically consistent database of polygons, which can be mapped at multiple scales in multiple formats, these polygons are also a series of linked objects that relate to other objects within the OSis collection/database of objects, or these can link to other artifacts, such as digital media at RTE, digitized museum and archeological collections, text in the 1916 letters, big data found in the commercial sector, utilities, property and valuation records, industry and finance, and social media, also other aspects of the environment such as ecological zones, wind energy turbines, climate.
The model becomes a core infrastructure upon which new knowledge can be produced. These data can also be linked to near real time data, sensor feeds and be the framework for smart city technologies. These data may allow for the modeling of dynamic processes, ebbs and flows of water, traffic, climate. They become an authoritative, reliable, and trusted state framework dataset. Space is augmented.
Image source http://labs.sogeti.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/digital-change.jpg
As we have just heard from Michael Cory and Andy McGill, the OSi has always been an innovator, in has pragmatically embraced technologies and has implemented innovative practices. But none quite like this one.
Socio-technological transformations include connections to the past, things have a genealogy, a history, an etymology. Nothing is fixed, things come into being, however, being able to temporarily capture/fix a moment is important. The Heusten station example just shown, the maps captured and fix space in sheets, and as we know those maps and those things mapped did not come from no where. They have too have a provenance as Andy just discussed, and as Declan and Colin will discuss after the break. They come from pre-existing models of the world, which were captured in paper, based on older geometries which and these retain their etymology in Prime2. These are stored in older media, the big data of the past if you will and these too will be made accessible in digital forms and preserve in Prime2 but also in the archives.
Those older media were the foundation of Prime, Prime 2 echoes Prime. New data coming into Prime 2 are topologically situated in the past, as Prime data remain the core, but these Prime data are re-engineered data, bridging the past with now, and also capture change. New data come into Prime and relate to all the other data in the database, a model that is continuously and dynamically coming into being.
Models also have a past, and they too do not come from no where or suddenly appear. As discussed, Prime2 is an element of a large complex socio-technological system – part of an assemblage – which interconnects with & enables other constellations of assemblages. This model has a history, and has evolved, it is based on real things and how those things fit into the world, a model of it and them, and all of those things are social constructed by real people and their views of the world.
Socio technological approach
Although data are commonly understood in practical terms, understandings differ depending on the actors involved there are different epistemologies and ontologies.
Their collection requires specialized knowledge, techniques, sophisticated technologies, and often, significant resources. Data are also owned, regulated, guarded, standardized, and created within a particular community of practice. They are collected according to a particular model of the world based on the author’s worldview, and in turn, become an image or a representation of it. Data can be considered as arrangements of “facts within a specific cultural perspective” (Harley, in Dodge 2011:276).
An earth scientist, urban planner, cartographer, electrical engineer or epidemiologist each represents a community of practice or epistemic group, each with their unique outlook on what constitutes data.
Definitions, understandings, values and quality parameters also vary according to discipline (e.g., geography, physics, social work, archaeology), sector (e.g., communication, energy, housing, health), level of government and their departments (e.g., city, county, EU), private sector (e.g., Google, Axcion, IBM), non-governmental organization (e.g., CreativeCommons.ca, coastwatch, friends of the earth) or to individual citizens.
In addition, data resellers, lawyers, data value-added service providers, and researchers in academia or the private sector value data for different reasons.
Finally, the roles people have in relation to data (e.g., data librarian, archivist, network specialist, database manager, GIS specialist, cryptographer, cataloguer, artist, project manager) frame how data are handled.