International Journal of Health Geographics

Maged N Kamel Boulos, Bernd Resch, David N Crowley, John G Breslin, Gunho Sohn, Russ Burtner, William A Pike, Eduardo Jezierski and Kuo-Yu Slayer Chuang

“‘Wikification of GIS by the masses’ is a phrase-term first coined by Kamel Boulos in 2005, two years earlier than Goodchild’s term ‘Volunteered Geographic Information’. Six years later (2005-2011), OpenStreetMap and Google Earth (GE) are now full-fledged, crowdsourced ‘Wikipedias of the Earth’ par excellence, with millions of users contributing their own layers to GE, attaching photos, videos, notes and even 3-D (three dimensional) models to locations in GE.

Mobile CO measurements in the city of Copenhagen (December 2009)

“From using Twitter in participatory sensing and bicycle-mounted sensors in pervasive environmental sensing, to creating a 100,000-sensor geo-mashup using Semantic Web technology, to the 3-D visualisation of indoor and outdoor surveillance data in real-time and the development of next-generation, collaborative natural user interfaces that will power the spatially-enabled public health and emergency situation rooms of the future, where sensor data and citizen reports can be triaged and acted upon in real-time by distributed teams of professionals, this paper offers a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of the overlapping domains of the Sensor Web, citizen sensing and ‘human-in-the-loop sensing’ in the era of the Mobile and Social Web, and the roles these domains can play in environmental and public health surveillance and crisis/disaster informatics. We provide an in-depth review of the key issues and trends in these areas, the challenges faced when reasoning and making decisions with real-time crowdsourced data (such as issues of information overload, “noise”, misinformation, bias and trust), the core technologies and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards involved (Sensor Web Enablement and Open GeoSMS), as well as a few outstanding project implementation examples from around the world. “

• More information
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Keynote Address

Saturday, 10 July 2010, during the Plenary Session, 8:30 a.m.–noon

Mark Chandler, Ph.D., International Director of Research for Earthwatch Institute

‘People today are challenged with understanding how their decisions impact the local community as well as their impact on populations and places far away. The common axiom “think global, act local” reflects the need to juggle the local context of our actions with the larger global context. This is true in respect to issues such as food supply, energy use, water, biodiversity, and our role in natural disasters. And this concept of scale is important not only because it helps connect our local communities to a greater landscape and ultimately the Earth, but also because it helps direct the scope of the social institutions and efforts that should be involved.

Dr. Chandler will discuss these points and how powerful learning can happen when people are directly engaged in projects that operate at multiple scales—and are connected via tools such as GIS and GPS technologies. See examples of how different audiences can participate in field-based projects involving sustainable landscapes, agriculture, and more. Hear how addressing problems with scientific investigation can stimulate interest and thinking about the connection between the communities people call home and the greater world in which they live.

• Read Dr. Chandler’s bio
• More information about the ESRI Education User Conference

Keynote Speaker Mark Chandler to Discuss Citizen Science and GIS

ESRI marks its commitment to GIS education with its 10th annual ESRI Education User Conference (EdUC), scheduled for July 10–13, 2010, in San Diego, California. The conference provides the opportunity for the education community to share ideas and experiences and discuss the latest developments in geographic information system (GIS) technology through a series of presentations, panel discussions, and workshops. The conference overlaps the 30th annual ESRI International User Conference, which will be held July 12–16.

One of the hot topics at this year’s education conference is the use of GIS to promote analytic and critical thinking skills. “These are the higher-order problem-solving skills employers say they want in future employees,” says Angela Lee, libraries and museums manager for ESRI industry solutions.

Other key topics include the broader use of GIS for administration purposes in educational institutions, implementing ArcGIS Server in the teaching environment and its impact on educational resource sharing, and making greater use of the resources available on ArcGIS.com.

Michael Gould, ESRI’s director of education for industry solutions, says, “The Education User Conference brings together leaders in GIS education from different sectors and countries to both hear the latest news from the ESRI Education Group regarding future initiatives and strategies and share their own experiences and ideas. It is the premier event for educators who are passionate about employing GIS to help improve education and therefore improve our future.”

Dr. Mark Chandler, international director of research for the Earthwatch Institute, will be this year’s keynote speaker at the conference. He is a prominent conservation biologist with more than 20 years of experience conducting field research in Central and South America, East Africa, and New England. Chandler will discuss Using Citizen Science and GIS Technology to Connect the Local to the Global.

The Earthwatch Institute, a pioneer in citizen science endeavors, is committed to scientific research and environmental education. It is one of the world’s largest private funders of research expeditions and has used ArcGIS for several years to monitor and document the many expeditions it supports throughout the world.

Additional information regarding ESRI’s EdUC is available on the Web at www.esri.com/educ.

[Source: ESRI press release]

“In an era of public skepticism about science and high-stakes decisions based on it, involving more non-scientists in research projects can boost public acceptance, understanding and the quality of the scientific results, a study co-authored by a UC Davis researcher suggests.

“The study will be presented on Monday, May 3, at the 91st annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Denver.

“For years, the National Science Foundation has encouraged the inclusion of volunteers from the public in the collection of data for scientific research. Through its funding, the NSF has institutionalized such so-called “citizen science.”"

• Read the article

(via @disruptivegeo )

When: 8pm to 10pm local time, 3-16 March 2010

Where: Everywhere

Who: You! (Everyone!)

How: See http://www.globeatnight.org

Why:

With half of the world’s population now living in cities, many urban dwellers have never experienced the wonderment of pristinely dark skies and maybe never will. This loss, caused by light pollution, is a concern on many fronts: safety, energy conservation, cost, health and effects on wildlife, as well as our ability to view the stars. Even though light pollution is a serious and growing global concern, it is one of the easiest environmental problems you can address on local levels.

Globe at Night is an annual 2-week campaign in March that helps to address the light pollution issue locally as well as globally. This year the campaign is March 3-16, 2010. You are invited along with everyone all over the world to record the brightness of your night sky by matching its appearance toward the constellation Orion with star maps of progressively fainter stars found at http://www.globeatnight.org/observe_magnitude.html. You then submit your measurements on-line at http://www.globeatnight.org/report.html

with your date, time and location. A few weeks later, organizers release a map of light-pollution levels worldwide. Over the last four 2-week Globe at Night campaigns, volunteers from over 100 nations have contributed 35,000 measurements.

To learn the five easy steps to participate in the Globe at Night program, see the Globe at Night website at http://www.globeatnight.org.   You can listen to our 10-minute audio podcast on light pollution and Globe at Night at http://365daysofastronomy.org/2010/02/03/february-3rd-the-globe-at-night-campaign-our-light-or-starlight/

For activities that have children explore what light pollution is, what its effects are on wildlife and how to prepare for participating in the Globe at Night campaign, see the new activities at http://www.darkskiesawareness.org/DarkSkiesRangers.

Monitoring our environment will allow us as citizen-scientists to identify and preserve the dark sky oases in cities and locate areas where light pollution is increasing. All it takes is a few minutes during the March 2010 campaign to measure sky brightness and contribute those observations on-line. Help us exceed the 15,000 observations contributed last year. Your measurements will make a world of difference.

“Massive Collider, a Global Collaboration, Has a Bumpy Start; but Sometimes the Work of Crowds Yields Wisdom

“If all goes well, researchers Friday may power up the Large Hadron Collider — a $6 billion particle accelerator near Geneva. The atom smasher is so large that a brief status report lists 2,900 authors, so complex that scientists in 34 countries have readied 100,000 computers to process its data, and so fragile that a bird dropping a bread crust can short-circuit its power supply — as occurred earlier this month.

“Far from trouble-free, the proton accelerator is resuming operations after a catastrophic breakdown in 2008 that triggered a year of repairs and recriminations. Its large research teams operate on such an elaborate scale that project management has become one of science’s biggest challenges.

“Around the world, scientists are cutting across boundaries of place, organization and technical specialty to conduct ever more ambitious experiments. Inspired by such cooperative enterprises as Linux and Wikipedia, they are encouraging creative collaborations through networks of blogs, wikis, shared databases and crowd-sourcing.”

• Read the article

“Cellphones could soon be used to fight noise pollution – an irony that won’t be lost on those driven to distraction by mobile phones’ ringtones.

“In a bid to make cities quieter, the European Union requires member states to create noise maps of their urban areas once every five years. Rather than deploying costly sensors all over a city, the maps are often created using computer models that predict how various sources of noise, such as airports and railway stations, affect the areas around them.

“Nicolas Maisonneuve of the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris, France, says that those maps are not an accurate reflection of residents’ exposure to noise. To get a more precise picture, Maisonneuve’s team has developed NoiseTube, a downloadable software app which uses people’s smartphones to monitor noise pollution. “The goal was to turn the mobile phone into an environmental sensor,” says Maisonneuve.”

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“People have been contributing to digital maps for some time, building displays of crime statistics or apartment rentals. Now they are creating and editing the underlying maps of streets, highways, rivers and coastlines. That is changing the dynamics of an industry that has been dominated by a handful of digital mapping companies.”

• Read the article

Are you bored working on Open StreetMap?  Are you submitting basemap corrections to Google and increasingly finding yourself thinking “there has to be more to life than this”?  Well NASA has a new way for you to volunteer your time to not just make the world a better place, but make the solar system a better place.

NASA and Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., have collaborated to create a Web site where Internet users can have fun while advancing their knowledge of Mars.

Drawing on observations from NASA’s Mars missions, the “Be a Martian” Web site will enable the public to participate as citizen scientists to improve Martian maps, take part in research tasks, and assist Mars science teams studying data about the Red Planet.

“We’re at a point in history where everyone can be an explorer,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “With so much data coming back from Mars missions that are accessible by all, exploring Mars has become a shared human endeavor. People worldwide can expand the specialized efforts of a few hundred Mars mission team members and make authentic contributions of their own.”

Participants will be able to explore details of the solar system’s grandest canyon, which resides on Mars. Users can call up images in the Valles Marineris canyon before moving on to chart the entire Red Planet. The collaboration of thousands of participants could assist scientists in producing far better maps, smoother zoom-in views, and make for easier interpretation of Martian surface changes.

By counting craters, the public also may help scientists determine the relative ages of small regions on Mars. In the past, counting Martian craters has posed a challenge because of the vast numbers involved. By contributing, Web site users will win game points assigned to a robotic animal avatar they select.

With a common goal of inspiring digital-age workforce development and life-long learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, NASA and Microsoft unveiled the Web site at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this week. The site also beckons software developers to win prizes for creating tools that provide access to and analysis of hundreds of thousands of Mars images for online, classroom and Mars mission team use.

“Industry leaders like NASA and Microsoft have a social responsibility as well as a vested interest in advancing science and technology education,” said Walid Abu-Hadba, corporate vice president of the Developer and Platform Evangelism Group at Microsoft. “We are excited to be working with NASA to provide new opportunities to engage with Mars mission data, and to help spark interest and excitement among the next generation of scientists and technologists.”

To encourage more public participation, the site also provides a virtual town hall forum where users can expand their knowledge by proposing Mars questions and voting on which are the most interesting to the community. Online talks by Mars experts will address some of the submitted questions. Other features include interactive tools for viewing Martian regions and movies about people who study Mars in diverse ways.

“Mars exploration inspires people of all ages, and we are especially eager to encourage young people to explore Mars for themselves,” said Charles Elachi, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “We are delighted to be involved in providing the creative opportunity for future explorers to contribute to our understanding of Mars.”

“The beauty of this type of experience is that it not only teaches people about Mars and the work NASA is doing there, but it also engages large groups of people to help solve real challenges that computers cannot solve by themselves,” said Marc Mercuri, director of business innovation in the Developer and Platform Evangelism Group at Microsoft.

The Mars Exploration Program is managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

To enroll as a virtual Martian citizen and start exploring, visit http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov

[Source: NASA press release]