Towards a Conceptualization for Location-Based Mass Collaboration

My final abstract as submitted to the Association of American Geographers conference where I will now be presenting in April 2010 in Washington DC!  How cool is that!

Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) can be described as a central authority that narrowly defines a problem and selects those who are best able to contribute to the problem. In contrast, the evolution of a Social Internet and web-based mapping applications is enabling a grass-roots platform for location-based mass collaboration between multiple, self-defined, users.  Such location-based mass collaborative systems facilitate broad public access to cooperative processes where citizens are empowered to (1) define a geospatial attribute within a mapping environment, (2) contribute data and information to this attribute, and (3) collectively make sense of the contributed data and information.

Prior studies provide conceptualizations of the PPGIS domain (Schlossberg & Shuford 2005, Carver et. al. 2001) that highlight the difference between various PPGIS applications. The recent evolution of Internet based GIS applications is challenging traditional PPGIS conceptualizations. Namely, novel web-based collaborative mapping applications offer new ways of defining ‘public’ and ‘participation’ and how these concepts interact with a GIS. Thus, existing PPGIS conceptualizations are not adequate for understanding location-based mass collaboration.

This paper will propose a new conceptualization of the PPGIS domain that reconciles traditional PPGIS frameworks with the affordances of emerging location-based mass collaboration systems. Our survey of the domain reveals the broad range of approaches utilized by existing location-based mass collaboration applications, and provides insight into how ‘public’ and ‘participation’ are being redefined in light of mass-collaboration. We expect that our proposed framework will contribute to the understanding of this emerging research area.

DRAFT Abstract - Association of American Geographers

I am planning on attending the Association of American Geographers conference in Washinton DC in April 2010.  I will be presenting a paper, the draft abstract is below.  Please have a look and let me know what you think.  When I am done the presentation I will likely include the paper as the first chapter of my thesis.

Towards a Conceptualization for Location-Based Mass Collaboration

Matthew Dance, Arie Croitoru, Ofer Arazy

Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) have traditionally been characterized by a central authority that narrowly defines a problem and selects, from a small group of stakeholders, those who are best able to contribute data and information to that problem. A central weakness of this approach stems from a lack of support for large groups of citizens to leverage their collective spatial knowledge.  In contrast, the concurrent evolution of a Social Internet and web-based mapping applications provide a platform for geo-spatial collaboration between multiple users.  Such location-based mass collaborative systems enable broad public access to geospatial collaboration processes where citizens are empowered to (1) define a geospatial attribute within a mapping environment, (2) contribute data and information to this attribute, and (3) collectively make sense of the contributed data and information.

Prior studies provide conceptualizations of the PPGIS domain (Schlossberg & Shuford 2005, Carver et. al. 2001) that highlight the difference between various PPGIS applications. Recent developments in location-based collaboration are challenging these PPGIS conceptualizations. Namely, novel web-based collaborative GIS applications offer new ways of defining ‘public’ and ‘participation’ and how these concepts interact with a GIS.

This paper will propose a conceptualization of the collaborative GIS domain that reconciles traditional PPGIS frameworks with the affordances of emerging location-based mass collaboration systems. We expect that our survey of the domain and proposed framework will contribute to the understanding of this emerging research area, and help distinguish between the numerous research projects and applications that are mushrooming on the Internet.






This is not the final draft as I would like to tighten up the opening paragraph and include a couple sentences that reflect the findings in the final paragraph.

Google Map Maker

From the Google Operating System Blog, Google has just announced their latest and greatest, Google Map Maker.

"Google Map Maker allows you to create a map by adding or editing features such as roads, businesses, parks, schools and more. Using Google Map Maker tools, you can visually mark locations and add detailed information about them. Once you have submitted content, this information may be edited by other users or moderators. Your mapping contributions on Map Maker are eventually also made available on Google Maps"

This is a game changer that I am very excited about!  With the addition of map making to their suite of tools that includes Google Building Maker, Google is positioning themselves to create an interavtive 3D mapping environment.  Now all we have to do is wait until Canada is added to the list of countries that can be mapped.  I wonder what this will do to the Open Data discussion occuring in Edmonton.

Stay tuned for more as I will update in the next day or so the features and limitations of Google Map Maker.

Interview Questions

These are some of the questions I am asking folks during my interview process (the whole interview takes about 1 - 1.5 hours). Please have a look and comment:

1. Do you use the Edmonton River Valley trails? How? For walking, cycling, dog walking, etc? What activities do you participate in within the River Valley?
2. How much time do they spend per week doing these activities in the River Valley? (Ask them to describe their trip from home to the River Valley?)
3. How would you describe Edmonton’s river valley trails in a physical sense, to someone who is not familiar with the city? Also, check out the Urban Tick Mental Map Flickr site.
   
4. I would like you to make a quick map of Edmonton’s river valley, focused on areas of the river valley that you frequent or use. Draw it just as you were giving a rapid description of the river valley to a stranger, covering just the important features. Please do not worry about creating an accurate drawing, just a rough sketch.
5. What local knowledge do you think is relevant for people visiting or using Edmonton’s River Valley Trail Network?
6. Do you currently use a web-based GIS application? How do you use it? For what activities? What data do you record when you participate in your activites?
   
7. Would you like to view activity routes in Edmonton? How – on-line? On your mobile phone? On a GPS devise? Printouts of maps?
8. Would you [DO YOU] like to view the trails and routes that your friends use? Would you like your friends to view the trails and routes you use? How would you like to communicate these? Would you feel comfortable with strangers seeing the routes you use?
9. When looking at the map interface, do you want to select what types of activities you can view, or would you rather see all activities. For instance, running, cycling, mountain biking, walking routes?
10. Would you like to upload the routes that you record with you GPS device for other people to see? Would you like to define who could see your routes? How? Would you like people to see your location in real time, as broadcast from a mobile devise?
11. Would you use this application to plan activities with your friends, or solo activities?
12. Do you record pictures or video of your activities within the river valley? Would you upload other data, for instance photographs of video of your routes / activities? If that media could be viewed within the route, would that provide incentive?
13. Would you provide a description of your uploaded routes in the river valley for other people to see? Would you like to see other descriptions? Trail ratings? Current trail conditions (wet, muddy, blocked, dry, good conditions)?
14. Would you provide descriptions of areas within the river valley? For instance, would you write your impressions of [Terwillager Park]? Would you edit incorrect information? Provide trail ratings? Would you do this within a wiki? Do you see any benefit to having collaboration around trails with other trail users? Would you recommend such a system to your peers?
15. Some systems use super users or moderators to help mange appropriate content in the application. Is this something that you might consider doing? What if your group of friends asked you to? If you were rewarded for you time?
16. Would you feel comfortable moderating a discussion that occurs on-line around an Edmonton location? What sort of process would you like to see in place to support moderation? How comfortable would you feel banning someone from a site for inappropriate behavior?
17. Would you use this type of application during your normal workday? Would it offer something of value to your work? How would you use it?
18. Would you be interested in viewing city plans (e.g. trail maintenance)? Would you report to the city on issues related to trail condition? Would they be interested in participating in trail-related decision-making processes (e.g. which new trails to develop)?
19. Would you like to see the application that we are developing linked to other applications? For instance, would you like to be able to move data from one format to another? For instance, to import into Google Earth or the Garmin mapping application?
20. Would you provide information to an online map regarding your use of Edmonton’s River Valley? Would you provide other people information on how you use the river valley? Would having the information aggregated and personal identifiers to the data were removed? If you could choose who saw your data?
21. What information would you provide? Would you provide real time location information? What are your privacy concerns? Would you censor the information that you provided on-line?
22. What if the information was not in real time? If there was a time lag between you’re use and the data being posted? How long of a time lag? Would you like to control the data pertaining to specific locations? Which locations? Is there activity related data that you would not like to share? Your favorite bike route? How would you define who can see your data?
23. If you were to provide information, can you speculate why you might want to do that? Do you trust on-line applications with private information such as email, your home address? Are you concerned about keeping your personal information private? What information? What kind of control measures would you deem as appropriate to safeguard your privacy? Do you trust that on-line companies will protect your information? Is there a potential of loss associated with providing personal information? Would you provide information if your friends did? If your running / cycling / riding groups were? If it would help the City of Edmonton plan within the River Valley?
    
24. What would be a barrier to you contributing data? Do you have secret trails that you would not want to share data about? What would motivate you to contribute data? How would you like to be compensated? What would be a good reward?
    
    

How do you map?

I was in Victoria last week for a number of days.  I was there to eat some good food (Red Fish Blue Fish and Restaurant Matisse were the food highlights), and to meet with the folks at Refractions Research.  Refractions is a software development company that specializes in spatial intelligence. My goal was to talk with them about a designing the software application that I have been talking about in the blog.  The process so far:

1. I have interviewed 17 people to try to undertstand how they understand their local geography, how they move through and use Edmonton's river valley, how they collect data and how they want to communicate all of this information using on-line mapping tools.
2. I have reviewed about 60 mapping applications from Google Earth to Bliin.com to Mapbb.com.
3. I have translated the mapping requirements identified by my interview subjects into features, and matched those features with some of the on-line tools I looked at.
4. Where there was no match (i.e. FB like social networking around geo-spatial features, wiki like collaboration around geo-spatial features with data from both authorized and un-authorized sources) I tried to create some conceptual functions.
5. From all of this data and thinking, I generated some wirefame flow diagrams of how I imagine the application to look and work, and some use case scenarios.
6. I went to Victoria to talk design and function with Refractions.

A sample of the wireframe:

 I also generated a mind map for the application:

 

And, finally, a function matrix for our application can be found here.

I thought that the process was a lot of fun.  I sat in a room for 3.5 days with a couple of programmer types and talked about how all of this would work.  I will post the draft design document once it is available.  Also, please let me know if you have any thoughts or comments!

Re-Imagining Public Debate in Edmonton

The City of Edmonton has recently announced recommendations for new LRT routes in Edmonton:

• The West LRT corridor goes from Lewis Estates east along 87 Avenue, then north on 156 Street. It connects to downtown via Stony Plain Road and 104 Avenue, providing a surface (street level) connection to Grant MacEwan College.
• The Southeast LRT corridor travels north from Mill Woods Town Centre on 66 Street, continuing north on 75 Street. It then uses Wagner Road to extend either over or under the CP Rail line to 83 Street. From there, it proceeds along 83/85 Street north to 95 Avenue, then along 95 Avenue to Connors Road with the route crossing the North Saskatchewan River, either replacing the Cloverdale footbridge or adjacent to it, and east into downtown to connect to the proposed Quarters development, providing a surface (street level) connection to Churchill LRT station, ultimately connecting to Grant MacEwan College.

While I applaud the push that the City is putting towards developing new Urban and Transportation Plans; as well as the proposed LRT routes, I can't help but think that in an Social Computing, Google Earth, and Wikipedia age there must be a better way to communicate the routes, plans and solicit feedback from citizens.

For instance, the City of Edmonton Website announced the LRT Network Plan, and lists the routes that are recommended and the various options considered. All of this is done using text and PDF files of images. The information is great, but the format is static and does not allow for a discussion that is location based, and does not support citizen manipulation of the data.

Bloggers such as MasterMaq (the map above is from the City of Edmonton via MasterMaq), have provided commentary and opinions as to why he prefers one route to another. He also links to all of the route options and supplies the City of Edmonton PDF files. Great. The more people interested and informed the better. But, is one connected and well informed blogger good enough? If not, what is possible?

I think it is possible to build an on-line interactive map that allow citizens to upload data (running routes, etc) as discussed previously (here, here, and here). What I am arguing in this post is that we can use that some technology to build good city based public policy. But before we can get there we need to have an open discussion about some gaps that are....well....gaping.

Some of these gaps are:

• We need an interface that supports collaboration within a mapping application. It would be possible within this application for the City of Edmonton to upload the same transportation and urban planning documents (maps, images, 3D models) that the professionals use to inform their decision making process. This application would support a discussion forum, wiki, and allow the data to be manipulated by citizens. Such an application would encourage a dialoge between citizens and City Staff that is not confined to a public consultation in a high school gym. Parts of this application is currently under development and is discussed in this blog.
• Currently there are several technologies that are 'stand alone' that could come together to give the geography of Edmonton more meaning: Twitter is becoming location sensitive, but it could be more so. For instance if we were able to tweet geo-tageed photos then we as citizens could help with the asset management of public space. Just tweet a pic of a fallen tree to the Parks folks, and get on with your day. These Asset Tweets could even be mapped. Also, Social Networks could also become location sensitive. For instance, I could define an on-line community in part by those who live in my neighbourhood.
• Trust with data. The City will need to acknowledge that data collected and stored in their data banks are owned in part by the citizens of Edmonton. We need to establish a relationship with the City Administration such that there is trust, respect and accountability on both sides. For instance, trust that if data is released by the administration to the citizens, that data will be understood; trust that data provided by citizens is reasonable, and can be QA/QC by citizens (hello Wikipedia); and trust that the City folks are doing the best that they can. Hopefully ChangeCamp will be a step in that direction.

Just imagine a policy process that started with an idea or map posted on-line by a citizen or administrator. All those within a set geography, and those who signed up for notifications would be emailed, tweeted, whatever of the posting. Imagine if they could then go to the on-line map and wiki their ideas, and build a network of support or improvements for the idea. Imagine if citizens worked with Administrators to develop the policy informs the infrastructure of a city. Imagine having a real say in decisions.

It may be a long way off, but I believe that it is coming.

MapMash

Mapmash. Just cool. A list of Google Maps Mashups.