ICT Update's List: crowdsourcing

Crowdsourced geospatial information (also called VGI - Volunteered Geographic Information) takes on a new meaning in the context of spatial data infrastructure (SDI), driven by rapid advances in mobile device technology, access to the cloud for managing large data volumes, arrival of new geo data standards, social networking, etc.

SDI Magazine editor, Roger Longhorn, recently interviewed Muki Haklay, Professor of Geographical Information Science in the Department of Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering at University College London (UCL) on his thoughts regarding the importance of crowdsourced GI.

Using the power of crowdsourcing & social-networking Zambia's Women in Technology organisation Asikana Network is creating the world's first comprehensive map of Africa's Women in Technology organisations, projects and initiatives.

Lusaka's http://asikananetwork.org/ organises mentoring, training, events and meet-ups for women trying to break into the male-dominated world of ICT in Zambia.

Disasters of natural and technological origin have caused enormous socioeconomic losses and millions of victims in the past years. Hazard prediction and risk mitigation need improvements through research and developments to curb damages and protect lives. A good cooperation and coordination of crisis response operations are of critical importance to react rapidly and adequately to any crisis situation. Technology progress to support crisis response has advanced greatly in the last few years. System for early warning, command and control, decision-making have been successfully implemented in many countries and regions all over the world. However, many aspects related to efficient collection and integration of geo-information, applied semantics and situation awareness for disaster management are still open. To advance the systems and make them intelligent, an extensive collaboration is required between emergency responders, disaster managers, system designers and researchers.

ITC will organize a session on crowdsourcing / collaborative mapping related to disaster response during the 8th International Conference on Geo-information for Disaster Management (Gi4DM).

Gi4DM 2012 will be held from 13-16 December 2012 at the University of Twente in Enschede, the Netherlands. This year’s event will specifically focus on advancing the role of geo-information technologies and sensor and communication networks in the fields of public safety and crisis management, with focus on intelligent use of geo-information, semantics and situational awareness. It will include live demonstrations of crisis response and management scenarios and solutions at Twente Airport.

The most comprehensive and interactive one-stop-shop data map with information on ALL e-infrastructure projects in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In Eastern Africa, severe drought is causing massive famines. In the United States, temperature records are soaring due to one of the warmest winters in decades. From pine beetle infestations in the Rockies to thinning ice in the Arctic, the impacts of climate change are inescapable.

Adapting to these changes is not an easy task. In addition to using modern science and engineering, we will need to draw on indigenous peoples’ traditional knowledge. This knowledge is an invaluable and often overlooked tool for adaptation.

Indigenous peoples have extensive knowledge of their local environments, gained through hundreds of years of observation and trial and error. They possess a large repository of strategies, skills, and techniques for dealing with climate variability.

This brief paper discusses the role of information and communication technologies in gathering, storing and disseminating indigenous knowledge, the various community-based structures to be used in order to safeguard and transfer indigenous knowledge and the best practices around the world in using IK systems for development.

KoBotoolbox provides an integrated suite of applications for handheld digital data collection. Digital Data collection is superior to paper-based methods in terms of speed, data quality, and security, and is a cost-effective alternative to manual data entry. However, those who attempt to move toward digital data collection are often faced with technical challenges requiring special programming skills, special equipment, or gaps in the process. Having faced these same issues, The team behind KoBoToolbox created this suite of applications; the same toolbox that we use to conduct large scale population studies in places like the Central African Republic, Northern Uganda, or Liberia.

Whether you are conducting academic research of a large or small sample, or performing monitoring and evaluation of an aid program, or even collecting a simple opinion poll, these flexible tools will get you results faster, cheaper, and more accurately than ever before. You can find more examples of real research questions in our user Showcases. A detailed flowchart of how a researcher proceeds from a basic research question, through the process of collecting data, and up to reporting findings is available here: System Diagram

European Network Exploring Research into Geospatial Information Crowdsourcing: software and methodologies for harnessing geographic information from the crowd (ENERGIC)

Jamie Drummond starts by taking us back to the most anticipated year in human history: 2000. “Remember that? Y2k, the dotcom bubble… the deep-down inchoate yearning that our millennium moment should mean more than a two and some zeros.”

Incredibly, he says, our leaders agreed, and as a result produced the Millenium Development Goals. For the few people who don’t have them memorized (i.e., most people) the goals are basically these: Developing countries pledged to halve death from disease, poverty and hunger by 2015, while the developed countries promised to help them by dropping debt.

We’re now approaching the deadline, and we should start to ask the questions, “How did we do? Do we like these big global goals? What should the new goals be? What does the world want?”

Participatory mapping - also called community-based mapping - is a general term used to define a set of approaches and techniques that combines the tools of modern cartography with participatory methods to represent the spatial knowledge of local communities. It is based on the premise that local inhabitants possess expert knowledge of their local environments which can be expressed in a geographical framework which is easily understandable and universally recognised. Participatory maps often represent a socially or culturally distinct understanding of landscape and include information that is excluded from mainstream or official maps. Maps created by local communities represent the place in which they live, showing those elements that communities themselves perceive as important such as customary land boundaries, traditional natural resource management practices, sacred areas, and so on.

Congo Basin, mapping-for-rights-sketch-map-horizontal-galleryhundreds of thousands of indigenous people live as hunter gatherers, depending on the forest's natural resources for their survival. Yet most have no legal rights to the land that has been their home for millennia.

But GPS technology is helping indigenous people map the land they call home and produce documents that can help preserve their access to the forest that is their lifeblood.

Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) is one group that organizes "community mapping" projects in central Africa's Congo Basin. Spread across six countries, and covering more than 1.3 million square miles -- an area twice the size of Alaska -- the Congo Basin includes an expanse of rainforest second only in size to the Amazon.

A groundbreaking new report suggests that mobile phone technology could help vulnerable communities secure land rights, helping to prevent forced evictions and land grabs in the developing world.

The RICS and Know Edge Ltd report proposes, for the first time, that mobile technology such as smartphones could allow citizens to directly record photographic and digital proof of their land and boundaries, a practice known as 'crowdsourcing’. These records could then be verified and approved, resulting in formal land rights being granted to communities that currently have no record of ownership over the land they have often inhabited for generations.

Crowdsourcing underway - If you want to help to build-up the resource then please contribute to the map by clicking on the Submit a Report button above to describe the activities of your organisation / project / initiative in the field. Please note that entries are sorted alphabetically.

The latest discussion, “Innovative financing for agriculture, food security and nutrition,” invited participants to comment on different Innovative Financing Mechanisms (IFMs) that have been suggested to complement Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) efforts in developing nations and come up with novel ideas of their own.

IFMs are mechanisms that lie outside traditional channels of funding (like ODA and private sector investment) that aim to reach under-serviced rural and poor populations. According to the FAO, they are needed now more than ever because, due to population growth and lifestyle change, the world’s food requirements are expanding at a time when ODA destined for agriculture is declining and private investment is found to be wildly lacking or even, at times, non-existent.

Angie and I are in Abu Dhabi for the Eye on Earth Summit. It has been a great conference so far, with a lot of discussion about greater access to environmental and social data for the conservation of the planet. What just happened a few moments ago left me and Angie speechless. We were at the technology showcase area speaking with different people who had questions about Ushahidi, its tools and uses around the world. Three gentlemen walked up, introduced themselves and we started talking about crowd sourcing. I was about to ask where they came from; and reading from the business cards they shared, they were from Afghanistan. As we talked a little more, they asked one question. Is there anyone using the platform in Afghanistan? We quickly started searching for this on our community website that lists Crowdmap deployments around the world, and recommended that he download the Ushahidi app on his mobile phone. This is because when he gets back to Afghanistan, he could fire up the app and get listings of deployments in his proximity. The deployment that came up in our search of the community site was this.

On Wednesday 9 November 2011, UNDP’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery and the International Peace Institute hosted a discussion to explore applications of crowdsourcing technology to conflict prevention. UNDP has been a pioneer in this field, first using crowdsourcing to curb violence during Kenya’s 2010 constitutional referendum. Since then, similar tools have been effectively applied by UNDP in Kyrgyzstan and Nigeria, and UNDP is now looking to integrate crowdsourcing into its work in other countries. Drawing on the ‘tech savvy’ of Google and TechChange, UNDP is working to improve and expand applications of technology to conflict prevention and development efforts in close collaboration with the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).

Citizen cartographers can be a powerful force. In the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, rescue workers used real-time data uploads on Open Street Map, via text and cellphone messages, to help create up-to-date maps of Haiti and find the injured. Engineers from around the globe gathered “virtually” to assess the damage.



Last October, the World Bank and its partners staged the first ever global “water hackathon,” with volunteer tech experts in London devising a system to allow Tanzanians to report water problems through SMS messages, and tech experts in Lagos devising new applications for reporting broken pipes.



Or take Dar es Salaam, where the local authorities engaged students to map roads, drains and streetlights in anticipation of an urban upgrading project, not only generating transparent planning data but also providing a platform for community consultation and a space for dialogue on development between citizens and leaders.



It’s a simple but harsh reality that most developing countries don’t have basic local data about where schools or hospitals are located. A recent mapping study of 100 health facilities and schools in Kenya found that only 25 percent of the clinics and 20 percent of the schools matched official data. Nearly 75 percent of locations needed to be updated.



Lack of knowledge of social infrastructure like schools and hospitals makes it more costly when natural disasters strike, setting back recovery efforts, sometimes by months. And lack of data, in general, makes it harder — both in government and in the community — to argue for improved services or increased funding.

Crowdsourcing Support of Land Administration

RICS research report to investigate the possibility of using crowdsourcing to improve land tenure security in poor communities worldwide.