Participatory Research, Information Science and GIS Method

Tool of Statecraft

as far back as Rome
  • Divide conquered land
  • Reclaim appropriated state lands
  • State revenue (taxes)
    late 16th and 17th C
    rise of capitalist social relations
  • Survey (governance)

Estate map

late 13th or 14th C onwards
  • Profit
    precision, permenence, governance and management of natural resources
  • describe/plot boundaries
  • resolve/avoid disputes
    Tenants, landlords, and between landlords
  • Legal security

Palomino, Diego (1549). Traça de la conquista del capitán Diego Palomino: [de las Relaciónes Geográficas, Provincia de Chuquimayo, Perú]
Kain, R. J. P., & Baigent, E. (1992). The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State: A History of Property Mapping. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Timothy Norris
tnorris@miami.edu
University of Miami Computer Science
10/11/2017

You can follow along at:
http://bit.ly/2wNGTi2
https://tibbben.github.io/ParticipatoryIsMethod/

Participation, GIS, and Method

  • what is a map?
  • what is cartography?
  • what is GIS?
  • what is participatory research?
  • what questions can I ask with participatory GIS?

National Geographic made the map of the US based on translations of place names from their origins in Native American languages.

Gerhard Mercator, 1569

Napoleon's march on Moscow March 1812, Charles Joseph Minard

When a large outbreak occurred in London in 1854, Dr. John Snow created a map that settled a debate between two schools of thought: that cholera is transmitted not through the inhalation of infected air, but through the ingestion of contaminated water or food.

Cartography

  • what stories will you tell with maps?
  • tension between fiction and reality, map and territory
  • the critical turn in cartography - maps and power
  • story (imaginative) vs. grid (lack of imagination)
  • maps as navigational tools for data as well as the world
  • maps are more interesting than reality?

Caquard, S. (2011). Cartography I. Progress in Human Geography, 37(1), 135-144. doi: 10.1177/0309132511423796

"Grid maps 'encourage the elimination of wonder from our relationship with the world. And once wonder has been chased from our thinking about the land, then we are lost' (Macfarlane, 2007: 145)" (Caquard 2011:136)

Caquard, S. (2011). Cartography I. Progress in Human Geography, 37(1), 135-144. doi: 10.1177/0309132511423796

"In indigenous culture, maps are often 'at the juncture of performance and artifact, the visual and the aural, of the static and dynamic' (Woodward and Lewis, 1998: 10)"
(Caquard 2011:139)

Woodward, D., & Lewis, G. M. (Eds.). (1998). Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian,
and Pacific Societies (Vol. 2). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.


Angelina Jolie's New Tatoo

the geospatial turn - easy visualization of geospatial data

  • Definition of GIS - 'S' for system
  • "crowdsourcing" as a data collection method; "citizens as sensors" (Goodchild)
  • new assemblages of data, people, machines and code revisit old questions about maps
  • "naive" geography and vernacular development
  • public participation in GIS - P/PGIS

Sui, D. (2008). The wikification of gis and its consequences or angelina Jolie's new tattoo and the future of GIS. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 32, 1-5.

definition of GIS

  • Geographic Information System
    • collections of tools, data, hardware, and people
  • Geographic Information Science
    • systematic inquiry into research questions about the relationship between GIS and socio-natural systems
  • Geographic Information conStruction
    • tool building for storage, collection or analysis of geospatial data

Wright, D. J., Goodchild, M. F., & Proctor, J. D. (1997). Demystifying the Persistent Ambiguity of GIS as ‘Tool’ versus ‘Science’.
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 87(2), 346-362. doi:10.1111/0004-5608.872057

GIS and Society

  • tool or social process?
  • GIS priviledges "instrumental logic over other ways of knowing" (abstract)
  • "techies" vs "intellectuals"
  • mapping technology and expansion of empire
  • critical cartography/GIS

Sheppard, E. (1995). GIS and society: towards a research agenda. Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, 22(1), 5-16.

"... cartographers, and surveyors not only solved problems but made possible the transformation of space from a complex cultural category into a preceise, universal, and objective metric which was highly functional to the development of trade, the cataloging of resources, and the definition of property ownership. Harvey (1990) argues that this regulation of spatial metrics was central to the success of capitalism as an economic and political system ..." (Sheppard 1995: 6)

Harvey, D (1990). Between Space and Time: Reflections on the Geographic Imagination. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80: 418-35.

thoughts on tools

  • [ who invented GIS and why? ]
  • [ who pays for development and for what? ]
  • GIS is limited by what machines can do
  • very rapidly moving field (Moore's law)
  • [ becomes more accessible to everyone ]
  • which approach/solution is the best?

thoughts on data

  • some data and relationships are privileged
  • [ points, lines, polygons (vector) and grids (raster) ]
  • boolean logic, instrumental logic
  • how do these constraints infuence questions we can ask? stories we tell?
  • things are easy, relationships are hard
  • analysis is driven by availability of data

thoughts on GIS and conflict resolution

  • access to technology
  • access to information
  • defining information
  • GIS as a political process
  • who wins and who loses?
  • what knowledge is priviledged?
  • how is GIS used? by whom? how successfully?

"... the popularity of GIS ... requires us to assess the implications of popularizing these particular representations [points, lines, polygons and rasters] and implicitly marginalizing others ..." (Sheppard 1995: 9)

"GIS is not a neutral tool to achieve a predefined end but can influence the ends themselves." (Sheppard 1995: 14)

further reading

  • Penrose
  • Hacking
  • Godel
  • Pickles
  • Rundstrom

Public Participation GIS

  • more than just geography
  • GIS, technology, and democracy
  • urban planning
  • uneven access to technology and data
  • who is empowered or dis-empowered?

Sieber, R. (2006). Public Participation Geographic Information Systems: A Literature Review and Framework. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 96(3), 491-507. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8306.2006.00702.x

"It is an odd concept to attribute to a piece of software the potential to enhance or limit public participation in policymaking, empower or marginalize community members to improve their lives, counter or enable agendas of the powerful, and advance or diminish democratic principles. However, that is exactly what has happened with geographic information systems (GIS) ..." (Sieber 2006: 491)

Las Flores, Colombia

An application in an urban setting

Private Conservation

An application in Peru

Antillean Visions

Maps and the Making of the Caribbean

Drawing heavily (although not exclusively) on the archives of the Special Collections Department and Cuban Heritage Collections of the Richter Library at the university of Miami, this exhibition will display a series of maps of the Caribbean in an attempt to critically analyze the role of maps in the making of ideas of the Caribbean.

Opening at the Lowe Art Museum, February 2018

Common geospatial questions

this here / here this

  • where?
  • what (who)?
  • how much?
  • extent or area?
  • [ when? ]

Wood, D., & Fels, J. (2008). The Natures of Maps. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Common participatory mapping questions

  • who wins? who loses?
  • can participatory mapping empower communities?
  • if so, how can we measure empowerment?
  • can participatory processes inform local governance?
  • what form does participation take?
  • who owns the data?
  • who has access to the data?
  • who has access to the technology?
  • who controls how the information is used?

Rambaldi, G., Chambers, R., McCall, M., & Fox, J. (2006). Practical ethics for PGIS practitioners, facilitators, technology intermediaries and researchers. Participatory Learning and Action, 54, 106-113.

Garamba

Coda:
thanks!
tnorris@miami.edu

Common Desktop GIS Assemblages

Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI)

  • Tool set
    • ArcGIS Desktop
    • ArcGIS Pro *NEW*
  • Relational data model
    • shapfiles (.shp)
    • geodatabases (.gdb)
    • geotiffs (.tif)
    • database servers (SQLServer, posgreSQL)
  • Scripting languages
    • python

Common Desktop GIS Assemblages

Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI)

Common GIS Assemblages

Quantum GIS (FOSS)

  • Tool set
  • Relational data model
    • shapfiles (.shp)
    • geodatabases (.gdb)
    • geotiffs (.tif)
    • database servers (postgreSQL, oracle)
  • Scripting languages
    • python

Common GIS Assemblages

R (FOSS)

  • Tool set
  • Relational and Tree data model
    • raw text, csv (tables)
    • raw text, json (trees)
    • raw text, grids (raster)
  • Scripting languages
    • R

Common Web Based GIS Assemblages

Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI)

  • Tool set
  • Relational data model
    • feature services (ArcGIS Online)
    • database servers (SQLServer, posgreSQL)
  • Scripting languages
    • not really any

Common Web Based GIS Assemblages

MapServer (FOSS) - for serving data and images

  • Tool set
    • MapServer - http://mapserver.org/
    • base: Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL)
    • base: Open GIS Reference (OGR)
  • Relational data model
    • shapfiles (.shp)
    • geotiffs (.tif)
  • Scripting/programming languages
    • c++ family
    • python, ruby, php

Common Web Based Visualization

Google Earth

Common Web Based GIS Assemblages

Leaflet - creating "mashups"

  • Tool set
  • tree and raster only
    • json, kml (trees)
    • jpg, png, etc (raster)
  • Scripting/programming languages
    • javascript (front end)
    • anything (backend)

For Ideas