More Mash-ups: Mapping A Century of Earthquakes

A recent posting on the AGU linkedin site drew my attention to a map tat plotted all magnitude 4 and above earthquakes that have occurred since 1898. The map in the Herald Sun clearly shows the distribution and the ‘hotpots’ you might expect around the Pacific ‘ring of fire’ as well as some intra-plate bursts of colour that suggest even the interior of continents are not immune from these hazards.
Although a nice image, the map represents a key trend that I mentioned in a earlier blog – mash-ups. The map was produced by John Nelson of IDV Solutions  a US software company specialising in visualising data. The maps combine data from the US Advanced National Seismic System and the United States Geological Survey to produce a map that spatially locates each piece of data. IDV Solutions understand the importance and power of such mash-ups and Deborah Davis published an article in Directions magazine (25th February 2010) on the importance of mash-ups for security. Although their observations about mash-ups are directed at security the observations in the articles are as useful for trying to understand and manage hazards and the risks associated with them.

Mash-ups provide a means of consolidating data from diverse sources into a single, comprehensible map and in a visual context that has some meaning for the observer. The map produced can be made relevant to the customer or user by ensuring that it contains additional information relevant to their interpretation of the information. A map of landslides combined with topographic data provides a context for helping to understand why the landslides might have occurred. Adding surface geology as another layer improves the context of interpretation for a landslide specialist, adding the road network improves the context of interpretation for a hazard manager. Once data has a context it is easier to spot relationships between phenomena. With this single, common map available to all parties there is a common basis for discussion and for decision-making. Having a common source of reference may even encourage discussion and debate. In addition, it may be easy to see where data is lacking and what other data these parties may require to aid their decision-making. The cost-effectiveness of such mapping should not be neglected either. Using existing data and producing a new product is very cost-efficient.

UK Real-time Flood Alerts Online - Using Information in Novel Ways

A BBC report on 6th July (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18740402) informs its readers of the online launch of a real-time flood alerts map developed by Shoothill, a Shrewsbury-based company, which uses data from the Environment agency network of monitoring sites. Users can zoom into the map and see flood alerts and warning as issued by the Environment agency within the previous 15 minutes.


The site is worth a visit but it does beg the question, particularly as the unseasonably weather continue in Britain and elsewhere – what does this company add to the existing EA site that makes it more useful? The EA flood warning front page (http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/floods/31618.aspx) shows a map of Britain that you can click on by region and then text information on flood warnings including locations are provided. Clicking further through the individual warning locations provides more detailed information. The Shoothill site provide the same information if you click on the symbol on the map.

The answer seems to be that the Shoothill site provides the information visually linked to a map. Is this such an advance? It seems to be and it indicates a key component of using the Web – the concept of mash-ups. Amazon and Google use a similar view of the flexibility of information in their Associates programmes – increasing revenues by allowing specialist to access databases and the facilities to purchase goods through links to Amazon and Google sites.

For Shoothill, the data is provided by the EA but the use to which it is put, and the value added to that novel use, is provided by Shoothill. Locating the flood warnings in a map may seem obvious but it takes specialist skills and time to do this, particularly in beign able to update the inforamtion in real-time. Shoothill uses the existing information in an innovative way adding value to the data in terms of how people can use and interpret it. Such innovation would not be possible without access to that information. This may seem like an odd view of data and information but within the Web environment, the value of information does not necessarily lie in keeping it the private and the exclusive property of one company or organization. The value of information can be released or expanded by allowing others to access it and to use it in a manner that may not have been envisaged by the information generators. Both parties can gain as Amazon and Goggle have already figured out!

Evidence in the National Planning Policy Framework

There is a section in the National Planning Policy Framework that deals with ‘Using a proportionate evidence base’ (paragraphs 159-177). This is designed to help planners make decisions concerning housing, business, infrastructure, minerals, security and the environment (the subsections identified). In my opinion it is essential to have an evidence base to produce valid and justifiable decisions in the planning process and the aim to have such decisions based on ‘adequate’ up-to-date and relevant evidence’ is highly laudable. Issues may arise, however, with the exact meaning of some of these terms. The term ‘adequate’ is essential – there will never be complete information or evidence upon which to make a decision. Planners, just like scientists, have to use the evidence that is available to them. There may be some scope to create information through local surveys and focus groups but for the rapid planning that the framework is pushing the scope for this may be limited. It is what is accepted as 'adeqaute' that could be debated.

The framework does provide pointers as to the type of information or evidence required. For housing, a Strategic Housing Market Assessment is required – a model of housing needs (and like any models assumptions will be needed to make it work). For most of the subsections a key piece of evidence is the current state of the area – for example, what minerals and where, what floor space exists and how much is needed into the future and where. Developing databases and producing up-to-date geographic information systems (GISs) of all this information is essential to the planning process even if that means collaboration and discussion with organisations such as health organisations (paragraph 171) that already have the appropriate information to hand. Form my viewpoint as a geographer this all seems a great idea and one that could provide employment for geography graduates skilled at thinking spatially and at collecting and analysing spatially tagged (or spatially co-ordinated) information.

The cynic in me wants to ask some other questions though. What will count as ‘relevant’ evidence? Does evidence produced by researchers funded by interested stakeholders count? Can communities research an issue and provide their own evidence? If ‘independent’ research or evidence counts who defines the term ‘independent’? Which stakeholders can afford to fund research that produces ‘independent’ evidence? Does this type of definition of evidence mean some stakeholders have more say in being able to provide ‘relevant’ evidence than other stakeholders? The decision about what is proportionate seems to imply that someone, somewhere in the planning process can say ‘that’s enough’ and make a decision based on what they consider to be relevant evidence. You may also have noticed above that I used the terms ‘information’ and ‘evidence’ interchangeably – they are not the same thing but could be conflated. I could collect information about the location of houses in an area but the way that information is used as evidence of the need for more housing or as evidence of pressure on infrastructure is an entirely different thing. Evidence implies a degree of interpretation, of using information to support or refute a viewpoint or idea. Information does not mean this or rather not necessarily as why would I collect information on housing in the first place if not to put forward or support a viewpoint?

COMMUNITIES AND ENVIROMENTAL GEOGRAPHY

ENVIRONMENTAL GEOGRAPHY THAT MATTERS

I outlined my initial view of environmental geography a couple of blogs ago. Since then I have been looking around for something that could clarify, expand and explain my view with a little more clarity and depth. I hope that my outline of the different approaches to studying hazards is beginning to show how environmental geography can be relevant.

I have been, however, loking for something that would serve as a reference for dicsussion; something that might need expansion and correction from time to time but one which readers of the blog might like to mull over and consider. A useful starting point might be the quote below taken from a book by Bent Flyvbjerg. I have just replaced the words ‘social science’ with the words ‘environmental geography’.

‘.. we must take up problems that matter to the local, national, and global communities in which we live, and we must do it in ways that matter; we must focus on issues of values and power like great social scientists have advocated ….. Finally, we must effectively communicate the results of our research to fellow citizens. If we do this we may successfully transform [environmental geography] from what is fast becoming a sterile academic activity, which is undertaken mostly for its own sake and in increasing isolation from a society on which it has little effect and from which it gets little appreciation. We may transform [environmental geography] to an activity done in public for the public, sometimes to clarify, sometimes to intervene, sometimes to generate new perspectives, and always to serve as eyes and ears in our ongoing efforts at understanding the present and deliberating about the future.’

(Bent Flyvbjerg, 2001, Making social science matter – why social science inquiry fails and how it can succeed again. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. p.166.)

Bent Flyvbjerg is professor at the University of Oxford, in the Said Business School (http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/research/people/Pages/BentFlyvbjerg.aspx). He has lead a debate calling for a rejection of the natural science model of research in the social sciences and making social sciences more relevant to people outside science such as citizens and policy makers. He has developed the phronetic approach to social sciences, i.e. studying of social phenomena with a focus on power and values. This approach asks four specific questions:

1. Where are we going?
2. Is this development desirable?
3. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power?
4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

(see Wikipiedia for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phronetic_social_science)

Whilst Flyvbjerg focuses on a idealised model of how physical science is done culminating in a predictive model of reality that is not necessarily how mdoern science with one eye on complexity views or understands reality, he does make an interesting point that predictability as understood in the natural sciences may not be achievable in the social sciences. The application of a model with relaible equations or laws may not be that useful in trying to predict human behaviour or in answering questions of what ought to be, of what is fair, questions of value and judgement that natural science, in the view of many social scientists, has trouble with.

My own view is that the physical sciences (for want of a better term) ask important, but different types of questions of the environment than social sciences so it is not a surprise that different types of answers are produced by each type of study. What the above quote does emphasis is that study for its own sake will produce a sterile subject. Although environmental geography has not wandered down this cul-de-sac yet, it is vital that it is practised and practised in a relevant context for it to develop and to provide communities with the perspective and power to improve their circumstances. In other words environmental geography must be relevant.

So what would a relevant environmental geography look like? Could it square the circle of incorporating both natural and social science? Could it inform and empower communities? A possible example of this type of environmental geography is provided by the South Durban Environmental Alliance (http://www.sdcea.co.za/). This is a community based organization, active since 1996, (an umbrella for 14 affiliate organizations) that lobbies, reports and researches industrial incidents in the South Durban area of South Africa. It is a good example of participatory science or democratic science where communities get involved in developing, logging, collating and interpreting scientific information and knowledge. The division between ‘expert’ and ‘local’ knowledge becomes deliberately blurred. The reporting of incidents, for example, is collated and mapped http://www.sdcea.co.za/images/stories/pdfs/mapsincidentstoscale0406.pdf . A set of data reliant on local knowledge, presented in a format understandable to local people and available for local communities to lobby on the basis of ‘scientific’ information.
Geography is central to this alliance and they have produced a brochure on their use of GIS in developing this community based science. http://www.sdcea.co.za/images/stories/pdfs/gisbrochurejuly08a.pdf
http://www.sdcea.co.za/images/stories/pdfs/gisbrochurejuly08b.pdf
Although this type of community based activity may not be translatable across the globe it does illustrate how individuals can use geography to monitor, interpret and lobby for action on their local environments. Environmental geography that really matters.