Dear Enrique,

when I read your question, I thought immediately of a project in Ghana, to collect environmental data such as pollution in the city of Accra. There is a nice summary on the mobile active blog:  http://mobileactive.org/urban-sensing-mobile-phones-data-collection

"Mobile sensing—also known as ‘participatory sensing,’ ‘urban sensing,’ or ‘participatory urbanism,’—enables data collection from large numbers of people in ways that previously were not possible. By affixing a sensory device to a mobile phone, mobile sensing provides the opportunity to track multiple data points and collect dynamic information about environmental trends from ambient air quality to urban traffic patterns. “sparse sensing strategy does little to capture the very dynamic variability of air quality that depends on automobile traffic patterns, human activity, and output of industries.”

The results are then presented in different maps, which you can find in this document: http://mobileactive.org/files/MobilizingSocialChange_full.pdf I imagine environmental data is just one of many ways to track data through mobile phones. What do you think?  

Is the work that my colleague Russell Schimmer has been doing which draws on remote sensing to identify patterns in environmental data that can serve as evidence of mass atrocities:

http://irevolution.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/tracking-genocide-by-remote-sensing/

Patrick Meier, Ushahidi

Using various sensors or testing devices in conjunction with GPS is probably a growing area of interest for various groups and academic efforts. The conservation and environmental science communities, for example, have long gathered data in the field which is geo-referenced. One of the neatest efforts I have been involved with currently is the Bug4Good effort of Human Rights Watch and BugLabs (see http://www.hrw.org/bug4good), which was a runner up of the NetSquared Mobile Challenge competition earlier this year (see http://www.netsquared.org/projects/bug4good). NetSquared is a good source of info on mobile computing devices in general, and I'm sure we'll see more synergies and similar devices. Basically, the Bug4Good concept would marry varous environmental sensors to a computing device that also has a GPS unit, so you could sample air and water, for example, in the field and have it geocoded right there. The general inspiration for all this would be something like the tricorder of Star Trek fame, but I digress ;)

Again, this is a concept in development so nothing is deployed yet, but the overall theory makes sense. In practical terms, I could foresee such a device being useful to test for explosive residue in soil (indicating artillery use for example), or toxins in water or air. A main limitation or thing to consider would be whether its cheaper and more accurate to gather samples in the field and ship them to a lab somewhere else, which is how most environmental testing is done currently. Or, use a field testing kit not necessarily linked directly to a GPS, but the data gatherer records both results and coordinates on a laptop or piece of paper. 

Other thoughts:

* I know the fine folks at Global Relief Technologies do lots of disaster relief deployment and have various gadgets, some similar to a Bug4Good.

* The gunshot detection system, ShotSpotter, is inherently geocoded but not portable of course. I've heard talk of having such systems in refugee camps, for example.

Kristin,

Thanks for this outline explaining geo-mapping.

I wanted to add one more purpose that perhaps others can also elaborate upon - geo-mapping for long-term impact information.

For example, during the New Tactics International Symposium in 2004 in Ankara, Turkey, the Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI), presented its work with
partners from the University of Liverpool and the Halabja Postgraduate
Medical Institute (a consortium of local physicians and academics) regarding their use
Geographic Information Systems analysis to correlate environmental and health data with chemical weapons attack sites. This use of geo-mapping correlated with health information can assist in creating better research, environmental safety and medical treatment
programs to track and address long-term impact of chemical weapons.

Do others have examples where they are using geo-mapping information to track both short and long-term impact?

Nancy Pearson, New Tactics in Human Rights Program Manager

I do not see a  big difference with a mapping and geo-mapping, except  as you said kristin, the component of spatial representation. You are talking about GPS, but it could be an administrative units as well that has a spatial componenents. You will link your collected information on the specific geographic dataset. Sure we have all in mind the Google red fever as it is quite visual and friendly… but it is only a point (X, Y).

The geo mapping implies to put in place a system of collecting, collating and dissemination of the information to the rights users.
The maps are done with indicators and those indicators are collected in the field trough paper forms (I will see if I could share some of the forms) , Portable Device Assitant and mobile SMS.
I will propose maybe some thematic on the geo mapping related to Human Right Violation
SGBV (Sexual and gender Based Violence), Land use violation it is really common after displacement , crime, violence, forced labour… maybe we have to dig a bit in those thematic, that should have specific representation according the thematic ? -Digging in terms of attribute related to that thematic, and as well in representation, BTW, some work was done by the UNHCR in 2006 for developing fonts related to protection issues.
I will say it is the step one definition of the” family “ of protections issues (well done by the UNHCR), now how and what attribute information could be collected ?
Like on the land issues what will be the data that should be collected to get actions immediately, in the mid-term and long term…. and here we need the inputs of lawyers, protection officers, paralegals, students in laws….

CartONG
Yann Rebois

Hello

Thanks for the dialogue

I am new on that after India's Meeting, I read the tool about maps of tacthical tech, for me is an innovative and good tool for our work

I am starting the proccess to use maps for advocacy in HIV issues in my country

I started with a groups of 73 NGOs working in HIV issues, in a traditional way I put them into Colombia'map; but I dont know what is the best way to put it this ONG's in the Colombia Map on line?

Regards

Oswaldo

Hi wotzkah, 

Thanks for sharing these examples. I really love the 'every human has rights' maps as it recognizes human rights activists and successful campaigns.  They state on their website,

"We're working to bring together human rights stories of triumph of and of abuse from the world over. We'll constantly add to this databank of human rights hero profiles, stories of triumph, and stories of abuse from those working tirelessly all over the map." 

I am inspired to geo-map our online database of successful human rights tactics as they are also from all parts of the world! 

Kristin Antin, New Tactics Online Community Builder

Dear Michael, 

thanks for sharing this great project, which was an inspiration for others to follow. I wonder what you think about the involved costs to get satellite data? Was that difficult to achieve and is it replicable?  How difficult is it to share satellite imagery across projects or is it legally impossible? What do you think of efforts such as OpenStreetMaps to create open free geo-data databases? Could this type of geo-data also be used for such a project or is it more feasible to knock on Google's door?

This is really great information about this system that seems to compile a large amount of data and correlates it with a specific geographic location. It made me wonder if the system could be useful for documenting police behavior related to community police stations/jails for accountability purposes. What I'm thinking about is if police stations/jails are being monitored for a wide variety of behaviors (positive and negative) that such trends could be more accurately pinpointed and in this case - confidentiality regarding specific police offier behavior would be desirable - those doing a good job would be rewarded and recognized; and those committing abuses would be held accountable and hopefully even prosecuted. The geographic locations would highlight where the problem stations are located so more focus could pinpointed there.

Is this a possible kind of use for this system as well as other geo-mapping systems?

Nancy Pearson, New Tactics in Human Rights Program Manager

The map has been a real success since ILGA-Europe launched it in July 2009. It has been widely used by media, high level decision makers as the LGBT Intergroup in the European Parliament to student and researchers. Moreover feedback from ILGA-Europe members has been very possitive, and many members has printed the map in their publications.

Why? The map is a very easy way to understand the conteniued struggle for lesbian, gay and bisexual people in Europe. It is clear from the map, that there is not equality in even the most progressive countries in Europe such as The Netherlands, Sweden and others.

Not a single country in Europe (and also for the rest of the world) can claim to tick off all the principles in the important Yogyakarta Principles (a UN level application from 2006 concerning International Human Rights Law in relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, read more about the Principles here).

It is also very clear from the map, that state homophobia is just "next door" - and violations of basic human rights occurs in numorous European countries.

Two big misunderstandings in the LGBT communities in progressive countries are - 1. there is no more to fight for, because we have 100% equality, 2. the countries that have huge problems with LGBT equality is far away from their daily life.

The information needed for this understanding is made accecible in an easy way by the map.

Transgender issues has not been included in this map, but ILGA-Europe is cooperating with Transgender Europe, so a renewed map can be published including all the letters in LGBT. We hope to publish an updated LGBT version in 2010.

Stay tuned for next versions of the map at our website.

Best

Nanna Moe,

Communications Officer
ILGA-Europe - the European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA).
Working for human rights and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people at European level

I think this helps highlight that maps can be very political tools.  We have assumed in this conversation that their use is "good" but the first example here shows a fine line between being used as a tool of oppression and 'transparency'.   I'm not saying this does that per se, but if this were a map of abortion providers' private homes or human rights activists in Iran I imagine there might be some serious protest.  Is this their work?  Home address?  Why do you want to share their location, so we can visit and harass them?

On another side, now that just about anyone can create a 'map' it is becoming harder to know what to trust.  Visualization and this new era of mashups is so easy, and can lie quite well, hiding lack of real 'data', obscure where those data came from or misrepresent with candy-colored icons. 

People have always placed a great deal of trust in maps as official repositories of information they can trust, but as the definition and access to creating maps changes, this trust in maps needs to change as well.  I think the sources of and confidence in data are going to be paramount in these new uses of maps, and the visualization or mapping second.  And with the flood of milions of user-created maps of varying quality floating around the web, using them effectively will require more creativity for human rights activists to get noticed and make an impact .

I have heard from various community mapping initiatives, but wonder what are the different objectives of such efforts? I read for example that it is used to represent in maps different interests around territories for conflict negotiation, but I am sure there are many more objectives. Can you maybe explain when and why community mapping is helpful? I also found this interesting resource by IFAD: Good practices in participatory mapping (http://www.ifad.org/pub/map/PM_web.pdf) Thanks in advance!

Christian Kreutz – crisscrossed.net 

Participatory mapping is very interesting indeed - something I'm looking at for disaster management as well, since many of the community based relief efforts involve participatory mapping.

Recently conducted a set of experiments in the U.S where I worked with folk from Google, OpenStreetMaps (OSM) and InSTEDD.  We set up a OpenStreetMap server locally, which spit out WalkingPapers with a Google Enterprise overlay - users then walked around the block marking and annotating stuff on the paper maps, which was then fed back into the OSM server- Sahana could then fetch this data from the OSM server as tiles - what we had was updated content. What we achieved was a simple and effective participatory mapping platform which had the added advantage of findings its way back into the OSM server as well.

 WalkingPapers is an interesting concept - it is an extension of OpenStreetMaps, which prints out a paper based map of the region selected. Users can then go around with the paper map, draw and mark and annotate on it, and then scan and send the map back to the OSM server - here it will be put into the queue where someone can come 'digitize' or translate the new map features to the OSM format, or the users who printed the map can make the changes themselves - this is like a poor man's GPS, I guess. Very interesting in a participatory mapping context.

Mifan Careem

Thank you for sharing this exciting endeavor with us - the mapping of the Kibera slum is taking place as this dialogue is happening. It will indeed be exciting to see how the project and process develops.

Nancy Pearson, New Tactics in Human Rights Program Manager

Hi Enrique,

Good questions, and ones that our favorite scientist Lars Bromley will no doubt answer very soon. In the meantime, I'd point you to the work that UNOSAT is doing since they do use satellite imagery analysis to provide evidence. A 5 minute video of UNOSAT's work will be posted on Crisis Mappers Net (CM*Net) in the next 24 hours, so do look out for it.

Also, the Joint Research Center (JRC) out of Ispra, Italy is doing some excellent work using automated change detections (algorithms from mathematical morphology) to count IDP populations. More here.

Patrick Meier, Ushahidi

The issue of evidence is a tough one. In its most formal sense, evidence means a court case, and in most legal settings the bar for evidence is extremely high. So, while satellite imagery very often serves as supporting evidence and corroborates other reporting, such as witness statements, it does not often serve as direct evidence itself. The reason for this is that we very rarely capture a crime "in progress" on imagery so to speak, or with enough detail. For example, while we can produce hundreds or thousands of images of villages destroyed in Darfur or Burma, and we can produce many images of adjacent janjawid or military encampments, we cannot to date produce any images of such militia/military units carrying out an attack directly. Therefore, the images are useful to prove that something drastic is happening, but not useful to incriminate anyone in particular.

One possible exception to this is work my group recently did with Physicians for Human Rights, where we located an image showing mass grave tampering in August, 2006, (see http://afghanmassgrave.org and http://shr.aaas.org/geotech/afghanistan/afghanistan.shtml). We literally saw a hydraulic excavator and dump truck atop what became an excavated mass grave, which afixed a date to the tampering, and filled a key gap in the evidence. Within about 72 hours of PHR releasing its findings, Obama announced an investigation, but we don't know where that will end up.

Another exception is work we did last year on the Russia / Georgia fight over South Ossetia. In this case, the issue of when exactly particular villages were destroyed was important. Specifically, the Russians claimed the villages were destroyed when Georgians controlled the area, while Georgia claimed the opposite. Once we were able to review imagery from mutliple dates, we could show conclusively that the villages were destroyed while Russia was in control, based on their own statements of when they took control and things like helicopters and other military assets visible in the imagery. This was cited by the EU fact finding commission on the conflict, see http://www.ceiig.ch/Report.html. Note that UNOSAT produced a couple images of burning houses in the area, which was one of the few examples of seeing an attack 'in progress' so to speak. 

On the other hand, we worked hard on Sri Lanka earlier this year, and while imagery work was cited in the US State Department war crimes report, they specifically said that imagery did not identify culpability in this case and thus did not constitute effective evidence. I am still arguing some of that with them as we were able to link shell craters with specific mortar positions, for example. They did include a few images which they call satellite images, but I think some of those are air photos based on the angle. See http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/131025.pdf for the report, or the report of my project at: http://shr.aaas.org/geotech/srilanka/srilanka.shtml .

A final example, some work I participated in a couple years ago located "unknown" IDPs in Somalia, that then required the UN to mount a relief operation. Not evidence in the courtroom sense, but it definitely served to change policy in a very real sense.

So, in sum, its not necessarily a direct link between imagery and evidence. Like all such evidence, it depends on the situation and context, and whether the evidence needs to survive extensive cross examination. I can talk more about this if needed, just let me know.

I can't comment on the Street View issue, it seems it is being decided courtroom by courtroom. Regarding whether its right to publish all data, that is a tough issue and differs drastically from place to place. I remember when Google Earth started putting high-res imagery up of a certain area, the folks hiding from persecution in that area got quite scared that it would allow them to be found. From Google's perspective, they just were doing their normal stuff, but they were totally unaware (and remained so) of how publishing such imagery might impact people.

In the projects I am involved in we take extreme care to sanitize much of the data we get to remove anything that might cause persecution of specific people. We often degrade our published coordinates and redact things like witness names. We feel this is absolutely justified to avoid further harm and repersecution of certain people. 

Thank you so much for your posting!  I have always thought of geo-mapping as a way to portray the results of a situation (victims in Darfur, environmental consequences, etc.) instead of a situation (as in the case you mentioned on refugees) and risking a negative impact.  It definitely provided a different perspective on geo-mapping.  Geo-mapping can have a very positive influence, as mentioned throughout all the postings, but also have risks involved.

I was wondering if anyone has themselves recognized and identified risks within their own geo-mapping projects.  It seems as if it would be hard to recognize the risks when your own project has only good intentions.  Was it something you or your organization identified?  Was it difficult to realize them?  Or was it similar to Yann's experience, where a separate organization pointed out the risk?

These are important issues of course, and I am wondering if they are of more concern in humanitarian mapping as opposed to human rights mapping. We are cautious with publicizing our data or satellite imagery, though this is usually temporary. After our investigation is complete we publicize pretty much everything we can. So, maybe it is all a matter of timing.

Again, we are generally not mapping roads that might enable LRA attacks or something like that. And, further, I'd never assume that my road mapping was better than any local knowledge...

Lars Bromley, AAAS-SHRP

Some minimal requirements for geo-mapping the end user should know what he/she would like to see on the map.

Maybe some  elements about your questions  If we really want to act, a bit less for advocating we have to put in place a system, system in terms of data collection and processing for a better diffusion, system for the timeliness delivery and update of the facts, it could be based on the locals with more or less risks for themselves, or international, with less proximity of the source of the info, so the information my have some bias.

In terms of system data model or SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure) should be defined ; as of today there is several initiatives on HRV, (with different topics, it might be interesting to develop a common dataset?

Then in terms of technology, sure the web server technologies, like the Google applications, or feeds (GeoRSS, WMS Web Map Service ,  WFS Web Feature Services) are the most appropriated to share and to be useed by GIS specialist and advocate and also to register the records like with the SMS ; however in the field it is not always possible or user friendly, or due to  IT  knowledge  of certain local staff member of some organization it is limited (previous experiences).

About expertise and here you point out the biggest challenge, we, techies have to facilitate and to promote the power to the experts that knows how to act with HRV and knows the mechanisms or the systems for referral actions. They will be the one that wil say “I would like to have this information as it could be use on this perspective…” For instance, we get some request from OHCR, for mapping the catchment areas of the new police post created in an area (how many villages are covered In 5km, 10 Km…radius), they were interested by the coverage of the paralegals and the police to see if there is an overlap of the 2 entities… so the specialists will come with their own language and we will have to analyze through spatial analysis for instance, the facts.

With the Google tools, I will say we are more locating or plotting the facts than processing the info… but how could the data could be turned out into real information for decision? We should have a kind of  HRV wish list of  geo-products that could be used and become standard for HRV. Then we could think on the data that should be collected and how…  

CartONG, Yann Rebois

Its possible now to do mapping quite cheaply with minimal infrastructure, though it can of course also get quite expensive. I think the first thing someone interested in mapping must ask themselves is "what do I want to do and why?" At this point, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of tools and software packages available, they are falling from the sky at this point. They will continue to improve and some advancements will be made, but there are a great many tools available now that we can all make use of. So, I would say that anything is possible, but the human rights group must define what it wants to do at the start. Note that that definition might be as simple as "we want to make a map showing where violations are taking place." Once that map has been produced, other things can be done with its data, like showing violations over time (ie as military units arrive), targeting satellites, or other tasks.

For equipment, technology, support, and expertise, that again depends on what you want to do. I think a fairly standard computer is enough for most mapping nowadays, and an internet connection is also important, especially to take advantage of google maps/earth etc. Its also probably important to have someone, either a staff or volunteer, who actually enjoys computing and making maps and stuff like that. Some of us just love this work, and to other people its totally frustrating and annoying. So, you want someone who loves it. For expertise, local people are the greatest experts on an area, whether you want to talk about mapping or human rights issues. Beyond that, you can contact me (lbromley 'at' aaas 'dot' org) or submit a request for GIS support at GISCorps.org.

From on of my other posts here, this is a simple set of links to help mapping. A simple way to create Keyhole Markup Language (KML), the basis for Google Maps and Google Earth, is to use the Google Docs spreadsheet mapper (http://earth.google.com/outreach/tutorial_spreadsheet.html)
to enter your information and latitude and longitude to create a KML.
If you don't want to use the Google Docs system, use one of the
standalone Excel KML makers,  such as http://www.earthpoint.us/ExcelToKml.aspx or http://freegeographytools.com/2007/xls2kml-another-excel-to-kml-converte... .

One common problem people have is that they might know the area they
want to map, but don't know the latitude and longitude because they
cannot use GPS for various reasons (costs, risk, etc). Generally, the
biggest challenge of my group in mapping human rights violations in
Burma, Darfur, Ethiopia, and elsewhere is converting place names to
latitude and longitude. One problem is that how place names are
communicated might not match how they are spelled in databases, thus we
use "fuzzy" matching to help with this.  Various tools can help with
this:

1) The AAAS fuzzy matchers for Burma, Darfur, Ethiopia, and Pakistan, at: http://sustsci.aaas.org/quickmatch/

2) Wider area fuzzy matcher from the EU at: http://dma.jrc.it/services/fuzzyg/

3) Another wide area fuzzy matcher from the US Dept of Defense: http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/index.html

So, the above gives people a way to learn latitude and longitude for
locations of interest and then map those locations on Google Earth or
Google Maps. And you have your first map!

Lars Bromley, AAAS-SHRP

Im with lbromley on this:

When I think about data sets and the way we use them, simplicity is the answer for most of the users.  What we want to do however is figure out ways to allow advanced users to play with simple tools that give them complex and otherwise hard to represent insights. 

Do we have any concrete answers to what this might look like yet?  Not at Ushahidi, though we're putting a lot of work into visualizations of data and about 20% of that time is spent on doing "crazy stuff that might not work", as we think this is where the breakthroughs might come.   In a conversation with Patrick Meier a couple weeks ago we talked about applying algorithms from completely different fields to the Ushahidi data.  Most of it probably won't work, but you never know until you experiment. 

Closely aligned to this is the fact that I like to spend a lot of time on data visualiztion sites and blogs.  There's always a fresh idea there, and the trick is figuring out how to apply it programmatically to the tools we build.