Abstract
Community Mapping and Citizen Science involve members of the public in projects to address real-world problems such as noise pollution, air pollution or large-scale development in their neighbourhood. Many of these are inherently location-based and maps provide a powerful tool for engagement. Most importantly, they can be tailor-made to display information required by the drivers of these projects—different groups of people with different interests. Previous Community Mapping and Citizen Science projects allowed the public to capture data for use on such maps via web based systems. However, mobile devices offer additional means of data capture and their in-built sensing devices (microphone, accelerometer, GPS) allow participants to work with additional types of information not available on web-based systems. Although many such Applications (Apps) exist, our experience with community groups shows that flexibility is key—the groups themselves must be able to decide what information they are interested in. While it is possible to meet this need by developing a bespoke App for each group, many of the group members involved in such projects are not programmers and do not have funding for bespoke development. This paper describes the development of a location based services App platform for Community Mapping and Citizen Science. The platform allows an unlimited number of bespoke Apps to be created by a non-technical administrator, without the need for programming skills.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
See http: www.everyaware.eu [Accessed 23rd April 2012] for details.
- 2.
An more comprehensive review of nature based Apps can be found at http://musematic.net/2011/10/12/mobile-apps-for-citizen-science/.
- 3.
http://www.doforms.com/, Accessed 26th April 2012.
- 4.
http://www.mobiforms.com/, Accessed 26th April 2012.
- 5.
http://beta.appinventor.mit.edu/learn/userfaq.html, Accessed 26th April 2012.
- 6.
http://beta.appinventor.mit.edu/learn/userfaq.html, Accessed 26th April 2012.
- 7.
- 8.
http://store.three.co.uk/view/product/ql_catalog/threecatdevice/2105 Accessed 22nd April 2012.
- 9.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/15/android-smartphones-apple-2011 Accessed 22nd April 2012.
- 10.
For an example of personalised Community Maps, compare: http://www.communitymaps.org.uk/version5/includes/MiniSite.php?minisitename=East%20London%20Waterways&minisite_group = andhttp://www.communitymaps.org.uk/version5/includes/MiniSite.php?minisitename=East%20London%20Waterways&minisite_group=British%20Waterways
- 11.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14397101, Accessed 24th April 2012.
References
Aanensen DM, Huntley DM, Feil EJ, Al-Own F, Spratt BG (2009) EpiCollect: linking smart phones to web applications for epidemiology, ecology and community data collection. PLoS ONE 4(9):e6968. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006968
Arnstein SR (1969) A ladder of citizen participation. J Am Inst Planners 35(4):216–224
APP Inventor (2012) What is MIT App Inventor,[online] Available from: http://www.appinventor.mit.edu/. Accessed 23April 2012]
BBC (2006) Citizen science, radio 4 series, [online] Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/citizenscience.shtml. Accessed 1 June 2011
BBC (2011) Big society is my mission [online] Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12443396. Accessed 28 April 2012
Coburn J (2005) Street science: community knowledge and environmental Health. MIT Press, Cambridge, p 284
Cohn JP (2008) Citizen science: can volunteers do real research? Bioscience 58(3):192–197
Ellul C, Haklay M, Francis L, Rahemtulla H (2009a) A mechanism to create community maps for non-technical users. The international conference on advanced geographic information systems & web services—GEOWS 2009, Cancun, Mexico, 1–7 Feb
Ellul C, Rahemtullah H, Haklay M (2009b) Beyond the internet—increasing participation in community events by text messaging. In: Krek A, Rumor M, Zlatanova S, Fendel EM (eds) Urban and regional data management: UDMS 2009 Annual, CRC Press, London, pp 409–420
Ellul C, Francis L, Haklay M (2011) Engaging with local communities: a review of three years of community mapping. In: Sisi Zlatanova, Hugo Ledoux, Elfriede M. Fendel, Massimo Rumor (eds) Urban and regional data management: UDMS Annual 2011, CRC Press
Elwood S (2007) Grassroots groups as stakeholders in spatial data infrastructures: challenges and opportunities for local data development and sharing. Int J Geogr Inf Sci 22(1):71–90
EveryAware (2012) EveryAware WideNoise http://cs.everyaware.eu/event/widenoise. Accessed 23 April 2012
Eye On earth (2012) Sharing is everything, [online]. Available from: http://www.eyeonearth.org/. Accessed 23 April 2012
Government White Paper (2008) Communities in control, real people, real power [online]. Available from: http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/communities/communitiesincontrol. Accessed 30 July 2008
Haklay M (2012) Citizen science and volunteered geographic information—overview and typology of participation. In: Sui DZ, Elwood S, Goodchild MF (eds) Crowdsourcing Geographic knowledge: volunteered geographic information (VGI) in theory and practice. Springer, Berlin (in press)
Haklay M, Francis L, Whitaker C (2008) Mapping noise pollution, GIS professional, Issue 23
Hargittai E (2002) Second level digital divide: differences in people’s online skills, First Monday, Vol 7, No 4 [online]. Available from: http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_4/hargittai/. Accessed: 1 Aug 2008
Hartung C, Anokwa Y, Brunette W, Lerer A, Tseng C, Borriello G (2010) Open data kit: tools to build information services for developing regions ICTD2010 London, UK, 13–15 Dec 2010
Leafwatch (2012) Final product post, [online]. Available from: http://naturelocator.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/2011/10/31/final-product-post/Accessed 23 April 2012
Lewis J (2007) Enabling forest people to map their resources and monitor illegal logging in cameroon. Before farming: the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers. 2007/2 Article 3
Mackerron G (2011) Mappiness.org.uk. In: LSE Research day 2011: the early career researcher, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK (Unpublished)
Maisonneuve N, Stevens M, Ochab B (2010) Participatory noise pollution monitoring using mobile phones. Inf Policy 15(1–2):51–71
Project Noah (2012) www.projectnoah.org/. Accessed 23 April 2012
Scientific American (2012) Citizen science http://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/. Accessed 26 April 2012
Silvertown J (2009) A new dawn for citizen science. Trends Ecol Evol 24(9):467–471
Talen E (2000) Bottom-up GIS: a new tool for individual and group expression in participatory planning. APA J 66(3):279–294
United Nations (1992) United nations environment programme. Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 3–14 June 1992
Wiggins A, Crowston, K (2011) From conservation to crowdsourcing: a typology of citizen science. In: 44th Hawaii international conference on system sciences (HICSS). doi:10.1109/HICSS.2011.207
World Meteorological Organisation (2001) Volunteers for weather, climate and water. WMO, Geneva, No 919
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr Jerome Lewis from the Extreme Citizen Science Group at University College London, Louise Francis from Mapping for Change and David Jeevendram pillai from the Department of Anthropology at University College London, for their input into the requirements definition processes for the platform.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ellul, C., Gupta, S., Haklay, M.M., Bryson, K. (2013). A Platform for Location Based App Development for Citizen Science and Community Mapping. In: Krisp, J. (eds) Progress in Location-Based Services. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34203-5_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34203-5_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-34202-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-34203-5
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)