Mapping Inclusive Employment: Community Engagement on the Participatory Geoweb

  By Naomi Bloch In British Columbia, researchers have been using a crowdsourced mapping tool to capture positive employment experiences of individuals with intellectual disabilities. Geothink co-applicant Jon Corbett, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus, is one of several UBC contributors to the participatory research project. Recently, the group published findings from its two-year pilot … Read More

GIS & the Global Community: Humanitarian Mapping

By Naomi Bloch Today, November 18, marks the 16th annual GIS Day. Throughout the week, Geothink has been presenting a series of posts looking at some of the ways in which our collaborators, partners, and friends around the world are critically examining and using GIS as a tool for civic engagement and understanding. The community snapshots presented this week highlight diverse perspectives and uses for GIS. … Read More

Geothink Student Twitter Chat on Location and Privacy on the Geoweb

Laura Garcia, PhD student at the University of Ottawa under Prof. Elizabeth Judge (University of Ottawa), recently conducted a Spanish language Twitter chat with students at Los Andes University. Discussion revolved around privacy issues especially in location-based services on the Geoweb 2.0. Using the hashtag #locationmine, participants discussed how location is both ‘mine’ in the sense of being very personal … Read More

Improving Access to Canadian Healthcare Using Open Data with Scott Bell

By Drew Bush If you ask a Canadian what makes them most proud of their country, free and easily accessible healthcare would often be near the top of the list. But for one Geothink researcher, this commonly held narrative has been disproven and led him to help those in need of better healthcare. “People in the north and some rural … Read More

Studying Public Transport Behavior By Accident: Lessons Learned from A Graduate Class in Computer Science with Scott Bell

By Drew Bush  Sometimes the best research grows out of collaboration and study within the confines of a classroom. For Scott Bell, an associate professor of Geography and Planning at the University of Saskatchewan, a graduate class in computer science provided just such an opportunity. The past few years, Bell has collaborated with a colleague in Saskatchewan’s Department of Computer … Read More

Spotlight on Recent Publications: Interrogating the Nature of Geosocial Data with Stéphane Roche

By Drew Bush In two articles published this January, Geothink researcher Stéphane Roche and his doctoral student Teriitutea Quesnot argue that not all geosocial data is equivalent, and that better data on the social significance of a landmark could greatly enhance our understanding of human wayfinding behavior. A Professor of Geomatics at University of Laval, Roche’s research over the past … Read More

Making Waves

Making Waves: Developing, Testing and Deploying a Smart Phone App to Share Examples of Good and Poor Water Conservation in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia by Prof. Jon Corbett Here at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, we have just hired two students, Andrew Barton and Emily Millard, to work on the Geothink project. They are being co-financed by … Read More