This is a guest post from Statistics Canada on their new initiative on crowdsourcing geospatial data Statistics Canada’s crowdsourcing project offers an exciting new opportunity for the agency to collaborate with stakeholders and citizens to produce and share open data with the general public — that is to say, data that can be freely used and repurposed. Data collection is … Read More
Leveraging Open Data: International perspectives presented at URISA’s GIS-Pro 2016 conference
This is a cross-post from Geothink co-applicant Dr. Claus Rinner‘s website, written by Geothink student Sarah Greene, Ryerson University. Sarah is Candidate for the Master’s of Spatial Analysis at Ryerson University. Her research focusses on open data. By Sarah Greene This past week, URISA held its 54th annual GIS-Pro conference in Toronto, bringing together GIS professionals and businesses from around … Read More
Crosspost: In Search of the Mother of GIS? Thoughts on Panel Session 1475 Gender & GIScience at AAG 2016
By Victoria Fast This post was originally published on GIS2 at Ryerson University: Geographic Information Science and Systems on April 6, 2016. We re-publish it here with permission of Dr. Victoria Fast who presented at this year’s Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). Roger Tomlinson has passed, and Mike Goodchild is in (a very active) retirement. So, … Read More
Crosspost: Being Philosophical About Crowdsourced Geographic Information
This Geo: Geography and Environment blog post is cross-posted with permission from the authors, Renée Sieber (McGill University, Canada) and Muki Haklay (University College London, UK). By Renée Sieber and Muki Haklay Our recent paper, The epistemology(s) of volunteered geographic information: a critique, started from a discussion we had about changes within the geographic information science (GIScience) research communities over the … Read More
Crosspost: Green Cities and Smart Cities: The potential and pitfalls of digitally-enabled green urbanism
This post is cross-posted with permission from Alexander Aylett, from UGEC Viewpoints. Aylett is an Assistant Professor at the Centre on Urbanisation, Culture and Society at the National Institute for Scientific Research (UCS-INRS) in Montreal, Quebec. By Alexander Aylett Since its early days, the discourse around “smart cities” has included environmental sustainability as one of its core principles. The application … Read More
Crosspost: Canada's Information Commissioner Tables Recommendations to Overhaul Access to Information Act
This post is cross-posted with permission from Teresa Scassa, from her personal blog. Scassa is the Canada Research Chair in Information Law at the University of Ottawa. By Teresa Scassa Canada’s Access to Information Act is outdated and inadequate – and has been that way for a long time. Information Commissioners over the years have called for its amendment and … Read More
Crosspost: Looking at Crowdsourcing's Big Picture with Daren Brabham
This post is cross-posted with permission from Daren C. Brabham, Ph.D. the personal blog of Daren C. Brabham. Brabham is a Geothink partner at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism where he was the first to publish scholarly research using the word “crowdsourcing.” by Daren C. Brabham In this post, I provide an overview of … Read More
Crosspost: Geoweb, crowdsourcing, liability and moral responsibility
This post is cross-posted with permission from Po Ve Sham – Muki Haklay’s personal blog. Muki is a Geothink collaborator at the University College London and the co-director of ExCiteS. By Muki Haklay Yesterday [March 3rd, 2015], Tenille Brown led a Twitter discussion as part of the Geothink consortium. Tenille opened with a question about liability and wrongful acts that … Read More
#Geothink Chat Transcript, 20 January 2015
Twitter Chat on #IntellectualProperty, #copyright, and #geodata, hosted by Cheryl Power, PhD student at UOttawa’s Faculty of Law. Cross-posted from Mapping Mashups. @geothinkca Jan 20, 2:59pm Welcome all to our #geothink chat, hosted by @cheryldpower on #IntellectualProperty, #copyright, and #geodata! Thanks for joining us! @cheryldpower Jan 20, 3:00pm Good evening everyone, Cheryl speaking – Let’s hear from the audience who … Read More
Crosspost: Ryerson journalism and the Neptis Foundation partner to teach students data journalism
By Prajakta Dhopade I stared blankly at the rows upon rows of transportation statistics on my computer screen. My heart thudded in my chest, my eyes darted to my classmates’ faces. Did they get it? The numbers in the intimidating Excel spreadsheet I was scrolling through didn’t make much sense to me. I thought I’d left math class behind when … Read More
Civic Hackathons: Innovation, Procurement, or Civic Engagement?
By Peter Johnson I’ve recently published a jointly-authored viewpoint piece with Dr. Pamela Robinson from Ryerson University in Review of Policy Research. Titled ‘Civic Hackathons: Innovation, Procurement, or Civic Engagement?‘, we take a critical look at the recent phenomenon of civic hackathons – time limited contests typically run by governments designed to promote use of open data resources, and potentially solve … Read More
Re-identification Risk and Proactive Disclosure of Data for Open Government: Lessons from the Supreme Court of Canada?
By Teresa Scassa One of the challenges with the proactive disclosure of government data, and with open data more generally, is the obligation that governments have to not disclose personal information. This challenge is made more acute by the fact that the definition of “personal information” is, generally speaking, “information about an identifiable individual”. Courts in Canada have said that … Read More