By Drew Bush In case you missed either report, over the last year Open North has quietly put out an inventory of open data globally and, in a separate report, recommended baseline international standards for open data catalogs. The first report is entitled Gaps and opportunities for standardization in OGP members’ open data catalogs while the second is entitled Identifying … Read More
Can Citizen Science Help Cities Address Climate Change?
By Naomi Bloch If you were following the recent climate change talks in Paris, you may have noticed a recurring theme: policymakers acknowledging the leadership of subnational governments in addressing climate change. Canada’s own delegation to the conference included representatives from the Canadian Federation of Municipalities, as well as provincial and indigenous leaders. While the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference focused on political negotiations, critics … Read More
Moving Forward with Canadian Census Data
By Naomi Bloch Chloropleth maps of National Household Survey global non-response data at the dissemination-area level courtesy Scott Bell. Global non-response rates > 50% resulted in suppression of data for that spatial unit. All maps are classified using a quantile classification scheme. As we move forward (and backward) with the 2016 return of Canada’s long-form census, questions remain for everyone who … Read More
Geothink Video Interview 3: Our Experts Take on Crowdsourcing
By Drew Bush We’re excited to bring you our long-awaited video interview that features Geothink’s experts discussing issues of authenticity and accuracy with crowdsourced data. Data collected through crowdsourcing methods increasingly has replaced traditional forms of data collection. This video features Geothink Head Renee Sieber, associate professor in McGill University’s Department of Geography and School of Environment; Daren Brabham, assistant … Read More
Decision-Making with Uncertain Data
Professor Scott Bell Director, The Spatial Initiative University of Saskatchewan 117 Science Place, Saskatoon, SK S7N 3C8 Governments have long provided their citizens with high quality data through centralized services. Generally, these are collected as a population census with an additional and more detailed sampled survey. In Canada, the former is known as the short form census and the latter … Read More
Mobile Feedback Applications for Base Map Editing
If governments wish to maximize citizen contributions on issues as varied as fixing maps, reporting potholes and commenting on social housing, they likely need easy-to-use tools for citizens to do so. One answer could be on mobile phones. Tool-building is more than a technical issue. Mobile devices have an increasingly central role in our daily activities; they become intermediaries for … Read More
Accuracy, Authenticity and Technical Aspects of Privacy
At the Universities of Laval and Waterloo, we are interested in what is often seen as the “virtuous cycle” of citizens’ increasing use of open government data and, potentially, for governments to actively leverage information that the public creates. Our work centers on issues of accuracy, authenticity and privacy in citizen-generated spatial data and the changing relationships between governments and … Read More