Crowdmaps allow citizens to report health and environmental data through tools like Ushahidi and contribute to real-time maps. These maps provide situational awareness of issues like disease outbreaks, pollution levels, and disaster impacts. Technologies like Xively connect citizen-collected sensor data to cloud-based maps. Crowdmaps empower citizens and improve decision making by continuously updating the understanding of situations at large geographic scales.

1. Public engagement and participation in health
geography: crowdmaps (crowdsourced maps) by
citizens, for citizens
Maged N. Kamel Boulos, PhD, FRGS, SMIEEE
mnkboulos@ieee.org
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
http://www.geoconnexion.com/uploads/publication_pdfs/uk-v11i5-article-towards-citizen.pdf
Short URL: http://tinyurl.com/gcxmag
18 September 2013
ISI 5-Yr IF: 2.7

2. Agenda
• Introduction
– 'Wikification of GIS by (and for) the masses' (Kamel Boulos, 2005):
a vision fully realised today (2013)
– Health-related applications of "direct" crowdmapping and
crowdsensing (active/citizen-led)
– "Indirect" crowdmapping (a product of sousveillance / Social Web
mining—passive/machine-led)
• ("Direct") crowdmaps
• Technologies and tools for creating crowdmaps
• Conclusions
Power of the crowds . Empower the crowds
Image credits: Text and modification by MN Kamel Boulos
based on http://themarketingsquare.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/10/crowd-1.jpg

3. 'Wikification of GIS by the masses'
(Kamel Boulos, 2005)
• The most exciting recent developments in the geographic
information science field are without doubt the results of the
marriage or synergy between social media and geoinformatics.
• 'Wikification of GIS by (and for) the masses' is a phrase-term first I
coined in 2005 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1242244/),
two years earlier than Goodchild's term
'Volunteered Geographic Information'
(http://dx.doi.org/10.1007%2Fs10708-007-9111-y).
Image source: http://geniusrecruiter.com/

4. Today…
• Eight years later (2005-2013), OpenStreetMap
(http://www.openstreetmap.org/) and Google Earth
(GE - http://www.google.com/earth/index.html) are now full-
fledged, crowdsourced 'Wikipedias of the Earth' par
excellence, with millions of users contributing their
own layers to GE, attaching photos, videos, notes and
even 3-D (three dimensional) models to locations in GE
(Kamel Boulos et al., 2011:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-072X-10-67).
• GIS (geographic information systems) and Google Maps
MOOCs (massive open online courses) are rapidly
becoming an affordable reality for the online masses
eager to learn more about these important tools
(http://apb.directionsmag.com/entry/my-take-on-the-google-maps-mooc-part-1/334505
and https://mapping.withgoogle.com/).

5. Health-related applications
• But the 'Wikification of GIS by the masses' has many other
serious public and environmental health surveillance
applications and important roles to play in disaster and crisis
management (Kamel Boulos et al., 2011:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-072X-10-67).
• This is all about public empowerment, engagement and
participation in health geography, and the so called crowdmaps
(or crowdsourced maps) we frequently come across these days
are created and updated by (large groups of) citizens, for
consumption by citizens.
Image source: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tonichilds/citizens-of-the-planet-live-experience

6. Health-related applications
• Crowdsensing (distributed citizen sensing/
collaborative citizen reporting) and crowdmapping of
environmental and health-related data and incidents
are becoming increasingly common these days.
• There are many applications ranging from building a
database and map of all the Automated External
Defibrillators (AEDs ) in a major US city
(http://www.med.upenn.edu/myheartmap/), to crowdmapping of
health facilities by citizens in the Philippines
(http://r08.pia.gov.ph/index.php?article=1781331709149 and
http://r08.pia.gov.ph/index.php?article=1141332522762), community-led air
quality monitoring around the globe (http://airqualityegg.com/)
and noise pollution monitoring by citizens
(http://noisetube.net/).

7. Community-led air
quality monitoring
around the globe,
powered by Xively (see
later).
Anyone can buy an Air
Quality Egg at
http://wickeddevice.com/in
dex.php?main_page=produ
ct_info&cPath=28&product
s_id=108 (US $185 per
unit, as at 31 July 2013)
and contribute to the
global map.

8. With the NoiseTube app, citizens can turn
their smartphones into an environmental
sensor and participate in the monitoring of
noise pollution in their cities:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gza0tyjozGs
(screenshot source: Stevens & D'Hondt, 2010)

9. Sousveillance / Social Web mining / "Indirect" crowdmaps
• Real-time mining of
indirectly self-
reported and
sousveillance
information harvested
from geo-coded
aggregates of Twitter
and other social
network feeds can also
offer useful data and
insights about
unfolding trends and
emerging crowd
behaviours at times of
outbreaks, crises and
disasters.
Above figure: An approach developed by Manuel Garcia-Herranz and colleagues at the Autonomous
University of Madrid exploits the Twittersphere to gain useful data and insights about unfolding trends and
disease outbreaks
http://www.un-spider.org/about-us/news/en/6384/2013-01-21t112800/crowdsourcing-study-suggests-how-best-monitor-disasters

10. http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/emergency-alert-study-reveals-metadatas-better-side/
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=06587204
"Indirect" crowdmaps

11. http://dx.doi.org/10.4304/jetwi.3.4.317-322
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cmpb.2010.02.007
"Indirect"crowdmaps

12. ("Direct") crowdmaps
• Now, let us consider only one aspect of these exciting
developments: the use of crowdmaps for the visualisation of
crowdsourced environmental and health-related data.
• The latter often produce 'big data', i.e., large continuous
streams of data that pose big challenges when trying to
understand and make sense of, particularly when attempting
to do so in real-time.
Well-conceived crowdmaps can help us
visualise and better understand / act
upon such big data.
Image sources: InformationWeek ('big data' elephant) and http://www.crowdsourcing.org/editorial/the-
crowd-maps-beijing-floods-faster-better-than-chinese-government/17422 (Beijing floods, 7/2012)

13. Crowdmaps
• In a recent article of mine
entitled 'Seeing through
the Crowds: Crowdmaps
Visualize User-Reported
Data' and published in
GeoWorld in June 2012
(http://bit.ly/OPnrYW),
several examples of
crowdmaps are
described, covering a
diverse range of health
and environmental
topics, including:

14. Crowdmaps
• Crowdmaps of
lunchtime eating
patterns in North
America
(http://nutrition.esri.com/
lunchbreak/);
http://bit.ly/OPnrYW
The 'Lunch Break' application only
collects data from the six questions on
its opening Web page. Participants can
report lunch data everyday if they
choose to do so.

15. Crowdmaps
• 'Sickweather'
crowdmaps
(http://www.sickweather.com/);
http://bit.ly/OPnrYW
Screenshot of Sickweather, a service
that promotes itself as the site "where
one can check for the chance of sickness
as easily as checking for the chance of
rain" (might prove handy prior to
travelling to a new location). Two types
of visualisation can be seen on the map:
orange polygons and blue 'sick' clouds
(see inset in this screenshot). The
former represent a 'storm', a
concentrated amount of symptoms in a
particular area, while the latter (see
inset) represent individual incidents or
reports and appear on zooming in.

16. Crowdmaps
• Crowdsourced real-time radiation maps of Japan following the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011: maps powered by Pachube, now
rebranded as Xively—see later in this presentation
(http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/energy/environment/radiation-monitoring-in-japan-goes-diy); and
http://bit.ly/OPnrYW
This map visualises live
crowdsourced Geiger counter
radiation readings from across
Japan. The user can click on the
labels to get more information
about the source of each
reading. Besides Geiger counter
feeds provided by individuals,
the map also aggregates and
displays radiation
measurements from other
sources such as the Japanese
government's sensor network
(SPEEDI/MEXT—System for Prediction
of Environment Emergency Dose
Information by the Ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science and
Technology).

17. Crowdmaps
• Crowdmap of sexual
harassment incidents
reported by Egyptian women
(http://harassmap.org/en/)
created using Ushahidi/
Crowdmap (see later in this
presentation).
http://bit.ly/OPnrYW
Screenshot of HarassMap. Users can filter
sexual harassment incidents by type
(categories) and time (using Ushahidi's
'dynamic timeline' feature).
HarassMap gives Egyptian women a way to
anonymously report incidences of sexual harassment
as soon as they happen, using mobile phone SMS
messaging, e-mail, Twitter (by sending a tweet with
the hashtag #harassmap), or by filling in a Web form.
By mapping these reports online, the entire system is
meant to act as an advocacy, response and prevention
tool: women can use the map to learn about 'problem
locations' where incidents tend to happen the most in
order to avoid them, while authorities can intensify
their presence in these areas. HarassMap received the
2011 UN World Summit Youth Award under the
'Power 2 Women' category. #CitizenEmpowerement

18. Creating crowdmaps: key underlying
technologies and tools
• Xively (formerly Cosm and before
that Pachube - https://xively.com/showcase/):
– In this age of the 'Internet of
Things', it is becoming increasingly
common to find volunteer citizens
carrying various kinds of Internet-
enabled sensors serving different
purposes, such as distributed
radiation sensing and
environmental pollution
monitoring.
– Xively's Platform as a Service (PaaS)
allows developers to connect
geotagged sensor-derived data to
the cloud and to build their own
real-time applications (e.g., online
mapping) based on those data.
Commercial and free options are available: https://xively.com/pricing/

19. • Ushahidi/Crowdmap platform (http://www.ushahidi.com/products/crowdmap):
– An open source platform that enables the easy deployment of
crowdsourced interactive mapping applications with Web forms/e-mail,
SMS (Short Message Service) and Twitter support (as information
sources/for incident reporting).
– Can be freely downloaded and deployed on one's own server by anyone
with the appropriate technical expertise, or used as a free online service
hosted by the Ushahidi team and known as Crowdmap.
– Mobile apps are available for accessing Ushahidi on smartphones and
tablets.
– Addressing crowdsourced data quality issues: Visitors of Ushahidi-
powered crowdmaps can vote for the credibility of individual reports
(thumbs up/down). A crowdmap administrator can also tag individual
reports as 'verified' or leave them with the 'unverified' label. Ushahidi
has published on its community Web site a 'guide to verification' that
gives a brief overview of the considerations to keep in mind when
verifying crowdsourced reports.
Creating crowdmaps: key underlying
technologies and tools

20. http://crowdmap.com/

21. • The OGC Open GeoSMS
(http://www.opengeospatial.org/
standards/opengeosms) has been
developed by ITRI (Industrial
Technology Research Institute,
Taiwan) for exchanging location
information via the common
mobile service, SMS:
– Open GeoSMS can be
composed with a mobile
phone application, by
retrieving GPS (Global
Positioning System) data and
then embedding the geo-
location coordinates in an
SMS message.
– Open GeoSMS can be used in
conjunction with Ushahidi.
Creating crowdmaps: key underlying
technologies and tools
Open Geospatial Consortium

22. ‒ Geo-tagged SMS
reports can significantly
shorten the processing
time for incident
reports and possibly
save more lives by
doing so, depending on
the nature of the
application, e.g., in
emergency and disaster
management
operations as in Sahana
Eden:
http://sahanafoundation.org/
products/eden/).
‒ Open GeoSMS can also
be used for task
assigning and
dispatching during
disaster management
operations.

23. • Collaborate.org (http://collaborate.org/ -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bGcDOONsMo):
– An online community tool and collaboration
platform, Collaborate.org offers members
access to over 2.2 million geospatial data
layers via InteleView, an interactive 3-D
geospatial visualiser based on NASA's open
source World Wind virtual globe
(http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/features.html).
– According to http://gwob.org/intelesense-technologies/,
"InteleView adds authentication and
encryption for security, better real-time
data integration including alerts, and
collaboration tools. Also, unlike World
Wind, InteleView is server-based in order to
consolidate disparate data into one
location".
Creating crowdmaps: key underlying
technologies and tools
The data layer above was used to help
determine proximity of hospitals to safe
houses during Hurricane Sandy and includes
facility information for all US hospitals.
N.B. Currently (as at 9/2013) in pre-release phase, with details of
pricing and subscription models (free/paid) not yet publicly available.

24. Conclusions
• Crowdmaps illustrate the 'power of the crowds' and the irreplaceable
importance of citizen engagement and participation in various
distributed health/environmental incident reporting and sensing
scenarios, where very large numbers of sampling points (citizens
acting as 'sensors' and reporters) and sampling locations (e.g.,
covering an entire country) are needed to more accurately draw and
continuously/instantly update 'the complete picture' of a given
situation.
• The latter is key to providing the public and decision makers with
appropriate 'situational awareness' of the problem(s) at hand, and
optimising various management and prevention operations on the
ground in real- or near-real-time.
Imaged source: Modified from http://www.nvidia.com/docs/IO/113447/fy11-citizenship-report-mfg.png