DIY aerial mapping workshop in Perugia through the School of Data as part of the International Journalism Festival 2014. "From tools to issues and from DIY to DIT (or doing it together)".
Thanks to Eymund Diegel for the slides on the Gowanus Canal and to Hagit Keysar for her materials on mapping Jerusalem.
19. 15 DECEMBER 2012 BALLOON AERIAL
GOWANUS CANAL MAPPING OF SEWAGE PLUMES FROM HURRICANE SANDY DAMAGE
20. 15 DECEMBER 2012
BALLOON AERIAL
GOWANUS CANAL MAPPING OF FRESH WATER INFLOWS FROM HISTORIC SPRINGS INTO SEWAGE CONTAMINATED WATERS
Unmapped
spring
discovered
22. CAN WE MAP ALL THE OLD GHOST STREAMS AND CREEKS ?
THESE CAN HELP DIVERT RAINWATER OUT OF SEWERS
AND REDUCE SEWER OVERFLOW POLLUTION
Looking for Solutions to the Problem…
24. 1766 Freeke’s Mill
Building
Potential
Spring
This is a public
Right of Way:
Could this stream
be restored for
the new park ?
Why are plants in concrete cracks
growing so well ?
Is the spring still running ?
July 2011 Balloon Photo
CIVIC DATA THAT ASKS QUESTIONS
33. The OVER MY DEAD BODY BALLOON MAPPING EXPEDITION comparing notes with local Brooklyn
authorities on how much space would be needed to bury 256 bodies
Pic by Dan Phiffer, 7 July 2012
35. PORTIONS OF THE NORTHERN MARYLANDER SITE WERE EXCAVATED IN 2009,
AND THIS AREA STUDIED BY ARCHEOLOGICAL TEAMS
– BUT NOTHING FOUND – WOULD WE HAVE MORE LUCK
WITH SOUTHERN PORTION ?
1957 Columbia University
Archeological Study Area
( nothing found )
Microsoft Bing Aerials, circa 2010
1998 Bona Fide Oil Archeological Study Area
2012 Over My Dead Body
Balloon Mapping Site
NEVER EXCAVATED…
1947 Robert Moses Historical
Park Proposal Area
1890s
Discovery of 30 bodies
by Contractor Ryan
- location unclear
36. The 7 July 2012 Balloon Photographs show an interesting pattern of cracks
running on a north south axis. Military burials typically had bodies facing the
rising sun. Cracks match proportions of burial trenches described by by 1956
Archeological Survey.
37. 2010 NYC LIDAR 3D Topographic Model of Slab half inch “bumps” on slab
40. “…aerial photographs do not speak for themselves.
And in particular those made by communities.
Exactly like any other form of photography aerial
images are ground for interpretation, rather than for
objective decoding.”
- Hagit Keysar, 2013
67. DIY manifesto
• DIY = empowerment & sense of ownership
• DIY = independence
• DIY = creativity
• DIY = understanding of things and taking
charge
• DIY = the right to choose
• DIY transforms consumers into contributors
• DIY is saves you money!
68. Nat Fein, 1947, Central Park
SMALL DATA vs BIG DATA
Reconnecting the State with it’s
Citizen Knowledge
TELLING THE LOCAL STORY
69. A very special thank you to all the wonderful staff and
volunteers at IFJ
A big thank you to all of you - now masters in DIY kite
mapping and who endured the cold and wet kite
mapping intro
Thank you to PublicLab.org community for their work
and open source materials, many of them included in
this presentation
publiclab.org | @publiclab | @cwb_london
Notas do Editor
We are doing this with contraptions such as this one, where we cut up plastic bottles to protect cheap digital cameras, and the we program the to take pictures every 10 seconds
Photography of public spaces and people in them is by and large legal. But things get more complicated when taking pictures from an unusual vantage point that can expose private property. If you’re mapping away from home, get to know people in the places you’re working -- reach out for partners and collaborators, who may have key insights into how and where to gather information, and to whom the data is surely relevant.
This is why we use the balloon and kite photography tools because they allow us to see MORE – like this puddle – and you may shrug and say – yeah it’s a puddle but..
The New York chapter of Public Laboratory has begun an ongoing periodic monitoring campaign in partnership with local environmental advocacy group the Gowanus Canal Conservancy. Designated a Superfund cleanup site by the EPA in 2010 due to pollution from decades of coal tar accumulation and sewage dumping. Local activists have adapted and improved many of the techniques developed for monitoring the effects of oil contamination in the Gulf of Mexico. This group of local activists have created a high-resolution map area they care about and imagery has replaced commercial and government data as a recognized representation of that place — this is a powerful example of the civic science in action.
Gowanus Dredgers - their problem along the Gowanus Canal is raw sewage pouring into the Canal during heavy rains – about a million gallons per day of the stuff.
So what have decided to do ? Well the sewage overflows are directly related to too much rain getting into our sewer system – so we’ve launched the Gowanus Low Altitude Mapping Program were we tie helium balloons and send them up a 1000 feet to take pictures of the Canals water quality and opportunities for improving it.
In particular, we are interested in spots were rainwater could be diverted out of the overloaded sewer system and into old historic stream beds that got buried a hundred years ago. The idea is that by figuring out a more natural and sustainable manner to manage our rain water we can be better prepared for the big disasters. This for example is balloon photo taken by our canoe team right after the Sandy Hurricane which caused our local sewage pump station explode, pouring massive amounts of sewage into New York waters. But what can better quality Citizen aerials actually tell us ?
The data the Public Lab community is micro – Scale – but that is precisely it’s value – it is from local citizens willing to “get their feet wet” and reconnect their expert knowledge of their backyards to a broader data sharing network