Presentation given at the Green Infrastructure and Water Management in Growing Metropolitan Areas conference on January 15, 2014 at the Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida.

1. Using Open Data and Citizen
Science to Promote Citizen
Engagement with Green
Infrastructure
Deborah Boyer
dboyer@azavea.com
Green Infrastructure and Water Management in
Growing Metropolitan Areas
January 15, 2013

2. About Azavea
• Founded in 2000
• Based in Philadelphia
• Research driven
• Building geospatial software
with a civic focus

3. How do you use technology to engage
with your communities?
Citizen Science
Open Source
Open Data
Glenwood Ave and Reese Street, 1907

4. Defining citizen science
• “Projects in which volunteers partner with scientists to
answer real-world questions.” – The Cornell Lab of
Orinthology
• “[our] mission is to create online citizen science projects
to involve the public in academic research. We believe
that by doing this we can not only help everyone share
in the excitement of discovery, but that such projects
are a necessary response to the flood of data facing
researchers in many fields.” – Citizen Science Alliance

5. Citizen Science for Stormwater
• Provides opportunities for spreading the word about
green infrastructure
• Attracts people interested in technology as well as the
natural world
• Has the potential for exploring new ways of approaching
stormwater issues
• Can build a community of advocates for change
• Can also be a whole lot of work

6. • A collaborative platform for crowdsourced tree
inventory, ecosystem service calculations,
urban forestry analysis, and community
engagement
• Open source software available at
https://github.com/azavea/
• Supported by USDA Small Business Innovation
Research grants

7. Main Features
• Search and Explore Tree
Data
• View Ecosystem Benefits
• Add New Trees
• Edit and Update Trees
• Upload Tree Photos
• Track Stewardship Activities

9. Viewing Ecosystem Benefits
• Available for search results or
individual trees
• Calculated using i-Tree Streets
• Can be customized with local
energy values
• Requires species and diameter
data – important caveat

11. OpenTreeMap In Action

12. Stewardship Search
• Add ability to search by public
actions, not just tree attributes
• Use settings that let the public
explore stewardship actions
• Display results with design that
emphasizes action or inaction

13. How do you get people involved?
• Tree mapping parties in
Grand Rapids
• The Great Tree Count in
California
• Tree surveys in
Philadelphia
• Partner with colleges
• Integration with citizen
forester classes

14. Smartphone Apps

15. Tablet Accessible

16. Tracking Green Infrastructure
• Adding support for tracking rain gardens, rain barrels,
and other green infrastructure
• Need to integrate a flexible system for customizing
ecosystem services calculations
• Is there a way to integrate with gaming and education?
• More complicated process for indicating the feature
raises questions of data accuracy

17. OpenTreeMap Data Quality Checks
• Remove duplicate
trees during data
upload
• Tree watch list
• Drop down lists
• User groups
• Reputation points

18. The dark side of citizen science
• Difficult to list or quantify the impact on participants and
the long-term effects
• May just attract people who were already interested in
your work
• Sudden influx of users who may quickly move on to
another topic that gets some press
• Resources spent on management can outweigh
potential economic or staff reasons for pursuing citizen
science

19. Getting started with citizen science
• Review existing projects
– Brevard County, Florida’s storm drain marking and storm
water asset marking programs http://www.brevardcounty.us/NaturalResources/GetInvolv
ed
– University of New Hampshire’s Coastal Research Volunteer
program - http://www.seagrant.unh.edu/crv
– Scientific American’s Citizen Science list http://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/

20. General Guidelines
• Select a topic that is integral to your mission
• Include basic tasks completed with minimal training and have
additional tasks or privileges for users that have shown a
commitment to the project
• Balance the technology with the desire to be outside
• Build-in data quality checks whenever possible
• Balance the desire for perfect data with the other benefits of
a citizen science project
• Take advantage of collaborations and open source

21. What is open source?
• Anyone can download, contribute, and reuse the
code within the parameters of the open source
license
• Maintained by a community of users
• New features are added back into the code for
everyone to use
• No license fee

22. Open Source
≠
Puppy Dogs and Lollipops

23. Potential Issues
• May not be out of the box with step by step
instructions
• Can require learning new technologies
• Community may be entirely volunteer
• New versions and changes constantly (or seldom)
appear

24. How to Contribute
• Explore existing open source repositories
• Become part of an open source community
• Contribute back any changes or improvements you
make or add documentation
• Make materials available as open source with clearly
listed licenses on a common open source repository
(Github, Sourceforge, etc)
• Share your data and software work

25. Open Data Philly

26. Open Data and Civic Hacking
• Draw in new audiences who can challenge you to think
in alternative ways about green infrastructure
• Create opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration
• Highlight the amazing work you’ve been doing
• Demonstrate your commitment to open information and
creating green communities focused on sustainability

27. What to share?
• Green stormwater projects
• PWD stormwater billing
parcels
• Water inlets
• Combined sewer service
area
• Surface water features
• Land cover raster (urban
tree canopy)
• Riparian buffers
• Land use designations
• Soil survey

28. What next?
• Make data available in easy accessible formats
(shapefiles, APIs, metadata)
• Keep information up to date
• Publish research and monitoring data too, if applicable
• Promote data availability (open data sites, university
classes, etc)
• Participate in civic hackathons and other events

29. Aren’t civic hackathons so
2009?

30. Being Realistic about Hackathons
• Be clear about your goals from the beginning
• Have reasonable expectations – you will not be building a tool
that saves the world in 48 hours
• Focus on particular challenges or data sets
• Hackathon participants are not free labor that you get to
order around
• A civic hacking event is just the first step in a long process
• Use the opportunity to brainstorm ideas and collaborate in an
interdisciplinary fashion

31. In Philly
• Code for Philly Brigade and many meet-ups
• Chief Data Officer with an interest in civic hacking
• Sharing of information on OpenDataPhilly
• Many, many hackathon opportunities
–
–
–
–
Random Hacks of Kindness
TechCamp Education
Apps for Philly Transit
NASA Space Apps

32. Embrace openness and technology, in all
their messiness, as new forms of community
engagement that can assist with innovation.
Lardner’s Point Pumping Station, 1903

33. Using Open Data and Citizen
Science to Promote Citizen
Engagement with Green
Infrastructure
Deborah Boyer
dboyer@azavea.com
Green Infrastructure and Water Management in
Growing Metropolitan Areas
January 15, 2013