Everybody can think, so there are fount of ideas to experiment, tryout, use them, test them collaboratively.
Environmental mapping:¶
As humans we are all aware that our perception, crazy things that happens in our fluidy brains influence the stuff around us and in turn they influence us symbiotically. Thus no longer we two legged animals can go on shenaniganing about earth taking care of itself. Ofcourse, Earth can able to take care of itself, and it had so far, even after we are wiped out of her face. Its time we have to fear about ourselves. This is where geography and mapping based feedback systems come into play that slaps the theoretical establishments, nit wits, who would only talk talk talk, and do nothing. One can contribute in mapping environmental data around them using simple DIY instruments made in collaborative way, acquiring heat, pressure, rain, humidity, air flow, radiation, pollution, etc.. data – log them, share them, visualize them in an urban area. Where as people from villages and forest areas can do much more than that ranging from conservation to tracking, ecosystems monitoring, etc..
Lets discuss and build applications for that too ! whenever possible.
Transportation & Transit facilitation:¶
Although web based mapping services like open street maps have the transparent navigation facility, still the problem is not solved socially. There is a heavy necessity in bringing up a solution to gather data for transit management that involves, bus, train, ferry, and other local transportation vehicles from public to private spectrum. With something like open street maps and open satellite imagery we have the flexibility to contribute to open street maps in a participatory way — working out a commons based peer production model. But in that case, the data sources are reliable and are available to us with a click of a button.
In order to get the position of list of bus stops, train stops, ferry pickup points, etc in a route designated by the local public transportation authority(upon people demand) requires accurate/precise latitude and longitude, along with a stop name. Even when the vehicle in every route is equipped with a positioning system still somebody has to manually enter the name of the stops and link it with the stop’s location data. That is where public and volunteer participation as usual in open street map/cycle map style becomes powerful and significant. Now the difference is that there is a requirement for a system to acquire such data. We shall call it generically as “Data Acquisition System”.
In this case:
StopData = Location + Stop meta data + ….
RouteInfo = StopData + Timing + Fair + Frequency + …
Further with frequency of change in the route stops, the local authority cannot scale up their manual monitoring method to appoint a person for every possible route and their tributaries. So creating a good data acquisition system similar to open street map gps based location, point of interest collection, but tailored for route management is necessary with a common data format such a Generic Transit Feed Specification . Such a open and common format will help scale the public transportation system in both local and as well as national level facilitating easier transportation and route management for both commons and the authorities.
RF Networking & Communication – Planning & Budgeting:¶
With the rise of distributed systems, mesh network, the need for community developed Radio planning and budgeting tool has grown and so far the communities associated with it has used just mapping solutions as a post network management and visualization tool. This idea has grown out of the involvement and working with the local mesh network communities. There will be a phase in network implementation where the peers has to hack around the hardware stuff such as cabling, connecting, pointing, directing, mounting antenna and testing — which requires wealthy laboratory grade instruments to do stuff to make things reliable. With the potential free software, and available mathematical models and their implementation again in free software along using proper GIS techniques and work flow, one can innovate new democratic RF planning and budgeting tool that can even surpass the proprietary tools used by Telecom. operators and ISP’s.
The following illustration may help you understand the potential and necessity.
Natural Emergency/Disaster/Calamity mapping:¶
Disasters are part and parcel of natural Earth. Keeping emotions aside, disaster usually involve Response, Rescue & Relief operations that requires adhoc, resilient communication infrastructure and reliable updated mapping platform that works upon the communication infrastructure. The mapping platform will be super awesome when it works in a collaborative and distributive way without depending upon any centralized processing and communication systems. Moreover, on the positive side, every natural emergency events have always proved the participatory power of the common people — surpassing the effective strategies of the government, private institutions. Moreover, non-governmental organizations like civil societies, clubs, groups, communities usually work out effectively, proving to be a effective governance during emergency situations.
Thus having a distributed p2p, & collaborative mapping platform serving the emergency situations on humanitarian grounds and when extended to normal usage is believed to empower the commons to organize a better governance.
With the convergence between free hardware/software systems, tech communities, civil societies, realtime mapping abilities, mesh networking, amateur radio enrichment — realization of this idea seems to be more pragmatic than just a theory.
Democratic Monitoring of Natural resources:¶
With the advent of Open Data & Open Access movements, Earth observation data democratization, Collaborative map contribution, Computing power, modern programming languages, we have crossed one more great mile in Environmental mapping that we know essential for symbiotic balance and our survival. For instance, we know that uRad monitor and its networked contribution has a similar objective. This is closely related with the above environmental mapping topic. However one has to know how to access data, process it, visualize it, communicate it, etc… That is what breathes ideas to life.
Fun + Contribution at the same time ?¶
We are aware “creative enforcing” open and collaborative contribution in reality is a daunting task for communities, and civil societies that work for openness and transparency which expands the liberty and knowledge of the commons. On the other hand, we are also aware about establishments do crazy stuff for capitalizing social mass to get the data inflow into their system. If you are interested in learning more on these dynamics. click here.
Participatory Games are one form of such strategies. This does not mean they are new, they have their history and with the current technical feasibility it become a trend now, such that even shittiest games are gaining so much traction now. On the other hand, many of the hackers, makers, programmers who have played the board games have already contributed to remaking them from scratch to play the same via internet using email, for example. One such game is “Scotland Yard” which earned its fame from the traditional “Catch me if you can” style and strategy. Even though many of us thought of establishing the game in real time, even with the availability of economic and open hardware penetration, density of people largely influences the play adrenalin as well as improves the contribution towards the open data sets. Scotland yard and its general strategy is only one such form of game which has the ability to be realized in real world scenario. There are plethora of games with plethora of strategies which can be innovated and leverage on the user base to make contribution more fun oriented and active. This does not mean “this way of contribution” is “the” way, all we mean is communities has to lookup for such alternatives too — because as humans we are deeply connected with geography and nature around us.
