Putting trash in its place: Participatory GIS, social networking, and targeting unofficial trash sites Frank Lafone Trevor Harris Department of Geology and Geography West Virginia University

Issues of unofficial trash sites Unknown sources Random Riparian trash gyres Spatially disjoint Difficult to police and clean up Out of sight out of mind Drain on official resources to police, monitor, and mitigate

Geographic Information Systems Embedded in contemporary society Explosive growth Expert and spatial data driven Utilization in waste management Trash management is a spatial problem Origin, destination, connecting network, distribution, transportation Spatially optimizing tool Scale and data issues Temporal issues Source issues Knowledge is local and undocumented

Geographic Information Science Immersive environments Social Networking Self organizing maps Cartograms Spatial Modeling RDBMS Augmented Reality Object-oriented GIS Serious gaming engines Geospatial semantic web Virtual Reality Adaptive and assistive technologies Geographic Information Science Data mining Virtual GIS Qualitative GIS Animation Enhanced Location based Services Mobile and wearable computing Spatially embedded multimedia Global Positioning Systems Geovisualization Tag clouds Word Tree Tree maps Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis Virtual globes

Participatory GIS and Social Networking Came out of the 1990’s social theoretical critique of GIS Concerns for incorporating community input Blending expert top down with local knowledge Quantitative and Qualitative forms Expert vs. non-expert Resources Social Networking Created around 2003-2004 Incorporates key technologies of Web 2.0 Interactive and immediate communication Robust functionality in the technology Allows for strong interaction between peers within the network VGI, UGC, Pareto-GIS, Neogeography

O’Reilly – digital shadow Geospatial Web VGI Mashups APIs Information geotagging Closing the gap between producers and consumers O’Reilly – digital shadow

Riparian Gyres Issues Gyres defined Problem of trash accumulations along and in waterways Some are point source some are non-point source River management Flooding Water Quality Tourism Ecological habitats Identification Sites Spring up overnight Challenge for GIS and waste management Mitigation efforts Who’s responsibility? Resource drain

Solutions in PGIS and Social Networking Develop a reporting mechanism Uses PGIS methods using social networking technologies Accessible to the public Many eyes can see what few eyes miss Citizen sensors Method Location based services of mobile devices Cell phones, GPS units, digital cameras Geotagging media (text, photos, video, etc) Social networking technology Upload information to social networking sites Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, instant message, etc Parsing geotagged media automatic to a geoweb browser - ‘mapping’ the problem Geotag provides location of the problem Media provides magnitude of the problem iPhone app

Benefits and Issues Benefits Low barrier of entry for citizens Easy to use and aggregate Low cost reporting and recording Decision support tool More efficient abetment Estimate community benefit Educate and involve the public Take ownership of the problem and the solution Tracking tool for trends Identifying recurring problem areas Greater policing Overcomes scale issues in GIS Higher accurate data/information Extensible Hunters, tire dumps, etc Maintainable Greater government responsiveness Government 2.0

Example Usage Photograph of riparian gyres Photo of mobile image upload See that image on flickr/twitter/etc How uploaded into a Mashup Google pushpin with image in it Photo of cleanup Flow diagram of the process Mashup of points over time (fake)

Conclusion