Factors driving the decline in the publication of geocaches

Geocaching is a popular outdoor recreational pastime that uses GPS to navigate to specific coordinates where the geocacher usually has to find a hidden container. Geocaching has many benefits including promoting exercise and learning. The number of new geocaches being published has started to decline. Here I present the first analysis of what factors might be contributing to that decline. Data on the geocache placement patterns of 116 geocachers were derived using the geocaching statistics analytical tool, Project GC. Two generalised linear mixed models were conducted on the resulting dataset. The study suggested that more active participants in the game are more likely to hide geocaches. The rate of hiding of geocaches declines over time. A quadratic relationship was identified with number of caches owned which suggests that individual geocachers have limits to the number of geocaches they can maintain. Perhaps, surprisingly the study suggested that cache saturation was only having a relatively small impact compared to these other potential drivers of the decline. Individual limits on geocaches owned and reduced activity over time appear to be the key drivers of the decline. Consequently the study suggests that a continuing influx of new participants to the pastime is required to maintain high levels of geocache placements. A range of measures to make geocaching more attractive to both current and future participants is suggested, for example increasing efforts to remove abandoned geocaches, making it easier for geocachers to identify the locations of high quality geocaches and increasing the variety of geocache types by the introduction of Citizen Science geocaches. By contrast, the study suggests that relaxing the rules on cache saturation is not likely to have much of an impact upon future levels of geocache placement. Management implications This study has identified keys factors associated with the current decline in geocache placements and has identified alterations to the management of the game that could mediate some of these effects. It remains to be seen whether or not the planet will ever have 4,000,000 active geocaches. The current trajectory suggests not, however actions could be taken which could alter this trajectory. In particular this study suggests key to continue to attract new participants to the pastime. This could be done by increasing cache type variety and improving the quality of existing geocaches and the ability of geocachers to identify their locations

Evaluating Mobile-Based Citizen Science in Increasing Citizen Participants in Environmental Management

Mobile-based citizen science as thriving citizen education tool increases the non-expert citizen involvement in the scientific world by encouraging the public upload nature observation to assist scientific research while learning scientific knowledge. Mobile-base citizen science as social media has potential to facilitate citizen engagement in the environmental management. Based on the conceptual framework of citizen science incorporation with environmental management, large users in the program foster the citizen involvement in the environmental management. Research here applies SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threats) analysis to evaluate mobile based citizen science regarding data management, citizen participation, and partnership. It revealed the current status of mobile-based citizen including advantages and disadvantages. The simplicity of observation collection, public data accessibility, communication channel provided for participants and strong supporter or collaborative partners are effective in making citizen science strong candidate in engaging citizen into environmental management. However, there are absent of data quality filter, privacy protection and the fact that large registered users and data submission doesn’t lead to high citizen participation impede the development of mobile-based citizen science. Therefore, the suggestion for current programs is to obtain investment from other organizations or agencies to develop more effective strategies to keep and maintain participants. The results of this study proves that mobile-based citizen science has potential to engage citizens in environmental management, but they need the improvement of sustaining strengths and opportunity and removing weakness and threats. Advisor: Zhenghong Tan

Applying geocaching principles to site-based citizen science and eliciting reactions via a technology probe

Site-based citizen science occurs when volunteers work with scientists to collect data at particular field locations. The benefit is greater data collection at lesser cost. Yet difficulties exist. We developed ScienceCaching, a prototype citizen science aid designed to mitigate four specific problems by applying aspects from another thriving location-based activity: geocaching as enabled by mobile devices. Specifically, to ease problems in data collection, ScienceCaching treats sites as geocaches: Volunteers find sites opportunistically via geocaching methods and use equipment and other materials pre-stored in cache containers. To ease problems in data validation, ScienceCaching flags outlier data as it is entered so that on-site volunteers can be immediately check and correct data. Additionally, other volunteers are directed to that site at a later time for further readings that provide data redundancy. To ease volunteer training, ScienceCaching directs volunteers to training sites on an as-needed basis, where they are taught and tested against known measures. To ease volunteer coordination, ScienceCaching automatically directs volunteers to particular sites of interest, and real-time communication between volunteers and scientist is enabled as needed. We developed ScienceCaching primarily as a technology probe—a working but quite limited system—to embody these ideas and to evaluate their worthiness by eliciting reactions from scientists involved in citizen science. Scientists saw many opportunities in using fixed location caches and geocaching techniques to aid citizen science. Yet they expanded the discussion. Amongst these, they emphasized practical concerns that must be addressed, and they argued that future systems should carefully consider the role of the social experience—both the “online” experience and the shared physical experience of visiting sites.Ye

Applying geocaching principles to site-based citizen science and eliciting reactions via a technology probe

Site-based citizen science occurs when volunteers work with scientists to collect data at particular field locations. The benefit is greater data collection at lesser cost. Yet difficulties exist. We developed ScienceCaching, a prototype citizen science aid designed to mitigate four specific problems by applying aspects from another thriving location-based activity: geocaching as enabled by mobile devices. Specifically, to ease problems in data collection, ScienceCaching treats sites as geocaches: Volunteers find sites opportunistically via geocaching methods and use equipment and other materials pre-stored in cache containers. To ease problems in data validation, ScienceCaching flags outlier data as it is entered so that on-site volunteers can be immediately check and correct data. Additionally, other volunteers are directed to that site at a later time for further readings that provide data redundancy. To ease volunteer training, ScienceCaching directs volunteers to training sites on an as-needed basis, where they are taught and tested against known measures. To ease volunteer coordination, ScienceCaching automatically directs volunteers to particular sites of interest, and real-time communication between volunteers and scientist is enabled as needed. We developed ScienceCaching primarily as a technology probe—a working but quite limited system—to embody these ideas and to evaluate their worthiness by eliciting reactions from scientists involved in citizen science. Scientists saw many opportunities in using fixed location caches and geocaching techniques to aid citizen science. Yet they expanded the discussion. Amongst these, they emphasized practical concerns that must be addressed, and they argued that future systems should carefully consider the role of the social experience—both the “online” experience and the shared physical experience of visiting sites.Ye

Posicionando a localização: um estudo do impacto da comunicação mediada na socialidade e no sentido de espaço

Partindo da admissão em como a adopção das tecnologias da comunicação no quotidiano conduz crescentemente a uma topologia social onde os espaços da informação virtual estão a ser mesclados e engastados nos contextos materiais de tal maneira que potencialmente afectam tanto a forma como construímos, percebemos e interagimos com os nossos selves internos como com os outros, o presente trabalho elege como factor pivô de análise o vector espaço na assunção de que este não é neutro, mas um constructo social que adquire significado pela deslocação, seja material e corpórea, seja crescentemente simbólica, de dados e informação, empreendendo uma investigação teórica e empírica nas diversas escalas de impacto: global, institucional, grupal e individual. Após escrutínio de conceitoschave das discussões passadas sobre a natureza dos universos físico e virtual, demonstra-se a obsolescência da sua clivagem através da análise de um conjunto de práticas empíricas paradigmáticas de como os média móveis locativos, facilitando a introdução da localização na comunicação, deram renovada forma à definição da situação e ao nosso sentido de lugar, tanto em termos da geografia como do posicionamento social, impactando a experiência do mundo vivido e a forma como a socialidade e o diversos tipos de capital são perseguidos no seu seio. Os dados recolhidos, em especial o questionário aplicado aos praticantes do jogo móvel locativo geocaching, remetem para a necessidade de reforçar o estudo das práticas de integração sobre a interacção como fenómenos chave e para o abandono da perspectivação dos espaços tecnologicamente orientados como autónomos, enquadrando-os antes como sendo a prossecução das motivações e interesses pessoais por outros meios.Contrary to the metaphysics of presence under which physical and virtual spaces were once perceived as conflicting in nature, the central tenet pursued in this study rests upon the assumption that current mobile locative media are appropriated by its users as means to reinforce the struggle for social positioning, allowing them to ascertain, communicate and tentatively manipulate their senses of distinction, place and worth through the prosumption of space in collaborative platforms. Vehicles for claiming individuality while exhibiting both taste and motility (the ability to be mobile) as a valorised social asset in line with the glass cage crafted by the connexionist spirit. Our work, therefore, proposes a scalar approach to the impacts of the introduction of location in communication electing power and status mechanisms as pivotal. Relying mostly on Lefebvre’s and Bourdieu’s concepts of spatial and symbolic violence, of space as a threefold historical product, social life as a topology of rank and hybrid tools and practices as harbouring simultaneously structured and structuring potentials, the emergence of digital mass self-communication and the geospatial web, in turn made possible by the converge of GPS, GIS and mobile networks, can be understood as part of an overall spatial fix undertaken under the so called digital network economy. A trend to further abstract space and value and an instrument to commodify the constitution of the self itself. One where, relying on principles not unfamiliar to a Ponzi scheme, the individual is allured to the spectacle and, through the suggestion of personal branding as the natural attitude, the structure of feeling and the technical code of informational, reflexive capitalism permeate culture and individuals, leading to the depiction of its isomorphism in everyday life in unexpected, mostly unconscious, ways. Insuring the homology between the social, technological, economical and domination apparatuses