The new role of citizens as co-creators of socio-digital innovations and urban development: A case-study of participation and co-creation in the smart city development of Barcelona.

Die vorliegende Masterarbeit untersucht aktuelle Trends in der Stadtplanung und Design, um zu analysieren, wie Bürger an der Mitgestaltung von Smart Cities beteiligt werden können. Ziel ist es, ein ganzheitliches Verständnis der neueren Konzepte und Methoden von Co-Design und Co-creation zu entwickeln und diese mit den etablierteren Forschungsfeldern der Bürgerbeteiligung und Koproduktion zu vergleichen. Koproduktion und Co-Creation können als verbesserte Partizipation oder Partnerschaft in Bezug auf die Partizipationsleiter verstanden werden, da beide Konzepte Beziehungen auf Augenhöhe zwischen Bürger und Stadtverwaltung voraussetzen. In ähnlicher Weise gesteht Co-Design, Designern und Usern die gleichen Rechte und Möglichkeiten im Gestaltungsprozess zu. Es wird eine ganzheitliche Definition des Co-Creation-Prozesses dargelegt, die Erkenntnisse aus Co-Design, Co-Produktion und Partizipation beinhaltet und Co-Creation als einen Prozess versteht, der aus Initiation, Design und Produktion besteht. Die Smart City als sich rasch entwickelndes Forschungsfeld, Definitionen und Charakteristika sowie populäre imaginäre und dominante Diskurse werden vorgestellt. Um die Rolle des Bürgers zur Smart City zu verstehen, werden die unterschiedlichen Verständnisse von Smart Governance erläutert und Aspekte von Open Data, Big Data und Big Data Analytics sowie die Rolle von Bürgern und Gefahren der Smart City diskutiert. In der Fallstudie zur Bürgerbeteiligung werden Methoden und Werkzeuge zur Förderung der Mitgestaltung einer Smart City anhand Partizipationsleiter von (Arnstein 1969) diskutiert und analysiert. Die Smart City Entwicklung in Barcelona wird vor dem Hintergrund der gemeinschaftlichen Entwicklung sozialer Innovationen in Smart Cities analysiert. Die Fallstudie verweist auf Mängel im Hinblick auf Bürgerbeteiligung an der Entscheidungsfindung und an der Verlagerung von Machtverhältnissen in der Entwicklung der Smart City Barcelona, die dafür aber mit neuen Werkzeugen und Technologien für partizipative Stadtentwicklung experimentiert und sich zu einem alternativen Smart City Modell entwickelt. Die wichtigsten Ergebnisse sind abschließend im Methodenkatalog zusammengefasst, der Methoden und Tools aus Theorie und Fallstudie aufgreift um zu dem Verständnis beizutragen, wie Smart Cities gemeinsam gestaltet werden können.This thesis studies current trends in planning and design studies to analyse how citizens can participate in the co-creation of smart cities. It aims at developing a holistic understanding of the new concepts and methods of co-creation, and co-design and compares those with the more established research fields of citizen participation and co-production. Co-production and co-creation can be understood as instances of enhanced participation or as a partnership in participation, as both concepts require equal relationships among citizens and the city administration. Similarly, co-design requires designers and users to share the same rights and possibilities in the design process. A holistic definition of the co-creation process is provided that incorporates insights from co-design, co-production and participation and defines co-creation as a process consisting of initiation, design and production. The smart city as emerging research field, definitions and characteristics, as well as popular imaginary and dominant discourses, are presented. To grasp the role of the citizen in the smart city, the different understandings of smart governance are explained and aspects of to open data, big data and big data analytics, as well as the role of citizens and perils of the smart city are discussed. In the case-study of citizen participation methods and tools fostering the co-creation of a smart city are discussed and analysed with the introduced participation framework, which is based on the ladder of participation (Arnstein 1969). The smart city development in Barcelona is analysed against the backdrop of co-creating social innovations in smart cities. There might be a lack of citizen participation in decision-making and shifting power relations in the city, which experiments nonetheless with new tools and technologies for the participatory environment experiments with new formats and technologies for economic and urban development and evolves to become an alternative model of the smart city. The main findings are included in the toolbox based on methods and tools from theory and the case-study contributing to the knowledge of how to co-create of smart cities

Using Ambient Geographic Information (AGI) in Order to Understand Emotion & Stress within Smart Cities

Oliveira, T. H., & Painho, M. (2015). Using Ambient Geographic Information (AGI) in Order to Understand Emotion & Stress within Smart Cities. In F. Bação, M. Y. Santos, & M. Painho (Eds.), AGILE 2015 : 18th AGILE International Conference on Geographic Information Science: Geographic Information Science as an Enabler of Smarter Cities and Communities AGILE.Since one of the main ambitions of a smart city is to improve urban functions and provided services, it is often perceived as a living urban fabric, in which connected urban citizens, acting as active sensors, have the capacity to contribute even more efficiently to the spatial intelligence of cities. This “immaterial” dimension is related with the need that smart cities have to assess their citizen’s feelings, perception and well-being, giving rise to an emotion-aware city. Mapping emotion builds on a tradition of studies in cognitive mapping, evaluative mapping, environmental preference and environmental affect, adding an approach in which people experience, evaluate and describe their environment “in situ” through social media. This paper aims to present an Ambient Geographic Information (AGI) approach to assemble geo-tagged data from Twitter, Flickr, Instagram and Facebook related with people’s perception and feelings regarding Lisbon (Portugal), and therefore characterize its emotional dimension, by comparing these subjective observations with objective measurements (such as socio-demographic statistics, questionnaires and data retrieved from biometric sensors). With this vision of a smart city, that is capable to interpret and harnessing the emotional states of its citizens, it is essential to find new methods and techniques to sensing affect in an urban context.publishersversionpublishe

Using Georeferenced Data in Social Science Survey Research: The Method of Spatial Linking and Its Application with the German General Social Survey and the GESIS Panel

This book demonstrates the use of georeferenced data for social science survey research which builds upon survey data enriched with geo-coordinates. It reviews the prerequisites and challenges of applying these data to different social science research questions, highlighting the different branches of an interdisciplinary effort. At the center of this presentation is the method of spatial linking: the combination of georeferenced survey data with information from auxiliary geospatial data sources. A collection of spatial linking methods is applied in this book’s empirical applications which underline these methods’ flexibility in different social science sub-disciplines, such as health and family, political attitudes, and environmental inequalities. For this purpose, georeferenced survey data from the German General Social Survey (GGSS) 2014 and the GESIS Panel are used. These empirical applications are part of an emerging field of research for social scientists, requiring new analytic skills from diverse and foreign disciplines, like ecology and engineering. Navigating the organizational and technical requirements for the analysis of georeferenced survey data enables researchers to answer new and innovative research questions.Dieses Buch beschäftigt sich mit der Nutzung georeferenzierter Daten in der sozialwissenschaftlichen Umfrageforschung, deren Ausgangspunkt Umfragedaten sind, die mit Geokoordinaten angereichert wurden. Es widmet sich den Voraussetzungen und Herausforderungen, solche Daten für verschiedene sozialwissenschaftliche Fragestellungen nutzbar zu machen und betont dabei die verschiedenen interdisziplinären Verzweigungen dieses Unterfangens. Im Mittelpunkt der Präsentation steht die Methode der räumlichen Verknüpfung: die Kombination georeferenzierter Umfragedaten mit Informationen aus externen Geodatenquellen. Anhand mehrerer, aus unterschiedlichen Subdisziplinen der Sozialwissenschaften stammender empirischer Anwendungen im Bereich Familie und Gesundheit, politische Einstellungen sowie Umwelt und Ungleichheit wird die Flexibilität der Methode in Form verschiedener räumlicher Verknüpfungen betont. Dazu werden georeferenzierte Umfragedaten der Allgemeinen Bevölkerungsumfrage Sozialwissenschaften (ALLBUS) 2014 und dem GESIS Panel 2014 verwendet. Diese empirischen Anwendungen sind Teil eines aufstrebenden Forschungsfelds für Sozialforschende, welches neue analytische Fertigkeiten aus verschiedenen anderen Fachbereichen wie der Ökologie oder des Ingenieurswesen erfordert. Werden die organisatorischen und technischen Anforderungen zur Analyse georeferenzierter Umfragedaten gemeistert, eröffnet sich Forschenden die Möglichkeit, neue und innovative Fragestellungen zu beantworten

Petroleum activities, wetland utilization and livelihood changes in Southern Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria: 2003-2015

The state of Akwa Ibom, Nigeria is known as one of the wetlands rich in biodiversity as well as oil and gas reserves. Its wetland ecosystem is noted for its primary support it has provided for the people living in this area. However, this wetland has also been a reservoir for Nigeria’s crude oil contributing a prominent share of petroleum product to the country’s GDP, total revenue to the government through exports and other fiscal surpluses, making it Africa’s largest economy. But back home where the resources is harnessed to achieved and attained the height of this economic successes the situation is a direct contrast, petroleum activities is mostly synonymous to environmental pollution, degradation, conflicts and crises. Wetland is not left out of these adverse effects. Therefore this study was based on the impact of petroleum activities and its effects on wetland, agricultural practices within the wetland, people’s livelihood as well as strategies for sustainable management of wetland in the study area. GIS and Remote Sensing was used, by adding ancillary data from ground truth points and other reference sources to the thematic LULC satellite images of the study area. Erdas Imagine and ArcMap were used in processing, monitoring and mapping the wetland changes caused by petroleum activities and the consequent effects of these actions by assessing the pattern of distribution of the affected wetland, taking into consideration the baseline data such as vegetation types, densities, phenology, as well as land use cover types. Livelihood changes were measured by conducting interviews to different stakeholders in the course of this research. The result showed that there has been a significant change in the wetland area of Southern Akwa Ibom State though more than 68% of the wetland mapped had not changed. While wetland was increasing in some areas others experienced a decrease. Livelihood changes in the area shows that petroleum activities have benefited the people in areas of employments both directly and indirectly although they are still expecting an improvement in areas such as provision of farm inputs, health and housing facilities from the Multinational Oil Companies. It was observed that management of the wetland was majorly based on traditional methods of total and periodic restrictions to some community preserved areas as well as periodic fallowing. The traditional management strategies of seasonal restrictions and buffers is not sustainable enough to protect and preserved the wetlands from complete degradation and as such measures should be taken to sensitize all stakeholders in the study area to adhere to the government laid down laws and regulations in order to protect, preserve and ensure a sustainable wetland for future generations.Nigeria’s Akwa Ibom State is a region that is naturally endowed with rich wetlands containing abundance of oil and gas deposits. These wetlands have been a source of primary support for the inhabitants of the area. It also forms one of Nigeria’s crude oil bases that contribute immensely to the vast petroleum product of the country. Nigeria has an increased revenue base due to production and exports of this crude oil making her the leading and largest economy in Africa. With this gigantic economic achievement one would expect that these successes be translated into the betterment of the generality of the people as well as the sustainability of the environment where these activities are carried out. Rather, petroleum activities in the region have led to environmental pollution, degradation, conflicts and crises within the host communities. Wetland is one of the major ecosystems polluted and degraded by petroleum activities in the region. Therefore, this study was based on the impact of petroleum activities and how it affects the wetlands, the agricultural practices within the wetlands and the people’s livelihood within this region. It also assessed the strategies used for sustainable management of wetlands within the area. The methods used in the study were mainly Geographic Information System (GIS) which enabled the collection and processing of geographic data and Remote Sensing (RS) which provides information on geographic objects using satellite or airborne platforms. Primary and secondary sources such as using Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver which provides information on spatial data position was used to collect ground truth sample points. Thematic Land Use Land Cover satellite images of the study area as well as other relevant reference materials were also acquired. GIS and Remote Sensing software like Erdas Imagine and ArcMap were used in processing, monitoring and mapping the wetland changes caused by petroleum activities and the consequent effects of these actions, by assessing the pattern of distribution of the affected wetland, taking into consideration the baseline data such as vegetation types, densities, phenology, as well as land use cover types. On the measurement of livelihood changes, interviews were conducted across the different stakeholders within the study. The result showed that there has been a significant change in the wetland area of Southern Akwa Ibom State though more than 68% of the wetland mapped had not changed. While wetland was increasing in some areas others experienced a decrease. Livelihood changes in the area shows that petroleum activities have benefited the people in areas of employments both directly and indirectly although they are still expecting an improvement in areas such as provision of farm inputs, health and housing facilities from the Multinational Oil Companies. It was observed that management of the wetland was majorly based on traditional methods of total and periodic restrictions to some community preserved areas as well as periodic fallowing. The traditional management strategies of seasonal restrictions and buffers is not sustainable enough to protect and preserved the wetlands from complete degradation and as such measures should be taken to sensitize all stakeholders in the study area to adhere to the government laid down laws and regulations in order to protect, preserve and ensure a sustainable wetland for future generations

Digital geographies of transnational spaces: a mixed-method study of Mexico-US migration

textThe central objective of this thesis is to explore how sophisticated information and communication technologies (ICTs) impact Mexico-US migration. In particular, it attends to those ICTs that enable Mexican immigrants in the United States to stay “in touch” with their loved ones in Mexico. Rather than pursue the impacts of these technologies through a singular methodology or theoretical framework, this study employs an array of approaches in order to examine the geography transnational communication across multiple scales. At the level of the individual, I examine how Mexican immigrants living in Austin, TX, incorporate communication technologies into their daily lives. Informed by a series of semi-structured and in-depth interviews, I argue that cellular phone calls, text messaging, and social media platforms enable a passive, routinized transnationalism that allows migrants to maintain a degree of presence both “here” and “there.” I subsequently scale up my analysis in order to trace the emergence of digital social media—Facebook, in particular—as a communication tool for dispersed Mexican immigrant communities, and I interrogate the ways in which digital social media engender transnational social networks. Using place as a guiding conceptual theme, I demonstrate how senses of and attachments to place form the basis of communal social interactions online, and I identify the many different places, both in the US and Mexico, that are involved in particular transnational social networks and migration flows. This study concludes by drawing on recent critical GIS scholarship and volunteered geographic information (VGI) in order to visualize the digital, place-to-place connections between Mexican migrants living in United States and their friends and family members living in Mexico and elsewhere.Geography and the Environmen

LIPIcs, Volume 277, GIScience 2023, Complete Volume

LIPIcs, Volume 277, GIScience 2023, Complete Volum

Mobility and Aging: Older Drivers’ Visual Searching, Lane Keeping and Coordination

This thesis examined older drivers’ mobility and behaviour through comprehensive measurements of driver-vehicle-environment interaction and investigated the associations between driving behaviour and cognitive functions. Data were collected and analysed for 50 older drivers using eye tracking, GNSS tracking, and GIS. Results showed that poor selective attention, spatial ability and executive function in older drivers adversely affect lane keeping, visual search and coordination. Visual-motor coordination measure is sensitive and effective for driving assessment in older drivers

No Lawyer for a Hundred Miles?: Mapping the New Geography of Access of Justice in Canada

Recent concerns about the geography of access to justice in Canada have focused on the dwindling number of lawyers in rural and remote areas, raising anxieties about the profession’s inability to meet current and future demands for localized legal services. These concerns have motivated a range of policy responses that aim to improve the education, training, recruitment and retention of practitioners in underserved areas. We surveyed lawyers across Ontario to better understand their physical proximity to clients and how, if at all, that proximity promotes access to justice. We find that lawyers’ scope of practice varies based on a number of factors, and in several areas of law lawyers serve clients beyond their immediate locality. Our results suggest that debates about the geography of access should be premised on the goal of territorial justice as an equitable distribution of legal services rather than a narrower emphasis on the equal distribution of lawyers