Crowdsourcing geospatial data for Earth and human observations: a review

The transformation from authoritative to user-generated data landscapes has garnered considerable attention, notably with the proliferation of crowdsourced geospatial data. Facilitated by advancements in digital technology and high-speed communication, this paradigm shift has democratized data collection, obliterating traditional barriers between data producers and users. While previous literature has compartmentalized this subject into distinct platforms and application domains, this review offers a holistic examination of crowdsourced geospatial data. Employing a narrative review approach due to the interdisciplinary nature of the topic, we investigate both human and Earth observations through crowdsourced initiatives. This review categorizes the diverse applications of these data and rigorously examines specific platforms and paradigms pertinent to data collection. Furthermore, it addresses salient challenges, encompassing data quality, inherent biases, and ethical dimensions. We contend that this thorough analysis will serve as an invaluable scholarly resource, encapsulating the current state-of-the-art in crowdsourced geospatial data, and offering strategic directions for future interdisciplinary research and applications across various sectors

Transition UGent: a bottom-up initiative towards a more sustainable university

The vibrant think-tank ‘Transition UGent’ engaged over 250 academics, students and people from the university management in suggesting objectives and actions for the Sustainability Policy of Ghent University (Belgium). Founded in 2012, this bottom-up initiative succeeded to place sustainability high on the policy agenda of our university. Through discussions within 9 working groups and using the transition management method, Transition UGent developed system analyses, sustainability visions and transition paths on 9 fields of Ghent University: mobility, energy, food, waste, nature and green, water, art, education and research. At the moment, many visions and ideas find their way into concrete actions and policies. In our presentation we focused on the broad participative process, on the most remarkable structural results (e.g. a formal and ambitious Sustainability Vision and a student-led Sustainability Office) and on recent actions and experiments (e.g. a sustainability assessment on food supply in student restaurants, artistic COP21 activities, ambitious mobility plans, food leftovers projects, an education network on sustainability controversies, a transdisciplinary platform on Sustainable Cities). We concluded with some recommendations and reflections on this transition approach, on the important role of ‘policy entrepreneurs’ and student involvement, on lock-ins and bottlenecks, and on convincing skeptical leaders

Guanxi, trust and reward-based crowdfunding success : a Chinese case

Author's accepted manuscript (postprint).acceptedVersio

Protecting Our Marine Treasures: Sustainable Finance Options for U.S. Marine Protected Areas

The report is intended to help guide Marine Protected Areas (MPA) managers on the general approaches they may pursue to obtain external funding. It describes eight elements of success for those seeking funding, and identifes four "funding vehicles" describing how funding can be processed, as well as common sources of external funding, including donations, philanthropy, public-private partnerships, crowdsourcing and revenues from concessions, permits, and visitor fees. The authors noted both opportunities and constraints and have included real world case studies. The document provides findings based on the work done to date and notes the need for ongoing work to fully explore all external funding possibilities. In addition to the guidance the report provides, it also contains three sets ofrecommendations focused at the national level, NOAA and DOI's National MarineProtected Areas Center, and for individual MPA programs throughout the nation

Feasibility of Zakat-based Crowdfunding for Marginalized Farmers in Bangladesh

The arrangement of funds and financing for the agriculture sector in Bangladesh is still considered in crisis that is coupled with concurrent uncertain situations like population growth and natural disasters. Therefore, specific financial terms such as Zakat that are based on and practiced in Islam, the religious origination of the major-ity of Bangladeshi, at the same time highly appreciated and carried out by other countries are found well complementary to agricultural project financing. The pur-pose of this study is to explore the feasibility of using zakat-based crowdfunding as a means of supporting marginalized farmers in Bangladesh. This study employs a case study approach, using secondary data sources to conduct a thematic analysis of za-kat-based crowdfunding for marginalized farmers. The findings of the study indicate that zakat-based crowdfunding can be a viable solution to support marginalized farmers in Bangladesh. The relevance of the study is in place due to the urgency to solve the problems of agricultural financing in Bangladesh. The study recommends the establishment of a zakat-based crowdfunding platform that caters specifically to the needs of marginalized farmers in Bangladesh. However, the study also identifies some limitations, such as the lack of primary data and the context of generalizability. Despite these limitations, the study concludes that zakat-based crowdfunding can effectively support marginalized farmers in Bangladesh, and further research in this area is warranted

Fostering Productive Entrepreneurship : An Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Perspective

Entrepreneurial activities and entrepreneurs do not emerge in isolation rather in a very integrated and complex system (ecosystem) with multiple actors (Cowell et al., 2018). The magnitude of entrepreneurship’s contribution to socio-economic development is contingent upon the respective country’s entrepreneurial enabling environments (ecosystems)-EEs (Colombo & Dagnino, 2017). As the newly emerged research stream, entrepreneurial ecosystem has increasingly captured the attention of scholars, policy makers and practitioners (Malecki, 2018). Moreover, the term entrepreneurial ecosystem has been used to express and explicate the frameworks on how entrepreneurs and start-ups interact with other actors. The success of entrepreneurs is fueled by conducive entrepreneurial supporting environments characterized by multiple interconnected players who offer valued resources to them (Audretsch et al., 2019). Thus, the phenomenon of entrepreneurial ecosystems has been recently used as the framework to describe and explain the integrated nature of economic, political, social, and cultural aspects that boost the growth of innovative new enterprises and supports high risk endeavors (Philip, 2017).publishedVersio

Beyond the “ivory tower”. Comparing academic and non-academic knowledge on social entrepreneurship

The increasing relevance of societal challenges has recently brought social entrepreneurship to the fore due to its capacity to leverage entrepreneurial processes to achieve social value while ensuring profits. In this study, we apply an experimental research method to analyse the concept of social entrepreneurship comprehensively. More specifically, we develop bibliometric analysis and web crawling techniques to gather information related to social entrepreneurship from Scopus and Wikipedia. We conduct a comparative network analysis of social entrepreneurship’s conceptual structure at academic and non-academic levels. This analysis has been performed considering scientific articles’ keywords and Wikipedia webpages’ co-occurrences, enabling us to identify four different thematic clusters in both cases. Moreover, plotting the centrality and density of each cluster on a bi-dimensional matrix, we have sketched a strategic diagram and provided the thematic evolution of this research topic, based on the level of interaction among clusters, and the degree of cohesion of keywords in each cluster. This paper represents one of the first attempts in the entrepreneurship literature to shed light on the conceptual boundaries of a research topic based on the analysis of both a scientific and an open-source knowledge database. Our results reveal similarities and discrepancies between those two different sources of knowledge, and outline avenues for future studies at the intersection between social entrepreneurship and the research domains of digital transformation, performance measurement, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and ethics. We also call for a further conceptualisation of social entrepreneurship in the face of the increasing complexity that characterises grand challenges

Answering a calling: medical professionals' digital careers in crowdsourcing

One of the most striking trends in individuals’ careers over the last decade has been the dramatic increase in the proportion of the labor force working beyond their employers’ physical boundaries because of the digital revolution in the gig economy. This trend has drawn much attention in the changing nature of work, workplace and careers. However, little empirical research has explored how and why individuals behave in the interface between online platforms and traditional organizations. In my dissertation, I explore these questions by studying medical professionals’ digital careers in the Chinese healthcare crowdsourcing industry, also known as “mobile doctors.” First, by analyzing approximately 240-hour observations and 43 interviews with Chinese physicians, I identify a key issue in this new career – time conflict between crowdsourcing and traditional work. The findings show that physicians respond to time conflict in a variety of ways, including time theft, an essential yet under-researched construct in the crowdsourcing literature which reflects the tension between traditional work and crowdsourcing. Second, by analyzing archival data of 4,034 doctors’ 3.1 million time records on a Chinese healthcare platform across half a year, I show that time theft for crowdsourcing is related to the traditional work context, including hospitals’ boundary control and offline crowd worker social groups. Finally, I further explore, via interview data, why such seemingly costly and deviant time theft is adopted by mobile doctors. The findings reveal that medical professionals assume the extra burden of working for crowdsourcing with the hope of answering unfulfilled occupational callings in traditional work and adding meaning to their work. Overall, these findings contribute to a better understanding of the shifting nature of work and careers in the digital economy by documenting and explaining mobile doctors’ participation in this new world of work