The impact of contributor confidence, expertise and distance on the crowdsourced land cover data quality

There is much interest in the opportunities for formal scientific investigations afforded by crowdsourcing and citizen sensing activities. However, one of the critical research issues relates to the 'quality' of the data collected in this way. This paper uses volunteer data on land cover collected under the Geo-Wiki system, where contributors label the land cover class at a series of locations, with expert labels at the same locations. It examines the statistical relationships between the accuracy of volunteer labels, their self assessed confidence in labeling, their 'experiential distance' to the location under consideration and the level of their domain expertise. The results show that distance has a minor effect on the reliability of land cover labeling, and that generally expertise has a greater effect, but not for all landcover classes

Probabilistic latent semantic analysis as a potential method for integrating spatial data concepts

In this paper we explore the use of Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (PLSA) as a method for quantifying semantic differences between land cover classes. The results are promising, revealing ‘hidden’ or not easily discernible data concepts. PLSA provides a ‘bottom up’ approach to interoperability problems for users in the face of ‘top down’ solutions provided by formal ontologies. We note the potential for a meta-problem of how to interpret the concepts and the need for further research to reconcile the top-down and bottom-up approaches

Geographically weighted correspondence matrices for local error reporting and change analyses: mapping the spatial distribution of errors and change

This letter describes and applies generic methods for generating local measures from the correspondence table. These were developed by integrating the functionality of two existing R packages: gwxtab and diffeR. They demonstrate how spatially explicit accuracy and error measures can be generated from local geographically weighted correspondence matrices, for example to compare classified and reference data (predicted and observed) for error analyses, and classes at times t1 and t2 for change analyses. The approaches in this letter extend earlier work that considered the measures derived from correspondence matrices in the context of generalized linear models and probability. Here the methods compute local, geographically weighted correspondence matrices, from which local statistics are directly calculated. In this case a selection of the overall and categorical difference measures proposed by Pontius and Milones (2011) and Pontius and Santacruz (2014), as well as spatially distributed estimates of kappa coefficients, User and Producer accuracies. The discussion reflects on the use of the correspondence matrix in remote sensing research, the philosophical underpinnings of local rather than global approaches for modelling landscape processes and the potential for policy and scientific benefits that local approaches support

Proposed Environmental Quality Standards for Phenol in Water

This is the Proposed Environmental Quality Standards (EQS) for Phenol in Water prepared for the National Rivers Authority, and published by the Environment Agency in 1995. The report reviews the properties and uses of phenol, its fate, behaviour and reported concentrations in the environment and critically assesses the available data on its toxicity and bioaccumulation. The information is used to derive EQSs for the protection of fresh and saltwater life and for the abstraction of water to potable supply. Phenol is widely used as a chemical intermediate and the main sources for phenol in the environment are of anthropogenic origin. Phenol may also be formed during natural decomposition of organic material. The persistence of phenol in the aquatic environment is low with biodegradation being the main degradation process (half-lives of hours to days). Phenol is moderately toxic to aquatic organisms and its potential to bioaccumulate in aquatic organisms is low

Pharmaceuticals in soils of lower income countries: Physico-chemical fate and risks from wastewater irrigation.

Population growth, increasing affluence, and greater access to medicines have led to an increase in active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) entering sewerage networks. In areas with high wastewater reuse, residual quantities of APIs may enter soils via irrigation with treated, partially treated, or untreated wastewater and sludge. Wastewater used for irrigation is currently not included in chemical environmental risk assessments and requires further consideration in areas with high water reuse. This study critically assesses the contemporary understanding of the occurrence and fate of APIs in soils of low and lower-middle income countries (LLMIC) in order to contribute to the development of risk assessments for APIs in LLMIC. The physico-chemical properties of APIs and soils vary greatly globally, impacting on API fate, bioaccumulation and toxicity. The impact of pH, clay and organic matter on the fate of organic ionisable compounds is discussed in detail. This study highlights the occurrence and the partitioning and degradation coefficients for APIs in soil:porewater systems, API usage data in LLMICS and removal rates (where used) within sewage treatment plants as key areas where data are required in order to inform robust environmental risk assessment methodologies

Semantic analysis of citizen sensing, crowdsourcing and VGI

This paper describes a semantic analysis of terms used to describe citizen sensing and crowdsourced data use in scientific analyses. It applies a latency analysis to journal abstracts downloaded from Scopus that matched one of number of terms related to crowd sourced data and citizen science. The latency analysis shows how the terms associated with crowdsourcing are related and how they have evolved over time.JRC.H.6-Digital Earth and Reference Dat

Developmental toxicity of metaldehyde in the embryos of Lymnaea stagnalis (Gastropoda: Pulmonata) co-exposed to the synergist piperonyl butoxide.

Metaldehyde is a widely used molluscicide in countries where damage to crops from slugs and snails is a major problem associated with warm and wet winters. In the UK it is estimated that over 8% of the area covered by arable crops is treated with formulated granular bait pellets containing metaldehyde as the main active ingredient. Metaldehyde is hydrophilic (log Kow=0.12), water soluble (200 mg·L(-1) at 17 °C) and has been detected in UK surface waters in the concentration range of typically 0.2-0.6 μg·L(-1) (maximum 2.7 μg·L(-1)) during 2008-2011. In the absence of chronic data on potential hazards to non-target freshwater molluscs, a laboratory study was conducted to investigate the impact of metaldehyde on embryo development in the gastropod Lymnaea stagnalis (RENILYS strain) and using zinc as a positive control. L. stagnalis embryos were exposed to metaldehyde under semi-static conditions at 20±1 °C and hatching success and growth (measured as shell height and intraocular distance) examined after 21 d. Exposure concentrations were verified using HPLC and gave 21 d (hatching)NOEC and (hatching)LOEC mean measured values of 36 and 116 mg MET·L(-1), respectively (equal to the 21 d (shell height)NOEC and (shell height)LOEC values). For basic research purposes, a second group of L. stagnalis embryos was co-exposed to metaldehyde and the pesticide synergist piperonyl butoxide (PBO). Co-exposure to the PBO (measured concentrations between 0.47-0.56 mg·L(-1)) reduced hatching success from 100% to 47% and resulted in a 30% reduction in embryo growth (shell height) in snail embryos co-exposed to metaldehyde at 34-36 mg·L(-1) over 21 d. In conclusion, these data suggest mollusc embryos may have some metabolic detoxication capacity for metaldehyde and further work is warranted to explore this aspect in order to support the recent initiative to include molluscs in the OECD test guideline programme

Comparison of Data Fusion Methods Using Crowdsourced Data in Creating a Hybrid Forest Cover Map

Data fusion represents a powerful way of integrating individual sources of information to produce a better output than could be achieved by any of the individual sources on their own. This paper focuses on the data fusion of different land cover products derived from remote sensing. In the past, many different methods have been applied, without regard to their relative merit. In this study, we compared some of the most commonly-used methods to develop a hybrid forest cover map by combining available land cover/forest products and crowdsourced data on forest cover obtained through the Geo-Wiki project. The methods include: nearest neighbour, naive Bayes, logistic regression and geographically-weighted logistic regression (GWR), as well as classification and regression trees (CART). We ran the comparison experiments using two data types: presence/absence of forest in a grid cell; percentage of forest cover in a grid cell. In general, there was little difference between the methods. However, GWR was found to perform better than the other tested methods in areas with high disagreement between the inputs

Distance metric choice can both reduce and induce collinearity in geographically weighted regression

This paper explores the impact of different distance metrics on collinearity in local regression models such as geographically weighted regression. Using a case study of house price data collected in Hà Nội, Vietnam, and by fully varying both power and rotation parameters to create different Minkowski distances, the analysis shows that local collinearity can be both negatively and positively affected by distance metric choice. The Minkowski distance that maximised collinearity in a geographically weighted regression was approximate to a Manhattan distance with (power = 0.70) with a rotation of 30°, and that which minimised collinearity was parameterised with power = 0.05 and a rotation of 70°. The results indicate that distance metric choice can provide a useful extra tuning component to address local collinearity issues in spatially varying coefficient modelling and that understanding the interaction of distance metric and collinearity can provide insight into the nature and structure of the data relationships. The discussion considers first, the exploration and selection of different distance metrics to minimise collinearity as an alternative to localised ridge regression, lasso and elastic net approaches. Second, it discusses the how distance metric choice could extend the methods that additionally optimise local model fit (lasso and elastic net) by selecting a distance metric that further helped minimise local collinearity. Third, it identifies the need to investigate the relationship between kernel bandwidth, distance metrics and collinearity as an area of further work

Participation in Transition(s):Reconceiving Public Engagements in Energy Transitions as Co-Produced, Emergent and Diverse

This paper brings the transitions literature into conversation with constructivist Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspectives on participation for the first time. In doing so we put forward a conception of public and civil society engagement in sustainability transitions as co-produced, relational, and emergent. Through paying close attention to the ways in which the subjects, objects, and procedural formats of public engagement are constructed through the performance of participatory collectives, our approach offers a framework to open up to and symmetrically compare diverse and interconnected forms of participation that make up wider socio-technical systems. We apply this framework in a comparative analysis of four diverse cases of civil society involvement in UK low carbon energy transitions. This highlights similarities and differences in how these distinct participatory collectives are orchestrated, mediated, and subject to exclusions, as well as their effects in producing particular visions of the issue at stake and implicit models of participation and ‘the public’. In conclusion we reflect on the value of this approach for opening up the politics of societal engagement in transitions, building systemic perspectives of interconnected ‘ecologies of participation’, and better accounting for the emergence, inherent uncertainties, and indeterminacies of all forms of participation in transitions