Filling OpenStreetMap data gaps in rural Nepal: a digital youth internship and leadership programme

Crowdsourced, open geospatial data such as the data compiled through OpenStreetMap have proven useful in addressing humanitarian, disaster and development needs. However, the existing ways in which volunteers engage in OpenStreetMap have inherent limitations that lead to critical data gaps in economically underdeveloped countries and regions. Various initiatives that target specific geospatial data gaps and engage volunteers for longer periods have emerged to overcome these limitations, yet there has been limited in-depth study of such targeted mapping initiatives. This article reports the findings from Digital Internship and Leadership (DIAL), a programme designed to fill data gaps in rural Nepal by engaging young people in mapping rural Nepal by integrating targeted mapping, a virtual internship strategy and youth leadership development. The findings suggest the potential benefits of targeted mapping initiatives embedded in youth leadership internship programmes to address those critical data gaps

Analyzing Crisis Response through Actor-network Theory: The Case of Kathmandu Living Labs

Crisis response is the most critical stage in crisis management during which actors make important decisions on mitigating a crisis. However, the decision making in such situations is a complex sociotechnical phenomenon. The literature specifies crisis response to include four steps (i.e., observation, interpretation, choice, and dissemination) and suggests a sociotechnical approach for analyzing them. However, we still lack theoretical guidelines for conducting sociotechnical analyses of the complexity involved in the crisis response activities. To help fill this knowledge gap, we present an interpretive case study on Kathmandu Living Labs’ (KLL) role in the response to the Nepal earthquake in 2015. We analyze the case using actor-network theory (ANT) and explore how a social entrepreneur from KLL enrolled different technical and human actors and mobilized them in the crisis response. We use ANT to explore the temporal and interdependent role of digital volunteers, local communities, and technologies in responding to the crisisWe demonstrate the usefulness of ANT’s translation process in understanding the complex sociotechnical process of crisis response in disaster events

Participants' Motivations to Contribute Geographic Information in an Online Community

121 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010.In addition to geographic information, the findings of this dissertation have implications for the development of other online communities, local and regional planning, and governance and citizen participation. People's desire to contribute local knowledge should not be understood in limited terms of the geometric primitives of point, line, and polygon; rather, it should be interpreted as an expression of a desire to participate in the broad processes of social, cultural, and technological transformation. If this excitement can be tapped, it will set a new stage for participatory discourse with government and fellow citizens. The resulting collective intelligence might prove to be an asset for transforming 21st century societies.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD