Understanding Knife Crime and Trust in Police with Young People in East London

We explore young people’s experiences and perceptions of knife crime, and we compare these to the understanding of police experts, to explore the perceptions shaping trust in the police and policing. We carry out an experience sampling survey deployed using a mobile application reflecting on safety and knife crime, to understand young people’s daily lived experiences. We then use the mental models approach to interview young people and police experts and construct a shared mental model which identifies mismatches between the two groups and key areas of discord related to breakdown of trust and communication. We identify gaps, misconceptions and expectations for re-establishing trust and propose strategies to tackle knife crime and improve trust between young people and the police

Extreme citizen science: Lessons learned from initiatives around the globe

The participation of communities living in high conservation value areas is increasingly valued in conservation science and practice, potentially producing multiple positive impacts on both biodiversity and local people. Here, we discuss important steps for implementing a successful extreme citizen science project, based on four case studies from conservation projects with Pantaneiro fishers living in Brazilian Pantanal wetland, Baka hunter-gatherers and Fang farmers in lowland wet forest in Cameroon, Maasai pastoralists in Kenya, and Ju|'hoansi rangers living in the semiarid deserts of Namibia. We highlight the need for a high level of trust between the target communities and project developers, communities' right to choose the data they will be collecting, and researchers' openness to include new tools that were not initially planned. By following these steps, conservation scientists can effectively create bottom-up collaborations with those living on the frontlines of conservation through community-led extreme citizen science

Challenges, Strategies, and Impacts of Doing Citizen Science with Marginalised and Indigenous Communities : Reflections from Project Coordinators

Citizen science is growing and increasingly realizing its potential in terms of benefiting science and society. However, there are significant barriers to engaging participants in non-Western, non-educated, non-industrialised, non-rich and non-democratic contexts. By reflecting on the experiences of 15 citizen science project coordinators, this paper contributes to the small but growing body of knowledge attempting to identify barriers and opportunities of doing citizen science with marginalised and Indigenous communities. Challenges affecting participation in the analysed projects include issues that range from lack of basic infrastructure and participant safety to unbalanced knowledge hierarchies and data rights. We found that, to overcome these challenges, projects have used several strategies, from promoting decentralized and low-tech solutions to engaging in bottom-up actions from a human-rights approach. Finally, our analysis of project impacts supports the idea that doing citizen science with marginalised and Indigenous communities might have a greater impact for participants than for science, as scientific achievements (although valuable) were not among the most important impacts highlighted in terms of project success. By providing stories from the field in a structured way, we aim to guide, to inform, and to inspire other citizen science projects, and to, ultimately, contribute to broader participation in citizen science in the future

Challenges, Strategies, and Impacts of Doing Citizen Science with Marginalised and Indigenous Communities: Reflections from Project Coordinators

Citizen science is growing and increasingly realizing its potential in terms of benefiting science and society. However, there are significant barriers to engaging participants in non-Western, non-educated, non-industrialised, non-rich and non-democratic contexts. By reflecting on the experiences of 15 citizen science project coordinators, this paper contributes to the small but growing body of knowledge attempting to identify barriers and opportunities of doing citizen science with marginalised and Indigenous communities. Challenges affecting participation in the analysed projects include issues that range from lack of basic infrastructure and participant safety to unbalanced knowledge hierarchies and data rights. We found that, to overcome these challenges, projects have used several strategies, from promoting decentralized and low-tech solutions to engaging in bottom-up actions from a human-rights approach. Finally, our analysis of project impacts supports the idea that doing citizen science with marginalised and Indigenous communities might have a greater impact for participants than for science, as scientific achievements (although valuable) were not among the most important impacts highlighted in terms of project success. By providing stories from the field in a structured way, we aim to guide, to inform, and to inspire other citizen science projects, and to, ultimately, contribute to broader participation in citizen science in the futur

Which path and how fast? The effect of flight time and path on user understanding in 3-D fly-over animations

3-D fly-over animations offer a potentially powerful technique to communicate geographical data and concepts. However, there is little in the literature concerning how they are understood by viewers. In this study the effects of flight travel time and flight path around a landscape on user understanding are tested on a special case of 3-D fly-overs: 'map tours'. Results prove that being able to see an overview of the landscape during a map tour is important for user understanding but the effects on tilting and flight travel time are less conclusive. Implications of the results to designing effective 3-D fly-over animations are discussed

Extreme Citizen Science Contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals: Challenges and Opportunities for a Human-Centred Design Approach

Citizen science has been recognized for its potential to contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals in multiple ways (e.g., for defining and monitoring indicators, data production, etc.). In this paper, we focus on Extreme Citizen Science, which includes a set of situated, bottom-up practices, used for environmental monitoring purposes and for recording local indigenous knowledge, mainly in the Global South. Here we present and discuss the human-centered approach that the implementation of extreme citizen science requires, and we identify and discuss the challenges that we face as well as the opportunities that extreme citizen science initiatives can create for contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals

Sapelli

Sapelli is a group of open-source applications, aimed to be used within a wider socio-technical approach which means that the software is expected to be used within a social process that considers inclusivity, equity, and risks and benefits. The software enables people with no or limited literacy as well as limited technical literacy to collect, share and analyze spatial data. Sapelli operates within the framework of an “Extreme Citizen Science” (ECS) methodology, based on co-creation and participatory design. This approach puts communities at the center of the project design process, enabling them to identify challenges they wish to address, what data to collect and how, and what analyses are required to address the challenges they have identified. The process relies on the consent and participation of participants, who shape the form and direction that the project takes

What path and how fast? The effect of flight time and path on user spatial understanding in map tour animations

“This is an original manuscript / preprint of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Cartography and Geographic Information Science on 17 Feb 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/15230406.2016.1275812.

Improved Methods for Fire Risk Assessment in Low-Income and Informal Settlements

Fires cause over 300,000 deaths annually worldwide and leave millions more with permanent injuries: some 95% of these deaths are in low- and middle-income countries. Burn injury risk is strongly associated with low-income and informal (or slum) settlements, which are growing rapidly in an urbanising world. Fire policy and mitigation strategies in poorer countries are constrained by inadequate data on incidence, impacts, and causes, which is mainly due to a lack of capacity and resources for data collection, analysis, and modelling. As a first step towards overcoming such challenges, this project reviewed the literature on the subject to assess the potential of a range of methods and tools for identifying, assessing, and addressing fire risk in low-income and informal settlements; the process was supported by an expert workshop at University College London in May 2016. We suggest that community-based risk and vulnerability assessment methods, which are widely used in disaster risk reduction, could be adapted to urban fire risk assessment, and could be enhanced by advances in crowdsourcing and citizen science for geospatial data creation and collection. To assist urban planners, emergency managers, and community organisations who are working in resource-constrained settings to identify and assess relevant fire risk factors, we also suggest an improved analytical framework based on the Haddon Matrix