All the protestors fit to count: using geospatial affordances to estimate protest event size

Protest events are a hallmark of social movement tactics. Large crowds in public spaces send a clear message to those in authority. Consequently, estimating crowd size is important for clarifying how much support a particular movement has been able to garner. This is significant for policymakers and constructing public opinion alike. Efforts to accurately estimate crowd size are plagued with issues: the cost of renting aircraft (if done by air), the challenge of visibility and securing building access (if done by rooftops), and issues related to perspective and scale (if done on the ground). Airborne camera platforms like drones, balloons, and kites are geospatial affordances that open new opportunities to better estimate crowd size. In this article we adapt traditional aerial imaging techniques for deployment on an “unmanned aerial vehicle” (UAV, popularly drone) and apply the method to small (1,000) and large (30,000+) events. Ethical guidelines related to drone safety are advanced, questions related to privacy are raised, and we conclude with a discussion of what standards should guide new technologies if they are to be used for the public good

Up in the Air: Applying the Jacobs Crowd Formula to Drone Imagery

The accurate estimation of event size is important for city planners, concert coordinators, social movements and anyone else interested in understanding how many people show up to an event. For social movements, the social theorists Charles Tilly long ago argued, large crowds signal worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment. Huge crowds on the street are a clear signal to authorities, the media, bystanders and the media itself. The same can be said for events with small turnouts. Event coordinators often have interests that lead to methods that inflate estimates. Critics and movement targets, on the other hand, are interested in minimizing the perceived size and scope of protests to their authority. Current efforts to estimate protest size have used on-the-ground methods (requiring many enumerators total control of the event area) or in-the-air methods (such as traditional aircraft, which are expensive and require advance notice and special permissions). Technological innovation involving Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (or "drones") provide an opportunity tomore accurately and affordably estimate crowd size. In this brief methods article we introduce a novel adaptation of a standard estimation model (Jacobs Crowd Formula) for use on an entirely new platform

Up in the Air: A Global Estimate of Non-Violent Drone Use 2009-2015

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, has increased dramatically in recent years. While most attention has gone to military drone use, commercial drones have gained widespread popularity, with uses ranging from leisure activities by hobbyists to humanitarian aid and disaster relief support by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and activist groups. This use has been hard to quantify and regulate. In an effort to better understand the rapid growth of non-weaponized drone, this report analyzes cases of worldwide drone use reported during a six-year period (2009-2015). Utilizing a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, we engage two distinct research questions: (1) what is the nature of civilian drone use over time, and (2) what regulatory responses exist to use at the international, state, and sub-state levels. This six-year window generated more than 15,000 news items for analysis, and resulted in a dataset of 1,145 unique uses. The findings are in line with popular reports: drone usage has grown significantly. New platforms in civilian hands are challenging the status quo response of both regulators and human rights groups. While ethical considerations make direct comparisons nearly useless, non-military use has eclipsed military use. This reality poses fresh challenges to national governments, local municipalities, businesses, and individual actors.https://digital.sandiego.edu/gdl2016report/1000/thumbnail.jp