"Combating Hegemonic Cartographic Discourses with Drones"
   by Britta Ricker
   Live captioning by Norma Miller.
   @whitecoatcapxg
   
   >> All right, thanks, Tyler, and now welcome Dr. Britta Ricker.
   >> Hi. Thank you. So I am a professor at the University of Washington Tacoma, which is just about 30 minutes south of here when there's no traffic, and I teach primarily in the masters of geospatial technology, and so that is why I have an overly academic title for this presentation, but it is intentional. 
   So whenever I tell people I work with drones, you just see their face change, and through the media, and these images we're getting online, like people automatically think militarization, and drones are just  associated with negative connotations. We also know that maps hold power, and maps have been used for Imperialism, maps have been used to take over new lands and claim ownership, so this is where I'm coming from.
   Maps have power. Greater weight is given to knowledge expressed in quantitative forms, and also represented in cartographic form, so Tyler did a great presentation talking about all of these different indicators we use in different governmental organizations and intergovernmental organizations.
   And aerial imagery is particularly seen as authoritative and seen as truth. But we know that when we get imagery from the government or from Google or anywhere else, that truth is set in that time that that image was taken, so we're constrained by the imagery that we're able to access from governmental organizations. 
   And then through -- this is the imagery that we use to then create the vectors, we digitize vectors based on this imagery so it's extremely valuable and right now in the state of volunteer geographic information we're contributing largely vectors, not rasters. And in the media when we do see drones adapted for mapping, it's primarily for disaster response, environmental monitoring by highly trained scientists, precision agriculture and humanitarian efforts. But first it's important to recognize that disaster isn't just disaster response. There are many phases to disaster, it's a cycle. So in a disaster you should be prepared, hopefully we're all prepared. Preparedness is the most important. 
   There's also, before preparedness, mitigation. Then you have the actual event and that's when the response kicks in, and we all know how maps are important for response and resilience, getting a community back on its feet.
   And also, different people have different spatial data needs during different phases of a disaster. And it's really important to recognize that it's not just for response. So a local example of how imagery was helpful for environmental scientists to understand a response and also a response, the Oso landslide. This is a really big event where drones were used heavily. One woman who does a lot of work with drones for disaster response, her name is Robin Murphy. She has a fantastic TED talk, and she concludes her TED talk with, "It's not about the robots. We have the robots. It's about the data and delivering the data to the right people in a timely fashion," so that's really the big challenge.
   Precision agriculture is one industry that has made remarkable progress in terms of delivering timely information to farmers. Mica sense is a company that develops multisensors that can be attached to drones and they have data that you can identify a tree in the middle of an orchard that's diseased that you wouldn't otherwise see from this technology, so we can learn from these other industries, example of humanitarian response.
   And then of course, HOT. HOT we had a lot of talks from. But we know drones are beneficial, why aren't more people using them regularly? Well, it's hard, you need technical know-how to understand the data. It's hard. But some of these barriers are coming down. Drones are becoming more prevalent, they're more accessible, so this access to imagery is this is a barrier that's -- we're overcoming, so drone enthusiasts now can contribute aerial imagery that is so authoritative and valuable. aged so on the bottom are some screenshots of my classmates and my students and I flying.
   And I'm really excited about pushing my research towards how can citizens generate their own aerial imagery that is so authoritative? Well, the temporal resolution, can fly over more often and get that granularity you need to monitor continuous or acute changes in a landscape, spatial resolution, increased coverage, there are so many reasons why this could be valuable and I specifically have been working with the phantom, because it's the most popular drone out there so I'm intentionally using that one, because it's accessible.
   But you know, Jane doe enthusiast drone flier, how does she catch these images that she's catching through drone and turn them into an ortho rectified photo? That's the challenge. First you have the flight, assuming you don't crash it and you land it safely and that the appropriate metadata is attached to each one of your images, then you can stitch the images around create a geoTIFF. But also 3D models and all these other exciting byproducts. As an educator I'm most excited about the analysis and teaching my students how to analyze the data that's captured and then there's the aggregation piece and then sharing the information with the relevant stakeholders.
   Now, to do each one of these steps, you need multiple different people or you need multiple different software systems, so I just took a random sample of software required to do each one of these steps and then I highlighted the open source ones, so we have open drone map, and then you'll notice that there's only one on there that is focusing on the sharing and aggregation, which is so important to our open source community.
   And that is OpenAerialMap. Now, has anyone used OpenAerialMap before?
   OK, well, if you need any imagery or you have any imagery to contribute, I highly recommend checking it out.
   So this is actually the second iteration of OpenAerialMap, it started in about 2007 and kind of tapered off in 2008 and it's a project powered by the open imagery network, and now I really think it's going to take off, because the technology has been shifting so quickly and more people have drones, and we see this need for more raster data, there's more an opportunity to contribute more raster data. And I want to give a tip of the hat to more contributors. I'm a user, I mean I've contributed imagery, but I'm really in awe of the work that has been done here. There's a catalog of imagery. And this is what the user interface looks like so it's really quite easy to use. You can zoom to the region that you're interested in either contributing or extracting imagery and then it shows you what imagery is available. So you can see here there's a lot satellite aiming from the government and there's one geoTIFF.
   So it's a platform that we could actually share data. So you have governmental data being pushed from the top down and the grassroots sharing data into this database to be shared and augment each other.
   And now I'm going to talk about about two examples from my own research that I haven't used OAM exclusively, but I could see how OAM could really help in these efforts and first the REM song stand in the place where you live? Yeah, so drone the place you live. I had a student call me and say hey, there's a landslide and it would be really helpful if you could come take recent imagery of this landslide. Here's a picture of the landslide.
   Then we were able to take previous imagery to monitor, well, was this an acute change or was this a continuous landslide? Was there any land use change that may have contributed to this land side? Oh, hey, wait, there's a deck that slid down the cliff, and it appears they might not have had a permit for that deck, so having this type of imagery and generating yourself can really help you make informed decisions about your own backyard. Martha Stewart regularly drones her yard to make -- to help with this decisionmaking process. 
   That's right, good job, Martha Stewart. But the imagery that we have, we don't really know the whole story, we're constrained by the time stamps that are available.
   A second case that I want to talk about really it's very similar to a lot of the things that Tyler was mentioning, so last summer I went to cape town South Africa to learn a little bit more about their open data practices, so Cape Town is the first city to use open data. So the orange is my GPX tracks, and the white is OSM in Carto, not CartoDB, Carto. And then if you zoom out, you can see, OK, there are some communities around, not much going on. But then when you turn on the imagery, it's like, oh, actually there's a lot going on. So Cape Town is a very complex place so there's formal settlements and informal settlements and I was walking in the informal settlements and you can see that people there, they don't own the land, but they are homeowners, they aren't landowners, but they are homeowners. This is what it looks like when you're walking through the community. This is the parcel data when you overlay the information on the digital imagery. So there is some missing information in the open data repository and all of us, as part of the OpenStreetMap community, we have a role to play in this. We risk reproducing inequalities, and Sarah Elwood from the University of Washington, she walls this for active engagement to combat inequalities through modern forms of map making, so this is a unique opportunity for all of us. In that community as visiting there's a nongovernmental organization called violence prevention through urban upgrading and they're working with the community, similar to what Tyler was talking about where they digitize each of the rooftops. So just because they don't own the land they do own the four walls that they have erected for their family and in this process they've taught the community to you to use QGIS.
   It's kind of like a deed, too, if the person dies, this is who it's left to. And it can be used for setting up bills, it's a formalized process. And so this is another opportunity where the government can share data and then the community can share data and it can be put together, this is a theoretical thing, but it would be amazing and I think OAM could be one of the platforms, so bringing it back to OAM, if you don't have the before imagery, if you don't have consistent temporal resolution, the imagery might be less useful. Drones provide an opportunity to monitor gradual, acute, continuous changes, all of the above and in regions that are important to you, and it's an opportunity to forge new relationships with authoritative sources, but also with drone enthusiasts.
   So I had a chat with Seth Fitzsimmons in preparation for this talk -- thank you, Seth if you're here -- and he was saying, well, as an educator, so I go to OAM just to find imagery a lot, well, what would be helpful so in the future, it would be awesome if you could search by sensor, by temporal resolution, and spatial had you been. This would be the dream wish list. Wouldn't it be awesome if OAM also had image recognition? That would be awesome if it was already built in. Sotera pattern as anybody played with this? That's incredible.
   I'm talking with the fire chief tomorrow. He was saying it would be awesome if we could tell where fuel deposits are.
   If you worked with snap sat? I highly recommend it, it's really fun.
   But for a more realistic recommendation, I mean I think this is starting to happen a little bit on its own, but if there was social networking between the people who have the drones, versus the people who have the expertise to stitch the imagery or have the software to do that, and start a dialogue, because not everyone needs to do every single step, so it would be great if there was some social network so we could share the workload and share resources and I think again, OAM is a great platform for this. We could also learn from others. These are not open source programs. I'm real interested to figure out phones and drones, and the Nature Conservancy, so they're having people fly the coastline and other people with phones digitize the important information. I think it's something to keep an eye on and maybe learn from and one more plug for this idea of sharing data. Workflow is important to make important decisionmaking together. Maybe an alternative title for this talk is accommodating UAV imagery in spatial data in from a structure for a two-way decision support tool. I have a guest lecturer in my class giving lectures on counter mapping. 
   What is hegemony? Is it the crowd? Is it the government, is it something else? I don't know the answer, but just something for you to think about, too. The ideal as an educator and academic, I can be idealistic, and more data, more eyes can lead to learning, I hope, and I hope also lead to informed decisionmaking and informed policymaking.
   And with that, I thank you for listening to my talk. Any questions? Yes?
   AUDIENCE MEMBER:  So is there an effort to make this more rural-oriented in the sense that you know, a lot of the data we have by how it's generated is more urban focused, you know, we have a lot of urban data, and especially the drones, people with drones, probably especially you know, like civilians live in areas that are more urban, so there a way that you guys want to expand this into rural areas, or rural mapping, population mapping, infrastructure mapping?
   >> My goal with my research is just to come up with a workflow that can be recommended to others. So anyone can go and buy a relatively inexpensive drone and use it whatever needs they have. So that would be a great idea and I know there is a lot of work being done in that regard in terms of rural mapping, but it's mostly for agriculture from what I've been reading recently, but that would be fascinating, do you have a project in mind or --
   AUDIENCE MEMBER:  No, I notice there's a lot of lack of information about rural areas, especially in developing parts of the world, so I mean I'm guessing if you leave this methodology alone, it will mostly focus on either individual focus points or urban areas, so I was just wondering whether there's some deliberate push to make is so that it accommodates rural mapping, as well.
   >> Hm, yeah, I'll think about that. Thanks.
   AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Hi there. I'm from Canada, so they have tons and tons of reasonable, but somewhat excessive, rules against drone flying. Have you come against this problem in your work and how do you navigate that?
   >> Well, so drone enthusiasts can fly where they want, when they want, within reason, so they have to fly under 400 feet and so actually that's why I'm really targeting this population, because they have the most freedom and I kept putting in there's a whole South Park area about drone flying, but this is the area that has the most freedom. The enthusiasts, as far as I understand it in the US right now, they have the most freedom, so if, yeah, go fly.
   AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Thank you.
   >> All right, thanks Dr. Ricker.
   [applause]