The Role of the Neogeography for Geospatial Information Sharing:

the Case Studies of the Crisis Mapping Project and the FOSS4G Community in Japan

© OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA© sinsai.info All Rights Reserved.

Toshikazu SETO （ Ph.D)CGA, Harvard Univ. ＆ DH-JAC, Ritsumeikan Univ.

2012 ABCD-GIS Meeting, December 19, 2012 @ CGIS South S050

Agenda• Introductions• Overview of the Crisis Geospatial Information

Sharing during the 311 Disasters• Case Studies “Crisis Mapping Project using FOSS4G”:– Base Map Creations (OSGeo.JP & OSM)– SNS + Mapping Platform (sinsai.info & Ushahidi)

• For the Monitoring and Recovery• Conclusions

Introductions: Concepts

Neogeography•Neogeography combines the complex techniques of cartography and GIS and places them within reach of users and developers.•Neogeography is about sharing location information with friends and visitors, helping to shape contexts, and conveying an understanding through the knowledge of place.•Andrew Turner (2006): 『 Introduction to Neogeography 』

Volunteered Geographic Information• Citizens are using handheld devices to collect geographic

information and contribute it to crowd-sourced data sets; they are employing Web-based mapping interfaces to mark and annotate geographic features…

• These citizens are largely untrained; their actions are almost always voluntary, and their results may or may not be accurate.

• However, their activities represent a dramatic innovation that will certainly have profound impacts on GIS.

• Michael Goodchild (2007): “Citizens as Sensors”

Neocartography & FOSS4G (Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial)

• “Map makers who may not have come from traditional mapping backgrounds, and are frequently using open data and open source mapping tools …..

• ….. the availability of data and tools allows these neocartographers both to make their own maps and often be the intended audience as well – that is to say they may make the maps for themselves, just because they can…(http://neocartography.icaci.org/mission-and-aims/)

• Chilton, S. (2008), M.J. Kraak (2011)

Crisis mapping

• Crisis Mapping is thus live mapping that is focused on crises, broadly defined, from slow-burn crises to sudden-onset disasters. Crisis Mapping is certainly not restricted to political crises; it may include social and environmental ones as well. (Meier, 2011)

• Ushahidi is a free and open source software (LGPL) program available for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping.

http://irevolution.net/2011/01/20/what-is-crisis-mapping/

Overview of the Crisis Geospatial Information Sharing during the 311 Disasters

Background

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mah_japan/4479363670/ CC-BY 2.0http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisa_joy/5071045906/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

• Great Hanshin Earthquake of January 15, 1995• The first year of activity by citizens volunteers• The focus on the GIS by the local government• The first Japanese GIS law established (May, 2007)

The Great East Japan Earthquake• The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011

brought catastrophic damage to a huge area of Japan.

• In comparison to the 1995 earthquake, a greater tsunami caused more devastation and a grave nuclear accident(Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power) .

• Although the traffic and communication infrastructures were interrupted, people shared information on area damage or the conditions of victims by using social media, such as Twitter and the mobile Internet (Tsuda 2011, Peary, Shaw and Takeuchi 2012).

Enterprise: Google Crisis Response

Traffic Performance Information

http://www.google.co.jp/intl/ja/crisisresponse/japanquake2011_traffic.html

Professionals: ArcGIS Online

http://bit.ly/Owiof5

http://map311.ecom-plat.jp/map/map/?mid=40&cid=3&gid=0

Professionals: Association of Japanese Geographers (ex. Geoserver+GeoExt)

Map Company: Mapion (ex. Mapserver)

Citizens: Map of Food Supplies & Evacuation places

http://bit.ly/hKcDQw

Neogeographers: The East Japan Earthquake Archive

http://shinsai.mapping.jp/

International Archive Projects: Harvard Univ.

http://cegrp.cga.harvard.edu/japan/?q=content/homehttp://worldmap.harvard.edu/maps/397/

http://beta.jdarchive.org/ja/home

Progress and Issues

• Many portal sites started very quickly (one to five days after the disaster)

• They used FOSS4G architecture and API services• Some of the Japanese enterprise/professional

projects were mainly Web-map representation (source data could not be obtained and reused).

• Some of the projects closed or did not update their websites one-year after 311.

Case Studies: “Crisis Mapping Project using FOSS4G”

Overviews

• Rectified aerial photos• Construction of open (Jpn-Eng)

gazetteer database• ML, Twitter

OSGeo.JP

OSGeo.JP Corroborate with Neogeographers

• Beginning with OSGeoJP, discuss ML and Twitter.

• Over 20 volunteers joined the project.• About 100 aerial photographs were geo-

rectified in two days. • Thousands of photographs were merged with

GDAL• Some related projects were setup in order to

facilitate this work.

@wata909 (Nobusuke Iwasaki: Project Manager)

Using Cloud Services

Many Satellite Data allow to use by OSMJAXA/ALOS, DigitalGlobe etc…

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JA:2011_Sendai_earthquake_and_tsunami/Imageries

• Mapping using aerial photos• Import GIS data• Translation• OSM Wiki, IRC, Twitter, Drupal

OpenStreetMap(OSM)

Japanese OSM Users and key=highway Statistics

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Techstrom/JapanData

262011.032011.10

Japan.osm (18GB)(daily dump file)

$ spatialite_osm_net -o japan121118.osm –d ja121118.sqlite -T features

sqliteman

ex. SELECT k, COUNT(v)FROM "osm_way_tags"GROUP BY k

ArcGIS forOpenStreetMap

Geodatabase-osm_pt, osm_ln, osm_ply

80,034,276 nodes6,801,613 ways12,301 relations（ time: 18 h 3 m 14 sec ）

inserted 80,034,276 nodes 25,972,822 tagsinserted 6,801,613 ways 44,327,471 tags 89,638,321 node-refsinserted 12,301 relations 64,698 tags 191,977 refs

Spatialite

Workflow

2011/3/11 – 4/11

2011/3/11 – 4/11

2011/3/11 – 4/11

• Disaster information management through SMS

• System development• Github, Yammer, Lingr (Skype), Twitter

Sinsai.info(Ushahidi)

sinsai.info （ SocialMedia + Map: Opensource Platform)

platform for disaster information sharing connecting reports with some locational information to the maps (The word of ‘sinsai’: disaster in Japanese) http://sinsai.info/

・ Release: 18:26 Mar. 11th (14:46 earthquake occurred)・ moderators: about 20 members developer:10 members・ gross participants: over 300 members・ supporting companies: over 15 (Amazon,Yahoo, NTT, NTT Data, etc..)・ Reports: 23,836, PageView: 628,534 （ 3/11-4/22 ）・ OutputsAPI (KML&REST API), GitHub (https://github.com/sinsai), Android …

reports

mail

website other sites

checked by the moderators

collection and checking reports#jishin:earthquake #j_j_helpme:need help #hinan:evacuation#anpi: safety confirmationreport@sinsai.info

For the Monitoring and Recovery

The Big Data Workshop for Project 311 #sinsaidata(Hosted by Google & Twitter Japan)

”Mass Media Coverage Map” of The East Japan Earthquake(http://media.mapping.jp/)

Totsukawa-village (Nara Pref.) Disaster Map

https://totsukawa.crowdmap.com/

Radiation Measurements by local government: Geo-visualization of Neogeographers

Using Google Fusion Tables (@d_shiba)

https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S206201bfzG

x

The Supports of Recovery and Restoration using IT x OSM

Kenichi Takahashihttp://www.flickr.com/photos/ktaka/5745142690 ・ 5742669976 　

Ideathon + Hackathon

http://www.slideshare.net/hal_sk/sinsaiinfo-and-hack-for-japan-social-media-weekby Hal Seki

Engineers

Designers

Others

NPO/NGO etc-

Hack-a-thon

Join

Support

ProblemsIdeas,Human resources

Why is a restoration map needed ?• Response to local “Up-to-date” information• Official guide by Chamber of Commerce 　⇔ OSM• The possibility of collaboration by volunteers and residents

Source: http://kamaishi-town.com/

2012/03/20 First Mapping Party in Kamaishi

■Purpose•Where is the restoration ?•What kinds of the restoration ?•(Geo-)visualization of the recently conditions

■Challenges•Collected detail information from the local residents•It wants to visit a lot of people in Kamaishi

2012/03/20 First Mapping Party in Kamaishi■Challenges•Collected detail information from local residents•Desire to visit many people in Kamaishi•Contacted over 40 people in fieldwork (using GPS) and introduced OSM editing•Logistics support by Yokohama-team

2012/03/16

2012/03/24

2012/05/12-13 Second Mapping Party in Kamaishi

■Purpose•What kind of restoration map?•Discussion of the map’s features: shops, public facilities, tourism resources, etc.•The development of Pdf and/or paper-based self-making restoration map using OSM data

2012/09/01-02 Field Excursion Tour with HOT

https://www.facebook.com/groups/hack4iwate.osm/

Before 311 Earthquakes

311 Earthquakes after one month

After the 1st Mapping Party

After the 2nd Mapping Party

After the HOT Excursion Tour

What kind of the restorationmap feature(s)

• Targeting shops– The name of the

shop– Type of the service– Opening-closing

time– Telephone number– When is it open,

and where is it located?

The Discussion of Restore Mapping Tag

namename:ja_kanaamenitycuisineopening_hoursphoneaddr:fullrestart_daysource

Evacuation Housingamenity=shelter

Massage shopshop=massage

61

The localization and re-designing of based MapOSMatic by Restoration Map Team (ongoing)

Making User Manual of Field Papers by Restoration Map Team(ongoing)

Conclusions• The Neogeographers contributed a vast amount

of visual geospatial information in the response period.

• Crowd sourcing and FOSS4G easily furthered networking activities.

• The awareness of information sharing and openness in crisis response increased.

• FOSS4G and Neogeography were committed to other possible disaster uses.(However, they were not able to deliver information and services directly to disaster area residents.)

Issues• The difficulty of the evaluation– VGI’s voluminous data; citizen motivation

• The gap of the IT literacy and GIS skills in the Tohoku area– Continuing collaboration with Tohoku area is

necessary

• Too many geospatial archive projects and related social network channels– The continuity of the project and community growth– SNS: Twitter, Facebook, Lingr, Redmine, GitHub, etc.

The Role of the Neogeography and VGI for Next Steps

• More active support for mapping by local residents• The special needs of easy-use, restoration

mapping • The visualization of opening-closing times,

holidays, etc.– Not only by neogeographers but also citizens

• Need for more educational opportunities and resources to prepare (neo)geographers for next crisis

Thank you for your attention !

Twitter & Facebook: @tosseto E-mail: tos@lt.ritsumei.ac.jp

Special Thanks to: Nishimura, Y., Furuhashi, T., Seki, H., Kamaishi Mapping Team, OSMFJ and OSGeo.JP