I thought it might be a good idea to note down some of the ideas inspired by speaking to members of the Affective Atlas team about the BurnMap project.
I found the process very helpful, especially at such an early stage in my PhD. It really got me into the right frame of mind to start thinking about what types of questions I’d like to explore and (possibly) answer. It’s also given me a great start in understanding the context in which I’ll be working, which will be a major part of the research I undertake.
I’m not sure about some of these headings/groupings yet, but here’s what i’ve come up with:
Collecting useful data
- Improving how park rangers collect data
- The potential for crowdsourcing data collection
- Using ambient/invisible technology that lives in the environment and reports back automatically (weather sensors, mesh network of smart nodes)
Disseminating knowledge
- Knowing what knowledge experienced park rangers have accumulated over the years, and exploring how to capture and communicate that to more junior staff
- Being aware of what knowledge has to be learned through experience, but allowing other data to supplement and support that learning process through some kind of tool or process
It’s about making the process of starting again when people move on easier, and allowing new rangers to come up to speed on complex topics quickly and efficiently
Turning data into knowledge, and using it more effectively
- How to visualise complex data so it makes sense and can be used by people
- Again, understanding the context in which knowledge is used to inform the visualisation. Specific data is only important to certain people in certain situations.
There are millions of dollars in consultants reports lying around. We always commission new ones because no-one understands of can find the existing data
Make decisions
- knowing the types of decisions that are required, who makes them, the context in which they are made and what is useful in supporting them
- Visualise scientific data in a meaningful way
- Help rangers justify their decisions to internal and external groups
There are lots of political issues when it comes to land management, we need new tools to communicate information and that allow use to show how they led to a decision
Feeding experience back to the system
- Explore how rangers make use of their field experience and ‘instinct’ to establish whether predictions and recommendations provided by a GIS are accurate and/or trustworthy
- Explore how they can feed back this knowledge to help reduce the gap in accuracy
These are obviously very light notes, but I suspect these points represent a ballpark estimate on where I’ll be starting my reading and research. I plan on continuing to develop some of these ideas futher, pending comments and guidance from my very knowledgeable supervisors.
Until next time…
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