Track C. Sustainability knowledge sharing: from individuals to countries
Track Chairs:
Marco Painho. NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS), Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal.
Ivone Pereira Martins. European Environment Agency, Denmark.
Contacts: painho@novaims.unl.pt; Ivone.PereiraMartins@eea.europa.eu
Goals and objectives of the track
Top-down approaches have prevailed and still are the most common practice on gathering information about the environment, society and sustainability in general. The operations of data acquisition are normally based on surveys, field measurements and observations, sensor networks or a combination of two or more methods.
In recent years the relevance of lay and local knowledge and the collection of data voluntarily provided by citizens in a bottom-up way through crowd-sourcing mechanisms (citizen science, CS) has gained a tremendous growth that is supported by low-cost, but accurate, technologies such as GPS devices embedded in mobile phones, cameras, watches and all sorts of devices and sensors which allow not only to collect the data but also to georeference it. While the last are key in monitoring water quality, air pollution among many others, CS plays a major role on biodiversity, noise or mobility monitoring.
Data can and is also being collected (not without raising some ethical issues) in an involuntary way through the analysis of social networks).
The data collected by institutions, corporations and citizens originates a gigantic flow of information and knowledge creation that can and should be shared with society in general. However there are many challenges both from a technical and governance point of view that need to be overcome. There is a need to streamline this information into infrastructures that are able to properly store, analyze, display and share not only the collected data but also the methodologies used to collect it, the institutional contexts, and the results of those analysis and, at the same time, allowing for feedback and scrutiny from the society.
Some, but few, steps have been taken in this direction which are many times due to an artificial “divide” between those interested in sustainability objectives and those in the information systems and data analytics area.
We are seeking contributions on main questions driving the debate, including:
- Streamlining of data produced by citizens in citizen science processes, voluntary geographic information, user generated content and other forms of public participation;
- Data structures and platforms for data/information/knowledge sharing;
- Data and visual analytics;
- Institutional policies on data/information/knowledge sharing;
- Public/private/NGO initiatives for data collection by citizens and public participation;
- Management of data on sustainability;
- Major Governance aspects and set-ups (from local to global);
- Case studies on sustainability data sharing.
You may submit your abstract by visiting the Ex Ordo abstract submission system (you will be required to setup an account first): http://isdrs2016.exordo.com/
