NeoGeography and Crisis Mapping Analytics

WarViews is Neogeography

Colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) are starting to publish their research on the WarViews project. I first wrote about this project in 2007 as part of an HHI deliverable on Crisis Mapping for Humanity United. What appeals to me about WarViews is the initiative’s total “Neogeography” approach.

What is Neogeography? Surprisingly, WarViews‘s first formal publication (Weidmann and Kuse, 2009) does not use the term but my CrisisMappers colleague Andrew Turner wrote the defining chapter on Neogeography for O’Reilly back in 2006:

Neogeography means ‘new geography’ and consists of a set of techniques and tools that fall outside the realm of traditional GIS, Geographic Information Systems. Where historically a professional cartographer might use ArcGIS, talk of Mercator versus Mollweide projections, and resolve land area disputes, a neogeographer uses a mapping API like Google Maps, talks about GPX versus KML, and geotags his photos to make a map of his summer vacation.

Essentially, Neogeography is about people using and creating their own maps, on their own terms and by combining elements of an existing toolset. Neogeography is about sharing location information with friends and visitors, helping shape context, and conveying understanding through knowledge of place.

Compare this language with Wiedmann and Kuse, 2009:

[The] use of geographic data requires specialized software and substantial training and therefore involves high entry costs for researchers and practitioners. [The] War Views project [aims] to create an easy-to-use front end for the exploration of GIS data on conflict. It takes advantage of the recent proliferation of Internet-based geographic software and makes geographic data on conflict available for these tools.

With WarViews, geographic data on conflict can be accessed, browsed, and time-animated in a few mouse clicks, using only standard software. As a result, a wider audience can take advantage of the valuable data contained in these databases […].

The team in Zurich used the free GIS server software GeoServer, which reads “vector data in various formats, including the shapefile format used for many conflict-related GIS data sets.” This way, WarViews allows users to visualize data both statically and dynamically using Google Earth.

Evidently, the WarViews project is not groundbreaking compared to many of the applied mapping projects carried out by the CrisisMappers Group. (Colleagues and I in Boston created a Google Earth layer of DRC and Colombia conflict data well before WarViews came online).

That said the academic initiative at the University of Zurich is an important step forward for neogeography and an exciting development for political scientists interested in studying the geographic dimensions of conflict data.

Geographic Data

Geo-tagged conflict data is becoming more widely available. My Alma Matter, the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO), has made an important contribution with the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED). This dataset includes geo-tagged conflict data for 12 countries between 1946 to present time.

In addition to ACLED, Wiedman and Kus (2009) also reference two additional geo-tagged datasets. The first is the Political Instability Task Force’s Worldwide Atrocities Dataset (PITF), which comprises a comprehensive collection of violent events against noncombatants. The second is the Peacekeeping Operations Locations and Event Dataset (Doroussen 2007, PDF), which provides geo-tagged data on interventions in civil wars. This dataset is not yet public.

Weidmann and Kuse (2009) do not mention Ushahidi, a Mobile Crisis Mapping (CMC) platform nor do the authors reference HHI’s Google Earth Crisis Map of Kenya’s Post-Election violence (2008). Both initiatives provide unique geo-tagged peace and conflict data. Ushahidi has since been deployed in the DRC, Zimbabwe and Gaza.

Unlike the academic databases referenced above, the Ushahidi data is crowdsourced and geo-tagged in quasi-real time. Given Ushahidi’s rapid deployment to other conflict zones, we can expect a lot more geo-tagged information in 2009. The question is, will we know how to analyze this data to detect patterns?

Crisis Mapping Analytics (CMA)

The WarViews project is “not designed for sophisticated analyses of geographic data […].” This is perhaps ironic given that academics across multiple disciplines have developed a plethora of computational methods and models to analyze geographic data over time and space. These techniques necessarily require advanced expertise in spatial econometric analysis and statistics.

The full potential of neography will only be realized when we have more accessible ways to analyze the data visualized on platforms like Google Earth. Neogeography brought dynamic mapping to many more users, but spatial econometric analysis has no popular equivalent.

This is why I introduced the term Crisis Mapping Analytics (CMA) back in August 2008 and why I blogged about the need to develop the new field of CMA here and here. The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) is now spearheading the development of CMA metrics given the pressing need for more accessible albeit rigorous methods to identify patterns in crisis mapping for the purposes of early warning. Watching data played on Google Earth over and over will only take us so far, especially as new volumes of disparate datasets become available in 2009.

HHI is still in conversation with a prospective donor to establish the new field of CMA so I’m unable to outline the metrics we developed here but hope the donor will provide HHI with some funding so we can partner and collaborate with other groups to formalize the field of CMA.

Crisis Mapping Conference

In the meantime, my colleague Jen Ziemke and I are exploring the possibility of organizing a 2-3 day conference on crisis mapping for Fall 2009. The purpose of the conference is to shape the future of crisis mapping by bridging the gap that exists between academics and practitioners working on crisis mapping.

In our opinion, developing the new field of Crisis Mapping Analytics (CMA) will require the close and collegial collaboration between academic institutes like PRIO and operational projects like Ushahidi.

Jen and I are therefore starting formal conversations with donors in order to make this conference happen. Stay tuned for updates in March. In the meantime, if you’d like to provide logistical support or help co-sponsor this unique conference, please email us.

Patrick Philippe Meier