Citizens Observatories: Empowering European Society

A citizens observatory is a concept that evolved at EU policy circles, defining the combination of participatory community monitoring, technology and governance structures that are needed to monitor/observe/manage an environmental issue. About two years ago, the EU FP7 funded 5 citizens observatory projects covering areas from water management to biodiversity monitoring. A meeting at Brussels was …

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The new London crime mapping website

The Metropolitan Police Authority has released a beta version of their new Crime Mapping application, showing the generalised level of crime (burglary, robbery and vehicle) for Lower-level Super Output Areas (LSOAs). The application uses generalised boundaries of LSOAs , and use a clear classification of the level of crime. Interestingly, the Show Us a Better …

What’s in your back yard? – the latest edition

The Environment Agency has released the new version of their ‘What’s In Your Back Yard?’ application, which allows you to find out about pollution incidents, water quality, and flood risk in your area. Similar to the rest of the website, it is still designed for 800x600 screen resolution, although not really – the legend spills …

The Experienced Noise

While the new Defra noise maps provide the results of a computerised model, the experience of noisy places can be mapped through community mapping, as was demonstrated recently in the Royal Docks area and the Pepys Estate. Within the Mapping Change for Sustainable Communities project, and through the collaboration with London Sustainability Exchange and London …

Noise modelling and public access

The new noise maps for England are yet another example of how environmental information is presented to the public in ways that do not make sense, and, I suspect, alienate rather than include people in understanding the state of their environment. A few weeks ago, the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) release …

Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2008 presentation

Below you can find the presentation that I gave at the Open Knowledge Conference on 15th March. The presentation focuses on the issue of environmental information and Open Knowledge and covers several areas of open information and access to environmental information, starting with a short overview of the background, followed by some examples of environmental …