GrassrootsMapping on Kickstarter: Get a balloon kit
January 9th, 2012 by Jeffrey Warren
Tags: kickstarter
Do you need maps?
Are you embroiled in an cartographic dispute? Do you disagree with the official version of your geography? Contact us through the public mailing list.
Grassroots Mapping is part of the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, founded by a group of activists, educators, technologists, and community organizers interested in new ways to promote action, intervention, and awareness through a participatory research model.
We're now trying to learn from our balloon mapping experiences to develop new DIY tools with a variety of local communities. This is an open community and you are welcome to join, and encouraged to contribute!
Purchase the Grassroots Mapping Forum, our new community research journal/archive/zine/map, where we hope to share ideas, techniques, and stories from the Grassroots Mapping community. It is printed on a single 22.75x35" newsprint sheet, folded down to just over letter size, and includes a full color reproduction of a grassroots map along with essays, illustrated guides, and interviews on the reverse.
You can find out more, and purchase the first issue here for $17 shipped.
Map the oil spill with balloons and kites!
We're helping citizens to use balloons, kites, and other simple and inexpensive tools to produce their own aerial imagery of the spill… documentation that will be essential for environmental and legal use in coming yeas.We believe in complete open access to spill imagery and are releasing all imagery into the public domain.
You can see all of our data here: http://publiclab.org/archive/.
Browse some of our best imagery on Flickr.
Learn more by reading the 5-page Illustrated Guide (0.6mB PDF)
About Grassroots Mapping
Techniques and tools for people who want to make maps, on the Public Laboratory wiki. Includes readings and case studies on grassroots mapping projects.
Balloon Aerial Photography »
Instructions on how to use cameras on weather balloons to create high-resolution maps.
Want to start mapping? See the Balloon Mapping Materials List to get started.
In collaboration with:
January 24th, 2012 at 11:46 am
Hello and congratulations on your work! I´m the coordinator of a GIS Lab for a local NGO in Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, Brazil. We have interest in getting your balloon kit and so Im wondering how to go about. How much will it cost all together to get the kit down here in Cuiabá? Here´s a bit on how we intend to use:
The Municipality of Alta Floresta is situated in the northern region of Mato Grosso State, approximately 800 km from Cuiabá, the State´s capital city. The vegetation is predominantly tropical rain forest, with a small patch of cerrado savannah in the southern portion of the municipality. The history of deforestation in the region has left the municipality with a great environmental passive which needs to be restored. New laws regarding environmental licensing has been established and in the past recent months there has been an effort from the State and Local Environment Agencies to map all rural properties in order to satisfy such legislation. In Alta Floresta such efforts have nearly completed mapping all rural properties, alongside with all of its environmental passives. One such environmental passive is related to the Permanent Protection Areas, which are composed mainly, but not restricted only to, the riparian forests alongside the rivers. The legislation defines width interval of forest alongside rivers depending on the width of the rivers. It is therefore imperative to have a detailed map of these areas and where the efforts of restoration need to be applied.
The main objective of this project is to implement a monitoring system which allows for evaluating the progress of the restoration efforts being implemented by the municipal environmental agency together with the land owners.
January 29th, 2012 at 4:54 am
I am an educator in Pittsburgh, PA and I can see so many applications for balloon kits in schools! I am interested in mapping our school campuses and engaging students a real quality hands-on project. Thanks for all you are doing!
February 1st, 2012 at 5:33 am
Rich
I am a professor at Cal U just down the road from you and would like to talk to about possible collaboration on air balloon photography. I tried your email from your website, but received an error
February 9th, 2012 at 7:28 am
Hey Richard and Tom – please get in touch via the mailing list (sign up at http://publiclaboratory.org/user/register) and I’m sure others in our community would be very interested to hear some of your ideas and plans. Our community is very supportive and we’d love to offer whatever support we can to help you map.
January 31st, 2013 at 3:00 am
It’s a shame you don’t have a donate button! I’d certainly donate to this brilliant blog! I suppose for now i’ll settle
for book-marking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account.
I look forward to new updates and will talk about
this website with my Facebook group. Talk soon!