Grassroots Mapping is a series of participatory mapping projects involving communities in cartographic dispute. Seeking to invert the traditional power structure of cartography, the grassroots mappers used helium balloons and kites to loft their own “community satellites” made with inexpensive digital cameras.
At Public Lab, we've grown the Grassroots Mapping community into a broader effort to enable communities to understand and respond to environmental threats with DIY techniques.
Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, New Orleans City Park
What do you do?
I am an MPH candidate at Tulane in the Department of International Health and Development and work as a research assistant within the department. Outside of the classroom and the cubicle, I spend time with my dog, running, reading, and playing scrabble
How did you become interested in Grassroots Mapping?
Through working with Tulane and LABB on GIS and mapping
What was your most memorable experience while leading a trip?
Trying to map by myself on a kayak
Any suggestions for future trip leaders or Grassroots Mapping in general?
Take Nathan Morrow’s next GIS class (Tulane University)
Why do you think mapping the spill is an important environmental monitoring technique?
Great way for anybody- school, communities, to get involved in the protection of their communities
Below is a map based on one of Kris’ trips, of Grand Isle State Park in Louisiana:
Hello everyone, I wanted to pop in to answer any questions on the project. Yes, we used Photosynth as a quick and dirty method to stitch everything together. The project started as a means to use playful tools to get the public to stop and engage in public space more. This method really got people around the city talking. A couple even left their buildings and chased us down to see what we were up too. Fantastic experience overall. So many great stories. But if you would like to check out the Synths go here..
All of these flights were during peak office hours, and in the most occupied downtown district of Center City. yet, there are no people. The spaces go unused, and give the downtown landscape a sense of loss
and isolation. This could in theory translate to the un-innovative nature of the workforce here. The theory being that by using playful acts people get re-energized as the spaces do. The city recognizes its horrible planning and plans on spending upwards of 90 million to fix just one of these spaces. We spent $100 and got people talking. We hope to continue using this method to open the dialog between the people of downtown Philly, and city planners so that city resources get put to the appropriate use and that the public can have a voice.
This post is re-posted with permission from the PlaceMatters.org blog. The author, Ken Snyder, is the Executive Director of PlaceMatters.
Ken writes: At the GeoDesign conference in San Diego we heard mention of folks at MIT using helium balloons with cameras attached to take aerial pictures. Thinking this was a fabulous idea I decided to find out more and see if this was a technique we could easily incorporate into our projects.
The MIT connection turned out to be the MIT Center for Future Civic Media and their partnership with others to create Grassroots Mapping, a project and resource site to encourage citizens to use these balloons to generate maps of communities and their surrounding environment.
One application highlighted on the website is Gulf coast communities using the balloons to observe and report on last year’s BP oil spill. From Grassroots Mapping emerged the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (PLOTS) which represents network of scientists and activists experimenting with accessible technologies for investigating and reporting on local environmental health and justice issues. PLOTS is a great example of an online platform bringing together citizens, scientists, social scientists, and technologists to collaboratively solve problems.
We too see a number of ways we could integrate balloon launches into our work including adding a bird’s eye perspective to our Walkshops or providing a unique medium for place-based art projects. The 3 minute video at the top of this blog documents our first balloon launch. Grassroots Mapping’s downloadable instructions on how to build your own helium balloon camera made the job easy.
At the time, we did not have a digital camera with the functionality of taking continuous pictures so I put huge faith into our knots and fishing line and sent up my iPhone in video mode. Since then we have acquired a GoPro sports camera that is capable of taking video or time-lapse pictures. The GoPro has the added advantage of having a wide angle lens. Total cost for our first balloon launch was $165, with the rental of the helium tank and the purchase of a 6 ft diameter balloon being the dominant expenses. The tank had enough helium for two launches.
Here is a poster of some of the images extracted from the video.
During the weekend of March 25-27, 2011, PLOTS staff – Jeff Warren (Boston), Liz Barry (New York), Shannon Dosemagen (New Orleans), Adam Griffith (Asheville), Mathew Lippincott (Portland), Stewart Long (Oakland) and Sara Wylie (Washington D.C.) – met in New York for the first PLOTS summit. We were able to come together for our first staff meeting due in part to the sponsorship of MITs Center for Future Civic Media.
On Friday, PLOTS was invited to teach one of the Trade School classes at the Whitney Museum of American Art – we were easily identifiable with a Mylar balloon floating in the outside courtyard. Despite the cold temperatures, students came to our Make Your Own Spectrometer class where they created spectrometers with paper tubes, CDs, razor blades and tape. Interested in trying out your own or have ideas on how to improve the design? Check out the spectrometer page on the Public Laboratory website. After making spectrometers, students were able to look at water samples collected from the Gowanus Canal and various puddles of standing water from Central Park. Having just released the online spectral analysis tool, students were then given a demonstration on analyzing samples and the first steps in identifying polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), as this tool is still in development.
Saturday brought a full day of meetings where, amongst other things, we discussed potential upcoming projects including mapping in Salt Lake, Utah and Lome, Togo and decided on creating a website similar to data.gov for all of the images that have been collected on the Gulf Coast and at other sites. We additionally discussed tool curriculum, research goals, incorporating PLOTS into a nonprofit and some of our retail endeavors in the upcoming months – maps, t-shirts and starter kits for mapping. We also decided on a couple of larger PLOTS community events for the next year. The first is what we are calling a “barn raising” where we pick a site that PLOTS team members have been working at and host a 3-4 day workshop where tools are tested in cooperation with community members and others that can help test and solve problems with each tool in use. Potential sites for the 2011 barn raising include Butte, Montana, Grand Isle, Louisiana, and Wiley’s Last Resort in Kentucky. Also in the works is a PLOTS conference with workshops, roundtables and other small sessions for tool and idea R&D. We are looking at early 2012 to host this first gathering.
On Sunday, we headed to the Gowanus Canal Superfund site, where we have an active aerial mapping project happening in partnership with the Gowanus Canal Conservancy. One of the difficulties that we’ve experienced with the site is that strong and unpredictable springtime winds have given mappers difficulties as balloons are popped on the barbed wire that lines the heavily industrialized canal. Charles A. Stewart from Let’s Fly Kites came to meet Liz Barry and Leif Percifield who lead the project at Gowanus and as an expert kite flyer, brought a couple of his kites to demonstrate. The new kites that we tested had structure and flew well with the rig attached. Liz and Leif decided on a Delta-Box hybrid model to try out during future mappings of the canal.
What should you look for coming out of this weekend? Lots! And we hope that you all will be active contributors going forward! Next online in the coming month – the first printed maps of the Gulf Coast thanks in part to a sponsorship from Development Seed.
As follow up to a November 2010 camera launch, a group of 11 students, professors and community members gathered on Saturday, March 5th for the second installment of Grassroots Newark. The dual purpose of the project is to (1) document the progress of the development of the riverfront park being built along Raymond Boulevard in Newark, NJ and (2) use the site space to teach people about grassroots mapping while testing new processes by innovating balloon, kite and camera designs.
The group constructed a three-mylar sack balloon with an arch and long tail – modeled after a design used for Gowanus Canal in January. While the sun was out and we had a beautiful day, the wind speeds were too high for a successful launch. Simultaneously, a couple people in the group attempted to fly a kite, but were unable to get it to stay level and high enough for an extended period of time.
Thus, we only accomplished one of the two set goals and ended up having a great time outdoors with our way-too-powerful balloon. Additionally, we saved the tail the Eugene Lang students (above) made and will use it again.
For next steps, we plan to meet again on April 16th with a new design that can maintain its shape without ripping the mylar while withstanding higher wind speeds. Other learning points to took away, were to (1) start much earlier in the morning when wind speeds are lower, (2) try to have the entire balloon constructed before working in the field, and (3) find additional tasks to keep all volunteers busy throughout the duration of the site work.
During the first week of March, students enrolled in Dr. Rob Young’s field trip course at Western Carolina University attempted to map coastal wetlands using Grassrootsmapping techniques in Beaufort County, SC. Beaufort County, SC has the most coastal wetlands of any county on the US East Coast and these wetlands are being threatened by sea level rise. Specific vegetation grows in high marsh and low marsh and an aerial view of the wetlands makes distinction of the two easier than ground based techniques.
Weather conditions during the week were very poor for balloon mapping due to 30 MPH sustained winds over two days. On the morning of the third day, seemingly calm conditions coaxed us into action, but the upper level winds carried the balloon horizontally more than vertically. We launched our Sutton Flowform 16 kite an hour later and gusts caused the Picavet suspension to swing wildly around the flying line. Some interesting images resulted.
This experience represents a core challenge of GRM techniques: weather conditions may not cooperate during the narrow time of a visit making the challenge of capturing imagery of a specific area even greater. This mission was a teaching students the basics of low cost aerial mapping, and was therefore a success, however, the imagery collected is not able to be stitched into a map of the wetland. This site is about a 6 hour drive from our university, so for future missions with the goal of mapping wetlands, we must better cope with the variable conditions.
Corey from Windpower Sports in Las Vegas (baby) suggested the following:
• Put the picavet suspension 100 ft away from the kite instead of our 50 ft.
• Use a Y shaped tail at least two times the length of the kite with a spinner sock on the end
• Use heavier weight flying line to stabilize from the front end of the kite
• Use a different kite with different ideal wind ranges
• Increase the weight of the camera
Dawn McKinney, of Mobile, Alabama
(pictured above center in blue shirt)
What locations did you map?
Dauphin Island, a barrier island off the coast of Alabama at the mouth of Mobile Bay, near the former “Sand Island” and the public beach and Helen Wood Park in Mobile Bay.
What do you do?
I am a Senior Instructor in the School of Computer and Information Sciences (CIS) at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. I teach the object-oriented programming course for Computer Science majors and the Freshman Seminar course for all incoming freshmen to the School of CIS. I am also Co-Director of South Alabama’s Center for Academic Service-Learning and Civic Engagement and on facebook.
How did you become interested in Grassroots Mapping?
I got involved in discussions about the Gulf Oil Spill Disaster and was made aware of this opportunity for the freshmen students to participate in a semester-long project where they could work in teams to explore their majors, establish relationships with other students, and connect to their community.
What was your most memorable experience while leading a trip?
Walking along the shore of the Gulf of Mexico with students and getting to know them away from the classroom.
Any suggestions for future trip leaders or Grassroots Mapping in general?
Pay more attention to the wind conditions in order to plan for problems better. Plan enough trips on varied dates and times which give all students an opportunity to participate. Have at least 3 trips throughout the semester. Give the students a “final goal” to reach so they have something to shoot for and so they know when they have succeeded. Give the students more background information about the environment in which the mapping is taking place and have them reflect more on the purpose, benefits of the experience for both the students and the environment.
Why do you think mapping the spill is an important environmental monitoring technique?
It gives every day people an opportunity to participate in something which could have a large impact on the community. It also connects people and at least gives them an awareness of their environment and how it changes. Probably most important is that it empowers every day people.
Anything else?
GM was an incredible resource for us and did an outstanding job of working with the students.
>>Question : How can you extract the % of wetland from an UV aerial picture using photoshop?
Video tutorial by Cesar Harada and Adam Griffith:
_ Instructions :
1. isolate the part that you are interested in using the menu/ image/ adjustment/ replace color. There you want to have a quite fuzzy selection and darken the desired part.
2. after isolating the part you are interested in -black area- apply menu/ image/ adjustment/ threshold
3. use magic wand /untick “contiguous” pixel to select all the black pixels available. Open menu/ window/ histogram/ expanded view. Here you will see how many black pixels are selected. Now you know how many black pixels there is on this image – corresponding the area of wetland from the original UV picture. You can convert the number of pixels into a % (proportions of wetland) or in surface area for quantifying. It is possible to optimize this workflow by creating a script or recording the chain of actions.
Same thread on Public Laboratory
A friend asked me to help find good imagery of the Oil Rocks near Baku in the Caspian Sea, which is not visible in Google Maps. In this 10 minute tutorial, I walk through the process of looking in Google Historical Imagery, then browsing and pricing out commercial satellite imagery from various vendors based on resolution, recency, and coverage.
The expense and difficulty of finding many sites in the world is exactly the inspiration for Grassroots Mapping, but in many cases this can be a useful (if somewhat esoteric) process to be familiar with. It’s also a great thing to check before attempting a balloon mapping flight — even if only to see what is available and how much cheaper producing your own imagery might be.
One possible way to process raw aerial imagery is to use existing imagery for georeferencing and rectification. With this technique it is possible to process aerial imagery without GPS data. The base data must have good metadata with a known coordinate system. It is also important to be aware that the precision of the new map will reflect the level of precision of the base data.
It is possible to obtain base data for the area of interest from various online GIS data clearinghouses. The USDA National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) is a 1m leaf-on coverage of the entire conterminous U.S. The imagery is acquired by the USDA and then made available to the public through the USGS National Map Viewer. It represents an excellent baseline for obtaining public domain base data for image processing.
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.
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.
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.
Techniques and tools for people who want to make maps, on the Public Laboratory wiki. Includes readings and case studies on grassroots mapping projects.
