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.
We're a neighborhood group in East Providence, RI with houses adjacent to a large construction waste grinding business. Toxic dust was filtering into our homes and yards from the plant. Many in the neighborhood suffer from respiratory and other health problems thought to be associated with the dust.
cross-posted from PBS's IdeaLab
Public Lab's balloon- and kite-based mapping approach is a new way to take aerial images from the ground. However, there are some considerations and things that can be learned from a few map stories.
Each map project has distinct characteristics in its time, place, and local atmospheric conditions. Here are several examples of how those factors make each balloon and kite map unique.
LAKE MERRITT (OAKLAND, CALIF.)
TECHNICAL NOTE AND QUESTION
We're going to have to repeat this one. The camera shut down prematurely.
I attribute the failure to the use of duct tape on the camera trigger-- any thoughts on this are appreciated. From looking at the photo sequence, the camera gave out after a wind gust. Still, some interesting shots were taken.
And, in the future, i will be using the Common Ground kayaks, so repeating this day will be easier the second time.
shannon snaps our flight
If anybody is interested in ground control point targets for aerial photography, I can leave here this North arrow for you to print (courtesy of the Integration and Application Network, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (ian.umces.edu/symbols/).
This was a bit lost in the hubbub over the Google announcement, but a few weeks ago we added a feature to order a print directly from MapKnitter and from the PLOTS map archive. Users can now click-through directly from their map details page. Public Laboratory map production is working towards a end-to-end open source solution:
This was a bit lost in the hubbub over the Google announcement, but a few weeks ago we added a feature to order a print directly from MapKnitter and from the PLOTS map archive. Users can now click-through directly from their map details page. Public Laboratory map production is working towards a end-to-end open source solution:
cross-posted from PBS's IdeaLab. How We Got Here: The Road to Public Lab's Map Project
Last week, Public Laboratory announced that public domain maps are now starting to show up on Google Earth and Google Maps. But how did the projects get there? Here's a timeline of a Public Laboratory map project.
MAKING A MAP
cross-posted from PBS's IdeaLab. How We Got Here: The Road to Public Lab's Map Project
Last week, Public Laboratory announced that public domain maps are now starting to show up on Google Earth and Google Maps. But how did the projects get there? Here's a timeline of a Public Laboratory map project.
MAKING A MAP
Hello Public Labbers and Grassroots Mappers!
To date, the documentation and open science literature we've made as a community has been published under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license, allowing anyone to reuse, remix, adapt, improve, and redistribute our works. Today, the PLOTS Web working group would like to propose that we as a community adopt a separate license for our hardware designs, and after much consultation, we'd like to adopt the CERN Open Hardware License.
A Picavet rig is a very common type of KAP/BAP rig, I've added it to the juice bottle in a fairly simple way, using 1/2" key rings.
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.
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.
Techniques and tools for people who want to make maps, on the Public Laboratory wiki. Includes readings and case studies on grassroots mapping projects.
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.
