Citizen Science and Google Earth Outreach

Part of the slick mapping project we are working on for the iCRAG Marine Spoke is to develop a method for locating, classifying and quantifying slicks in Irish Coastal Waters. We use remote sensing to find the slick and measure the spatial extents - but to help with the classification element - i.e. is it a natural or anthropegenic seep, what material is it - we can really benefit from having additional contextual GIS information to combine with the spectral information in the satellite imagery. There is a wealth of GIS data that we can use, giving environmental, meteorological, geological, legal, petroleum industry, fisheries layers etc and this has all been brought into the MAROBS platform that we are developing for spatial analysis. What we do not have is free access to the automatic identification system (AIS) on vessels, so if we find a seep we cannot check that against the mapping and position of shipping at the time the slick was sighted to see if it is possible pollution, blowing tanks, etc. We can pick up ships in the Sentinel 1 SAR imagery, but it is just a snapshot and we do not know the direction of travel - so the AI would be really useful. This is particularly useful when looking at motion of slicks in the spatial tests because if a slick recurs in a single location over time, it is very possibly a seep, and not a spill.

Example plot with AIS data included for Dublin port approaches

So in the course of my search for a similar, free, GIS-friendly dataset I was interested to see on the news recently that Leonardo DiCaprio launched a citizen science platform for tracking fishing vessels and monitoring illegal fishing.

Interpolated heatmap of fishing activity for a week in Irish coastal waters

I signed up, followed the link and it seems that this and are other excellent examples of citizen science being undertaken by the Google Earth Outreach team - one looking at fishing and the other looking at deforestation. The goal is to have citizens help monitor fishing vessels that are fishing where they shouldn't be, or illegal logging in forests around the world. The users can also help contribute in the machine learning part of the project - helping to calibrate the algorithm, as each method has more than a simple yes/no when the feature is spotted.

More information here

EM Spectrum - White Rainbows?

Definitely one to add to the lectures on the EM Spectrum - Fog Bows. Original story taken from BBC News

Explanation from NASA

The fogbow's lack of colors is caused by the smaller water drops ... so small that the wavelength of light becomes important. Diffraction smears out colors that would be created by larger rainbow water drops.

Rural Seminar - 2016

The schedule for the 2016 SCSI Rural Seminar is now online - I (or some fellow called Calahane) will be giving a talk on the potential of new mapping technologies for the rural sector, covering uses of remote sensing (satellite and aerial, both active and passive ) and RPAS for measuring flooding, precision agriculture, land cover and developing surface models for spatial analysis.

Crowdsourcing, spatial skills and 'What have the vikings ever done for us!?'

Here is another excellent case of crowdsourcing. In this example a mobile game helps to gather data for a study on dementia. It tests people's navigation skills in a simple sailing simulation and also their sense of orientation. One interesting finding is that coastal communities appear to have better spatial skills and it is possible these people may have received a genetic boost from viking blood! As a coastal dwelling Irishman, I have presumably benefited from the plentiful viking raids over the years - many of our big cities were founded by them.

Beauty of Maps

Old maps are a beautiful thing in themselves, and although the new GIS-ready vector files are essential for research and efficient processing I have a real soft spot for the old cartographic methods. I would rate nautical charts possibly at the top in terms of an item that links beauty and functionality and I have a large A0 print of the SW Coast of Ireland up on my wall at home. So having explained my soft-spot for maps it should be no surprise then that I was delighted when I came across a post on Twitter recently (I'm @con20or if anyone wants to tweet me) showing someone who reuses old maps and created something even more attractive out of them! An artist named Matthew Cusack takes old maps, and then uses pieces of these to create a collage of natural and human subjects. Have a look at this example of an ocean wave. I would love one of these, but you need to 'contact the gallery' for prices - so I think its a bit out of my price range....

Spatial Data and Ordnance Survey Ireland

Two major announcements from OSi of late, depending on your age/interests I'm not sure which you will find the most impressive!!

1. 5 Star Linked Data - The ERC application that I submitted recently leverages 5 Star Linked data in a big way for data sharing, so it is great to see that the Ireland's first 5 star datasets were released by OSI and the Dept of Public Expenditure and Reform. Now available on data.gov.ie. Linked open data will revolutionise how we share spatial data, linking data in a conceptual and semantic way online. I am really excited to see where this goes.

2. Minecraft - in a big plus for anyone involved in public engagement or demonstrating the many uses of maps and spatial data, large portions of Ireland have been taken from PRIME2 (OSi's spatial data storage model) and converted into Minecraft format. They have dublin city, killarney lakes, Limerick city and others.

Carrauntoohil

Irish Marine Atlas - Excellent GIS/Spatial Data Repository

I recently begin looking at the Irish Marine Atlas in detail to help with the marine spatial planning (MSP) side of the iCRAG slick mapping project. We are combining remotely sensed data with contextual GIS data to help inform classification of slick features. The Marine Atlas (designed by the Marine Institute) is an extensive, exhaustive and easily accessible online portal directing you to pretty much every spatial dataset that a person working in the marine or coastal environment for Ireland could want for any application, whether it is the blue economy, oil and gas, environmental, coastal protection. These datasets all captured by different organisations and using different geospatial technologies but combining them in one location really helps to make this data useable.

Bathymetry in the Economist

Interestingly the Economist has an article mentioning two of the areas of research that I am active in - Bathymetry and Oil Seep mapping. GEBCO (of the bathymetry cookbook fame) have been tasked with collating all available hydrographic data for the ocean floors. They will also leverage mariners (including merchant marine, defence, pleasure boats) to crowd-source more depth measurements as these vessels pass to and fro. . As an interesting note - to survey the oceans with a single vessel - they claim it could take 200 years!!

The article suggests that this will also help locate oil seeps and ore bearing geological features, but isn't quite as clear on how it will do that.

Atlantic Ireland and Geoscience 2016

Busy week for the team on the conference front these last few weeks - IEOS 2016 last week in Cork (Tim), a two day Atlantic Ireland in Dublin for the oil and gas industry this week (Me, Dáire and Tim)  and Geoscience 2016 in Dublin Castle (Me) - we presented some of our satellite and sensor pod stuff for bathymetry and slick mapping at each of these events. Drone X is also on this week (Tim) where we will showcase some of our drone projects and cloud platform development and I don't think any of us are able to make the Coastal TEP meeting unfortunately - just too much stuff on in one week.

One strange thing at the start of the AI conference was the presence of security and the announcement that all attendees and proceedings were being videoed - expecting protesters presumably?