We were delighted to hear Prof. Zorica Nedovic-Budic speak at CUSP on May 8, 2017. Prof. Nedovic Budic discussed the power of Crowd-sourced Data for Urban Planning and Emergency Response with case studies from Ireland and Iran.
Abstract
Since mid-1980s the advances in geospatial technologies and information and decision-support systems have offered planners and other professionals dealing with spatially manifested phenomena new tools for storing, analyzing and visualizing information. However, the pace of technological progress has been faster than our ability to fully explore, adapt and exploit the technologies and tools to meaningfully contribute to practice and policy. As we move from geographic information systems (GIS) and WebGIS, to spatial data infrastructures (SDI) and geoportals, and to user-generated content enabled by Web 2.0, our informational capacities are ever expanding, albeit with very little time allowed to understand the impact. Like their predecessors, the recent developments in volunteered geographic information (VGI) and crowd-sourcing facilities have opened up new possibilities. They promise to enable a further step into democratization of data- dependent processes and have blurred the boundary between data users and data producers to create a new hybrid of data producers. This presentation explored two applications of crowd-sourcing: 1. in planning for underutilized inner city properties (Dublin, Ireland); and 2. in assessing the situation for earthquake emergency response (Bam, Iran). The work focused on evaluating the contribution of data generated through crowd- sourcing to better understanding of the local issues and guiding further actions.
Bio
Zorica Nedović-Budić is a professor and head in the Department of Planning and Policy at University of Illinois in Chicago. She received her PhD degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was a faculty member at the University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign for 15 years and Chair of Spatial Planning at the University College Dublin for 7 years. Prof. Nedović-Budić’s research is about planning, cities and technology. From 2011 to 2016 she was the principal investigator on a 30-partner European FP7 project Transitioning Towards Urban Resilience and Sustainability (TURaS). She has published extensively in books and refereed journals, co-edited three volumes and served on editorial boards of several journals (including JAPA book review editorship and currently as an associate editor for the ASCE’s Journal of Urban Planning and Development). Prof. Nedović-Budić was on the Board of Directors of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) and the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS). She sits on the Executive Committee of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP).