Foss4g Seoul 29015 nishimura poster
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Neo-geography practices became popular in Japan after the 2011 earthquake when non-experts used geospatial data and maps to share disaster information. While open data and mapping projects increased public participation in neo-geography, traditional geography education in universities remained focused on training professionals and did not incorporate new open source tools and web-based mapping. However, some universities are now offering courses teaching students to use tools like OpenStreetMap for crisis mapping and addressing local issues.
Foss4g Seoul 29015 nishimura poster
- 1. Neo-geography GeographyEducation In recent years, neo-geographical practices became popular in Japanese society. Neo-geography means that non-experts view, search, use and make the geospatial information stored on various website according to their individual interest and daily living situation (Turner 2006). Japanese ordinary people come to recognize the importance of geospatial data and geographical visualization especially when they faced at the heavy disaster situations in Great East Japan Earthquake, 2011. For example, sinsai.info (http://www.sinsai.info) played important role for neo-geographical practices for sharing disaster information. Ushahidi(http://www.ushahidi.com) based geographical visualization of disaster information, base map delivered by crisis mapping of OpenStreetMap and moderating information are managed by OSMFJ(OpenStreetMap Foundation Japan) and global volunteer neo-geopraphers (Seto and Nishimura, 2015). As related example, OpenStreetMap project are accepted as one of the neo-geographical mapping practice in Japan. Japanese registered users of OpenStreetMap were increased drastically at April, 2011 and were over 3,700 in September, 2013(figure 1). The number of registered and active users still increasing continuously. Open data/government policies also interested Japanese ordinary people in the neo-geographical practices. The effect of G8 open data charter agreed in 2014, The action for open data by Japanese government is slow pace and the especially releasing public open data by local governments in Japan is very limited (datainnovation.org, 2015). However, voluntary activities related to open data are active in Japan. Code for Japan (it learn from Code for America) established in 2013 and 32 authorized brigades (Fig. 2, brigades mean volunteer groups of each local communities) and 23 brigades preparing authorization in August 2015. The number of the events of international open data day has also increasing every year. International open data day events held only at 8 cities in 2013, 35 events in 2014, the events expanded to 62 cities in 2015. These events include the various type of the meeting(hackathon, datathon stc.), making/using geospatial data have become one of the main topic (photo 1). The number of opened GIS data and geocoded data is very limited in Japan, these neo-geographers use (and sometime they make by themselves) geospatial data for visualizing local issues geographically. Because the main purpose of each Code for X are solving the local issues by using ICT, they need the geographic visualizing and geographical analysis for it. QGIS hackfest planed by Japanese neo-geographers and took placed in July, 2014 at Tokyo. 2nd QGIS hackfest in August, 2015 are expanded to 3cities (Tokyo, Sapporo, Osaka), these events also carried out by neo-geographers. Such neo-geographical practices could be related to Japanese Neo-liberalism. Recent Japanese ‘New Public Commons’ could be associated with these practices. Though openness, transparency and participatory natures of these practices attract attention by some of the Japanese local/national government and local citizen want to use open data for solving local issues, bureaucratic tendency of the Japanese local/national government and the limited contract article between local/national government and the data producing company prevent local citizen from open data access. 1. THE EMERGENCE OF NEO-GEOGRAPHY IN JAPAN 2. GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION IN JAPANESE UNIVERSITY 3. NEO-GEOGRAPHY,OPEN DATA, AND GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION Neo-geography and Geography Education in the Japanese Universities Yuichiro Nishimura1 Japanese geography education in universities are similar to UK, most of the geography education in universities are still old-fashioned and aimed for educating professionals, the new type of mapping practices like neo-geography are dissociated from it (Dodge and Perkins, 2008). Geography education in most of Japanese universities remains conservative style. The GIS education in the Japanese geography education is biased toward the methods of using desktop, proprietary software like ArcGIS desktop. The share of FOSS4G software and web-GIS are still limited, and they did not integrated to geography educating system, except some advanced universities. Japanese GIScience BoK(Body of Knowledge) has established in 2012 (Fig. 3), small mention about neo-geographical aspect. The part related to neo-geography are as below. Though there are the part of public participatory GIS(PPGIS) and internet GIS in the chapter of GIS and society, there is no mention related to these words in the chapter of GISc education. Figure 1.OSM statistics of Japan from 2008 to April, 2013: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/images/a/ae/Osm-japan-data-node s.png Photo 1. International opendata day mapping event in Nara, 2015 PO-18 1 Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nara Women's University Kitauoyanishi-machi, Nara 630-8506, Japan Email: [email protected] However, such situation is now changing. The student have new chance to using various different open source softwares, web based platforms, and data collection initiatives (Fig. 5)(Cowan and Hinton 2014). The several universities in Japan now hire the new curriculum for learning GIS and geography by neo-geographical tools. The students also learn the possibility and the limitation of neo-geographical mapping(Photo 3, Fig. 4). Some university students now doing crisis mapping by OpenStreetMap and making the disaster map by using FOSS4G softwares (Photo 4). Fig.3 Japanese GIScience BoK(Body of Knowledge) http://curricula.csis.u-tokyo.ac.jp Fig. 2 Code for Japan 32 authorized brigade (August, 2015) data derived from http://code4japan.org/brigade chapter: GIS and society PPGIS：Public Participation GIS internet GIS FOSS4G software wikipedia town geospatial open data open data platform and related internet services used by neo-geographers in Japan local story, qualitative information quoted local facts, qualitative information local fact data, quantitative information diverse map expression, custumable map “open streetview” custumable map, “open my map” “my guide map” issues ▽ understanding about neo-geography and open data in the university ▽ materials, online tutorial for educating using FOSS4G written in Japanese ▽ need for education of license of web map and geospatil data ▽ keeping motivation finishing the university class ▽ making connections between neo-geographers and university education ▽ open science and geography education in the university Photo 3 mapping around campus Fig. 4 mapping around campus campus Photo 4 Nepal earthquake crisis mapping in Nara Women’ s Univ. Fig. 5 NEO-GEOGRAPHY,OPEN DATA, OPEN SOURCE AND GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION ©OpenStreetMap contributors