El día Wednesday 16 June 2010 02:58:41, Edward Vielmetti dijo: > There are news media crawling the coast and documenting what's happening > all over the place, but I don't know (and this is my ignorance) if anyone > is systematically scooping that crude information and refining it until it > turns into data.
Rely on the media to get consistent data? Ha! Just look at Haiti. Media outlets were actually hindering all kinds of efforts over there. Their only goal is to bring the goriest image to your living room at prime time. Their goal is not to "document" an event. You should rely on the emergency response teams, but in an oil spill, they are likely to be funded (read: bought) by the oil lobbies. As Tim Berners-Lee recently said, "it has to start at the bottom, it has to start at the middle, and it has to start at the top". It has to start at the bottom. People cleaning up the gunk must have some sort of motivation to collect data. Give them some cool app for tracking effort, or for semi-automatic health risk assesment, or something useful. As SteveC says: "Easy, fun, takes 5 minutes". It has to start at the middle. This is the GIS people at the coast guard and wildlife dept and whatnot. Throw them any data and they'll use them. It has to start at the top. This is politicians and oil companies. And, man, this is where the problem resides. Better data won't get a politician a longer term, and won't make the oil companies' stock to raise. I'm sorry to put my pessiimistic hat on, but I don't think there'll be any good spillage-related dataset anytime good. Without support from "the top", there'll be no comunication between agencies and no cool apps. Just my 2¢. Best, -- Iván Sánchez Ortega <[email protected]> Un ordenador no es una televisión ni un microondas: es una herramienta compleja. _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org
