Waterloo Civic Map Lab

Crowdsourcing the Disaster Management Cycle

Peter Johnson — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 12:00:00 +0000

In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, and recent record flooding in Bangladesh, I was reminded of the foundational role of mobile communications technology in the response to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.

Tags: geoweb, publications, research, crowdsourcing, disaster, hurricane, management

2017 Esri User Conference and The Cost(s) of Geospatial Open Data

Peter Johnson — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 12:00:00 +0000

I had the amazing opportunity recently to attend the 2017 Esri User Conference (UC) in San Diego, California. The Esri ‘UC’ as it’s known is an annual event that showcases what’s new and hot in the Esri GIS world, and provides a chance for over 16,000 GIS and map nerds to get together, learn from each other, and generally celebrate everything geospatial.

Tags: conferences, development, education, giscience, open data, publications, esri, journal, technology

Aligning Canadian open data programs with international best practices – Geothink.ca and OpenNorth

Peter Johnson — Sat, 20 May 2017 12:00:00 +0000

The Geothink partnership is a great opportunity for academics to work directly with those organizations pushing the leading edge of our field. Last fall, University of Waterloo student Erin Bryson held a co-op placement working at Montreal-based non-profit (and Geothink partner) OpenNorth.

Tags: education, geothink, open data, publications

Volunteered Drone Imagery: Challenges and constraints to the development of an open shared image repository

Peter Johnson — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 12:00:00 +0000

I recently had the pleasure of working on a new project called “Volunteered Drone Imagery: Challenges and constraints to the development of an open shared image repository”, with Dr. Britta Ricker, University of Washington-Tacoma, and Sara Harrison, a recently-graduated MES student from Waterloo.

Tags: conferences, geoweb, publications, tools, drone, hicss, oam, osm

New paper: Strategic analysis of a water rights conflict in the south western United States

Peter Johnson — Tue, 21 Jun 2016 12:00:00 +0000

A new paper by PhD Candidate Simone Philpot has just been published in the Journal of Environmental Management!

Tags: publications, simulation modeling, model, research, students

New publication: Evolving relationships in community participatory geoweb projects

Peter Johnson — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 12:00:00 +0000

At long last, a team publication from the GEOIDE grant The Participatory Geoweb has been published in ACME journal.

Tags: academic, geothink, geoweb, publications

Civic open data at a crossroads: Dominant models and current challenges

Peter Johnson — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve co-authored an exciting new paper with Dr. Renee Sieber from McGill University. It is currently online first with Government Information Quarterly. With this piece we take a look at the dominant models of open data provision by government and start to lay out what the challenges are for delivering open data.

Tags: open data, publications

Civic Hackathons: Innovation, Procurement, or Civic Engagement?

Peter Johnson — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve recently published a jointly-authored viewpoint piece with Dr. Pamela Robinson from Ryerson University in Review of Policy Research.

Tags: geothink, hackathon, open data, academic, publications

The impact of climate change on winter ski tourism in the Pyrenees

Peter Johnson — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:00:00 +0000

We all know that climate change is having a major impact on weather patterns around the globe. One industry that is particularly exposed to these changes is the ski industry. Though large mountain/high elevation ski resorts may remain insulated from the impacts of shorter ski seasons and more erratic weather, those ski resorts at low altitude are particularly vulnerable to a changing climate. As a mid-latitude, lower elevation (comparatively) ski region, the Pyrenees are one area where the impacts of a changing climate are pronounced.

Tags: giscience, publications, results, simulation modeling, academic, climate, environment, science, simulation, tourism

Why technology adoption constraint research is important

Peter Johnson — Tue, 10 May 2011 12:00:00 +0000

A chapter from my dissertation has been recently published in Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design. This paper, titled “Negotiating constraints to the adoption of agent-based modeling in tourism planning (PDF)” presents material from a series of interviews that I conducted with tourism planners in Nova Scotia.

Tags: publications, results, simulation modeling, tools, academic, adoption constraints, geodesign, model, planning, policy, simulation