Geography Lesson
August 1st, 2008Geography was not my strong suit in school; it required lots of memorization about a lot of faraway places I’d never been to in the 6th grade. To make matters worse, geographical names for countries and cities change all the time. Seemed kind of silly to my pre-teen self.
At some level, though, I realized the utility in it. I undertook to learn what I could, which was usually just their names along with some other odd fact here and there (”Burma’s main export is jute”, etc.). Some years later, in college, I found out much more about these countries through the wonders of “The Economist” magazine. (Not to be confused with “theeconomist.com”, which is a simple, odd little page dedicated to Alan Greenspan.) Despite its name, “The Economist” is about more than just economics - it’s most often about politics, actually, which is how Nelson Mandela got away with reading about world affairs for years when he was in jail.
Anyway, having some context and history lessons about different countries around the world really did wonders for my geography knowledge. Now I can tell you that Pakistan is to the Northwest of India, as well as having been a part of it in the past, and I can tell you that Lithuania is one of the three Baltic States in Northern Europe. My siblings and I are a quarter Lithuanian, and thus we have a sort of fascination with the country. Our unusual surname (”Younskevicius”) is an Anglicized Lithuanian last name. (It should probably be “Januskevicius” instead.) That means that, given its status as an odd American/Lithuanian hybrid, almost no one can ever say it right, which in turn has led our family to develop a number of unusual coping techniques. (”Younski”, “Y”, “YY”, and even “Young” - especially helpful for pizza delivery.)
However, every once in a long while, someone says our name perfectly. They often follow that with a question like, “Your name’s Lithuanian, right?” (Most people have no clue.) After I finish looking astonished, I usually nod my head. One person even informed me that all last names ending in “-ius” are Lithuanian. You can use that fun fact to surprise the next Lithuanian you might meet.
But enough about names. It’s merely my long-winded way of saying that geography never came easily to me, and that for the geographically-challenged out there reading this post, you have my sympathy.
Even I have my limits. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have always seemed a bit scary and hard to follow to me. I first came across GIS through reading the entire Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH), which was an intense and time-consuming process, to say the least. (I wrote about the experience of reading it here in an earlier post.)
In the OOH (how’s that for a fun acronym?) I read about people whose entire job was to use, analyze, and report using GIS. They’re called Geographic Information Specialists (also GIS, which is also different from this GIS, resulting in a spectacular case of acronym collision). They’re related to surveyors, cartographers, and photogrammetrists. By the way, I use photogrammetrists as my stock anecdote for jobs I read about in the OOH. They have a weird, technical-sounding name, and no one ever seems to know what they do. (Another great trivia question.)
I read up a bit on what you have to study and know to be a GIS and, frankly, it seemed a bit daunting even to my data nerd self. Since then I’ve had the job in the back of my mind, coming up every now and again when I heard snippets about them and the data they use. I’ve seen them at work in cool applications like Google Earth, but that was as far as it went.
Until today, when my long-time buddy Dan sent me this Youtube link. (Dan also helps with the technical aspects of the site, which is invaluable - thanks Dan!) That video is one of Google’s fascinating “tech talks”. (I just found out about them today.)
Anyway, the video is about getting people to share their research data, with a research project they’re developing called “Data Basin”. Data Basin is a site for uploading, sharing, visualizing, and commenting on GIS conservation-related data. You can read more about their goals here. Basically, they want to improve access to these data and make it easier to share and work with.
It’s an amicable goal. Having run this blog for over a year now, I already see how hard it can be to get at the data I want at times, even if it’s publicly available. Us “data vultures” can have it hard. Sometimes you have to pay for the data, sometimes you have to scrape to get it, and sometimes, well, you just can’t get the data at all.
Other sites like “Many Eyes” and “Swivel” have a similar goal to Data Basin and are also about sharing data. (I wrote about Swivel here and Many Eyes here and here.) The difference is that Data Basin is still in an alpha phase and is more highly specialized. That makes it an interesting contrast to the other data-sharing websites that are already live and have a greater diversity of data.
It also means I can’t upload any data to test and play with, as I normally would in situations like this. (”Learning by doing” is one of my mantras, as long-term readers of this blog already know.) The best you can do is take a tour of the site instead. However, in watching that Data Basin tech talk, I learned a number of other interesting things which piqued my interest. Having used other data-sharing websites, I knew what to look for, and a few questions came up in my mind as I watched.
The first thing I wondered is how easy the data would be to upload. I knew from using Many Eyes and Swivel that uploading data and getting it in the format you want can be a pain in the neck (to put it mildly). Sure enough, someone asked about this, and the presenters confirmed that the data upload is the “scariest” part of the site. (They even specifically named Many Eyes and Swivel as models to emulate.)
As they mention, Data Basin’s uploading tools are mostly geared toward their main partners in the Conservation Biology Institute. They mention, however, that they won’t consider themselves a success until the uploading tools are more user-friendly. Just accepting comma-separated value (CSV) files isn’t enough; you have to make it so “your grandma” can cut-and-paste data from Excel into the site and have it work. Anyway, I think it’s interesting hearing the Data Basin people talk about these concerns at such an early stage of development.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one intimidated by GIS data, either. One of the main presenters, a Ph.D-educated woman named Tasha, had the same problems. (I couldn’t find her bio online anywhere so I’m not going to try and spell her last name. Mine gets butchered enough, so I know the feeling.) She said that it took easy-to-use visualization tools like Data Basin for her to make some use out of GIS data, something she’d never done before. Thus, when the site goes live, maybe I’ll be able to use GIS data for something more than cursory curiosity (i.e. Google Earth). We’ll see.
I also learned a little about Data Basin’s developers, Rhiza Labs. Apparently one of their main aims is to implement a database under the Information Commons standard. (Check the second “external link” at the bottom of the page for an extremely thorough description of the idea, in PDF format.) Rhiza Labs, they said, is implementing a peer-to-peer version of this standard by creating a data storage cloud. The idea is that the same bits of data would be shared, redundantly, across many different computers. Thus, you have a data “cloud” that you can easily propagate data through and query as you wish. And the architecture is open-source, or at least will be at some point. Pretty cool.
As an aside, I appreciate Data Basin’s conservation-oriented focus, too. Years ago, I used to volunteer for beach cleanups, and I distributed information about ecological causes from time to time as well. Conservation has always been a topic close to my heart. At work, I have the most plants in my office by far, and most of them are live. (Quick tip: I find the “Lucky Bamboo” plant does the best out of any inside plant. There’s a reason you always see it in cube farms.) Data Basin’s aim to bring reluctant researchers and hot-headed advocates together is a good thing, I think. The researchers crave recognition and the advocates need data, but, as the presenters mention, they don’t often talk to each other. (That’s been my personal experience as well.)
So Data Basin has some new ways of doing things, but they still have some growing pains to work out in their alpha phase. They might manage to get me over my aversion to using GIS data, and maybe they’ll even help the planet in the long run. But the real question is, “Will they help me get to know geography better?” Considering that I often mix up which countries are in Scandinavia, and the Red Sea with the Mediterranean Sea, maybe not. My 6th grade geography teacher would not be impressed. If you’re reading this, Mr. Tuttle, one day I’ll remember Iran is to the right of Iraq, and not the left. One day.
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August 1st, 2008 at 10:49 am
Dave,
The idea of creating incentives for people to harvest disparate data from the web and organize it (giving structure to unstructured data) has always been something that interests me. That is why Data Basin caught my attention. Do you plan to follow their progress as you do with other sites such as Swivel?
And there seems to be a wealth of information in those Google Tech Talks. Similar sources of information seem to be popping up all over the web. I’m currently going through a number of recorded college lectures from India’s National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning. (See this link.)
–Dan
P.S. Thanks for the kind mention.
I’m getting a huge amount out of these tech talks, so thanks again!
I will try to follow them when I can. Depends on if they have an RSS, mostly.
- Dave
August 4th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Dave, I thought this was an awesome topic. Lindsey had me read it when I was talking about wanting to get my master’s in GIS and she thought of this immediately. Its great to know that someone else is out there thinking about how to share this kind of information, and helping others interpret and use it. Okay, I just thought it was great to find someone also interested in it.
Thanks Jessica, and thanks to Lindsey for the kind words! There’s a few of us “data nerds” around if you look, I promise.
- Dave