Wen Lin

Assessing the utility of social media as a data source for flood risk management using a real‐time modelling framework

The utility of social media for both collecting and disseminating information during natural disasters is increasingly recognised. The rapid nature of urban flooding from intense rainfall means accurate surveying of peak depths and flood extents is rarely achievable, hindering the validation of urban flood models. This paper presents a real-time modelling framework to identify areas likely to have flooded using data obtained only through social media. Graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerated hydrodynamic modelling is used to simulate flooding in a 48-km2 area of Newcastle upon Tyne, with results automatically compared against flooding identified through social media, allowing inundation to be inferred elsewhere in the city with increased detail and accuracy. Data from Twitter during two 2012 flood events are used to test the framework, with the inundation results indicative of good agreement against crowd-sourced and anecdotal data, even though the sample of successfully geocoded Tweets was relatively small.

Complexities in Sustainable Provision of GIS for Urban Grassroots Organizations

Over the past decade there has been a significant increase in the use of geographic information systems (GIS) technologies by a plethora of social groups in various fields. Public participation GIS (PPGIS) has emerged to advance more equitable access to and more inclusive use of GIS among resource-poor and traditionally marginalized community-based organizations. The issue of sustainable provision of GIS for these community groups remains critical; thus, it is worth continuing investigation, particularly with respect to unravelling the dynamic process of GIS provision. This article presents such an attempt through a critical examination of the Data Center program in Milwaukee, which has been suggested as a valuable model of GIS provision in local PPGIS practice. This study proposes that a synthesized approach of scaled network analysis helps to better explain the dynamic process of social struggle for power and control within which the GIS provision is situated. The article illustrates how multiple scaled...

When Web 2.0 Meets Public Participation GIS (PPGIS): VGI and Spaces of Participatory Mapping in China

While existing studies provide important insights into power relations and spatial knowledge production impacted by volunteered geographic information (VGI), this chapter argues that more research is needed to investigate how these new geospatial technologies have constituted the actor’s subjectivities and the politics of citizen participation. Drawing upon public participation GIS (PPGIS) studies, critical GIS research and critical social theory, this chapter examines the mutual and complex relationships between subject formation and geospatial technology development and their implications for spaces and politics of citizen participation in a variety of contexts. A case study in China is presented with three examples of VGI mapping drawn from ethnographic fieldwork. These VGI practices in China have constituted multiple “DigiPlaces,” a notion proposed by Matt Zook and Mark Graham that is characterized by greater visibility with automatic production, increased individualism, and dynamism. Furthermore, these practices are simultaneously impacted by the complex process of subject constitution, informed by Mark Poster’s notion of “the mode of information,” marked by the proliferation of electronic communications that helps to constitute multiple subjectivities. In particular, coupling with rapid Internet and new communication technology developments, Chinese citizenship witnessed growing awareness of individual rights and more decentered self-identities compared to two decades ago. As such, new spaces of citizen participation are constructed by these VGI practices; however, significant challenges remain regarding the intersection of possibilities and existing economic and sociopolitical inequalities.

Situating Performative Neogeography: Tracing, Mapping, and Performing “Everyone's East Lake”

The emergence and proliferation of neogeographic practices since the mid-2000s have drawn significant attention from GIS scholars. I seek to contribute to the discussion on situating neogeography, particularly through examining the performative dimension of neogeography. To understand performative neogeographic practices I enroll de Certeaus notion of tactics to read these practices as tactical spatial narratives, which may provide different possibilities for spaces of civic engagement and political intervention in an increasingly networked and yet individualized society. I also draw upon theoretical insights from critical GIS and critical social theory to situate and trace the constructions of performative neogeographic practices within particular sociopolitical contexts. Through this synthesized framework, I discuss a case study involved in a participatory art performance project entitled “Everyones East Lake” in China. Drawing upon interviews and document analysis, the author examines how participants utilize neogeographic mapping as a form of performance and tactical act in response to the dominant corporate and state power. While performative mapping has long been used by artists and cartographers, this case study illustrates how these performative neogeographic practices might highlight different intersections between self-identities, community participation, and sociopolitical conditions, through reconfigurations of mobile and networked mapping technologies. These dynamic, hybrid, and networked mapping practices necessitate a broader conceptualization of activism through mapping in critical GIS research.

Revisiting critical GIS

Even as the meeting ‘revisited’ critical GIS, it offered neither recapitulation nor reification of a fixed field, but repetition with difference. Neither at the meeting nor here do we aspire to write histories of critical GIS, which have been taken up elsewhere.1 In the strictest sense, one might define GIS as a set of tools and technologies through which spatial data are encoded, analyzed, and communicated. Yet any strict definition of GIS, critical or otherwise, is necessarily delimiting, carving out ontologically privileged status that necessarily silences one set of voices in favor of another.

Digitizing the Dragon Head, Geo-Coding the Urban Landscape: GIS and the Transformation of China's Urban Governance

While local governments have been one of the major user groups of GIS, there is still little research on how GIS development in local government might be intertwined with urban governance, particularly in non-Western contexts. Drawing upon insights from GIS implementation, critical GIS, and governmentality studies, this article seeks to bridge this gap by examining the implications of Chinese urban government GIS practices amidst Chinas changing urban governance. Through an in-depth case study of Shenzhen, this article analyzes how urban GIS has been transformed from a practice involving internal organizational workflow automation, into a more active dimension of the governance of urban spaces—reflected in the expanding practice of “geo-coding” the urban landscape. “Geo-coding” here refers to a broadly defined spatial practice of carving and reconstructing a rational urban space. GIS practices have constituted a particular form of geographic rationality that seeks to govern at a distance while simultaneously regulating the urban environment, intersecting with the broader transformations of Chinas urban governance. These GIS developments have been largely government-centric rather than citizen-centric, yet they provide possibilities for new forms of spatial knowledge production for citizen participation in urban governance.

GIS Development in China's Urban Governance: A Case Study of Shenzhen

Government agencies have been an important actor in using GIS and other information technologies across the world. However, contextual examinations of government GIS practices over time within non-Western contexts remain sparse in the existing GIScience literature. In particular, little is known with respect to Chinas significant growth of using GIS in its urban government amidst its rapid urbanization and enormous transformation. This article presents an in-depth investigation of the case of Shenzhen city, one of the Chinas leading cities in urban government GIS development. Drawing upon critical GIS research and GIS implementation studies, a synthesized theoretical framework is developed to interrogate the nature and evolutionary process of Shenzhens government GIS practices. The analysis is focused on examining the role of broader social conditions, local contextual factors and organizational characteristics in shaping GIS development in Shenzhens urban governance. Situated in this contextual analysis, this article also illustrates the three major transformations of GIS development in Shenzhens planning agency over the past decade. The findings show that GIS development in Chinese urban governance has been influenced not only by the instrumental functions of GIS, but also by the interactions and relationships among different actors and institutions with various vested interests in the process of structuring and governing the urban spaces. This study will contribute to the ongoing discussion of understanding the interwoven relationship between GIS and society in GIScience research.

Social Constructions of GIS in China's Changing Urban Governance: The Case of Shenzhen

Abstract GIS technologies have developed rapidly in urban China, particularly within local governments, over the past decade. However, such GIS practices in non-Western contexts have not been investigated in depth. The present study attempts to address this gap, drawing on insights from critical GIS and political economy. Scholarship in critical GIS has underlined the importance of power relations in constituting organizational GIS practices, and vice versa. Moreover, perspectives from scalar politics and network analysis provide a useful way to delineate and analyse the spatialized social relations shaping and embedded in GIS constructions. In particular, scaled networks conceptualize social connections and power relations in terms of networks of actors embedded in different spatial extents; within this synthesized framework, we contend, local government organizations serve as both sites and nodes in developing and employing GIS. Through an in-depth case study of the city of Shenzhen, we investigate in w...

Tracing the Map in the Age of Web 2.0

In his now-classic essay ‘‘Deconstructing the Map,’’ published a quarter century ago in Cartographica, J.B. Harley questions the objectivity and neutrality of cartographic knowledge production and calls for examining the role of the map as a form of power/knowledge. The first two quotes listed above exemplify the distinction between external and internal power in cartography that underpins Harley’s conception of maps and mapping. As the contributions to this special issue make clear, Harley’s work has been highly influential in the emergence of critical cartography and critical GIS since the early 1990s (also see Pickles 1995, 2004; Schuurman 2000; Crampton 2003; Harris and Hazen 2006; Kitchin and Dodge 2007). Elsewhere, there have been insightful analyses that explore the intellectual influences of Harley’s work (e.g., Crampton 2003; Edney 2005). In this review essay, I would like to reflect on how revisiting Harley’s (1989) arguments might be helpful in addressing some of the questions raised in critical cartography and GIS, particularly regarding the emergent mapping practices facilitated by a new array of Web 2.0 technologies and mobile devices since the mid2000s. I intend to highlight the intersections between technology, text, and knowledge, informed by the rich traditions in critical cartography and GIS, and related studies, indicated by the third quote listed above. In particular, drawing on the work of Foucault and Derrida, Harley (1989) advances three threads of argument to deconstruct the map. First, he examines how cartographic rules might be intertwined with social relations and calls for more attention to the ‘‘social context’’ in which cartographic knowledge is ‘‘fashioned’’ (Harley 1989, 7). Second, Harley looks into the content and representation of maps, viewing them as a ‘‘cultural text’’ and highlighting the rhetorical dimension of map-making (7). Third, focusing on how maps might work as a form of power/knowledge, he discusses the need to uncover how power is exercised both externally and internally in cartography. Investigating the power external to maps, which Harley considers as ‘‘the most familiar sense of power in cartography,’’ involves studying the processes by which maps are linked to ‘‘the centres of political power’’ (12). By contrast, the power internal to cartography, which might be less investigated but is equally central to the question of how maps do work in society, is concerned with ‘‘the political effects of what cartographers do when they make maps’’ (13). As such, it is important to examine cartographic processes such as ‘‘the way maps are compiled and the categories of information selected,’’ through which power might be inscribed and exercised consciously and unconsciously (13). In these cartographic processes, certain forms of representation might be promoted and legitimized, especially concerning those images that are mass-produced. Harley concludes by emphasizing the importance of a deconstructionist approach to studying the history of cartography through three functions. First, the epistemological myth of objective cartographic knowledge can be challenged. Second, this approach invites different nuances of investigating the political effects of maps in society. Last, it can facilitate more engagement with contributions to the interdisciplinary body of work on text and knowledge from map history.

Climate Change and Its Impact on Cultural Shifts in East and Southeast Asia

Predictions warn that the annual mean warming across land in Asia will be approximately 3 °C (5.4 °F) in the 2050s and about 5 °C (9 °F) by the 2080s. Water surface temperatures are projected to increase 2 to 4 °C (3.6 to 7.2 °F). This region will experience more heat waves, heavy precipitation events, and cyclones than the present. Characteristics that make this region particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change are a high rate of poverty that spans across many Asian countries, the susceptibility towards endemic illnesses, and increasingly dense populations that reside along coastlines and low-lying areas. This chapter focuses on four countries in South and Southeast Asia: Cambodia, China , Philippines, and Vietnam, each with characteristics that make them susceptible to climate change. Cambodia has a high rate of poverty and an agricultural sector that is climate dependent. China is seeing a rapid and massive migration from inland to coastal areas as well as urbanization . The Philippines is an archipelago. The country is not well equipped to respond to effects of climate change partly due to its geography as well as such factors as poverty and poor infrastructure. Like China, 74 % of the population in Vietnam is concentrated along the coastal plains and river deltas with an equally large urban population distributed in low lying areas. How will the Asian population react to the impact(s) of climate change on the physical environment (e.g., food production and water resources, ecosystem degradation, and coastal regions) that have a direct influence on their livelihood and culture? Projection of cultural shift rests on key and significant changes that include migration patterns from coastal to inland, diversification of livelihood (e.g., change agricultural practices), and solutions to protect valuable water resources. Together, these shifts will impact the economy, social structure, and culture across multiple and interlocking scales as we know it today.