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This chapter examines the ways that companies, users, and states alike navigate the overload of data in the cloud by targeting information, and argues that targeted-marketing campaigns online come out of the same ideological apparatus as military targeting. Two oppositional groups serve as case studies for this argument: first, a group of radio-frequency hackers that data mined the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, and second, the artist/geographer Trevor Paglen, who photographs U.S. reconnaissance satellites and other covert military infrastructures. As this chapter argues, these oppositional tactics may be effective, but sometimes re-animate the very structures of power that they purport to expose or overturn. The reason is due to something this chapter terms the sovereignty of data, which both co-opts user participation and also gives practices such as torture and extraordinary rendition new life within the cloud.

This chapter describes how data fusion enhances the analytical capability of cultural analysts by using the visual analyst theory in conjunction with ongoing technological software advances in data fusion. The field of cultural analyses is significantly contributing to COIN doctrine. However, software advances must also be accompanied by two caveats. The first is, no matter how powerful or versatile the technology is a thorough understanding of the social system depends on expert analyst’s opinion that is deeply familiar with a culture’s fundamentals. Second, we must refrain from reinventing the wheel by utilizing existing sources of social data ranging from deployed company intelligence officers to civil affairs teams. In conclusion, by harnessing technology to fuse geospatial, relational, and temporal data, we can enhance the field of cultural analysis to further empower the war fighter’s mission of defeating contemporary and future insurgency.

Place is one of the basic tenets of a field investigation. Both the who and the when of infection are relative to and often dependent on the where. Geographic information science, systems, software (collectively known as GIS), and methods are among the tools epidemiologists use in defining and evaluating the where. This chapter reviews GIS applications as they pertain to the 10 steps of a field investigation. This chapter offers recommendations about the types of geographic data, equipment, and software necessary for GIS and provides considerations for visualization and spatial analysis. An overview is included of sample data sets that might prove useful for estimating and defining the population in a particular study area (e.g., population data from the US Census) as are recommendations for geospatial methods for estimating sociodemographic characteristics and disease rates by using these data within GIS. This chapter should provide field epidemiologists with a greater spatial awareness that will help guide the design, collection, analysis, and dissemination of findings from a field investigation.

Future humans interacting with water in Kentucky will bring to their experience not only the panoply of expectations, assumptions, background knowledge, and past experiences but also ultra-smart gadgetry which will shape the outcome of the event. The technoscapes inhabited by human communities and individuals are over imposed on the natural rhythms which hydrology obeys, providing opportunities for sensorial fusion. An ongoing evolutionary explosion in diversity, mobility and interconnectedness of sensors is manifesting itself as the Internet of Things, all denizens of the “Cloud”, allowing the citizen scientist to easily generate georeferenced sensor information. This augmented, hybrid sensorial ecosystem challenges us to rethink how we tap into big data, mostly unstructured, representing the status of water systems, and how we extract relevant information.

This book explores how openness and the Internet promote innovation and the creation of economic value, citing the growth of the Web, Wikipedia, YouTube, and the open-source software (OSS) application Apache as examples. It examines why and how teams of software developers and users, collaborating over the Internet, can build and maintain software as a form of commons, and, more precisely, discusses the factors that lead some OSS commons to succeed and others to fail. To address these issues, the book draws on literature about software engineering and information systems, along with distributed work and virtual teams, political science and economics—including collective action, social movements, and commons governance and management. It also uses a framework called Institutional Analysis and Development to analyze the technological characteristics of the software, the community aspects of the people involved, and the institutional rules and processes that govern OSS projects. Moreover, the book presents a case study of Open-Source Geospatial Foundation, a nonprofit organization involved in a number of projects on OSS geographic information systems.

The primary goal of The Rosewood Massacre is to shed a light on the deep temporal connections between past racial violence and modern social inequality. González-Tennant’s approach involves a multidisciplinary study of racial violence and a new investigation of the destruction of Rosewood, Florida. This is not a study of a single moment or even the destruction of a single community, which was not truly destroyed, but rather displaced. Instead, it is a search for answers to the question of how culture, society, and violence intersect across time and space. González-Tennant’s study of Rosewood draws on additional datasets to construct an interpretive framework that begins with a case study—a microhistorical study—and builds toward a theory offering a fuller explanation of how ordinary citizens turned on their neighbors in terrifying ways. While previous studies of Rosewood accurately record approximate numbers of African Americans living in the area prior to the riot and present a broad review of the town’s development, they do not construct a detailed history of the town’s development through time. Collecting such information is difficult in rural settings. No maps or city directories exist for Rosewood due to its relatively remote location and low population density. We require new methods to explore the development of such rural contexts. In Rosewood, the use of geospatial mapping to analyze and interpret hundreds of property deeds demonstrates the development of a particular pattern of African American homeownership, and the role it played in contributing to the town’s destruction.

Research connecting neighborhoods and health has characterized neighborhood factors in multiple ways. This chapter discusses standard and emerging methods to measure and study neighborhood characteristics. In particular, this chapter provides an overview of neighborhood characteristic assessment methods, including self-report, systematic social observation, geographic information system (GIS) methods, Web-based geospatial methods, real-time geospatial methods, crowd-sourced geospatial methods, and information retrieval methods from online sources such as Instagram and Twitter. This chapter also discusses the strengths and limitations of each neighborhood characteristic assessment method (e.g., ease of administration, validity), and readers are provided with examples of each neighborhood assessment method applied in the epidemiology and population health literature.

This chapter introduces the reader to the main puzzle and argument motivating the book: piracy affects primarily weak states, but in those states, organized piracy is most common close to coastal areas with some governance and infrastructure. The chapter notes the limitations of existing research on maritime piracy, compares Pirate Lands with research on transnational crime, and argues that the authors’ comparative political economy focus is well-suited to capture the subnational conditions that drive armed robbery on ships and maritime piracy. The chapter sketches the research design and empirical approach. The chapter concludes with the organization of the book.

An estimated 65% of the world’s land and more than 80% of Earth’s biodiversity are under indigenous or local community customary ownership, care, and use. Recent developments in remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), mobile, and cloud computing provide the opportunity to systematically and cost-effectively monitor land-cover and land-use changes and threats at multiple scales. It is now possible, via satellite observations, to obtain a synoptic view of ecosystems at spatial and temporal resolutions that are more detailed, locally relevant, and consistent from village to global scales. However, to make geospatial data and technologies work for conservation, we still need to understand how data turn into actionable information and conservation decisions. This chapter uses Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation as a framework to discuss insights from 18 years of using geospatial technologies with the local communities, village and district governments, and other partners to monitor chimpanzee habitats and threats and inform chimpanzee conservation strategies and actions in Tanzania. It focuses on how Earth Observation data and associated technologies enabled and benefitted from the creation of research-implementation spaces in which stakeholders were able to collaborate and interact with geospatial data and results in a diversity of ways. This enabled development of geospatial applications and solutions ‘with’ and not ‘for’ local stakeholders, resulting in expansion of new protected areas managed by village and districts governments and restoration of habitats in some degraded village forest reserves.

Finally chapter 11 brings together the different strands of enquiry into a conclusion. It offers a comparison of the three distinct bans reviewed in the empirical chapters and what can be learned from them. This chapter highlights how bans in Afghanistan have often been a function of a wide range of international, national, sub national and local institutions, with quite different interests and mandates, coalescing around a demand for action provoked by growing levels of drug crop production. It shows how these coalitions establish the conditions under which a ban can be imposed and sustained with relative ease in areas of consolidated statehood, but how in areas of limited statehood the very act of prohibition distorts the political market place and undermines efforts at state formation. This chapter also highlights the broader implications of the research and geospatial analysis.

Chapter 4 provides an outline of what has proven to be a pioneering and innovative methodology for examining drug crop cultivation. The chapter documents the challenges associated with collecting primary data in rural Afghanistan and how a lack of basic demographic data, and the diversity in local circumstances, have shaped the way that fieldwork has been conducted. It explains the importance of positioning primary research on drug crop cultivation firmly within the framework of rural livelihoods, not only to develop a deeper understanding of the capabilities, assets and institutional processes that shape the livelihood outcomes of different households and communities, but also as a method for mitigating the risks of social desirability during research, in particular the consequences of what can only be called the drugs fetishism of much of the mainstream drugs literature. The chapter also shows the importance of methodological pluralism when conducting primary research in insecure and contested space, particularly when examining sensitive issues such as the drugs economy. It also highlights the opportunities for developing synergies between high-resolution geospatial analysis and long-term fieldwork in insecure terrain.

The business geographer performing market analysis for real estate should become skilled in the advances of geographic technology, as well as geographic and real estate analysis and procedures. And the client should become skilled in judging the analyst’s work. In this context, the eighteenth-century poetic essay by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) is appropriate (see box 10.1). The left column is particularly relevant to the analyst practitioner, while the right column is particularly relevant to the client who is making his or her judgmental decision. The client, whether an investor, financier, or developer, should know enough about business geography and real estate market analysis to correctly understand the evaluation and report, know which questions to ask of the analyst, and know how to translate the report into correct judgment. The client making the judgmental decision should not have his or her vision clouded by details of the choice made for which data source to use for population projections, nor should the judgmental decision be steered off course by the choice between which desktop GIS software to use. Instead, the client has other considerations, such as How do I select and work with a business geographer performing market analysis for real estate projects? and When and how should a business geographer consultant be used? This chapter gets the reader started in these tasks. Financiers, investors, developers hire business geographers to provide a variety of services, including choosing the appropriate data, software, and methods to use, and rely on their professional skills of execution and ability to complete and present the report in a manner that will improve their judgment. The business geographer brings objectivity, professionalism, and both broad and specialized experience with similar projects. How should a business geographer be chosen? First, the prospective client should decide what project(s) the analyst is to evaluate. The type of projects a business geographer might be engaged to work on include; … Determining the highest and best-use for a given site Selecting the location and evaluating the viability at that location for a specific type of development Constructing an expansion strategy and location strategy for individual outlets of a new or existing chain of retail stores. … The client should decide whether outside expertise should be sought or whether the real estate market analyst functions should instead be performed in house.

This chapter examines the use of a specialized case of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs)—geospatial technologies, particularly the use of satellite-based remote sensing—in human rights documentation and litigation. Geospatial technologies are a subset of information technologies and are concerned with data that have an explicit geographic context. The technologies encompass next-generation cartographic techniques, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), crowdsourced information with specific geographic information, and remote sensing by both space-borne and aerial vehicles. These technologies are used for a range of applications supporting human rights documentation, from the mapping of human rights abuses to monitoring areas of social and political uprising using geotagged texts and photographs.