TY - JOUR
T1 - Sensors, empowerment, and accountability
T2 - a Digital Earth view from East Africa
AU - Georgiadou, Yola
AU - Bana, Benson
AU - Becht, Robert
AU - Hoppe, Robert
AU - Ikingura, Justinian
AU - Kraak, Menno-Jan
AU - Lance, Katte
AU - Lemmens, Rob
AU - Lungo, Juma Hemed
AU - McCall, M.K.
AU - Miscione, Gianluca
AU - Verplanke, Jeroen
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - Several innovative ‘participatory sensing’ initiatives are under way in East Africa. They can be seen as local manifestations of the global notion of Digital Earth. The initiatives aim to amplify the voice of ordinary citizens, improve citizens' capacity to directly influence public service delivery and hold local government accountable. The popularity of these innovations is, among other things, a local reaction to the partial failure of the millennium development goals (MDGs) to deliver accurate statistics on public services in Africa. Empowered citizens, with access to standard mobile phones, can ‘sense’ via text messages and report failures in the delivery of local government services. The public disclosure of these reports on the web and other mass media may pressure local authorities to take remedial action. In this paper, we outline the potential and research challenges of a ‘participatory sensing’ platform, which we call a ‘human sensor web.’ Digital Africa's first priority could be to harness continent-wide and national data as well as local information resources, collected by citizens, in order to monitor, measure and forecast MDGs
AB - Several innovative ‘participatory sensing’ initiatives are under way in East Africa. They can be seen as local manifestations of the global notion of Digital Earth. The initiatives aim to amplify the voice of ordinary citizens, improve citizens' capacity to directly influence public service delivery and hold local government accountable. The popularity of these innovations is, among other things, a local reaction to the partial failure of the millennium development goals (MDGs) to deliver accurate statistics on public services in Africa. Empowered citizens, with access to standard mobile phones, can ‘sense’ via text messages and report failures in the delivery of local government services. The public disclosure of these reports on the web and other mass media may pressure local authorities to take remedial action. In this paper, we outline the potential and research challenges of a ‘participatory sensing’ platform, which we call a ‘human sensor web.’ Digital Africa's first priority could be to harness continent-wide and national data as well as local information resources, collected by citizens, in order to monitor, measure and forecast MDGs
KW - ITC-ISI-JOURNAL-ARTICLE
UR - https://ezproxy2.utwente.nl/login?url=https://webapps.itc.utwente.nl/library/2011/isi/georgiadou_sen.pdf
U2 - 10.1080/17538947.2011.585184
DO - 10.1080/17538947.2011.585184
M3 - Article
VL - 4
SP - 285
EP - 304
JO - International journal of digital earth
JF - International journal of digital earth
SN - 1753-8947
IS - 4
ER -