Grassroots groups as stakeholders in spatial data infrastructures: challenges and opportunities for local data development and sharing

Abstract

This paper investigates the unique challenges of an expanding group of stakeholders making demands upon shared geospatial data resources: non governmental organisations participating in local governance. In spite of efforts to improve local data integration in spatial data infrastructures and development of strategies from public participation GIS to expand access to geospatial data and technologies, grassroots data users still experience difficulties with the accessibility, quality, and usefulness of local government data resources. Drawing from extended ethnographic research conducted in Chicago, Illinois, I illustrate these problems and how they are shaped by grassroots groups' resource constraints, knowledge systems, and socio‐political positions; and assess the feasibility and impacts of proposed alternatives for better meeting grassroots spatial data needs. I contend that the needs and challenges of these stakeholders are unique from those of other users, but are nonetheless rooted in central dilemmas of spatial data handling, and so might be addressed through stronger engagement with GIScience research in this arena.

Keywords:

• PPGIS
• Spatial data infrastructures
• Local knowledge
• Data sharing

Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. BCS‐0652141. The project has benefited greatly from the involvement of participants from Humboldt Park and West Humboldt Park, and the research assistance of Nandhini Gulasingam, John Baldridge, Man Wang, Jennifer Hampton, Allan Kempson, Jennifer Grant, Grant Garstka, and Danny Shields. I am especially grateful for the detailed and thoughtful input of three reviewers and the editor.

Notes

1. See also Craig, Harris and Weiner 2002, Obermeyer 1998, Sieber 2004, Sieber 2006.

2. While I focus on the US context here, efforts to foster stronger local data integration and accessibility in SDIs are also evident in other national contexts (Crompvoets and Bregt 2003, Van Loenen and Kok 2004).

3. State legislation in the 1990s established the Illinois Geographic Information Council to coordinate data integration and sharing from local to state level, but at the time of writing ILGIC has not yet launched its centralized data clearinghouse.

4. The City of Chicago's GIS division also hosts an interactive mapping website that enables users to create and customize maps showing zoning, supportive housing resources, public transit stops and their accessibility, fire stations, schools, and a host of other public facilities and community resources (http://www.cityofchicago.org/gis). The site does not allow data download and only supports single record retrieval from queries, so I do not discuss it in detail here. Staff members from both case study organisations have reviewed these interactive mapping services and rejected them for their applications because of these limits and because they do not enable users to integrate their own data.

5. All quotes are drawn from participant observation and interviews with research participants. In keeping with my confidentiality agreements with these participants, they are identified by a pseudonym.