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Participatory Sensing: Recruiting Bipedal Platforms or Building Issue-centred Projects?

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Participatory Sensing, Opinions and Collective Awareness

Part of the book series: Understanding Complex Systems ((UCS))

Abstract

This paper raises questions about the way in which participation and recruitment are framed within participatory sensing. The text outlines a number of assumptions of participatory sensing and using a case study, examines the impacts of these assumptions on the practices of participatory sensing. The case study involves a mobile phone app that monitors ambient sound levels and creates noise maps. The study describes the conceptual and practical challenges of recruiting people and the need for an issue-centred campaign that encases the app inside a wider framework of local environmental issues. Based on observations from the case study, the paper proposes a pragmatic approach to sensing that focuses on designing sensing assemblages that support local issues of public concern. The paper argues that an issue-centred approach enables sensing that allows both machines and humans to participate in an equitable way that maximises their unique sensing abilities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UCL, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    Christian Nold & Louise Francis

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  1. Christian Nold
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  2. Louise Francis
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Correspondence to Christian Nold .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Vittorio Loreto

  2. Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London, London, United Kingdom

    Muki Haklay

  3. Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg , Würzburg, Germany

    Andreas Hotho

  4. Department of Physics, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Vito D.P. Servedio

  5. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany

    Gerd Stumme

  6. VITO—Flemish Institute for Technological Research, Mol, Belgium

    Jan Theunis

  7. Institute for Scientific Interchange Foundation, Torino, Italy

    Francesca Tria

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Nold, C., Francis, L. (2017). Participatory Sensing: Recruiting Bipedal Platforms or Building Issue-centred Projects?. In: Loreto, V., et al. Participatory Sensing, Opinions and Collective Awareness. Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25658-0_11

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