Beyond the Urban Interface: Design for Scientific Data Collection
Climate adaptation in complex urban systems now hinges on critical connections among big data, social media, and crowdsourcing. While big data has been a recurrent buzzword for academic researchers, the integration of complex datasets for predictive analytics requires more than volume. Similarly, the explosive growth in social media usage and ubiquitous computing, which has given researchers access to an unprecedented volume of data, continues to demand better tools for non-trivial analyses. Although crowdsourcing methods for data collection have met some success, the full potential for integrated feedback protocols for civic co-management practices remains under explored. Design-based research is key for more successful and sustainable urban data collection and digital civic participation.
PetaJakarta.org is proving why an integrated approach to big data, social media, and civic participation is essential for megacity data collection processes. Through strategic community organizing, institutional ethnography, and novel approaches to big data gathering through designed engagement, PetaJakarta.org has developed new tools, techniques, and methods to democratize resilient strategies for climate adaptation by meaningfully engaging the concerns and capacities of urban residents in Southeast Asia. The presentation will focus on research from the PetaJakarta.org project to suggest how big data analytics, crowdsourcing through social media networks, and grassroots citizen cartography can be coordinated through new design research methods, facilitating effective, equitable digital participation for innovative approaches to climate adaptation.
Director of Research and Partnerships, Stamen Design; Assistant Professor, School of Graduate Design
California College of the Arts
Sara Dean is the director of Research and Partnerships at Stamen Design, in San Francisco, and an assistant professor at the California College of the Arts. She is also design director of the research group anexact office, where her work considers the implications of emerging digital methodologies on public engagement, urban interface, and related political practices. She is an investigator of PetaJakarta.org. Her work has recently been exhibited in Asia, Europe, and North America. Sara has an MArch and am MS in Design Research, both from the University of Michigan. She has previously taught design methodologies at University of California, Berkeley, the University of Michigan, and the College for Creative Studies.
