Climate Change is a spatial issue: the issues surrounding it have specific geographic locations or foci. For example, carbon footprints can be summarized by zip code and the information displayed as a map. What if there were a way to view your carbon footprint and those of your neighbors on a map and then take personal action that could lower your personal footprint as well as that of your neighborhood? If sea level rise threatens your community, there should be an easy tool to let your representative know how you feel.
Technology has enabled us to tie in blogging technology, video, geographic data, and other media. If a story breaks on a climate change meeting in Bali, it would be incredible for a user to blog about it via the map, then find similar users, schedule a meetup (or join an existing one), write their representatives, and take personal action, describing their actions in a geotagged blog on the atlas....hence the moniker 'blatlas'. What's needed most is for the United States to adopt policies that will harness the power of the market to spur innovation into renewable energy technology, carbon capture/recycling, and simultaneously a progressive cap on emissions themselves. If this mashup becomes a hit, it could help push legislation get the ball rolling finally. Armed with information and performace indicators regarding local carbon footprints and climate change scenarios (including the most detailed sea level rise maps for the entire US), people will be motivated enough to make simple personal decisions that cumulatively can have much more effect than any legislation.
The blatlas will have three main focus areas that roughly correspond to the following questions:
1)What's the current situation regarding climate change?
2)What are the future predictions?
3)What are the solutions?
The information required to create the blatlas will be derived from hundreds of sources: rss feeds regarding climate change news, youtube videos, USGS digital elevation models, NREL, IPCC, carbon calculators, and many others. However, the most interesting and potentially powerful information will come from bloggers themselves. Peer based persuasion has been shown to be a powerful motivator for social change.
I have worked at the Environmental Defense Fund since 1998 starting with the 'Scorecard' website which was one of the first database backed environmental websites. My career since then has focused on leveraging the power of geographic information for environmental advocacy.
I need a team who can help design the UI and style the site. I also need help of engineers in developing the blog aspect of the atlas, as well as using a slider to morph through tile layers and other data.
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Comments
comments
It would be nice to add a section about things that are being done to help climate change, so people could network in their own areas.
Section 3 of the blatlas...
would address what is being done at local, regional, national, and international efforts. In fact, this solutions focused area is the key to the entire atlas. I think of it as a social network for climate activists.
Thanks for the comment!
Peter
Social network for climate action
There is an existing social network for climate activists ... www.2people.org . As the founder, I'd be interested to hear from folks with ideas about how to leverage and/or improve it: you can reach me at phil at 2people dot youknowhat.
well you could add maps to
well you could add maps to the site that will help people visualize impacts, scientific models, and where(not just how) people are working to rectify the problem. That's what the blatlas concept is all about, and more than one social network can exist for a given niche.