Caracals

Caracals are named after an agile and adaptable wildcat,native to Izmir. Like caracals, they navigate complex ecosystems of data to uncover hidden insights. They focus on hazards (earthquakes, forest fires, climate change, floods) and cultural conservation. Recognizing the importance of street animals in urban ecosystems, they seek solutions for their care. They use free and open source spatial tools such as OpenStreetMap, QGIS, Kobotoolbox, etc. to empower communities to take ownership of data-driven decision-making processes. By contributing to urban democracy through participatory mechanisms, they seek to amplify local voices and create a more resilient, responsive and solidaristic world. Karakulaklar, within the Izmir Planning Agency (IZPA), provides and disseminates crowdsourced data production with the perspective of realizing artificial intelligence research and disseminating open data and free software culture.

Goals and Principles of Community-Based Approach

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Caracals crowdsourcing encourages the participation of a broad community, not just academia and the general public, in the production of scientific data. Citizens go beyond raising awareness about urban and environmental issues and take on the roles of generating and analyzing data. In addition, the free software tools used in this process increase the capacity of communities to use these technologies in the long term. With citizen science at the center, this work supports community-based scientific data production, allowing citizens, not just the public or experts, to directly contribute to monitoring ecosystems.

Methods and Working Principles

Within the scope of crowdsourced open data production efforts, Caracals organizes “Citizen Participatory Field Studies & Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Workshops” for the production of open data with the use of free software tools. Citizen Participatory Field Studies & GIS Workshop Series is carried out with the participation of local communities in order to support efforts to understand, monitor and prevent the effects of hazard / risk factors in the city, as well as to protect cultural and natural values in the city. Within the framework of the working model; trainings on prevention of hazard/risk factors such as fire, flood, earthquake, intervention during disasters, post-disaster recovery and protection of cultural & natural values are organized. In addition, participants are given basic trainings on Geographic Information System (GIS) and free software tools (such as QGIS, KoboToolBox) based on data collection in the field. After the expert trainings, participants are involved in monitoring and observing changes in urban and natural areas by directly collecting data in field studies. Within the scope of the workshops, the data produced in field studies are transferred to the GIS environment. The workshops basically build a bridge between local knowledge / information obtained in the field and scientific knowledge and describe a broad participatory data production process based on the citizen science method.

Focal Outputs and Impact Areas

The main outputs of the studies focus on the production of publicly available data sets for the benefit of society and the creation of well-equipped communities with increased environmental awareness. In addition, contributions to the production of scientific knowledge aim to enrich local research and develop sustainable solutions for the city.

1. Open Data Production and Contribution to the Public Good: Data collected within the scope of prevention of hazard/risk factors such as fire, flood, earthquake, etc., intervention during disasters, and post-disaster recovery activities are transformed into open data sets that can be used for “Disaster Emergency Action Plans”. Data collected within the scope of studies on cultural and natural heritage values such as urban biodiversity, intangible & tangible memory elements, ecological heritage, public art are transformed into open data sets that can be used for “Urban, Cultural and Natural Heritage Protection Action Plans”. Thus, while the resilience of the locality against risk factors increases, efforts to protect the cultural and natural fabric of the city are strengthened.
2. Supporting Community Capacity: Participants learn free and open source GIS tools and experience hands-on how to use them. In this process, capacity building of local communities is ensured and environmental awareness is raised. Thus, a sustainable environmental awareness and urban resilience is ensured in the long term.
3. Contribution to Scientific Knowledge and Data Production: Locally generated data directly contribute to scientific studies and urban studies. While the data collected provide valuable inputs to academic studies and scientific analyses of public institutions, they support decision-making processes based on concrete data to solve local problems. These contributions are valuable as a source of scientific knowledge and an important resource for local governments to develop urban strategies.
4. Open Data Production for the Public: Data produced with public resources are licensed as public goods and made available for the benefit of society. Sharing this data for public access increases knowledge-based participation and ensures that communities have equal access to information. This strengthens the public data ecosystem that can be utilized not only by public institutions but also by all segments of society, and ensures environmentally and socially fair information sharing.