Teaching & Learning Ethics with Spatial Thinking & Geotech

2 Tenets:

1. Teaching and learning about equity and ethics is important. I submit that given key social and technological forces, teaching these topics will be even more important than ever in the future.

2. Teaching equity and ethics can be powerfully and engagingly done using GIS and the geographic approach.

Social equality is a state of affairs in which all people within a specific society or isolated group have the same status in certain respects, including civil rights, freedom of speech, property rights, and equal access to social goods and services.

 Equity is the quality of being fair and impartial  .

Social equity is impartiality, fairness and justice for all people as implemented in social policy. Social equity takes into account systemic inequalities to ensure everyone in a community has access to the same opportunities and outcomes. Equity acknowledges that inequalities exist and works to eliminate them.

As defined by the National Academy of Public Administration, social equity is “the fair, just and equitable management of all institutions serving the public directly or by contract; and the fair and equitable distribution of public services, and implementation of public policy; and the commitment to promote fairness, justice and equity in the formation of public policy.”

Connection to Education:

Equity to me strikes close to home of what makes us human and also what inspired us to pursue a career in education in the first place:

I also believe that GIS and spatial thinking are disruptive technologies and disruptive ways of thinking, respectively--at its heart they break down disciplinary barriers.

With access to these tools, data sets, and ways of thinking, students will be wiser decision-makers in government, nonprofit, industry, and academia, building a more equitable, sustainable, and resilient world.

Beyond the benefits that GIS offers students, GIS also helps governments, nonprofit organizations, and others assess where a lack of access to resources exists, who is impacted, where to intervene, and enables people to take action.

1. Maps are widely used as effective means of communication.
2. Maps are increasingly used in a widening array of disciplines and topics.
3. GIS is the technology behind the creation of most modern, online, interactive maps.

Selected principles impacting inference:

The ecological fallacy: Ecological in the sense of dealing with aggregates. A correlation at the aggregate does not imply correlation at the individual level. Example: Suppose COVID infection is correlated with % Asian at the Census Tract level. This does not imply that individual Asian-descendants are more susceptible to COVID infection, but implies only that areas with high proportions of Asians also have high rates of infection.

Correlation does not imply causation: It is necessary to avoid the use of causal language in reporting correlation: x impacts y; x explains y.

The dominant theme of the UX has been "caveat emptor" - the user is free to choose which functions to employ on which data, and is left to interpret the results. (Goodchild)

Today, ArcGIS Pro has thousands of functions, but the UX philosophy remains the same, and ethical behavior is largely the responsibility of the user. Do they know about MAUP, the ecological fallacy, location privacy, and spatial dependence?

How could we build software tools that help the user make ethical decisions? Warnings, popups, stored workflows, something else? 

Ground Truth, by John Pickles. 1995.

1 effective technique: Show bad maps, such as my set  here : Bad maps abound, and even live data feeds can be in error!  

Imagery must also be viewed critically—it could be  intentionally  o ffset from vectors  or  selectively  o ffset from vectors  or  selectively  r emove items, such as moving vehicles.    

Data could even be  intentionally faked.  

Key information may be left out of the metadata can only be resolved by talking to the data creator with an old-fashioned call as was the case when I was   revising   m y Lyme disease map of Rhode Island.   

Another effective teaching technique: Make clear that even when you are mapping your own data, data quality and ethical decisions frequently arise, as  I point  o ut in these field examples.    

Use case studies in your ethics instruction. One   set is from David DiBiase at Penn State.  

Another way to teach ethics are to examine  these gigapan images . I included this image from this tower in China in discussions in  my course in modern GIS. 

Turn issues of copyright, such as “can I use that picture in my story map” into short effective instructional moments in ethics. This fosters discussion about best practice aided by  my  f avorite decision-making graphic on this topic.  

Next, ask, “Should I use that picture?”  Potential harm can occur to natural spaces,  for example , from geotagged photographs resulting in a place being “over-loved” to  rare and endangered species . 

Another way of teaching ethics: Foster a debate using the  GIS Certification Institute’s  C ode of Ethics . Pose scenarios and ask students, “when does the obligation to society outweigh the obligation to the employer, funder, or colleagues?”    

1. An AAG paper is out for  review on locational privacy and the public interest. 

2. The Map Makers Mantra:

 https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-online/mapping/mapmakers-mantra/ 

• Be Honest and Accurate: The highest objective and primary obligation of ethical mapmakers is to communicate information in the most accurate and understandable way. They strive for veracity and verifiability in all aspects of their mapmaking.
• Be Transparent and Accountable: Ethical mapmakers take responsibility for their work and are open and transparent about their sources and decisions. They accept that neither speed nor format forgive accountability.
• Minimize Harm and Seek to Provide Value: Ethical mapmakers treat sources, subjects, colleagues, and members of the public with respect; they promote equity, inclusion, and empathy. They strive to make maps of value to increase understanding and provide insights.
• Be Humble and Courageous. Ethical mapmakers humbly admit when they get it wrong and gently point out when others get it wrong. They have the courage to admit when they do not know something and call on others when their own skills or knowledge are insufficient.

3. Data Equity:  https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com/2023/10/02/reflections-on-data-equity/  Reflections from the Equitable Data Working Group.

4. The International Science Council CODATA Working Group on Data Ethics. “The growing application of big data and artificial intelligence in scientific research raises ethical and normative challenges, particularly in relation to openness, privacy, transparency, accountability, equity and responsibility. The Data Ethics Working group of CODATA is working with global scholars to collaboratively establish a basic consensus for further activities and research on data ethics principles and a data ethics framework covering the whole data life cycle. This will help CODATA to advance its mission in championing global open data exchange and applications in alignment with the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science.”

As part of the  SciDataCon [scidatacon.org]  side of  International Data Week [internationaldataweek.org] , a session organised by the CODATA WG on Data Ethics, looking at four aspects of data ethics relevant to the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science:  Data Ethics and the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science [scidatacon.org] 

5. The African Association of Universities (AAU), the University of Nottingham, and the Ethical Data Initiative launched the Campaign for Data Ethics in Education during 2023. The Campaign aims to highlight the importance of educating researchers and aspiring data practitioners about the ethical considerations involved in collecting, using, reusing, and storing data during their training. Details can be found here:   https://ethicaldatainitiative.org/campaign-for-data-ethics-in-education/ [ethicaldatainitiative.org]  and here:  https://ethicaldatainitiative.org/news/ 

Conservation Social Science:

 https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Conservation+Social+Science%3A+Understanding+People%2C+Conserving+Biodiversity-p-9781444337570 

Handbook of Geospatial Technologies:

 https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Geospatial-Technologies-and-Society/Kent-Specht/p/book/9780367428877   includes social constructivism and more.

Digital Earth: Yesterday, today, and tomorrow: International Journal of Digital Earth:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17538947.2023.2187467 

1. My  Ethical Geo essay for the American Geographical Society. 

2. My ethics essays on the  Spatial Reserves data blog. 

3. My  location privacy chapter in the UCGIS GIS&T Body of Knowledge and other chapters.