PoliBlog

Starting today, iPhone users who come upon oiled birds and other wildlife in the Gulf Coast region can immediately transmit the location and a photo to animal rescue networks using a free new iPhone app, MoGO, for Mobile Gulf Observatory. It was developed by four University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers to make it easier for the public to help save wildlife exposed to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The UMass Amherst researchers hope the MoGO app will draw on the large network of “citizen scientists” who are as heartbroken as they are to witness the disaster for marine life and who are actively looking for ways to help save wildlife along the 14,000 miles of northern Gulf coastline.

Although rescue networks are in place and busy saving stranded wildlife, the task is enormous and trained staff too few. They just don’t have the people-power to cover all the territory from Louisiana to Florida. With over 400 wildlife species and 35 national wildlife refuges at risk, the Gulf is in crisis from the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

“That’s where citizen science comes in,” says UMass Amherst wildlife biologist Curt Griffin. As he explains, “The new app allows anyone who finds an oiled animal to be linked automatically by the phone to the Wildlife Hotline and also to contribute photos of the stranded animal and its GPS location coordinates to a database here on campus.”

Each report will alert wildlife stranding networks to deploy experts to rescue live animals for clean-up and medical treatment. Photos of oiled wildlife plus the GPS location will also be uploaded to MoGO’s comprehensive database for review by wildlife and fisheries experts using a Web browser. Users are also encouraged to upload their photos of dead marine and coastal wildlife, tar balls on beaches, oil slicks on water and oiled coastal habitats to the MoGO database.

The idea for the new app came to Charlie Schweik, associate director of the National Center for Digital Government, as he listened to yet another depressing story about the Gulf oil spill. Already working on invasive species mapping with computer scientist Deepak Ganesan, an expert in mobile phone and sensor systems, Schweik thought that experience might prove useful for inventorying damage in the Gulf. Smartphones such as the iPhone have several sensors including camera, GPS, audio and video, which can provide valuable data for such an application.

Schweik also turned to Griffin and Andy Danylchuk, a fisheries ecologist, his colleagues in UMass Amherst’s Natural Resources Conservation Department, to connect to the wildlife and fisheries community. Griffin and Danylchuk agreed that a mobile phone app in the hands of an army of “citizen scientists” would enhance recovery efforts by wildlife stranding networks. It could also increase the efficiency of state and federal efforts to monitor, assess and respond to the damage caused by the spill and engage the public to partner with natural resources agencies and researchers.

As Danylchuk points out, “The MoGO public database will help guide restoration efforts of vital coastal and marine habitats, and be used by scientists world-wide to assess the ecological impacts of the spill on the Gulf. The public database also allows scientists outside the Gulf region to participate in the assessment.”

The app takes advantage of “mobile crowdsourcing,” that is, the power of smart personal mobile devices to provide thousands of eyes and ears on the ground. Ganesan’s research group has designed a software framework called “mCrowd,” which simplifies the usual weeks- to months-long process of developing a new mobile crowdsourcing app. “It provides easy-to-use templates that can be tailored to a new application,” Ganesan explains. His mCrowd technology allowed the UMass Amherst team to create the MoGO app and infrastructure in a little more than a week.

Whether the project succeeds now rests on how well the word gets out to the public in the Gulf region, the researchers note. “Any person, on land or at sea, wishing to use the free app for their iPhone can go to www.savegulfwildlife.org for more information on how to get it on their iPhone,” Schweik says.

Listen to report on WFCR public radio.
Visit the Mobile Gulf Observatory Website, including free download of MoGo app

Martha Fuentes-Bautista, assistant professor of communication and public policy, has received a 2010-2011 Faculty Research/Healey Endowment grant.  The grants are awarded annually as part of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement internal grant program, and are designed to promote excellence in research as well as each awardee’s capacity to publish and acquire future outside funding.

Thirty-eight applications were submitted through the Faculty Research/Healey Endowment grant competition this year.  Professor Fuentes-Bautista was one of nine applicants to receive the award.

Support from this grant will enable Fuentes-Bautista to conduct a year-long study, “Examining Impacts of Local Broadband Initiatives on Universal Service Goals.”  The study will evaluate the ability of different local broadband interventions (municipal, community-based, and/or public-private partnerships) to improve the availability and affordability of high-speed Internet services in areas with little or no broadband access.  Ultimately, this research will help to inform state and federal programs charged with advancing broadband coverage, which is increasingly vital for economic development, public health and safety, educational opportunity, and government transparency.

Over the next year, Fuentes-Bautista will gather data from 10 communities in Western Massachusetts to develop indicators for evaluating the scope and impact of local broadband initiatives.  Pilot data will be used to develop predictive models and for applications to federal granting agencies. WesternMA Connect, Inc., a regional nonprofit that supports the deployment of broadband in the western part of the state, will be a collaborator in the research.

Professor Fuentes-Bautista has been at UMass Amherst since 2007 and has research and teaching interests in new media policy, technology and inequality, and global communications.  Her doctorate is from the University of Texas at Austin.

For more information, contact Susan Newton (snewton@pubpol.umass.edu or 413-577-0478)

Jarice Hanson, Professor of Communication and CPPA Faculty Associate, was one of four professors selected to receive a  Microsoft IMPACT Grant for Blended Learning from the Office of Faculty Development and the Center for Teaching at UMass Amherst.

The grant will provide support for introducing new technologies into Prof. Hanson’s COMM 334: Media History and Communication Policy course.  Students will participate in on-line, collaborative activities such as virtual field trips and work to create wikis, podcasts, and blogs based on themes pulled from course materials.

The $10,000 IMPACT Grants are generously funded by Microsoft’s Academic Evangelism Program, with additional support from the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the College of  Natural Sciences, and the Provost’s Office.

More information about Jarice’s teaching and research is available through her Communication Department website.

Krista Harper, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Public Policy, was interviewed by Red-Eye Vancouver Cooperative Radio about the effect of recent elections putting right-wing conservatives in power in Hungary, including a subsequent increase in violence against the Roma people.  In  “Growth of far right in Hungary poses danger to Roma,”  Harper, who studies public health and environmental issues of Hungarian Roma (Gypsies) communities, discussed how anti-Roma racism has changed throughout history, the main far right political group in Hungary called Jobbik, and what the recent Hungarian elections mean for the Roma.

Listen to the entire podcast [here]

David Mednicoff, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Associate Director of the Program in Social Thought and Political Economy, will talk about his research on the rule of law in Arab societies as part of an inaugural conference being held at Stanford University on May 10-11, 2010.  The conference, “Political Reform in the Arab World: Problems and Prospects,” will launch a new “Good Governance and Political Reform in the Arab World” program at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Mednicoff’s talk will focus on his extensive research concerning the roles that legal rights and procedures play in contemporary Arab societies and prospects for political democratization there.  His research has important implications for international relations and US policy.  Mednicoff was a 2006-2007 Fulbright Scholar at the Qatar University and has presented his work to policymakers in Washington at forums sponsored by the Department of State and by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  He is currently conducting research on the regulation of migrant workers in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as part of a grant from Georgetown University.  He also recently was named Principal Director of a workshop on the comparative politics and law of secularism to be held in 2011 at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Onati, Spain. Mednicoff holds both Ph.D. and law degrees from Harvard University.

The conference at Stanford will feature renowned experts on Arab politics and civil society from around the globe, and will address key themes related to Arab governance and reform, including the role of the military, secular and Islamist political opposition, youth politics, media and public opinion, economic development, and interventions by the international community.

For more information on Professor Mednicoff’s lecture contact Susan Newton (snewton@pubpol.umass.edu or X7-0478).