S H A W N L . P E N M A N

E A R T H D A T A A N A LY S I S

C E N T E R

U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E W M E X I C O

GIS ETHICS, STANDARDS

& METADATA

URISA – Urban and Regional Information Systems Association

(www.urisa.org/)

ASPRS – American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote

Sensing (www.asprs.org/)

GISCI – GIS Certification Institute (www.gisci.org/ ‎)

MAPPING SCIENCES CODE OF ETHICS

Be guided in all professional activities by the highest standards

and be a faithful trustee or agent in all matters for each client

or employer.

At all times function in such a manner as will bring credit and

dignity to the mapping sciences profession.

Do not compete unfairly with anyone who is engaged in the

mapping sciences profession.

Work to strengthen the mapping sciences profession.

Undertake only such assignments in the use of mapping

sciences for which one is qualified by education, training, and

experience.

Give appropriate credit to other persons and/or firms for their

professional contributions.

Recognize the proprietary, privacy, legal, and ethical interests

and rights of others.

ASPRS/URISA CODE OF ETHICS

Society

Recognize the impact of your work on society as a whole, subgroups

including geographic or demographic minorities and future generations.

Employers

Recognize that you’ve been hired to deliver needed products and

services. The employer (or funder) expects quality work and

professional conduct.

Colleagues and the Profession

Recognize the value of being part of a community of other

professionals. Together, we support each other and add to the stature of

the field.

Individuals at Large

Recognize the impact of his or her work on individual people and will

strive to avoid harm to them.

GISCI CODE OF ETHICS

The GIS professional will:

Respect privacy

Protect individual privacy, esp. about sensitive information.

Be especially careful with new information

Respect individuals

Encourage individual autonomy,

Be truthful when disclosing individual data,

Treat all individuals equally, without regard to race, gender, or other

personal characteristic not related to the task at hand.

GISCI CODE OF ETHICS

1. You will not use a GIS technology to harm other people.

2. You will not interfere with other people's computer work.

3. You will not snoop around in other people's computer fi les, nor misuse distributed access to geospatial databases or location -based technology in such a way as to infringe of the rights of your fellow humans.

4. You not use a computer to steal or use geospatial data or information or GIS applications to aid in theft, whether directly or indirectly.

5. You will not use a geospatial database or GIS technology to bear false witness.

6. You will not copy or use proprietary GIS, visualization, GI database management or remote sensing analysis software for which you have not paid.

10 COMMANDMENTS OF GIS ETHICS

7. You will not use other people's computer resources or geospatial databases without

authorization or proper compensation, unless such resources are openly advertised as being freely available and in the public domain.

8. You will not appropriate other people's intellectual output.

9. You will think about the social consequences of the GIS or other spatial analysis program you are writing or the GIS application system you are designing, including its potential for misuse or abuse by those less principled than yourself.

10. You will always use a computer, information network and spatial applications in ways that insure consideration and respect for your fellow humans

10 COMMANDMENTS OF GIS ETHICS

Industry

What are they?

How affect your work?

Organization

Are they different than industry standards

Personal

Something to think about…..

STANDARDS

Who owns the data?

Use data with permission of creator

Give credit for data utilized

Do you need IRB review?

De-identify data

Make sure that an individual person cannot be identified in your analysis

(particularly when made public)

COMMON SENSE GUIDES

HOW IS MAP USED?

Image – Kelly Alfaro Haugen, WAURISA 2014, Ethics of GIS Presentation www.waurisa.org/conferences/2014/presentations/Ethics%20of%20GIS.pdf

WILLFUL MISDIRECTION

Mark Monmonier - A Case Study in the Misuse of GIS: Siting a Low -Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility in New York State

In 1986, in response to a federal mandate, New York State established the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Siting Commission to select a disposal site for low-level radioactive waste (LLRW). The Siting Commission adopted a GIS -based site-selection process that began with statewide exclusionary screening and advanced through the stepwise identification of several candidate areas and a few "finalist" potential sites to the selection of a single preferred disposal site…. Moreover, the commission not only relied too confidently on an outside contractor for study design, data collection, and locational analysis but also failed to provide an open public review of the GIS data and analysis. In addition, New York's LLRW siting effort suffered from lack of communication with GIS experts in state agencies, universities, and the private sector; the decision to select a site before choosing a disposal method; gross underestimation of public hostility to all types of nuclear facility; adoption of a conceptually flawed, top -down siting process; and the divergent perspectives of legislators, regulators, site planners, environmental consultants, and local public officials. Public outrage intensified in later stages of the siting exercise. Protests over a poorly designed and inconsistently applied GIS tarnished the Siting Commission's credibility and led to suspension of the siting process and a major revision of the state's LLRW law.

CASE STUDY

Issues

Contractor designed GIS with no GIS expert oversight

Coarse spatial resolution

two-stage raster system

with square-mile (2.59 km2) cells for exclusionary screening and identification of candidate areas

40-acre (16.19 ha) cells for identification of potential sites

GIS Data

Transportation Network

rather than apply a minimum-path algorithm to a digitized map of the state's primary road

network, the contractor computed straight-line distances, which blatantly ignored the

Adirondacks, the Catskills, the Finger Lakes, and other significant topographic and hydrographic

obstacles.

Computing distance between a site and an "incompatible structure," such as

a school, church, hospital, or residence

Used centroid rather than site’s perimeter

Old Maps

Relied on existing large-scale maps (10+ years old)

Weighting Factors arbitrary

workshop attended by Advisory Committee members and other environmentally savvy

participants, who discussed the factors and voted on weights.

CASE STUDY

Commission rewrote rules as they went

Mistrust of the GIS led to numerous freedom-of-information

requests and lawsuits.

Commission claimed data was updated frequently and were not suitable

for release. Judge ordered release of data.

“CCAC soon realized that its hard-won data tapes were useless. Because the

contractor, Roy F. Weston, Inc., of Seattle, had used a proprietary, one -of-a-

kind GIS, the data were incompatible with Arc/Info and other commercial GIS

software. “

In May 1992, the Siting Commission announced that its GIS and a trained

operator were available to the public --even "on nights and weekends to

accommodate the schedule of interested citizens who might find the

weekdays inconvenient .“

Negligence/liability is often problematic because "standards" for GIS

refers largely to exchange formats, geometric precision, and consistent

terms and definitions, not to recipes for competent practice.

CASE STUDY

How to

keep track

of your

data!!!

METADATA

METADATA

Metadata – data about the data

Information about source, currency,

scale and appropriateness of GIS

data. Helps user understand

context of the data.

Styles

FGDC

ISO 19139

ESRI

METADATA

METADATA

Metadata Basics

Source (where did you get data?)

Process (what did you do to it?)

Purpose (what is it used for?)

Attributes (what are they?)

Date (when did you do it?)

Description (what is it?)

Contact (who knows about the

data?)

Access (who can use it?)

ESRI Metadata

DOCUMENTING METADATA

ArcCatalog for editing metadata

METADATA IN ARCCATALOG

Creating standard-compliant metadata in ArcGIS for Desktop

Choose standard or profile you need to follow

Metadata editor can help by checking content as you type

The table of contents lets you see at a glance if an item's metadata's

satisfies all of a metadata style's rules.

If there are any problems with the information provided on a page, the page will have a red

X in the table of contents.

Pages with no errors have a green check mark instead.

A plain page in the table of contents has no rules concerning the information it lets you

manage.

METADATA IN ARCCATALOG

When there is a problem with an element's value it will have a

red background.

For example, the element might be required for your metadata style,

but it has no content; or, an integer might be required in an element,

but text was provided instead. If you see any problems, you can correct

them immediately as you edit the item's metadata. If you're ever unsure

of what information to provide in a metadata element, hover the pointer

over its input control. A help string appears at the bottom of the editor

explaining what information is expected.

Some pages are long; you might not be able to see a problem

right away. Therefore, a list of all errors that occur on a page is

presented at the top. If you click an error in this list, the page

will scroll to the place where you can fix that problem.

METADATA IN ARCCATALOG

METADATA IN ARCCATALOG

Create a Metadata Template Useful for repetitive information such as contact info, originating agency,

Steps:

In the Catalog window, right-click the folder where you want to store the metadata template.

Click New > XML Document. A new XML fi le with the default name New_XML_Document.xml is created in the folder. The item's name can instantly be modified to something more appropriate.

Type an appropriate name for the metadata template.

Press ENTER.

View the XML fi le as metadata. The fi le doesn't contain any information to display in the Description tab.

Click the Edit button in the Description tab.

Type in appropriate content for this metadata template.

Click the Save button in the Description tab. The contents of the metadata template will be displayed.

Import this template to an ArcGIS item by clicking the item in the Catalog window, clicking the Import button in the Description tab and using the FROM_ARCGIS import type.

METADATA IN ARCCATALOG

FINAL NOTES

Documenting metadata may be dif ficult, time -consuming, and

expensive, but worth it

Don’t invent your own standard

Apply properly the standard you choose to use

Describe your data completely and correctly

f tp://edacftp.unm.edu/outgoing/pub/spenman/geog581L/exam

ples_metadata

FTP SITE

Produce information for Emergency Management on Coast of

Oregon

Tourists like to visit beaches, how many beaches do we need to

worry about in the event of a tsunami? Which beaches will need

to have EMS personnel?

Spatial Join – Which cities have beach access?

Create metadata for oregon_city_beach.shp which is output of above

process.

DEMO/PRACTICE

Produce information for Emergency Management on Coast of

Oregon

Landslides are a problem in Oregon we need to know potential

population affected by landslides.

Dissolve – Dissolve landslide_erosion on sections.

What is the population that will be affected in Siletz?

Clip - Create tracts shapefile with only the tracts for the landslide_erosion

section for Siletz.

Create metadata for tracts_siletz.ship which is output of above process.

DEMO/PRACTICE