Our undergraduate research assistant, Korbin daSilva presented a poster at McGill's Undergraduate Research Conference:
Echo "Hello, Farmer!": Implication of New Computational Technologies on Connecting Local food to consumers AND to geography
Despite growing calls for locally produced foods, a disconnect remains between average consumers and local producers. Web 2.0 with social networking capabilities offer new solutions to bridge this gap. Simple Digital Earth mashups (e.g., with Google Maps) are useful; Digital Earth APIs (Application Program Interfaces) contain greater potential to accomplish interactivity with geographic information. These more computational approaches represent a paradigm shift for traditional geography. I developed an application that allows urban consumers to easily customize Google Maps. The application also gathers information from rural farmers regarding what and where products are sold. I hope to bring the computation behind Web 2.0 to the discipline of geography and bring geographic information science to the layperson.
