The article Introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset by Sundberg and Melander (2013) is an overview of an open data database. They explore the reasons for its creation as well as associated definitions and limitations.
This idea is well founded in good intentions, as it aims to approach violence from a disaggregated perspective to offer a better understanding of the geography of violence. One of the important characteristics of open data is that it functions at a high level of interoperability. Sundberg and Melander make sure to note that this data set, unlike many other event data sets, can be integrated with a number of other UCDP datasets in order to promote engagement within a broad range of research questions (524). Though this is not the fault of the authors, I think this data set does provide a good example for one of the downfalls of open data that is the digital divide. Simply because a data set is put online and labeled open, does not make it accessible to the public. The authors of this article outline definitions needed to understand what is included, coding decisions made during its production, and other limitations that when presented to a untrained eye would likely go unnoticed. This has the potential to for misappropriation of data. For example, this data set from the text may be used by politicians lobbying for an ‘intervention’ of a region on the basis that it is experiencing war and a threat to the world. Or conversely, the same data may be used by a different group to argue the exact opposite. Or take the example of the IPCC report, whose predications for global climate change on showed a decrease in artic sea ice cover, which the extractive company Shell then used in their plans to expand artic off shore drilling, ignoring all the other data in the same study explicitly stating the negative externalities of such actions.
The problem I am trying to address surely goes beyond open data as much of the information available today is beyond the scope of understanding of the layman. In order for humanity to advance, I think this problem needs to be addressed and open data may offer the perfect opportunity to do so. What if there was a way to make open data more open so to speak? Obviously, this presents a very challenging task as datasets, geospatial data in particular, seem to inherently demand a level of understanding that is gained through the deliberate study of it’s structure. However, we once thought the world was flat—so I have faith in our abilities to tackle this problem.
-BannerGrey