via geowanking, a content aggregation tool for climate change. GIS is a bit of a gimmick but it’s a good initiative.
To increase awareness and the availability of environmental information, the IDIOM Media Watch on Climate Change provides a comprehensive and continuously updated account of media coverage on climate change and related issues. The portal aggregates, filters and visualizes environmental Web content from 150 Anglo-American news media sites.
The vision of a Geospatial Web promotes the convergence of geographic information, Internet technology and social change. Taking a step towards this vision, the Media Watch on Climate Change uses automated content analysis to extract geospatial context and build a geotagged knowledge base. The interface provides various means to interactively access this knowledge base. It shows that geobrowsers are not only suited to explore geographic features, but can also render other types of imagery such as two-dimensional ‘Semantic Maps’ or three-dimensional Knowledge Planets.
Acquiring, managing and applying knowledge are crucial steps in addressing environmental issues effectively, and ensuring that change is conceived and implemented on both regional and society-wide scales. Over the next year, the Media Watch will be extended into an interactive “Collaboratory” that brings together the scientific community, the commercial world, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These stakeholders are often divided by differing worldviews, goals, and agendas. The collaboratory will provide matchmaking services for ad-hoc team composition, and support the day-to-day activities of online communities through content aggregation and advanced visualization services.