Digital Innovation in Water Scarcity in Coimbatore, India

印度哥印拜陀水资源短缺的数字创新

• 批准号: AH/T011580/1
• 负责人: Deborah Sutton
• 金额: $ 13.92万
• 依托单位: Lancaster University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FT011580%2F1
• 关键词: Digital; Innovation; Water; Scarcity; Coimbatore

The project is designed to be a rapid, reflexive intervention in the ongoing, and worsening, water crisis in Coimbatore in Southern India. The project will build the considerable potential of digital humanities to generate robust and trusted data sets and to design meaningful, resonant visualisations that will reframe and subvert cycles of water over-exploitation and depletion. The depletion of the region's water resources is abundantly documented: river basins are shrinking, droughts increasing, water tables lowering and rivers are being transformed from perennial to monsoonal as tributary aquifers and rivers vanish. However, there is a paucity of trusted quantitative data that connects water to the localities faced with an acute and immediate resource crisis. Pan-regional or national aggregate data is dominant in the crisis discourse and, while significant, these figures have little relationship with quotidian patterns of local water use. There is an urgent need to challenge the disjunctures created between locality and information, and between water and land, created by colonial and post-1947 practises of cartography, governance and water exploitation. This project will draw on the concepts and methods of spatial humanities - georeferencing, entity recognition and corpus linguistics methods - to restore meaningful associations between landscape, people and water. Text mining and geotagging can create a unique data base relating to the water resources of the Coimbatore region. Digital Humanities methods are uniquely capable of drawing data, at great speed, from a wide-range of materials (for example, revenue statistics, cartographies, hydrology interventions, poetry, geology, agrarian history, art, advertising, industrial expropriation, medical topography and contemporary oral testimonies) in order to create data sets that can radically re-frame the water crisis and create innovative, integrated strategies of conservation. The project will assemble a range of qualitative and quantitative data relating to water bodies in Coimbatore: volume, surface area, distribution in urban, semi-urban and rural, quantification and naming of dry and perennial water resources (canals, tanks, lakes and rivers). This data will be gathered from digitised materials drawn from across the world and returned to Coimbatore.The project partners include journalists, activists and scholars. Their participation allows both the formulation, the development and the outputs of the project to be embedded within ongoing conservation strategies and debates in the region (see Pathways to Impact). Third sector partners include five local NGOs engaged in activist work in Coimbatore: Kovai Kolangal Paathukaappu Amaippu, Sirithuli, Siruvani Vizhudhugal, Osai and Kurichi Kulam. These NGOs undertake a range of information, engagement and conservation work and have made explicit their interest in collaborating on the proposed project. Other participants include scholars, writers and academics working on water histories and conservation in Southern India.Digital data can provide the foundations and tools to create new, robust practises of water conservation only if it has credibility and resonance with a number of stakeholders: communities, activists, local, regional and national officials with jurisdiction over water. Digitised media and platforms will be used to return water to the localities of Coimbatore through creative visualisations - animations, imaginative counter-mapping and narratives - that are based on historical, literary, linguistic and cultural understandings of the Coimbatore region. These data visualisations will be framed and determined by local collaborations and interactions. Project collaborations will ensure that the outcomes of the project are meaningful resources and interventions that can be used to re-frame and re-orientate struggles for water conservation, management and access in Coimbatore.

该项目旨在对印度南部哥印拜陀持续恶化的水危机进行快速、反思性的干预。该项目将建立数字人文的巨大潜力，以生成强大和可信的数据集，并设计有意义的，共鸣的可视化，将重新构建和颠覆水资源过度开发和枯竭的循环。本区域水资源枯竭的情况有大量的文件记录：河流流域正在缩小，干旱增加，地下水位下降，随着支流含水层和河流消失，河流正在从常年性河流转变为季风性河流。然而，缺乏可靠的定量数据，无法将水与面临严重和紧迫资源危机的地方联系起来。泛区域或国家汇总数据在危机讨论中占主导地位，这些数字虽然重要，但与埃塞俄比亚当地用水模式关系不大。殖民主义和1947年后的制图、治理和水资源开发造成了地方与信息之间以及水与土地之间的脱节，迫切需要挑战这种脱节。该项目将借鉴空间人文学的概念和方法--地理参照、实体识别和语料库语言学方法--来恢复景观、人和水之间有意义的联系。文本挖掘和地理标记可以创建一个与哥印拜陀地区水资源有关的独特数据库。数字人文学方法能够以极快的速度从广泛的材料（例如，收入统计，地图，水文干预，诗歌，地质，农业历史，艺术，广告，工业征用，医学地形学和当代口头证词）中提取数据，以创建数据集，从而从根本上重新构建水危机并创建创新的综合保护战略。该项目将收集一系列与哥印拜陀水体有关的定性和定量数据：水量、表面积、城市、半城市和农村的分布、干旱和常年水资源（运河、水箱、湖泊和河流）的量化和命名。这些数据将从来自世界各地的数字化材料中收集，并返回哥印拜陀。项目合作伙伴包括记者，活动家和学者。他们的参与使项目的制定、发展和产出都能融入该地区正在进行的保护战略和辩论中（见影响之路）。第三部门合作伙伴包括在哥印拜陀从事积极工作的五个当地非政府组织：Kovai Kolangal Paathukaappu Amaippu、Althuli、Siruvani Vizhudhugal、Osai和Kurichi Kulam。这些非政府机构进行一系列的信息、参与和保护工作，并明确表示有兴趣就拟议项目进行合作。其他参与者包括致力于印度南部水资源历史和保护的学者、作家和学者。只有数字数据具有可信度并引起许多利益相关者的共鸣，数字数据才能为创建新的、强有力的水资源保护实践提供基础和工具：社区、活动家、地方、地区和国家对水资源有管辖权的官员。数字化媒体和平台将被用来通过创造性的可视化-动画，富有想象力的反映射和叙事-基于对哥印拜陀地区的历史，文学，语言和文化理解，将水返回到哥印拜陀地区。这些数据可视化将由当地的合作和互动来构建和确定。项目合作将确保该项目的成果是有意义的资源和干预措施，可用于重新构建和重新定位哥印拜陀的水资源保护，管理和获取斗争。