Bridging the Rural Divide

英国各地的数字服务分布不均，城乡差距尤为明显。在提供普遍接入方面正在投入大量努力，但也需要开发满足农村需求的服务，以吸引农村社区参与数字英国，并提高他们在数字经济中的份额。该项目旨在通过开发新的地图服务来弥合农村鸿沟，这些服务加强了支撑农村经济的广泛活动，如散步、骑自行车、划独木舟、观鸟和其他维持农村经济的日常活动。具体地说，该项目寻求开发基于社区的地图，以加强我们与农村的接触，并开发新颖的数据服务，使个人能够输入和/或访问实地的数字内容。通过用户直接参与在野外发展这些服务，这项研究将为更广泛的推出和提供满足农村需求的服务提供蓝图。目前的数字地图服务主要集中在城市环境中。例如，谷歌地图提供了丰富的城市街道景观，但这种乡村空间景观基本上是不存在的。Google My Maps为用户提供了绘制自己的路线和添加内容(如照片、视频和文字描述)的工具，但这些都很费力，而且缺乏大量的上下文相关性。移动、定位和基于传感器或“无处不在”计算的新发展现在使用户有可能超越城市边缘，预示着计算的空间扩展，从城市到农村地区，长期以来由于技术限制而被边缘化，而新的在线“Web 2.0”服务的发展为增强和共享现场生成的内容打开了新的可能性。该项目寻求利用无处不在计算和Web 2.0的新发展来加强我们对农村环境的参与，并增加推动农村经济的活动。该项目寻求通过跨学科和用户主导的“农村ubiomp工具包”的开发来实现其目标，该工具包将使人们能够创建和共享代表他们独特兴趣和关切的基于社区的地图。因此，例如，该工具包将使用户能够绘制路线，以指示通过农村空间的有趣路径。现场生成的GPS数据将对草图进行补充。在外地时，用户将能够根据他们的位置访问社区内容，以便在他们旅程的适当时间点向他们提供与上下文相关的信息。用户还将能够通过移动设备上传带有地理标记的内容来添加到不断发展的社区知识语料库中。该工具包还将通过游客中心的现场显示器和微型投影仪访问、添加和查看内容，从而支持我们与乡村景观互动的更直接的社交方面。该项目的成果将是一个开放源代码工具包，它为DIY传感器硬件的更广泛部署提供蓝图，用于移动体验捕获、呈现和共享的软件API，以及为普通用户创建引人入胜的公共活动的工具。该项目得到了RCUK Horizon数字经济中心、法令调查、威尔士农村委员会、议员马克·威廉姆斯和威尔士农村事务部长的支持。

Access to digital services is unevenly distributed across the UK and the urban-rural divide is particularly pronounced. A great deal of effort is being invested in providing universal access, but the development of services that meet rural demand is also needed to engage rural communities in Digital Britain and enhance their stake in the Digital Economy. This project seeks to bridge the rural divide through the development of novel mapping services that augment a broad range of activities underpinning the rural economy; activities such as walking, cycling, canoeing, bird-watching, and other everyday activities that sustain the rural economy. Specifically, the project seeks to develop community-based maps that enhance our engagement with the countryside and novel data services that enable individuals to input and/or access digital content in the field. By developing these services in the wild through direct user participation, the research will provide a blueprint for broader roll-out and provision of services that meet rural need.Current digital mapping services largely focus on urban environments. Google Maps, for example, offers rich street views of urban settings but such views of rural space are largely absent. Google My Maps offers users tools to map out their own routes and add content, such as photographs, video, and textual descriptions, but these are laborious and lack a great deal of contextual relevance. New developments in mobile, location and sensor-based or 'ubiquitous' computing now make it possible for users to move beyond the urban fringe and herald the spatial expansion of computing out from the city and into rural locations that have long been marginalised due to technological limitations, and the development of new online 'Web 2.0' services open up new possibilities for augmenting and sharing field-generated content. This project seeks to leverage new developments in ubiquitous computing and Web 2.0 to enhance our engagement with the rural environment and augment the activities that drive the rural economy.The project seeks to meet its aims through the interdisciplinary and user-led development of a 'rural ubicomp toolkit' that will enable people to create and share community-based maps that represent their distinctive interests and concerns. Thus, and for example, the toolkit will enable users to sketch routes out to indicate interesting pathways through rural space. Sketches will be augmented by GPS data generated in the field. When in the field, users will be able to access community content based on their location, in order to have contextually relevant information fed to them at appropriate points in their journey. Users will also be able to add to the evolving corpus of community knowledge by uploading geo-tagged content via mobile devices. The toolkit will also support more immediate social aspects of our engagement with the rural landscape by enabling content to be accessed, added to, and viewed via situated displays and mini-projectors in visitor centres.The results of the project will be an Open Source toolkit that provides a blueprint for the broader deployment of DIY sensor hardware, software APIs for mobile experience capture, representation and sharing, and tools for ordinary users to create engaging public events. The project is supported by the RCUK Horizon Digital Economy Hub, Ordinance Survey, the Countryside Council of Wales, Mark Williams MP, and the Minister for Rural Affairs in Wales.