Collaborative Proposal: People and Place: Geographic Information Technologies and Patterns of Individual Identification

这个合作研究项目将研究新兴地理信息技术与个体识别模式变化的关系。这个跨学科的研究团队将研究向数字地理信息系统过渡的长期社会后果，特别是对个人隐私和身份的影响。该项目将对一套包含地理和个人身份数据的信息系统案例研究进行全面比较分析。这一分析将确定身份识别实践中的趋势和趋势，将可能对社会公平和权力产生的影响理论化，从概念上将地方力量与更全球性的力量区分开来，并提出改进这些技术的方法，使其使用更符合保护隐私和有关的人类价值。这些案例包括在三个应用领域开发系统：(1)地理人口绘图；（二）应急响应系统；(3)智能汽车与移动远程信息处理。案例的选择是为了方便沿着三个维度进行比较。前两个维度涉及系统的功能：地理信息系统是否打算对地点、人口或流动个体进行建模；以及该制度的主要目的是促进商业还是调节社会风险。第三个维度涉及系统运行的管辖范围。所选的情况允许进行一组复杂的比较，这些比较可以使每个维度的方面保持不变，而使其余维度的方面变化。每个案例研究将采用文献和访谈数据的汇编和分析，以揭示系统信息收集和操作的机制，人物和地点的建模，以及系统发展和使用的制度，经济，法律和文化背景。研究结果将引起各种学科和跨学科团体的兴趣，包括通信和信息技术、公共政策和地理学者，以及公共政策实践者、技术开发人员和隐私活动家。此外，该研究还考察了个人在日常生活中与之互动的系统，这些系统通常是在没有有意义的知识和同意的情况下进行的。鉴于基于地理信息的系统的扩散以及公众对隐私和身份问题的日益敏感，研究结果可能会引起公众的普遍兴趣，并对政策讨论有价值。

This collaborative research project will examine the relation of emergent geographic information technologies to changing patterns of individual identification. The interdisciplinary research team will address the long-term social consequences, and in particular the consequences for personal privacy and identity, of the transition to digital geographic information systems. The project will provide a comprehensive comparative analysis of a set of case studies of information systems which incorporate both geographic and personally identifying data. This analysis will identify trends and tendencies in identification practice, theorize possible effects on social equity and power, conceptually separate local forces from more global ones, and suggest ways in which these technologies may be modified so that their use is more consistent with the protection of privacy and associated human values. The cases include developing systems in each of three areas of application: (1) Geodemographic Mapping; (2) Emergency Response Systems; and (3) Intelligent Vehicles and Mobile Telematics. The choice of cases is designed to facilitate comparisons along three dimensions. The first two dimensions concern the functions of the system: whether the geographic information system is intended to model places, populations, or mobile individuals; and whether the system is intended primarily to facilitate commerce or to regulate social risk. The third dimension concerns the jurisdiction within which the system operates. The chosen cases permit a complex set of comparisons that can hold aspects of each dimension constant, while varying aspects of the remaining dimensions. Each case study will employ the compilation and analysis of documentary and interview data to reveal the mechanics of the system's information collection and manipulation, the modeling of persons and places, and the institutional, economic, legal, and cultural context of the system's development and use. The research results will interest a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary groups, including scholars of communication and information technology, public policy, and geography, as well as public policy practitioners, technology developers, and privacy activists. Moreover, the research examines systems with which individuals will interact throughout their daily lives, often without meaningful knowledge and consent. Given the proliferation of systems based on geographic information and the growing public sensitivity to privacy and identity issues, the research results are likely to be of general public interest and valuable to policy discussions.