Bridging the Rural Divide

数字服务在英国各地分布不均，城乡差距尤其明显。在提供普遍接入方面投入了大量的努力，但满足农村需求的服务的发展也需要让农村社区参与到数字英国中来，并增强他们在数字经济中的利益。该项目旨在通过开发新的地图服务来缩小农村地区的差距，从而扩大支撑农村经济的广泛活动；诸如步行、骑自行车、划独木舟、观鸟等日常活动，这些活动维持了农村经济。具体而言，该项目旨在开发以社区为基础的地图，以加强我们与农村的接触，并开发新颖的数据服务，使个人能够在实地输入和/或访问数字内容。通过用户直接参与在野外开发这些服务，该研究将为更广泛地推广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。例如，谷歌Maps提供了丰富的城市街景，但基本没有农村的街景。谷歌My Maps为用户提供了绘制自己的路线和添加内容（如照片、视频和文本描述）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，并预示着计算从城市向农村地区的空间扩展，这些地区长期以来因技术限制而被边缘化，而新的在线“Web 2.0”服务的发展为扩大和共享现场生成的内容开辟了新的可能性。该项目旨在利用普适计算和Web 2.0的新发展来加强我们与农村环境的接触，并扩大推动农村经济的活动。该项目旨在通过跨学科和用户主导的“农村城市地图工具包”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注的社区地图。因此，例如，该工具包将使用户能够勾勒出路线，以指示通过农村空间的有趣路径。现场生成的GPS数据将增强草图。在现场时，用户将能够根据自己的位置访问社区内容，以便在旅途中的适当时刻向他们提供与上下文相关的信息。用户还可以通过移动设备上传带有地理标记的内容，从而为不断发展的社区知识宝库增添新的内容。该工具包还将支持我们与乡村景观互动的更直接的社会方面，使内容能够通过位于游客中心的显示器和小型投影仪进行访问、添加和观看。该项目的成果将是一个开源工具包，为更广泛的DIY传感器硬件部署提供蓝图，为移动体验捕获、表示和共享提供软件api，并为普通用户创建引人注目的公共事件提供工具。该项目得到了RCUK地平线数字经济中心、条例调查、威尔士农村委员会、Mark Williams议员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.