Geoforage.io

How do you get young people engaged with the civic process? How can they articulate what is working, what is not working or what they would like to see for the future? "Spatial literacy" is a critical capability that prevents communities engage and hinders civic participation. People experience cities and places and have a lot of knowledge about them having lived and navigated through them. However, their knowledge and experience are largely untapped and not captured. By building a survey experience focused on the map, we enable a new class of surveys: geosurveys. Geoforage.io is a geosurvey tool that enables people to engage with the map and capture their preferences and opinions. Geoforage.io is compatible with open location code and can be used for any location across the world. We have built software that enables to people be comfortable "thinking spatially" and develop their citizenship capability through this.

Community participation (or lack of it) in the civic process is a complex problem of people, the institutions and the process itself. In the digital age, an engagement process must feel easy, fresh, interactive and focused at the same time. Within communities, technical competence varies drastically and for an effective contribution process, the cognitive barriers must be overcome.

The core hypothesis is that the current generation of young people want to contribute and get involved but the engagement process and tools could be improved to facilitate this. Young people often experience a lack of agency in civic participation. Therefore, there is a need to build an engagement process that is more suitable for the digital native: enabling people to engage at their own time at their own convince and with their familiar devices leveraging their knowledge and understanding. This can be by utilizing in digital technology and developing a fresh view on this problem. A common objection to engaging young people or taking their contributions seriously is their lack of expertise. However, if their engagement produces high-quality data and analysis that are simple not possible then we can leapfrog the existing status-quo.

The primary group of people we aim to serve are young people: digital natives (18-30 years old), regardless of race, income or social group. Within these, we are working with people who have not engaged in the community or feel excluded from the governance process. Unfortunately, this is a very common sentiment, so most young people fall in this group.

In our product development research, we have worked directly with these groups going through several stages of testing and product development and interviews with participants from the US, Brazil and India. Young people feel a lack of connection and the belief that civic participation does not make an impact. Some of this has to do with the way community driven innovation is undertaken. Younger populations don’t have time or interest to attend meetings, fill out surveys or interviews. We have found that majority of younger people want to engage and are very passionate about their community. This demographic is digitally savvy and requires little training, and digital tools fit perfectly with their schedule and lifestyle. They are well connected and can organize effectively and are optimistic about the future. This makes them a great group to work with digitally.

Geoforage.io is a simple survey tool built for fast and seamless responses. Think of it like a survey focused on map. It should be used when you want to ask people about a location and their response is expected to be "spatially explicit". To elaborate, lets take a example of a park. Imagine you are in charge of running it and want to know what the people using the park (e.g. citizens) think about it. A "standard" geo-survey can be used to undertake data collection for questions like: What is your favorite spot in the park? (https://www.geoforage.io/gq2/) A variation on this could be a  "temporal" survey which has a additional time dimension. So lets imagine there are locations in the park that can be "booked" e.g. the arboretum or cemetery. In this case, you can use the survey ask a question like: What time do you want to book your photography shoot? (https://www.geoforage.io/2zp/) This way, you can see a schedule of bookings and activities at different locations across your site. An Asset survey is where you specify pre-defined assets or landmarks and then create a survey around that. For e.g. You can preload all hydrant locations and check if they need maintenance or not. (https://www.geoforage.io/4ra/). Or you want to know what is the best bike route? (https://www.geoforage.io/nee/)

Once the responses have been added, you can view each of these responses (https://www.geoforage.io/r/e32...) or aggregate it by using the open location code (https://www.geoforage.io/locat...)

The tool is built using Python and Django and uses a mobile friendly front-end to ensure that it scales to any screen.

There are two things that make Geoforage innovative: the user experience and business model.

We focus on a map-based survey and making it simple and straight forward for people to respond to. By limiting the number of controls and asking a singular question around a specific location, we optimize the survey for quick response. The simplicity theme is prevalent throughout: you can setup a survey in less than one minute (https://www.geoforage.io/creat...) and to answer it takes similar or less time. The speed and fast response are critical to engaging young people and we do that by building a intuitive user experience.

We allow flexible licensing of data so the customers can choose what they want to do with it. Data in Geoforage exists in a spectrum from closed, shared to open. When used for free, we mandate that the data be licensed as open data but for paid products the customer can choose the data license. The tool is compatible with Open Location Codes (https://plus.codes) a worldwide system of identifying locations. The innovation is that it enables engagement seamlessly for any location anywhere on the world regardless if there is an actual address for it or not. This also means that the responses can be aggregated at multiple levels (community, district, ward level for e.g.). 

We are a software company and the core technology is a Python-based web application that uses Django. All of the platform is written from scratch and uses Django Rest Framework to serialize and de-serialize the data and build the API calls. In addition, there is a spatial datastore using GC2/Vidi to maintain and update the data that can be integrated with other systems.

Digital contributions have a much longer lifespan as against responding
on pen and paper and all the data is available via our sophisticated
API. Digital contributions have a much longer lifespan as compared to responding using pen and paper so having a API that is flexible, standardized and enables use in other software is critical. Using the API we can then integrate Geoforage into other existing commercial and open source platforms. Another important part of the technology is the the integration with Plus Codes system. Plus Codes is a free, opensource way to refer to generate a address for any location across the world even for places with roads. This means that the entire platform can be used at any location across the world and can be made compatible with most of the common mapping platforms.

How do you enable young people to make meaningful contribution to the civic engagement process? This won’t happen with existing methods because it is a cultural issue. Often, young people do not relate to the civic engagement process because it is perceived as cumbersome, inflexible and stuck in the past. A platform like Geoforage enables us to change this perception: it is fast, simple and digital and works on their time and schedule.

The simplicity also lends itself to engagement and a perception of agency for the participants. In our experience and interviews with the respondents, they expressed very high satisfaction with the process because in many cases it was the first time that anyone asked them what they wanted to see and they felt that they had the power to articulate their response. They reported feeling powerful and by going through the process of going through the survey and ended up submitting multiple responses. When people use Geoforage, they love the simplicity and immediacy of the experience. In group dynamics context, many times voices that are heard are the loudest By contrast, when you use Geoforage, there are no forms to login or username or any other tracking done and this anonymity ensures that the participants feel that their response will be judged on it merit. In many community engagements processes, focus on solutions is missing. Using Geoforage changes the group dynamics of community engagement: it focuses the conversation on the problem and a discussion on specific responses.

We are recently out of beta testing and have very limited number of people who have used the software (about 700). We have undertaken around 35 surveys till date and in the next year, we hope to increase the number of surveys to 100 (two surveys a week) and the goal by the end of the five years is to have one survey a day.

The number of people who respond to the surveys is quite large: anywhere from 30 - 100 people per survey but this depends on a number of factors, therefore the number of surveys created and conducted is a better metric. We hope to have about 50-100 young people respond to every survey in one year. Young people who we primarily target are well connected and we rely on the word of mouth and large number of contributions to achieve large number of responses.

The main goal of the company for the next year to develop 10-20 paying institutional customers who are interested in the "pro" version of this service. These are professionals in public administration, private companies and non-governmental organizations whose job is around digital public engagement. When this is done without using a purpose built digital geo-survey tool like Geoforage, they spend a lot of time analyzing and geo-referencing the responses. Many projects have a spatial data component to it but when the existing data (sensed) combined with local knowledge and high quality crowd sourced data, a true location intelligence system can be built. As the system matures, the goal is to have 100 private companies using the paid product over the next five years.

The second goal for this is to work with government and public administrative bodies around building their public engagement and maintaining their open data portals. For the next year, it would have to be as a pilot with the goal to have two or three agencies over the next five years.

There are two main barriers that exist for Geoforage to accomplish our goal: institutional change and cultural change. Community engagement or community driven innovation, in many cases is viewed as an afterthought or a box to tick in a process. Sometimes there is a consensus that real innovation is the domain of experts and the community needs to be consulted but they lack the capability to produce high quality innovation. Of course, this mind set is changing individually and also in many organizations. However, processes and structures still simply do not exist to leverage and take community inputs forward. Everyone understands the importance of a partnership and the utility of getting more people solving a problem, the process of engaging and management simply does not exist in many organizations. So, in many ways, community driven innovation is not a problem of the community not being capable but more about the administration and organization system managing it is not capable or setup to handle the outcome. At the worst case, the community then develops cynicism and is reluctant to contribute one they conclude that their ideas are not moved forward.

Engaging the community is often times more about the organization engaging and the fundamental changes required in it, this requires leadership that self-reflects and organization maturity in addition to making difficult decisions. 

Geoforage luckily has a dual business model of solving an immediate problem of generation of high-quality data and engaging communities. We cannot wait for organizations to change overnight but we enable them to take small steps by solving the problem of data generation and analysis. Geoforage solves problem geo-referencing and public engagement for many professionals and selling "pro" licenses and developing integrations for them ensures financial stability.

From a cultural change will take time and patience, as mentioned earlier, in many cases across the world the problem is not about innovations from the community but of the managing organizations. The administration systems are not setup to take in input from the community. However, there are many organizations who are ready and want to engage with the communities, I think that these pioneering organizations will show a way forward. Our goal a Geoforage is to engage with these organizations to help them with their journey. By taking a two-phased approach in our business, we mitigate the issue of cultural change at the same time ensuring financial stability.   

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At the moment, I, Hrishikesh Ballal (www.hrishikeshballal.net) work full time on the company. We are going to hire a part-time marketing co-oridnator in Q4 2019 to expand on the marketing collateral. Additionally, the role will be expanded to do support activities for customers.

I built the platform to solve the problem of generation of high-quality spatial data. I have worked in this space for a number years, across many projects this is a very common problem. I had to interview (via emails or in person or through web-meetings) many stakeholders and I spent a lot of time reviewing their responses and digitizing/ geo-referencing them. Sometimes I had to review PDFs and websites to build a digital geo-data database. It was very time consuming work and I often wondered why there were no tools to help with these kinds of surveys so I decided to build it to solve the problem I was experiencing. . Doing this work manually for so long, really helped me understand the inefficiencies associated with the process and a deeper understanding of the problem

I graduated with the first PhD in geodesign from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London in 2015 and prior worked at Microsoft. I have a number of years of professional experience and am a Mechanical engineer and an MIT and University of Michigan alumni. 

At the moment, we are just out of beta testing and just starting the customer discovery process. We have not partnered with organizations but are looking to explore partnerships around:

- Open data and cities: mentorship and pilots with communities

- Support in marketing and communication around the use of spatial data

- Working specifically with under served communities engaging them on spatial data and infrastructure.

The business is based on software as a service model with a freemium product. The most innovative part of this is that there is a free tier where anyone can create a survey with the condition that the resulting data has to be licensed as open data. While this is suitable for a number of public projects, a number of companies and entities would want additional features and support. In which case they choose the "Pro" or the "Enterprise" tier and get professional support and additional services such as hosting and data maintenance and flexible licensing etc.

The key customers for the non-free tier are government agencies and private companies who work in a public engagement context and with spatial data. Additionally, for these professional customers we would provide integration services with existing software, spatial analysis. The value proposition for them is the availability of high quality data. In the Enterprise tier, advanced features such as A/B testing across the surveys, logo customization etc. can be provided. The key value proposition is the availability of high quality, vetted data. In these organizations, the staff are so busy with the day-to-day operations that they need professional help with the development and curation of good quality data for decision making.

The company will be funded through payments the survey product and also for additional services associated with it: data hosting, maintenance of the spatial data. Like any freemium SaaS product, the Pro and Enterprise tiers and selling those will bring the bulk of the revenue. In this case we will be utilizing the "Market Intermediary model" where we will sell to public agencies and private companies to help them with their public engagement mandate for projects.

Enabling Data collection is the first step in this process. Once the data is collected, there are additional activities around data maintenance, hosting, integration with existing data. This development of comprehensive spatial data infrastructure, in the long term is the path to financial sustainability. Building spatial data capacity in organization is a critical in the long term and I anticipate that this will be a competitive advantage for private companies and agencies. This is specifically true for organizations working with communities where the data is fluid and changable. As the trend of digitalization gets bigger the combination of citizen generated data and combining with existing spatial data is critical. From a expense point of view, the bulk of the expenses will be because of hiring and software development costs, I expect these to be covered by growing the professional customers directly.

The main reason I am applying to SOLVE is to expand my network. Geoforage is built around engaging future citizens and developing a culture of engagement and contributions within them. I am looking to get introduced to like-minded people and entities to connect and learn from them. I am sure that just being a part of the network will enable me to take Geoforage to the next level from a product features viewpoint. On an operational level, I am looking to understand how an "open-data" company can grow and scale. One of the issues we face in this domain is that most of the companies operate on a business model of monetizing the user-generated data and I think there is an opportunity to build an open-data focused company. In the long run, I believe, effective community driven innovation is about how that innovation is supported professionally with a sustainable business model.

In the software world, the rise of open source software and open source companies provides a path forward. We know how to build a closed data company, we just have to replicate what others are doing, building a new kind of data company is difficult but I am determined to go down this path. Regardless of the outcome for Geoforage, this is a very important broad problem that needs to be addressed especially if the community driven innovation has to reach its full potential. 

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We would like to partner primarily with government / non-government agencies and organizations who are interested in:

• building digital spatial data infrastructure and capacity
• engaging young people in countries with large young populations of young people (e.g. India)
• who are in charge of a space and are interested in building a high quality data and location intelligence capability

The partnership could be in the form of pilots, solving immediate spatial data capabilities or in the context of providing engagement. We are experts in spatial data and analysis and can help these organizations build and maintain spatial data and provide support and analysis for that data. We have the expertise and experience in building spatial data infrastructure, maintaining it and engaging communities around it. In addition, we would be interested in partnering with institutions in conducting pilots directly with communities with a focus on young people.

Geoforage.io is a data collection tool and currently, the focus is on collecting data and optimizing the data collection experience. At the moment, there is no AI technology implemented to analyze the generated data. We have a very good idea of what kind of AI / machine learning technologies we would like to implement on the data. In the long term, the development of this capacity to perform analysis and develop insights is critical for our platform. This Innovations prize, if granted will fast track the existing work on supervised machine learning in the context of spatial data. Specifically, development of AI in the context of spatial analysis will enable us to quickly: 

• Find patterns in the responses
• Identify spatial similarities and dissimilarities
• Group responses by the shape of the geometry they draw and also the text that is written.

All of these types of analyses are currently performed manually and are time consuming and building these integrations in the software will enable us to provide a analytical and computing back-end to the surveys. We have taken initial steps with automating this and building a decision tree model but the model is limited in the learning set (~ 100 data points) and it needs to be expanded, this prize will enable us to focus on building that capability.

Using a Geoforage.io survey a under-represented community member can engage and articulate about their vision for their community from their home or work place in familiar surroundings at their own time.

At the moment our focus is young people, but funding such as a the GM prize will enable us to specifically focus on developing additional features for other groups of people: older citizens, blind or hearing deprived. In particular we will use the funding to develop specific accessibility features for these groups, to give some examples based on priority:

1. display accommodation for color blind users
2. and text magnification for people with eyesight problems
3. Voiceover and hands free operation when using the survey

These features require specific changes to the code and the associated testing and this prize will enable us to advance the software to accommodate more members of a community in addition to the current focus on digitally savvy young people.

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Geoforage is primarily a survey tool and we would like to apply for the Refugee Inclusion prize to further develop multi-lingual capability in Geoforage.io. Integration and inclusion of refugee population has a communication and engagement aspect to it. Language plays a crucial part in this process and building software and tools available in the refugee's familiar language increases the impact of the engagement. In our user tests, users are always surprised and impressed when they see a survey in their own language, especially when they do not expect it.

Currently Geoforage has limited localization and internationalization capabilities but they need to be developed further. At the moment, the language once set, cannot be changed by the user, the administrator of the survey sets the language of the survey that is set globally for the survey. If awarded this prize, we would use it to build code that: 

• Let the users choose their preferred language dynamically
• Expand localization and translations from the existing 5 languages to the top 20 most spoken languages in the world.
• Enable specific support for right-to-left languages

At the moment, Geoforage is focused on collecting spatial data and responses about a space. Analyzing this data and developing insights using AI will make the platform stronger.

This data is in the form of a spatially explicit geometry: points, lines and polygons and it has additional meta data (also shared by the survey respondent) associated with it. This is in the form of text description and categories. This type of data falls under the category of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and if awarded the prize we would like to build a geography + knowledge graph of the data and use it to derive insights around a location. At a very basic level it could be sentiment analysis around a location or mood analysis around a location. While these would be relatively straight forward to build, more interesting applications could predicting for e.g. road accidents by analyzing survey responses from respondents in the area. Another example could be deriving crime hotspots from surveys around a location. All of this required a fairly sophisticated algorithm and training and we hope to start to do that and expand the platform to have a "crowd sourced intelligence" for any location on earth.

The Morgridge Foundation focuses on Education and Design thinking. When you deploy a Geoforage survey, you can engage people to think about the future and articulate their vision of it using design. In this context, design is both a verb and a noun. The act of digitally creating a proposal or change and going through the process of designing it is empowering. What we have seen in the context of Geoforage, when people articulate what they want to see in a space and listen to other using specific geometries they begin to understand the key trade-offs. They need to go through a process of design to understand what the problem is in the first place. Geoforage enables this kind of free form exploration: the respondents can suggest and change their aspirations freely and easily. Once the survey has concluded, we hold public meetings where people discuss the responses and develop a understanding of what is necessary, provide feedback.

Currently, we do this ad-hoc and there is little documentation of how a
public workshop can be run. If we are awarded this Innovation prize, we would like to use the prize money to develop material and training guides for running and conducting a workshop. Geoforage has the potential to be a great tool to promote design thinking, we already have integrations with other design tools such as Geodesignhub, this prize will help us build documentation and formalize the process of teaching design to young people.

Geoforage.io is a geographic data collection tool and uses simple map focused surveys to engage the respondents. We hope to address the problem of gun safety by analyzing the spatial structure of the community and providing analysis for spatial interventions. Geoforage.io can be used to engage citizens of the community in the area to map out for e.g. the most unsafe / safe areas in a neighborhood. This spatially explicit information can then be analyzed to develop interventions such as neighborhood watch, night lighting etc. for the community.

Safety of a community has a direct geographic connection and using Geoforage in this context would mean utilizing advanced spatial analysis to tackle the problem of gun crime the space. We propose to use the prize money to develop a pilot working with a community to understand how the community can be made safer using advanced spatial analysis. We will first conduct surveys around perceptions of safety and identify issues with citizen we will then overlay this information with the data about the street network, land use etc. and then do a overlay analysis to understand hot-spots, connective and other characteristics of the spatial structure of the community that promotes the behaviors. Insights into the location of cameras, lighting, best way to close off streets can be develop to reduce the the drivers of violence can be generated. After having demonstrated that the tool and the method works for the first location, it can be expanded into other locations as well.