- Michael Corey
- Marianne Bouchart
- Denise Lu
- Kelly Calagna
Journalists are using a wide range of sensors to find stories, from spectrometers in space to cameras on drones to Raspberry Pis on the street. We'll talk about our processes, what we'd like to see more of, the challenges, and discuss the variety of ethical frameworks that may overlap and even contradict each other.
Examples
Breathe map from India uses Air Quality Index
Losing Ground by ProPublica
Speeding cops by Sun Sentinel
Houston Chrinicle air toxins
Cicada Tracker by radiolab
Where do you get data?
- Use existing data
- Collect data by deploying sensors
- Collect data from sensors deployed by public
A data journalist's microguide to environmental data
World Resources Institute
NASA Earth Data
AQCIN
What kind of data is useful for what kind of stories?
What does the data look like?
Most of the time, like any other type. May require research to understand the format.
Project to build easy-to-use sensor toolkit for journalists.
Kelly Calagna
Desire to democratize data.
EPA monitors are few and far between. They use algorithms to fill in the missing data. But it varies a lot based on factories, construction, geography.
Making it accessible. Cost, energy, time, knowledge.
- Arduino
- LoRa Radio
- LiPo Batteries and solar
Deploying
Homes, businesses or public land? Still figuring it out.
Depends on project.
Collecting particulate matter (PM10 & PM2.5) with optical sensors, but testing other types of sensors.
Things to consider:
How does this affect people's lives?
How do we ensure accuracy?
What happens if we discover harmful concentrations?
Michael Corey
Top water users in Bel-Air. "Which one is it?" Had ZIP Code but that's it.
Using other bands of satellite imagery to detect water usage.
Two-step process.
NDVI - measures how healthy plants are by measuring photosynthesis. Higher ratio of infrared to red light means healthy plants.
Doesn't directly measure water though.
"Tasseled cap" transformation. Can get measure of soil moisture.
Scatter plot of area and green/wet index.
Other remote sensors:
- Spectrometry
- LIDAR
- INSAR - magnetic
- GRACE - gravity
Denise Lu
Resolution
Different sources have different resolutions. "15m" means 1px = 15m x 15m. Free imagery usually has higher revisit rates for lower res imagery.
Pansharpening
Panchromatic sharpening: merging high-res single-band with low-res multi-band
Leveraging data for news
Las Vegas shooting
Google Earth 3D
EgyptAir Crash
SRTM - shuttle/satellite radar topography mission elevation data (land only)
Natural Disasters
Hurricane Maria
Slippy Maps with vector data from National Hurricane Center. Automatic updates instead of out-of-date static maps.
Binary raster files for sea surface temperature data.
Satellite imagery to show power loss before and after.
DigitalGlobe (for profit, but provides data during breaking news) for up-to-date satellite imagery.
Katrina anniversary looking at 1 block. Pictometry.
Timelapse, GOES-16.
Satellite data products, Copernicus.
Conflict zones, Islamic State scorched earth tactics
Battle for Mosul, satellite band recipes
Out-of-reach areas, South China Sea, North Korea
Science and environment
Land use/land cover
Historical imagery, Lake Erie algae bloom
Hyperlocal satellite imagery, Larsen C ice shelf crack
Michael Corey is Reveal's acting data editor. He leads a team of data journalists who seek to distill large datasets into compelling and easily understandable stories using the tools of journalism, statistics and programming. His specialties include mapping, the U.S.-Mexico border, scientific data and working with remote sensing. He previously worked for the Des Moines Register and graduated from Drake University. @mikejcorey
Marianne Bouchart is a data journalist based in France. She is the manager of the Data Journalism Awards. She is also the founder of HEI-DA, a nonprofit organisation promoting news innovation, the future of data journalism and open data. She runs data journalism programmes in various regions around the world as well as HEI-DA's Sensor Journalism Toolkit project. She also created the Data Journalism Blog in 2011.
Denise Lu makes maps, charts, data visualizations and other knickknacks. She is currently a graphics editor at The New York Times and was previously a graphics editor at The Washington Post. @DeniseDSLu
Kelly Calagna is a postgraduate fellow at Northwestern University's Knight Lab. She is part of a team that is developing an environmental sensor project, called SensorGrid. As an environmental journalist, Kelly has covered topics from sea level rise in Puerto Rico to climate change research on the Tibetan Plateau. Kelly earned her MSJ from the Medill School of Journalism and has a communications degree from UCLA. @kellycalagna
Description and speakers from official schedule