Podcast 14: Deciding with maps: how open geographic data helps us understand territory

We live surrounded by decisions that, although it may not always seem like it, have a geographical dimension: where homes are built, how cities are organized, which areas are most vulnerable to fires or floods, or even where essential public services are installed. Behind many of these decisions there is data. Data that, when represented over the territory, allows us to see patterns, anticipate problems and better plan for the future.

In this podcast we talk about precisely that, open geographic data, with two guests who will give us both an academic and public management vision.

• Paco Pellicer, Professor in the area of Physical Geography at the University of Zaragoza.
• Fernando López, Director of the Geographic Institute of Aragon (IGEAR).

1. Why is geography essential to understand today's world?

Fernando López: Basically, geography helps to better understand man's relationships with the environment. Therefore, geography for us, geography professionals, understand that it is the fundamental instrument to solve complex problems.

Paco Pellicer: Our relations with the territory and with people are often carried out through geographical instruments that until recently were a bit strange and now we all carry them in our pockets.

2. When we talk about open geographic data, what exactly are we talking about?

Fernando López: By European, national and regional regulations, the data is in an open format so that everyone can access it. Data must be accessible, interoperable and freely accessible, if possible. It should not be forgotten that no more than fifteen years ago the National Geographic Institute (IGN) offered geographical data at an economic cost. Today, it is open data because it is accessible and free. As we do in practically most of the institutions of the autonomous communities that manage geographic information. We say, as a joke, that except for the soul (we are working on it), everything else can be georeferenced. Therefore, they are all geographical data and we have the obligation to give them in an open, accessible and absolutely simple way for the citizen, for the administration and for researchers.

Paco Pellicer: As Fernando says, this is a real revolution that has taken place in the last two decades, because we can't go much further. I remember when I was starting out in the research that I got information from aerial photographs from 1956 that had to be requested from the geographical service of the Army, with special permits dedicated to research and paying for them...

Today we have a multitude of fantastic information validated by official bodies and that are contrasted, verified, scientifically correct data. Being able to access them, live, for free, having all this information adapted to your needs is a real revolution. And this means that, along with mobile devices and others, geography has been put in our pockets and is essential for many activities in life, from moving around or knowing where there is a certain resource or risk.

3. What tools or platforms facilitate access to and use of open geographic data?

Fernando López: From the administrative side, in compliance with European regulations,  we have an obligation under the INSPIRE directive to maintain spatial data infrastructures. They must be available to citizens in different formats, whether they are map services or they are layer services or they are dataset services.

But, some communities have gone further and we have related that information among themselves following the Graph theory And we've gone to what we've called in Aragon "space knowledge infrastructure" where the information is related.

And, therefore, these infrastructures can no longer only be asked for data, but they can also be asked questions, because in reality the ultimate goal of geographic information, as most geographers understand it and certainly at the Institute we understand it that way, is that we have to help make better decisions. In other words, we are not simply here to be a library in the broad sense of geographic information, but we have to carry out territorial geo-analysis, develop applications, propose solutions so that decision-makers make as few mistakes as possible.

Therefore, all these infrastructures are the tools that today are helping to effectively have applications that improve territorial decision-making, which is essential.

Paco Pellicer: Yes, there are many platforms where this data can be accessed. At the national level, the IGN; on a regional scale here in Aragon, because we have the ICEAragón, which is fundamental for a good part of our work. But we also have the Territorial Information System of the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation, to name a few sources, of which there are many more... The City Council itself also has a platform that offers a lot of information.

And, just as Fernando spoke from the Administration, I would like to speak from civil society in a complementary way. And what this phenomenon produces is a very important democratization and facilitates participation in the management of any event in the face of any challenge of our modern life.

It allows the civilian population to interact in a co-responsible way with the Administration. Civil society has reached a very important point of maturity because we are working, the Administration and civil society, with the same data. This increases the co-responsibility of civil society. Many times when there is a problem we throw it out to the administrations and we are so wide. That is completely false. Civil society has a very important role to play and to the extent that we are working on an equal footing, in that we are handling the same data validated by the administrations that give security to civil society.

In short, civil society can offer its particular way of seeing this phenomenon, the one we are dealing with, for example, floods. The Administration has the same data that civil society has and we can see if I am an irrigator, if it affects a property or whatever. And I have that information and I can also propose other solutions to the Administration or we can in a collegiate or associative way, then participate and give our ideas to the Administration as well. This is enormously democratic, enormously interesting in geography. In this case, through all these instruments, it is making us a much more advanced society.

4. To put it down to the practical: how is geoinformation used in spatial planning?

Fernando López: In the administration we have multiple cases such as the management of the environment, agriculture, energy networks, etc. With better or lesser success, because as I do I totally share with Paco this democratizing effect of the dissemination of geographic information.

Civil society does not always agree with the decisions of the Administration. But by sharing information, it is possible to debate and  to challenge the Administration to make better decisions. We interact with absolutely all departments, even those that seem to have nothing to do with geographic information. For example, with people in the field of public health, our MIR are trained with the Atlas of Public Health,they use it as a training element, because there we have included all the information on determinants of mortality, morbidity by health zones, by health areas.

To put a little less classic anecdotes, for example, next week begins the application period for school places in Aragon and the only valid tool for measuring distances for the score to obtain school places in schools, as it is the tool of the Geographic Institute of Aragon.

Or, for example, on August 12 we have a total solar eclipse where it will be best seen, especially in the south of Zaragoza and in the province of Teruel. The Spanish State itself estimates that some four million people may come to Aragonese territory. Let's hope not because it is unfeasible to absorb four million people in this autonomous community in two or three days. But they have to be placed somewhere safely. What has been done in the inter-ministerial interdepartmental working groups in which we are involved? Take the Geographic Institute and say: "please tell me what the appropriate areas are, combining slopes, combining shades, combining security, combining exits, combining water supply, possible sanitary services, and give me at least a dozen places where ten or twelve thousand people can accumulate for two or three days providing services."

In the end, as I said at the beginning of the interview, geographic information proposes solutions or provides information for tremendously complex problems such as the one I have just put on the table. Geography is directly involved in trying to make things go well.

Paco Pellicer: An example that can also illustrate what Fernando has just explained to us is that we have an exhibition now called Zaragoza Mapa in which Zaragoza has been divided, we have divided the city into blocks and we have introduced a series of data: age of the construction of the house, the inhabitants who occupy it and the level of income,  geographical origin, etc. This gives us guarantees of anonymity and offers us a lot of information.

If we apply a series of filters and group information, we can see the vulnerability map of the city, that is, where the most vulnerable people live, what needs they have, etc.

And, on the other hand, as we are dealing with the phenomenon of climate change, the heat island, etc., we have a network of sensors in which precise data is being taken, with a very close periodicity of the temperatures that occur at the different points. If we cross the temperatures at extreme times with the vulnerability map, we are seeing which are the parts of the city that suffer the most from this phenomenon, which may not only be the poor but also the rich.

In the end, he makes us a map in which he shows us where we can intervene, for example, to make a new park. If we see a densely populated, vulnerable area and we want to improve that space and we have land that has left us a change of use in the city, then we can develop an equipped park in which we can have everything from school services, health services, sports, green infrastructure in the environmental sense, but also social infrastructure, because we are also introducing the population that lives there.

5. What trends will shape the future of open geographic data? How will emerging technologies such as digital twins or artificial intelligence affect them?

Fernando López: Well, the truth is that it is an issue that worries me enormously because I live it every day. Institutionally, we have to be up to date with what all the innovations regarding geographic information mean and it is going at a speed that administrations are impossible to bear.

As Paco said, geography has been put in people's pockets through their smartphones, but we are living in a contradictory moment because geography in secondary and primary education has practically disappeared.

But the future is really overflowing. We are already using artificial intelligence. It must be used with extreme caution, because artificial intelligence, after all, is an algorithm, which has its biases and tendencies depending on who trains it and how it is trained.

So we are facing challenges in which the Administration is going to have to create its own artificial intelligence algorithms that are only supplied with verified official information, as Paco said. In other words, they cannot drink from sources other than official sources and that the rules of the game of the algorithm are the legal-administrative rules of the Administration. This is a great challenge that we, at IGEAR, have set ourselves.

And another great challenge is that of digital twins. I have my discrepancies with some digital twins that are still backups in the cloud and little else. A true geographic digital twin must simulate, both forward and backward, projects on the territory that really give us real simulations of what can happen, what can impact, what can happen with experience, what has happened in the past.

In addition, BIM technology, the sixth dimension, must be introduced. That is to say, we have a series of challenges that, just to be informed, I don't say trained, just to be informed of everything there is and all the possibilities of what can be done is already complex.

But it is also very exciting, as long as we do not lose sight of the fact that all the results of these technologies have to have an expert in front of them who knows how to interpret the results. If we fall into the mistake that the machine, intelligence, the twin, is already hitting the button and doing it, we will do it very badly, we will fail miserably. There has to be a technician before, during and after who supervises the process and who at the end interprets the tools.

They are going to help us grow in speed. Now, we launch geoprocesses that used to take between three weeks and four weeks and right now we have a server that does it in three hours, which it did before, almost in four weeks. It is a great tool, but at the end of the process who interprets it and validates that it is correct and allows the reasonable solution to be given is the technician, the expert, the geographer or other professions that are in multidisciplinary teams.

Therefore, exciting, but also worrying at the same time and has very high costs that I don't know how many people will be able to bear to be at the forefront.

Paco Pellicer: I fully agree with Fernando. One of the challenges is precisely the quality of the data. We are all aware of the fakes that we are suffering continuously, to the point that there is an uncertainty in which you do not know if something is real. They need to be people with very advanced training and who give guarantees of that work, who work in the Administration, where there is also independence from other powers in the world in which we are being distorted.

It is important that there is an Administration that is safely and with a very high technical quality, validating all this data to offer it and know that when you go to the Ebro  you will have reliable information. That is very important.

AI is a magnificent horse, I find it adorable. But a riderless horse leads us to ruin. That is why it is necessary to ask ourselves some questions that are eternal: Where are we going? What for? Who are we? We can get carried away by capacity, speed, etc. All of this is enviable. But if the right questions aren't asked, the answers can be perfectly wrong. No matter how much there is a lot of data. In this I do demand training and scientific character of the data.

If we don't know what we want, if we don't know where we're going, then it leads us nowhere. So, asking intelligent questions is very important. Hence research, often basic, in addition to applied research, of which I am very much in favour. But this initial basic information of the concepts, rigorous in the methodologies and others, is fundamental.

Training, training, training... and geography.