Environmental Visualizations: Connecting Images, Knowledge, and Politics I

We welcome papers that explore the creation, design, use, and
societal politics of visualizations in the environmental context.
Visualizations are images or representations that communicate
information in accessible formats to specific audiences. In 1990,
Woolgar and Lynch published Representation in Scientific
Practice, which examined the use of diagrams, drawings, and
graphs to depict scientific data. This work has been updated (e.g.
Pauwels 2005; Coopmans, Vertesi, Lynch, and Woolgar 2014) to
include medical imaging, economics graphing, and other
applications. However, relatively little work has concentrated on
visualizations of environmental and social issues, their production
and character, and their role in civil society discourses,
government policy-making, and industry practices. Over the past
30 years, visualizations have become influential artifacts in
reshaping both public knowledge and citizen agency. Increasingly,
visualizations are designed to be interactive and to convey
narratives. This panel will look critically at the nature and politics
of visualizations as ways to know and learn about environmental
matters. A key area of interest is to compare visualizations and
interpretive conventions across diverse cultural and national
settings, especially in the Asian region. Examples of potential
topics include the rise in participatory mapping of air pollution in
urban areas, the graphical representations of biomonitoring data,
the use of GIS to track environmental hazards, and the real-time
coverage of wildfires. isualizations also play a central role in
climate change science and politics—such as mapping droughts,
sea level rise risks, and changing disease ranges. Visualizations
can connect land use, health, ecosystems, and industry in novel
ways.

Participants:
Corporate environmentalism and the making and visualization
of environmental knowledge Louise Karlskov Skyggebjerg,
Technical University of Denmark: History of Technology
Division DTU

In the wake of the Brundtland report 1987, corporate
environmentalism became a hot topic among industrial
managers. Environmentally friendly behaviour became
something to be measured, visualized and circulated as
knowledge. Something to be represented for stakeholders
as an important part of industry practices. But how? One
of the solutions was the creation of green accounts
including the use of Life Cycle Assessments (LCA), a
tool developed as a way to measure and visualize the
environmental aspects of a product from cradle to grave.
Sometimes industry practices were changed to be more
environmentally friendly. Sometimes not, only the
linguistic and visual representation of the practices, which
led to discussions about “green-washing”. In the paper,
the making of environmental knowledge in Danish triple
helix constellations in the 1990s is analysed. The aim is,
through the empirical case, to look at how exactly
environmentally friendly behaviour was created as a
relevant topic for the industry, and how this behaviour
was translated into something, which could be represented
on paper as text, numbers, standards, diagrams and
ecolabels in green accounts and the like. This translation
included among other things the creation and use of
complex databases and software, which can be analysed
as an example of post-normal science including high
degrees of uncertainty and value conflicts. Using STS
concepts such as translation, representation and
mediation, the black box we call sustainability, an
important part of corporate communication, will be
analysed as something constructed historically.
Public deliberation on water: The case of Uruguay Marila
Lázaro; Isabel Bortagaray, Universidad de la Republica
This paper is about a process of public deliberation (Deci
Agua ) on the national water plan held in Uruguay in
2016. The intrdocution briefly sketches the national
context on water policy, the elaboration of the national
water plan and this deliberation process in particular,
which aimed at analyzing and revising a draft of the
national water plan by a panel of 15 citizens in close
relationship with an advisory group and a coordination
team during three months, from October to December
2016. The focus of the paper is on the deliberation
process, the policy impact of the Uruguayan public
deliberation process and the extent to which the public
panel’s report was taken into account for the national
water plan, and the internal and external legitimacy of the
process. Finally, the conclusions relate to the evaluation
of the deliberative process in relation to the foundations
of deliberative democracy.

Geospatial Data, Citizen Science and Social Participation Sarita
Albagli, IBICT Brazilian Institute for Information in Science
and Technology; Allan Iwama, Post-Graudate Program in
Information Science/IBICT-UFRJ; Henrique Parra, Unifesp
- Federal University of Sao Paulo; Hesley Py, Post-
Graudate Program in Information Science/IBICT-UFRJ
The paper discusses the role of co-production and sharing
of geospatial data and its visualization as maps, as a
modality of citizen science with the potential to amplify
social participation in territorial planning and
development policies. It is part of the results of an action-
research project in the municipality of Ubatuba, on the
Northern coast of the State of São Paulo, Brazil,
supported by the OCSDNet/IDRC. The study involved: a
review of the literature on the role of data visualization (specially maps) for social appropriation of information
and influence in policy-making; the monitoring and
documentation of public consultation and debates on local
processes of reviewing the ecological-economic zoning
(EEZ); and the development of an experiment of
participatory data visualization with local actors
throughout this process. Public hearings on EEZ have not
been sufficient to neither inform local communities nor to
empower them to intervene in this process, affecting the
quality - and hence on the scope - of their claims. It was
conducted an exercise to build a platform prototype that
articulates the efforts of sharing and visualizing spatial
data, in an open and collaborative way. This experiment
allowed: (1) to exchange experiences and needs among
different groups and institutions; (2) to collectively
construct protocols on priority topics; and (3) to stimulate
synergy among future initiatives of common interest. The
study points out the dual character of maps as technical
and political tools under dispute that potentially both
strengthen hegemonic actors and empower the vulnerable
ones.
The Periphery on the Map? USA’s Air pollution Mapping and
Analysis Program in South Korea joohui kim, Seoul National
University
This paper examines how the ‘BenMAP(Environmental
Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program),’ free and open-
source software developed by U.S. EPA, both shapes and
is shaped by atmospheric pollution policies and research
in South Korea. BenMAP is originally designed to
estimate the health impacts and economic value resulting
from changes in air quality, and provide scientific basis
for the management of air quality in USA. EPA
constantly promotes BenMAP to policymakers and
researchers in other countries as well, which enables its
users to visualize air pollution and resulting benefits with
just a few clicks. South Korean government and scholars,
who have been urged to cope with the worsening air
pollution, have been developing and utilizing ‘Korean-
Style’ Ben MAP with the help of EPA since 2003. This
paper investigates how BenMAP technology itself is
reconstructed into Korean-Style one, how this newly
adapted technology affects research and policies in
practice, and what the implications of using American
technology in Korea are, considering center/periphery
power dynamics. In the first part of the paper, it traces the
social construction of imported technology by focusing on
the Korean researchers’ tweaking efforts to make
‘Korean-Style’ BenMAP. Secondly, this paper analyzes
how Korean-Style BenMAP actually facilitates or
confines air pollution research and policy evaluations in
Korea. Thirdly, by paying attention to the EPA’s steady
efforts to disseminate its program in Korea, this paper
aims to show the politics of mapping and analysis
program, revealing the power dynamics between the
center and the periphery.
Session Organizer:
Alastair Iles, UC Berkeley