Is GIS an ethical profession?

1. Introduction

Ethics in technology deals with a set of moral principles that influence a person's behaviour specific to Technology. As technology is developing over time, new codes of ethics are created –especially in the field of capturing and processing spatial data from a system called geographic information system (GIS).

Within the last five decades, GIS has evolved from a concept to a science and can be traced back to the 19th century. In 1832, Charles Picquet, French geographer, contributed to the development of epidemiology by using colour gradients to signify the amount of death as a result of cholera from a map of Paris.

Today, geographic information science (GIS) is known to serve in practices such as disaster response, urban planning, military operations and market resource management research.

The boundaries of geospatial thinking in the years have led to open-source mapping, augmented reality and remote sensing (as a way of remotely collecting geographic data), means spatial information will only become more significant in our daily lives. Furthermore, leading to future developments such as creating navigation systems for self-driving cars and location-based augmented reality. Over time, this may lead to demands that are more qualitative than quantitative which could prevent geography pupils to engage with the ethical issues of their work (Elwood & Wilson, 2017).

1.1 GIS and Ethics

GIS is an ethically complicated. It is generally an ethically inconsistent behaviour (Curry 1995) due to the competitive and overlapping goals. A portion of this inconsistency is caused by a divergence between actual practices and perspectives of GIS (Curry 1994); the unacknowledged impacts of GIS (Veregin, 1995) and issues of using GIS to maintain community participation in decision-making processes (Harris et al., 1995).

Popke (2009) states that geographers who consider solidarity and collectives in relation to space are important for understanding ethics; which can be seen in ‘smart cities’ (Hatuka & Toch, 2017). By focusing on the human impacts of datafication, data ethics allows us to comprehend how moral choices are implemented with information systems, but also the history, politics and cultural aspect of these systems (Dalton et al., 2016).

Over time, as we develop our understanding of ethics, the notion of ethics it contains can be known as passing through the following stages: 1. Being unaware/ignoring ethics, 2. Having an internal perspective of ethics, 3. Perceiving ethics both externally and internally, and 4. Changing internal and external perspectives by establishing a dialectical association.

I think that an important goal of ethics is to promote meritocratic outputs with minimal bias. I believe that the GIS communities are at stage 2 – Referring to an internal perspective, the questions of scientific analysis, the day-to-day practical questions of a discipline that follow established standards e.g. The proper use of statistics and logical reasoning.

The terms "internal" and "external" perspectives positively influence the ethical and critical theory of cartography (Harley, 1991). Various cartographers refuse to accept that maps potentially have an external, ideological agenda with their role as (neutral) depictions of the surroundings, prompting studies between society and spatial technology (Pickles, 1995). Many of these negative responses somewhat lead the release of Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, to a Committee on Social Theory in the International Cartographic Association promoting meetings such as in (a) 1996 (Harris & Weiner, 1996) summit and (b) 1993 (Sheppard & Poiker, 1995) conference, reinforced by the US National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA), both of which aimed to create more research allowing us to understand social associations of how environment, space and people are represented in GIS.

1.2 Outline

To understand GIS and ethics, I will be discussing if GIS is an ethical profession by including confidentiality and surveillance, reflecting on the cultural aspect inherent to the indigenous and feminist communities.

2. Privacy and Tracking

Analysis into individual private lives was also criticised by geographers (Goss, 1995), and is rapidly becoming more prevalent as we can map these data.

This is a question of who has the right to obtain the data held by a person, and the ethics of changing, presenting or studying this information and the accessibility of these spatial information causes us to think about the related ethical codes and privacy. We must now think about a practical and appropriate way for those using GIS to act ethically in a rapidly changing environment (Richardson & Wilbanks, 2003). For some academic users of GIS, it is the norm to engage with private/intelligent databases than classical sources such as census (Longley, 2005).

The individual level of tracking data raises considerably larger privacy concerns (Kwan & Lee, 2004). For example, geocoded data in health settings (Rushton et al., 2006), along with our mobile phones, GPS and other geospatial technologies can additionally create an ethical issue for the whole of society

There are also issues over security (Crampton, 2002), as well as beneficial outcomes, for instance, traffic management (Ahas & Mark, 2005), making it a challenge to consider the codes of ethics and the search of possible technical fixes such as having 24-hour supervision to most of the population in a practical way – which may seem impractical and time-consuming.

In relation to this, Geodemographics is also involved as this can be used in 1) businesses economic gains, 2) Politics, a by-product of data capitalism. This makes individuals become objects of commercial intervention and policy, through particular, spaces, devices and services (Harris & Weiner,1998). For instance, flow system developed by Alphabets through google in Sidewalk labs prompted digitisation and centralisation of urban transport data that target cities as a ‘solution’, to maintain their transport systems (Harris, 2016). If an urban area adopts Flow’s services, the provider can have access to the coordinate grants for low-income residents, Google’s mobile payment system for all transport payments, and public parking by finding the location of vehicles via Google Maps.

Flow demands cities to share all: 1) public transport data with Uber ride-sharing companies if bus stops are overcrowded, 2) parking and ridership information with Sidewalk which may in turn prompt passengers to use Sidewalk’s payment infrastructure (Harris, 2016). Sidewalk processes the same data to the private sector, which needs to know the location of the travellers every time and the bank details to make payments. This can create an adverse imbalance between public-private alliance as Flow are standardised to use public resources to fund private-sector businesses. This allows the city to understand people’s transport needs and identify shortfalls in service provision which will prompt improved business strategies of private transport services.

Likewise, an app was created to provide special offers from retailers known as Beacons (Social Retail, 2017), which helps people find local landmarks such as temples and restaurants. A way of Beacons covering up for its privacy and ethical concern, it also created a natural disaster notification alert system – it is difficult to find a company which is completely ethical.

In other words, they use our data about ourselves, behaviour and social contacts from their own gain and power. It transforms citizens into customers, and they tell a story about people’s finances, work, and leisure which make us more visible to private companies, law enforcement and city authorities.

2.1 Possible Solutions

Privacy cannot be infringed if the analysis is at an aggregate (neighbourhood or census block) level. For instance, Openshaw and Goddard (1987) articulate that the British Inland Revenue can potentially create small statistical blocks of annual income while protecting the confidentiality of individuals" (p. 1425).

Subsequently, leading to sensitive use of geographical aggregation around government-collected data as it could be sold off as assets which prompt the suggestion of confidentiality-preserving guidelines of census organisations (Rhind, 1992, p. 19). Even though private records of an individual may not be kept in databases, but at a spatially aggregated scale, this information within those geographic units can be used to make choices about people. Prompting to inaccurate conclusions of ethics, for instance, displaying a map of AIDS at the block level could cause insurance establishments to possibility charge greater premiums to a person from blocks with increasing rates of AIDS.

3. Cultural

3.1 Feminism

GIS technologies can be influential among feminist communities –even more within a few years (Susan Hanson, 2002). It allows them to view comprehensive depictions of the individual lives of a woman in a daily setting (Kwan and Lee, 2004). From maps and data sources such as census, which aims to create female empowerment.’ (McLafferty, 2002: 265).

There is a feminist critique of GIS, in such that fermium cannot engage more with a range of GIS practices and does not need to replicate the antagonistic dualisms, prompting discussions of technology and GIS to date (Schuurman & Pratt, 2002, p. 291).

This can create activism of the community which can, in turn, lead to a funded research project such as Long Island Breast Cancer Project (Timander & McLafferty, 1998), which uses GIS tools to understand the female’s health outcome.

This empowerment of communities and individuals via GIS can rapidly escalate when higher institutional actors partake (Sieber, 2000). Companies misusing their power could be prevalent in the feminism communities by using tactical approaches to seem ethical, a way of hiding the true intent, for instance, the SeaTac company was exclusively targeting Muslims neighbourhood, a way of SeaTac reducing the criticism, they included individual Christians. This can create questions like what if SeaTac or other companies used feminism as a way of tracking minorities down? Or what if the female communities were under target? It is also difficult to know the truth to what maps convey and the idea of accessing information about the ‘everyday life’, activities of females, can be intrusive.

I think feminism is prevalent in GIS and can be beneficial but at a local scale, scholars such as Matthews et al. (2005) agrees to the ability of comprehensive spatial activity information incorporated with ethnographic research.

3.2 Ingenious communities

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are useful to collect data which can be processed via GIS. It can be challenging to introduce to a population that has never been exposed UAVs, especially in countries with strong local and cultural-religious beliefs in supernatural or witchcraft spirits; preventing local humanitarian and development efforts.

A way of managing the constrains can be seen in Vanuatu and Malawi (Pacific Islands) where the UNICEF Office of Innovation is promoting drone projects (Berman et al., 2018). In both settings, there are multiple religious and cultural groups which are changing beliefs about, “objects hovering in the sky”. For instance, the cargo cult in Vanuatu, Tanna island, where residents rejoice aviators and interpreting air vehicles as gods.

To mitigate misunderstandings, Vanuatu and Malawi UNICEF collaborated with the corresponding governments to bring awareness to the communities (i.e. Theatre shows in the local language, including drone flight demonstrations) about the drone and GIS technology to assure that there is no relationship between these machines and negative spirits. By explaining the usefulness of GIS/drones in disaster management via flood response, search and rescue (Rodríguez-Espíndola et al., 2016).

However, implementations like this can create ethical concerns as organisations may exploit this technology as these communities may not be aware of its security issues as they are new to or may lack in resources to critically assess the situation. Another issue that can arise is data ownership or sovereignty (even in regards to security/privacy explained above), for example, the ingenious tribal Maori communities, New Zealand have established the Māori Data Sovereignty Network (known as Mana Raraunga), which could develop in some isolated pacific islands/countries; creating ethical concerns.

4. Ethics of GIS and Society (conclusions)

This paper outlined ethical issues of GIS by considering ethical behaviour, from both the external (surveillance) and internal (cultural aspects such as feminism and indigenous communities, data matching, copyright) notions. The practice of GIS in society (e.g., empowering local communities) and the ways society views GIS (e.g., in "tactical" terms) are both vital for the ideas of ethical issues.

Here we can conclude that most GIS roles originated from a positive approach, there are irregular expectations which can have a negative humanist use such as permitting local decision-making (Harris et al. 1995). Although information cross-matching creates confidentiality violations pronounced above, the notion of linking information, particularly in a communicating medium, can create advantageous possibilities via the analysis of the World Wide Web (WWW)

I would propose that following the ethical code of practice is not always the best option, despite being a frequently recommended one. Curry made me realise that the answers to ethical challenges can occasionally be as immoral as the issues themselves (1991, p.144). Introducing legal groups of ethical codes could generate the delusion of order, which typically encourages rule-following behaviour, behaviour that is not likely to diffuse sureness in the enthusiasms of the people participating, and hence appear just as improper (as the ethical problems). It is disagreeable to object to complete assumptions which bypass the likelihoods of GIS use and role.

The failure of creating distinct progress on a social past of GIS is important for ethical GIS studies to be generated which as emphasised by Sheppard (2005) and Chrisman (2005) as a way of reducing the divergence between the idea individuals have of a system and its actual roles (Curry 1994). The history allows us to move away from the academy of profiting from GIS in the marketing industry (Albrecht & McIntyre, 2005) and instead of looking back at roots of the motive of GIS as a means of helping and benefiting the world (Lobley, 1999). Schuurman & Kwan (2004) indicate that the social outcomes of GIS throughout the 1990s have since been missing, possibly due to the ‘rebranding’ of GIS as a geographical information science –the race of who wins and benefits.

As a result, the URISA Board (The Urban and Regional Information Systems Association) for GIS Professionals unanimously accepted the GIS Code of Ethics (URISA, 2020). It includes the guidance of ethic obligations in four key areas: 1) Commitments to employers and funders, 2) Responsibilities to society, 3) Requirements to individuals in society and 4) Responsibilities to colleagues and the profession. However, this has been criticised as certified as GIS Professionals (GISPs) may become caught in a dilemma where two correct actions conflict with one another; any response of action may violate parts of this code. A way of mitigating this is by education, such as, in a form of case studies which help students develop moral cognitive skills as actual workplace settings test student’s ability analyse ethical difficulties realistically (Keefer & Ashley,2001; Bearman et al., 2016). Once gaining that knowledge professions now need to build trust with citizens by respect, compassion, being transparent and ensuring if community offices are used for the public good. (OECD 2000, p.5) as well as creating, ‘reciprocal’, trust, though the acknowledgement of consumer rights (O'Neill, 2002). The absence of a recommended technique of settling many ethical issues does not show the failures of ethical philosophy but somewhat is a trait inherent such as the moral conflict. (Scanlan 2001, p.12).

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