All hands on deck: How aerial imagery can support inclusive participatory landscape decision-making
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2023-11-26
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Master Thesis
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yes
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Abstract
Land-use management is crucial for reconciling competing ecological, social, and economic interests in the face of sustainability challenges such as climate change, food security, and biodiversity conservation. To ensure landscape management decisions are sustainable, resilient, and relevant for the community they impact, participatory landscape decision-making engages stakeholders from various sectors and prioritizes local involvement and knowledge. This study investigates how drone-captured aerial imagery can be used as boundary objects -- easily interpretable landscape representations -- to create a common understanding among diverse stakeholders. We examine the role of aerial imagery in legitimizing local knowledge during participatory landscape decision-making, and seek to identify the most readily interpretable type of aerial imagery for untrained observers, in our case, members of rural village councils in Laos. Employing Participatory Action Research (PAR), we visited 27 villages in Laos where we collected drone-captured images from various angles, printed the images in the field, and hosted focus groups with village council participants selected by village heads. Considering the effects of resolution and angle on image interpretzability, these focus group discussions aimed to identify the interpretability of three aerial images: the oblique and top-down nadir images, taken with the drone, and satellite images taken from Google Earth. We also asked participants how they would use the images during the decision-making process of recent landscape decisions that had affected their community. We found that while nadir images had the highest element identification rate, participants preferred the familiar angle the oblique image offered. Participant feedback indicated they would use different images for different purposes: nadir was useful for projects that involved whole-village planning due to its preservation of scale, while oblique images were most useful for self-localization, and for projects that require the imagination of local conditions in the context of the surrounding landscape. Overall, we found that aerial imagery can legitimize local knowledge for decision-making processes, bolstering land claims and supporting negotiations of fair compensation for land. We note that while there are technical limitations and ethical considerations, drone aerial imagery is a valuable asset for equitable multi-stakeholder landscape management dialogue.
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ETH Zurich
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Participatory mapping; drones; UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle); Spatial representation; Environmental justice; Participatory action research
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03723 - Ghazoul, Jaboury / Ghazoul, Jaboury
01861 - MSc Science, Technology and Policy / MSc Science, Technology and Policy