 Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to this webinar of the Geographical Sciences Committee of the United States National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Our speaker today is Dr. Doug Richardson, who will be providing an overview of the ethics landscape in the Geographical Sciences. This is just the first webinar in a series organized by the Geographical Sciences Committee on Ethics and Biases in Geographical Sciences. My name is Glenn McDonald and I'm a member of the Geographical Sciences Committee. I'll be having the honor of moderating today's webinar. Here's a few quick notes before we get started. Doug will speak for about 30 minutes and then we'll have a question and answer period for the remainder of the hour. We will be taking your questions through the Q&A box, which is located at the bottom of your screen. Simply type your question in the box at any time and click send. We'll be collecting the questions and then we'll be asking them of Doug at the end of his presentation. I want to tell you that this webinar is being recorded. Please understand that any question you submit may be read aloud and included in the recording. I'll link to the recording as well as a copy of the slides will be posted on our website within the week. If you have any technical issues during the event, please contact Zoom support. Before I turn to Doug, I just want to say a few things about the Geographical Sciences Committee. May I have the next slide, please? The Geographical Sciences Committee is a standing committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The National Academies themselves are a non-profit organization with the dual mission of honoring the nation's top scientists and providing objective, independent advice on science, technology, engineering, and medicine. National Academies were established under the direction of President Lincoln and have been providing these services to the country for over 150 years. May I have the next slide, please? The Geographical Sciences Committee has a mission of providing advice to society and government at all levels on using the methods of spatial analysis representation. We address the geographic dimensions of human-environment interactions, spatial location and concentration, place-based research, and policy at all spatial scales. The committee also fosters international cooperation by serving as a liaison to other National Geographical Committees and to the International Geographical Union. The committee thanks the National Sciences Foundation for funding. May I have the next slide? Here's a list of the current members of the committee, and the committee membership does change and represents the breadth of geography. May I have the next slide, please? This just gives you an overview of some of the issues that the committee has tackled in the last few years and provided advice on and provided webinars on and provided a dialogue on. So quite a wide range. May I have the next slide, please? Now I have the pleasure of introducing today's speaker, Douglas Richardson. Doug is a distinguished researcher at the Center for Geographic Analysis and the Institute of Quantitative Social Sciences at Harvard University. Previously, he was the longest serving executive director of the American Association of Geographers. He had a highly successful renewal of that organization. He greatly expanded the AAG's membership and international footprint, developed dynamic and wide-ranging new research initiatives, and built a strong academic publishing and financial foundation which carries the AAG forward today and ensures geography's future. Prior to joining the AAG, Doug founded and was the president of Geo Research Incorporated, a scientific research firm that developed and patented the world's first real-time space-time interactive GPS GIS functionality. That's transformed the way in which geospatial data and geographic information is now collected, experienced, mapped, and used within geography, and many, many other disciplines as well. The concepts, technology, and innovations pioneered by Doug and Geo Research are now ubiquitous and at the heart of a wide array of real-time interactive mapping, navigation, mobile computing, consumer devices such as cell phones, and location-based business applications. They have also become central to real-time management, day-to-day operations of large government entities, corporations, and NGOs. Doug sold his company and the core patents in 1998 and has since continued to develop the field of real-time space-time integration in geography and the geographic information sciences through international and interdisciplinary research in areas such as health, sustainable environments, economic development, human rights, and coupled natural human systems. More recently, he's been working on the integration of spatial concepts, data, and analysis in the humanities and social sciences. So it is my pleasure now then to turn this over to Doug. Hello. Thank you, Glenn. Can everyone hear me? Well, I'd like to thank the National Academies and the Geographic Sciences Committee for hosting these, not only this webinar, but a whole series on the topic of ethics. So what I'm going to do is, because this is the first of several in the series, I'm going to try to provide a basic foundation for the whole series to do a broad overview of issues and topics that are ethical issues and topics in the field of geography. I've also been asked to speak to some of the ethical dilemmas that I've experienced over the years in my long career with geography in many different sectors. So, next slide please. So the overview will do two things. First, I'm going to provide this overview of ethical issues and topics in geography. And the AG has been evolving a statement of professional ethics since 1998 with significant revisions and updates in 2005 and 2009. So we're going to survey briefly and discuss some of the most important ethical topics and issues in this document, particularly as they pertain to geographical research. And then secondly, we'll highlight a few pressing geographical and geospatial research ethical issues and go into them in a bit more detail, although we don't have a lot of time. But we'll look at dual use, geographic research, privacy and geospatial data, confidentiality, intergenerational ethics and human rights, and then COVID-19 and geographic health research. And in our discussion of COVID-19, I would also, we'll also have a poll set up for the audience to make an ethical decision. We'll pose a question to you about COVID-19 privacy and ethics. So it'll be interesting to see how that comes out. Next slide please. So the, before I start, I just, many, I know there are many students and people from other countries and on this webinar. And so I just wanted to clarify that ethics refers to rules provided by an external source, such as codes of conduct and workplaces and and morals, which are often confused with ethics refers to an individual's own principles regarding right and wrong. There's a wide range of philosophical theory and interpretation on the nature and basis of ethics. So people come from many, many different directions toward these, these topics next, next slide please. And so a few, few of the, the AG statement of professional ethics is quite lengthy and I've taken out a few excerpts that I thought would be most salient and that could be covered in the time that we have. Notice that this has been updated twice already. So it's an evolving document as all ethics statements should be. During my term at the AG, it was updated in 2005 and 2009. I played some portion, some role in that. So the preamble says that, you can read it here, the members of the AG recognized that the conduct of geographic research and analysis as well as the transmission of geographic theories. The concepts and information involves a wide variety of ethical considerations, almost everything that we do has some kind of a slice of ethical consideration. As I mentioned, it's very broad and this statement was great, it was drafted with the intent to encourage active thoughtful engagement with ethical issues both within the scope of the statement, and in relationship to various circumstances confronted by geographers. Something that you'll hear over and over again in discussions of ethics is discussion. And in conversation, really, these ethics mean a lot of different things to different people in their backgrounds and where they how and where they come to to get their ethical guidance and their moral beliefs. Next slide please. So, I'd like to raise the issue of ethical behavior during field research. This is and this is sort of the bottom one as well. Research involving indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities and other vulnerable groups. Geographers, almost all geographers do field work and we're out all around the world interacting with people, learning from them and, and sometimes teaching them in our work. And that's one of the great things about geography, we don't spend most of our time behind a computer screen, some do, but, but we really do a lot of field work and I've had, I've been privileged to be able to go to almost every country in the world during my career. But there are some important guidelines and principles on governing field research. Places, people things should be treated justice researchers would like others to treat their own places, possessions and themselves. Now that's a little bland and sort of golden Rulish, but, but it's really a something to take very seriously. In the case of environmental studies focused on non human topics field research should be conducted in ways that minimize long term impacts. And it's that's important because most, most, most research doesn't doesn't really deal with the environment to the extent that we do. And not only physical environment but cultural and environmental studies may generate data that are co opted by others with damaging results. So it's, it's careful. You have to be very careful on how you handle and disseminate that those results. Now research involving indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, etc. Some of these groups are potentially vulnerable or marginalized, raise the special challenges and require special care regardless of whether the research is conducted by members of those groups. For indigenous communities researchers need to engage in a process of respect reciprocity and mutual benefit in the research. And I've commented on these, these principles are explicitly outlined in nine guidelines for research and indigenous peoples. And that those were led by Doug Hervin at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian it's a very, very cogent set of guidelines. I've had the pleasure of working with the American Indian tribes for many years living on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation for two years and working for a national organization representing 25 Indian tribes who had energy resources on environmental and economic issues. And I, you know, the, the, what I always did in those circumstances was, was to say, you know, I would always ask what is it you need, what is it you want, and how can I help you. And those are three good questions to ask wherever you go. I would not presume to have answers not presume to, to know more about things and to know about things in all of the different ways that people can know about things. So, it's a, it's a rich way I tell you it's something that I hope all of you get a chance to do is to really work closely with with indigenous peoples at some point in your career. You gain a lot and I always tried to make sure that they gained a lot and we did some very, very positive things during, during those times. Next slide please. Professional relations with one another collegiality is a core principle of ethics. I think for the most part are, you know, you see among geographers and you see people are pretty, they're pretty decent they're pretty good, not very many people get going to geography or for fame or riches. And they tend to be quite interested in what they're doing and quite straightforward and honest. During my tenure as a executive director, although I was, you know, I was exposed to a dozen or so incidences in the discipline, not involving me but in the discipline where unfounded accusations and rumors about colleagues became an issue and it's one of the most heartbreaking kinds of situations. And I think that if I were to say one of the most, I would say one of the most egregious form of violation of ethics is when that sort of thing happens. And I, I would hope their entire discipline would rise up and oppose that when it does happen. So, avoiding discrimination discrimination and harassment. This is very much I think in in our current culture, and the AG has developed also a professional conduct policy and procedures, which grew out of sexual harassment policies and so forth. That's been developed over the last four or five years. You can find this document, and you can find all of these statement of ethics on the AG's website just ag.com.org, and then go to governance and then go to statement of professional ethics, and you can find this expanded on in great, great detail. In the sustaining community, geographers strive to create a maintain a diverse pluralistic and inclusive professional community. And again here, I think is an issue is in an area where we really need to do a lot more work. We've been an organization for 115 years or so. We've not seen a woman or a person of color in leadership positions in our organization. Top leadership positions. And we, we, in our geography departments we were, we're, there's a lot of rhetoric and so forth but Joe Darden who's been a mentor of mine for years. And the rest is the point that that kind of change is only going to happen when in hires are made. And so, I think we really, it's no longer, I'm no longer making those decisions but I would urge all of you to, to think very, very seriously about what it would mean to our discipline. If we were to have a woman of color, for example, in a leadership position, strong leadership position in our discipline. I think that would be transformative. And I hope that at some point in the future that will happen. So that's a thing to really focus on. Next slide please. Relations here with two different groups. Relations with the larger scholar of the community and relations relations with people places and things. Some of these are just sort of self evident but I'd like to comment on the first item here. Our scope is really an interdisciplinary discipline and we have a very core need, not, not just to, you know, go out and have lunch and go to meetings with, you know, other organizations. But our, our, our research really is entangled with so many other scholar like scholarly communities. And I think of core need for us it is to really the focus on impactful geographic research and scholarship which, if we do that, that will, we, I guarantee you we will have a great relations with the larger scholarly community. And that's the one way, one message I think that that I'd like to leave a lot of people with. It's also important because we learn, we also are learning a lot from everyone else. So, because we're so interdisciplinary in our work. The way we are going to grow our discipline and stature and in students wanting to come in is through that kind of research and scholarly work. There's been a lot of emphasis. I guess on public relations PR and so forth. That's, that's useful and it's important and so forth but I think that that it's, it's definitely secondary to our scholarly and research missions and teaching. Then relations with people places and things. This is something that geographers do more of, I think, then then probably most other disciplines, because we're traveling all the time. We're focused on places. When we're doing geographical research. We're having the same kinds of interactions that we talked about in terms of Indigenous peoples and so forth, but wherever we go, we're in a different culture and we really have to be respectful of that. And we have to enjoy it. So there are formal ways of guiding our research in addition to sort of common sense. And those are institutional review boards and they're kind of a, for most of us, it's a little bit of a pain in the neck, but it's something that you have to go through. When you are writing research proposals and then after they get funded, you really have to have that review and have your work reviewed and make sure that human subjects are being treated as they should be. And then our guidelines here also go on to state that research in the geographical sciences should be conducted only after careful consideration of these fundamental principles or four of them here. Some are a bit repetitive, but respect for persons and communities. And the state of individuals and groups to be informed that they are research subjects to be given adequate information so that they can make informed consent decisions, and to have content confidentiality arrangements to protect data interviews, etc. Other information to the extent possible. And that's pretty, that's, that's pretty important. You know, we have had incidences and geography. We had a research project in the Mojaca, Mexico that had been funded by the military and and there was perhaps some miscommunication or there wasn't enough clarity in terms of the funding and of that project that ended up being a very controversial event in geography's history and took a lot of energy and time. But I think lessons, good lessons have come out of it for everyone. It was a project by the American Geographical Society, but but all of us came together and tried to look at that and find out what we could then do looking forward so it was an important reminder that we need to really take this seriously. Now equity is another thing that parades are already all, not just a G's but all equity, all ethics issues, sharing of research research results to the practical legal with individuals and communities affected by the research now. And equity also is a key factor in so, so many ethical decisions. You know, for example, is it ethical to, you know, have someone go get your groceries during the COVID-19 crisis. If you have someone to go do that, whose family might, the person who you're paying may become infected, maybe his family or her family would become infected. So you'll have to look at equity issues almost all the time and disparate power relationships when you're looking at ethics. It's a precondition of coming to conclusion if people, you know, if people are not, you know, have no choice, but to do that sort of work. So we have to say, should I be going to the grocery store and getting that my own groceries or should I be further all of the risk of that to someone else by paying for it, just because I have more money than they have. And so that those kinds of issues and those kinds of thought patterns I think are important in equity is always and always should be one aspect of that conversation and that final decision. And I guess I think you hear about this all the time, the maximization of benefits and the minimization of harm from research. You kind of look at what you're doing, is it really beneficial. You know, life is short and even if it's something that you're doing that you do, you should do that, but it's not beneficial or it's, you know, it's not worth doing. So, and certainly you want to avoid doing things that harm others. And then respect for ecosystems. This one, this is, this is pretty straightforward, but it also is unique to not pretty unique to geography. We have in physical geography and our human geography and our GIS and GI science communities of researchers. We're always involved, probably more than others with ecosystems, biodiversity, natural resources, climate, landforms and so forth. I think this raises a point I wanted to make, and I'll do it here. I've been I worked with the triple AS for many years and we helped found something called the science and human rights coalition, which was a coalition of 30 or so. Disciplinary associations. And one of the issues that I chose to look at is sort of this intergenerational human right. And I think that that this is something that we all think about when we think about climate change, certainly, but there are so many other things soils, sustainable oceans and so forth. We really have to think about it. I think there should be an international human right to future generations to receive a livable planet from our generation. So, there's a lot of interesting work and conversation that can be had around this topic and I would urge urge you to kind of pick it up. Yeah, but and also get involved with the science and human rights coalition at triple AS. We know the AG not only helped found that I served as its chair for the first five of its steering committee for the first five years of its existence. It's a good, it's been very good and program and I'd urge you to check it out. Next please. So now, I want to talk briefly about dual use research in geography. I think most of you know, have heard the term dual use research that means that you're doing research that has can can be very positive to be very helpful for the world and so forth. But it can also then become used for other purposes. You know, atomic physics, physicists, you know, you know, came up with fission and fusion and, and then sort of the results of those predictably were, you know, atomic bomb and so forth. You know, look at Robert Oppenheimer and his sort of regrets over some of the work that he did there and I would say even even in my own career. When we first developed the real time interactive GPS GIS systems and tools and did work around the world with those. I, you know, we started out we were we were doing environmental work, transportation work, energy work and so forth and with those tools and then eventually everybody we started getting a lot of interest from other countries we started getting a lot of interest from the military and defense agencies and and the intelligence community and so forth and and those those the developments that we we did there we were quite concerned about how they were in a final finally end up doing and now for better or worse. They're ubiquitous but they're also ubiquitous in in in how we fight our wars are our wars now are basically one great big real time interactive GPS GIS process where everything every feature every moving activity is all integrated in and monitor and act upon in real time with with location and with underlying geographic information of those areas so these are kinds of things that you kind of live with and you try to figure out how to make something happen and I think that you know I've chosen to do become quite involved in human rights and human rights active activities and organizations and and I think there's a that's useful but but you can also use technology upon technology and there's a a program that we're called the tech and human values initiative and that's designed to to leverage the university's resources to build capacity and collaborations that empower humankind to shape technology rather than be shaped by it and this is something that you know in my ongoing work I I try to I try to focus on on how you know there's just such a plethora of technologies out there but you know how can we either technically or through policies blunt the negative aspects of those things that we've done next slide types of dual use research in our evolving geospatial technologies are very extensive of course they involve all the things we've been talking about that have been involved in this kind of stuff for the first real time sensor inputs and so forth and then sort of from this became a spatial temporal data explosion of data gathered then the building of cyber GIS infrastructure to to house and manage it and spatial data analytics including now artificial intelligence and decision making I think personally I think that artificial intelligence is is really fraught with with some outcomes that would be not be to all of our advantages it's a way of making those who have access to certain things even more have have deeper access to it so it's also something that could be very dehumanizing in certain ways I think we should all keep an eye on that see what we can use it for that's useful and good and really take a look at where it might be going in the next five ten years and further on okay next slide so this was this is just the something about the kinds of work that we did next slide and this is the kind of a system that we built up with all of the positioning and attribute data gathering and sensors inputs and tracking and so forth next slide so dual use is really something to consider and something to act on to the extent that one can and particularly if you have the technical ability and the philosophical insight to address those issues I think it's almost an obligation that you have to have to follow through on it it's important we all I think everybody understands the geospatial data in its privacy and confidentiality issues but it's also important that qualitative research methods in geography require attention to research subject human subject privacy you know interviews lots of locations and lots of cultural things that may or may not be good to disclose are at play in qualitative research so let's not overlook that next slide please some good things happening around this area and that is quite a bit of research going on in trying to find solutions for data privacy and confidentiality issues I've been working with a team through three NSF grants to try to build up a geospatial virtual data enclave within which confidential data could be well it could be archived but also it could be analyzed within a safe environment and that's really important because you know if you can't everybody has to write data management plans whether you're getting an NSF or NIH grants you have to say what are you going to do with that data after you're done with this research that we're paying you to do and so you know right now the idea behind that I should say is the impetus to want to share scientific research so get it out there share it on your desk drawer don't keep it on your computer and not share that data and that research so there's a the institutions that fund research want to get it out into the world so others can build on it and replicate it but if you can't access it because it's confidential then you can't build on it you can't share it so a lot of the impetus in the management plans sort of came to a screeching halt when people began to understand locational privacy and location is so central to data confidentiality that it is really affects a very large number of research research projects at NSF all across the discipline sociology and psychology engineering and so forth and so what we've done is we've developed a virtual geospatial data enclave specifically for geospatial data research so that it can be shared it can be built upon by other scientists it can be replicated if you can't access if you can't replicate research you don't have science and it's a core thing that you have to do if and if you can't get the data then you can't replicate it so there you don't you can't continue to build on it as science should so we've had some very very promising outcomes in this pathway of geospatial virtual data enclaves and the good thing about them is you can access it from your desktop computer you don't have to go travel to three or four other states and enter a cement block area in order to look for the data so that project is really exciting and we're starting to see some major results coming out of it so there are good things happening in the data confidentiality realm for us particularly for geographers next slide I will let you kind of just read through this but this summarizes some of the research methods that we're using next slide we're also adding a lot of masking and spatial statistics software into this system next slide and also something that's been really it's about five or six years old but it's been sort of unhauled for a number of years we're working with several other universities to try to develop an international geospatial help research network or not to develop it to revive it we have universities in North America Europe and Asia who have been and will be on the steering committee of this new network that we're reviving next slide so COVID-19 as you read the newspapers if you turn on the television there's a tremendous amount of information going on about COVID-19 and geographic research there are now dozens of conferences, dozens of forums and so forth the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard held a forum a few weeks ago on the very topic here how can we look at geospatial research but also geospatial solutions to COVID-19 and it was very interesting so those of you who want an exploding research area of course I'm sure you've already jumped into this area I want to next slide please okay I should go back one if you would kind of like this so I want to address a little bit about some of the debate on COVID-19 and what turns out to be sort of locational privacy issues to a large extent whether we have Apple and Google do work on exposure notification that's all voluntary and it's not really location it's looking at gatherings basically who's near others doesn't really involve GPS it does give notions but it does look where people aggregate but there are lots of other methods that are going on that are perceived at least to be pretty more successful and that is where you're really looking at location you're looking at addresses you're looking at working with those people to find the people that they've interacted with that appears to be the most successful way of curbing the number of deaths and illnesses and ultimately the length of shutdowns that have occurred I'd like to have you all think about that the tracing the tracing of people sort of testing, treating and tracking or tracing is really a method that can be done very loosely and would probably require more than half of the population to adopt them as for them to really be useful but I think in conjunction with that there still is a question about how do we approach that thing with privacy so I'd like to propose a poll and a question to you could you put up the question for the poll please so the poll is the ethical issues, your own obligations to others, your own concerns to oneself and your own well-being the question is and this is kind of several different ethical aspects to it if you were tested positive for COVID-19 would you give up some of your privacy such as name, address, location and travel routines if it could be shown to be effective in reducing COVID-19 deaths and illnesses for others this is a question that involves dual use technology such as the systems that Google and Apple have proposed the same technology that they're developing and proposing could be also used by other countries but could look a dictator for example could use that same technology to say here's this person and then who's in contact with him that this person hangs out with and so forth there's a lot of dual use things that can come out of that proposal but then of course there's privacy issues so if you would please click this and we'll announce the results and it will be interesting so in one question we're looking at several different topics that we've discussed already when COVID-19 geospatial data and tracking and dual use technologies and their involvement okay next slide I'm going to click that off so here's just a list of a few ethics resources that you may not be as familiar with as some others and some of the work that's being done now at Harvard on ethics so there's a URL at the bottom can you roll that screen up a little bit so people can see so there's a URL here if you just go to ethics.harvard.edu you will have a lot of resources and again if you want to take a look at the statement of professional ethics just go to AG click AG.org click governance and then click on the statement so that's all I have and I'd like to turn it over to Glenn and when you get, do we have account for the poll yet? So this is interesting a very large number of you 85% would be willing to give up privacy information if it were help others. I guess this says a lot about geographers and their generosity and their caring so I was happy to see that. So with that I'm going to close out I want to thank all of you for your time and the opportunity to chat with you. I wish it were more of a two-way conversation but I hope it's useful and I've tried to design this it's basic in some ways but I was trying to ask to sort of set the groundwork for the whole series so I wanted to get a good range of issues out there and then also do that away so I can share some of my own experience with ethics. So thank you very much Glenn you have some questions. So thank you very much and yes the people who are viewing this do have a lot of questions and I'm not sure we'll get through all of them but we'll work our way through them and try not to be repetitive. Glenn was very interested in the updating of the AAG statement on ethics and of course you said that's a living document but what drove that 2009 update and they're wondering was there a specific controversy that arose that caused you to relook at that in 2009 and update the ethics statement? Yeah that was actually what happened this was the project, the American Geographical Society project in Oaxaca, Mexico and that became very controversial issue it was kind of part of it was because it was and I don't want to speak for the people who were involved in that process and I'm sure they don't have a strong ability to do it but that was the reason part of it was because it was funded by US military and part of it was because as claimed by some of the folks down there that they weren't as fully informed of all of that and I think that what I've done in my international work I always have written disclosures about where this funding is coming from and I think that that incident really resulted in quite a bit of rancor in the discipline and eventually we tried to say how can we learn from this at some point and so I think we did learn a lot from it and I think everybody did and hopefully that means that in the future we really look hard at the disclosures of funding, the disclosures of what's going to happen with the data and so forth. Thank you. So we have an international audience for this and I am going to ask a question that came from the international audience from another country and it really has to do about our relationship again and it goes back to the question you just answered, relationship as researchers to native communities, indigenous peoples and things like that and really the question, the heart of the question is is do you see that the progress and the work in terms of ethical ways of working in indigenous lands has been more focused and stronger in the social sciences humanities and how is it building and how is it being applied in the natural and physical sciences end of geography, the physical geographers going out in the land so that we are not seeing as a settler colonists in terms of our research and our taking of knowledge from the land. Yeah, you know I think that that's a lot of questions in one but I do think that our discipline has learned a lot over the years and you know working with the American Indian tribes for many years basically you have to ask what do you want what is your governing group want what do you want in this project and how can we help you. On occasion there will be something that people want that I say I'm not going there because I think it may be a little off base but in terms of doing that work not only have geographers become more sophisticated in these areas than the indigenous peoples have I can certainly say in terms of American Indian American Indians I worked for 25 different tribes and they have become so sophisticated they have a very keen understanding of what is in their self interest and they are very good at selecting people that they know they can work with and who will respect what it is that they want to do rather than trying to foist some kind of policy or sentiment on to them and that's happened as more and more people become lawyers become geographers we need a lot more geographers from that and most American Indian reservations are using GIS they are using a lot of very interested in geography and very sophisticated in how they move forward of course cultural heritage and legacy is very important too both current and historic we had a number of questions protecting group identity differences things like that and one of the questions was with big data and with things like remote sensing which we are using you might have the individual participants identity protected but what about the identification of the specific neighborhood the specific region things which you would register let's say on a satellite image you would write about which then would identify and classify a whole group by the location in which you are sensing it and studying and also then how do you inform you talked about informing the subjects of your research but if your research is a satellite analysis of an entire country or state how do you do that so how do we treat the fact that we are dealing with big data and we do have even if the individual is identifiable what their neighborhood is and how do we get consent for that that's a good question I think that part of that is that one has to look at whatever kind of data you have gathered and see and look at it in terms of should this be archived and not distributed and if there is a reason for that that would be one of the human subjects issues in a funded research project now people go out and do all sorts of things on their own and I think that we as geographers have to have a responsible approach to that and there are ways there are a lot of joint projects that involve big data and remote sensing and so forth which is becoming more and more used and of course much better resolution but there are a lot of country to country activities there and a lot of corporate activities going on in that same realm and I think that can basically only be monitored by either international organizations or major state government organizations so that's where the regulation of that should occur so we're almost up against the time I do want to ask just quickly one more question that's sort of come up and this is you talked about the difference between ethics and morals and this then at the beginning of your talk and this also arises where scientists and geographers the difference between objective science and then becoming advocates right where our moral values make us want to advocate for a certain position just in short answer how do we face this dilemma where our morals may not would cause some conflict between the ethics of objective research and things like that how do we navigate those those waters between objective scientists and advocates well I don't think that we have to choose I think you can do both there's no reason that I do it all the time writing letters trying to impact federal legislation we just did pass the new geospatial data act a couple years ago but yeah you're a person you can have your beliefs you can have your morals and your ethics and you can decide to act on that as you're doing other research now it shouldn't mean that you should skew your research to reflect a belief that you have if you're doing research you need to look at science and be accurate and straightforward and faithful to that research project that should not change but the projects you select might change but your research should not be you know twisted in some way because you want a certain political outcome to happen well unfortunately we've come to our time we have many many more questions I'm sorry I can't get to that I would like to thank Doug Richardson for providing a stimulating discussion today and thought provoking and I want to thank all of you for participating and for providing your questions and working with us in the poll I want to remind and I'll end with one last slide that this is just the beginning of the conversation that we're going to be having more webinars on this topic and we invite you to join us for those the next one will feature Dr. Marilyn Brown who's a Regents and Brooks Breyer's professor of sustainable systems at Georgia Tech and she is newly elected to the National Academy of Sciences and she is a professor of geoprivacy research at Globe Chalk Consulting and that's coming up on Thursday June 11th at 11 p.m. Eastern 9 a.m. Pacific so thank you again Douglas Richardson and thank all of you for joining us today