The way we perceive areas affects most of our day-to-day activities. We may park away
from "high crime areas" or "go downtown" for some shopping, without a clear
geographical definition of what these terms mean. The areas don't usually represent
discrete points or polygons, but are often "fuzzy" – with vague boundaries and
variations within. Attention is rarely paid to this vernacular geography because its
difficult and subjective nature makes it so hard to capture and use. Three open
source GIS tools (using Java), together called "Tagger", have been developed to
capture these "fuzzy" or "vague" psychogeographical areas and their associated
attributes. 

   1. User input tool: The user is given a spray can tool, with which they can define
fuzzy areas on a map. Attribute information can be tagged to the sprayed area.
   2. Storage and weighting tool: this aggregates results from multiple users and
stores their individual areas and attributes.
   3. Querying tool: represents all users' aggregate data and searching for comments
ranked according to perceived importance.

The live demonstration shows the Tagger system, allows a person to add their own
inputs, their own "fuzzy" information, and any attribute information to the areas
sprayed. The combined results from all users will also be seen, and can be queried.

The poster displays the architecture of the system and the application of Tagger on a
study on people’s perception of high crime areas in a West Yorkshire (UK) town. The
results from the users were compared with actual recorded crime statistics to display
commonly identified sources of threat versus actual levels of risk, and answer
questions like "what level of crime do people notice as high" or "where do people
have misperceptions of the level of risk from crime", as well as the users of the
system to themselves gain from reflections such as "how scared of crime are my
neighbours" and "does anyone else feel the same way as me".

While attribute information was collected in the example (the way people felt about
an area), there is no reason why the system should not be used without this option
simply to delimit one type of geographical area ("where is your community?", "what
areas do you know most about?").

There are difficulties in GIS when using "fuzzy" or "vague" data but there’s also a
great benefit from capturing vernacular geography. Improving the interface and
integration with other geospatial tools is underway. Scope also exists for
strengthening the analysis of "fuzzy" or "vague" data, and it is possible that this
system could be an input into a more formal cognitive/semantic/ontological GIS.

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Demonstration and poster of a web based Java GIS called Tagger, allowing people with
minimal use of GIS to enter in "fuzzy vernacular" geographies, and attach attribute
information, utilising a spray can tool, familiar from many image editing
applications. Tools to aggregate and store users inputs and a tool to extract,
combine and analyse the combined responses and attributes are also presented. Uses
J2SE applet on client side, and J2EE Servlet or perl on server side.

The main components of the system are:
   1. User input tool: The user is given a spray can tool, with which they can define
fuzzy areas on a map. Attribute information can be tagged to the sprayed area.
   2. Storage and weighting tool: this aggregates results from multiple users and
stores their individual areas and attributes.
   3. Querying tool: represents all users’ aggregate data and searching for comments
ranked according to perceived importance.

The poster displays the architecture of the system and the application of Tagger on a
study on people’s perception of high crime areas in a West Yorkshire (UK) town. The
results from the users were compared with actual recorded crime statistics to display
commonly identified sources of threat versus actual levels of risk, and answer
questions like "what level of crime do people notice as high" or "where do people
have misperceptions of the level of risk from crime", as well as the users of the
system to themselves gain from reflections such as "how scared of crime are my
neighbours" and "does anyone else feel the same way as me".

Future developments include: stronger analysis of the results, closer integration
with other GIS software, changing interface/GUI, more examples and applications of
the software, and research into fuzzy and vague GIS.

More information:
Project Homepage - http://www.ccg.leeds.ac.uk/software/tagger/
Presentations & Papers - http://www.ccg.leeds.ac.uk/software/tagger/docs/documents.html

Other online demo: http://www.saferbradfordinfo.org.uk/tagger/demo/
(which part of the UK has the best food!)