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[title]While the shutdown and social distancing regulations has restricted people’s movements within the greater city, it has allowed Bangkokians to discover more about the neighborhood they live in. Crowdsourcing maps like STRN Citizen Lab have come in handy as a tool to explore your immediate surroundings, generating data provided by your own neighbors.
The force behind Thailand’s latest crowdsourcing map is Techit Jiropaskosol, a former graphic designer who’s now part of Satarana, the civil society network that’s behind the redesigned bus stop signs around town, as well as youth empowerment camps and walking tours that allow people to get a better sense of their community.
Still in its beginning phase, STRN Citizen Lab (an abbreviation of satarana, which
means “public” in Thai) invites users to provide data on the neighborhoods they live in, such as restaurants, markets, shops and service establishments. Unlike data collected by corporate giants like Google and Apple, the information generated and provided on STRN Citizen Lab is open-sourced and more transparent. (In other words, this information is not controlled by one single company.)
“Sometimes we know very little about the neighborhood we live in, but this is the time that we have to rely on what’s around our home,” explains Techit. “We can learn about our area by exploring the pinned places created by our neighbors. At the same time, places that are struggling from low traffic during this crisis
will get exposure from its online presence.”