Collective spatial awareness

Enquiring about and understanding what is going on around ourselves is a fundamental and natural human behaviour. The psychological concept of sense of place considers our individual perceptions of particular locations at particular times. In addition to the immediate properties of our environment, it is also strongly dependent on our individual traits, purpose and relationships as they evolve and adapt over time. In this paper we examine how new approaches to participatory ICT can support heightened levels of sense of place through the development of a parallel concept for collective spatial awareness in ICT systems. We discuss how this could be used as the basis for autonomous processing, acquisition and exchange of spatially relevant information and knowledge.