Zoöp Nieuwe Instituut
Report Zoöp Workshop III: Developing Instruments For Ecological Assessment
This is a summary of the main findings of the third zoöp research session, which took place in the context of the Neuhaus temporary academy for more-than-human knowledge. The following text assumes that the reader has a basic familiarity with the zoöp concept. For a regularly updated version of the zoöp concept and its organisational diagram, please check the Zoöp research project page.
The first zoöp research workshop focused on the basic legal and organisational structure of the zoöp as a way to give non-human collective bodies some kind of legal standing within the Dutch jurisdiction. The second zoöp research workshop investigated the zoöp's approach to measuring ecological development. That session led to the conclusion that measuring the ecological development of a specific zoöp cannot rely on a single instrument, but should rather make use of a flock of instruments. The aim of this third zoöp research workshop was to further conceptualise some of these zoönomic instruments.
The possibility of qualitative zoönomic instruments
Within the operations of zoöps, zoönomic instruments have the role of registering and making legible different sorts of information and data on the basis of which a robust assessment can be made of the health and development of the collective body of nonhumans belonging to a zoöp. The instruments should do this in a way that allows both the Zoönomic Mother Foundation (ZMF, see zoöp structure) as well as external parties to see how the assessment is compiled. In other words, the assessments should be auditable.
Currently, ecological development is generally assessed with the use of quantitative data on metabolic and environmental circumstances and biodiversity. This practice has reached a high degree of refinement. However, as more research is revealing the sentient, communicative and subjective capacities of more and more living nonhumans (for instance trees) a range of new questions has to be asked about the human-centricity of common definitions of ecological development. To what extent could what is commonly defined as ecological development be related to the quality-of-life of living nonhumans? To what extent are the usual quantitative data then able to indicate this quality-of-life of living nonhumans? What other ways of understanding quality-of-life for nonhumans could provide relatable types of information that can be gathered by zoönomic instruments?
In the previous research session these issues were discussed in principle. For the current session the aim was to work out a practical approach.
Zoöps are primarily interested in the quality of life of nonhumans, which suggests that zoönomic instruments or methods have to be developed that can capture these qualities more directly than we can currently do. However, the focus on quality does not mean that quantitative assessment has to be abandoned in principle. It does mean that new ways have to be conceived to relate quantitative assessments to the qualities that zoöps need to perceive.
Reference frames for zoönomic development
Before the research could set to work on the actual design questions of creating instruments that support the intentions of zoöps, one important choice that the previous session left to the current one, had to be made.
For zoönomic instruments to make legible the development in quality of life of a zoöp's ecological community, a frame of reference is needed. Two kinds of options had been outlined in the zoöp's development so far. The first idea was nicknamed the Chernobyl Standard and had been around in loose form since the first attempt to articulate the zoöp legal format. The other option, first considered in the previous research session, was to work out a baseline method.
The Chernobyl Standard would represent the maximum potential of zoönomic fulfillment, with the ecological richness of the human exclusion zone around Chernobyl, Ukraine as point of reference. Zoönomic instruments would have to able to express a zoöp's development as a degree of fulfillment of that maximum potential.
This proposal has the advantage that it understands zoönomic development essentially as a relative degree of potential - that is as a qualitive phenomenon - and not as a set of absolute numbers or volumes to be reached. Using this standard, every zoöp would be somewhere between 0% of fulfillment and 99% of fulfillment, regardless of its volume, climate zone, or environmental context. A problematic aspect is that it would use one unique area's (Chernobyl) geographic, climatological and infrastructural history as exemplary for all the zoöps' very different local volumes of biosphere. How could the Chernobyl Standard provide a useful reference for a zoöp in coastal waters, for instance?
This proposal for a universalist external standard furthermore no longer meshed with the choice of the previous research session to always use a range of zoönomic instruments instead of only one. A further consequence of this choice now became clear. The notion of the Chernobyl Standard had to be abandoned in favour of a more immanent way of calibrating the development of zoöps - a yet to be developed zoönomic baseline assessment method.
Baseline assessment requirements
The research group then established the following requirements for the baseline assessment method:
- It should be able to articulate different spatial, contextual and social starting points of zoöps
- It should be able to give an indication of quality of life of the local ecological community at the moment the zoöp is initiated
- It should allow zoöps to express their own zoönomic ambition in reference to their baseline assessment and acknowledged by the ZMB.
- It should provide frames and references for different zoönomic instruments to reveal the ecological development of the zoöp.
- It should allow different kinds of zoöps to be both different as well as comparable.
The central aim of the research session thus became to design zoönomic instruments that yield information in communication with a baseline method. The calibration of zoönomic instruments - one of the crucial tasks of the ZMF - then signifies the action of establishing how the information yielded by each instrument relates to this baseline method.
Designing zoönomic instruments
Three groups were created, each working on a different task. Group one set out to develop the outline of a baseline assessment method that would meet the above requirements. The second group focused mainly on the tandem between qualitative and quantitative assessments and worked on a way to relate the two notions from the perspective of the needs of zoöps. Group three worked on detailing the architecture of the Datafusion Instrument that would combine the functionality of the remote sensing web-app (this prototype was made for the zoöp observatory in the Neuhaus Temporary Academy for more-then-human-knowledge) with measurements by onsite sensors and instruments.
A Baseline Assesment Method
For the Baseline Assessment Method a structure was outlined made up of two parts. The first part focuses on the stable and discrete characteristics of the zoöp: its spatial, social and contextual characteristics. No special new instruments are needed to map these. The second part, where the zoönomic instruments play their roles, aims to capture the state and developments in the quality of life of the nonhuman ecological community.
Spatial characteristics:
- Volume of biosphere under the zoöps' agency
- Fresh water surface area
- Presence of buildings, infrastructural elements.
Social and organisational characteristics:
- What kind of organisation(s) are part of the zoöp?
- How many humans of what age groups can contribute time and energy to the zoöp, and what experience do they have with zoönomic development?
Contextual aspects:
- Biographical area: rural, industrial, urban, climate zone etc.
- Ecological context: volumes and distances of the nearest ecological communities
- Political context: zoning laws, land price development, most important political actors in the context of the zoöp.
For the second half of the baseline methods, the use of spider graphs along a number of evaluative axis was proposed - nine in the illustration below. The spider graphs would be the actual evaluation tools that show progress and transition in ecological regeneration over periods of time and are thus concerned with variables that are expected to change.
A long list of possible indicators was compiled that would be relevant to zoöps, that could be clustered in different ways: required material externalities, required energy externalities, the amount of meaningful social interactions that a zoöp fosters, colour scheme, water retention, number and size of earth worms, presence of certain key species, sound quality, smell scape, soil texture. These lists have to be evaluated and analysed further.
The graph would be sectored into concentric rings. Each evaluation axis in a spider graph could work with a different particular meaning for these rings. The calibration of each axis has not been worked out yet. The plotting of the graph yields a shape that differs according to the different levels of the parameters. Thus, these spider graphs allow for comparison across various stages of development of one zoöp or across one period of assessment across different zoöps, if they use the same zoönomic instruments.
The outline of the baseline method appears to meet all requirements. It facilitates tracking progress in a relatively simple manner and communicating it externally, allowing for comparison across zoöps.
Also, it allows zoöps to express their own ambitions as desired states of various spider graphs, to be reached at a designated moment in time.
Qualitative versus quantitative measurements
The team was concerned with the reconciliation between qualitative and quantitative assessment. The general idea was to come up with quantitative parameters (that would describe the starting point of a zoöp) to then side them with an overall qualitative judgement that could potentially synthesize and add layers to the quantitative ones. For example, next to quantitative measurements of air quality that numbers pollutants, chemical compositions, dust particles and humidity, qualitative questions could be answered by a zoöp's workers or visitors. For instance: which of the following words would you use to describe the smell today? Pick five, and put them in order (flowery, nectar, rotting, moist, sulphurous, fungus, sweet, fresh, bitter, sour, honey, sewage, etc.) If both types of measurements are repeated over time, correlations can be seen and perceptions of both measurements gains in depth.
An issue with this type of language-assisted sensory perception is the high degree of subjectivity of the qualitative statements. A possible solution would be to submit such type of qualitative questions to groups of people that are specialized in it. A vocabulary that is subjective but also precisely understood in the same way by a larger group of people, allows for more robust qualitative indications. See for instance the type of indications used for describing tastes and smells among perfumers, chefs and sommeliers. The great advantage is the level of abstraction or aggregation that is performed in human qualitative sensorial assessments, that cannot possibly be matched by the quantitative technical assessments.
Qualitative assessments: Radical Observation Methods
An interesting practice of qualitative assessment is the Radical Observation Methods, developed by Debra Solomon to perceive qualities in the food forest under her custody. Solomon's initial idea was to respond to expensive techno-scientific quantitative assessment of nonhuman qualities with a qualitative assessment that learns to pay attention to the rhythms of the nonhumans inhabiting the food forests. Two main methods have been developed by Debra and her colleagues: Twenty-four and Soil chromatography. The first consists of spending one hour per day during the course of an entire month in one spot paying maximum attention to the natural surrounding and taking 'mental notes'. The second is a photographic process. Finely ground soil is absorbed by filter paper that has been prepared with silver nitrate. Thanks to capillary action, a visual representation of qualities of that soil appears. The organic content is lighter than the mineral content and thus travels further onto the paper. The higher the organic content, the healthier the soil. If these methods are carefully logged they can be adopted as zoönomic instruments.
Architecture of the Datafusion Instrument
The third team focused on the architecture of the next iteration of the zoöp monitor, the
web application that was built by Space4Good to demonstrate how the monitoring of important ecological factors of also relatively small surface areas can be automated with the use of open satellite data. The next imagined iteration of this tool was labelled the Datafusion Instrument. This was thought of as a tool that would combine ('fuse') remote sensing data with data gathered directly from within different zoöps.
The group investigated 67 possible indices of vegetation quality that can be obtained using open data from various ESA satellites. The six most relevant for zoöps were established as biomass, NDVI, NDWI, the chlorophyl index, vegetation stress and vitality. The information from these indices can be combined with local data to be gathered from humidity sensors, air quality sensors, but also cameras, microphones and or from observation apps like waarneming.nl or tuinvogeltelling.nl . This combination increases significantly both the spatial and the temporal granularity of the indices and adds depth and context to the observation apps. The integration of remote and local data sources thus gives a much more robust index of changes than any of them can give on their own.
Two modes of data integration were explored: soft integration would limit itself to collecting and correlating several types of data. Hard integration would compute an aggregated overall index out of a collection of different datasets. The soft integration method appeared to be most suitable for application within zoöp context, because it allows for more flexible combination of different data sources.
The schematics of the system were drawn in such a way that different data sources can be added modularly. This would make it possible (for instance) to replace the data from a Copernicus satellite by data from a microscope. The computational heavy lifting of calculating the indexes will take place on the server side.
The user interface for zoöps should then be accessible by affordable phones or tablets. Applying this instrument for a starting zoöp should become as straightforward as opening an account, drawing a polygon on the map, placing or selecting local data sources, and consulting the resulting reports.
Finally, it was concluded that such a Datafusion Instrument would allow the ZMB to easily get an overview of zoönomic developments of a range of zoöps.
Participants
- Andrei Bocin-Dumitriu (space4good)
- Ricardo Cano-Matteo
- Natalia Derossi
- Syne Fonk
- Sjef van Gaalen
- Theun Karelse
- Klaas Kuitenbrouwer
- Anne van Leeuwen
- Marthijn Pool
- Debra Solomon
- Bianca Slieker