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A consequence of modern society's increasing reliance on digital communication is the concurrent multiplication and narrowing of information streams, with many channels of digital information, but channels which are difficult or impossible for some individuals to access. Blind and visually-impaired individuals are often left out of this communication, unless accommodations are carefully planned and made to present the information in a usable form. The context of this research is the realm of assistive geotechnology, where web mapping technology and geographic information systems are used to provide access to enabling information and services. This paper presents research on the development of tools to provide transient obstacle information to blind, visually-impaired, and mobility-impaired individuals through crowdsourcing, and research on the general accessibility of local pedestrian networks under constraints presented by transient and permanent navigation obstacles. We discuss the social and technological dynamics associated with the creation and use of our crowdsourcing system and present our effort for comprehensive quality assessment. We conclude that crowdsourcing is a crucial technique for successful deployment of assistive geotechnology, particularly those that involve navigation, wayfinding, and travel in public space. We find that many public health services and other important resources cannot be accessed dependably without the use of crowdsourcing and other techniques for capturing dynamic, changing environmental conditions. More broadly, this paper concludes by addressing the progression of user-generated and crowdsourced content from static data contributions to dynamic placebased services and the enabling role of assistive geotechnology in providing access and help to blind, visually-impaired, and mobility-impaired individuals.

A A r re ep po or rt t o on n q qu ua al li it ty y a as ss se es ss sm me en nt t, , d dy yn na am mi ic c e ex xt te en ns si io on ns s, , a an nd d m mo ob bi il le e d de ev vi ic ce e e en ng ga ag ge em me en nt t i in n t th he e G Ge eo or rg ge e M Ma as so on n U Un ni iv ve er rs si it ty y G Ge eo oc cr ro ow wd ds so ou ur rc ci in ng g T Te es st tb be ed AbstractThis report documents the development of the George Mason University Geocrowdsourcing Testbed (GMU-GcT), whose purpose is to provide a platform for studying the dynamics, limitations, and best practices of geocrowdsourcing. We present a comprehensive study of the social moderation process in the GMU-GcT and the quality parameters of information in the GMU-GcT. We present an analysis of device-based positioning in mobile geocrowdsourcing, and use the study and our analysis as a context for dynamic application extensions of the GMU-GcT in the areas of field-based obstacle moderation, obstacle interaction, and accessible routing.

High reliability organizations (HROs) need to collaborate to address risks that transcend organizational boundaries. HRO literature has yet to examine the challenge of creating interorganizational reliability, while collaboration literature can further explore how stakeholder priorities become dominant in collaborations. This study joins these bodies of literature to identify the growing domain of High Reliability Collaborations (HRCs). Drawing from 2 years of ethnographic research within a community emergency collaboration, the study theorizes that communicative translations constitute HRCs and serve to make sense of HROs and non-HROs as belonging to a shared collaborative framework. These translations are necessary to create reliability but also establish a negotiated order among collaborative stakeholders. This study finds that containing and controlling stakeholders can be an incentive to collaborate and that collaborative decision-making is influenced by stakeholder claims to urgency.