CASE STUDY: Southwings
Southwings is a conservation nonprofit that maintains a network of private, small plane pilots in the southeast US. The organization then takes requests from environmentalists, biologists journalists, politicians and other activists seeking visual access to industrial sites or toxic disasters, and coordinates flights for those people within its network of volunteer pilots.
This case-study is less about quantitative information and more about visual data — and access to it. Many of the flyovers are focused on sites where access to outsiders is extremely limited (sometimes for very strategic reasons). In other cases, issues that may be impossible to diagnose from a single geographic location become much clearer when reviewed from above.
Many groups approach Southwings as part of a larger campaign to hold industries accountable for pollution or environmental destruction. People generally must have an official affiliation since Southwings’ resources (and those of its volunteer pilots) is extremely limited. Flyovers are strategic and not necessarily democratic.
TOP-DOWN / BOTTOM-UP — This organization is mostly bottom-up as missions are proposed by individuals dealing with specific issues, however, because of finite resources there is some top-down prioritization required.
PRESSURES — Many times the inaccessibility of toxic sites necessitates an aerial investigation. When regulations exist, pollution can become more discreet; access becomes a big part of enforcement. However, like our conversation about satellites and resolution, planes can only see certain types of data. Ultimately, an aerial view can be helpful but not enough to make change on its own.
Airplanes are hardly an accessible technology, but this case study offers a few relevant insights for our work. Could science/citizen science make use of the expensive assets of others? In some cases this might require a complicated network of volunteers who take some loss to participate, but in other instances it might just mean attaching a sensor or asking for a particular piece of data (for example, could small plane pilots help corroborate data from NASA’s TEMPO satellite?).
DATA/DECISIONMAKING — Southwings engagements are generally short, and often result in visual data. These insights then educate follow-up steps for scientists or advocacy groups. In that way, Southwings helps frame issues, both in terms of strategy, but also relationally: seeing spaces from above demonstrates how pollution in one place ends up in another. Journalists have more evidence and visuals for publication; environmentalists can set up new experiments or lobby for particular enforcement; politicians can take stock of the area under their jurisdiction and see some ways it affects constituents.
