Digital Detectives of Environment Tackling Cigarette Butt Pollution

Abstract. The aim of this paper is to design and develop an openly accessible, web-based Crowdsourced Geographic Information (CGI) framework, referred to as the Digital Detectives of Environment (DiDE), to facilitate the collection of geo-located events. The framework incorporates three user roles: (i) citizens, (ii) experts, and (iii) supervisors. Citizens can browse relevant events without requiring authentication, while experts are responsible for collecting geographic data, including the optional attachment of photographs or videos. Supervisors, on the other hand, define and manage event types. Each event type is classified as either useful or harmful, which determines its visibility to citizens. The pilot implementation was conducted at the Beytepe Campus of Hacettepe University, focusing on four event types aligned with Green Deal actions: rubbish bins and recycling bins (useful), and cigarette butts and full rubbish/recycling bins (harmful). During a one-week data collection period, a total of 490 events were recorded by 37 students. The results reveal clear clustering patterns in both space and time. Temporally, a large proportion of the data was collected on the final day, indicating a tendency toward procrastination among participants. Spatially, events are concentrated in the southern part of the campus, where most facilities are located. This pattern is further supported by analyses using the F and G functions. In particular, cigarette butt events exhibit strong spatial clustering, with a mean nearest-neighbour distance of approximately 25 metres. This finding provides empirical support for the broken windows theory.
Project’s GitHub repo: https://github.com/ibrahimtopcu11/DiDe/tree/isprs26
Dataset: https://zenodo.org/records/19442148