Mapping Surveillance - The Fulcrum Application as a Spatial Method

GEO 600

Final Project Writeup

12/22/2013

Jessi Breen

Jordan Miller

Alex Rittle

This project sought to characterise the surveillance and policing at Fayette Mall. In order to do so, we set out to physically map surveillance technologies within the mall. For the sake of simplicity, we opted to use a mobile application called Fulcrum.  Fulcrum allows users to create web-based field surveys that can then be easily filled out on site using a mobile phone.

We designed our field survey to include variables that we decided as a group would be useful to capture.  Those variables included:

• map location - a variable that allowed us to connect an alphanumeric name for a location to a hand-drawn point on the mall map
• ease of location - a Likert scale variable intended to allow users to rank the difficulty they had in sighting the technology given that surveillance technology is often concealed
• target - a variable intended to describe the space the surveillance technology was surveying
• type - a binary variable to gather whether the surveillance was being conducted by human or non-human means
• observation - a multiple choice variable to capture whether or not a user was surveilled while collecting this information
• photo - a photo of the surveillance technology

Fulcrum survey interface:

Once on-site at the Fayette Mall, we split into our three field research groups.  Each research group included a member of the mapping working group. In turn the three groups worked their way through the mall using the different research method protocols developed by the three working groups. This was intended to ensure that the groups did not duplicate each others efforts.

While on-site, the following observations where made:

• Retail stores seemed to consistently have surveillance cameras aimed at doorways and near cash registers
• While all stores had cameras aimed at entryways and registers, larger retailers had the entire floorplan covered in camera surveillance
• Human surveillance seemed to be absent
• Camera surveillance was only documented in retail stores - not in  mall walkway/open space/food court
• Dearth of security guards/human policing
• Tech surveillance in some stores more advanced than others; i.e. video screens, more square footage, cameras more discrete in some locations
• Surveillance seemed to be just as concerned with employees (aimed at registers) as much as shoppers
• The level of discernibility because of several factors - camera position, high level of shopping activity, cost/benefit - was in question
• No consistent trend in types/quantity of surveillance and location in mall - random, perhaps based on level of retail business

Figure 1 and 2: TV screens that display camera’s POV; commonly in entryways of stores

Figure 3: Large camera; common in large department stores. Seemed to cover entire floorplan of store.

Figure 4: Small camera in corner of Victoria’s Secret - aimed at shoppers.  Small, doesn’t cover entire floorplan.

We encountered a few methodological problems during our field research, not the least of which was that the Fulcrum application ultimately “ate” our data when the trial organizational membership ran out. Other problems included:

• Inconsistent picture taking styles
• Jessi took contextual pictures, Alex took pictures of the specific surveillance mechanisms
• GPS didn’t work across platforms
• Before the data got eaten, GPS points were in weird places and Jessi wasn’t able to record any GPS points at all.
• We neglected to account for audible or tactile surveillance methods
• The beeps at doors caused by various sensors and the merchandise attached to the wall/table, like in Best Buy and the Apple Store.
• No check box for the lack of cameras
• Made it unclear whether a space had been covered
• Should give a description of what the store is like if it does not have physical surveillance
• small/big; lots of workers, etc.
• “Target” should have been a drop down option.
• The descriptions were very different across users and should have standardized some with a drop down menu.

Given the outcome of our field experiences there are a few things that we would do differently next time. First off, we wouldn’t use Fulcrum.  Without an organizational account, apps in Fulcrum are restricted to single users.  A better option would be Epi-Collect, which allows multiple users to participate in a survey without having a paid account.  Next, we would spend more time training on the application and having a backup plan for how to update the survey in the field. We would also make sure that researchers were spread out more, it was fairly obvious that we were all together and we would assign an individual to observe the data recorder to see how that individual was observed. We would also consider adding more nuance to our data collection on human surveillance.  We lacked options in the survey to record who conducted the human surveillance, a greeter, a floater? And how it was conducted, where you followed?  Did someone look in your bag? Finally, we would consider the non-human aspect of surveillance, beyond the video camera, more.  Our initial concepts of the non-human surveillance seemed to stop at video recordings and our experience in the field tells us that there is a lot of non-human surveillance that we hadn’t expected or allotted ways to record in our survey.

Ultimately, this experience raised more questions for us about the characterization of surveillance within the Fayette Mall.

• How effective is camera surveillance?

• Is camera surveillance used enough to where it is beneficial?
• Tech surveillance vs. Human surveillance?
• Is surveillance for shoppers or employees? Both? Even distribution?
• Surveillance a form of intimidation instead of actual evidence?
• Surveillance used more at certain times of year?