![Sample our Environment & Sustainability journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5935/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Environment-Sustainability.jpg"})
Abstract
The convergence of newly interactive Web-based technologies with growing practices of user-generated content disseminated on the Internet is generating a remarkable new form of geographic information. Citizens are using handheld devices to collect geographic information and contribute it to crowd-sourced data sets, using Web-based mapping interfaces to mark and annotate geographic features, or adding geographic location to photographs, text, and other media shared online. These phenomena, which generate what we refer to collectively as volunteered geographic information (VGI), represent a paradigmatic shift in how geographic information is created and shared and by whom, as well as its content and characteristics. This article, which draws on our recently completed inventory of VGI initiatives, is intended to frame the crucial dimensions of VGI for geography and geographers, with an eye toward identifying its potential in our field, as well as the most pressing research needed to realize this potential. Drawing on our ongoing research, we examine the content and characteristics of VGI, the technical and social processes through which it is produced, appropriate methods for synthesizing and using these data in research, and emerging social and political concerns related to this new form of information.
La convergencia de nuevas tecnologías interactivas de la Web con creciente uso de contenidos generados por usuarios y difundidas en Internet, están generando una notable nueva forma de información geográfica. Los ciudadanos están usando dispositivos de mano para recopilar información geográfica y aportarla a conjuntos de datas de fuentes agrupadas usando interfaces de mapeo basadas en la web para marcar y anotar sus características geográficas, o añadir ubicaciones geográficas a fotografías, textos y otros medios compartidos en la red. Estos fenómenos que generan lo que nos referimos colectivamente como voluntariado de información geográfica (VGI), representan un cambio paradigmático en cómo la información geográfica es creada y compartida y por quienes, así como su contenido y características. Este artículo que se basa en nuestro inventario recientemente terminado de iniciativas del VGI, se pretende enmarcar las dimensiones fundamentales de este para la geografía y los geógrafos con miras a identificar su potencial en nuestro campo, así como el más apremiante estudio necesario para hacer realidad esta posibilidad. Basándonos en nuestra investigación en curso, se analiza el contenido y las características del VGI, los procesos técnicos y sociales mediante los cuales se produce, los métodos apropiados para la síntesis y uso de estos datos en la investigación, y las emergentes inquietudes sociales y políticas relacionadas a esta nueva modalidad de información.
Acknowledgments
Constructive comments from the editor and six anonymous reviewers have significantly improved this article. Research assistance by Darren Hardy, Agnieszka Leszczynski, Chen Xu, Jay Knox, and Xining Yang is also gratefully acknowledged. This article is a result of a collaborative research project among the three authors—“A GIScience Approach for Assessing the Quality, Potential Applications, and Impact of Volunteered Geographic Information”—funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (Awards 0849910, 0849625, and 1048100). More project details are available at http://vgi.spatial.ucsb.edu. Funding was also received from the U.S. Army Research Office through Awards W911NF-09-1-0302 and W911NF-10-1-0340 to Goodchild. The usual disclaimers apply.
Notes
1. In recent years, the private sector has also helped to upset the traditional apple cart by taking an increasingly significant role in the production, use, and archiving of geographic information, exemplified by the commercial production of road-network data by TeleAtlas and Navteq, of the locations of businesses by Dun and Bradstreet, and by the online services of Google, Microsoft, MapQuest, and Yahoo!
2. Indeed, early work on VGI supports this claim, positing a blurring of the boundaries between user and producer, the emergence of a hybrid “produser” or “prosumer” (Budhathoki, Bruce, and Nedovic-Budic 2008).
3. This is not to say that the remaining sites do not offer mapping interfaces—many do. This category represents sites such as Google Earth that primarily facilitate geovisualization of UGC.
4. This is not to suggest that the process of redistricting cannot be done by citizens but rather that responsibility for spatial data files representing such units is likely to remain with government entities.
5. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names was established in 1890 for the express purpose of standardizing the use of place names.
6. In the mapping effort following the Haiti earthquake, much of the OSM coverage was generated remotely from fine-resolution imagery. Feature names cannot normally be obtained from imagery, so mappers relied on the memories of expatriate Haitians, among other sources.
7. Linus Torvald, a software engineer and leader of the Linux kernel project, propounded the principle as a basis for assuring the quality of software.
8. It is also clear that mashups present multiple challenges to existing legal and policy structures related to spatial data and maps, as examined by S. Li and Yan (Citation2010).
9. We are using the word consilience in its original sense, which is conceptually consistent with the practice of Web 2.0; we are not necessarily endorsing Wilson's biological reductionism.
10. As has been debated extensively around GIS (Crampton Citation2009; Leszczynski Citation2009), as a digital form of representation, VGI is, of course, always a limited expression of human knowledge and experience.
11. Different forms of VGI raise very different issues with respect to using these data. The use of VGI to assist in rescue and relief efforts following Haiti's 2010 earthquake hints at some of the pragmatic issues that might arise around VGI in different representational forms. The primary form of VGI emerging from within Haiti via Ushahidi's crisis mapping platform (http://haiti.ushahidi.com/) was text messages. These messages were in three different languages and tended to use linguistic descriptors of location, requiring significant additional processing before they could be integrated with other data. On another level, disparities in access to different modes of representation matter because they carry differing social and political meaning and forms of authority. We return to these questions later in this section.
12. Ushahidi's SwiftRiver system, for example, validates VGI through a crowd-sourced filtering process that combines automated techniques and review of the data by any user who wishes to participate (Fildes Citation2010).