Study on VGI Volunteers

1. Study on VGI Volunteers Rupa Tiwari Advisor: Professor Shashi Shekhar Computer Science & Engineering, University of Minnesota tiwar020@umn.edu, 02/09/2011

2. Outline • Introduction • Problem Motivation & Statement • Related Work • Contribution • Challenges • Experimental Setup • Findings • Future work

3. Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) The harnessing of tools to create, assemble, and disseminate geographic data provided voluntarily by individuals (Goodchild, 2007). E.g. Wikimapia, Flickr, OpenStreetMap, Cyclopath OpenStreetMap portion of UMN east bank

4. Problem Motivation • Need for new volunteers and retention of existing ones • Designing future VGI projects in better and appealing way • Boon in managing disasters. Significant contribution during natural disasters like hurricane Katrina, Haiti and Chile earthquakes. • Projects and initiatives involving: • Detailed locations update • Urban and regional development to under-served communities environmental analysis • Economic & community development

5. Problem Statement Given: • A set S, of VGI organizations, P1, P2 …Pn. • Sets of spatial volunteers, V1, V2 …Vn from the projects, P1, P2 …Pn respectively. Find: • A tiered list L, of motivation factors behind the volunteerism activity of volunteers. • Qualitative study of volunteer demographics Objective: • To find a statistically meaningful list of volunteer motivation factors divided in leading, moderate and lagging tiers. This would help in understanding the dynamics of volunteer psychology. Example: • Volunteers of OpenStreetMap – a geowiki site form a candidate volunteer set.

6. Related Work Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography by M.F. Goodchild, 2007 This geojournal summarizes few factors underlying VGI volunteerism, like: “Self-promotion” (for non-anonymous projects only) “convenient way of making it available to friends and relations” and “Personal satisfaction” (for OpenStreetMap only). Limitation: It is unclear as how the motivational factors have been arrived upon. Probably the outcomes are influenced by volunteer communities of Citizen Science projects like Christmas Bird Count and Project Globe. There is no mention of any kind of experimental approach backing up the findings. • The Motivations to Volunteer: Theoretical and Practical Considerations by Clary, E. Gil and Mark Snyder, 1999 • The authors applied functionalist theory and hypothesized following 6 personal and social functions: • Values (like humanitarianism) • Understanding (learning unused worldly skills) • Enhancement (growing psychologically) • Career (gaining career-related experience) • Social (strengthening relationships) • Protective (reduce personal problems) • Limitations: • The volunteer subjects on whom they worked were general social volunteers of unpaid helping activities. • We have come 11 years down the line. Changes in economic situation, availability of information and technology at volunteer’s disposal have resulted changes in motivational factors.

7. Contribution • Factors and their tiers concluded from Survey Results • More factors and Qualitative Analysis as compared to 3 and 6 from related work • New factors like “Building Professional Network”, “Better Time Utilization” and “To Look for New Employment” • Improvement suggestions for VGI projects specially during emergency and real-time situations

8. Challenges • Access to the volunteers of only two organizations OpenStreetMap and GISCorps was achieved. • Central tendency bias and social desirability biasof 5-point Likert scale . • Inferring Human Psychology is Non-trivial

9. Sample Details • GISCorps • Started October 2003, Atlanta, Georgia • Highly specialized GIS expertise to underprivileged communities • Strengthens local capacity by effective use of spatial information technologies • Develops web-based interactive mapping applications • Assists in strategic planning of GIS systems and their implementation. • E.g. : Created an accurate base map for northwest Albania, developed several data layers including a detailed road network (on Open Street Map – OSM interface), damaged buildings, and various Points of Interests. • OpenStreetMap • Started July 2004 by Steve Coast • Free editable map of the whole world • Allows viewing, editing and using geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth • The project was started because most of the available maps had legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive, or unexpected ways • Registered users can upload GPS track logs and edit the vector data using the given editing tools. • E.g.: During Haiti earthquake, OpenStreetMap used available satellite imagery to map the roads, buildings and refugee camps of Port-au-Prince. • 134 out of 150 deployed GISCorps and 118 OpenStreetMap volunteers

10. Participant Location Major participants from USA, followed by Germany, UK & France

11. Gender Relatively low Female participation with 37% in GISCorps and only 4% in OpenStreetMap

12. Age All age groups contribute, predominant being those between 20-50 years. OpenstreetMap seems to consist of younger lot of volunteers; the small fraction consisting of below 20 years of age is solely due to OpenStreetMap.

13. Occupation • Majority (64% in OSM and 83% in GISCorps) of the participants are professionals followed by students and academicians. • Others constitute people who are retired, unemployed or both professional and student at a time.

14. Relation with GIS GISCorps OSM Majority of GISCorps volunteer’s professional work and areas of study are related to GIS. While for OpenStreetMap the opposite holds, they volunteer as a hobby.

15. Findings Tiered list table of the motivational factors:

16. Desire for Geospatial Training 55% of volunteers would undergo geospatial training only if it were free

17. Participation Incentive • More than half of them do not need any incentive • A considerable portion desired technical training, followed by award, honor and recognition • No wonder we have personal satisfaction, altruism and desire to gain geo-spatial knowledge as the top factors.

18. Non-statistical Inferences • Centralized Online Community for Volunteers • Insufficiency of Resources and Infrastructure • Ways to attract new volunteers: • Publicity through media • Ease of contributing • Easy documentation • Appreciation for Contribution • Encouragement from employers

19. Emergency Preparedness • Exhaustive list of all that can be achieved • Technical training for volunteers • Clear technical documentation of all equipment and tools • Pre-event identification of regional and local volunteers • Increase volunteer pool for disaster-prone regions / localities

20. Future Work • Study other VGI organizations • Factors based on Gender, Age group etc • Target rich sample size • Study varied geographies, stress on continents which showed less participation like Asia

21. Thank You  Any Questions? Email: tiwar020@umn.edu