Presentation on Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography

1. Presentation onCitizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography by Michael F. Goodchild GeoJournal Published online in 2007 by Springer Netherlands RupaTiwari & AnkitaAgrawal CSci 8715, Spring 2010 University of Minnesota

2. Outline • Introduction • Problem Statement • Significance in CSci8715 • Significance of the Geojournal • Major Contributions • Key Concepts • Validation Methodologies • Assumptions Made • Rewrite Points

3. Introduction “Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) is the harnessing of tools to create, assemble, and disseminate geographic data provided voluntarily by individuals.” – (Goodchild, 2007) E.g. OpenStreetMap, Wikimapia, Cyclopath.

4. Problem Statement Input: Empowerment and encouragement to citizens Enabling technologies Volunteered contribution in the form of formal tuple like <x, t, z>. Output: Driving force behind volunteer motivation Extent of volunteer contribution accuracy Objective: To augment volunteer motivation and To maximize the accuracy of volunteer contribution Constraints: Conclusions based on more traditional Citizen Science and Example: A cyclist adding a missing trail to Cyclopath.org being the input; output would be the motivating reason behind his trail addition and the extent of accuracy of his addition.

5. Significance of the Problem in our Course • Volunteered Geographic Information involves “location” - an important geographic property. • “Geographic data is spatial data whose underlying frame of reference is the earth’s surface.” – our text book • “GIS provides a convenient mechanism for the analysis and visualization of Geographic data.” – our text book • “GIS is the principle technology motivating interest in Spatial Databases study.” – our text book

6. Significance of this Geojournal • Absence of prior significant literature in this area • Figuring out underlying Volunteer Motivation is hard • Recognition of the critical societal roles that VGI can play • VGI’s comparison with Crowd sourcing and Citizen Science • Commercial usage: Tomtom, Navteq

7. Major Contributions of the Paper Goodchild was the first to coin the term “Volunteered Geographic Information” in 2007 through this paper. E.g.: OpenStreetMap He provided the classification/specialization from Citizen Science.

8. Contributions… Explanation of the evolution of VGI. Waldseemüller map, the first documented examples of VGI. An assertive method of collecting geospatial information as opposed to the authoritative method.

9. Contributions… Elaboration of VGI activities and advantages. “GIS democratization” Early warnings Emergency Management and “Fly-by” creation of OpenStreetMap and Google Earth appealing millions.

10. Key Concepts contd…Human Sensors Human Beings: • 6 billion intelligent sensors • Informed observers • Rich local knowledge • Uplink technologies like broadband & internet mobile phones

11. Impact of Authority and Assertion Loss of Accuracy due to Google’s Authority, e.g. mis-registration of University of California by approximately 20m east-west

12. Quiz • What was the need of coining the new term "Volunteered Geographic Information"? when the underlying concept could have been explained using "Citizen Science", "User-Generated Content" or "Crowd Sourcing“. • What do you think is the underlying motivation for the volunteers of geographic information? • How to prevent/combat subversive phenomena in VGI? • Why would you ever use a VGI-based information/map?

13. Validation Methodology • Example Citations of user-created data warehouses and enabling technologies • Analytical comparison with similar traditional phenomena • Research on geographic naming trend Strengths: • Successful in clarifying VGI concepts and notions • Proved VGI’s popularity by providing statistics like 4.8million Wikimapia entries in comparison to 7 million Wikipedia entries in 2007 Weaknesses: • Lack of statistics and proofs behind listed volunteer motivation factors • Lack of qualitative and quantitative analysis of available volunteers

14. Assumptions Made • Based totally on Citizen Science • Volunteers are benevolent, politically unbiased and not self-centered • Effective usage of Human Censor Network during emergency management • Absolute fit to National Spatial Data Infrastructure model • VGI servers will not face any security threats

15. Rewrite Points Inclusion of research / study results analyzing the motivations and demographics of the Volunteers. Inclusion of thorough techniques for determining volunteer motivation factor, enhancing the content quality and sustainability extent of individual privacy. Inclusion of suggestions for retaining the existing volunteers and attracting new ones. Detailed survey and citations on Human Sensors with tangible examples

16. Citations & References • M. Raddick et al, Galaxy Zoo: Exploring the Motivations of Citizen Science Volunteers, AAS Meeting #212, #40.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 40, p.240  http://arxiv.org/pdf/0909.2925. • Galaxy Zoo Project, http://zoo2.galaxyzoo.org/ • M. Raddick et al, Citizen Science: Status and Research Directions for the Coming Decade, http://www8.nationalacademies.org/astro2010/DetailFileDisplay.aspx?id=454 • Volunteered Geographic Information: the nature and motivation of produsers, David J.Coleman, YolaGeorgiadou and Jeff Labonte • http://www.geog.ubc.ca/biodiversity/VGI-VolunteerGeographicInformation.html • Wired.com

17. Thank you