Collaborative Research: A GIScience Approach for Assessing the Quality, Potential Applications, and Impact of Volunteered Geographic Information

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This project is motivated by the rapid expansion in the number and size of websites devoted to gathering geographic information supplied on a voluntary basis by users. This phenomenon of volunteered geographic information (VGI) is part of a more general trend of user-generated content facilitated by a suite of technologies loosely known as Web 2.0. VGI presents significant new challenges for GIScience research, where existing theory and practices are geared almost exclusively toward more conventional forms of spatial data. Yet to date there exist no rigorous studies investigating the scientific and societal questions raised by this phenomenon. Little is known about why people contribute information, the accuracy or quality of what they produce, appropriate methods for synthesizing or analyzing these data, how the so-called "digital divide" may operate to inhibit some people from contributing VGI, or how this phenomenon may impact privacy and confidentiality. Professors Goodchild (UC Santa Barbara), Elwood (University of Washington) and Sui (Texas A&M) will conduct a 3-year study that will expand basic knowledge about VGI via three overarching objectives. First, the PIs will conduct a comprehensive inventory of existing VGI efforts, and will assess the quality and accuracy of VGI using a sample of these websites. Second, the PIs will evaluate the methodological requirements of VGI with this same subset of VGI sources, evaluating the appropriateness of existing techniques such as spatial data mining and other approaches for analyzing large volumes of spatial data. Third, the PIs will study the social dimensions and impacts of VGI using a qualitative and case-based approach, collecting survey and interview data from applications in emergency management and community development, two important arenas in which VGI is predicted to be beneficial. Finally, to complement these basic and applied research activities, the PIs will establish and facilitate a network of scholars conducting research on VGI, to support compilation and exchange of their research activities, findings, methods, and curricular innovations. This study makes several important contributions to science and society. It will identify factors that motivate and constrain people from contributing VGI, develop and evaluate techniques for synthesizing and assessing the quality and accuracy of VGI, and investigate the implications of VGI for privacy, confidentiality, and unequal access to digital information and technologies. VGI is thought to have tremendous societal benefits, for example by providing timely information from citizens about the impacts of a natural disaster or early warning of disease outbreaks. This research initiative will make a pivotal contribution toward realizing this potential, by developing basic and applied knowledge about how this new form of geographic information may be acquired, synthesized, and redistributed, and about how its quality may be assessed and assured. Geographic information is a substantial part of the infrastructure of sciences ranging from geophysics to anthropology, so VGI will impact science in novel and important ways. More broadly, VGI entails public participation in the production of geographic information and knowledge at an unprecedented level in human history - potentially six billion or more people could serve as information producers. VGI represents a radical departure from the top-down paradigm that has dominated the production of geographic information for the past few centuries. This project generates theoretical, methodological, and applied knowledge necessary for scientists, educators, policy makers, and citizens to engage this profound transition in productive ways.