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

该项目的动机是，专门收集用户自愿提供的地理信息的网站的数量和规模迅速扩大。这种自愿提供地理信息（VGI）的现象是用户生成内容这一更普遍趋势的一部分，这一趋势得到了一套笼统地称为Web 2.0的技术的推动。VGI为GIScience研究提出了重大的新挑战，现有的理论和实践几乎完全面向更传统的空间数据形式。然而，迄今为止，还没有严格的研究调查这一现象提出的科学和社会问题。人们为什么贡献信息，他们产生的信息的准确性或质量，合成或分析这些数据的适当方法，所谓的“数字鸿沟”如何阻止一些人贡献VGI，或者这种现象如何影响隐私和保密性，这些都知之甚少。Goodchild教授（加州大学圣巴巴拉分校）、埃尔伍德教授（华盛顿大学）和Sui教授（得克萨斯州农工大学）将进行一项为期3年的研究，通过三个总体目标扩大对VGI的基本知识。首先，PI将对现有的VGI工作进行全面盘点，并将使用这些网站的样本评估VGI的质量和准确性。第二，PI将评估VGI的方法要求与VGI来源的相同子集，评估现有技术的适当性，如空间数据挖掘和其他方法来分析大量的空间数据。第三，PI将使用定性和基于案例的方法研究VGI的社会层面和影响，收集应急管理和社区发展应用程序的调查和访谈数据，这两个重要领域预计VGI是有益的。最后，为了补充这些基础和应用研究活动，PI将建立和促进一个学者网络进行研究VGI，以支持编辑和交流他们的研究活动，发现，方法和课程创新。这项研究为科学和社会做出了重要贡献。它将确定激励和限制人们贡献VGI的因素，开发和评估用于综合和评估VGI质量和准确性的技术，并调查VGI对隐私，保密和不平等获取数字信息和技术的影响。VGI被认为具有巨大的社会效益，例如通过提供公民关于自然灾害影响或疾病爆发早期预警的及时信息。这项研究计划将通过开发关于如何获取、合成和重新分配这种新形式的地理信息以及如何评估和保证其质量的基础知识和应用知识，为实现这一潜力做出关键贡献。地理信息是从地球物理学到人类学的科学基础设施的重要组成部分，因此VGI将以新颖而重要的方式影响科学。更广泛地说，VGI要求公众以人类历史上前所未有的水平参与地理信息和知识的生产-可能有60亿或更多的人可以作为信息生产者。VGI代表了对过去几个世纪主导地理信息生产的自上而下范式的彻底背离。该项目产生了科学家，教育工作者，政策制定者和公民以富有成效的方式参与这一深刻转变所需的理论，方法和应用知识。

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.