Designing methods for evaluating and communicating the quality of volunteered geographic information

最近出现的Web 2.0有可能显著改变地理空间数据集的生成方式。虽然数据集主要是由政府和行业地图专家制作和分发的，但最近的工具，如OpenStreetMap，现在允许任何Web用户为创建大型免费地理空间数据集做出贡献。这种现象被称为“自愿地理信息”（VGI），最初在地图专家中遭到怀疑，但最终导致了与政府地图在准确性上竞争的数据集的创建。在过去两年中，这引起了国家测绘机构和测绘行业越来越大的兴趣，因为它可能对测绘过程产生重大影响，因为它可以让公民收集、更新或核实地理空间数据。这种变化对世界地图行业的潜在经济影响是巨大的，这个行业的价值已经达到数百亿美元。除了经济影响之外，高质量的免费数据的分发可能会产生强大的社会影响，因为它允许在各个领域做出更明智的决定。

The recent emergence of the Web 2.0 has the potential to significantly change the way geospatial datasets are produced. While datasets were largely produced and distributed by government and industry mapping experts, recent tools such as OpenStreetMap now allow any Web user to contribute to the creation of large free geospatial datasets. This phenomenon, described as "Volunteered Geographic Information" (VGI), faced an initial skepticism among mapping experts but led to the creation of datasets that compete in accuracy with government maps. This generated in the past two years an increasing interest from National Mapping Agencies and the mapping industry as it could potentially have a major impact on mapping processes, by having citizens collecting, updating or verifying geospatial data. The potential economic impact of such change is huge for a world mapping industry which is already valued at tens of billions of $US. Beyond the economic impact, the distribution of high-quality free data is likely to have strong social impacts by allowing more informed decisions to be made in various fields.