2. Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI)
VGI (Volunteered Geographic Information), Goodchild (2007):
“Geographic information acquired and made available to others through
the voluntary activity of individuals or groups, with the intent of providing
information about the geographic world” (Elwood, Goodchild, and Sui
2011)
‘Crowdsourcing’: A process in which a
large group of people is asked to perform
business functions that are either difficult
to automate or expensive to implement
(Howe, 2005)
3. VGI Drivers
• Traditional geospatial data updates are slow
• Lack of institutional data in time-sensitive situation
• Spatial local knowledge: Individuals’ understandings of local
events
• Low resources. Mapping are expensive
• Rich in context: attributes from spatial
data are usually hard to obtain
• Bidirectional mapping: Quick
dissemination & data acquisition
• Completeness:Gathering lots of data
quicklyModified from Chen & Elmes, (2014)
4. Problems with VGI
• Main problem: Data qualities
• Heterogeneity in quality: no standardization
for LoDs
• Positional accuracy. VGI often comes from
non-surveying devices (e.g. mobile phones)
• Thematic consistency. Each contributors
could have different opinions on a single data
• Usually Project-centric, only good for some
specific use-cases
• Coverage bias. Interesting AOIs are better mapped than others
8. Liput Gambut
A Mobile Application to collect data based on user input, social media tags and
services to report and verify haze mitigation in peatland areas
Geocrowd Dashboard Geocrowd App
User report Real World
Phenomenon
Real time Hotspot API
HotSpot Verification
(GPS + Foto + Form)
14. VGI for SDI (?)
SDI Components VGI SDI
Policy Community of registered
users
Formal organizations
Access Network Bidirectional One directional focus
Standards Data standards Metadata, data and
service standards
Data Specific focus or theme Broad data scope
People Broad user base of non-
professionals
Limited user base of
professionals
Castelein, et. al. (2010)
15. VGI in Government
Haklay, et.al, (2014)
• Separation between data collection and
use for Policy Analysis
• VGI should not be seen as an activity that
replaces the work of professionals, but as
one that enhances it (‘patchwork’,
Goodchild 2007)
• Project continuation and stability.
Adoption of crowdsourcing by government
is a process which is subject to resource
management and organizational change
16. VGI in Government
Haklay, et.al, (2014)
• VGIs are inherent with coverage,
temporal and participation
biases. Government needs to
employ strategies for volunteer
engagements
• Need to consider Licensing and
Intellectual Property Rights
