Presentation on Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography by Michael F. Goodchild Rupa Tiwari & Ankita Agrawal CSci 8715, Spring 2010 University of Minnesota

Problem Statement VGI involves voluntary submission of location and geographic information. E.g. Flickr and Gypsii. All of these involves location, which is an important spatial property. What motivates the volunteers? How accurate are their result / findings? Will they threaten individual privacy? How can the volunteers augment more conventional sources? The available VGI provide scope for exploring the geographies of social networks through spatial social network maps that support exploration of locational data as well as online relationships and patterns. The term VGI was coined by Goodchild (2007) to define the user-generated geospatial content being created in these and many other sites to satisfy a variety of needs within industry, government, and social networking communities.

Major Contributions of the Paper Goodchild was the first to coin the term “Volunteered Geographic Information” in 2007 through this paper. Explanation of the evolution of VGI. Elaborate details on VGI activities and advantages. E.g. “GIS democratization”, early warnings, emergency management, OpenStreetMap, Google Earth, “fly-by” creation appealing millions. Comparison of this new phenomenon of VGI with traditional Citizen Science. Technologies enabling VGI. E.g. Web 2.0, Georeferencing tools, High quality graphics. Explanation of concepts like mash-up, geocoding, digitizing, geotag, geocaching, patchwork, NSDI model, Human sensor networks and Citizen Science.

The Key Concepts behind the Approach in this Paper Mash-up: Superimposing geographic information from sources distributed over the web. Popularized by Google Earth and Google Maps. Geocoding: Process of finding associated geographic coordinates from other geographic data, such as street addresses or zip codes. Digitizing: Making a digital representations of geographical features. Geotag: Standardized code that can be inserted into information in order to note its appropriate geographic location. Geocaching: Hidden destination finding sport, based on geographic coordinates. Patchwork: Need-wise, non-uniform coverage leading to composite coverage of the country extent. NSDI model: National Spatial Data Infrastructure manages the distribution of spatial information across all interconnected systems, federal and private sector, and analyzes it to determine the impact of the world economically, physically and socially upon the United States. A group of individuals act independently according to local needs. Human sensor networks: Human beings with their inbuilt five senses and the intelligence to compile and interpret their sensed data. VGI is an effective utilization of Human Sensor Networks. Citizen Science: Citizen Science involves public volunteers for fulfilling observational and / or computational tasks related to scientific research. The volunteers performing the tasks might be less-skilled or unskilled.

Underlying Motivation Self Promotion? Exhibitionism? If yes then what makes Wikimapia and Flickr popular? Since they have anonymous content. Informing friends and relatives Personal Satisfaction Loss of Accuracy due to Google’s Authority, e.g. mis-registration of University of California, Santa Barbara by approximately 20 m east-west. Assertion of VGI content without citation, reference etc creates ample doubt on the content accuracy and reliability. E.g. efforts to create fictitious landscapes, attacks to VGI serves etc. Suggestions to prevent/combat subversive phenomena in VGI? Motivation behind usage of VGI? Information about remote places in the cheapest possible way. Sometimes VGI is the only way e.g. places of national security.

Motivational Factors of “Galaxy Zoo” volunteers Galaxy Zoo is an online Citizen Science project in the field of astronomy. The most stunning discoveries made in Galaxy Zoo was of an object “Hanny's Voorwerp,” discovered by Dutch primary school teacher named Hanny. The motivational factors behind the Galaxy-Zoo volunteers are discovered as:- Enjoyment: Volunteers consider doing it to be fun and has made them addictive. Social community: Volunteers felt being benefitted by participating in the social community enabled by networking tools such as the forum and blog, and meetups in real life. Ability to participate in real science: Volunteers relished being able to participate in real scientific projects, and to be recognized for this participation. All Galaxy Zoo papers include a footnote acknowledging the contribution of all Galaxy Zoo volunteers.

The Validation Methodology Example citing from Wikimapia, OpenStreetMap and Google Earth etc. Comparison with traditional phenomena like Citizen Science. Solid research on geographic naming trend starting from 1507 till 2006, leading to VGI concept evolution. Statistics and comparison, proving the popularity of VGI, e.g. 4.8 million Wikimapia entries in comparison to 7 million entries of Wikipedia in million photographs being contributed each month in Flickr. Clear description of VGI examples, e.g. description of Medina(Saudi Arabia) entry. Ample survey on related work like Flickr, MissPronouncer etc. Logical and observational proofs, e.g. “GIS democratization”. Strength: Methodologies adopted by Goodchild, clarifies the concepts and notions. Weakness: Lacks statistics and proofs behind volunteer motivating factors listed. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the volunteers should also have been done.

Paper Revision Pilot Study results into the motivations and demographics of the Volunteers could have been included. Exploring the motivations of a large population of volunteers is possible through a very small sampling of individuals, although larger interview sets helps. Various techniques to determine the volunteer motivation could have devised; e.g. surveys, questionnaires etc Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) example stresses that a great global or cause could be the reason. Ohio Chapter of the Nature Conservancy example brings out that motivation varies according to the volunteers background. Often there are more than one underlying motivations. Techniques for enhancing the content quality of volunteered submission could have been suggested; e.g. a group of volunteers working with experienced researcher, learning by analyzing existing content(by researchers). Various techniques for retaining the existing volunteers and attracting new ones could have devised; e.g. existing scientific-content availability on web, publicity of the project, uncomplicated and intuitive systems, etc.

Untapped VGI Potential Earth observing satellites sometimes fail to collect images and data due to cloud and smoke. Ground conditions might prevent rapid downloading of images due to lack of power and Internet connection. In such situations, human sensors can report situations through mobile phones, voice, text or pictures. E.g. The Haiti VGI service, data model and tools are based on international standards, and can be updated by anyone. The companies are working with Crisis Commons, Crisis Mappers Google groups and others to coordinate the services. Anyone may contribute updates with free Gaia WFS-T tools or any WFS-T client. The service is designed as rapid collection point for Haiti WMS imagery annotations, emergency operations, framework data updates etc. Volunteer collaboration activities in sharing tools and lessons to quantify characteristics of successful.

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 Galaxy Zoo Project, M. Raddick et al, Citizen Science: Status and Research Directions for the Coming Decade, Volunteered Geographic Information: the nature and motivation of produsers, David J.Coleman, Yola Georgiadou and Jeff Labonte VolunteerGeographicInformation.html Wired.com

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