Volunteered geographic information: future research directions motivated by critical, participatory, and feminist GIS

New interactive web services are dramatically altering the way in which ordinary citizens can create digital spatial data and maps, individually and collectively, to produce new forms of digital spatial data that some term ‘volunteered geographic information’ (VGI). This article examines the early literature on this phenomenon, illustrating its shared propositions that these new technologies are part of shifts in the social and technological processes through which digital spatial data are produced, with accompanying implications for the content and characteristics of geospatial data, and the social and political practices promoted through their use. I illustrate how these debates about VGI conceive of spatial data as socially embedded, and suggest ways in which future research might productively draw upon conceptualizations from participatory, feminist, and critical GIS research that have emerged from similar foundations.     

Confronting the data-divide in a time of spatial turns and volunteered geographic information

Geography is enjoying a period of unparalleled visibility, driven by the growing use of geographic methods and concepts across the sciences and humanities—the so-called spatial turn—and the pervasive use of geospatial Web technologies and their concomitant influence on society, especially the phenomenon of volunteered geographic information (VGI). The field of public health is beginning to harness spatiality with gusto; however, the geospatial Web and its social phenomena are underexplored in this context even though they may be particularly useful for public health enquiry, especially in low-resource settings that lack traditional data collection mechanisms. A case study framed within these two current phenomena is presented to illustrate the influence of geography and its potential for addressing the data-divide—the disparity in availability of data for scientific enquiry and decision-making most felt in low-and middle income countries. A facilitated VGI data collection initiative collected public health-related injury data in Cape Town, South Africa, as a pragmatic alternative given the lack of data from traditional sources. Emergency medical services personnel interacted with a GeoWeb interface to volunteer their informed opinions of high-incident injury locations. Previously unrecorded injury location data were created, and combined with traditional injury data for use in an ongoing study examining the environmental determinants of injury in this setting, which speaks to the possibility for hybrid authoritative/asserted data collection strategies. This study speaks to the growing influence of geography and one of its driving forces, the techno-social revolution in geospatial technology and data. Future work should continue to examine their potential to address the data-divide.     

Harvesting ambient geospatial information from social media feeds

Social media generated from many individuals is playing a greater role in our daily lives and provides a unique opportunity to gain valuable insight on information flow and social networking within a society. Through data collection and analysis of its content, it supports a greater mapping and understanding of the evolving human landscape. The information disseminated through such media represents a deviation from volunteered geography, in the sense that it is not geographic information per se. Nevertheless, the message often has geographic footprints, for example, in the form of locations from where the tweets originate, or references in their content to geographic entities. We argue that such data conveys ambient geospatial information, capturing for example, people’s references to locations that represent momentary social hotspots. In this paper we address a framework to harvest such ambient geospatial information, and resulting hybrid capabilities to analyze it to support situational awareness as it relates to human activities. We argue that this emergence of ambient geospatial analysis represents a second step in the evolution of geospatial data availability, following on the heels of volunteered geographical information.     

Building a semantic based public transportation geoportal compliant with the INSPIRE transport network data theme

Interoperability is becoming essential for the today’s geographic information systems. Geographic information is usually available as datasets stored in databases and accessible via GIS. However, these information sources are increasingly heterogeneous and show differences in data formats, database schema and object concepts. To satisfy the increased demand for the use and sharing of geographic data in common applications, considering the heterogeneity and the methods to support interoperability are required by the GIS community. The implementation of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) such as the European INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community) enables accessibility and the sharing of geographic data and interoperability among the systems. In addition to this, traditional GIS systems perform spatial queries using a keyword-based method. However, this approach remains incapable of fully expressing the users' needs due to a lack of geographic concepts (semantics) in the dataset. Different terms may refer to similar concepts, while the same terms may refer to different concepts. This causes semantic heterogeneity in the dataset. In this context, the most promising approach is the implementation of geospatial semantics by means of ontology in the geospatial dataset to overcome this kind of ambiguity. The aim of this research is to investigate the implementation of INSPIRE as a SDI standard and the use of Semantic Technology to empower the traditional GIS approach. In this regard, a public transportation geoportal has been developed for the experimental investigation which uses a revised sample transportation data complaint with the INSPIRE Transport Network Data Theme and a developed Transportation Ontology Domain, including concepts, relationships and individuals to provide a semantic spatial search.     

Landslide investigations in Russia and the former USSR

The impact of natural hazards on mankind has increased dramatically over the past decades. Global urbanization processes and increasing spatial concentrations of exposed elements induce natural hazard risk at a uniquely high level. To mitigate affiliated perils requires detailed knowledge about elements at risk. Considering a high spatiotemporal variability of elements at risk, detailed information is costly in terms of both time and economic resources and therefore often incomplete, aggregated, or outdated. To alleviate these restrictions, the availability of very-high-resolution satellite images promotes accurate and detailed analysis of exposure over various spatial scales with large-area coverage. In the past, valuable approaches were proposed; however, the design of information extraction procedures with a high level of automatization remains challenging. In this paper, we uniquely combine remote sensing data and volunteered geographic information from the OpenStreetMap project (OSM) (i.e., freely accessible geospatial information compiled by volunteers) for a highly automated estimation of crucial exposure components (i.e., number of buildings and population) with a high level of spatial detail. To this purpose, we first obtain labeled training segments from the OSM data in conjunction with the satellite imagery. This allows for learning a supervised algorithmic model (i.e., rotation forest) in order to extract relevant thematic classes of land use/land cover (LULC) from the satellite imagery. Extracted information is jointly deployed with information from the OSM data to estimate the number of buildings with regression techniques (i.e., a multi-linear model from ordinary least-square optimization and a nonlinear support vector regression model are considered). Analogously, urban LULC information is used in conjunction with OSM data to spatially disaggregate population information. Experimental results were obtained for the city of Valparaíso in Chile. Thereby, we demonstrate the relevance of the approaches by estimating number of affected buildings and population referring to a historical tsunami event.

     

Geospatial analyses of alcohol and drug problems: empirical needs and theoretical foundations

Over the past four decades geospatial analyses of alcohol and drug problems have moved to the forefront of ecological studies of the correlates and determinants of drug addictions in community health. These advances have been predicated upon the expanding computational capabilities of geographic information systems, advancement of statistical tools for the analysis of spatial data, and the formulation of suitable social ecological theory. This paper provides an introduction to the study of drug markets in the US as a model social problem for geospatial research and analysis. Market and epidemic models of the growth of the methamphetamine abuse and dependence in California are used as examples of two fruitful approaches to understanding the social processes that underlie use of this dangerous substance. Data on the growth of the epidemic are described and used to motivate theoretical and empirical concerns regarding further analyses of the development of drug markets over space and time. These concerns, in turn, begin to be addressed by the remaining four papers in this series, each providing some examples and insights into avenues of geospatial research which can be profitably explored in the future.     

Volunteered Geographic Information constructions in a contested terrain: A case of OpenStreetMap in China

The recent explosive growth of user-generated geographic information has drawn significant attention from GIS scholars and human geographers. Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) here refers to a key component of such a phenomenon, comprising both a range of practices of geographic information production and dissemination by volunteers as well as new forms of geospatial data produced and curated through various interactive online platforms and mobile devices such as OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Google Maps. VGI constructions have raised questions on spatial knowledge, power, and context. Through a study that examines social constructions of OSM in China, this paper makes two contributions to the existing literature: providing a political economic account of VGI constructions in China and exploring legalities in VGI research. Informed by research in critical GIS, this paper traces political economic transitions in relation to OSM constructions and examines OSM contributors' experiences and how these experiences constitute OSM development and usage. Drawing upon law and society research, this paper investigates how OSM mappers encounter the state's regulatory scheme of online mapping. This legality perspective of spatial data production and usage is a topic rarely explored in VGI studies. With interview data and document analysis, this paper unravels processes of powerful state institutional arrangements to control and invest in VGI simultaneously, entrepreneurs' interest in developing location-based services using VGI data, and experiences from a tech-savvy group in exploring and making VGI. While individual experiences vary, they show efforts of questioning embedded power relations shaping spatial data production in these continuously evolving, contested technoscientific and social landscapes.     

A development of spatiotemporal queries to analyze the simulation outcomes from a voxel automata model

The raster and vector spatial data models are the most commonly used in geographic information systems (GIS) practice but are insufficient for the representation of dynamic spatiotemporal phenomena that operates in multiple dimensions. Although numerous improvements to the spatial data models have been proposed and various prototype implementations have been developed in order to address this limitation, the problem has persisted. One of the proposals for spatial data representation is the geoatom data model which is a theoretical concept used for conceptualizing geographic information as it pertains to the four-dimensional (4D) space-time continuum. The objective of this study is to develop and apply the spatiotemporal queries in order to analyze and explore the evolution of the 4D geospatial process. The geo-atom data model and voxel automata have been used for the simulation of a dynamic 4D process of snow cover retreat in order to test the developed theoretical concepts. The developed queries for spatio-temporal analysis are volume, surface area, rate of change and temporal ordering. The data used have spatial, temporal and attribute components and represent the voxels units generated from the simulation of the process. Obtained results are the outcomes of various spatio-temporal queries that permit the analysis of the snow retreat process in 4D. This study contributes to conceptual and applied advancements in the field of 4D GIS and multidimensional analysis, and is relevant to geography, earth and environmental sciences, the disciplines where the phenomena need to be studied in 4D.     

The Arc-view application in the field of hydrology and water resources

Through system design and analysis from the aspects of entity categories, hierarchical design, attribute design, and the final function design and realization of the system, this paper develops a software application based on Arc-view platform with a view to solving the deficiencies of conventional groundwater dynamic management in managing the spatial graphics data. Using this application into the supporting automatic monitoring system of groundwater level helps to achieve the automatic analysis of attribute data, and offer a new, visual and efficient automated management tool. Moreover, the computer geospatial modeling can realize the quick query and spatial analysis of geographic information, and thus facilitating dynamic simulation and prediction of the research object. However, a multi-functional, multi-level groundwater level information management system is a complex system engineering, which requires continuous improvement of the structure, development of functions, and supplement of user models.     

Earthquake hazard assessment through geospatial model and development of EaHaAsTo tool for visualization: an integrated geological and geoinformatics approach

An earthquake is a natural phenomenon which is very frequent in Himalayan region in India. In southern peninsula India, the spatial occurrence of earthquake is irregular, whereas the northeastern, the north and the northwestern Himalayan parts of India are subjected to regular occurrences of earthquakes as they mark the boundary of the Eurasian and the Indian Plate. Hence, it is important to study and develop spatial model and information tool to understand the seismic phenomenon. The geoinformatic technique plays a significant role in the analysis of geodatabase to study the natural disaster and hazard assessment. The main aim of the present study is to develop geospatial model based on earthquake hazard assessment tool (EaHaAsTo) through integrated geological and geoinformatic techniques to better understand the earthquake occurrences zones. The spatial and non-spatial data were collected and integrated in a GIS to prepare geospatial databases. The thematic and quantitative databases were generated, and analysis was carried out to understand the seismic characteristics of the study area. The geospatial model was developed by integrating thematic databases and geospatial analyzed using weighted linear combination method. Finally, the GIS based on customized EaHaAsTo was developed to visualize the output of the model in qualitative and quantitative forms.     

Spatial variations in broadband and air passenger service provision in the United States

With the resurgence of regions as key nodes in the global economy, there is a growing interest in better defining their competitive advantages, particularly those accrued through infrastructure provision. Two important components of this competitive landscape are information and communication technologies (ICTs) and commercial air passenger service. While the development of these two networks is frequently cited as being a critical factor in regional economic competitiveness, few empirical studies address the statistical relationship(s) between these infrastructures or the complexities associated with their spatial distribution. The purpose of this paper is to determine if an association exists between the provision of broadband telecommunication service and air passenger service in the United States. In addition, basic spatial statistical approaches are utilized to identify a suite of important social and economic determinants that play a central role in spurring infrastructure provision.     

数字城市基础地理信息数据处理

数字城市以地理空间框架为定位基准,集成城市自然、社会、经济、人文、环境等综合信息,基于网络基础设施实现城市信息的广泛共享。数字城市代表了城市信息化的发展方向,是推动整个国家信息化的重要手段。数字城市地理空间框架既是一城市的空间基础信息平台,也是国家空间数据基础设施的基本组成部分,它是信息集成的载体、是数字城市赖以实现的不可或缺的基础支撑。     

The credibility of volunteered geographic information

The proliferation of information sources as a result of networked computers and other interconnected devices has prompted significant changes in the amount, availability, and nature of geographic information. Among the more significant changes is the increasing amount of readily available volunteered geographic information. Although volunteered information has fundamentally enhanced geographic data, it has also prompted concerns with regard to its quality, reliability, and overall value. This essay situates these concerns as issues of information and source credibility by (a) examining the information environment fostering collective information contribution, (b) exploring the environment of information abundance, examining credibility and related notions within this environment, and leveraging extant research findings to understand user-generated geographic information, (c) articulating strategies to discern the credibility of volunteered geographic information (VGI), including relevant tools useful in this endeavor, and (d) outlining specific research questions germane to VGI and credibility.     

Exploring the structure of the U.S. intercity passenger air transportation network: a weighted complex network approach

The U.S. airline network is one of the most advanced transportation infrastructures in the world. It is a complex geospatial structure that sustains a variety of dynamics including commercial, public, and military operations and services. We study the U.S. domestic intercity passenger air transportation network using a weighted complex network methodology, in which vertices represent cities and edges represent intercity airline connections weighted by average daily passenger traffic, non-stop distance, and average one-way fares. We find that U.S. intercity passenger air transportation network is a small-world network accompanied by dissortative mixing patterns and rich-club phenomenon, implying that large degree cities (or hub cities) tend to form high traffic volume interconnections among each other and large degree cities tend to link to a large number of small degree cities. The interhub air connections tend to form interconnected triplets with high traffic volumes, long non-stop distances, and low average one-way fares. The structure of the U.S. airline network reflects the dynamic integration of pre-existing urban and national transportation infrastructure with the competitive business strategies of commercial airlines. In this paper we apply an emerging methodology to representing, analyzing, and modeling the complex interactions associated with the physical and human elements of the important U.S. national air transport and services infrastructure.     

Organizing earth observation data inside a spatial data infrastructure

Scientists as well public institutions dealing with geospatial data often work with a large amount of heterogeneous data deriving from different sources. Without a well-defined, organized structure they face problems in finding and reusing existing data, and as consequence this may cause data inconsistency and storage problems. A catalog system based on the metadata of spatial data facilitates the management of large amount of data and offers service to retrieve, discover and exchange geographic data in an quick and easy fashion. Currently, most online catalogs are more focusing on the geographic data and there has been only few interests in catalogizing Earth observation data, in which in addition the acquisition information matters. This article presents an automatic metadata extraction approach that creates from different optical data deriving from various satellite missions of scientific interest (i.e. MODIS, LANDSAT, RapidEye, Suomi-NPP VIIRS, Sentinel-1A, Sentinel-2A) metadata information, based on an extended model of the standard ISO 19115. The XML schema ISO 19139-2 with the support of gridded and imagery information defined in ISO 19115-2 was examined, and based on the requirements of experts working in the research field of Earth observation the schema was extended. The XML schema ISO 19139-2 and its extension has been deployed as a new schema plugin in the spatial catalog Geonetwork Open Source in order to store all relevant metadata information about satellite data and the appropriate acquisition and processing information in an online catalog. A real-world scenario that is productively used in the EURAC research group institute for Applied Remote Sensing illustrates a workflow management for Earth observation data including data processing, metadata extraction, generation and distribution.     

Sediment yield assessment at basin scale using geospatial technique

Soil erosion and sediment yield from catchments are key limitations to achieving sustainable land use and maintaining water quality in nature. One of the important aspects in protecting the watershed is evaluation of sediment produced by statistical methods. Controlling sediment loading in protecting the watershed requires knowledge of soil erosion and sedimentation. Sediment yield is usually not available as a direct measurement but is estimated using geospatial models. One of the geospatial models for estimating sediment yield at the basin scale is sediment delivery ratio (SDR). The present study investigates the spatial SDR model in determining the sediment yield rate considering climate and physical factors of basin in geographic information system environment. This new approach was developed and tested on the Amammeh catchments in Iran. The validation of the model was evaluated using the Nash Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient. The developed model is not only conceptually easy and well suited to the local data needs but also requires less parameter, which offers less uncertainty in its application while meeting the intended purpose. The model is developed based on local data. The results predict strong variations in SDR from 0 in to 70 % in the uplands of the Basin.     

Spatial characterization of environmental gradients in a coastal lagoon, Chincoteague Bay

Spatial patterns of environmental processes are intrinsic yet complex components of estuaries. Spatial characterization of environmental gradients is a necessary step to better understand and classify estuarine environments. A geographic information system is developed to analyze the major abiotic environmental processes, to evaluate accuracy and spatial uncertainty, and to analyze potential zonation within the choked coastal lagoon of Chincoteague Bay in Maryland and Virginia, USA. Spatially extensive grid-based models of environmental gradients are constructed from existing geospatial and environmental databases, including tidal prism, bathymetry, salinity, wave exposure, and Secchi disk depth. Integration of wetland boundaries and bathymetric data provide for full basin analysis of flushing and tidal prism. Multivariate Principal Components Analysis demonstrates the covariation among gradients and provides an empirical approach to mapping multidimensional zones within the lagoon. The project documents the development of an estuarine geographic information system that can be used to analyze and compare estuarine environments and provide data for environmental decision making.     

Application of Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence to GIS-based landslide susceptibility analysis

GIS-based spatial data integration tasks for predictive geological applications, such as landslide susceptibility analysis, have been regarded as one of the primary geological application issues of GIS. An efficient framework for proper representation and integration is required for this kind of application. This paper presents a data integration framework based on the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence for landslide susceptibility mapping with multiple geospatial data. A data-driven information representation approach based on spatial association between known landslide occurrences and input geospatial data layers is used to assign mass functions. After defining mass functions for multiple geospatial data layers, Dempster’s rule of combination is applied to obtain a series of combined mass functions. Landslide susceptibility mapping using multiple geospatial data sets from Jangheung in Korea was conducted to illustrate the application of this methodology. The results of the case study indicated that the proposed methodology efficiently represented and integrated multiple data sets and showed better prediction capability than that of a traditional logistic regression model.     

Spatially enabled bushfire recovery

Over the last decade growth in spatial information use for disaster management has been considerable. Maps and spatial data are now recognized as critical elements in each of the four phases of disaster management: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. The use of spatial information to support the phases of mitigation, preparedness and response to bushfires is widely understood. Less attention, however, has been given to the role of spatial information in the recovery. Moreover, the application of the spatially enabled society concept to bushfire recovery has not been explored. This paper explores the role that spatial information plays and could play in the recovery phase of a bushfire disaster. The bushfires in Victoria, Australia that took place during February 2009 are used as the primary case study. It is found that: Spatial information for recovery requires a pre-existing infrastructure; Spatial capacity must be developed across agencies dealing with recovery; Spatially enabled address and parcel information are the key dataset required to support all recovery tasks; Spatial integration of bushfire datasets (spread and intensity) require linking with planning regimes, and Spatial information that is volunteered could be incorporated into recovery activities.     

Diversity in volunteered geographic information: comparing OpenStreetMap and Wikimapia in Jerusalem

While the term “volunteered geographic information” (VGI) has become a buzzword in debates on the geoweb, online cartography and digital geoinformation, the scope and reach of VGI remains underexplored. Drawing on literature on social implications of VGI, this article, firstly, explores differences between VGI initiatives at the example of a comparative case study on social biases within data of OSM and Wikimapia in the fragmented social setting of Jerusalem, Israel. The results of this analysis turn out to be highly contradictive between both projects, which challenges widely accepted assumptions on the imprint of social inequalities and digital divides on VGI. This observation guides, secondly, a discussion of diversity within the category of VGI. Arguing that mapping communities, data formats and knowledge types behind VGI are extremely dissimilar, the paper proceeds by questioning the consistency and utility of VGI as a category. Seeking for a more comprehensive typology of VGI, Edney’s notion of cartographic modes will be presented as an approach towards a more contextualized understanding of VGI projects by embracing their underlying cultural, social and technical relations. Consequently, the paper suggests empirical research on the cartographic modes of a broad series of VGI projects through qualitative and quantitative methods alike.