TY - JOUR
T1 - Researching Volunteered Geographic Information
T2 - Spatial Data, Geographic Research, and New Social Practice
AU - Elwood, Sarah
AU - Goodchild, Michael F.
AU - Sui, Daniel Z.
N1 - Funding Information:
Constructive comments from the editor and six anonymous reviewers have significantly improved this article. Research assistance by Darren Hardy, Agnieszka Leszczynski, Chen Xu, Jay Knox, and Xining Yang is also gratefully acknowledged. This article is a result of a collaborative research project among the three authors—“A GIScience Approach for Assessing the Quality, Potential Applications, and Impact of Volunteered Geographic Information”—funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (Awards 0849910, 0849625, and 1048100). More project details are available at http://vgi.spatial.ucsb.edu. Funding was also received from the U.S. Army Research Office through Awards W911NF-09-1-0302 and W911NF-10-1-0340 to Goodchild. The usual disclaimers apply.
PY - 2012/5
Y1 - 2012/5
N2 - The convergence of newly interactive Web-based technologies with growing practices of user-generated content disseminated on the Internet is generating a remarkable new form of geographic information. Citizens are using handheld devices to collect geographic information and contribute it to crowd-sourced data sets, using Web-based mapping interfaces to mark and annotate geographic features, or adding geographic location to photographs, text, and other media shared online. These phenomena, which generate what we refer to collectively as volunteered geographic information (VGI), represent a paradigmatic shift in how geographic information is created and shared and by whom, as well as its content and characteristics. This article, which draws on our recently completed inventory of VGI initiatives, is intended to frame the crucial dimensions of VGI for geography and geographers, with an eye toward identifying its potential in our field, as well as the most pressing research needed to realize this potential. Drawing on our ongoing research, we examine the content and characteristics of VGI, the technical and social processes through which it is produced, appropriate methods for synthesizing and using these data in research, and emerging social and political concerns related to this new form of information.
AB - The convergence of newly interactive Web-based technologies with growing practices of user-generated content disseminated on the Internet is generating a remarkable new form of geographic information. Citizens are using handheld devices to collect geographic information and contribute it to crowd-sourced data sets, using Web-based mapping interfaces to mark and annotate geographic features, or adding geographic location to photographs, text, and other media shared online. These phenomena, which generate what we refer to collectively as volunteered geographic information (VGI), represent a paradigmatic shift in how geographic information is created and shared and by whom, as well as its content and characteristics. This article, which draws on our recently completed inventory of VGI initiatives, is intended to frame the crucial dimensions of VGI for geography and geographers, with an eye toward identifying its potential in our field, as well as the most pressing research needed to realize this potential. Drawing on our ongoing research, we examine the content and characteristics of VGI, the technical and social processes through which it is produced, appropriate methods for synthesizing and using these data in research, and emerging social and political concerns related to this new form of information.
KW - Geospatial Web
KW - Web 2.0
KW - neogeography
KW - spatial data infrastructure
KW - volunteered geographic information
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U2 - 10.1080/00045608.2011.595657
DO - 10.1080/00045608.2011.595657
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84860200610
SN - 0004-5608
VL - 102
SP - 571
EP - 590
JO - Annals of the Association of American Geographers
JF - Annals of the Association of American Geographers
IS - 3
ER -