Volunteered Geographic Information and Citizen Science
A special issue of ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (ISSN 2220-9964).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 29179
Special Issue Editors
Interests: location-based services; VGI; user profiling; geovisual analysis; smart city technology; urban dynamics; citizen science
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Traditionally, Citizen Science has referred to the collection and analysis of data about the natural world by laypeople. Over the past 10 years, that definition has broadened and there has been an increase in the number of Citizen Science projects which now encompasses a wider range of activities to empower communities to act on gathered data. While Citizen Science is not new, technology such as the internet has enabled citizens to share their data with others and increase the visibility of projects. Furthermore, technologies such as mobile phones, GPS devices, home weather stations and a plethora of other sensors permit interested members of the public to collect and analyse data about their environment and location. Given the importance of location in many Citizen Science projects, such projects can be described as a form of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), a term formally introduced by Goodchild in 2007 to describe the collection and sharing of geographic data by private individuals.
The term VGI has been expanded in recent years to encompass other forms of spatial data such as that generated by individuals in location-based social networks. While this can be a valuable source of geographic data, it does not necessarily represent a Citizen Science project as individuals are not sharing data with a specific scientific output in mind. In these cases, the geographical content is a by-product of sharing the location for social purposes.
True Citizen Science and VGI projects encompass the complete data life cycle including collection, storage, processing, dissemination, use in applications and archiving. This Special Issue seeks articles which describe the state-of-the-art in these areas with special focus on the spatial aspects of the data. Another key aspect of VGI which we seek to further understand is the motivation for individuals to participate and freely share their time and data to Citizen Science initiatives. Finally, given that VGI is collected by untrained volunteers using consumer-grade equipment and sensors, the veracity of the data and resulting applications are continuously questioned. Several interesting projects which seek to validate and improve VGI quality have been proposed recently, and we also seek articles in this important area.
Dr. Gavin McArdle
Dr. Bianca Schoen-Phelan
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- volunteered geographic information
- citizen science
- data quality
- motivations
- data collection
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