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  • The Relevance of Protocols for VGI Collection

    Marco Minghini, Vyron Antoniou, Cidália Costa Fonte, Jacinto Estima, Ana-Maria Olteanu-Raimond, Linda See, Mari Laakso, Andriani Skopeliti, Peter Mooney, Jamal Jokar Arsanjani, Flavio Lupia

    Chapter from the book: Foody, G et al. 2017. Mapping and the Citizen Sensor.

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    Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) has become a rich and well established source of geospatial data. From the popular OpenStreetMap (OSM) to many citizen science projects and social network platforms, the amount of geographically referenced information that is constantly being generated by citizens is burgeoning. The main issue that continues to hamper the full exploitation of VGI lies in its quality, which is by its nature typically undocumented and can range from very high quality to very poor. A crucial step towards improving VGI quality, which impacts on VGI usability, is the development and adoption of protocols, guidelines and best practices to assist users when collecting VGI. This chapter proposes a generic and flexible protocol for VGI data collection, which can be applied to new as well as to existing projects regardless of the specific type of geospatial information collected. The protocol is meant to balance the contrasting needs of providing VGI contributors with precise and detailed instructions while maintaining and growing the enthusiasm and motivation of contributors. Two real-world applications of the protocol are presented, which guide the collection of VGI in respectively the generation and updating of thematic information in a topographic building database; and the uploading of geotagged photographs for the improvement of land use and land cover maps. Technology is highlighted as a key factor in determining the success of the protocol implementation.

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    How to cite this chapter
    Minghini, M et al. 2017. The Relevance of Protocols for VGI Collection. In: Foody, G et al (eds.), Mapping and the Citizen Sensor. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bbf.j
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    This is an Open Access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (unless stated otherwise), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright is retained by the author(s).

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    Additional Information

    Published on Sept. 11, 2017

    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.5334/bbf.j


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