scholarly journals HOWMUCH DO WE KNOWABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS TO VOLUNTEERED GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION AND CITIZEN SCIENCE PROJECTS?

2015 ◽  
Vol II-3/W5 ◽  
pp. 339-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Mooney ◽  
L. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Volunteered Geographic Information ◽  
Geographic Information ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Science Projects ◽  
Meta Review ◽  
Lack Of Knowledge

In the last number of years there has been increased interest from researchers in investigating and understanding the characteristics and backgrounds of citizens who contribute to Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and Citizen Science (CS) projects. Much of the reluctance from stakeholders such as National Mapping Agencies, Environmental Ministries, etc. to use data and information generated and collected by VGI and CS projects grows from the lack of knowledge and understanding about who these contributors are. As they are drawn from <i>the crowd</i> there is a sense of the unknown about these citizens. Subsequently there are justifiable concerns about these citizens’ ability to collect, generate and manage high quality and accurate spatial, scientific and environmental data and information. This paper provides a meta review of some of the key literature in the domain of VGI and CS to assess if these concerns are well founded and what efforts are ongoing to improve our understanding of <i>the crowd</i>.

scholarly journals DOCUMENTATION OF HERITAGE STRUCTURES THROUGH GEO-CROWDSOURCING AND WEB-MAPPING

2017 ◽  
Vol XLII-2/W7 ◽  
pp. 17-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. K. Dhonju ◽  
W. Xiao ◽  
B. Shakya ◽  
J. P. Mills ◽  
V. Sarhosis
Keyword(s):  
Coordinate System ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Mobile Phones ◽  
Volunteered Geographic Information ◽  
Geographic Information ◽  
Global Coordinate System ◽  
Web Mapping ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Potential Applications ◽  
Platform Development

Heritage documentation has become increasingly urgent due to both natural impacts and human influences. The documentation of countless heritage sites around the globe is a massive project that requires significant amounts of financial and labour resources. With the concepts of volunteered geographic information (VGI) and citizen science, heritage data such as digital photographs can be collected through online crowd participation. Whilst photographs are not strictly geographic data, they can be geo-tagged by the participants. They can also be automatically geo-referenced into a global coordinate system if collected via mobile phones which are now ubiquitous. With the assistance of web-mapping, an online geo-crowdsourcing platform has been developed to collect and display heritage structure photographs. Details of platform development are presented in this paper. The prototype is demonstrated with several heritage examples. Potential applications and advancements are discussed.

scholarly journals Assessing data quality in citizen science (preprint)

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Kosmala ◽  
Andrea Wiggins ◽  
Alexandra Swanson ◽  
Brooke Simmons
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
Data Quality ◽  
Systematic Error ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Project Design ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Volunteer Training ◽  
Science Projects ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Expert Validation

AbstractEcological and environmental citizen science projects have enormous potential to advance science, influence policy, and guide resource management by producing datasets that are otherwise infeasible to generate. This potential can only be realized, though, if the datasets are of high quality. While scientists are often skeptical of the ability of unpaid volunteers to produce accurate datasets, a growing body of publications clearly shows that diverse types of citizen science projects can produce data with accuracy equal to or surpassing that of professionals. Successful projects rely on a suite of methods to boost data accuracy and account for bias, including iterative project development, volunteer training and testing, expert validation, replication across volunteers, and statistical modeling of systematic error. Each citizen science dataset should therefore be judged individually, according to project design and application, rather than assumed to be substandard simply because volunteers generated it.

scholarly journals Keys to successful scientific VGI projects

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Ingensand ◽  
Sarah Composto ◽  
Olivier Ertz ◽  
Daniel Rappo ◽  
Marion Nappez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Volunteered Geographic Information ◽  
Geographic Information ◽  
Quality Data ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
High Quality ◽  
High Quality Data ◽  
Geographic Data

Scientific projects are increasingly using volunteered geographic information (VGI) in order to collect and validate geographic data. This concept relies on the three challenges that first of all users can be found and second be convinced to collaborate and contribute and that scientists finally are able to gather high quality data for their projects. In this paper these three challenges are discussed using the experience with three different research projects: Urbangene, Signalez-nous and BioSentiers.

scholarly journals Maps in Citizen Science: A Preliminary Analysis of Use and User Issues

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Artemis Skarlatidou ◽  
Marcos Moreu
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Social Networking Sites ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Geographic Information ◽  
Environmental Conservation ◽  
Recent Analysis ◽  
Skill Sets ◽  
Fully Integrated ◽  
Science Projects ◽  
Wide Range

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Citizen Science involves a collaboration or partnership between scientists and amateur volunteers, which may take various forms; from simple data collection to a close collaboration where both parts jointly define their aims, methodologies and analysis approaches in the scientific endeavour. Although citizen science has existed for more than two centuries (Silvertown, 2009), the widespread use of information and communication technology (ICT) now plays a significant role in the way citizen science is currently shaped and utilised. At present, there are hundreds of citizen science applications available which engage thousands of volunteers in the disciplines of astronomy, environmental conservation, biology, marine science, geography and many others. A relatively recent analysis of 388 citizen science projects revealed that they have been used to engage 1.3 million volunteers, contributing up to US$2.5 billion in-kind annually (Theobald et al. 2015).</p><p>Web 2.0 and its associated technologies, which have existed for almost 15 years now, have enabled the development of websites which supported content generation by their end users (aka crowdsourcing; Howe, 2008) and multiple interactions amongst them. Examples include web-based communities, social-networking sites, wikis, mashups, and others (Batty et al., 2010). In this context the term ‘Neogeography’ was coined (Eisnor, 2006) and since then it has been used within the geographic and cartographic circles to describe the multi-directional generation of geospatial contents and interactions, which enables non-GIS professionals to create and share maps and other geographic information online “on their own terms” simply using the “elements of an existing toolset” (Eisnor, 2006). Map mashups started to not only be used for disseminating spatial information to a wider user audience, but applications have been created which enabled the crowdsourcing of geographic information for the production of geospatial knowledge; a trend, which is also known under the term Volunteered Geographic Information (Goodchild, 2007). OpenStreetMap (OSM) is perhaps one of the earliest examples that the literature cites to demonstrate how harnessing the power of the crowds for the collection of geographic information can result in the creation of a free, open source of map of the world (Goodchild, 2007; Haklay et al., 2008; Batty et al., 2010).</p><p>We argue in this paper that the above developments from the geospatial context have massively contributed to the current state of citizen science. While interactive web maps made their appearance as mainly “way-finding” tools (Skarlatidou and Haklay, 2006), they quickly became part of digital interactions in a much broader context and they are currently a basic component of most citizen science projects. The relevance and significance of space has been fully exploited by technological features such as geotagging, GPS-enabled mobile devices fully integrated with other sensors, which has made the collection and sharing of data much easier (Haklay, 2013). Sinton (2018) argues that it is such the power of maps in citizen science that “it would be difficult to pursue a project in biological conservation, for example, without incorporating mapping”. The breadth of citizen science applications is so wide that we observe an extremely wide range of potential users, with very different skill sets, backgrounds, literacy levels and user needs.</p>

“Really Knowing” the Community: Citizen Science, VGI, and Community Housing Assessments

2020 ◽  
pp. 0739456X2097680
Author(s):  
Jerry Shannon ◽  
Kimberly Skobba ◽  
Jermaine Durham ◽  
Chase Polak
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Volunteered Geographic Information ◽  
Geographic Information ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Housing Conditions ◽  
Local Initiatives ◽  
Local Leaders ◽  
Science Initiative

This paper evaluates a citizen science initiative to assess housing conditions in multiple rural Georgia communities. Using technologies for digitized collection of volunteered geographic information (VGI) on property conditions and an online dashboard to analyze results, local housing teams identified the characteristics and prevalence of housing problems in their communities. Drawing from a pragmatist framework, we note how this process created new connections between local leaders and residents and brought attention to sometimes unexpected issues. Conversely, participation was uneven within local communities in ways that potentially limit the effectiveness of these local initiatives.

Citizen Science and the Politics of Environmental Data

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 871-880 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Kuchinskaya
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Radiation Safety ◽  
Environmental Hazards ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Nuclear Accident ◽  
The Other ◽  
Soviet Republic ◽  
Science Projects ◽  
The World ◽  
Fukushima Daiichi

In this commentary, I reflect on the differences between two independent citizen approaches to monitoring radiological contamination, one in Belarus after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident and the other in Japan following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident. I examine these approaches from the perspective of their contribution to making radiological contamination more publicly visible (i.e., publicly recognized as a hazard). The analysis is grounded in my earlier work (Kuchinskaya 2014), where I examined how we have come to know what we know about post–Chernobyl contamination and its effects in Belarus, a former Soviet republic most heavily affected by the fallout. As I described in this study, much of what we know about the consequences of Chernobyl is based on the work of the Belarusian nonprofit Institute of Radiation Safety, “Belrad.” I compare Belrad’s approach to radiological monitoring with the work of the volunteer network Safecast, arguably one of the best-known citizen science projects in the world, which is working to monitor the scope of the post–Fukushima contamination. Through this comparison of approaches, I raise broader questions about a form of sensing practices—data-related practices of citizen science that make environmental hazards publicly in/visible.

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