aag 2015 - cost energic, vgi, citizen science and openstreetmap

ESF provides the COST Office

through a European Commission contractCOST is supported

by the EU Framework Programme

ENERGIC (European Network

Exploring research into

geospatial information

crowdsourcing)

IC1203

Start date: 05/12/2012

End date: 04/12/2016

Chair Cristina Capineri, University of Siena (Italy)

Vice Chair Muki Haklay, UCL London, UK

Objectives1. Identify VGI

taxonomy of

sources

2.Identify credibility

and relevance

measures (topicality,

coverage, temporal

and patial proximity..)

5.Transfer knowledge

to the scientific

community and to

practitioners,firms,

ONG.

“Imagine a world with a

ubiquitous flow of real time

information. A world where

every point in space is a

sensor and also a potential

display”

6. Build research agendas

3.Interoperability and

semantics

4. Gather European

short cases

3

ENERGIC TOOLS

•WORKING GROUPS

WG1 Societal and human aspects of VGI.

WG2 Spatial data Quality and infrastructures.

WG3 Data mining, semantics and VGI use.

• SHORT TERM MISSIONS

• TRAINING SCHOOLS

www.vgibox.eu

VGI Biological Recording

Community/Civi

c science

Volunteer

computing

DIY scienceVolunteer Thinking

VGI/Citizen Science

OSM Studies

• OSM != VGI – they are not the same things.

Without comparing OSM to the wider

‘universe’ of VGI and citizen science projects,

it is wrong to generalise

• OSM deserve special attention, because of

scale, importance to humanitarian activities

and because it’s the biggest open mapping

project.

• But OSM can also benefit from other cases.

OSM, VGI, Citizen Science

The role of academics within the OSM

community: be a critical friend. No point in

just telling ‘you’re the best kid in the class!’.

Understandable that commercial/voluntary

actors do that – they have to.

Example: how many contributors?

2,000,000 ?

10,000?

Biggest VGI project?

Growth in eBird contributions since its

introduction in 2002 (Lagoze 2014)

Oh, but it’s different, OSM is geo

Citizen Science, VGI, OSM studies

OSM Studies

• Quality

• Participants motivations

• Inclusion / exclusion

VGI

• Participation inequality

• Quality assurance

• Coverage

Citizen Science

• Quality assurance

• Biases

‘Code of engagement’ for

OpenStreetMap researchRule 1 – even if you are just going to use the

data, do some mapping, and understand the

process. Join a mapping party.

This will help you avoiding misinterpretations

such as ‘the data is collected by users from

the GPS trails’


OpenStreetMap researchRule 2 – Read. OSM Books, Wiki, Blog and

mailing lists.


OpenStreetMap research

Rule 3 – Explore the data. There’s plenty of it –

quantitative and qualitative. Then talk with

someone in the community to check that you’ve

got it right.



Rule 4 – Open Access. Put outputs in Open Access

repository, publish in Open Access journals &

blogs.


OpenStreetMap researchRule 5 - Open Knowledge. Publish and share

the data that you’ve processed, and ideally

the code so other people can use it for their

purposes.

Rule 6 - You have a responsibility to your

academic field, and the OpenStreetMap

community can deal with criticism – be a

critical friend.


OpenStreetMap researchRule 7 - Teach. Students are some of the most

likely participants. It’s

also fun for them.

Source: Harry Wood 2010



Maintain links with the OSM community – it will

pay off and will help you to identify new

research directions

Also maintain links within the VGI research

community – even if the term is awkward, the

research is valuable

Explore comparisons and parallels – it’s important

to learn what is going on in other projects