Search

Amidst the proliferation of social media and online platforms, sentiment analysis stands out as a pivotal tool in Natural Language Processing (NLP), facilitating the categorization of public opinions. The overarching goal of this study is to apply sentiment analysis techniques to assess public perceptions of water supply quality and provide decision-support maps for infrastructure planning. The primary research gap addressed in this study concerns the efficacious integration of spatial statistics methods with sentiment analysis for the purpose of generating zoning maps. This integration, offers a novel approach for understanding public perceptions and sentiments within specific geographical contexts. Sub-objectives of the study include aspects such as the development of a robust meta ensemble learning framework, the utilization of crowdsourced geographic information for sentiment analysis, and the evaluation of text mining techniques specific to water supply concerns. Our approach utilizes comments from subscribers of the Water Organization portal. The meta ensemble learning framework comprises six different combinations, including boosting, bagging, and voting solutions, drawing from various base estimators such as K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Decision Tree (DT), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF), and Artificial Neural Network (ANN), alongside boosting techniques like AdaBoost and XGBoost. Results indicate that aggregating vectors from text feature extraction techniques such as Bag of Words (BoW), N-gram, and TF-IDF yielded optimal pattern recognition. AdaBoost emerged as the most effective model, as determined by metrics like Accuracy, F1-score, and AUC. Unreviewed subscriber comments were fed into the final model to predict unfavorable remarks, subsequently visualized on georeferenced maps. Geostatistical methods within Geographic Information Systems (GIS) were employed, including spatial kernel density, spatial join, natural breaks classification, and hotspot analysis using Getis-Ord Gi* statistics. The approach produced maps illustrating areas with a high density of negative remarks, identifying problematic urban blocks and continuous hotspot areas. Overall, our method demonstrates promising efficiency in assessing water supply situations and informing development planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the toponymic heritage used in Kenya's Authoritative Geographic Information (AGI) toponyms database of 26,600 gazetteer records through documentation and characterization of meanings of place names in topographic mapping. A comparison was carried out between AGI and GeoNames and between AGI and OpenStreetMap (OSM) volunteered records. A total of 15,000 toponymic matchings were found. Out of these, 1567 toponyms were then extracted for further scrutiny using AGI data in the historical records and from respondents on toponyms' meanings. Experts in toponymy assisted in verifying these data. From the questionnaire responses, 235 names occurred in more than one place while AGI data had 284. The elements used to characterize the toponyms included historical perceptions of heritage evident in toponyms in their localities, ethnographic, toponymical and morphology studies on Kenya's dialects. There was no significant relationship established between the same place name usages among dialects as indicated by a positive weak correlation r (438), = 0.166, p < 0.001 based on the effect of using the related places and the distance between related places. The weak correlation implies that the one name one place principle does not apply due to diverse language boundaries, strong bonds associated with historical toponyms in the form of heritage and significant variations on how names resist changes to preserve their heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the issues brought on by rapid urbanization is the loss of livability owing to poor waste management, a lack of resources, air pollution, traffic congestion, and outdated buildings and public infrastructure. The idea of a smart city has arisen as one of the potential solutions to this concern. In this study, we have demonstrated how citizen science helps immensely to the growth of a smart city by crowdsourcing data about urban decay. Tehran, the capital of Iran, which is home to the history of many people’s social lives, has begun losing some of its vitality. Municipalities have plans for dealing with urban decline and revival, but we indicate that volunteered geographic information (VGI) would be more effective in turning such ideas into practice. According to our research, there are three different types of organizations active in urban renewal: municipalities, civil and urban planning agencies, and organizations that support tourism and cultural heritage. As a result, we provided a system design that outlines the duties that each institution has in relation to urban renewal. In addition, we suggested a service broker with the capacity to publish VGI in order to offer interoperability related to geographic data and services based on spatial data infrastructure (SDI). Beyond that, various types of urban decay, necessary management procedures, the sequence of information in system components, and the volunteer’s behavior confronting the system were all specified in the form of an object-oriented design. A prototype system based on state-of-the-art in open-source technologies was developed to test our hypothesis. The VGI system enabled us to monitor urban decay events in real time using the management dashboard. We have shown that volunteers can distinguish between urban declines and typical instances like a binary classifier in the quality control method proposed in this study. Performance was 90% based on the findings of the quality control. A running VGI system would start beneficence after 3 months and make a profit of 150% after a year, based on our estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world is awash in data—by 2020 it is expected that there will be approximately 40 trillion gigabytes of data in existence, with that number doubling every 2 to 3 years. However, data production is not equal in all places—the global data landscape remains heavily concentrated on English-speaking, urban, and relatively affluent locations within the Global North. This inequality can contribute to new forms of digital and data colonialism. One partial solution to these issues may come in the form of crowdsourcing and volunteer geographic information (VGI), which allow Global South populations to produce their own data. Despite initial optimism about these approaches, many challenges and research gaps remain in understanding the opportunities and barriers that organizations endemic to the Global South face in carrying out their own sustainable crowdsourcing projects. What opportunities and barriers do these endemic organizations face when trying to carry out mapping projects driven by their own goals and desires? This paper contributes answers to this question by examining a VGI project that is currently mapping public libraries across the African continent. Our findings highlight how dramatically digital divides can bias crowdsourcing results; the importance of local cultural views in influencing participation in crowdsourcing; and the continued importance of traditional, authoritative organizations for crowdsourcing. These findings offer important lessons for researchers and organizations attempting to develop their own VGI projects in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Volunteered geographic information (VGI) is a large and up-to-date data source, which is available to the public easily. VGI enables public participation by leveraging scientific research and ease of data entry. OpenStreetMap (OSM) is one of the most popular examples of a volunteered geographic information project that has turned into a major source as the substitution of geographical data over the past years. Because OSM data quality is very variable, its various aspects have been investigated in previous studies. Assessing the reliability of volunteered geographic data has been a topic of interest to researchers during recent years. The objective of this study is to introduce an approach for computing the reliability indicators as tools for assessing OSM data quality using the history of data. To prepare the data required, the history file of the OSM dataset for the study region was extracted. Then, historical data cleaning was carried out by identifying and eliminating the outlier data. Afterward, the reliability indicator was calculated through criteria such as the number of versions, the number of user participation, temporal variations, and the number of tags editing. In the last step, to evaluate the proposed approach in calculating the reliability indicator, the level of feature reliability was compared with their spatial accuracy calculated via feature matching of the OSM and official data. The results show among 7478 reliability features of the OSM, approximately 4338 feature involves reliability of above 50%, containing 58.01% of the datasets, and among 5659 matching features of the OSM dataset, 4429 features have a similarity percentage of above 70%, containing 78.26% of the datasets. Increasing the number of versions, the number of users, and the temporal variation range of a route increased the reliability. Contrastingly, tag editing reduces reliability. Moreover, according to the results, a correlation coefficient of 0.695 between the reliability and spatial accuracy indicates a direct relationship of reliability in the quality of the OSM dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When it comes to crisis management in times of earthquake, a large volume of damage information is required in the first hours in order to reduce its damages. Damage estimation based on pre-determined models and field visits has many limitations as it is both time-consuming and expensive. Thus, the present study tries to develop a web-based system to collect volunteered geographic information (VGI) provided by users who, when an earthquake occurs, immediately share the information about their or others' economic losses and casualties, providing the crisis management team with a large volume of information to analyze. The system developed in the present study not only collects and stores VGI, but also performs heatmap spatial analyzes on the VGI. This study uses heatmaps to create classified damage maps based on the damage rate reported by people. In order to assess the results, the system was implemented in Masjed Soleyman (Iran) where an earthquake recently occurred. One hundred thirty two people cooperated in information collection. Heatmaps have been used to assess the accuracy of the data, which resulted in a significantly increased speed and accuracy of the validation, with 76.65% of information considered correct. The results suggest that, compared to the existing methods, VGI increases the damage estimation speed by 83% and reduces the costs by 75%. The results also show that implementing these systems in any organization not only significantly increases the information collection speed, but by using of spatial analysis we can reduce the time and increase the accuracy of data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open geospatial data and tools are an increasingly important paradigm offering the opportunity to promote the democratization of geographical information, the transparency of governments and institutions, as well as social, economic and environmental opportunities. During the past decade, developments in the area of open geospatial data and open-source geospatial software have greatly improved. Many parts of the research community believe that combining free and open software, open data, as well as open standards, leads to the creation of a sustainable ecosystem to accelerate new discoveries to help solve global cross-disciplinary societal challenges, from climate change mitigation to sustainable cities. The consistent prevalence of open source GIS studies motivated this thematic collection. The contributions are divided into two main categories. In the first category, seven concrete studies on open-source tools and technologies for urban and environmental studies are briefly presented. Each one has been implemented for and applied to a certain use case, and at the same time it may be applied to other use cases due to the reproducibility nature of open source software. The second category presents and discusses the usability of open source geospatial solutions for laser scanning technology and its applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data scarcity is still a common barrier to adequately understanding urban access in Global South countries. Widely used location-based methods address the traditional definition of accessibility as the easiness to reach land-uses by means of available mobility modes. Space Syntax instead analyses accessibility as network centrality focusing only on the topological and geometric properties of urban layouts, making it comparatively less data-intense. However, the interpretation of its outputs is limited to its own theory. Knowledge is missing on how such metrics are comparable to the metrics produced by location-based methods. The objective of the research was to compare both approaches for mapping urban accessibility in two cities in Guatemala. Our hypothesis tested the assumption that Space Syntax metrics could consistently reflect accessibility conditions that so far have only been measured by location-based methods. We proposed an approach using volunteered geo-information and produced accessibility maps following both approaches that were then compared using Pearson correlations. Space Syntax metrics at low and high radii are consistently correlated with location-based access to land uses that reflect location quality at neighbourhood and city-wide scale correspondingly. Space Syntax metrics at lower radii reflect time-based access restrictions either posed in the location-based analyses or by reduced accessibility by public transport. The hypothesis acceptance, p < 0.01, expands the scope of accessibility knowledge derivable from limited data availability using Space Syntax, which is relevant for its applicability in data-scarce contexts by planners and researchers in the Global South. Rather than replacing location-based methods Space Syntax offers an important complementary measure to geographical accessibility. This having been said, Space Syntax could contribute to early-stage planning by gaining overall insights into patterns of urban access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Depending on the increase in the world population and climate changes, the number of disasters have increased gradually. To cope with natural hazards, comprehensive disaster management strategies must be developed and implemented. Among the natural hazards, landslides are one of the most harmful and they cause serious economic losses and human deaths throughout the world. To reduce these losses, comprehensive regional landslide susceptibility and hazard assessments must be performed and the mechanism of landslides must be understood clearly. If a landslide inventory database is inaccurate and incomplete both spatially and temporally, assessment of regional landslide susceptibility and hazard includes more or less uncertainties. Consequently, new approaches are needed to reduce or even to eliminate the uncertainties. For this reason, the purposes of the present study are to describe the potential role of Citizen Science (CitSci) in landslide researches and to present a simple and user-friendly mobile app for the collection of the essential data from landslides. It is expected that the use of CitSci in landslide researches would increase and help greatly for the provision of comprehensive data. In addition, the spatial distribution of the data to be collected may be correlated with the human population and the settlement density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographic data are used by United Kingdom (UK) defence for purposes including peacekeeping, humanitarian aid and disaster relief, and fighting wars. The geographic extent of defence data covers the world, with greater focus directed towards areas considered to be of current interest. Traditionally, these data have been officially sourced, e.g. via National Mapping Agencies, but there is now increasing interest in the potential of crowdsourced geographic data to supplement authoritative data where they are not available, outdated or incomplete. Volunteered geographic information (VGI) and social media have the potential to provide this needed missing information. This paper presents initial work carried out in identifying the potential of crowdsourced geographic information in defence. We first provide a short description of the role of UK defence and review the existing literature on crowdsourced geographic information in defence, as well as generic VGI quality assessment methods. We then explore the potential of crowdsourced data in real-world applications: the conflation of VGI and social media with official data for effective decision-making in war zones, and the potential for crowdsourcing to increase effective collaboration between machines and humans in disaster situations. Based on our review, we outline specific research challenges for deploying crowdsourced geographic information in defence, focussing on data quality and fitness-for-purpose assessment. Defence-specific constraints include the need for rapid quality assessment processes and the need to communicate high-quality information effectively in situations where rapid decision-making is required. Ethical issues are also of fundamental importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crowdsourcing (geo-) information and participatory GIS are among the current hot topics in research and industry. Various projects are implementing participatory sensing concepts within their workflow in order to benefit from the power of volunteers, and improve their product quality and efficiency. Wheelmap is a crowdsourcing platform where volunteers contribute information about wheelchair-accessible places. This article presents information about the technical framework of Wheelmap, and information on how it could be used in projects dealing with accessibility and/or multimodal transportation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction and modulation of cognitive maps relies on spatial information. Their analysis is essential to understand the orientation and navigation behavior in humans. Empirical studies within the interdisciplinary cooperation of Professor Dickmann at Ruhr-University Bochum and Professor Kuchinke at the International Psychoanalytical University Berlin focus on the investigation of spatial memory and navigation performance, from a cognitive and a geographic perspective. Several studies found out that the design of topographic maps has a systematical influence on spatial memory performance. Within the frame of the Priority Programme SSP 1894 'Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI): Interpretation, Visualisation and Social Computing', which is funded by the German Research Foundation with a term of 3 years, similar effects of landmarks and landmarks configurations will be investigated. Selected landmarks and, in particular, patterns of landmarks building geometric shapes are expected to guide spatial attention and support individual wayfinding strategies. Identifying landmark patterns will lay the foundations for automatic extraction processes and mobile map design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is much interest in being able to combine crowdsourced data. One of the critical issues in information sciences is how to combine data or information that are discordant or inconsistent in some way. Many previous approaches have taken a majority rules approach under the assumption that most people are correct most of the time. This paper analyses crowdsourced land cover data generated by the Geo-Wiki initiative in order to infer the land cover present at locations on a 50 km grid. It compares four evidence combination approaches (Dempster-Shafer, Bayes, Fuzzy Sets and Possibility) applied under a geographically weighted kernel with the geographically weighted average approach applied in many current Geo-Wiki analyses. A geographically weighted approach uses a moving kernel under which local analyses are undertaken. The contribution (or salience) of each data point to the analysis is weighted by its distance to the kernel centre, reflecting Tobler's 1 law of geography. A series of analyses were undertaken using different kernel sizes (or bandwidths). Each of the geographically weighted evidence combination methods generated spatially distributed measures of belief in hypotheses associated with the presence of individual land cover classes at each location on the grid. These were compared with GlobCover, a global land cover product. The results from the geographically weighted average approach in general had higher correspondence with the reference data and this increased with bandwidth. However, for some classes other evidence combination approaches had higher correspondences possibly because of greater ambiguity over class conceptualisations and / or lower densities of crowdsourced data. The outputs also allowed the beliefs in each class to be mapped. The differences in the soft and the crisp maps are clearly associated with the logics of each evidence combination approach and of course the different questions that they ask of the data. The results show that discordant data can be combined (rather than being removed from analysis) and that data integrated in this way can be parameterised by different measures of belief uncertainty. The discussion highlights a number of critical areas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The GeoWeb presents an opportunity to expand the array of potential contributors describing the earth through digital geographic information. However, the adoption of user-generated geographic information has not been uniform, resulting in an uneven distribution of content and more nuanced digital divides. This paper uses a survey of Internet users to measure the gender divide in the contributions of cartographic information to the Internet and examine the impact of this divide within the context of OpenStreetMap and Google MapMaker. This paper argues that in both publicly available basemaps the gender divide results in men serving as the gatekeepers of local knowledge leading to gendered user-generated representations. As these digital basemaps are reproduced and utilized by almost every mobile application or web-based map, the gender divisions in the creators and content are endlessly reproduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of information sources as a result of networked computers and other interconnected devices has prompted significant changes in the amount, availability, and nature of geographic information. Among the more significant changes is the increasing amount of readily available volunteered geographic information. Although volunteered information has fundamentally enhanced geographic data, it has also prompted concerns with regard to its quality, reliability, and overall value. This essay situates these concerns as issues of information and source credibility by (a) examining the information environment fostering collective information contribution, (b) exploring the environment of information abundance, examining credibility and related notions within this environment, and leveraging extant research findings to understand user-generated geographic information, (c) articulating strategies to discern the credibility of volunteered geographic information (VGI), including relevant tools useful in this endeavor, and (d) outlining specific research questions germane to VGI and credibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 40 years there has been a movement to increase opportunities for public participation in the decision and policy-making processes for design and planning projects. The emergence of online digital mapping systems and enhancements in Web technology to support sharing and collaboration have allowed the general public to generate their own spatial content via Web applications and other geospatially enabled devices. The resulting data from this recent phenomenon has been called Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). When facilitated through digital mapping interfaces, VGI can provide landscape architects and allied design professionals with local, detailed and spatial information that can be used to create a more informed design solution. This paper describes several digital interfaces the author has developed to elicit facilitated-VGI (f-VGI) over the past decade, and examines their use in community design projects and their lessons for implementing future f-VGI initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between public participatory GIS (PPGIS) and volunteered geographic information (VGI). A brief review of the history of PPGIS reveals similarities between the two but also provides examples of how these two areas have developed in ways that cause the boundaries between them to be unclear at times. As evidence for advancing this conversation, 2 case studies are presented: volunteers mapping vernal pools and park design in Second Life. These case studies demonstrate both the intertwined nature of some aspects of VGI and PPGIS, while also showing some aspects of divergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the availability of cheap location technologies, volunteered geographic information (VGI) has become one of the most relevant geographic data sources. In order to make more efficient use of such volunteered data, the VGI is often needed to be integrated to the corresponding ‘traditional’ datasets. This article proposes a specific case of data integration between (a) the topographic dataset of ATKIS maintained by German surveying and mapping agencies and (b) the Alpstein Outdoor-Sport Data (AOSD) primarily collected by numerous enthusiasts (volunteers) of jogging, hiking, biking (incl. road and mountain), skiing, etc. Considering that the VGI of AOSD reveals quite different LODs (level of details) to the traditional topographic dataset of ATKIS, the authors put forward a new approach to realize automatic and accurate data integrations between these two datasets, which demonstrates high performance in a number of large test areas and thereby has been successfully utilized for the real-world data production in the area of Alps, Europe. As a result, the integrated datasets have been published on the website to serve broad masses of outdoor-sports enthusiasts by a German Cooperation, viz. Outdooractive GmbH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]