Volunteered Geographic Information

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free map of the world which can be edited by global volunteers. Existing studies have showed that completeness of OSM road data in some developing countries (e.g. China) is much lower, resulting in concern in utilizing the data in various applications. But very few have focused on investigating what types of road are still poorly mapped. This study aims not only to investigate the completeness of OSM road datasets in China but also to investigate what types of road (called omission roads) have not been mapped, which is achieved by referring to both Street Map and Street View. Sixteen prefecture-level divisions in the urban areas of Hubei (China) were used as study areas. Results showed that: (1) the completeness for most prefecture-level divisions was at a low-to-medium level; most roads (in the Street Map), however, with traffic conditions had already been mapped well. (2) Most of the omission OSM roads were either private roads, or public roads not having yet been named and with only one single lane, indicating their minor importance in the urban road network. We argue that although the OSM road datasets in China are incomplete, they may still be used for several applications such as traffic flow analysis, road map representation, and backbone structure detection.

As the world is digitizing fast, the increase in Big and Small Data offers opportunities to enrich official statistics for reporting on Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). However, survey data coming from an increased number of organizations (Small Data) and Big Data offer challenges in terms of data heterogeneity. This paper describes a methodology for combining various data sources to create a more comprehensive dataset on SDG 6.1.1. (proportion of population using safely managed drinking water services). We enabled digital volunteers to trace buildings on satellite imagery and used the traces on OpenStreetMap to facilitate visual detection of water points on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) imagery and estimate the number of people served per water point. Combining data on water points identified on our UAV imagery with data on water points from field surveys improves the overall quality in terms of removal of inconsistencies and enrichment of attribute information. Satellite image...

Society and economy are only two of the dimensions of vulnerability. This paper aims to elucidate the state of the art of data sources, spatial variables, indicators, methods , indexes and tools for the spatial assessment of socioeconomic vulnerability (SEV) related to geohazards. This review was first conducted in December 2018 and rerun in March 2020 for the period between 2010 and 2020. The gross number of articles reviewed was 27, from which we identified 18 relevant references using a revised search query and six relevant references identified using the initial query, giving a total sample of 24 references. The most common source of data remains population censuses. The most recurrent spatial variable used for the assessment of SEV is households without basic services, while critical facilities are the most frequent spatial category. Traditional methods have been combined with more innovative and complex methods to select and weight spatial indicators and develop indices. The Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI ®) remains the benchmark for the assessment of SEV and a reference for its spatial assessment. Geographic information systems (GIS) is the most common tool for conducting a spatial assessment of SEV regarding geohazards. For future spatial assessments of SEV regarding geohazards, we recommend considering 3-D spatial indexes at the microscale at the urban level and involving the community in the assessments.

Digital social data are now practically ubiquitous, with increasingly large and interconnected databases leading researchers, politicians, and the private sector to focus on how such ‘big data’ can allow potentially unprecedented insights into our world. This paper investigates Twitter activity in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in order to demonstrate the complex relationship between the material world and its digital representations. Through documenting the various spatial patterns of Sandy-related tweeting both within the New York metropolitan region and across the United States, we make a series of broader conceptual and methodological interventions into the nascent geographic literature on big data. Rather than focus on how these massive databases are causing necessary and irreversible shifts in the ways that knowledge is produced, we instead find it more productive to ask how small subsets of big data, especially georeferenced social media information scraped from the internet, can reveal the geographies of a range of social processes and practices. Utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methods, we can uncover broad spatial patterns within this data, as well as understand how this data reflects the lived experiences of the people creating it. We also seek to fill a conceptual lacuna in studies of user-generated geographic information, which have often avoided any explicit theorizing of sociospatial relations, by employing Jessop et al’s TPSN framework. Through these interventions, we demonstrate that any analysis of user-generated geographic information must take into account the existence of more complex spatialities than the relatively simple spatial ontology implied by latitude and longitude coordinates.

This article explores starting points for spatial citizenship education and discusses fields of competence needed for active spatial citizenship. The use of geoinformation systems at the secondary-school level has been considered mainly as preparation to join the geospatial workforce and as a support tool to encourage spatial thinking. While this approach definitely has benefits in arguing for a wider set of competencies acquired by geoinformation-based learning, it has frequently been linked to instrumental knowledge, and misses out on the societal consequences of geoinformation use. The concept of spatial citizenship attempts to address these shortcomings. Originating from the individual and collective appropriation of social space, it supports learners in acquiring competencies that will enable them to participate more actively in society through the critical use of geoinformation. Spatial citizenship adds an explicitly spatial domain to citizenship education.

Within ecological research and environmental management, there is currently a focus on demonstrating the links between human well-being and wildlife conservation. Within this framework, there is a clear interest in better understanding how and why people value certain places over others. We introduce a new method that measures cultural preferences by exploring the potential of multiple online georeferenced digital photograph collections. Using ecological and social considerations, our study contributes to the detection of places that provide cultural ecosystem services. The degree of appreciation of a specific place is derived from the number of people taking and sharing pictures of it. The sequence of decisions and actions taken to share a digital picture of a given place includes the effort to travel to the place, the willingness to take a picture, the decision to geolocate the picture, and the action of sharing it through the Internet. Hence, the social activity of sharing pictures leaves digital proxies of spatial preferences, with people sharing specific photos considering the depicted place not only " worth visiting " but also " worth sharing visually. " Using South Wales as a case study, we demonstrate how the proposed methodology can help identify key geographic features of high cultural value. These results highlight how the inclusion of geographical user-generated content, also known as volunteered geographic information, can be very effective in addressing some of the current priorities in conservation. Indeed, the detection of the most appreciated nonurban areas could be used for better prioritization, planning, and management.

This paper is an Editorial for the Special Issue titled “OpenStreetMap as a multidisciplinary nexus: perspectives, practices and procedures”. The Special Issue is largely based on the talks presented in the 2019 and 2020 editions of the Academic Track at the State of the Map conferences. As such, it represents the most pressing and relevant issues and topics considered by the academic community in relation to OpenStreetMap (OSM)—a global project and community aimed to create and maintain a free and editable database and map of the world. In this Editorial, we survey the papers included in the Special Issue, grouping them into three research perspectives: applications of OSM for studies within other disciplines, OSM data quality, and dynamics in OSM. This survey reveals that these perspectives, while being distinct, are also interrelated. This calls for the formalization of an ‘OSM science’ that will provide the conceptual grounds to advance the scientific study of OSM, not as a set of individualized efforts but as a unified approach.

Дисертаційну роботу присвячено проблемі забезпечення умов соціально-педагогічної діяльності студентських волонтерських груп. У ній здійснено ретроспективний аналіз волонтерського руху в зарубіжній та вітчизняній соціально-педагогічній практиці; запропоновано класифікацію студентських волонтерських груп, розкрито зміст і напрями їх соціально-педагогічної діяльності; обґрунтовано та експериментально перевірено модель забезпечення соціально-педагогічної діяльності студентських волонтерських груп; розроблено та впроваджено програми підготовки керівників волонтерських груп і студентів
до волонтерської роботи.
Ключові слова: волонтерство, волонтер, група, студентська волонтерська група, соціально-педагогічна діяльність, модель.

Tetyana L. Liakh. Socio-pedagogical activities of student volunteer groups. – Manuscript.
Dissertation on the scientific degree of candidate of pedagogical sciences on specialty 13.00.05 – social pedagogic. – Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University. – Luhgansk, 2009.
Proposed dissertation is devoted to the problem of provision of socio-pedagogical conditions for activities of student volunteer groups. In the dissertation the retrospective analysis of volunteer movement in foreign and domestic socio-pedagogical practices is carried out, classification of student volunteer groups is presented; content and directions
of their socio-pedagogical activity are analyzed and presented; the model of ensuring proper socio-pedagogical conditions of activities of student volunteer groups is experimentally tested and grounded; curricula of training for leaders of volunteer groups and students are developed and introduced into practical volunteer activities.
Key words: volunteering, volunteer, group, student volunteer group, socialpedagogical
activity, model

"Cette thèse se veut une première approche du rôle des technologies de cartographie en ligne à l’ère du Web social (géoweb) dans le domaine de la planification urbaine participative. Son ambition est de proposer, par la prise en compte des dimensions humaines et sociales des technologies, un angle de lecture et un cadre d’analyse innovant pour appréhender une thématique souvent victime de lectures trop rapides.

Plus spécifiquement, l’objectif est d’appliquer une approche sociogéographique du géoweb à la problématique de l’aménagement urbain participatif avec la volonté de renouveler l’analyse de la participation publique en analysant le rôle de l’information géographique et des technologies en ligne (sites Web, réseaux sociaux, blogues, etc.). La question fondamentale posée est celle de l’utilisation du géoweb et d’Internet par les acteurs de la participation et de ses impacts sur les dynamiques participatives.

Basée sur une étude de cas monographique fine et détaillée mobilisant une panoplie variée de méthodes (analyse documentaire, entrevues, observations directes et participantes), la démarche méthodologique basée sur l’observation de pratiques concrètes, le dialogue et les interactions avec les acteurs de la participation vise à la fois à rassembler des éléments empiriques et à en proposer une interprétation.

Ce travail confronte ainsi des questionnements théoriques sur les nouveaux usages de l’iconographie territoriale numérique et du géoweb avec un corpus d’éléments empiriques issus du cas des procédures et des pratiques de participation publique de la ville de Québec. L’organisation de la thèse s’articule autour de 3 parties et 8 chapitres.

Les 3 premiers chapitres, qui correspondent à la partie d’exploration de la thèse, proposent une vue d'ensemble de l’univers d’étude tant dans sa dimension sociopolitique (débat public, iconographie territoriale, etc.) que technologique (cartographie en ligne, SIG participatifs, géoweb). Les trois chapitres suivants sont consacrés à l’exposé des observations réalisées dans l’étude de cas consacrée à la Ville de Québec (présentation du terrain d’étude, iconographie territoriale mise en œuvre, usage des technologies par les acteurs). Enfin, la dernière partie, consacrée à l’interprétation, propose en premier lieu une synthèse sur le géoweb comme levier de participation puis propose de nouvelles perspectives de recherche."

Geotagged photos on social media like Flickr explicitly indicate the trajectories of tourists. They can be employed to reveal the tourists’ preference on landmarks and routings of tourism. Most of existing works on routing searches are based on the trajectories of GPS-enabled devices’ users. From a distinct point of view, we attempt to propose a novel approach in which the basic unit of routing is separate road segment instead of GPS trajectory segment. In this paper, we build a recommendation system that provides users with the most popular landmarks as well as the best travel routings between the landmarks. By using Flickr geotaggged photos, the top ranking travel destinations in a city can be identified and then the best travel routes between the popular travel destinations are recommended. We apply a spatial clustering method to identify the main travel landmarks and subsequently rank these landmarks. Using machine learning method, we calculate the tourism popularity of the road in terms of relevant parameters, e.g., the number of users and the number of Point-of-Interests. These popularity assessments are integrated into the routing recommendation system. The routing recommendation system takes into consideration both the popularity assessment and the length of the road. The best route recommended to the user minimizes the distance while including maximal tourism popularity. Experiments were conducted in two different scenarios. The empirical results show that the recommendation system is able to provide the user good travel planning including both top ranking landmarks and suitable routings in a city. Besides, the system offers user-generated semantic information for the recommended routes.

Analysing Active Mobility through Participatory Urbanism deals with the practical application of emerging trends in participatory urbanism, as applied to the understanding of the urban environment issues of active mobility in Malta. Through citizen science, neogeography and volunteered geographic information (VGI), this research seeks to analyse if and how community knowledge can be considered a viable option for understanding the urban environment issues for bicycle users.
The inherent benefits of active mobility align with two of Malta's current and most prominent health concerns, urban outdoor air pollution and lack of physical activity (World Health Organization, 2011), in addition to the overarching goal of making cities more livable (Gehl, 2010).  In this research, a mixed methods approach focused on participatory action research (PAR) allows for a practical understanding of these issues, with emphasis given to the process of the research as well as critical outcomes. This approach was taken due to its relevance to urban design research and in an effort to avoid an overly positivist quantitative approach (Elwood, 2009b; Haklay, 2013b).
Central to this study has been the implementation of a citizen science initiative entitled bike&map, which consisted of a workshop during which physical mapping was complemented with a digital interactive online mapping exercise. The case study, carried out over 14-days, attracted 342 VGI contributions, relating mainly to Malta’s Principal Urban Area (PUA). The practical application of community knowledge led to an in-depth on-the-ground understanding of the urban environment issues that bicycle users encounter.
It is suggested that community knowledge can bridge the gap between technical knowledge and the on-the-ground reality. The outcome is that there are multiple forms of knowledge that can influence the understanding of the urban environment in a meaningful manner, amongst which, technical and community knowledge are considered. The citizen science process, through the implementation of participatory citizen science, neogeography and crowdsourcing in an urban design context, can therefore be termed mutualistic urbanism.

The platform can be found online and is still available for crowdsourcing at https://uom.communitymaps.org.uk/project/bikemap

This thesis presents an analysis of the nature of volunteered geographical information (VGI) and on its applicability for use in a spatial data infrastructure (SDI) to supplement official and commercial sources, particularly given the ease with which ordinary people can document their environment, experiences, perspectives and prejudices, share them widely and rapidly, and even query anyone else’s content. For this research, taxonomies and repositories of such information were examined qualitatively and using formal concept analysis (FCA). Further, this thesis attempts to reflect on the context for SDIs and VGI and the challenges and opportunities for both.

An SDI is an evolving concept for facilitating and coordinating the management and sharing of geospatial data, with services, metadata, products, standards and inter-organisation arrangements and structures. It can take long to establish an SDI; some have failed and they have competition. In South Africa, the National Development Plan has an objective to establish a national spatial observatory: it is part of an SDI with its own value-add data, and products provided through the SDI or directly to its participants. The Spatial Data Infrastructure Act established the South African Spatial Data Infrastructure and its Committee for Spatial Information.

Creating vast quantities of user-generated content (UGC) has been enabled by the pervasiveness, power and affordability of inter-networking, social media, virtual communities, applications and mobile devices. VGI is user-generated content with geospatial components, or user-generated geospatial content.

VGI can contribute successfully to an SDI, at the local, national, regional or global level. VGI can extend the reach in time and space of official mapping agencies and others contributing to an SDI, because of the sheer volume of humans and their devices acting together or independently, as sensors, recorders and disseminators. VGI; repositories of VGI; innovative integration of content, applications and services (mashups); crowd sourcing and new geographical theories (psychogeography, social theory, social justice, ethics, etc) all challenge the traditional business models of SDIs.

However, metadata, quality, classification and standards can be challenges for VGI. Further, while some VGI can be useful, other VGI can be spurious, misleading or wrong. There are also different interpretations over what is actually VGI.

To provide context for the exposition, this thesis also examines terminology, geospatial data, classification, folksonomies, virtual globes, inter-networking, the limitations of the Internet, controlling the Internet, privacy, exploiting content, social media, curation, the digital divide, citizen science, crowd sourcing, neogeography, metadata, quality, standards and formal concept analysis (FCA). To determine the nature of VGI and its suitability for an SDI, this thesis investigates various taxonomies of UGC, VGI and citizen science; assesses qualitatively their discrimination adequacy using VGI repositories; and assesses them using FCA.

This thesis also presents original research contributions, to information science, geographical information science and theoretical computer science. For FCA it presents lemmas on stability in a lattice (providing lower and upper bounds for intensional and extensional stability indices), it shows there is value in instability in a lattice when assessing a taxonomy (representing extreme values rather than noise) and it presents stability exploration, a possible decision support tool. It describes the four stages for recognising the quality of a resource, it reports on a survey of geographical information professionals on VGI, SDIs and virtual globes, and it clarifies the differences between UGC, VGI, citizen science, crowd sourcing and neogeography, which can be confused with one another. Finally, this thesis explains why the Internet cannot be controlled.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are computer-based tools used to collect, store, manipulate and display spatially-referenced information. They are used to support decision-making in a wide variety of contexts, including spatial planning and environmental management. Because the process of GIS production, from software development to visualization of GIS output, is characterized by political, economic and social motivations, it is important that GIS practitioners are aware of issues such as access to data and the political economy of information, and the nature of GIS epistemologies vis-à-vis multiple coexisting perceptions of reality. Lack of such appreciation can lead to social and spatial marginalization of communities. Use of GIS in a research program for environmental management of the Cooum River in Chennai, and in support of participatory processes for managing environment and health in slums are used to demonstrate appropriate applications of GIS in India. Internet-distributed GIS as a potential avenue to address issues of public access to data is also considered.

Mapping, and more generally geopositioning, has become ubiquitous on the Internet. This democratization of geomatics through the GeoWeb results in the emergence of a new form of mapping based on Web 2.0 technologies. Described as Webmapping 2.0, it is especially characterized by high interactivity and geolocation-based contents generated by users. A series of recent events (hurricanes, earthquakes, pandemics) have urged the development of numerous mapping Web applications intended to provide information to the public, and encourage their contribution to support crisis management. This new way to produce and spread geographic information in times of crisis brings up many questions and new potentials with regard to urgency services, Non Governmental Organisations (NGO), as well as individuals. This paper aims at putting into perspective the development of GeoWeb, both in terms of technologies and applications, against crisis management processes.

Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2016. © 2016 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria.

In the past few years, crowdsourced geographic information (also called volunteered geographic information) has emerged as a promising information source for improving urban resilience by managing risks and coping with the consequences of disasters triggered by natural hazards. This chapter presents a typology of sources and usages of crowdsourced geographic information for disaster management, as well as summarises recent research results and present lessons learned for future research and practice in this field.

Big data is increasingly seen as a way of providing a more 'scientific' approach to the understanding and management of cities. But most geographic analyses of geotagged social media data have failed to mobilize a sufficiently complex understanding of socio-spatial relations. By combining the conceptual approach of relational socio-spatial theory with the methods of critical GIScience, this paper explores the spatial imaginaries and processes of segregation and mobility at play in the notion of the '9th Street Divide' in Louisville, Kentucky. Through a more context-sensitive analysis of this data, this paper argues against this popular spatial imaginary and the notion that the Louisville's West End is somehow separate and apart from the rest of the city. By analyzing the everyday activity spaces of different groups of Louisvillians through geotagged Twitter data, we instead argue for an understanding of these neighborhoods as fluid, porous and actively produced, rather than as rigid, static or fixed. Ultimately, this paper is meant to provide a conceptual and methodological framework for the analysis of social media data that is more attentive to the multiplicity of socio-spatial relations embodied in such data.

Information has always had geography. It is from somewhere; about somewhere; it evolves and is transformed somewhere; it is mediated by networks, infrastructures, and technologies: all of which exist in physical, material places. These geographies of information about places matter because they shape how we are able to find and understand different parts of the world. Places invisible or discounted in representations are invisible in practice to many people. In other words, geographic augmentations are much more than just representations of places: they are part of the place itself; they shape it rather than simply reflect it. This fusing of the spatial and informational augmentations that are immutable means that annotations of place emerge as sites of political contestation: with different groups of people trying to impose different narratives on informational augmentations. This paper therefore explores how information geographies have their own geographic distributions: geographies of access, of participation, and of representation. The paper offers a deliberately broad survey of a range of key platforms that mediate, host, and deliver different types of geographic information. It does so using a combination of existing statistics and bespoke data not previously mapped or analysed. Through this effort, the paper demonstrates that in addition to the geographies of uneven access to contemporary modes of communication, uneven geographies of participation and representation are also evident and in some cases are being amplified rather than alleviated. In other words, the paper comprehensively shows one important facet of contemporary information geographies: that geographic information itself is characterised by a host of uneven geographies. The paper concludes that there are few signs that global informational peripheries are achieving comparable levels of participation or representation with traditional information cores, despite the hopes that the fast-paced spread of the internet to three billion people might change this pattern.

Models of public governance are changing profoundly due to global and digital transformations and various context-specific societal pressures. One direction of development is the increased utilisation of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) in facilitating governance practices. Such changes are intended to improve the performance of public organisations, the quality of democratic governance, and the cost-effectiveness of service delivery. This article outlines the potentials of technological trends in building governance platforms. The discussion is based on such influential trends as open source movement, Web 2.0, geoinformatics, and ubiquitous technologies. An approach that takes into account such e-enabled platform solutions is called platform orientation in public governance, which offers a framework for supporting policy and governance informatics. It’s supposed to provide new tools to create structured environments for governance and the capacity to increase the flexibility and responsiveness of public organisations as governance actors. Such e-enabled governance platforms are an answer to the needs of a highly complex and technologically meditated society with a special view to providing easy access to governance processes, encouraging creativity, sharing information in a cost-effective way, and integrating services and governance processes so that the processes are comprehensible, easy, and value-adding for citizens and other stakeholders.

This thesis addresses crowdsourcing applied to urban planning. The Brazilian legislative
framework points to the inclusion of the citizen in the process of decision and territorial
management thus social media opens opportunities for investigations in applications known
as Social Media Geographic Information (SMGI). The use of these information seeks to
support the role of the urban planner as a decoder of collective values in the participatory
decision-making process. The thesis main research object is about the democratic citizen
inclusion method in the urban planning process, using the new communication technologies
from social media. The confirmed hypothesis is that it is possible to include the citizen in the
support of urban planning through the identification of collective values using the new
technologies derived from volunteer geographic information. The case studies' organization is
carried out through the course of the data generation, systematization of the data, and the
information deployment to reach collective knowledge. The thesis presents a crowdsourcing
framework through a evolution of Geographic Information Systems parallel. The four case
studies cover approaches of active SMGI, passive SMGI data systematization, use of passive
SMGI in urban planning, and finally verifies the conditions of a participatory planning
approach (using geodesign) combining a face-to-face approach with online validation through
popular vote. The conclusion analyzes the new technologies related to Volunteered
Geographic Information that favor the collective value identification.

This book features contributions stemming from the activities of the ENERGIC (European Network Exploring Research into Geospatial Information Crowdsourcing: software and methodologies for harnessing geographic information from the crowd) scientific network. Researchers from 23 European countries participate in ENERGIC. It is funded as action IC1203 by the COST (Cooperation in Science and Technology) programme, which is a European framework supporting trans-national cooperation among scientists, engineers, and scholars across Europe.

State of the Map featured a full day of academic talks. Building upon the motto of SotM 2019 in "Bridging the Map" the Academic Track session was aimed to provide the bridge to join together the experience, understanding, ideas, concepts and skills from different groups of researchers, academics and scientists from around the world. In particular, the Academic Track session was meant to build this bridge that connects members of the OpenStreetMap community and the academic community by providing an open passage for exchange of ideas, communication and opportunities for increased collaboration. These proceedings include 14 abstracts accepted as oral presentations and 6 abstracts presented as posters. Contributions were received from different academic fields, for example geography, remote sensing, computer and information sciences, geomatics, GIScience, the humanities and social sciences, and even from industry actors. We are particularly delighted to have included abstracts from both experienced researchers and students. Overall, it is our hope that these proceedings accurately showcase the ongoing innovation and maturity of scientific investigations and research into OpenStreetMap, showing how it as a research object converges multiple research areas together. Our aim is to show how the sum total of investigations of issues like Volunteered Geographic Information, geo-information, and geo-digital processes and representation shed light on the relations between crowds, real-world applications, technological developments, and scientific research.

This chapter will introduce the concept of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) within practices of mapping and cartography. Our aim is to provide an accessible overview of the area, which has grown rapidly in the past decade, but first we need to define what we mean by VGI. Defining VGI In a seminal paper published in 2007, Mike Goodchild coined the term Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) in an effort to describe 'the widespread engagement of large numbers of private citizens, often with little in the way of formal qualifications, in the creation of geographic information' (Goodchild, 2007: 217). At that point, rudimentary crowdsourced Geographic Information (GI) was created and disseminated freely with the help of innovative desktop applications (e.g. Google Earth) or web-based platforms (e.g. Wikimapia, OpenStreetMap). By crowdsourcing we refer to the action of multiple participants (sometimes thousands or even millions) in the generation of geographical information, when these participants are external to the organization that manages the information and are not formally employed by it. Since then a lot has changed and VGI now has a deep and broad agenda that ranges from implicitly contributed GI through social networks to rigorously-monitored citizen science projects. However, before we continue the discussion on this subject, it is necessary to shed light onto the key factors that have helped to create this phenomenon. Background technology and societal aspects While it may seem that VGI was created suddenly with the birth of OpenStreetMap in 2004, the crowdsourced and collaborative creation of spatial content is not new. The current form of the VGI phenomenon emerged as several enabling factors matured, particularly regarding how people collaborate, with the key paradigms paving the way for similar endeavours coming from the field of software development. Open source software is a prime example of collaboration amongst otherwise unrelated programmers who aim to create software that is freely accessible by anyone. More importantly, the code used to create the software is also shared so that anyone can see, examine, reuse or improve it. This collaborative approach also started to grow in the geomatics domain, but, whereas in software development the purpose was to work together to create an application, here, the mentality was mostly oriented towards collaboration in order to solve a common problem.

The terms user-generated content, volunteered geographical information, crowdsourcing, citizen science and neogeography are elucidated. The purpose is to expose the range of meanings associated with these terms, and to promote consensus as to their scope and meaning, thereby enhancing the clarity with which discourse around these phenomena may occur, both in the research and popular context.

As emerging sources of so-called 'big data' are increasingly utilized in order to understand social and spatial processes, so too have these new data sources become the subject of harsh criticism from more critically-oriented geographers and social scientists. This paper argues that one of the major issues preventing a more productive dialogue between critical human geographers and those already engaging in the mapping and analysis of these new data sources is around the ways that space and spatiality are conceptualized in social media mapping. As such, this paper draws on and extends earlier critiques of the 'spatial ontology of the geotag', in which the geographic analysis of geotagged social media data over-privileges the single latitude/longitude coordinate pair attached to each individual data point, often leading to the kind of simplistic mappings and interpretations prevalent today. The goals of this paper are twofold: first, to demonstrate how the spatial ontology of the geotag is implicitly operationalized within mainstream social media mapping exercises, and how this understanding of space remains incongruent with existing conceptions of space drawn from human geography. Second, using the example of tweeting in the wake of the August 2014 killing of an unarmed African-American teenager by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, this paper demonstrates how a more geographically-situated analysis of this kind of data, inspired by relational or multidimensional conceptualizations of space, can yield alternative understandings of the social processes embedded in such data.

This article addresses the emergent phenomenon of carto-vandalism, the intentional defacement of collaborative cartographic digital artefacts in the context of volunteered geographic information. Through a qualitative analysis of reported incidents in WikiMapia and OpenStreetMap, a typology of this kind of vandalism is outlined, including play, ideological, fantasy, artistic and industrial carto-vandalism, as well as carto-spam. Two families of counter-strategies deployed in amateur mapping communities are discussed. First, the contributors organize forms of policing, based on volunteered community involvement, patrolling the maps and reporting incidents. Second, the detection of carto-vandalism can be supported by automated tools, based either on explicit rules or on machine learning.

A Spatial Data Infrastructure contributes remarkably to the development of the country, but because it is something relatively new in Brazil we have to consider a range of issues for this to be effective. One aspect that needs to be addressed is the importance of using Web 2.0 as computational platform and the new forms of online collaboration. This paper presents an analysis of the influence that new technologies of communication and collaboration have on the popularization of spatial information and presents a new model of collaborative vision for the NSDI which considers geographic information voluntarily

(Un)intentional geographies. – The article deals with the innovative topic of user generated geographic information, that is, information created more or less
intentionally by Web users, a revolutionary source of information generally known as Volunteered Geographic Information (Vgi). In particular, the paper offers a novel distinction between intentional and unintentional information, analyzes how this information is produced and its main features (availability, quality, etc.); moreover it debates the issues concerning their transformation into data for spatial analyis.The article ends with a reflection on the implications for methodology and on the paradigmatic shift introduced by this kind of information in geographic thinking.