Synonyms
User-generated geospatial content; Volunteered geographic information (VGI)
Definition
The crowdsourcing of geographic information addresses the collection of geospatial data contributed by non-expert users and the aggregation of these data into meaningful geospatial datasets. While crowdsourcing generally implies a coordinated bottom-up grassroots effort to contribute information, in the context of geospatial data, the term volunteered geographic information (VGI) specifically refers to a dedicated collection effort inviting non-expert users to contribute. A prominent example here is the OpenStreetMap effort focusing on map datasets. Crowdsourcing geospatial data is an evolving research area that covers efforts ranging from mining GPS tracking data to using social media content to profile population dynamics.
Historical Background
With the proliferation of the Internet as the primary medium for data publishing and information exchange, we have seen an explosion in the amount...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsRecommended Reading
Adams B, McKenzie G. Inferring thematic places from spatially referenced natural language descriptions. In: Sui D, Elwood S, Goodchild M, Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge: Volunteered Geographic Information, editors, Crowdsourcing geographic knowledge: Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) in theory and practice. Netherlands: Springer; 2013, p. 201--21.
Agarwal S, Snavely N, Simon I, Seitz SM, Szeliski R. Building rome in a day. In: Proceedings of the 12th IEEE Computer Vision Conference; 2009. p. 72–9.
Ahmed M, Karagiorgou S, Pfoser D, Wenk C. Map construction algorithms, Springer International Publishing, Switzerland, 2015.
Cope A. The shape of alpha. Available at http://code.flickr.net/2008/10/30/the-shape-of-alpha/, 2008.
Crooks AT, Pfoser D, Jenkins A, Croitoru A, Karagiorgou S, Efentakis A, Lamprianidis G, Smith D, Stefanidis A. Crowdsourcing urban form and function. Int J Geogr Inf Sci. 2015;29(5):720–41.
Goodchild MF. Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography. GeoJournal. 2007;69(4):211–21.
Haklay M. How good is volunteered geographical information? A comparative study of OpenStreetMap and ordnance survey datasets. Environ Plan B. Plan & Design. 2010;37(4):682–703.
Hecht B, Gergle D. On the localness of user-generated content. In: Proceedings of the ACM Computer Supported Cooperative Work Conference; 2010, p. 229–32.
Intagorn S, Plangprasopchok A, Lerman K. Harvesting geospatial knowledge from social metadata. In: Proceedings of the 7th ISCRAM Conference; 2010.
Kling F, Pozdnoukhov A. When a city tells a story: urban topic analysis. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS Conference; 2012. p. 482–85.
Lamprianidis G, Pfoser D. Collaborative geospatial feature search. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS Conference; 2012. p. 169–78.
Pfoser D, Brakatsoulas S, Brosch P, Umlauft M, Tsironis G, Tryfona N. Dynamic travel time provision for road networks. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS confernce; 2008. p. 475–78.
Pfoser D. On user-generated geocontent. Proceeding of 12th SSTD Symposium In: Proceedings of the 12th SSTD Symposium; 2011. p. 458–61.
Skoumas G, Pfoser D, Kyrillidis A, Sellis T. Location estimation using crowdsourced spatial relations. ACM Trans Spat Algorithms Syst. 2016;2(2):1–23.
Stefanidis T, Crooks AT, Radzikowski J. Harvesting ambient geospatial information from social media feeds. GeoJournal. 2013;78(2):319–38.
Zhang Z, Zhang C, Du C, Zhu S. SVM-based extraction of spatial relations in text. In: Proceedings of the IEEE ICSDM Conferncence; 2011. p. 529–533.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Pfoser, D. (2018). Crowdsourcing Geographic Information Systems. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_80607
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_80607
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-8266-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-8265-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceReference Module Computer Science and Engineering