A review of crowdsourced geographic information for land-use and land-cover mapping: current progress and challenges

Abstract

The emergence of crowdsourced geographic information (CGI) has markedly accelerated the evolution of land-use and land-cover (LULC) mapping. This approach taps into the collective power of the public to share spatial information, providing a relevant data source for producing LULC maps. Through the analysis of 262 papers published from 2012 to 2023, this work provides a comprehensive overview of the field, including prominent researchers, key areas of study, major CGI data sources, mapping methods, and the scope of LULC research. Additionally, it evaluates the pros and cons of various data sources and mapping methods. The findings reveal that while applying CGI with LULC labels is a common way by using spatial analysis, it is limited by incomplete CGI coverage and other data quality issues. In contrast, extracting semantic features from CGI for LULC interpretation often requires integrating multiple CGI datasets and remote sensing imagery, alongside advanced methods such as ensemble and deep learning. The paper also delves into the challenges posed by the quality of CGI data in LULC mapping and explores the promising potential of introducing large language models to overcome these hurdles.