A Risk-Based Approach for Enhancing the Fitness of Use of VGI

Abstract

Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) phenomena offer an alternative or supplement to the authoritative mechanism of geospatial data acquisition. It aims to allow people without professional geospatial skills or knowledge to participate in the geospatial data collection. VGI has been boosted by recent advances in geospatial technology and applications. VGI applications have shown great potential in various areas such as disaster management and public health. However, VGI suffers from a lack of quality assurance, because VGI contributors may lack knowledge of the geospatial domain and credibility. Moreover, VGI data may have different levels of detail and precision, and may have been collected for different purposes. Appropriate VGI data for a specific application may be less appropriate for another application. End-users may use VGI data without being aware of its appropriateness to their requirements. This may cause a risk that arises when end-users inappropriately use, or be uncertain about using VGI data in their applications. This risk may undermine the VGI project, in which end-users are involved. This paper proposes an approach that aims to enhance VGI quality assurance by measuring the spatio-semantic similarity between user requirements and provided VGI, and to evaluate the fitness-for-use of VGI. The proposed approach is based on an algorithm to help VGI end-users to deal with the risks related to the quality of VGI data. The approach helps end-user make appropriate decisions about VGI data (e.g., considering or not considering VGI data and being careful when using VGI data).