Abstract
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in the potential of crowdsourced geographic data to supplement authoritative data where they are not available, outdated or incomplete.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.
Highlights
DoD Department of Defense (US) DSTL Defence Science and Technology Laboratory DARPA Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (US) geographic information systems (GIS) Geographic information systems HACs Human-agent collectives JFC Joint Forces Command (UK) MOD Ministry of Defence (UK) OSM OpenStreetMap RN Royal Navy (UK) ISO International Organization for Standardisation involuntary geographic information” (iVGI) Involuntary geographic information SDSR Strategic Defence and Security Review Social media Collaborative and social computing UAVs Unmanned aerial vehicles UGVs Unmanned ground vehicles volunteered geographic information (VGI) Volunteered geographic information
The security, independence and interests of the United Kingdom (UK) at home and in overseas territories are protected by the MOD, where the main objective is to ensure that the armed forces have the necessary training, equipment and support to fulfil their duties (UK HM Government 2015)
Crowdsourcing, as has been previously mentioned, is an open participative activity, where anyone can propose a specific task of data collection to a number of people while Goodchild (2007) introduced VGI as an “umbrella” term for the geographic information being created by everyday users, privately and voluntarily
Summary
“The war will be won in the future, not the past. We must go on, or we will go under (Mayfield 2011).” – General of the United States (US) Army Douglas MacArthur, 1931 –. 197), generates location-based social networking and collaborative mapping (Franklin et al 2013; Shanley et al 2013) This new era, involving a set of geographic information systems (GIS) techniques and tools available to public and non-expert users, is characterised as Neogeography (Haklay et al 2008) Neogeography as a concept appeared in 2006 and is defined by Turner (2006, p.3) as “the sharing of location information with friends and visitors, helping shape context, and conveying understanding through knowledge of place”. Given the fact that many readers may not be familiar with defence terminology, we provide a short list of key terms at the end of the paper
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