Volunteered geographic information in the context of local Spatial Data Infrastructures

Abstract

Geographic information and geo-technologies are essential for the municipal administration to learn the reality of the city and its infrastructure. Spatial Data Infrastructures promote data sharing and access to data by the community in an easy and effective way. However, acquisition and update of spatial data has changed in recent years because it is a timeconsuming activity and of costly implementation. In this context, volunteered contribution can complement the efforts for mapping geographic information. This paper proposes an architecture for information systems that receive volunteered geographic information in a SDI at the municipal level. Among the contributions of this work is the adaptation and integration of a SDI architecture to services that include new collaborative components. Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) (Goodchild, 2007a; McDougall, 2009) is the generic name given to citizen-supported creation and maintenance of geographic data sets. In this paper, we see VGI as a component of SDI, through which users can contribute to the advancement and enhancement of publicly-available geographic data. We are especially interested in VGI dedicated to urban mapping, since we consider that the most important and unique contributions citizens can make are related to their individual interests and first-hand knowledge, and these are mostly related to local GIS applications and data. This article presents an overview of SDIs, highlighting the context in which they arise and their most important characteristics (Section 2). The phenomenon of Volunteered Geographic Information and its relationship with SDI are presented in Section 3. We then propose, in Section 4, an architecture that integrates volunteered geographic information and SDI. Section 5 presents a case study in which the proposed architecture is implemented and integrated, taking on the form of a Municipal Collaborative SDI. Finally, Section 6 presents conclusions and out-