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IJGI
Special Issues
Volunteered Geographic Information: Analysis, Integration, Vision, Engagement (VGI-ALIVE)
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Volunteered Geographic Information: Analysis, Integration, Vision, Engagement (VGI-ALIVE)

A special issue of ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (ISSN 2220-9964).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 March 2019) | Viewed by 38428

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Peter Mooney

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Guest Editor
Department of Computer Science, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland
Interests: volunteered geographic information (VGI); citizen science; geospatial data mining and knowledge extraction; free and open source software for geomatics (FOSS4G)
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Franz-Benjamin Mocnik

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Geography, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
Interests: volunteered geographic information (vgi); openstreetmap spatial graphs and networks structure and laws in giscience big data, data mining; and visualization
Prof. Dr. Alexander Zipf

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
GIScience Research Group, Institute of Geography, University of Heidelberg, Berliner Strasse 48, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
Interests: volunteered geographic information; crowdsourcing; citizen science; location based services; SDI
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Jamal Jokar Arsanjani

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Geoinformatics and Earth Observation Research Group, Department of Planning, Aalborg University Copenhagen, A.C. Meyers Vænge 15, DK-2450 Copenhagen, Denmark
Interests: citizen observations; earth observation; geocomputation; GEO-artificial intelligence; data quality; environmental monitoring and assessment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Hartwig H. Hochmair

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center, Geomatics Sciences, University of Florida, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33314, USA
Interests: crowd-sourced spatial data; social media; non-motorized transportation; location-based services
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Ms. Kiran Zahra

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Interests: various text mining and information extraction techniques

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The steady rise of data volume shared on already-established and new Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and social media platforms calls for advanced analysis methods of user contribution patterns, leads to continued challenges in data fusion, and provides also new opportunities for rapid data analysis for event detection and VGI data quality assessment. Questions regarding the future of VGI and social media platforms include the prospect of continued user growth, engagement of new user groups, further expansion of VGI to educational activities, and closing data gaps in geographically underrepresented areas.

Although some papers for this Special Issue will be drawn from a related one day VGI-ALIVE workshop at the AGILE 2018 conference, other original submissions aligned with this area of research are also highly welcome. The workshop evolves around a wide range of VGI and social/media research topics including cross-platform data contributions, innovative VGI analysis approaches, current data fusion methods, data interoperability, real-world applications, and the use of VGI and social media use in education. Contributions that discuss future challenges of VGI and social media, may it be on the legal or technical side, that formulate a vision for VGI and social media usage and analysis for the near future, and that demonstrate analysis workflows or the integration of VGI into education are also welcome. This Special Issue offers an outlet for publishing papers relevant to the scope of this workshop. Papers will be reviewed on a continuing basis until the submission deadline.

Article processing fees of IJGI can be waived for a limited number of papers, where priority is given to papers presented during the VGI-ALIVE workshop at the AGILE 2018 conference and early submissions. Please contact the Guest Editors for more information.

Special issue topics include (but are not limited to):

  • Activity patterns and collaboration across multiple VGI and social media platforms
  • (Quasi) real-time analysis of VGI and social media content
  • Technical and legal aspects of crowd-sourced data fusion
  • Opportunities, challenges, and limitations for the future of VGI
  • VGI and social media analysis in geographic areas with sparse data coverage
  • Novel methods of VGI data quality assessment
  • Mobility patterns from VGI and social media
  • User engagement and VGI education
  • Closing the gaps in VGI data coverage

Dr. Peter Mooney
Dr. Franz-Benjamin Mocnik
Prof. Dr. Alexander Zipf
Dr. Jamal Jokar Arsanjani
Dr. Hartwig H. Hochmair
Ms. Kiran Zahra
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 7510 KiB  
Article
The Value of OpenStreetMap Historical Contributions as a Source of Sampling Data for Multi-Temporal Land Use/Cover Maps
by Cláudia M. Viana, Luis Encalada and Jorge Rocha
ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2019, 8(3), 116; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi8030116 - 28 Feb 2019
Cited by 22 | Viewed by 5361
Abstract
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open-access Volunteered geographic information (VGI) platform that has been widely used over the last decade as a source for Land Use Land Cover (LULC) mapping and visualization. However, it is known that the spatial coverage and accuracy of [...] Read more.
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open-access Volunteered geographic information (VGI) platform that has been widely used over the last decade as a source for Land Use Land Cover (LULC) mapping and visualization. However, it is known that the spatial coverage and accuracy of OSM data are not evenly distributed across all regions, with urban areas being likelier to have promising contributions (in both quantity and quality) than rural areas. The present study used OSM data history to generate LULC datasets with one-year timeframes as a way to support regional and rural multi-temporal LULC mapping. We evaluated the degree to which the different OSM datasets agreed with two existing reference datasets (CORINE Land Cover and the official Portuguese Land Cover Map). We also evaluated whether our OSM dataset was of sufficiently high quality (in terms of both completeness accuracy and thematic accuracy) to be used as a sampling data source for multi-temporal LULC maps. In addition, we used the near boundary tag accuracy criterion to assesses the fitness of the OSM data for producing training samples, with promising results. For each annual dataset, the completeness ratio of the coverage area for the selected study area was low. Nevertheless, we found high thematic accuracy values (ranged from 77.3% to 91.9%). Additionally, the training samples thematic accuracy improved as they moved away from the features’ boundaries. Features with larger areas (>10 ha), e.g., Agriculture and Forest, had a steadily positive correlation between training samples accuracy and distance to feature boundaries. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Volunteered Geographic Information: Analysis, Integration, Vision, Engagement (VGI-ALIVE))
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21 pages, 6841 KiB  
Article
Analyzing and Visualizing Emotional Reactions Expressed by Emojis in Location-Based Social Media
by Eva Hauthal, Dirk Burghardt and Alexander Dunkel
ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2019, 8(3), 113; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi8030113 - 28 Feb 2019
Cited by 21 | Viewed by 8233
Abstract
Social media platforms such as Twitter are extensively used for expressing and exchanging thoughts, opinions, ideas, and feelings, i.e., reactions concerning a topic or an event. Factual information about an event to which people are reacting can be obtained from different types of [...] Read more.
Social media platforms such as Twitter are extensively used for expressing and exchanging thoughts, opinions, ideas, and feelings, i.e., reactions concerning a topic or an event. Factual information about an event to which people are reacting can be obtained from different types of (geo-)sensors, official authorities, or the public press. However, these sources hardly reveal the emotional or attitudinal impact of events on people, which is, for example, reflected in their reactions on social media. Two approaches that utilize emojis are proposed to obtain the sentiment and emotions contained in social media reactions. Subsequently, these two approaches, along with visualizations that focus on space, time, and topic, are applied to Twitter reactions in the example case of Brexit. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Volunteered Geographic Information: Analysis, Integration, Vision, Engagement (VGI-ALIVE))
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22 pages, 10039 KiB  
Article
Checking the Consistency of Volunteered Phenological Observations While Analysing Their Synchrony
by Hamed Mehdipoor, Raul Zurita-Milla, Ellen-Wien Augustijn and Arnold J. H. Van Vliet
ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2018, 7(12), 487; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi7120487 - 19 Dec 2018
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 5153
Abstract
The increasing availability of volunteered geographic information (VGI) enables novel studies in many scientific domains. However, inconsistent VGI can negatively affect these studies. This paper describes a workflow that checks the consistency of Volunteered Phenological Observations (VPOs) while considering the synchrony of observations [...] Read more.
The increasing availability of volunteered geographic information (VGI) enables novel studies in many scientific domains. However, inconsistent VGI can negatively affect these studies. This paper describes a workflow that checks the consistency of Volunteered Phenological Observations (VPOs) while considering the synchrony of observations (i.e., the temporal dispersion of a phenological event). The geographic coordinates, day of the year (DOY) of the observed event, and the accumulation of daily temperature until that DOY were used to: (1) spatially group VPOs by connecting observations that are near to each other, (2) define consistency constraints, (3) check the consistency of VPOs by evaluating the defined constraints, and (4) optimize the constraints by analysing the effect of inconsistent VPOs on the synchrony models derived from the observations. This workflow was tested using VPOs collected in the Netherlands during the period 2003–2015. We found that the average percentage of inconsistent observations was low to moderate (ranging from 1% for wood anemone and pedunculate oak to 15% for cow parsley species). This indicates that volunteers provide reliable phenological information. We also found a significant correlation between the standard deviation of DOY of the observed events and the accumulation of daily temperature (with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.78 for lesser celandine, and 0.60 for pedunculate oak). This confirmed that colder days in late winter and early spring lead to synchronous flowering and leafing onsets. Our results highlighted the potential of synchrony information and geographical context for checking the consistency of phenological VGI. Other domains using VGI can adapt this geocomputational workflow to check the consistency of their data, and hence the robustness of their analyses. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Volunteered Geographic Information: Analysis, Integration, Vision, Engagement (VGI-ALIVE))
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35 pages, 34008 KiB  
Article
Optimising Citizen-Driven Air Quality Monitoring Networks for Cities
by Shivam Gupta, Edzer Pebesma, Auriol Degbelo and Ana Cristina Costa
ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2018, 7(12), 468; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi7120468 - 30 Nov 2018
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 6589
Abstract
Air quality has had a significant impact on public health, the environment and eventually on the economy of countries for decades. Effectively mitigating air pollution in urban areas necessitates accurate air quality exposure information. Recent advancements in sensor technology and the increasing popularity [...] Read more.
Air quality has had a significant impact on public health, the environment and eventually on the economy of countries for decades. Effectively mitigating air pollution in urban areas necessitates accurate air quality exposure information. Recent advancements in sensor technology and the increasing popularity of volunteered geographic information (VGI) open up new possibilities for air quality exposure assessment in cities. However, citizens and their sensors are put in areas deemed to be subjectively of interest (e.g., where citizens live, school of their kids or working spaces), and this leads to missed opportunities when it comes to optimal air quality exposure assessment. In addition, while the current literature on VGI has extensively discussed data quality and citizen engagement issues, few works, if any, offer techniques to fine-tune VGI contributions for an optimal air quality exposure assessment. This article presents and tests an approach to minimise land use regression prediction errors on citizen-contributed data. The approach was evaluated using a dataset (N = 116 sensors) from the city of Stuttgart, Germany. The comparison between the existing network design and the combination of locations selected by the optimisation method has shown a drop in spatial mean prediction error by 52%. The ideas presented in this article are useful for the systematic deployment of VGI air quality sensors, and can aid in the creation of higher resolution, more realistic maps for air quality monitoring in cities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Volunteered Geographic Information: Analysis, Integration, Vision, Engagement (VGI-ALIVE))
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24 pages, 8630 KiB  
Article
Change Detection for Building Footprints with Different Levels of Detail Using Combined Shape and Pattern Analysis
by Xiaodong Zhou, Zhe Chen, Xiang Zhang and Tinghua Ai
ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2018, 7(10), 406; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi7100406 - 13 Oct 2018
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4378
Abstract
Crowd-sourced geographic information is becoming increasingly available, providing diverse and timely sources for updating existing spatial databases to facilitate urban studies, geoinformatics, and real estate practices. However, the discrepancies between heterogeneous datasets present challenges for automated change detection. In this paper, we identify [...] Read more.
Crowd-sourced geographic information is becoming increasingly available, providing diverse and timely sources for updating existing spatial databases to facilitate urban studies, geoinformatics, and real estate practices. However, the discrepancies between heterogeneous datasets present challenges for automated change detection. In this paper, we identify important measurable factors to account for issues like boundary mismatch, large offset, and discrepancies in the levels of detail between the more current and to-be-updated datasets. These factors are organized into rule sets that include data matching, merge of the many-to-many correspondence, controlled displacement, shape similarity, morphology of difference parts, and the building pattern constraint. We tested our approach against OpenStreetMap and a Dutch topographic dataset (TOP10NL). By removing or adding some components, the results show that our approach (accuracy = 0.90) significantly outperformed a basic geometric method (0.77), commonly used in previous studies, implying a more reliable change detection in realistic update scenarios. We further found that distinguishing between small and large buildings was a useful heuristic in creating the rules. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Volunteered Geographic Information: Analysis, Integration, Vision, Engagement (VGI-ALIVE))
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21 pages, 11685 KiB  
Article
Improving the Quality of Citizen Contributed Geodata through Their Historical Contributions: The Case of the Road Network in OpenStreetMap
by Afsaneh Nasiri, Rahim Ali Abbaspour, Alireza Chehreghan and Jamal Jokar Arsanjani
ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2018, 7(7), 253; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi7070253 - 28 Jun 2018
Cited by 21 | Viewed by 6909
Abstract
OpenStreetMap (OSM) has proven to serve as a promising free global encyclopedia of maps with an increasing popularity across different user communities and research bodies. One of the unique characteristics of OSM has been the availability of the full history of users’ contributions, [...] Read more.
OpenStreetMap (OSM) has proven to serve as a promising free global encyclopedia of maps with an increasing popularity across different user communities and research bodies. One of the unique characteristics of OSM has been the availability of the full history of users’ contributions, which can leverage our quality control mechanisms through exploiting the history of contributions. Since this aspect of contributions (i.e., historical contributions) has been neglected in the literature, this study aims at presenting a novel approach for improving the positional accuracy and completeness of the OSM road network. To do so, we present a five-stage approach based on a Voronoi diagram that leads to improving the positional accuracy and completeness of the OSM road network. In the first stage, the OSM data history file is retrieved and in the second stage, the corresponding data elements for each object in the historical versions are identified. In the third stage, data cleaning on the historical datasets is carried out in order to identify outliers and remove them accordingly. In the fourth stage, through applying the Voronoi diagram method, one representative version for each set of historical versions is extracted. In the final stage, through examining the spatial relations for each object in the history file, the topology of the target object is enhanced. As per validation, a comparison between the latest version of the OSM data and the result of our approach against a reference dataset is carried out. Given a case study in Tehran, our findings reveal that the completeness and positional precision of OSM features can be improved up to 14%. Our conclusions draw attention to the exploitation of the historical archive of the contributions in OSM as an intrinsic quality indicator. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Volunteered Geographic Information: Analysis, Integration, Vision, Engagement (VGI-ALIVE))
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