View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Aston Publications Explorer Usage of VGI for Validation of Land Cover Maps 1,2Cidália C. Fonte, 3Lucy Bastin, 4Linda See, 5Giles Foody, 6Favio Lupia 1 Department of Mathematics, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal 2 Institute for Systems Engineering and Computers at Coimbra (INESC Coimbra), Coimbra, Portugal 3 School of Engineering and Applied Science, Aston University, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK 4 Ecosystems Services and Management Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria 5 School of Geography , University of Nottingham , Nottingham ,NG7 2RD, UK 6 National Institute of Agricultural Economics (INEA), Rome, Italy Corresponding author: Cidália C. Fonte (e-mail:
[email protected]) 1 Usage of VGI for Validation of Land Cover Maps Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) represents a growing source of potentially valuable data for land cover validation. However, the quality and credibility of the data remains a key concern, especially if VGI is to be adopted by more traditional map producers or integrated into authoritative sources in the future. This paper reviews different categories of spatial data quality and the main sources of VGI currently being used in the development and validation of land cover maps. The paper also proposes a framework for addressing different VGI quality assessment methodologies, which is used to identify gaps in approaches that could be used in VGI quality assessment in the future. Keywords: VGI, land cover/land use, quality, validation, crowdsourcing 1. Introduction Land cover maps are fundamental for a wide range of users and for many applications, such as planning, nature and biodiversity protection, environmental monitoring, management of natural resources, climate change and hydrological modelling (Feddema et al.