University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones Department of Geography and the Environment 10-2016 Merging Volunteered Geographic Information Systems James McAndrew Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/geog_ms_capstone Part of the Other Geography Commons Recommended Citation McAndrew, James, "Merging Volunteered Geographic Information Systems" (2016). Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones. 54. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/geog_ms_capstone/54 This Capstone is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Geography and the Environment at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. i M erging Volunteered G eographic Inform ation System s Jam es M cA n drew Departm ent of G eography, University of Denver ii A b stract This project determ ines how two different system s based on geographic user- ge n e rate d con te n t can w ork toge th e r to allow th e con te n t to be m ade m ore accessible. This project’s objective is to determ ine the technical and social issues involved w ith allow ing inform ation to be transferred between system s. Specifically, this project w orks w ith inform ation from tw o volunteer system s: 1) The U nited States G eological Survey’s N ational M ap Corps, 2) A global volunteer mapping project called O penStreetM ap. Th is project discusses th e history of both system s and how they have dealt w ith im porting data in the past. It review s w hat has w orked w ell w ith previous imports and determ ines the best approach for m erging volunteered datase ts. It include s softw are th at de m on strate s th e e ffe ctive n e ss of th e proposed importation process. iii Table of C on te n ts A B S TR AC T ............................................................................................. II I NTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 1 L ITERATURE R E V IE W ................................................................................. 4 In trodu ction ...................................................................................... 4 W hat is Volunteered Geographic Information? ..................................... 5 Neogeography .................................................................................. 6 Public Participation and G IS ............................................................... 8 Volunteer m otivations ...................................................................... 10 Data Q uality in VG I ......................................................................... 12 Counter Mapping ............................................................................. 14 VG I and Privacy .............................................................................. 15 Application s of VG I .......................................................................... 17 The Future of VGI ........................................................................... 20 Literatu re Su m m ation ...................................................................... 21 R E SE ARCH ........................................................................................... 24 O penStreetMap ............................................................................... 25 U nited State G eological Survey ........................................................ 27 N ational Park Service ...................................................................... 29 Software Review ............................................................................. 30 D ESIGN AND I MPLEMENTATION ................................................................... 33 Software Design.............................................................................. 34 In te rfa ce ........................................................................................ 37 D ISCUSSION ........................................................................................ 39 W hy Use Volunteer Effort? ............................................................... 40 Effectiveness .................................................................................. 41 F UTURE S TUD Y...................................................................................... 42 C O NC LU SIO N ........................................................................................ 43 REFERENCES........................................................................................ 45 APPENDIX ............................................................................................ 50 1 Introduction U ser- generated content provides a valuable source of information and can provide inform ation in areas w here traditional inform ation sources are not available. W hen u ser- ge n e rate d con te n t con tains a spatial com pon e n t, it is term ed Volunteered G eographic Inform ation (VG I) (G oodchild 2007). G eographers have used a variety of m ethods to collect geographic inform ation from untrained participants. Data collection techniq u e s th at are currently in use, such as Participatory G IS (PG IS ), Public Participation G IS (PPG IS ), an d C om m u n ity In te grate d G IS , se lect spe cific participan ts to provide inform ation. V G I takes a sim ilar approach, but instead it allow s the general public to volunteer their information. VG I system s, prevalent on the Internet since 2005, include technologies such as G oogle M ap M aker, W ikim apia, U n ited S tate s G e o lo g ic a l S u r v e y ( USGS) National M ap Corps, O penStreetMap, and a m apping com ponent of Flickr (Budhathoki 2010). These projects have differen t goals for collecting V G I an d th e u sers of th ese system s h ave different reasons for volunteering their geographic information. Th e variety of V G I system s offers volun teers n u m erou s w ays to provide and to access inform ation . A draw back of th e variety of system s is that the system s are independent from each other. This m eans that if a volunteer would like to contribute to m ore than one VGI system , the volunteer is forced to reform at and reenter their inform ation into each 2 system . The USG S National M ap Corps project and the O penStreetMap project are exam ples of projects that offer volunteers the ability to volunteer their own information, but these projects currently do not have any procedures for data sharing between the two system s. G eographers require a sou rce of inform ation to te st th e ir th e ories. T r a d it io n a lly , t his information has been obtained through fieldwork and by w orking w ith reliable secon dary sou rces su ch as govern m en t an d com m ercial entities. Fundin g for secon dary sou rces is n ot always presen t an d m ay be abse n t in m any geographic areas (G oodchild 2009). W hile VG I can fill this role, it can also introduce new problem s. Volunteers m ay be m ore c o m fo r t a b le w it h a g r o u p o f to o ls in o n e e x is t in g m a p p in g s ystem , or u sers m ay be aware of legal issues surrounding data licensing, and have their own opinions of how they want their contributions to be used. This project determ ines the technical and social issues involved w ith allow ing inform ation from a governm e n t sy ste m to be u se d in a private system . This includes working with data licensing, data transformation, and existing volunteer com m unities. The research is conducted by working with user contributions fro m both the U SG S National M ap Corps project and O penStreetMap. This includes literatu re abou t th e U S G S Nation al M ap C orps proje ct an d th e docu m e n tation for O pe n S tre e tM ap. The O penStreetMap com m unity keeps track of its docum entation through an online w eb application called a “w iki” 3 w hich allow s for a collab orative environm ent where all users can propose their own solutions to problems. This research uses the O penStreetMap W iki tool as w ell as it m ailing lists as a w ay to determ ine best practices for im porting n e w data into O pe n S tre e tM ap. The intent of the Na t io n a l M a p C o r p s is t o a llo w v o lu n t e e r s to con tribu te data to th e U S G S that w ill b e verified by a group of professional geographers and added to the public m ap upon verification. The USGS National M ap Corps project provides an exam ple of how VG I can be used successfully to m eet the goals of an organization. An inherent problem with setting up an independent system is that the user contributions are not usually accessible w ith external tools. The O penStreetMap com m unity has created software tools for m anaging changes to the OpenStreetMap dataset. This research determ ines how applicable these tools are to this project and the m odifications that w ill need to be m ade in order to m eet its goals. R esearch question W hat are the technical and social issues involve d w ith a llo w in g inform ation to be transferred betw een United States Governm ent volunteer m apping projects and the O penStreetM ap project? 4 Literature Review Introduction O nline m aps have been present since the early days of the W orld W ide W eb (Hudson- S m it h et al. 2009). There has been a sharp increase in th e num ber of o n lin e m a p v is u a liz a t io n t o o ls s in c e 2 0 0 5 . The increase has been spu rred, in part, by services su ch as G oogle M aps, w h ich allow s w eb developers the opportunity to create online m aps w ith little knowledge of the underlying geographic science (Haklay 2008) . These new services c o lle c t m uch of their information from user- generated content. U ser- generated geographic content has been term ed Volunteered G eographic Inform ation (VG I) by M ichael G oodchild (G o o d c h ild 2007). V G I has been able to capture a significant portion of online users, although it m ay also be viewed as “a flash in the cartographic pan” (Goodchild 2008).