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Into the night – training day on citizen science slides

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Last December, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) awarded funding to UCL Extreme Citizen Science group and Earthwatch as part of their investment in public engagement. The projects are all short – they start from January to March and included public engagement and training to early career researchers. “Into the Night” highlights the importance of light … Continue reading Into the night – training day on citizen science slides

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#DITscience, citizen cyberscience, citizen science, Conference, Extreme Citizen Science, GIS, GIS Usability, VGI

Podcast – discussion with Liz Killen and Alice Sheppard on citizen science

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Several weeks ago, Liz Killen, who is studying for an MSc in Science Communication at Imperial College organised an interview with me and Alice Sheppard about aspects of citizen science, for the I, Science the science magazine of Imperial College. This is the second time ExCiteS is covered in the magazine, after a report in 2013 by … Continue reading Podcast – discussion with Liz Killen and Alice Sheppard on citizen science

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#DITscience, citizen science, DITOs, Extreme Citizen Science

Editorial in Human Computation Journal – Creativity and Learning in Citizen Cyberscience

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As part of a special issue of the open access Human Computation Journal, I am the co-author of the editorial Creativity and Learning in Citizen Cyberscience – Lessons from the Citizen Cyberlab Summit. Following the summit (see blog post here), Egle Ramanauskaite took the blog posts and edited them with her notes, which led to a … Continue reading Editorial in Human Computation Journal – Creativity and Learning in Citizen Cyberscience

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citizen cyberlab, citizen cyberscience, citizen science, Papers

Public Participation GIS and Participatory GIS in the Era of GeoWeb – editorial for a special issue

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As part of the AAG 2015 conference, Bandana Kar, Rina Ghose, Renee Sieber and I organised a set of sessions on Public Participation GIS – you can read the summary here. After the conference, we’ve organised a special issue of the Cartographic Journal (thanks to Alex Kent, the journal editor) dedicated to current perspectives of public participation … Continue reading Public Participation GIS and Participatory GIS in the Era of GeoWeb – editorial for a special issue

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AAG2015, Conference, GIS, GIS Usability, Papers, Participatory Geography, participatory GIS, PGIS, PPGIS, special issue PPGIS, The Cartographic Journal, VGI

Competition: Exceptional contribution to (GIS/statistical) software

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The GIScRG (Geographic Information Science Research Group of the RGS) and QMRG (Quantitative Methods Research Group) are looking to use some of their fund to support a contribution to some GIS / statistical open source software. We have £500 to offer as a grant (or series of grants) to one or more projects that will … Continue reading Competition: Exceptional contribution to (GIS/statistical) software →

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Initiatives

A Shared Perspective for PGIS and VGI – new paper

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Part of the special issue on Public Participation GIS that was published in The Cartographic Journal, was a paper that was led by Jeroen Verplanke (ITC). This paper goes back to the workshop on participatory GIS in 2013, that was the leaving event for Dr Mike McCall in ITC, after which he continue to work in UNAM, Mexico. … Continue reading A Shared Perspective for PGIS and VGI – new paper

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citizen science, GIS, paper, Papers, participatory GIS, PPGIS, special issue PPGIS, The Cartographic Journal, VGI, Volunteered Geographic Information

Authoritative and VGI in a Developing Country: A Comparative Case Study of Road Datasets in Nairobi

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The motivation behind the paper was that while there are numerous studies comparing VGI to authoritative data in the developed world, there are very few that do so in developing world. In order to address this issue in the paper we compare the quality of authoritative road data (i.e. from the Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development – RCMRD) and non-authoritative crowdsourced road data (i.e. from OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Google’s Map Maker) in conjunction with population data in and around Nairobi, Kenya.

Results from our analysis show variability in coverage between all these datasets. RCMRD provided the most complete, albeit less current, coverage when taking into account the entire study area, while OSM and Map Maker showed a degradation of coverage as one moves from central Nairobi towards more rural areas. Further information including the abstract to our paper, some figures and full reference is given below.

Abstract:

With volunteered geographic information (VGI) platforms such as OpenStreetMap (OSM) becoming increasingly popular, we are faced with the challenge of assessing the quality of their content, in order to better understand its place relative to the authoritative content of more traditional sources. Until now, studies have focused primarily on developed countries, showing that VGI content can match or even surpass the quality of authoritative sources, with very few studies in developing countries. In this paper we compare the quality of authoritative (data from the Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development – RCMRD) and non-authoritative (data from OSM and Google’s Map Maker) road data in conjunction with population data in and around Nairobi, Kenya. Results show variability in coverage between all these datasets. RCMRD provided the most complete, albeit less current, coverage when taking into account the entire study area, while OSM and Map Maker showed a degradation of coverage as one moves from central Nairobi towards rural areas. Furthermore, OSM had higher content density in large slums, surpassing the authoritative datasets at these locations, while Map Maker showed better coverage in rural housing areas. These results suggest a greater need for a more inclusive approach using VGI to supplement gaps in authoritative data in developing nations.

Keywords: Volunteered Geographic Information; Crowdsourcing; Road Networks; Population Data; Kenya  
Road Coverage per km2
Pairwise difference in road coverage. Clockwise from top left: i) RCMRD 2011 versus Map Maker 2014; ii) RCMRD 2011 versus OSM 2011; iii) RCMRD 2011 versus OSM 2014; iv) OSM 2014 versus Map Maker 2014 (Red cells: first layer has higher coverage; Green cells: second layer has higher coverage).

Full Reference:

Mahabir, R., Stefanidis, A., Croitoru, A., Crooks, A.T. and Agouris, P. (2017), “Authoritative and Volunteered Geographical Information in a Developing Country: A Comparative Case Study of Road Datasets in Nairobi, Kenya”, ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 6(1): 24, doi:10.3390/ijgi6010024.

As always any thoughts or comments about this work are welcome.

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GIS, OpenStreetMap, VGI, Volunteered Geographic Information, Web 2.0

Authoritative and VGI in a Developing Country: A Comparative Case Study of Road Datasets in Nairobi

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The motivation behind the paper was that while there are numerous studies comparing VGI to authoritative data in the developed world, there are very few that do so in developing world. In order to address this issue in the paper we compare the quality of authoritative road data (i.e. from the Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development – RCMRD) and non-authoritative crowdsourced road data (i.e. from OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Google’s Map Maker) in conjunction with population data in and around Nairobi, Kenya.

Results from our analysis show variability in coverage between all these datasets. RCMRD provided the most complete, albeit less current, coverage when taking into account the entire study area, while OSM and Map Maker showed a degradation of coverage as one moves from central Nairobi towards more rural areas. Further information including the abstract to our paper, some figures and full reference is given below.

Abstract:

With volunteered geographic information (VGI) platforms such as OpenStreetMap (OSM) becoming increasingly popular, we are faced with the challenge of assessing the quality of their content, in order to better understand its place relative to the authoritative content of more traditional sources. Until now, studies have focused primarily on developed countries, showing that VGI content can match or even surpass the quality of authoritative sources, with very few studies in developing countries. In this paper we compare the quality of authoritative (data from the Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development – RCMRD) and non-authoritative (data from OSM and Google’s Map Maker) road data in conjunction with population data in and around Nairobi, Kenya. Results show variability in coverage between all these datasets. RCMRD provided the most complete, albeit less current, coverage when taking into account the entire study area, while OSM and Map Maker showed a degradation of coverage as one moves from central Nairobi towards rural areas. Furthermore, OSM had higher content density in large slums, surpassing the authoritative datasets at these locations, while Map Maker showed better coverage in rural housing areas. These results suggest a greater need for a more inclusive approach using VGI to supplement gaps in authoritative data in developing nations.

Keywords: Volunteered Geographic Information; Crowdsourcing; Road Networks; Population Data; Kenya  
Road Coverage per km2
Pairwise difference in road coverage. Clockwise from top left: i) RCMRD 2011 versus Map Maker 2014; ii) RCMRD 2011 versus OSM 2011; iii) RCMRD 2011 versus OSM 2014; iv) OSM 2014 versus Map Maker 2014 (Red cells: first layer has higher coverage; Green cells: second layer has higher coverage).

Full Reference:

Mahabir, R., Stefanidis, A., Croitoru, A., Crooks, A.T. and Agouris, P. (2017), “Authoritative and Volunteered Geographical Information in a Developing Country: A Comparative Case Study of Road Datasets in Nairobi, Kenya”, ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 6(1): 24, doi:10.3390/ijgi6010024.

As always any thoughts or comments about this work are welcome.

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GIS, OpenStreetMap, VGI, Volunteered Geographic Information, Web 2.0

The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science

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‘The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science’ is a fairly slim and small format book. Darlene Cavalier and Eric B. Kennedy edited this short collection of papers that came out earlier in 2016. The book is part of a series, from the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO) at Arizona State University. The series aims are … Continue reading The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science

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Book review, citizen science, Concepts, scistarter, The rightful place of science, VGI

The Prevalence, Scaling and Variance of Urban Phenomena

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This coming month (January 2017) sees the launch of another of Nature’s flagship journals Nature Human Behaviour. In it, Andres Gomez-Lievano, Oscar Patterson-Lomba, and Ricardo Hausmann explore an integrated model which explains the prevalence, scaling and variance of urban phenomena … Continue reading →

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city size, complexity, Economies of scale, Information, power laws
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