Current Themes in Volunteered Geographic Information

Conceptualising the Link between Citizen Science and Climate Governance: A Systematic Review

“…It is widely recognised that digital devices and new technologies could serve as a vital contribution to the effective implementation of CS in the climate governance domain. First, they provide the chance to collect a diverse repertoire of data-quantitative measurements, audio, videos and photos of environmental and weather conditions-with increased extensive spatial and temporal coverage [80,103,106,109,113,122,124]. Moving beyond data collection, digital information-sharing platforms can facilitate early detection and warning of climate-related hazards [103], community-based environmental monitoring [99], inclusive adaptive decision-making, e.g., [99,104], knowledge co-creation [103,118] and co-management of natural resources and ecosystems [79,81,96].…”

“…We found several arguments and practical examples supporting the beneficial integration of a wide array of new technologies in climate-related participatory research and policy; namely, Volunteered Information Systems (VGI) [113], remote sensing (RS) [80,96], Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications [96,104,122], Geographic Information Systems (GIS) methodology [80,96,112,116], and low-cost sensors and devices [8,97]. For example, Participatory-GIS (P-GIS) tools have been used to support the co-design of climate policies and strategies to address flood risk, increases in temperature and pollution in an action research project in East London [112].…”

“…Since they are becoming more and more accessible and cheap, these devices could advance the expected democratisation of science and enhance active public involvement in governance [96,103,104,106,124], at the same time yielding data ownership and sovereignty to local communities and marginalised groups, and hence community empowerment and self-governance [103,118]. On the other hand, these methods could exacerbate existing social inequalities, to the extent that they may not be able to overcome the digital divide: although costs are ever lower, smartphones and internet connections are still necessary to take part in these digital-based projects; moreover, digital skills are required, which may be difficult to acquire, especially for older people [96,99,107,108,112,113,122]. In line with this, we report a consistent co-occurrence of this theme with the following, i.e., Justice-Based Approaches, echoing the need to integrate digital CS methodologies with environmental and social justice cogitation to avoid shoring up the digital divide [79,103,104,107,116,118].…”

Reproducibility and Replicability in Geographical Analysis

“…The introduction of new forms of spatial data into geographic analysis has made it increasingly difficult to assess and communicate measurement uncertainties. For example, the rising prominence of citizen scientists and crowdsourcing within the geographic research process (Ferster et al 2018) has introduced uncertainties related to participant reliability, instrumentation, calibration, and sampling that are difficult to quantify. Specifically, the normally opportunistic data collection methods of citizen science and related volunteered geographic information raise questions about the use of conventional forms of statistical inference due to the lack of representative sampling across space or time.…”

The Impact of Built Environment on Bike Commuting: Utilising Strava Bike Data and Geographically Weighted Models

“…The popularity of activity tracking apps has increased to the point that people voluntarily share data on their recreational and utilitarian movements. Crowdsourced data such as this, also called volunteered geographic information (VGI), is often more spatially and temporally comprehensive than traditionally acquired data and encompasses a much larger user group (Ferster et al, 2018). The fitness tracking app Strava is one of the most popular in its genre, and it is becoming increasingly popular amongst researchers and urban planners as well due to the Strava Metro service, a data service that aims to enable the harnessing of Strava data for urban planning improvement (Strava, 2021).…”