Geospatial User Feedback: How to Raise Users’ Voices and Collectively Build Knowledge at the Same Time

Abstract

Geospatial data is used not only to contemplate reality but also, in combination with analytical tools, to generate new information that requires interpretation. In this process data users gain knowledge about the data and its limitations (the user side of data quality) as well as knowledge on the status and evolutions of the studied phenomena. Knowledge can be annotations on top of the data, responses to questions, a careful description of the processes applied, a piece of software code or scripts applied to the data, usage reports or a complete scientific paper. This paper proposes an extension of the current Open Geospatial Consortium standard for Geospatial User Feedback to include the required knowledge elements, and a practical implementation. The system can incrementally collect, store, and communicate knowledge elements created by users of the data and keep them linked to the original data by means of permanent data identifiers. The system implements a Web API to manage feedback items as a frontend to a database. The paper demonstrates how a JavaScript widget accessing this API as a client can be easily integrated into existing data catalogues, such as the ECOPotential web service or the GEOEssential data catalogue, to collectively collect and share knowledge.