Toward a participatory VGI methodology: crowdsourcing information on regional food assets

Abstract

Local knowledge has been underrepresented in food-related policies and planning. The goal of this research was to engage members of a local food community and generate volunteered geographic information (VGI) on community food assets. During active data collection, over 200 food assets were reported. This paper details the systematic approach used to create VGI, which emphasizes the socio-cultural context surrounding the mapping technology. The project began with an identified need to connect to and learn from the local food community. The participants were drawn from active food system stakeholders, and a Geoweb infrastructure was selected based on publicly available crowdsourcing tools. The resulting VGI is presented according to system functions: input (Web traffic, contributors, input types), management (contribution vetting, privacy), analysis (typology of input), and presentation (sharing the submitted data). Despite limitations, this study revealed a hyper-local and community-driven perspective on food assets, opened access to government and private data, and increased the transparency and accessibility of information on the regional food system. This research also revealed that there is a growing need for intermediaries who can bridge the gap between experts in the subject matter and experts in digitally enabled participation, and a need for non-government open data repositories.

Participatory Rural Spatial Planning Based on a Virtual Globe-Based 3D PGIS

“…Local villagers are the major source of local knowledge. Web-based PPGISs have been widely used for public information collection (for example, Fast and Rinner [46] and Gomez-Barron et al [47] and McLAREN [48]). However, local villagers usually have limited computer knowledge and are seldom able to skillfully use these professional tools.…”

Towards a Participatory Methodology for Community Data Generation to Analyse Urban Health Inequalities: A Multi-Country Case Study

“…To tackle this challenge, our methodological approach is based on participatory and collaborative mapping, but in addition to the methods adopted to by similar initiatives [22] [24], the present approach introduces further steps of data production and validation to maximise spatial accuracy, whilst simultaneously engaging community members. Given the high density of poor urban neighbourhoods such as slums and their morphological variety across countries [25], using a methodology which is sensitive to the contextual characteristics is of crucial importance to creating a base for representative urban policies.…”

Biodiversity in Food Consumption Studies

“…Similar approaches to map food biodiversity, using participatory methodologies with the support of family farmers, rural communities, and others, can be applied. For instance, the use of geographic information (Fast and Rinner 2018), volunteered from crowd-mapping services, might well be an appropriate solution. 3 We see citizen science as strategic, because it offers new approaches to realize the biodiverse food plant research agenda.…”