A taxonomy of quality assessment methods for volunteered and crowdsourced geographic information

Castro Degrossi, L., Porto de Albuquerque, J. , dos Santos Rocha, R. and Zipf, A. (2018) A taxonomy of quality assessment methods for volunteered and crowdsourced geographic information. Transactions in GIS, 22(2), pp. 542-560. (doi: 10.1111/tgis.12329) (PMID:29937686) (PMCID:PMC5993263)

Abstract

The growing use of crowdsourced geographic information (CGI) has prompted the employment of several methods for assessing information quality, which are aimed at addressing concerns on the lack of quality of the information provided by non-experts. In this work, we propose a taxonomy of methods for assessing the quality of CGI when no reference data are available, which is likely to be the most common situation in practice. Our taxonomy includes 11 quality assessment methods that were identified by means of a systematic literature review. These methods are described in detail, including their main characteristics and limitations. This taxonomy not only provides a systematic and comprehensive account of the existing set of methods for CGI quality assessment, but also enables researchers working on the quality of CGI in various sources (e.g., social media, crowd sensing, collaborative mapping) to learn from each other, thus opening up avenues for future work that combines and extends existing methods into new application areas and domains.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: The authors would like to acknowledge funding provided by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through the Global Challenges Research Fund. Lívia Castro Degrossi is grateful for the financial support from Coordenaç~ao de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Grant/Award No. 88887.091744/ 2014-01) and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnologico (Grant/Award No. 201626/2015- 2). Jo~ao Porto de Albuquerque is grateful for the financial support from Coordenaç~ao de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Grant/Award No. 88887.091744/2014-01) and Universität Heidelberg. Roberto dos Santos Rocha is grateful for the financial support from the Marie Curie Actions/Initial Training Networks (Grant/Award No. 317382) and Federal University of Bahia.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Porto de Albuquerque, Professor Joao
• Authors: Castro Degrossi, L., Porto de Albuquerque, J., dos Santos Rocha, R., and Zipf, A.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Urban Studies
• Journal Name: Transactions in GIS
• Publisher: Wiley
• ISSN: 1361-1682
• ISSN (Online): 1467-9671
• Published Online: 19 April 2018
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2018 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Transactions in GIS 22(2): 542-560
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence