Andrew, Perhaps you don't care too much about the relations between the open source community and the "super elite and private VGI-dubbing" group that met at Santa Barbara, but, if you do, please note that statements like this are needlessly alienating.
The meeting was well announced in various forums, including, I believe, on Geowanking. The meeting was open to everyone who submitted a position paper and application and got selected -- they had about 35-40 folks from all over the spectrum -- private industry (ESRI, Teleatlas, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo...), academia (too many to list), open source (myself, Steve Coast...), government (well, at least US govt. -- CIA, NGIA, CERL, Los Alamos National Labs), non-profit (National Geographic...). I don't consider myself super elite nor private, yet I was there. This was indeed the first, afaik, attempt by academia to recognize this "phenomenon" that we, in the open source community, have been living for the past many years. Nevertheless, it just seems bad form to disabuse or denigrate this initiative in any way whatsoever. Glib criticism is just that, nothing more. Here is my summary of the two days of meeting. I hope this helps capture what happened in that "VGI-dubbing" session -- Workshop on Volunteered Geographic Information Dec 13-14, 2007 Upham Hotel, Santa Barbara, CA Approximately 30 participants. The participant list and contributed issues papers are available at http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/projects/vgi/participants.html Presentations ranged from smart sensors for solving global problems (think cell phones that transmit geocoded ambient information, digital traces that we leave everywhere we go such a while swiping a subway card, crossing a traffic light, working at a wifi hotspot, or talking on the cellphone [1] to GPS units that can be extended with low-cost measurement devices: for example, GPS that not only records water locations, but also measures water quality [2]) to VGI from the grassroots where citizens contribute and fill in the gaps that the government can't or won't [3]. OpenStreetMap was presented as a specific case of organized VGI [4] to personalized driving routes [5] VGI implies connectivity. Waldseemüller map was shown as one of the first documented examples of VGI. In today's world, while a formal naming process for placenames exists, technology makes it possible to have multiple names for a single location. VGI itself is described by many different terms: user-generated content/collective intellegence/crowdsourcing/asserted information. Whatever it is called, it leads to empowerment of millions who are untrained and have no authority otherwise. VGI leads to non-uniform coverage as only "interesting" places tend to get covered, and depends on web search engines to allow us to find it. There are three types of sensors: inert or fixed; carried on moving objects; and human beings. A key trait of VGI is that humans act as sensors. This is really "citizen science" in action, and some of its examples are the Christmas bird count and Project GLOBE. Some possible research questions to consider are: Why do people do this? Is it self-promotion (exhibitionism, retaining "ownership" of contributed data); altruism; a desire to fill gaps in the available data; or sharing with friends? Studying the range of authority and assertion, the potential for subversion of information, and the review process which may or may not be localized [6]. Almost 80% of all decisions are based on spatial information. Like in any decision-making, information loops exist in geographic information based decision-making as well. Characterizing VGI quality: completeness, consistency. Notions of place, discovering VGI, integrating VGI and GI, grounding semantics, modeling trust and reputation, liability. Metaphors for web interaction, incentives, social semiosis with VGI. Scaling the loops: from geeks to everybody, from GPS tracks and images to rich data and services, from disconnected loops to interfaced loops, from a few big social networks to many small ones [7]. There is room for both VGI and authoritative GI, for different purposes as well as to validate the former against the latter. One way to think about it is that VGI is "action driven" while GI is "process driven." VGI is basically observational assertions and metadata about such assertions are very important [8]. I offered Amazon's "Real Name" feature as an example of metadata about assertors. ESRI also demonstrated their distributed GIS platform that allows loosely coupled authors and users, mashups, and use of standard APIs with ArcGIS as a system for authoring, serving and using VGI/AGI. ArcGIS server has a crawl-able, KML-tagged "Services Explorer" [9] Jack summarized with his observations on the entire workshop. He commented on GIS and VGI relationship — how can GIS users use VGI data? How does GIS support VGI? Does VGI have the promise of SDI? How can we mine VGI data for experts use? VGI benefits greatly from GIS concepts — spatial referencing system, visualization and query tools, web servers and services, shared data bases. What would GIS professionals say about VGI? Well, a good basemap is important, data models are important, standard workflows to create, maintain, edit and manage data are important, good geographic data requires a lot of work, spatial analysis modeling requires consistent data models, VGI observation data and assertions are valuable but how do we organize and integrate? (Spatial data mining, ETL) Six types of geographic knowledge: geog data, data models, geoprocessing models, geospatial workflows, metadata, maps and visualization. Distinction between amateur and professional systems: LA street lights, NESA street lights (Denmark, allows neighbors to dim their street lights), DHS security, NYC 311, BLM surveys, WWF Forest Watch. Google asserted that we are sitting on the long tail of geographic data (breadth: how many places we know; depth: how much do we know about each of those places). Google has counted seven million "My Maps" instances, 300 million Google Earth activations, more than 50,000 API sites, and estimates 1000 human lifetimes spent looking at satellite photos. They call this the emergence of a geoweb, and are working on creating a new geoweb search [10]. National Geographic is geoenabling its content. They demonstrated Meta Lens, a web based platform for managing geo-enabled content and talked about LandScope America (to be launched in 11 months) in partnership with NatureServe. NG believes that while we are in great shape as far as imagery is concerned, the GIS data are spotty albeit very rich. It needs to be better supported and aggregated. While GIS data are in a pretty good shape at small scales and getting better at very large scales, VGI might help fill in the "gap in the map" in between small and very large scales [11]. Harvard is embarking on creating an "Africa Map," a one-stop shopping for Africa continent base maps, online atlas and index, a gateway to more specific data searches across multiple systems, search non-spatial visual data, and a repository for Africa research projects. There is a lot of data on Africa, but not many know about it. Africa has been mapped by colonial powers for over a hundred years. Most of the continent is LandSat (not very good imagery). Russians have the best mapping of Africa. [12] Don Cooke observed that users of geographic information are two orders of magnitude greater after Google Earth than before [13]. I gave a presentation on the Science Commons Open Data Mark. Last Thursday this was still an "upcoming data mark" which became official three days later! Some of you may know that I have been involved in this initiative since May's Brazil workshop on open access and the subsequent follow-up in Paris in September. The Paris workshop was really where most of the ideas of the Data Mark were crystallized, so I have been able to develop a presentation that I am going around giving wherever I can. I will continue to refine that presentation and offer it online sometime soon. Some of the many, many Research Questions: what are the researchable questions? What disciplines should be involved? What are the roles of the academies, private sector, agencies, public? What is the legal status/ownership of VGI? What points of view are missing? What activities might maintain this momentum? What might be done to publish, reach wider audiences? The findings of the workshop will be published. The final outlet is not determined, but it might be a special issue of a suitable journal such as the Journal of SDI Research (IJSDIR) or the GeoJournal. [1] Sarah Williams. Spatial Information Design Laboratory, Columbia University [2] Rajan Gupta. Los Alamos National Labs [3] Sarah Elwood. University of Washington; David Tulloch. Rutgers University; Morgan Bearden. The National Map, USGS [4] Steve Coast. OpenStreetMap [5] John Krumm. Microsoft. [6] Mike Goodchild. [EMAIL PROTECTED] [7] Werner Kuhn. University of Muenster [8] Jack Dangermond. ESRI [9] David Maguire. ESRI [10] Lior Ron. Google [11] Allen Carroll. National Geographic [12] Ben Lewis. Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis [13] Don Cooke. TeleAtlas On 1/3/08, Andrew Turner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Anyone that attended the super-elite and private VGI-dubbing > discussion in December at UCSB want to enlighten us all on various > interesting matters that were discussed? > > http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/projects/vgi/ > > > On Jan 3, 2008 12:53 PM, michael gould <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > By the way, although Goodchild's GeoJournal article is not so accessible, a > > similar version *is* available at > > > > > > > > http://ijsdir.jrc.it/editorials/goodchild.pdf > > > > > > > > > > > > cheers, > > > > > > > > ------- > > > > Michael Gould > > > > Centro de Visualización Interactiva www.cevi.uji.es > > > > Dept. Information Systems (LSI), Universitat Jaume I, 12071 Castellón, Spain > > > > email: gould (at) lsi.uji.es // email2: mgould (at) opengeospatial.org > > > > research group www.geoinfo.uji.es // personal www.mgould.com > > > > AGILE www.agile-online.org > > > > Vespucci Summer Institute www.vespucci.org > > > > Erasmus Mundus: Master in Geospatial Technologies www.mastergeotech.info > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Geowanking mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking > > > > > > > > -- > Andrew Turner > [EMAIL PROTECTED] 42.2774N x 83.7611W > http://highearthorbit.com Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA > Introduction to Neogeography - http://oreilly.com/catalog/neogeography > > _______________________________________________ > Geowanking mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking > > -- Puneet Kishor http://punkish.eidesis.org/ Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/ Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) http://www.osgeo.org/ _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
