A gamified map application utilising crowdsourcing engaged citizens to refine the quality and accuracy of cadastral index map border markers

ABSTRACT

Due to urban expansion, agriculture, and the long history of the cadastre in Finland, the cadastral index map has millions of border markers that have low spatial accuracy, incomplete feature properties or both. The low quality of the border markers creates issues, such as forest cutting machines cutting from the wrong side of the border. As it is unfeasible for the national mapping agency to remeasure all these border markers, crowdsourcing is seen as a solution. However, the task of locating and measuring border markers requires motivated citizens. Therefore, in this study, a gamified map-based artefact enabling citizens to refine the quality of border markers in the cadastral index map was created. The artefact was designed, developed, demonstrated, and evaluated following the design science research approach. This study demonstrated with high sample size that gamified crowdsourcing is viable for motivating citizens to perform even challenging tasks. Of the applied gamification affordances, progression, points, and leaderboard were the most motivating. It was also found that involving stakeholders early in the creation process and focusing on usability of the artefact resulted in a pleasing user experience for the citizens. The artefact even spun a self-organised mapping party during its demonstration.

KEYWORDS:

• Crowdsourcing
• volunteered geographic information
• gamification
• cadastre
• border marker
• design science research

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the National Land Survey of Finland for enabling this research. We would also like to thank all the citizens who participated in this research by playing Marker Quest (en) / Pyykkijahti (fi).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Geolocation

The study area is the whole of Finland.

Data availability statement

The data gathered in this study consisting of contributions and questionnaire responses by citizens who have given consent. The contributions contain both a unique identifier (an email address or username) and a geolocation (likely to reveal a movement pattern or approximate location of residence). The questionnaire contains unique identifiers that can be connected to the contributions. Therefore, the data in this study is not ethical to be shared as such.