Advances in Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and Citizen Sensing
In 2007, Mike Goodchild introduced the term Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) to capture the idea of citizens as sensors, collecting and sharing location-based information online and via mobile devices. We often cite OpenStreetMap as the most successful example of VGI today. Yet there have been so many advances since 2007 that have driven (and continue to drive) new and innovative applications of VGI. The ubiquity of location-enabled mobile phones, the proliferation of low-cost sensors that measure many different environmental variables, recent advances in virtual and augmented reality, and the increasing access to very high-resolution images of the Earth, from satellites to drones to street level imagery, are just some examples of the technologies and big data sets that have contributed to a diversity of VGI applications, and the recognition that VGI is a robust and growing source of data.
VGI is playing an ever-important role in a world faced with climate change, environmental degradation, social inequalities and natural disasters. The need for more spatially explicit and up-to-date data remains one of the largest challenges in monitoring the environmental and socio-economic health of countries, cities, and neighbourhoods, and one that VGI can help to address. At the same time, citizens are becoming increasingly empowered through data collection to improve their well-being, to gather evidence for making change, to support humanitarian efforts and to become producers of data sets that can have positive impacts. This Article Collection explores how different applications of VGI have made an impact on filling key data and research gaps, empowered citizens in diverse ways, and contributed to addressing current environmental and social challenges.
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