Harnessing the power of volunteers, the internet and Google Earth to collect and validate global spatial information using Geo-Wiki

See, L. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2665-7065, Fritz, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0420-8549, Perger, C., Schill, C., McCallum, I. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5812-9988, Schepaschenko, D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7814-4990, Dürauer, M., Sturn, T., et al. (2015). Harnessing the power of volunteers, the internet and Google Earth to collect and validate global spatial information using Geo-Wiki. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 98 324-335. 10.1016/j.techfore.2015.03.002.

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Project: Operational Global Carbon Observing System (GEOCARBON, FP7 283080), Stimulating Innovation for Global Monitoring of Agriculture and its Impact on the Environment in support of GEOGLAM (SIGMA, FP7 603719), Harnessing the power of crowdsourcing to improve land cover and land-use information (CROWDLAND, FP7 617754), Exploring the potential for agricultural and biomass trade in the Commonwealth of Independent States (AGRICISTRADE, FP7 612755), Geo-Wiki

Abstract

Information about land cover and land use is needed for a wide range of applications such as nature protection and biodiversity, forest and water management, urban and transport planning, natural hazard prevention and mitigation, monitoring of agricultural policies and economic land use modelling. A number of different remotely-sensed global land cover products are available but studies have shown that there are large spatial discrepancies between these different products when compared. To address this issue of land cover uncertainty, a tool called Geo-Wiki was developed, which integrates online and mobile applications, high resolution satellite imagery available from Google Earth, and data collection through crowdsourcing as a mechanism for validating and improving globally relevant spatial information on land cover and land use. Through its growing network of volunteers and a number of successful data collection campaigns, almost 5 million samples of land cover and land use have been collected at many locations around the globe. This paper provides an overview of the main features of Geo-Wiki, and then using a series of examples, illustrates how the crowdsourced data collected through Geo-Wiki have been used to improve information on land cover and land use.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: land cover; land use; crowdsourcing; volunteered graphic information; validation; Geo-Wiki
Research Programs: Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM)
Depositing User: IIASA Import
Date Deposited: 15 Jan 2016 08:53
Last Modified: 04 Jan 2024 13:54
URI: https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/11389

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