VGI contributors' awareness of geographic information quality and its effect on data quality: a case study from Japan

• Published in: International journal of cartography Vol. 5; no. 2-3; pp. 214 - 224
• Main Authors: Yamashita, Jun, Seto, Toshikazu, Nishimura, Yuichiro, Iwasaki, Nobusuke
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis 04.05.2019
• Subjects: data quality assessment; OpenStreetMap; positional accuracy; volunteered geographic information
• ISSN: 2372-9333; 2372-9341; 2372-9341
• DOI: 10.1080/23729333.2019.1613086

In many countries, geospatial data are typically provided by public institutions. Cities have been mapped using such public data. On the other hand, the demand for geospatial data has been diversifying, given the requirements for mapping cities. To respond to demands for new geospatial data, creation of citizen-generated open data and volunteered geographic information (VGI) have recently become popular. However, the quality of such open data and VGI are not always guaranteed. The number of studies on quality assessments of VGI have increased in recent years. The present study aimed to identify OpenStreetMap (OSM), one type of VGI, as well as contributors' awareness of data quality, and the relationships between their awareness and the positional accuracy of the OSM data contributed by them. The results showed that awareness or lack of the positional accuracy did not affect the quality of the OSM data created by the contributors. These findings suggest that the crowdsourcing approach might not guarantee the data quality of VGI.