Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge: Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) in Theory and Practice

This 387 page 2013 book provides 20 chapters focused on various components of crowdsourcing and Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI).  In particular, the chapters in this book explore both the theories and applications of crowdsourcing for geographic knowledge production. The book includes three sections, focusing on: VGI, public participation and citizen science; geographic knowledge production and place inference; and emerging applications and new challenges. The authors argue that future progress in VGI research depends largely on building strong linkages with diverse geographic scholarship. The phenomenon of VGI is part of the transformation on how geographic data, information, and knowledge are produced and circulated, and the book situates VGI within the context of big data and the emergence of data-intensive inquiry.

This book will be of particular use to PVE researchers and practitioners interested in the various uses of crowdsourcing and particular those with an interest in VGI. The book’s many contributors situate VGI research in geography’s core concerns with space and place, and offer several ways of addressing persistent challenges of quality assurance in VGI. The book positions VGI as part of a shift toward hybrid epistemologies, and potentially a fourth paradigm of data-intensive inquiry across the sciences. The book also considers the implications of VGI and the exaflood, the growing torrent of data on the Internet, for further time-space compression and new forms, degrees of digital inequality, the renewed importance of geography, and the role of crowdsourcing for geographic knowledge production.

Full ebook is available here >>