Analyzing Volunteer Geographic Information Accuracy and Determining its Capabilities for Scientific Research Data

Abstract

The primary purpose of this research project is to develop, test, and evaluate a volunteered geographic information (VGI) based approach for collecting data in order to assess its accuracy and relativity to a field of scientific research. As such, this research project is composed of three specific aims: 1) Develop a series of mobile VGI applications, accompanying websites, and databases to enable the collection, storage, visualization, and analysis of VGI data; 2) perform usability studies with specific groups of end-users to evaluate the appropriateness of data model and application design; and 3) determine fitness-for-use of the data within a limited set of commonly-employed of spatial analysis techniques sought after by our test audience.