VGI data (Volunteered
Geographic Information) is an up and coming form of Big Data. What is “Big Data”, you ask? “In recent years
databases in enterprises have grown bigger and bigger. Mobile phones tracking
and logging their users’ behavior, social media applications and an increasing
number of interconnected sensors, create more and more data in increasingly shorter
periods of time. This valuable data is called big data.” VGI’s can be incredibly useful in that it
lets users create a great deal of sharable, valuable data.
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| Tourist density and flows calculated from Flickr database |
However, there are drawbacks to VGI data. One such problem is that “VGI datasets rather
reflect the characteristics of specific online communities of interest but do not
necessarily fulfill the qualities of a random population sample.” VGI is not distributed well over
socioeconomic, physical location, or any sort of variable, really. This is its biggest problem. The future of
VGI data must reconcile this lack of distribution with its enormous potential.
Citation:
Fischer, Florian. “A New but Delicate Geographic Data-Source: VGI as Big Data”. GEO Informatics. 2012.
Fischer, Florian. “A New but Delicate Geographic Data-Source: VGI as Big Data”. GEO Informatics. 2012.
I read this article as well but from what I gathered, in my mind, a big problem is that some VGI is taken from users when that is not the users intent or focus. I think that a better relationship between the user and business should be formed because it could lead to better retrieval of data and a better idea of who the users are.
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