Oakmapper: citizen science, webGIS, and volunteered information

Connors, J., S. Lei and M. Kelly. 2012. Citizen science in the age of neogeography: utilizing volunteered geographic information for environmental monitoring. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102(6): 1267-1289

The interface between neogeography and citizen science has great potential for environmental monitoring, but this nexus has been explored less often than each subject individually. In this article we review the emerging role of volunteered geographic information in citizen science, and present a case study of an integrated toolset that engages multiple types of users (from targeted citizen-based observation networks, expert-driven focused monitoring, and opportunistic crowdsourcing efforts) in monitoring a forest disease in the western U.S. We first introduce the overall challenge of data collection in environmental monitoring projects, and then discuss the literature surrounding an emergent integration of citizen science and volunteered geographical information. We next explore how these methods characterize and underpin knowledge discovery and how multimodal interaction is supported so that large spectrum of contributors can be included. These concepts are summarized in a conceptual model that articulates the important gradients of web-based environmental monitoring: the users, the interaction between users and data, and the types of information generated. Using this model, we critically examine OakMapper.org, a website created by the authors to collect and distribute spatial information related to the spread of a forest disease and discuss many of the core issues and new challenges presented by the intersection of citizen science and VGI in the context of environmental monitoring. We argue that environmental monitoring can benefit from this synergy: the increased emphasis on a diversity of participants in knowledge production may help to reduce the gaps that have in the past divided the public, researchers, and policy makers in such efforts.

Keywords: citizen science, open source, participatory GIS, sudden oak death, volunteered geographic information, Web GIS.

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