Role of Volunteered Geographic Information in Advancing Science

1. Do you think the volume of VGI available in your area of research and/or practice is adequate or deficient? If deficient, what can be done to increase it?
2. How easy is it to collect VGI for scientific experiments?  What can be done to ensure that VGI is as useful as possible in science?
3. How valuable are developing standards and (software) tools for collecting VGI for the scientific community?  What additional steps can be taken to develop and promote standards?
4. What's the relative role and utility of social cyber networks (such as Facebook) vs. crowdsourcing /citizen science based approaches?

Open Discussions

Panelist Presentations:
Stéphane Roche
Teresa Scassa
Daniel Begin
Guillaume Touya

Questions:

1. How do you think national mapping agencies (NMAs) like Geomatics Canada changed the way they perceive VGI data and their usefulness?
2. What are the main technical and organizational challenges faced by NMAs to make a better integration of VGI and authoritative data happen?
3. Should we talk about integration of authoritative and VGI data or rather talk about interactions? What would be the differences?
4. Should VGI systems map space or places?
5. Why would VGI contributors be expected to provide error-free data, while national mapping agencies don't, and often say they are not responsible for accidents that may be related to their maps?

Open Discussions