The USGS National Geospatial Program (NGP) has sponsored various forms of volunteer map data collection projects over the past two decades. Citizen cartographers revised many structures during this period, but the program was suspended in 2008. In recent years, new technologies and Internet services have made it easy to georeference many different types of information and share this information with others on map-based Internet platforms and social networking sites. This activity has been referred to as crowdsourcing, and the information produced has been called volunteered geographic information (VGI). In light of this rapidly changing technical landscape, the increasing use of social software for citizen mapping, and the mandates for more transparency and citizen involvement in government, the USGS is expanding volunteer mapping program. The future of The National Map Corps Collaborative pilot projects in Colorado were recently used to test the concept of crowdsourcing. The volunteers' actions were accurate and exceeded USGS quality standards. The significant results of the Colorado pilot have led to a phased, nation-wide expansion of the crowd-sourcing/volunteer project. The following states are operational as of April 2013: Arkansas, Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, Washington, and West Virginia. By the end of 2013, all 50 states will be available for volunteer data collection. For more information about the project and how to participate, go to The National Map Corps web site at [ https://my.usgs.gov/confluence/display/nationalmapcorps/Home ]. Also contact us at NationalMapCorps@USGS.gov if you have questions or comments.

1. {CENSORED} Uses of Volunteered
Geographic Information Systems
James McAndrew
Department of Geography, University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA

2. What is Volunteered Geographic
Information?
 Any user-generated content with a spatial component.
 Private citizens with little formal qualifications in
geography.
 Systems have become prevalent online since 2005
 Systems commonly have less restrictive licensing when
compared to commercial models.
 Less restrictive licensing can lead to more uses than
traditional data sources.

3. Examples of VGI
 OpenStreetMap
 {CENSORED}
 WikiMapia
 Google Map Maker

4. Existing Literature

Dr. Michael Goodchild



Citizens as Sensors: The World of Volunteered Geography
GeoJournal (2007)
Dr. Daniel Sui & Dr. Michael Goodchild



Researching the Geocrowd: Volunteered Geographic
Information and Geographic Research
Annals of the AAG (2011)
Dr. Muki Haklay

How Good is Volunteered Geographic Information? A
Comparative Study of OpenStreetMap and Ordnance Survey
Datasets.

Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design (2010)

5. What is OpenStreetMap?
 “Wikipedia of Maps”
 Allows users to create and distribute “free” geographic
data for the world
 Created as an alternative to expensive commercial
maps and government maps (Such as the UK’s
ordnance survey)
 Started at University College London
 Allows users to add points, lines, and polygons.
 http://osm.org

6. OpenStreetMap Technologies
 The OpenStreetMap website uses Ruby on Rails for its
user management platform.
 The backend database is PostgreSQL.
 The database is not PostGIS
 The database uses “key” : “value” relations which are
indexed by a version number.
 The default mapping system is called Potlatch2
 There are many more ways to contribute to
OpenStreetMap

7. OpenStreetMap Potlatch 2
 Potlatch2 is a Flash based editor for OpenStreetMap.





User-friendly tagging with customizable presets
A flexible undo/redo system
WYSIWYG rendering
Vector Background Layers
Mac/Windows/Linux/Android

8. Tagging in OSM
The OpenStreetMap system uses the “Key” : “Value”
style of data tagging. Each Key / Value is also
references by a Node ID and a Version.

9. OpenStreetMap Backend
Consists of four projects:
 “Rails Port”
 The website itself, user management
 Potlatch editors / iD editor
 The editing interfaces
 Tiles
 A custom tile caching service that makes editing easier for
users.
 Tile Generation
 Mapnik

10. OpenStreetMap Backend
 “Rails Port” is build in Ruby on Rails and requires a
few external packages






Ruby 1.9.3
RubyGems 1.3.1
Postgres 9.1+ (not PostGIS)
Imagemagick
Bundler
Osmosis
 PostGIS is used for rendering, but not for data
collection

11. Research Design & Objectives
 What are the technical and social issues involved with
allowing information to be transferred between the
{CENSORED} projects and the OpenStreetMap
project?
 Information added to the {CENSORED} database.
 OpenStreetMap users do not have easy access to this
information.
 OpenStreetMap contains information from
{CENSORED} sources, but it is no longer up to date.

12. Merit
 Volunteered Geographic Information Systems have
become popular with many users, but each system has
its own set of users.
 These users tend to duplicate effort instead of building
off work in other databases.
 These users also miss out on information in other
databases because the information is not available
through a system with which they are familiar.

13. Impact
 If the Federal projects can share information with
OpenStreetMap, it will lead to standard procedures
that other small VGI systems can follow.
 Data merging can becoming an important part in the
retirement process of VGI systems.

14. Methods: Technical
 Determining what needs to be done to merge the
datasets
 Both the {CENSORED} and OpenStreetMap use a
similar database.
USGS National Map Corps style tags
OpenStreetMap style tags

15. Methods: Technical
 The OpenStreetMap community offers several tools for
manipulating their database.

Osmosis: Java tool for programmable access to the
OpenStreetMap database.

MapRoulette: A system to distribute data errors to a large
group of people for manual interpretation.
 Errors to look for

Omission

Commission

Some errors can be fixed programmatically, but others will
need to be put into a queue for a human to manually decide.

16. Methods: Social
 OpenStreetMap currently has a large community
following.
 This community is weary of data imports, and wants to
ensure that their standards for their areas are met.
 Determining the key people in each area is important to
ensuring that the data import will be successful.

17. Skills and Background
 10+ years of professional computer programming and
database experience.
 Board Member of OpenStreetMap US Chapter 2011-
2013
 Vice President 2012-2013

18. Conclusion
 The goal is to document and overcome the issues with
importing a dataset into the OpenStreetMap database.
 This will require programming and manual effort.
 It will require working with user groups for an
importation that works within their constraints.
 Once these issues are overcome, a final procedure will
be made that can be used for future data imports.