Volunteered Geographic Information

Volunteered geographic information (VGI) refers to geographic information that is acquired and made available to others through the voluntary activities of either individuals or groups. The growth of VGI in the past 10 years is a result of several related technological advances and scientific practices, such as Web 2.0, Geoweb, mobile technologies, neogeography, citizen science, crowdsourcing, and open science. VGI often differs from conventionally produced forms of geographic information, including the types of information produced and the approaches used to acquire it, the methods and techniques for working with it, and the social processes that mediate its creation. As VGI is rapidly merging with the stream of big data, issues regarding its quality assurance, methodology of use, and legal/ethical implications have been raised. As an alternative data source that in many ways complements traditional sources such as those produced by national mapping agencies and cartographic corporations, VGI has been shown to be a valuable data source for a variety of applications, especially in low‐resource areas and time‐sensitive situations.