Week 2 - Crowdsourcing Data

In this video, you heard from Dahlia Domain of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria. Crowdsourcing data is a phenomenon that has grown over the last decade. In crowdsourcing projects, citizens contribute data for a specific task that could otherwise not be collected with existing resources.

Dahlia showed you some different kinds of crowdsourcing applications. You can use some of these from the comfort of your home using just your computer or mobile device. Others require you to go outside and collect land-related data in the field using your smartphone.

Dahlia talked about Geo-Wiki, a crowdsourcing tool used for the collection of land cover data. Citizens are asked to look at high-resolution satellite images and identify different features of the landscape. The data collected have been used in various land cover mapping applications.

FotoQuest Go and CityOases are mobile apps for crowdsourcing land-related data in the field. These data can provide information that can be used by planners, decision-makers and researchers.