A linguistic decision making approach to assess the quality of volunteer geographic information for citizen science

  • Authors:

  • Gloria Bordogna;Paola Carrara;Laura Criscuolo;Monica Pepe;Anna Rampini

  • Affiliations:

  • CNR-IDPA, via Bassini 9, 20133 Milano, Italy and CNR-IREA, via Bassini 15, 20133 Milano, Italy;CNR-IREA, via Bassini 15, 20133 Milano, Italy;CNR-IREA, via Bassini 15, 20133 Milano, Italy;CNR-IREA, via Bassini 15, 20133 Milano, Italy;CNR-IREA, via Bassini 15, 20133 Milano, Italy

  • Venue:
  • Information Sciences: an International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2014

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.07

Visualization

Abstract

The paper analyses the challenges and problems posed by the use of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) in citizen science and a proposal is formulated for assessing VGI quality based on a linguistic decision making approach so as to allow its feasible use for scientific purposes. VGI quality is represented by indicators at distinct levels of granularity which take into account the distinct components of the VGI items. The quality indicators represent both the extrinsic quality, depending on the characteristics and reputation of the sources of information; the intrinsic quality, depending on the distinct accuracy and precision of information; and, last but not least, the pragmatic quality, depending on the user needs and intended purposes. In order to assess the pragmatic quality of VGI items, a linguistic decision making approach is defined that allows users to rank and finally filter the VGI items based on the satisfaction of distinct criteria expressed by means of both linguistic terms, defining soft constraints on the distinct quality indicators, and linguistic aggregators, defining fuzzy operators which combine the satisfaction degrees of the soft constraints at distinct hierarchical levels to yield the final satisfaction of the VGI items. Finally, an example of quality assessment in a glaciological citizen science project is discussed.