Volunteered Geographic Information for Disaster Management

Introduction

Internet technology supports citizens not only to access but also to provide information. Information created by citizens, is generally called user-generated content, or - more specifically - volunteered geographic information (VGI) if it is geographic in nature (Goodchild, 2007; Gouveia et al., 2004). Volunteered geographic information is provided by different media: text, images or video. VGI can be regarded as an extension of public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) which intend to empower communities by improved information access and participation (Ghose, 2001; Sieber, 2006). In contrast to PPGIS, which facilitates citizens’ participation, the VGI approach is predominately self-organized. Extensive research in citizen science and PPGIS has proved the usefulness of involving the public in environmental monitoring (e.g. Fore et al., 2001; Engel & Voshell, 2002) and spatial planning (e.g. Weiner & Harris, 2003; Sultana et al., 2008). Recent examples have also shown the usefulness of VGI for disaster management (Goodchild & Glennon, 2010; De Longueville et al., 2010). In order to make VGI a valuable additional information source for disaster management as one component of urban planning to decrease a society’s vulnerability its potential has to be examined systematically, and challenges and solutions have to be identified. This chapter gives an overview about the application of VGI in disaster management and presents existing approaches to tackle important challenges related to VGI.