Supporting the participation of women in VGI projects

01.08.2011 - 31.05.2013
Forschungsförderungsprojekt
User Generated Content (UGC) created through blogs, forums, websites and online communities have gained great importance. A variety of platforms for collaboratively collecting geographic information have been created. Data collected in this way are also called Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). A typical example of VGI is OpenStreetMap (OSM) ¿ a project creating a free map of the world based on open source software and data. The number of contributors has been growing continuously over the last years. However, the number of women who contribute to OpenStreetMap is only about 3%. This has the following implications: Collecting data from a broader user group, including women, would increase the amount of available information for important problems (e.g., collecting up-to-date information in disaster zones). This can only happen if these sites become more acceptable to these users. Apart from the number of contributors, the quality of the data is of importance. Different groups of people have different needs and requirements for geographic data that are not represented in current collaborative databases. One of the major advantages of VGI is that spatial data for a lot of different types of use can be acquired, independent of commercial vendors. This potential might not be fully used in current VGI projects if nearly all contributors are young, well-educated males. Therefore, the aims of fem2map are: Investigating the reasons for the low rate of female participation in VGI projects; developing strategies to incorporate women in VGI; identifying what impact the low rate of women has on VGI; propose an extended data model that allows for the consideration and collection of data that is more aligned with the needs of women. Fem2map would like to make a contribution to support the participation of women in VGI projects and to ensure the consideration of different backgrounds and requirements for collaboratively collected geographic information.

Personen

Projektleiter_in

Projektmitarbeiter_innen

Institut

Grant funds

  • FFG - Österr. Forschungsförderungs- gesellschaft mbH (National) Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG)

Forschungsschwerpunkte

  • Media Informatics and Visual Computing: 100%

Schlagwörter

DeutschEnglisch
nutzergenerierte GeodatenerfassungVGI
Open SourceOpen Source

Externe Partner_innen

  • Salzburg Research

Publikationen