Exploring the use of crowdsourced geographic information in defence: challenges and opportunities

Journal of Geographical Systems https://doi.org/10.1007/s10109-018-0282-5 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Exploring the use of crowdsourced geographic information in defence: challenges and opportunities Nikolaos Papapesios1 · Claire Ellul1 · Amanda Shakir2 · Glen Hart2 Received: 7 November 2017 / Accepted: 8 November 2018 © The Author(s) 2018 Abstract Geographic data are used by United Kingdom (UK) defence for purposes including peacekeeping, humanitarian aid and disaster relief, and fighting wars. The geographic extent of defence data covers the world, with greater focus directed towards areas considered to be of current interest. Traditionally, these data have been officially sourced, e.g. via National Mapping Agencies, but there is now increasing interest in the potential of crowdsourced geographic data to supplement authoritative data where they are not available, outdated or incomplete. Volunteered geographic information (VGI) and social media have the potential to provide this needed missing information. This paper presents initial work carried out in identifying the potential of crowdsourced geographic information in defence. We first provide a short description of the role of UK defence and review the existing literature on crowdsourced geographic information in defence, as well as generic VGI quality assessment methods. We then explore the potential of crowdsourced data in real-world applications: the conflation of VGI and social media with official data for effective decision-making in war zones, and the potential for crowdsourcing to increase effective collaboration between machines and humans in disaster situations. Based on our review, we outline specific research challenges for deploying crowdsourced geographic information in defence, focussing on data quality and fitnessfor-purpose assessment. Defence-specific constraints include the need for rapid quality assessment processes and the need to communicate high-quality information effectively in situations where rapid decision-making is required. Ethical issues are also of fundamental importance. Keywords VGI · Defence · Situational awareness · Crowdsourcing · Social media · Data usability * Claire Ellul 1 Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London (UCL), Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK 2 Cyber and IS Division, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Porton Down, Salisbury, Wiltshire SP4 0JQ, UK 13 Vol.:(0123456789) N. Papapesios et al. Abbreviations DoD Department of Defense (US) DSTL Defence Science and Technology Laboratory DARPA Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (US) GIS Geographic information systems HACs Human-agent collectives JFC Joint Forces Command (UK) MOD Ministry of Defence (UK) OSM OpenStreetMap RN Royal Navy (UK) ISO International Organization for Standardisation iVGI Involuntary geographic information SDSR Strategic Defence and Security Review Social media Collaborative and social computing UAVs Unmanned aerial vehicles UGVs Unmanned ground vehicles VGI Volunteered geographic information 1 Introduction “The next war will be won in the future, not the past. We must go on, or we will go under (Mayfield 2011).” – General of the United States (US) Army Douglas MacArthur, 1931 – In an age where a considerable amount of geographic data are characterised as big, and the volume of data is predicted to continue to increase, a key question has emerged regarding how it can best be managed, collected and analysed. The availability of faster data collection methods, in combination with technological advances including Web 2.0, and low-cost tools such as Global Positioning System (GPS) devices and smartphones, enables the public to participate in the data collection process (Goodchild 2007; Girres and Touya 2010; Haklay 2010; Ali and Schmid 2014; Forghani and Delavar 2014; Neis and Zielstra 2014). The involvement of amateurs, individuals and volunteers in crowdsourcing, which was recently described as “a type of participative online activity in which an individual, an institution, a non-profit organisation or a company proposes to a group of individuals of varying knowledge, heterogeneity, and number, via a flexible open call, the voluntary undertaking of a task” (Estellés Arolas and González Ladrón-de-Guevara 2012, p. 197), generates location-based social networking and collaborative mapping (Franklin et al. 2013; Shanley et al. 2013). This new era, involving a set of geographic information systems (GIS) techniques and tools available to public and non-expert users, is characterised as Neogeography (Haklay et al. 2008) Neogeography as a concept appeared in 2006 and is defined by Turner (2006, p.3) as “the sharing of location information with friends and visitors, helping shape context, and conveying understanding through knowledge of place”. 13 Exploring the use of crowdsourced geographic information… The spatial information produced by volunteers, usually characterised as “contributors” and occasionally as “prosumers” or “produsers”, i.e. people who both produce and use data, is often referred to as volunteered geographic information (VGI). VGI is defined by Goodchild (2007, p.211) as the use of the web to “create, assemble, and disseminate geographic data provided voluntarily by individuals” (see Sect. 3.1 for a more detailed explanation of the terminology). VGI is a part of the Neogeography concept, together with techniques and tools such as Web 2.0, mashups, citizen science and public participation (Heipke 2010), and is considered as an inexpensive, up-to-date and plentiful source of data (Coleman et al. 2009; Fonte et al. 2015). It can be used as either a single source or to enrich and update authoritative data and products (Antoniou 2011). In particular, social media is considered an important source of these data, as it can rapidly inform users about what is happening in the world at any time and place. In the United States (USA), for instance, social media use rose sharply from 5% of internet users in 2005 to 70% in 2015 (Perrin 2015).The availability of georeferenced data through VGI and social media services and platforms such as OpenStreetMap (OSM),1 Wikimapia and Twitter increases the potential of these data to be used in applications relating to areas as varied as disaster management, citizen science, pedestrian navigation and national security. The wide-ranging use of VGI in many domains also reveals its biggest challenge, i.e. the evaluation of its quality (Flanagin and Metzger 2008; Haklay 2010; Antoniou and Skopeliti 2015). Defence, which is the potential VGI application area forming the focus of this paper, collects information from a wide range of official (authoritative) sources in order to inform decisions. The “geographic” aspect is a key component of this information given the importance of geography to defence and the worldwide remit of many defence forces (e.g. see Sect. 2 for UK Defence Roles). However (...truncated)