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SUMMARY:Mind the Map - Modelling Sustainability of Urban Crowd-Sourcing - 
 Dr Licia Capra - University College London
DTSTART:20130508T131500Z
DTEND:20130508T141500Z
UID:TALK44786@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:David Greaves
DESCRIPTION:Urban crowd-sourcing has become a popular paradigm to harvest\
 nspatial information about our evolving cities directly from citizens.\nOp
 enStreetMap (OSM) is an example of such paradigm\, where citizens are\ntur
 ned into cartographers and engaged in building and maintaining a map\nof t
 he world. Research has shown that OSM information is accurate\, by\ncompar
 ing it with centrally maintained spatial information\nsuch as Ordnance Sur
 vey. However\, we find that coverage is low and non\nuniformly distribute
 d\, thus challenging the long-term sustainability of\nurban crowd-sourcing
  as a mechanism to map the whole world. In this\ntalk\, we present recent 
 work we have conducted to understand and model\nthe sustainability of urba
 n crowd-sourcing. Taking OpenStreetMap as a\ncase study\, we first investi
 gate what contextual factors correlate with\ncoverage of OSM information i
 n urban settings. We find that population\ndensity\, distance from the cit
 y centre\, and socio-economic factors have\na direct correlation with info
 rmation coverage. Inspired by models of\nphysical urban growth developed b
 y urban planners\, we then build a model\nof digital growth of crowd-sourc
 ed spatial information that takes into\nconsideration such contextual fact
 ors. Using this model\, we build a\nclassification tool that  predicts\, a
 t a fine level of spatial\ngranularity\, what areas of the city are likely
  to be neglected by\nOpenStreetMap contributors. These predictions can be 
 used to organise\nevents (e.g.\, OSM mapping parties) that direct crowd-so
 urcing towards\nareas in need. We conclude with an analysis of the direct 
 and indirect\nimpact of mapping parties on user contributions in both the 
 short and\nlong term.
LOCATION:Lecture Theatre 1\, Computer Laboratory
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