(1) Background: Due to the advent of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), large datasets of user-generated Points of Interest (POI) are now available. As with all VGI, however, there is uncertainty concerning data quality and fitness-for-use. Currently, the task of evaluating fitness-for-use of POI is left to the data user, with no guidance framework being available which is why this research proposes a generic approach to choose appropriate measures for assessing fitness-for-use of crowdsourced POI for different tasks. (2) Methods: POI are related to the higher-level concept of geo-atoms in order to identify and distinguish their two basic functions, geo-referencing and object-referencing. Then, for each of these functions, suitable measures of positional and thematic quality are developed based on existing quality indicators. (3) Results: Typical use cases of POI are evaluated with regards to their use of the two basic functions of POI, and allocated appropriate measures for fitness-for-use. The general procedure is illustrated on a brief practical example. (4) Conclusion: This research addresses the issue of fitness-for-use of POI on a higher conceptual level by relating it to more fundamental notions of geographical information representation. The results are expected to assist users of crowdsourced POI datasets in determining an appropriate method to evaluate fitness-for-use.
Microsimulation of travel flows aims to assess the effect of decisions taken by travelers based on personal preferences, time-ofday, properties of the infrastructure and expected or perceived travel flows. Route choice represents a particular class of such decisions. Route choice prediction is an essential component of microsimulators. Specification of choice models and estimation of the corresponding parameters based on observations are required in the preparatory stage. Route choice sets need to be established for sampling in the simulation stage.This paper is part of a research project aiming to investigate how route complexity can be integrated in the choice process modeling. In particular routes for bikers collected by GPS tracking in the Dutch FietsTelWeek project in 2016 are analyzed.The data exploration stage and the research project outline are covered. Properties of the publicly available fietstelweek2016 dataset used for model training are investigated in order to assess their effect on prediction results. In order to achieve the project goal, the research project structure is briefly discussed. It is based on the observation that the number of routes recorded for each OD-pair is too small to observe a frequency distribution for complexity. Hence, complexity data are collected for sub-networks that are similar with respect to particular graph properties.
Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) is a growing area of research. This Special Issue aims to capture the main trends in VGI research based on 16 original papers, and distinguishes between two main areas, i.e., those that deal with the characteristics of VGI and those focused on applications of VGI. The topic of quality assessment and assurance dominates the papers on VGI characteristics, whereas application-oriented work covers three main domains: human behavioral analysis, natural disasters, and land cover/land use mapping. In this Special Issue, therefore, both the challenges and the potentials of VGI are addressed.
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