Recording points of interest using GPS whilst working in the field is an established technique in geographical fieldwork, where the user's current position is used as the spatial reference to be captured; this is known as geo-tagging. We outline the development and evaluation of a smartphone application called Zapp that enables geo-tagging of any distant point on the visible landscape. The ability of users to log or retrieve information relating to what they can see, rather than where they are standing, allows them to record observations of points in the broader landscape scene, or to access descriptions of landscape features from any viewpoint. The application uses the compass orientation and tilt of the phone to provide data for a line of sight algorithm that intersects with a Digital Surface Model stored on the mobile device. We describe the development process and design decisions for Zapp present the results of a controlled study of the accuracy of the application, and report on the use of Zapp for a student field exercise. The studies indicate the feasibility of the approach, but also how the appropriate use of such techniques will be constrained by current levels of precision in mobile sensor technology. The broader implications for interactive query of the distant landscape and for remote data logging are discussed.

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ABSTRACT:Volunteer geographical information (VGI) either in the context of citizen science, active crowdsourcing and even passive crowdsourcing has been proven useful in various societal domains such as natural hazards, health status, disease epidemic and biological monitoring. Nonetheless, the variable degrees or unknown quality due to the crowdsourcing settings are still an obstacle for fully integrating these data sources in environmental studies and potentially in policy making. The data curation process in which a quality assurance (QA) is needed is often driven by the direct usability of the data collected within a data conflation process or data fusion (DCDF) combining the crowdsourced data into one view using potentially other data sources as well. Using two examples, namely land cover validation and inundation extent estimation, this paper discusses the close links between QA and DCDF in order to determine whether a disentanglement can be beneficial or not to a better understanding of the data curation process and to its methodology with respect to crowdsourcing data. Far from rejecting the usability quality criterion, the paper advocates for a decoupling of the QA process and the DCDF step as much as possible but still in integrating them within an approach analogous to a Bayesian paradigm.

This paper provides a two-phase study to compare alternative techniques for augmenting landscape scenes on geography fieldtrips. The techniques were: a pre-prepared acetate overlay; a custom-designed mobile field guide; a locative media app on a smartphone; a virtual globe on a tablet PC; a head-mounted virtual reality display, and a geo-wand style mobile app. In one field exercise the first five techniques were compared through analysis of interviews and student video diaries, combined with direct observation. This identified a particular challenge of how to direct user attention correctly to relevant information in the field of view. To explore this issue in more detail, a second field exercise deployed 'Zapp', a bespoke geo-wand-style app capable of retrieving information about distant landscape features. This was evaluated using first-person video and spatial logging of in-field interactions. This paper reflects upon the relative merits of these approaches and highlights particular challenges of using technology to mimic a human field guide in pointing out specific aspects of the landscape scene. We also explore the role of students acting as design informants and research co-participants, which can be mutually beneficial in promoting a critical appreciation of the role of technology to support learning about the landscape.