Geocrowdsourcing and accessibility for dynamic environments

Abstract

A consequence of modern society's increasing reliance on digital communication is the concurrent multiplication and narrowing of information streams, with many channels of digital information, but channels which are difficult or impossible for some individuals to access. Blind and visually-impaired individuals are often left out of this communication, unless accommodations are carefully planned and made to present the information in a usable form. The context of this research is the realm of assistive geotechnology, where web mapping technology and geographic information systems are used to provide access to enabling information and services. This paper presents research on the development of tools to provide transient obstacle information to blind, visually-impaired, and mobility-impaired individuals through crowdsourcing, and research on the general accessibility of local pedestrian networks under constraints presented by transient and permanent navigation obstacles. We discuss the social and technological dynamics associated with the creation and use of our crowdsourcing system and present our effort for comprehensive quality assessment. We conclude that crowdsourcing is a crucial technique for successful deployment of assistive geotechnology, particularly those that involve navigation, wayfinding, and travel in public space. We find that many public health services and other important resources cannot be accessed dependably without the use of crowdsourcing and other techniques for capturing dynamic, changing environmental conditions. More broadly, this paper concludes by addressing the progression of user-generated and crowdsourced content from static data contributions to dynamic placebased services and the enabling role of assistive geotechnology in providing access and help to blind, visually-impaired, and mobility-impaired individuals.

The Role of Social Factors in the Accessibility of Urban Areas for People with Motor Disabilities

“…Nowadays, using data generated from the Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) has become a hot topic for various applications including routing and navigation. However, there are still many concerns regarding the quality of such datasets [35][36][37][38][39]. In order to provide a reliable and accurate data for the pedestrian network database, in this paper, we used several existing data sources including the collections of the Ville de Québec, 2015, the web portal of the Ville de Québec (i.e., S, W, SeL, SuT, and SuT), and a complementary field survey (i.e., SuQ and HC).…”

Big Data in Natural Disaster Management: A Review

“…Active crowdsourcing platforms have been developed for users to enthusiastically contribute the required information [63][64][65]. These platforms are usually developed and implemented by members of the affected public, or by non-governmental organizations (NGO's) such as Ushahidi (https:// www.ushahidi.com/).…”

Social Moderation and Dynamic Elements in Crowdsourced Geospatial Data: A Report on Quality Assessment, Dynamic Extensions and Mobile Device Engagement in the George Mason University Geocrowdsourcing Testbed

“…To articulate how this dynamic GMU-GcT functionality works, we present the generation of the current, underlying pedestrian network, the basic characteristics of this network, the geocrowdsourced obstacles, and their corresponding influence on routing results. As reviewed in Rice et al (2013aRice et al ( , 2013b 89,90 and Qin et al (2015a) 91 , capturing and documenting obstacle information on pedestrian pathways can be difficult and time consuming, depending on the design of the system and data model specifications. Formal approaches for modeling accessibility obstacles, such as those proposed by Laakso et al (2013) 92 and Chen et al (2015) 93 are thorough, but not well adapted for transient events.…”

“…6,7 Researchers at George Mason University (GMU) have explored the topic of crowdsourced geospatial data extensively, through the support of the United States Army Corps of Engineer's Geospatial Research Laboratory. The results of this work have been published in a series of technical reports, conference proceedings, and journal articles documenting this work from its inception and to the present day , 2012a, 2012b, 2013a2013b, Paez 2014, Qin et al (2015a, 2015b) Rice 2015 8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18 The research work from these publications has been oriented toward exploring the emerging phenomena (Rice et al 2012b), data production techniques (2012b, 2013b), accuracy assessment methods (2012b, 2013b, 2014), fitness-for-use evaluations (2012b), exemplar applications and projects (2012b, 2014), and novel implementations (2012b, 2014). These research topics address the typical early questions associated with a nascent technological transformation, where scientists, academics, and practitioners focus on defining the terminology, placing boundaries on the field, and exploring the early implementations and activity.…”