1. Social Multimedia as Volunteered Geographic Information: Crowdsourcing What-Is-Where Through Proximate Sensing Shawn Newsam Associate Professor and Founding Faculty Electrical Engineering & Computer Science University of California at Merced California Geographic Information Association 3rd Annual Geospatial Summit UC Merced April 5, 2013

2. Volunteered Geographic Information Wikipedia: Wikipedia: Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) is the harnessing of tools to create, assemble, and disseminate geographic data provided voluntarily by individuals (Goodchild, 2007). Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) is the harnessing of tools to create, assemble, and disseminate geographic data provided voluntarily by individuals (Goodchild, 2007).

3. VGI: OpenStreetMap – Sept. 2009 “OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you.” “OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you.”

4. GoogleMaps – Sept. 2009

5. VGI: Flickr 178,016,405 geotagged items (Mar. 14, 2012) 178,016,405 geotagged items (Mar. 14, 2012)

6. VGI: Flickr

7. Social Multimedia as VGI I stipulate that georeferenced social multimedia can be considered as a form of VGI. I stipulate that georeferenced social multimedia can be considered as a form of VGI. Multimedia = images and video Multimedia = images and video It is a often a serendipitous form since its original purpose might not have been for geographic discovery. It is a often a serendipitous form since its original purpose might not have been for geographic discovery. Research challenge is how to extract useful geographic information in an automated fashion. Research challenge is how to extract useful geographic information in an automated fashion.

8. Remote sensing: using overhead images of distant scenes to derive geographic information. satellite image (Google Maps)National Land Cover Database (USGS)

9. Proximate sensing: use ground-level images of objects and scenes. Land Cover Map 2000 (UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology) ? community-contributed photos (Geograph Britain and Ireland project) study area: 100x100 km region in southeastern UK (region TQ in National Grid)

10. community-contributed photos (Geograph Britain and Ireland project) Proximate sensing: use ground-level images of objects and scenes.

11. Image Analysis

12. Current Work: Land Use