Background

Numerous crowdsourcing projects have collected vast volumes of geospatial content through mobile devices, in many cases referred to as Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). The reusability of such data outside of its native application still remains an issue. For instance, despite the fact that there is an awareness of using VGI as a source to fill gaps in official data (Núñez-Redó et al., 2011) and satellite images, in reality, integration of VGI with official data sources is a challenging task due to the disparate nature of VGI. However, if the processing of VGI is handled properly, it can serve to ground-truth satellite images.

Tasks

In this research you will first study the potential and the issues of the integration of VGI (from mobile devices), in-situ sensors and satellite images. Then you will devise procedures to integrate/fuse these data sources in a client/server setting for one or two use cases. The AfriAllience project (see IHE 2016), which aims to disclose the use of three abovementioned types of data in Africa, can serve as a basis. You will develop a prototype by using an open source mobile mapping tool (e.g., ODK 2016) and ILWIS (ILWIS 2016a, 2016b) as open source GIS/RS tool.

Expected results

Your MSc project will result in a tested prototype application and an MSc thesis that reports on procedures for the integration of VGI and satellite data and the design and implementation of the prototype and recommends developers what to do and what not to do when they want to set up such a system.