Abstract
In the early 2000s, Web 2.0 technologies prompted an explosion in geographic data that include Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), a set of methods that brings user contribution to the center of data acquisition. These methods increase the capacity of community-driven and local initiatives to create geographic information and close existing data gaps in authoritative sources. Informal settlements constitute an example of where a major vacuum exists, as maps are often incomplete, outdated, or imprecise. However, quality issues regarding VGI frequently arise, as do questions on citizen participation and empowerment. This study explores how different VGI approaches support citizen participation and user empowerment, in tandem with the opportunities and limitations of VGI to map informal settlements in Latin America. We propose a VGI comparison framework to evaluate citizen participation in two informal settlement mapping projects in São Paulo and Mexico City. Such a framework includes four categories: (1) required material resources; (2) required geographic information system (GIS) literacy; (3) user agency; and (4) involvement of research subjects. The results demonstrate that higher citizen involvement in São Paulo stems from the inclusion of residents through participatory mapping methods. Conversely, the Mexico City’s case demonstrates how crowdsourcing may happen irrespective of and contrary to the goals from those represented in the data. We suggest that VGI is a powerful tool for generating timely and precise data on informal settlements, but research subjects should have agency over geographic information collected about them.
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Acknowledgements
Techo acquired the data about São Paulo and kindly provided them to the authors. This paper and its affirmations do not represent Techo policy or opinions and are of sole responsibility of its authors. This research was supported by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) through a doctoral research grant. This publication contributes to the Cluster of Excellence Climate, Climatic Change and Society (CLICCS), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), and to the Project “Geographic Info on the COVID-19 pandemic” (COVIDGI), supported by the Volkswagen Foundation. Underlying RapidEye data has been contributed on behalf of the German Aerospace Center through funding by the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Energy.
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Santos, A.P., Pessoa Colombo, V., Heider, K., Rodriguez-Lopez, J.M. (2023). Comparing Volunteered Data Acquisition Methods on Informal Settlements in Mexico City and São Paulo: A Citizen Participation Ladder for VGI. In: López, S. (eds) Socio-Environmental Research in Latin America. The Latin American Studies Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22680-9_12
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