There’s no such thing as the perfect map: quantifying bias in spatial crowd-sourcing datasets

Conference paper

Quattrone, G., Capra, L. and De Meo, P. 2015. There’s no such thing as the perfect map: quantifying bias in spatial crowd-sourcing datasets. Cosley, D., Forte, A., Ciolfi, L. and McDonalld, D. (ed.) CSCW 2015. Vancouver, Canada 14 - 18 May 2015 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). pp. 1021-1032 https://doi.org/10.1145/2675133.2675235
TypeConference paper
TitleThere’s no such thing as the perfect map: quantifying bias in spatial crowd-sourcing datasets
AuthorsQuattrone, G., Capra, L. and De Meo, P.
Abstract

Crowd-sourcing has become a popular form of computer mediated collaborative work and OpenStreetMap represents one of the most successful crowd-sourcing systems, where the goal of building and maintaining an accurate global map of the world is being accomplished by means of contributions made by over 1.2M citizens. However, within this apparently large crowd, a tiny group of highly active users is responsible for the mapping of almost all the content. One may thus wonder to what extent the information being mapped is biased towards the interests and agenda of this group of users. In this paper, we present a method to quantitatively measure content bias in crowd-sourced geographic information. We then apply the method to quantify content bias across a three-year period of OpenStreetMap mapping in 40 countries. We find almost no content bias in terms of what is being mapped, but significant geographic bias; furthermore, we find that bias in terms of meticulousness varies with culture.

ConferenceCSCW 2015
Page range1021-1032
EditorsCosley, D., Forte, A., Ciolfi, L. and McDonalld, D.
ISBN
Hardcover9781450329224
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publication dates
Print01 Mar 2015
Publication process dates
Deposited12 Jan 2021
Accepted01 Dec 2014
Output statusPublished
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1145/2675133.2675235
LanguageEnglish
Book titleProceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing
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