Welcome!

This blog is a companion to the course Volunteered Geographic Information: Fundamentals and Applications in Humanitarian Affairs and Crisis Management offered in the GI Sicence Research Group of the Institute of Geography of the University of Heidelberg by Prof. Dr. João Porto de Albuquerque (Visiting Scholar, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil), Prof. Dr. Alexander Zipf (Chair of the GI Science Research Group), and Svend Schellhorn (Master Student in Geography).
We will discuss in this course Volunteered Geographic Information, that is information which is collected, gathered and disseminated by citizens and volunteers. The most prominent example of VGI today is probably the open mapping innitative OpenStreetMap. The emphasis of our course lies in the emerging use of VGI for managing humanitarian crisis events, including the role of Digital Humanitarian Volunteers and Volunteer and Technical Communities (V&TCs).

This blog will bring contributions from the students for each of themes that we will cover in the course:

1. Neogeography und "Volunteered Geographic Information" - Theory and Basic Concepts
2. Citizen Science: Participative Methods and VGI
3. Who are the Volunteers? The motivation of VGI contributors and V&TCs
4. OpenStreetMap: Mapping in the crowdsourcing principle (HOT OSM as an example)
5. Basic Concepts in Disaster Management: Risk, Vulnerability and Resilience
6. Disaster Management Cycle: Preparedness, Response, Recovery, Mitigation
7. Actors in the Humanitarian Aid
8. Information Management in Humanitarian Affairs
9. GIS and Remote Sensing in Disaster Management: Potential and Application Cases
10. The role of social media in Disaster Management
11. Crisis Mapping: Background and Potential
12. Software Tools for Crisis Mapping and Social Media Monitoring
13. Case Study: Social media and Corwdsourcing in Haiti
14. Challenges for VGI in Disaster Management: Credibility and Quality

We warmly welcome you to check out our next posts and join the discussion!