A STUDY ON THE USE OF CROWDSOURCED INFORMATION FOR URBAN DECISION-MAKING

Abstract

Social Media have become commonplace for citizens. The popularity of social media aff ords a great opportunity to investigate how citizens experience the landscape, their feelings towards it, and its perceived impact over citizens. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have become an important tool to support decision making, as the use of geospatial technologies enables the construction of complex databases, quick access to data, and development of predictive scenarios. Combination of social media and GIS has been called crowdsourced mapping and represents a promising opportunity for their integrated study. In this paper we aim to evaluate contributed versus volunteered crowdsourced information. As a case study, we analyze information from the period in which the FIFA World Cup took place (Brazil, June and July 2014), obtained from social media services Twitter and Instagram, about the Pampulha Region in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, to show the analytical potential of contributed information. We seek to create a methodology to identify the possibilities for studying the landscape and its essential urban values, as reported by users of the analyzed area, and according to the stakeholders' point of view.