Preface del volume "Mobile Information Systems Leveraging Volunteered Geographic Information for Earth Observation"

Volunteered geographic information is being investigated as a novel opportunity to enrich research projects with widespread ground data that can be exploited in Earth observation, including monitoring of natural, environmental, human-driven and social changes and events. The volume is organized into three parts, introducing the reader to three basic aspects involved in VGI creation by mobile information systems and its use for Earth observation. The first part focuses on the analysis of volunteers ' engagement in relation to their expertise, motivation, types the task they are called to perform, means and tools provided to them for creating VGI. The second part of the volume is dedicated to the management of VGI within information systems for Earth observation, i.e., to introduce methods, techniques Introduction and algorithms that can be applied to exploit VGI for distinct Earth observation purposes. The last part of the volume focuses on the crucial aspects of VGI questionable quality and the proposal of methods and techniques to cope with it.