The compatibility of metadata available at VGI systems with the metadata profile employed at the Brazilian National Spatial Data Infrastructure (INDE-BR)

Abstract:

In the last few years, researchers and mapping agencies have investigated the Volunteered Geographic Information aiming to comprehend how VGI systems could provide information for official databases. For example, Brazil has scarce investments on the field of geoinformation production and, in this case, the volunteered geographic information could be an alternative to increase the speed of geoinformation updating process. For this reason, we have designed this research in order to investigate the compatibility of Volunteered Geographic Information metadata with the Official Brazilian Geospatial Metadata Profile. Therefore, we have selected VGI systems as well as a set of information and proceeded to the comparison of the Brazilian geometadata profile with the chosen VGI content. The results have suggested there is a similarity between the official profile and the metadata available within the evaluated VGI systems. In general, the foregoing results have indicated the need of further studies on assessing VGI content for several purposes, especially on those relative to official database updating, because this volunteered information could promote social, economic and political development of certain regions in which there are not updated geoinformation available, like occurs in Brazil

Keywords:
Brazilian Geospatial Metadata Profile; Volunteered Geographic Information; Brazilian Spatial Data Infrastructure