Development of web based volunteered geographic information system for improving e-service quality

The rapid increase of the population and the fact that the majority of population lives in cities cause deterioration in the environment. Constantly changing and developing cities face deteriorations in the public services and infrastructure including road, sidewalk, parking, electricity infrastructure or garbage cleaning. Local governments produce solutions so that these problems do not affect city life. In this process, local governments may remain insufficient despite the serious costs involved in rapid identification of problems. Authorities have been using the reports of voluntary participants to identify problems through dedicated call centers. However, due to the lack of or imprecise information such as the location and detail of the problems in the current applications, there may be delays regarding the timely solution of the problems. The aim of this study is to create a common platform for voluntary participants and local governments to report and view citizen-reported problems in a dynamic context. A web-based Volunteered Geographical Information (VGI) application is developed to allow volunteers to report the problems of a city at any time and investigate the existing problems in an interactive manner. Each reported problem is stored in a database, along with the location, description, comments and information of the volunteers and visualized on the map. A participant who is entering the system can view the existing problems on the map, comment on these problems, vote the problem with like or unlike button and input a new problem. In the application, it is aimed to provide the infrastructure for increasing the sustainability of the system and data quality by using a kind of gamification techniques which have comment and like/unlike button for each problem. The effectiveness of the platform is tested by 62 participants who have logged in to the system from 16 different cities of Turkey and 28 of these participants have reported 58 problems. It is seen that 50% of the reported problems is about road infrastructure. This application will provide a dynamic structure to solve problems by increasing social sense of responsibility for more livable cities. It will also improve the quality of e-service by allowing citizens' concerns to be heard in a more transparent and direct way. As a result, the project will raise awareness regarding the importance of VGI both with respect to citizens as well as local authorities.