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Geospatial Data User Survey Results by GeoKnow

In the past month (April 2013), we invited geospatial data consumers and providers, GIS experts and Semantic Web specialists to participate in our Geospatial Data Users Survey. The goal of this survey was to collect general use cases and user requirements from people outside the GeoKnow consortium. We publicised the survey using mailing lists and social networks, and it was available for 25 days. During this period we received 122 responses, of these we had 51 full responses and 71 incomplete ones. Since we were interested in having good quality surveys, so we performed a manual control, which resulted in 39 useful responses – not too bad. In this blog post, we aim to show some interesting results from our survey. If you are interested to learn more about the results of this survey, you can check the public derivable available here.

User Scenarios

One of the goals of this survey was to learn more use cases different from those we already consider in the project. Thus, we asked participants how they use geospatial data in their work. To analyse this question, we grouped answers in different types which is shown in the graph at the right. Most of the scenarios were about visualisation and analysis, followed by geospatial data creation scenarios.

UserScenarionByType

Functionalities

We asked users for the most popular tools they use at their work. Responses to this question were OSM and Google Maps/Earth, as well as other GSI. After we asked about the features they like the most about these tools, participants reflected preference by easy to use and free tools for their work, referring to their popular choices of Google Maps or OSM. Also having an API to interact with the application is important. The fact that applications provided data that can be integrated was also appreciated. GIS applications were considered as difficult. Integration and interoperability were mentioned as goals. Besides the previous question, we were also interested in knowing the missing functionalities that may improve their work. A list of these functionalities grouped by the related work package within GeoKnow is presented in the image below.

Screen Shot 2013-05-06 at 11.06.23 AM

Conclusions

This survey allow us to learn from different use cases, main features used, and desired functionalities, that are to be considered in the creation of the GeoKnow Generator. Some important high level findings from the survey were the emphasis in interoperability and reusability through open APIs and approachable visualisation components, support for common geospatial data formats and geodbs, and the necessity of simple tools to support data integration/reuse from geospatial LOD sources. We also found that some of the ideas of the GeoKnow project are further supported by user requirements like the integration of private and public data and the importance of using the web as an integration platform.

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