The widespread availability of
GPS-equipped mobile devices
and the development of VGI
communities such as Wikimapia
or OpenStreetMap (OSM) enables
the general public to collaboratively
collect, share and distribute
geographic information. In recent
years, the quantity and quality of
VGI has grown significantly to the
extent that VGI represents a serious
alternative to geographic information collected by professionals. Th ese
communities are also collecting
increasing amounts of information
about buildings: recently, the
building footprints in OSM surpassed
the amount of data on streets.
With the integration of additional
sensors such as acceleration
sensors, barometers, Near Field
Communication (NFC) and images,
future mobile phones will enable the
collection of indoor information.
Th is indoor information can then –
if an appropriate methodology for
modelling is available – be provided
as VGI. However, the existing
(outdoor) VGI methodologies need
to be extended with methodologies
for collecting and sharing indoor
information. Th e authors designed
an indoor mapping schema for OSM
since, with more than 500,000
members, it is currently one of the
largest VGI communities.