Quantitative Assessment of Pragmatic Quality of Volunteered Geographic Information Using Fuzzy Linguistic Quantifiers and OWA Operator

In spite of huge advantages, Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) still lacks a mechanism for quality control. As such, the quality of this kind of data is believed to be the main limitation in its use. Many scientists have worked on this issue so far, but the majority of the researches have focused on the internal and external quality of VGI. Pragmatic quality has usually been ignored, despite its significance. This paper proposes a method for assessing pragmatic quality of volunteered geographic information based on linguistic quantifiers and OWA operator. In this method, to assess the pragmatic quality, first internal and external quality of volunteered data should be assessed. In order to evaluate internal and external quality a few mid-level and low-level indicators are defined for each and by applying OWA on these indicators the value of quality is computed. As an example, this method is used to assess pragmatic quality of volunteered data gathered about the vandalism of historic monuments of Tehran, Iran. The results of this research showed that internal quality has a greater impact on pragmatic quality than external quality and that the expertise of the volunteer has a remarkable impact on the pragmatic quality of data he or she has produced.