Volunteered Spatial Data Infrastructure (VSDI) to Develop Collaboration System in Transportation

Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) has key role in management of many human activities by building a suitable information infrastructure for collaboration and cooperation among different data producer organizations and private sectors. SDI traditionally follows top-down approach that that only use data of organizations and private sectors, so does not consider user generated contents. In other side, web 2.0 platforms and GPS equipped devices provide user friendly tools for collaboration people in producing and sharing spatial data recently. This approach has enabled people even with no knowledge in spatial science to produce and share spatial data. These data that called volunteered geographic Information (VGI) are valuable data that could be integrated with other resources of SDI to complete and update SDI resources. VGI describes any type of content that has a geographic element which has been voluntarily collected. In this regard, user-centric SDI approach (the third generation of the SDI) that concentrate on user needs and preferences, while in the past SDI initiatives had concentrated mainly on technological issues such as data harmonization, standardized metadata models, standardized web services for data discovery, visualization and download, supports opportunities of VGI as viable means of updating and enriching SDI. However, some components of SDI should develop to consider valuable VGI resources. In this paper, Volunteered spatial data infrastructure (VSDI) model is proposed. In this model, VGI is used as other resources of spatial information in SDI. In addition, a system is developed based on VSDI concepts in road transportation projects. Road transportation projects and specially route selection project need to transform huge spatial data. In the route planning for road transportation, best route selection process is carried out with consideration of environmental, social and economic effects and as well as supplying technical transportation criteria to access sustainability. This process gets into trouble without suitable programming for public participation in route transportation planning and coordination between different related organizations and private sectors to the project. In addition, lack of sufficient information, lack of updated information or lack of same way to gathering required information, usually is one of the biggest obstacles to obtain the results based on real world. This VSDI based system could give decision makers update information of region to get better decisions by providing collocation environment. Based on the concepts of VSDI model, the system is designed by using web 2.0 technologies that enabled user to produce and share spatial data as well as to express opinions. To select best route in this system, fuzzy group AHP and VIKOR decision making methods are used with environmental, socio-economic, tourist and technical route characteristic’s criteria. The results of the research show that people like to collaborate in transportation planning and to share spatial data. So the use of VGI as another resource of SDI helps to make better and more effective decisions and to increase people satisfaction. The achieved results of implementation indicate that the system has good performance and selected route in the system corresponds to determined route by consult engineering company.