58
R. Saameli et al.
5.2.4 Opportunities, Risks, and Perspectives
This project aims to democratize access to health geodata. By enhancing the quality
and accessibility of geodata, this project offers several opportunities to achieve social,
health and humanitarian impacts in areas where data is scarce. A better knowledge
of locations of health facilities and associated services can help to map and identify
population underserved by healthcare services (Munoz and Källestål 2012) (Blanford et al 2012). Such information can contribute to develop and advocate better
evidence-based health policy. It can also help healthcare organizations to better plan
their activities, vaccination campaigns based on the correlation between vaccination
rate and distance to primary healthcare center (Al Taiar et al. 2010). For relief workers, knowing where the health facilities and associated health service are located
are crucial information to know to prepare contingency plans, but also to respond
promptly and meaningfully during the emergency.
The project also bears some limitations and risks. Several studies (Haworth and
Bruce 2015) have showed that questions about liability of VGI are often not clearly
answered “Who is responsible if harm results from reliance on volunteered information: the initial contributor, the host or the organization responsible for the website
or product relying on VGI”. The question of moral and legal reliability is highly relevant in the case of public exposure and dissemination of potentially sensitive data
such health facilities and workers location. In order to address this risk, a governance
committee composed of ICRC, IHF and developer team has been set to monitor data
quality and the risk of exposure of data in sensitive contexts.
The capacity of the project to meet its goal to build global, complete and highquality database of world health facilities depends on the contributions of VGI communities and health experts. In comparison with other similar VGI initiative, this
project has the advantage of having the endorsement of major actors such as Humanitarian OSM team, the ICRC, and IHF. This support enables a strong promotion
among digital humanitarians and health experts.
Finally, the model of Healthsite.io of taking OSM data to enhance its attribute by
health experts before exporting back completed and validated data to OSM is a truly
innovative approach. It fosters bidirectional exchange between health experts and
VGI communities. In addition, it also a new approach to quality issue of attribute
data in OSM. If this model proves to be successful, it could be replicated in other
essential domain, such water services, where accessibility to detailed and reliable
data is much needed for humanitarian operations. This approach would be a new
way to maintain updated comprehensive thematic database without having to spend
resources usually required for such tasks
Research on how to measure quality of VGI, specifically attribute data, are recent
and few. Healthsite.io offers an interesting concrete case to measure the reliability
of data jointly validated by VGI community and authoritative experts. Such research
could help to identify opportunities to enhance VGI validation process. In Healthsite.io, this process is mainly based on user reputation where also only few research
on VGI applications have been done.
R. Saameli et al.
5.2.4 Opportunities, Risks, and Perspectives
This project aims to democratize access to health geodata. By enhancing the quality
and accessibility of geodata, this project offers several opportunities to achieve social,
health and humanitarian impacts in areas where data is scarce. A better knowledge
of locations of health facilities and associated services can help to map and identify
population underserved by healthcare services (Munoz and Källestål 2012) (Blanford et al 2012). Such information can contribute to develop and advocate better
evidence-based health policy. It can also help healthcare organizations to better plan
their activities, vaccination campaigns based on the correlation between vaccination
rate and distance to primary healthcare center (Al Taiar et al. 2010). For relief workers, knowing where the health facilities and associated health service are located
are crucial information to know to prepare contingency plans, but also to respond
promptly and meaningfully during the emergency.
The project also bears some limitations and risks. Several studies (Haworth and
Bruce 2015) have showed that questions about liability of VGI are often not clearly
answered “Who is responsible if harm results from reliance on volunteered information: the initial contributor, the host or the organization responsible for the website
or product relying on VGI”. The question of moral and legal reliability is highly relevant in the case of public exposure and dissemination of potentially sensitive data
such health facilities and workers location. In order to address this risk, a governance
committee composed of ICRC, IHF and developer team has been set to monitor data
quality and the risk of exposure of data in sensitive contexts.
The capacity of the project to meet its goal to build global, complete and highquality database of world health facilities depends on the contributions of VGI communities and health experts. In comparison with other similar VGI initiative, this
project has the advantage of having the endorsement of major actors such as Humanitarian OSM team, the ICRC, and IHF. This support enables a strong promotion
among digital humanitarians and health experts.
Finally, the model of Healthsite.io of taking OSM data to enhance its attribute by
health experts before exporting back completed and validated data to OSM is a truly
innovative approach. It fosters bidirectional exchange between health experts and
VGI communities. In addition, it also a new approach to quality issue of attribute
data in OSM. If this model proves to be successful, it could be replicated in other
essential domain, such water services, where accessibility to detailed and reliable
data is much needed for humanitarian operations. This approach would be a new
way to maintain updated comprehensive thematic database without having to spend
resources usually required for such tasks
Research on how to measure quality of VGI, specifically attribute data, are recent
and few. Healthsite.io offers an interesting concrete case to measure the reliability
of data jointly validated by VGI community and authoritative experts. Such research
could help to identify opportunities to enhance VGI validation process. In Healthsite.io, this process is mainly based on user reputation where also only few research
on VGI applications have been done.