Proposal to participate in the NCGIA and Vespucci specialist meeting on Volunteered Geospatial Information: Weaving Space and Time into the Web of Trust

The scope of this research is on trust and how it functions on social networks of agents moving in space and time. We are investigating the dynamics of trust and particularly its spatial and temporal properties. Our assumption in this study has two aspects. The first is that with the lack of traditional Geographic Information (GI) quality criteria (lineage, accuracy, consistency and completeness) understanding the spatio-temporal dynamics of trust in social networks of agents (e.g. humans) will enable using trust as proxy for GI quality. Trusted agents tend to provide more useful and relevant information compared with not (or less) trusted agents. Quality is a subjective measure here (and always to some extent). The second aspect is that from the perspective of an individual mobile agent. Our understanding of the spatio-temporal dynamics of trust will enable us to provide agents with trust filtered, dynamic information based on their current information needs. Each agent or community of agents will have its own situation aware information view, which assists it in navigating or filtering the vast amounts of volunteered/collaborative GI.