Linking smart cities datasets with human computation - The case of UrbanMatch

Abstract

To realize the Smart Cities vision, applications can leverage the large availability of open datasets related to urban environments. Those datasets need to be integrated, but it is often hard to automatically achieve a high-quality interlinkage. Human Computation approaches can be employed to solve such a task where machines are ineffective. We argue that in this case not only people's background knowledge is useful to solve the task, but also people's physical presence and direct experience can be successfully exploited. In this paper we present UrbanMatch, a Game with a Purpose for players in mobility aimed at validating links between points of interest and their photos; we discuss the design choices and we show the high throughput and accuracy achieved in the interlinking task. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.