Crowdsourced Geospatial Information (CGI) from social media, volunteered geographic information (VGI), citizen science platforms, and participatory mapping approaches provide significant value for a wide range of scientific disciplines and applications. In terms of human-environment relations, the use of these resources can give insights into people’s perceptions of and interactions with their environment. Beyond the immediate response to climate-related events and disasters and their management, CGI can support the ability of a community to cope with the challenges posed by climate-induced changes to the natural environment by informing preparedness and mitigation actions initiated regularly towards future events and enhancing local resilience. Thus, exploiting CGI resources can improve community’s adaptability to climate change and related phenomena. Achieving this involves approaches relating to different analytical dimensions: depicting the current status quo, identifying developments over time, and predicting future human-environment interactions. Naturally, CGI resources may be inaccurate, incomplete, and noisy. Nevertheless, their usage can offer significant theoretical and methodological innovations for better understanding the human-environment interactions.
We invite any researcher working on a relevant issue to submit original studies and reviews aimed at using CGI to support human-environment interaction issues and climate-change adaptability. Of particular interest are new developments in theories and methodologies for significant progress in these themes. Potential themes may include but are not limited to the following topics:
- Applying CGI to analyse various human-environment interactions
- Theories, models for CGI data processing, knowledge production and communication to support climate change adaptation
- Developing methods utilizing CGI resources to assess communities’ vulnerability and enhance their resilience
- Using spatial approaches to detect and screen biases, rumours, and fake news in geo-social data related to climate-induced phenomena and urban environments
- Identifying and addressing ethical issues arising from the use of CGI in community-based projects
- Identifying temporal and spatial trends and phenomena that are reflected in CGI systems and their implications for producing valid assessments of preparedness and resilience
