Using Flickr for characterizing the environment: an exploratory analysis

Jeawak, Shelan, Jones, Christopher B. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6847-7575 and Schockaert, Steven ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9256-2881 2017. Using Flickr for characterizing the environment: an exploratory analysis. Presented at: 13th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT), L’Aquila, Italy, 4-8 September 2017. 13th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2017). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, 21:1-21:13. 10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2017.21

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Abstract

The photo-sharing website Flickr has become a valuable informal information source in disciplines such as geography and ecology. Some ecologists, for instance, have been manually analysing Flickr to obtain information that is more up-to-date than what is found in traditional sources. While several previous works have shown the potential of Flickr tags for characterizing places, it remains unclear to what extent such tags can be used to derive scientifically useful information for ecologists in an automated way. To obtain a clearer picture about the kinds of environmental features that can be modelled using Flickr tags, we consider the problem of predicting scenicness, species distribution, land cover, and several climate related features. Our focus is on comparing the predictive power of Flickr tags with that of structured data from more traditional sources. We find that, broadly speaking, Flickr tags perform comparably to the considered structured data sources, being sometimes better and sometimes worse. Most importantly, we find that combining Flickr tags with structured data sources consistently, and sometimes substantially, improves the results. This suggests that Flickr indeed provides information that is complementary to traditional sources.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Computer Science & Informatics
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science T Technology > TR Photography
Publisher:	Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics
Funders:	ERC
Related URLs:	Organisation
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	12 July 2017
Date of Acceptance:	26 April 2017
Last Modified:	02 Nov 2022 11:32
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/102353

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