Volunteered Geographic Information Use in Crisis, Emergency and Disaster Management: A Scoping Review and a Web Atlas

Nowadays, an increasing number of crises worldwide, triggered by climate extremes, natural and human-made hazards, the coronavirus pandemic, and more, pose a high pressure on crisis, emergency, and disaster management. Spatial data and Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) are key issues in the successful and immediate response to crises. This paper aims to explore the use of VGI in crisis management, including emergency and disaster management, based on a scoping review of existing literature in English for five years (2016–2020). Specifically, the research intends to answer Scoping Review Questions (SRQ) regarding the use of VGI in crisis, emergency, and disaster management, and the verified cases’ spatial distribution, the VGI sources utilized (e.g. OpenStreetMap–OSM, Crowdsourcing, Twitter), the types of hazards (e.g. natural and human-made hazards, pandemic), the specific tasks in crisis, emergency or disaster management and VGI use in the management of actual crisis events, e.g. COVID-19 pandemic, Hurricane Katrina, etc. Eligible papers on VGI use in crisis, emergency, and disaster management are geolocated based on first-author affiliation, and as a result, a spatial bibliography is provided. Thus, the term Spatial Scoping Review is introduced. Scoping Review Questions are answered, and the results are analyzed and discussed. Finally, implementing the “VGICED Atlas”, a web atlas, permits the publication of the research results to a broad audience and the visualization of the analysis with several interactive maps.