Figure 4.4: Map to highlight the extent to which councils that adopt FMS are overrep- resented in reports compared to all others
for reporting, two assumptions are made:
• that the location information provided with the report is the location where the person doing the reporting actually encountered the issue, and • that the time when the report was submitted reflects approximately the
time when the issue was encountered.
To address this, the following section will explore the geographical and temporal reliability of the data.
4.2
Assumptions
4.2.1
Accuracy of spatial information
FMS allows people to submit, to point level, the location of the issue they are reporting. This location needs to be accurate in order for the problem to be addressed. As discussed in the methodological framework, one distinct char- acteristic of VGI is that the content creators are also the consumers, and there- fore have a vested interest in the accuracy of the information. Because of this,
Figure 4.5: Temporal trends in reporting reflects daily cycle in all activities 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Hour of the day
Number of repor
ts
there exists a self-regulatory behaviour regarding the validity of the data, where people will strive to ensure the accuracy of the information they provide. Indeed the risk of inaccurate information provided in crowdsourced data is known in the crowdsourced literature, and it is acknowledged that these ”risks are managed through self-regulation and self-management by community norms and in some cases technological architecture” (Marjanovic et al., 2012) (p.6). In the case of FMS, people might self-regulate, because, in order for the local authority to be able to address the issue being reported, it is in the content creator’s interest to provide accurate locations. Further, the technological architecture is also set up to allow people to accurately provide location; a map is displayed on the site on which contributors can search known landmarks, streets, or postcodes, and they can assign a location to their incident by clicking on the map, facilitating accurate spatial information when reporting.
One way to assess whether the location provided did meet the accuracy necessary for the local council to response is provided by the FMS data itself. For local authorities who have engaged with the fixmystreet platform, it is pos-
4.2. Assumptions 95 sible to provide feedback and ’close’ complaints to which they have offered a solution. While councils’ involvement with participating on the site varies as a function of their motivations and capabilities to address the issues and then provide feedback about them through the FMS website, it is possible to take the example of Bromley, which has incorporated FMS into their website, hence are invested in addressing issues reported through it. According to the figures on display on the Fix My Street website, Bromley have marked 99.69 percent of their cases as fixed (excluding those labelled as ”new problems” which they may not have had time to address yet). Although this percentage can drop much lower in other local authorities, it is a less plausible hypothesis that this is due to the residents of Bromley being much more skilled at locating problems on a map than residents of other boroughs. Instead it is more likely that the borough is just more responsive than others due to better resourcing or other variables.
The assertion can be made, therefore, that whilst there will be geographic inaccuracy, this will be moderated by the self-reporting process, and so it can be concluded that the spatial information in the reports is reflective of the location where people encounter the issues they report.
Another spatial issue regarding the data relates to the generation of hotspots where multiple people report the same issue. However, since the object of measurement is the perceptions of people, rather than the raw count of observed incidents, multiple reports accurately weigh the issue as more im- portant as it affects more people encountering the issue. This is also in line with findings by Innes (2014), that indicate that repeated exposure is a signifi- cant factor in something being interpreted as a problem by citizens. Therefore I assert that trust can be placed in the spatial accuracy of this data in measuring perceptions of a problem.
4.2.2
Is the temporal information with the report a reflection
of when people encounter the issues they report?
The temporal information, on the other hand, may prove to be more problem- atic. While FMS is also wrapped into a mobile application to enable people to
make the report in situ (and make it easier to provide photographs), taking time of reporting to be the time of experience with the sign of disorder is very much an assumption.
To test the viability of this assumption, consider the case of reporting bro- ken street lights. The reasonable assumption that broken street lights will be noticed during hours of darkness rather than in daylight can be made here, because that is when the absence of light is more evident. Therefore if peo- ple report issues when they experience them, reports of broken street lights should be more prevalent during the night time, rather than day time when peo- ple notice other issues more, rather than the absence of light. Comparing the proportion of reports during daylight and night time hours (using proportion to mitigate trends in overall reporting behaviour, such as a dip in reports over night when people are at home sleeping (for illustration of this see Figure 4.5)), re- veals that a higher percentage of reports are made about street lighting during hours of darkness than during daylight hours (Figure 4.6).
Figure 4.6: Percentage of all FMS reports about street lights.
0 4% 8% 12% 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Proportion of all reports that are about street lighting by hour of day
4.3. Reporting behaviour: the Who and the What 97