This paper mainly reviews the applications of four online mapping platforms in Haiti earthquake in 2010. It cannot be denied that the four platforms (i.e., CrisisCamp Haiti, OpenStreetMap, Ushahidi, GeoCommons) contribute to disaster relief in the earthquake. However, these technologies also bring problems remain to be discussed and further solved.
Primarily, in the beginning parts of this paper, the authors emphasize the importance of information technologies (ITs) in disaster response and then note how volunteered mapping helps. However, they focus on Haiti where the IT infrastructures are quite limited and geo-referenced data are lacked. I agree that volunteered mapping can provide efficiently and effectively provides these data for disaster rescue and tremendously facilitate the rescue. However, this may not happen in countries with good infrastructures and well-mapped. In that case, I will wonder what is the strength of volunteered mapping comparing with the traditional mapping databases and whether we need it.
Besides, since the platforms use volunteered geographic information (VGI), the fundamental problem is how to ensure the quality of these data. In term of disaster response, I think we should consider two general types of errors proposed by Goodchild (2007): a false positive (i.e., a false rumor of an incidence), or a false negative (i.e., absence of information about the existence of the incidence). The former will lead to the inefficiency in disaster rescue, and the latter can result in low effectiveness. Both could affect the human life even just one individual. Moreover, I will doubt that a place with more dense information is necessarily a place more in need. Information density can result from different reasons, but human lives are not different across areas. According to the authors, there are only 11% people can access to the Internet and one third have mobile phones. It means at two thirds people cannot send out distress calls in Ushahidi. Resources are firstly taken by people who have the access. The authors argue that we should blame the originally insufficient infrastructures. In other words, they think even without VGI the discrimination happens. This is a trick argument and defenses nothing. Of course, I agree that social inequality always exists. However, VGI is not value-neutral and it may worse the existing inequality. Criticists does not blame VGI bring the inequality but worsen the inequality, and currently there is no efficient way to solve the issues.
In conclusion, this paper provides comprehensive review of the benefits brought by volunteered mapping in disaster response in Haiti. But it is not critical enough when discussing the defects of using volunteered mapping. Through reading this paper, we can identify many questions remaining to be answered including the inherent characteristics of VGI and its applications.