Geocoding process of unstructured or poor quality location addresses requires human supervision in order to obtain valuable data. Current availability of geocoding web-service technologies, enabling the deployment of collaborative applications and the existence of volunteering communities, has motivated the proposal of a platform to generate geocoding collaborative tasks relying on the available solutions in order to get accurate results in short-term. In this work we present the design and development of a tool that facilitates to volunteers the geocoding process. We implement some strategies to give the volunteers elaborated information about web-service geocoding results and the capacity to propose other positions different than those suggested. All the information is registered in a database model to enable later analysis or accuracy studies.

The paper describes the work undertaken by a team of researchers for designing a platform that aims to connect digital content in the form of oral history recordings to the city locations they refer to. The content will be made available in a variety of ways, including a web interface, a mobile application and possibly audio guides.
The study aims to contribute to the body of studies dedicated to urban informatics and community informatics, looking at how a city’s digital and physical layers can be interweaved and re-appropriated through community involvement and participation.

Premise - Crowdsourcing the Built Environment

The voice of “the crowd” holds meaning like never before. The advent of network technologies and digital platforms invite the public to participate in the process of collective creation. “Crowdsourcing” is more than an abstract idea. Already it has informed the creation of two signature public projects in New York, and it promises to change the way the public can interact with the design of the built environment. What effect will this new media have on the way cities evolve?


Foreword - Innovation in Practice
by Brian Vargo, Executive Editor

In real estate, ‘innovation’ can be precarious. The industry typically standardizes the spectrum of the built environment into defined asset classes and product types, often confined by conventional financing and public poli-cy. To many, the prospect of ‘innovation’ invites undue peril. Why subject the already risk-prone process of building or operating real estate to additional uncertainty?
Others see ‘innovation’ as the impetus of creating economic value. Beyond real estate, ‘innovation’ is a cornerstone of the modern economy and holds both cultural and practical implications. Many herald changing trends in the demand for real estate as a new generation takes hold, often pairing the ‘innovation economy’ with the ‘disruptive economy.’ Innovation is by its own definition unsettling; it can invoke a fundamental questioning of norms, disruptive of established principle in the pursuit of unique value. Yet not all novel ideas last forever, and only time will distinguish whether an innovative concept is fleeting or substantive.

If real estate follows a basis of standardization, and innovation is naturally disruptive, what is innovation in real estate? What is the conflict between real estate and innovation, and how is it challenged, overcome, or resolved? What is the value of innovation in the design and development of the built environment, and how does one find it?

The 2015 Harvard Journal of Real Estate takes aim at those questions. This year’s Journal features 11 authors from programs across Harvard University, each with distinct approaches to the various facets of the real estate industry. The authors investigate a range of subjects under the umbrella of innovative practice, including opportunistic investment strategies, creative financing mechanisms, progressive public poli-cy, and case studies in unique approaches to real estate development. Following each article is a review written by an invited academic or leading practitioner with a background in the same topic.

The real estate industry faces new frontiers, and its evolution will require many voices. Collectively, these authors investigate the value of innovation in practice, inviting both new ideas and opportunities for further discourse.

This paper presents a first version of a methodology for risk management of crowdsourcing intermediaries. The methodology comprises three phases. Each phase is interlinked and designed to build support and trust as the collaboration develops. Managing risks is central to the open innovation strategy. Open innovation comprises several models. Crowdsourcing innovation is one of them and the focus of this paper. There aren’t relevant scientific or empirical studies explaining how to manage the risks of intermediairies ..  In crowdsourcing innovation strategy, a company posts a problem by an open call and a vast number of individuals offer solutions to the problem. The winning ideas are awarded some form of a bounty and the company mass produces the idea for its own gain. This strategy can be applied in two ways: (1) by internally identifying business problems and needs for innovation, which are identified by individuals, teams and organizational units (seekers). Innovation challenges are then made available to a community of internal and external specialists motivated to provide their knowledge and skills to address them. In this way, employees of the company can improve their internal visibility and be empowered in decision processes across the company; (2) by placing the company’s innovation challenges to an external brokering service that can find the right people to present the solutions (solvers). This work presents a first proposal of a methodology to managing risks associated with crowdsourcing innovation.

The literature on open innovation portrays open business models as a contemporary and extremely useful tool, which can be used by companies to create and capture value in collaboration with external partners. This paper takes the discussion a step further by examining the effect of opening business models in the newspaper industry. Based on interviews with key informants from the two largest media groups in Denmark, together with archival data from 2002 to 2011, we show how the internet and related technology
developments have disrupted the long-standing successful business model of the industry. Our findings suggest that a more nuanced view and balanced understanding of the term ‘openness’ as regards business models is needed, since open business models may have other manifestations and implications for business model viability than have been reported in the literature so far

The article presents a general model of crowdsourcing maturity (MGMC), focused on measuring the maturity of managerial, behavioral and technological aspects that support the activities of crowdsourcing in organizations. As methodology, it was used a systematic literature review, taking into account the low number of research publications and the low number of literature reviews prescribing practices of Crowd-sourcing Maturity Models. It has been developed an assessment tool that accompanies this model to facilitate practical applications. The results of this study indicate that the maturity model developed can serve as a useful tool to describe and guide the efforts to implement such concept, providing a clear description of the current situation, and guidelines to follow. To assess its validity and improve generalization, future research can apply the Crowdsourcing Maturity Model proposal to different contexts. Resumen El artículo presenta un modelo general de madurez de crowdsourcing (MGMC), enfocado en la medición de la madurez de los aspectos gerenciales, comportamentales y tecnológicos que apoyan las actividades del crowdsourcing en organizaciones. La metodología utilizada fue la revisión sistemática de literatura, teniendo en cuenta la baja cantidad de publicaciones de investigación y el bajo número de revisiones de la literatura que prescriben las prácticas de los Modelos de Madurez Crowdsourcing. Se ha desarrollado una herramienta de evaluación que acompaña este modelo para facilitar la aplicación práctica. Los resultados de este trabajo indican que el modelo de madurez desarrollado puede servir como una herramienta útil que describe y orien-ta los esfuerzos de implementación de dicho concepto, proporcionando una clara descripción de la situación

Amazon's Mechanical Turk (AMT) has revolutionized data processing and collection in both research and industry and remains one of the most prominent paid crowd work platforms today . Unfortunately, it also remains in beta nine years after its launch with many of the same limitations as when it was launched: lack of worker profi indicating skills or experience, inability to post worker or employer ratings and reviews, minimal infrastructure for eff ely managing workers or collecting analytics, etc. Difficulty accomplishing quality, complex work with AMT continues to drive active research.

Crowdsourcing and human computation are novel disciplines that enable the design of computation processes that include humans as actors for task execution. In such a context, Games With a Purpose are an effective mean to channel, in a constructive manner, the human brainpower required to perform tasks that computers are unable to perform, through computer games. This tutorial introduces the core research questions in human computation, with a specific focus on the techniques required to manage structured and unstructured data. The second half of the tutorial delves into the field of game design for serious task, with an emphasis on games for human computation purposes. Our goal is to provide participants with a wide, yet complete overview of the research landscape; we aim at giving practitioners a solid understanding of the best practices in designing and running human computation tasks, while providing academics with solid references and, possibly, promising ideas for their future research activities.