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Informal settlements in urban areas are increasing rapidly throughout the world and regularisation of these settlements is being one of the challenging issues. Various study results have shown that conventional cadastral based information system approach and government managed institutional arrangements do not appropriately address land management issues of slum settlements. The aim of this study is to explore application of smartphone based Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and open spatial tools for slum mapping in developing countries such as in Nepal. A case of Pokhara Metropolitan city has been considered to explore the potential of utilization of smartphone based VGI and open spatial tools for slum mapping. Attribute and spatial data were collected using Smartphones and community-driven approach. Spatial and attribute data collected from 229 respondents of household’s surveys are integrated, analysed and interpreted and presented in this paper. Open Street Map (OSM) platforms and QGIS open source software have been used for slum mapping. These maps could play an important role in providing spatial information to the local government and planning authority in Nepal. This research paper concludes that smartphone based VGI and open portals such OSM have great potential to contribute to develop slum database and in providing information to plan various strategies, which aims at understanding, regularisation and upgrading slums.

The participation and engagement of grass-root level community groups and citizens for natural resource management has a long history. With recent developments in ICT tools and spatial technology, these groups are seeking a new opportunity to manage natural resource data. There are lot of spatial information collected/generated by landcare groups, land holders and other community groups at the grass-root level through their volunteer initiatives. State government organisations are also interested in gaining access to this spatial data/information and engaging these groups to collect spatial information under their mapping programs. The aim of this paper is to explore the possible utilisation of volunteered geographic information (VGI) for catchment management activities. This research paper discusses the importance of spatial information and spatial data infrastructure (SDI) for catchment management and the emergence of VGI. A conceptual framework has been developed to illustrate how these emerging spatial information applications and various community volunteer activities can contribute to a more inclusive spatial data infrastructure (SDI) development at local level. A survey of 56 regional NRM bodies in Australia was utilised to explore the current community-driven volunteer initiatives for NRM activities and the potential of utilisation of VGI initiatives for NRM decision making process. This research paper concludes that VGI activities have great potential to contribute to SDI development at the community level to achieve better natural resource management (NRM) outcomes.

Spatial information plays an important role in many social, environmental and economic decisions and increasingly acknowledged as a national resource essential for wider societal and environmental benefits. Natural Resource Management is one area where spatial information can be used for improved planning and decision making processes. In Australia, state government organisations are the custodians of spatial information necessary for natural resource management and regional NRM bodies are responsible to regional delivery of NRM activities. The access and sharing of spatial information between government agencies and regional NRM bodies is therefore as an important issue for improving natural resource management outcomes. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the current status of spatial information access, sharing and use with varying statutory arrangements and its impacts on spatial data infrastructure (SDI) development in catchment management sector in Australia. Further, it critically examined whether any trends and significant variations exist due to different institutional arrangements (statutory versus non-statutory) or not. A survey method was used to collect primary data from 56 regional natural resource management (NRM) bodies responsible for catchment management in Australia. Descriptive statistics method was used to show the similarities and differences between statutory and non-statutory arrangements. The key factors which influence sharing and access to spatial information are also explored. The results show the current statutory and administrative arrangements and regional focus for natural resource management is reasonable from a spatial information management perspective and provides an opportunity for building SDI at the catchment scale. However, effective institutional arrangements should align catchment SDI development activities with sub-national and national SDI development activities to address catchment management issues. We found minor differences in spatial information access, use and sharing due to varying institutional environment (statutory versus non-statutory). The non-statutory group appears to be more flexible and selfsufficient whilst statutory regional NRM bodies may lack flexibility in their spatial information management practices. We found spatial information access, use and sharing has significant impacts on spatial data infrastructure development in catchment management sector in Australia.