Online Collaboration Creates 'Map-Making For the Masses'

The Science Daily site has up a piece on the effect user-generated content can have on map-making. Scientists are appreciative of the data enthusiastic mappers can provide, updating maps on changes in local geographic information. "Goodchild's paper looks at volunteered geographic information as a special case of the more general Web phenomenon of user-generated content. It covers what motivates large numbers of individuals (often with little formal qualifications) to take part, what technology allows them to do so, how accurate the results are and what volunteered geographic information can add to more conventional sources of such information."

Comments

Re:OpenStreetMap

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In TFA, they are refering to OpenStreetMap, a wiki-style project to create free street maps. (though this is not mentioned in the summary)

I love these guys. I live in Vanuatu, a tiny South Pacific country that so far has escaped the attention of the Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft map interfaces. The only way we're going to get decent maps of our towns is by doing it ourselves. Thanks to a few thoughtful people from Australia and the US, we now have a GPS and are mapping all the streets of Port Vila, the capital.

Few people have computer experience, but we managed to recruit a young man from a local NGO's youth project, and he's been spending the last few weeks riding around in a local mini-bus run by a family member of his. I've already uploaded some of the raw data, and with any luck we'll have some decent maps of the town before too long.

What I like best about Open Street Maps is that their format is compatible with Google Maps. This means that if the stars align themselves properly, we'll be on the map fairly soon.