Web Mapping

History

By Sean Gorman:

"Google Earth and Google Maps launched in the summer of 2005. While there had been previous web mapping projects like Microsoft’s Terraserver, public cognition largely began with Google’s new foray. Although these mapping applications were first intended to provide local search results and driving directions, users quickly hacked the application to overlay their own data on top of Google Maps. Paul Radamacher struck first taking housing rentals from Craig’s List and overlaying that data on top of Google Maps for his site HousingMaps.com. Adrian Holovaty quickly followed suit overlaying Chicago crime data on top of Google Maps to create ChicagoCrime.org.

Both programmers had “mashed up” new data sources with Google Maps creating a new term in the web’s lexicon.

Leveraging their talent for writing code, Paul and Adrian became a new brand of cartographer. Neither had a background in geography or science but they had suddenly reinvented how data could be visualized on maps. Instead of admonishing the mapping hacks, Google released an API (application programming interface) that would allow any programmer to easily do what Paul and Adrian had done. They went even further and hired Paul to work at Google Maps. Microsoft, Yahoo! and other mapping companies soon released APIs of their own and the term “mash-up” became commonplace across the Web.

Government geographic data – the official source

The data unearthed by the HousingMaps.com and ChicagoCrime.org websites was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to geographic data. The total amount of information that can be given a geographic set of coordinates or a boundary is mind-numbing. Over 80% of data gathered and stored by businesses has a geographic component. The data traditionally collected by professionals alone is immense. Federal government data alone is astounding; including information from agencies such as the Census Bureau, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Transportation, Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Housing and Urban Development. While access to this data has historically required complex software and training, the data itself is open to the public at no cost.

The rise of user generated content

Free and open access to public data is often taken for granted in the United States. Many countries in Europe and around the globe are not as fortunate. Governments deem such geographic data to be proprietary and charge the public large sums of money to acquire the data. This was the case in the United Kingdom which led to the creation of one of the most successful open source geographic data projects to date – the OpenStreetMap Project.

A group of students at University College London were assigned a project to map out the rampant bike theft occurring on their campus. They used GPS (global positioning system) devices to log the coordinates of each bike theft and then wanted to post a map online of where the thefts had occurred. When they looked into acquiring a base map on which to visualize the bike theft data, they discovered the UK’s Ordnance Survey charged £50,000 for the privilege.

This was a non-starter for the students who found themselves at a dead end. Then an idea for a brilliant work-around came to them. They used their GPS devices to map out all the streets on campus to then create their own base map for visualizing their data.

The resulting online bike theft map was a huge hit and soon other neighborhoods were asking to have their streets mapped out as well. The team solicited additional volunteers and soon mapping parties were popping up at pubs across London and neighborhoods were being mapped out in great detail by knowledgeable locals.

Today OpenStreetMap.org boasts over 45,000 contributors and has over 442,194,531 GPS trace points uploaded. This is just one example of many mapping websites that are built around user generated content including Google MyMaps, Platial.com, Yahoo! ZoneTagger and MapMixer, Microsoft Collections, OpenAerialMap, EveryTrail, Wikimapia, PPGIS.net, Yelp, Chowhound, Plazes and many others." (http://www.receiver.vodafone.com/creating-maps-for-everyone)