New Paper: Mapping for Masses

Andrew Hudson-Smith, Michael Batty, Richard Milton and myself from CASA have just found out that our paper "Mapping for the Masses Accessing Web 2.0 Through Crowdsourcing" in Social Science Computer Review which comes out later this year can be downloaded from OnlineFirst.

For those interested the abstract is:

"The authors describe how we are harnessing the power of web 2.0 technologies to create new approaches to collecting, mapping, and sharing geocoded data. The authors begin with GMapCreator that lets users fashion new maps using Google Maps as a base. The authors then describe MapTube that enables users to archive maps and demonstrate how it can be used in a variety of contexts to share map information, to put existing maps into a form that can be shared, and to create new maps from the bottom-up using a combination of crowdcasting, crowdsourcing, and traditional broadcasting. The authors conclude by arguing that such tools are helping to define a neogeography that is essentially ‘‘mapping for the masses,’’ while noting that there are many issues of quality, accuracy, copyright, and trust that will influence the impact of these tools on map-based communication."

Keywords: network economies; web-based services; map mashups; crowdsourcing; crowdcasting; online GIS. 

Full Reference:

Hudson-Smith, A., Batty, M., Crooks, A.T., and Milton R. (2009), Mapping Tools for the Masses: Web 2.0 and Crowdsourcing, Social Science Computer Review, 27 (4): 524-538. (pdf)