"Volunteered Geography"

Michael Goodchild has an article in GeoJournal on the phenomenon of everyday folks creating and publishing geospatial data through websites like Google Maps. He calls it "volunteered geographic information."

The article -- Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography -- is not available for free on-line. A news release about the article from Springer, publisher of GeoJournal, gives an idea of some of the concepts Mr. Goodchild explores, and a statement of his conclusion:

He concludes that “collectively volunteered geographic information represents a dramatic innovation that will certainly have profound impacts on geographic information systems and more generally on the discipline of geography and its relationship to the general public.”

Update: Many thanks to commenter "phantomplanet" who has provided a link to the full article in PDF format.

Distributed QA/QC?

The ability for registered users to edit some of the location data in Google Maps is starting to get notice in the media. The Washington Post included a story on the day after Thanksgiving (Google Lets Users Fine-Tune Its Maps). The San Jose Mercury News had the story a few days earlier (Google lets users change maps). And there are others.

The Washington Post version includes a quote from a Google staffer that has a familiar ring:

"We're constantly working to improve the quality and accuracy of the information available in Google Maps," said Google spokeswoman Kate Hurowitz. "Accurate, detailed local information about neighborhoods, towns and the world around us is important to our users, and yet no one knows a town better than the people that live there."

That "no one knows ... better than the people who live there" echoes a theme we've stressed in GIS coordination; the best data comes from the most local sources. That has generally meant state and county data (and some major municipal players) with our challenge being to find ways to aggregate that data at larger and larger geographies.

The idea of having members of the public help edit data is not new, but the fact of Google's large presence in the social networking, "live web" world, may make a difference.

The USGS has its National Map Corps, an attempt to harness the power of interested geo-hobbiests. TeleAtlas and other large geospatial data providers enable their clients to submit suggested corrections. And some states offer channels for citizen corrections. In my own state of Delaware, the DataMIL on-line mapping system includes an invitation to submit error reports.

Google may trump all of these efforts through market penetration, and that's a good thing. More accurate data is an important goal. I'll be interested to see the extent to which this catches on as an on-line activity. And I'm curious to see whether, and how, this corrected data can be
spread back to a variety of data providers and local governments.

If nothing else, though, it is exciting to think about a wide community taking responsibility for where things are.