“Demolishing thousands of years of history…”

Can you remember the time when the prophets announced death of cartography by Google Maps & Co? Well nevertheless today we are experiencing lots of high quality cartography products; just have to look at the Le Monde diplomatique and the Atlas of Globalisation (for one thing). Even on the internet: for instance look at all those map making going on at the Wikipedia. Nope, cartography is still alive and well. Actually it is so alive, that it is called neogeography by some other prophets.

Now there is another discussion raised in the UK, whether british history and cultural heritages is threatened by …you have three guesses… Google Maps? The accusation: many internet maps fail to show interesting land marks such as flea markets, museums and other tourist traps. “Corporate cartographers are demolishing thousands of years of history” said Mary Spence, President of the British Cartographic Society. Yet once again, after motorcycles replaced horses, the civilised world is on the verge of doom. Isn’t it? No (not this time); for a simple reason: If I want to get into tourist traps, I buy me tourist map. Google Maps itself is like a road map, specialised for navigating from A to B. Whoever wants to stroll from Queensway station to the Royal Geographic Society and loves to discover all those beautiful roadside attractions would likely use another kind of map.

So, to make a long story short, if there is a problem, then most likely it will be of the same type as: “I can’t see the sky while travelling on the tube“.

However, recently Google added a layer of georeferenced Wikipedia articles to it’s Map. And this simple example shows the true challenge the Geoweb is facing right now. We shouldn’t blame internet map providers for showing or not showing this and that on their maps. Instead we should care about how to spatially connect all those information flying around the web in a semantic way. How can we draw spatially related information out of Wikipedia, categorise and connect it with other data or drawing geocoded locations out of books from the Project Gutenberg.

Dickens' London Map

Just for an example lets take this nice Charles Dickens’ London Map I’ve found. Ambitious efforts are now being made to produce similar maps from any arbitrary digital text due to sophisticated geocoding techniques. These are the true problems to be solved. Then I’m pretty sure we will see better and far more interesting city or tourist guides online then ever printed to date. Imagine, Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap could answer questions like “Where are settings or locations of plot events of victorian novels located in London’s Soho?”.

The Ghost Map – A Tale of Victorian GIS Technology

The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

I just got a copy of Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map which came out in paper last week. The reason I’m really excited about this book is that it is amongst others about history of analytical cartography and solving urban sustainability problems as seen by Victorian London in the mid 19th century. In fact, as Johnson mentioned, there was an open question that time about whether such huge cities like London (over 2.5 million population in1850) will be still sustainable or whether it will collapse just as the ancient Rom did at a certain point.

The Story takes place in August 1854 when a cholera outbreak was raging in London. Dr. John Snow, a private physician and kind of Sherlok Holmes-like cross-disciplinary thinker, was able to link the epidemic to contaminated drinking water source from public pumps. He was drawing a map with elements like fatalities, water pumps and streets to advance an argument about the nature of the disease.

Yes, it’s a remarkable example of how people started to recognize the importance of spatial dimensions for better understanding complex problems in an urbanizing world. But it’s also a remarkable historical example of how map-making pretends to be objective, where there is a clear author’s intention behind. In this particular case, Snow’s intention was to reinforce his theory on the cause of the disease. In fact, his map was rather a graphic description or summary of his studies than an analytical tool.

The Ghost in the Map

Nevertheless, there is a memorable GIS story coming out of the book: the way of taking advantage of local knowledge and (amateur) cross-disciplinary thinking on a local level. It shows the importance to empower communities through GIS technology and participation.

For instance the 2005 Hurricane Katrina GISCorps disaster response is a good example for the importance of participatory GIS and community mapping. Teams of volunteers organized by the GISCorps responded very quickly and produced maps for the initial responders and briefing maps showing things like power outages or road closures. They also helped rescue teams through geocoding (translating) addresses into GPS coordinates. The nub of the matter: all these efforts could only be accomplished by the community itself (in close collaboration with private industry).

PS: Seems that the guys from Riverhead Books produced a little trailer cartoon, which by the word of Steven Johnson can be described as “Yellow Submarine meets 28 Days Later” :)

I don’t like to park my car in East Berlin

This map (from brennende-autos.de) shows recent arson attacks on cars in the city of Berlin. So, if you’re about to visit Berlin – please first check where it is safe to leave your car (especially the luxurious ones).