Participatory cartography and OpenStreetMap

Yuwei Lin

University for the Creative Arts

Participatory Cartography and OpenStreetMap

Prepared for the Digital Futures event, V&A, London, 21 January 2014

Maps are technical instruments.

Navigation

Map of Benjamin Brecknell Turner's photographs

Visualisation

Maps That Will Help You Make Sense of the World

Maps are political statements.

Psalter Map (1260)

Plan de Mérian (1615)

Plan de Turgot (1734-6)

Satirical Map of Europe

Maps are art works.

Antique Map of London

Storytelling – Lord of the Ring

Maps are social products.

Memory maps

The lone cartographer?

Collaborative and Social

Professional vs. Amateur

Authoritative vs. Playful

Personal experiences, memories, identities,

belongings, emotions, ideologies,

philosophies.

Embodiment

● Crowdsourcing● Participatory

● Free/Open Source● Wikification of Maps

Who are the OpenStreetMap mappers?What do they do?

How do they do what they do?Why do they do what they do?

When do they do what they do?Which community? Which platform? Which tool?

Sociological questions

Social interaction and social engagement

Mapping parties,Beer and BBQ

Meet-ups

Women who made OpenStreetMap | FLOSSIE 2013 | 8-9 November 2013 | London 26

Women who made OpenStreetMap | FLOSSIE 2013 | 8-9 November 2013 | London 27

Crisis Mapping /Humanitarian Mapping

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

OSM for the Blind

● http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_for_the_blind● http://www.blind.accessiblemaps.org/

Software and maps for the blind is usually expensive and also outdated. The blind community can help themselves update the maps.

Locative Media● Geo-referenced information● Geo retailing, location-based marketing

When new names arrived...When disaster happened...

- new country in Africa- new city plan in Vienna

- new shop in town (add POIs)

Contexts

Knowledge, Power, Community, Democracy

Advantages of broader contributor groups● larger group of potential contributors

● for collecting data● for updating data

● more diverse views of the worldKnowledge/data is created in different contexts. What content is regarded relevant? (Elwood 2008; LAM et al. 2011; Callahan & Herring 2011)

“'the exclusion and under-representation of information from and about marginalised people and places in existing data records is linked to the ensuing exclusion of their needs and priorities from policy and decision making processes” (Elwood 2008)

Women who made OpenStreetMap | FLOSSIE 2013 | 8-9 November 2013 | London 34

Thank you for your attention!

http://cartography.tuwien.ac.at/fem2map This work was funded by the Austrian Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) within the structural research program FEMtech fFORTE.