Mapping in a Digital World

Mapping in a Digital World — page 1 — GATHERING DATA Digital technology enables cartographers to gather huge amounts of data and to display it in different ways for use by governments businesses and individuals As technology develops cartographers use the latest advancements to create innovative maps Cartographers were among the first to develop ways of representing a spherical globe on a flat surface They began to make maps on computers soon after the first computers appeared From the 1980s cartographers began to make maps that existed only in digital form and were stored in computers In 1989 the English computer scientist Timothy Berners-Lee figured out a way to let computers share documents leading to the development of the World Wide Web www Cartographers were quick to use the new technology to develop the maps you use today This map of Helsinki in Finland uses data from mobile sports apps to show routes for runners blue walkers green and cyclists red Mixed colors show where routes are shared by users Gathering such information would not have been possible before the invention of the Internet Popularity of walking running and cycling in Helsinki Metropolitan Area 4

Mapping in a Digital World — page 2 — I Know Where Your Cat Lives This map shows cats living in part of Kuala Lumpur Singapore Owen Mundy created the map which covers the whole world using pictures of people’s cats that are freely available on the Internet New Formats Digital computer technology allowed cartographers to create maps in new formats These formats included interactive maps where users could select different options for display or maps that could be updated in real time Just as importantly digital technology also gave cartographers new ways to access information to use in maps and new ways to store and process it For example a digital media artist named Owen Mundy searches Internet sites for publicly posted images tagged with the word cat He has plotted the locations of more than a million pet cats on a world map Mundy calls his map I Know Where your Cat Lives He wants the map to demonstrate the capacity of the Internet to gather and share any type of information Digital maps can display a huge variety of 5

Mapping in a Digital World — page 3 — data drawn from different sources In addition to geographical data such as the shape of mountains or the routes of rivers and roads they may include information about the population in an area where different types of vegetation can be found or how far the average person lives from a fast-food restaurant They can also depict abstract information such as how people use words in different ways Before the Internet existed such information often took a long time to collect and sort into a format that could be used on maps Maps usually relied on official figures such as those collected in the national census A census is a government survey of everyone in a country It records where they live and information such as their ethnicity age job and religion The Canadian census is held The Great American Word Mapper uses Twitter to map the use of language These maps show where people in the United States call their evening meal dinner left and supper right In the Real World Maps and the Internet Gathering information from the Internet does not always give accurate results People who mask their Internet Protocol IP address can only be traced to a whole country not to the neighborhood where they live The Internet allocates this incomplete data to a location in the middle of whichever country the IP address is located Users with masked IP addresses are therefore not included in local data 6

Mapping in a Digital World — page 4 — GATHERING DATA Breakthroughs Information from Users The Internet allows cartographers to react to input from map users Google uses user feedback to correct mistakes on its maps In the United States the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA uses data from amateur meteorologists to add to its own weather reports to generate maps Allowing users to add and adjust data is like adding thousands of researchers to a mapping project every five years and the United States census is held every 10 years Censuses provide useful information but a several year gap between censuses means information isn’t up to date Unfiltered Data Today cartographers use the Internet to gather sets of data that are not filtered by any kind of official organization Data on the Internet does not only come from sources such as the census NOAA bases maps such as this chart of U.S. rainfall on both its weather stations and input from amateur weather watchers The areas of heaviest rain are colored yellow and green 7

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