Invasive Species Mapping and other Crowdsourcing GIS News

Locals in and around Saugerties, NY will add to  iMapInvasives,  New York’s online invasive species database, via a mapping party on May 8.

The event starts at the Town of Saugerties Library for an orientation and brief training. Next the volunteers will carpool to the Esopus Creek Conservancy’s Esopus Bend Preserve (EBP) to walk the woodland trails and map invasive species and will return to the library to view their real-time contributions to the database. Invasive plant ID guides and trail maps will be provided.

I think that last bit, about seeing their contributions added to the state database is vital.

- Suagerties Times

In Altadena, CA (always like the name of that city) the local Patch is asking readers to help build a map of dog attacks, after one earlier this week. The map is Google-based (still waiting for a MapQuest-based one!) and there are guidelines: don't use exact addresses and only post actual attacks. Patch is doing a lot of this work. I wonder if they are studying how well it works across its many papers?

- Altadena Patch

The Miwaukee paper asked readers to map their sentiment yesterday during the recall primary. I want to encourage Google or developers to build a decent legend solution for such maps.

- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Mapping Moods for Mental Health Awareness and other Crowdsourcing News

Canada's Partners for Mental Health, a national charitable organization aiming to create a new state of mind about mental health is running a 'Not Myself Today' campaign.

The goal is to have Canadians sign an online pledge of support for mental health at notmyselftoday.ca. But there's an interactive map to, I guess, draw more visitors:

On the website, Canadians can pin their mood on a virtual map of Canada, which is updated throughout the day.

On Thursday, 32.4 per cent of Saskatchewan residents were anxious, 24.3 per cent were hopeful, 18.9 per cent were OK, 13.5 per cent were depressed and 10.8 per cent were up.

You select your mood from a dozen or so options, then key in a ZIP Code or let the app find you.

- Leader Post

Students in India are updating OSM and that's getting into the paper.

Five youngsters, all third year students of Information Science, Nitte Mahalinga Adyanthaya Memorial Institute of Technology (NMAMIT), have added details to the online map of Mangalore (onOpenStreetMap).

Aadarsh, Chaitra, Cheryl, Shravan, and Sneha have added and corrected wrong locations of roads and city landmarks. They added details using GPS in Android phones and after modifying the data thus collected on a software called JOSM. The students divided themselves into two groups, the Kadri and Ladyhill groups. Both added details of city landmarks they knew. Aadarsh said he concentrated on correcting places that were wrongly marked. He added roads, residential areas, Bharath Mall, the KSRTC Bus Stand, and Bejai where he lived. He said that they divided themselves into two groups, with each adding details that they knew of. He said that since the idea was to add details of use to people, he marked medical, photocopy, soda shops, and grocery shops (such as Baliga Stores).

No, you don't read about that in the U.S. do you. Why not?

- The Hindu

Want to help crowdfund a location based game? How about one that uses real maps to build a fantasy world and is from the folks from Magic: The Gathering? The game, already in production, will be free on iOS, then Android. It's called Map Monsters. Goal funding is $40k and contributors will get their investments back as in game cash.

- The Verge

Google to Crowdsource Indoor Locating Data

Google Maps Floor Plan Marker for Android was announced late last week. But first, a disclaimer from The Verge:

It's important to emphasize that this app is intended only for those that have provided the company with floor plans for an indoor venue. Google flatly states that the software will primarily be of interest "to map enthusiasts and venue owners," and hopefully that disclaimer will be enough to ward off erroneous downloads.

Those who do run the app are basically giving Google detailed information on local wi-fi/cell coverage to better locate devices (and thus people) in the venue. I have a question I've seen in comments on the news already: Who has permission to collect and share this data with Google? The ownder of the property? The vendor renting it? Those who work there? Those who shop there? I'm wondering if there's legal precident here.

- Google Lat Long Blog

Mapping Rwanda’s Tourism Sites and other Crowdsourcing GIS News

Rwanda Development Board (RDB) in partnership with Google, yesterday, commenced the mapping exercise where all tourism attractions in the country will feature on the web.

The two-day event dubbed, Rwanda Tourism MapUp, started with the team's road trip from Kigali where key touristic features were mapped and continued to Musanze and Rubavu districts whose attractions were also added to the Google map list.

About 40 people including GIS professionals helped with the mapping which will be redone annually to insure locations are correct.

- All Africa

The Initiative for Solidarity with Arrested Students released the "Map of Unnamed Students". With this project, the initiative wants to create awareness for judicial and administrative rights violations encountered by students and to make these violations visible. The map also aims at keeping track of the situations of the arrested students.

The idea is to add other incidents to the map and get more information on the known ones.The effort focuses on Turkey and uses CrowdMap.

- Bianet.org

UBC Okanagan and the Central Okanagan Food Policy Council have put together a set of food discussion maps for the Central Okanagan area of British Columbia, Canada. Discussions are "pinned" to their locations and live on four different maps.

Semi-Volunteered Geographic Information Via Game Mechanics

This makes perfect sense to me. Say you want to capture images (or I guess any sort of sensed data about a place) but for whatever reason, poeple just don't go there. What if you could "guide them there" with the lure of more points or prizes or the like? It's my understanding that Waze already does that as it tries to complete its maps of road networks in the United States. And, a new mobile phone based running game tries to entice you to run faster (from the Zombies!).

A paper from Northwestern Univeristy suggests that the mechanics work just as well for having individuals on foot take and share phots at places of interest. If they need to shoot the ghost, and it happens to at the location where data is needed, the player will oblige. The researchers make it clear that players are told exactly how the data they capture will be used and how/if their personal information will be attached. Thus, this is not really "coerced geographic information."

- VentureBeat