Collaborative Mapping and GIS: An Alternative Geographic Information Framework

The collection and dissemination of geographic information has long been the prerogative of national mapping agencies. Nowadays, location-aware mobile devices could potentially turn everyone into a mapmaker. Collaborative mapping is an initiative to collectively produce models of real-world locations online that people can then access and use to virtually annotate locations in space. This chapter describes the technical and social developments that underpin this revolution in mapmaking. It presents a framework for an alternative geographic information infrastructure that draws from collaborative mapping initiatives and builds on established Web technologies. Storing geographic information in machine-readable formats and exchanging geographic information through Web services, collaborative mapping may enable the “napsterisation” of geographic information, thus providing complementary and alternative geographic information from the products created by national mapping agencies.