Neogeography
So the term Neogeography has popped up here and there – I believe because of all the online mapping tools – like Yahoo Maps, Google Maps, Google Earth…etc, etc. Neogeography for those not “with it” – “literally means “new geography”, and is commonly applied to the usage of geographical techniques and tools used for personal and community activities or for utilization by a non-expert group of users.”
As a GIS person I’m a bit interested in the swine flu – as it relates to information dissemination:
- MSNBC – Flash Map showing cases of Swine Flu.
- Google Earth – Dots shown on Google Earth that update over time.
- Google Maps – My Maps Showing locations of Flu
- PandemicFlu.gov – Gotta love the title.
So you have neogeographers taking on a problem and producing maps – and there is much more than what was listed. What is interesting about the above maps:
- Just about every map I’ve seen so far has Google is winning out – which to me means their API is alot easier to use or more accessible – of course I used Google to search so it could be biased.
- All the data seems to be the same – so without little investigation everyone is using the same dataset – right or wrong. I’m going to vote right data since so much seems to match. At this point it would be hard to fake it since there is too much coverage (in my opinion). Although you could have pockets of wrong information causing issues.
- While some people are using quantitatively shaded state maps – the preference seems to be points.
April 30th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Neogeography has become prevalent due to the decreased cost of accessing geospatial tools: off the shelf GPS, mapping API’s, navigation devices, open data, digital cameras, and broadband internet.
The result has been that almost any domain can now more easily leverage geographic information that was already existent, but difficult to utilize.
Specifically to your points on GoogleMaps – Google has done a tremendous job building a powerful, easy to use API, cultivated the developer community, and continued to innovate and integrate best practices. There are other API’s but they have either arrived later, been less supported, or don’t align with the general appeal and use – not to mention pure mind-share now.
Lastly, the data – yes, web mapping has definitely done mostly points. They are easy to create and visualize – both from a developer perspective, as well as not overloading client viewers.
However, this is changing. Richer, polygonal datasets are becoming available – thematic and analytic tools are emerging in free and lightweight incarnations.
It’s definitely a very exciting time to engage with the next generation of mapping!
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