The Critical GeoWiki Experiment:

Bola C. King's Annotated Bibliography

Bangalore Geowiki. [2006.] 13 Feb. 2008 <http://ctrlw.net/geo/geowiki/>.

The Bangalore Geowiki is a simple but clear example of a functional GeoWiki project. It includes what seems to be a relatively low-res map of Bangalore, India, as its basis, and has a handful of annotations, visible as blue dots. While it is not very sophisticated, it does demonstrate some of the simplicity and flexibility of the GeoWiki concept. Aside from and more importantly than this proof-of-concept, the "About" section includes instructions on actually implementing a GeoWiki as well as some information on customizing it and integrating it with a text-based wiki--in this case, a PmWiki. There is also a "Philosophy" statement that justifies the use of the GeoWiki tool over another method: namely, for simplicity and accessibility.

Chang, Chin-Lung, et al. “The Web and Collaborative Geospatial Mapping: A Position Paper.” Technical report, 12 Sep. 2006. Academia Sinica Institute of Information Science, Taipei. 13 Feb. 2008 <http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/papers/trc/3811-A.pdf>.

Originally written in 2005 but not published until 2006, this paper provides background on the then-emergent idea which the authors termed "online community mapping," the concept which underlies the GeoWiki project and other, similar applications. The authors attempt to create a conceptual framework and strategy of implementation for online collaborative work of this sort. They begin with the collaborative and social nature of many online endeavors and note that such efforts have (at the time) not been widely or systematically applied to the exploration of physical spaces via cartographical applications. It is pointed out also that Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a field has been considered "elitist" in part because it had not yet embraced any sort of participatory culture or methodology, although that was beginning to change with the advent of a Participatory GIS movement.

The authors distinguish, however, between Participatory GIS and Community Mapping based on the positioning of the community: in the former, the GIS tool is used to help create community; in the latter, the community pre-exists the tool which then becomes a focus of community activity. They attempt an initial categorization of various community mapping websites based on whether the mapping process is conducted on- or offline and volume of user contributions of data. They also explore the types of tools and data formats that might (or should) be used in a successful community mapping project. This ultimately leads to their proposal of a prototype project called "Web3P (A Web of Places, People, and Participation)." Unfortunately, the permalink to the project is no longer valid.  

Chuang, Tyng-Ruey, and Andrea Wei-Ching Huang. "Online Community Mapping." Proc. of The PNC 2005 Annual Conf. and Joint Meetings., 31 Oct. to 3 Nov., 2005, U of Hawaii at Manoa. 13 Mar. 2008 <pnclink.org/pnc2005/chi/Presentation-PDF/018-Andrea%20Huang-GIS2.pdf>.

Egenhofer, Max J., and David M. Mark. “Naive Geography.” Lecture Notes in Computer Science 998 (Sep. 1995): 1-15.

Faria, Nuno André de Sampaio. “Suporte à edição cooperative de Informação Geogràfica em ambiente Web.” Thesis. Universidade do Minho (Portugal), 2006. 13 Feb. 2008 <http://repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/bitstream/1822/6351/1/Tese%20Mestrado%20-%20Nuno%20Faria%20-%20Set2006.pdf>. 

This is Nuno Faria's thesis for the degree Master of Information, written under advisor Jorge Gustavo Rocha, who is a researcher in collaborative online mapping. The thesis is in Portuguese and therefore needs better translation than I have available thus far, but the writing seems relatively straightforward and the abstract is made available in English. From that abstract: "In this dissertation, we propose the use of non-proprietary formats and technologies to develop a framework in which the users themselves can manipulate a particular set of geographic data (adding, updating and removing GI [Geographic Information])." The paper is an update, more or less, of Chang et al. (above). Rather than proposing the creation of a new tool, however, Faria instead makes the case for already-existing tools, specifically the Open Geospatial Consortium's free WMS and WFS services and worldKit's GeoWiki.

The paper's aim is "to demonstrate that GI manipulation on the Web is an inexpensive process that uses available technology and is also of interest to the GI user community." To this end, the free tools are discussed at length in chapters 4 and 5, with special attention in chapter 5 given to the GeoWiki application and its installation, configuration, and implementation.  

Farina, Koz [Kosso]. blogHUD.com. 2006. 15 Mar. 2008 <http://bloghud.com>.

Huang, Andrea Wei-Ching, and Tyng-Ruey Chuang. "Commonsense Geography Meets Web Technology: Online Community Mapping." Open GIS & Web GIS 2005 Conference Proceeding: 85-94. 13 Mar. 2008 <www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/~dongpo/OpenGIS2005/papers/10.pdf>.

Shorter, Cameron. “Bicycle Map Builder White Paper.” Working paper, n.d. 13 Feb 2008 <http://members.optusnet.com.au/shorterc/bikemap/whitepaper/>.

This paper is a work in progress, with notes on sections to be expanded. Shorter approaches open-source map building from a health perspective, beginning with the idea of cycling as a way to promote public health. The foundational argument, then, is that one significant barrier to increased bicycle travel (specifically, in this case, in New South Wales, Australia) is a lack of complete and detailed maps of appropriate routes for bikers. As Shorter puts it: "While Sydney's main roads are congested and dangerous for cyclists, large areas of Sydney are covered by back streets, parks and drainage lines ideal for cycling. The problem is that only a few people know about them."

There are existing maps, but they are not comprehensive and some are designed for advanced cyclists rather than recreational or commuting bikers. The necessary information in question, however, is available: it is actually distributed throughout the bicycling community in Sydney. Shorter argues that a community-based, online mapping system can tap into this latent data source more efficiently and with less monetary cost than a dedicated, organization-based team trying to discover the information. The proposal includes information on types of tools, including WMS, and what qualities would be necessary to make the enterprise both feasible and popular for the cycling community. It then focuses on the power, flexibility, and accessibility of open-source, community-driven applications. 

worldKit GeoWiki. 2008. worldKit.org. 13 Feb. 2008 <http://worldkit.org>.

GeoWiki is, as its name implies, geographically-based wiki-type application. It allows the administrator to create a map out of virtually any .JPG-formatted image file, which can then be annotated by visitors. Annotations may be revised as in a wiki, but points on the map can also be added by visitors, and annotations attached to these points. The application allows for different types of point markers (such as circles, triangles, or custom icons) to denote different categories of location-annotations, and images rather than text can be used for annotations. It can be made to work in conjunction with other applications, such as text-based wikis, blogs, and RSS. The documentation is relatively thorough, and a mailing list provides access to a community of users for additional support.