USGS Needs Help, Seeks Volunteers For The National Map Corps

The USGS is expanding its crowd-sourcing of geographic data and is seeking more volunteers to contribute structures information to 16 more states.

The mapping crowd-sourcing program, known as The National Map Corps (TNMCorps), encourages citizens to collect structures data by adding new features and/or correcting existing data within The National Map database. Structures being mapped in the project include schools, hospitals, post offices, police stations and other important public buildings.

The 16 recently added states needing help with structures are: Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming, bringing the total number of states available for updating to 35.  The final release of states by the end of the year will open up the entire country for volunteer structures enhancement.

Preliminary results of the effort have been very promising. As part of the project pilot, The National Map Corps had 143 volunteers who improved data for more than 6,400 structures in Colorado. The quality of the volunteer data collected met the USGS standards for position, attribution, and completeness.

The release of 19 states last April resulted in an increase of 154 new citizen geographers who have contributed their skills and local knowledge to The National Map.

"We are excited to open the next series states of our volunteer data project" said Elizabeth McCartney, the Volunteer Geographic Information Project Leader. "The response from the original set of states has been encouraging and we hope to have volunteer participation across the entire nation by the end of the year".

The tools on TNMCorps website explain how a volunteer can edit any area, regardless of their familiarity with the selected structures.

The citizen geographers/cartographers who participate in this program will make a significant addition to the USGS's ability to provide accurate information to the public. Data collected by volunteers become part of The National Map structures dataset which is available to users free of charge.

To show appreciation of our volunteer's efforts, The National Map Corps has instituted a recognition program that awards "virtual" badges" to volunteers. The badges consists of a series of antique surveying instruments ranging from a surveyor's chain (25 – 50 points) to the yet to be achieved theodolite (2000+ points). Additionally, volunteers are publically acclaimed.

In a recent development, the 4-H National Headquarters has announced that this year's 4-H National Youth Science Day planned for October 9, 2013 will feature geographic technology projects that are part of The National Map Corps data collection efforts.

Becoming a volunteer for TNMCorps is easy; go to The National Map Corps website to learn more and to sign up as a volunteer. If you have access to the Internet and are willing to dedicate some time to editing map data, we hope you will consider participating!

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Costa Rica Launches Digital Maps For Foreigners

Immigration authorities in Costa Rica will soon launch an electronic migration maps that will show areas where foreigners live in the country.

According to the migration assistant, Freddy Montero, the mapping program gives a clear perspective of the movements of foreigners in the country, its location and even needs.

According to the maps, Pavas, a community west of San Jose, remains the area where more Nicaraguans live in Costa Rica, while the central and northern Pacific are where many Americans and Colombians reside, living in cities such as Heredia, Alajuela and Escazú.

Montero said that the system helps in getting information such as the need for housing, basic services such as water and energy, in addition to controlling the trafficking and smuggling of persons.

SOURCE

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GeoPlanner 2 and GeoPad Unveiled

Launch of latest technologies coincides with World GIS Day, which sees more than 80 countries celebrate how GeoSpatial technology is shaping the world.

The Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council (the UPC) today unveiled two important new Geographical Information Systems (GIS) initiatives. The first, GeoPlanner Version 2, is an updated addition of the Council's hugely successful GeoPlanner technology while the second, GeoPad, comprises state-of-the-art planning software especially for use on the iPad. Both initiatives once again prove the UPC's commitment to employing the latest, ground-breaking technology to facilitate the urban planning process in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The launch of these latest technologies coincides with World GIS Day, the international forum that sees users of GIS technology around the world demonstrate how real-world applications are making a difference to society.

GIS technology is a highly valuable component in all of the UPC's business activities and, aligned with the guiding principles of Vision 2030, it is vital in helping the Council's planners define the shape of the Emirate. The clear goal of GIS is to inform the decision-making process by integrating data from an array of different sources and visualising the whole planning process. These latest GIS technologies and capabilities are being shared with the UPC team today, through a series of demonstrations and interactive workshops.

SOURCE Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council

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Enhanced Neighborhood Data from Urban Mapping

URBANWARE Neighborhoods Database Surpasses 84,000 Neighborhoods for over 2,700 municipalities in the United States, Canada and Europe.

Urban Mapping, Inc. (UMI), the leading provider of location-rich content for interactive applications, today unveiled enhancements to the company’s URBANWARE® Neighborhoods database. Already used by industry-leaders in the portal, map platform and Internet yellow page markets, such as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, MapQuest and AT&T's YellowPages.com, the database’s market-leading coverage incorporates nearly 8,000 new neighborhoods in the U.S. and 500 new neighborhoods across Canada and Europe. In addition, Urban Mapping has raised the bar for quality of neighborhood data by adding the capability to dynamically incorporate user feedback in its offering. The company can now merge data from its thousands of existing sources with input from local residents that best understand the dynamics of their neighborhoods.

"Outsourcing expertise to local markets is a critical piece of what we’ve always done and adding user input to the equation was the next logical step to further increase product quality," stated Ian White, CEO of Urban Mapping. "There can be many wrong answers for neighborhoods and few correct ones. Urban Mapping is the neighborhood data provider of choice by the who’s who of the industry because we take the extra steps necessary to deliver quality data that truly reflects the way people think about their local communities."

Yahoo!, a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide, utilizes neighborhood data from Urban Mapping to provide detailed and accurate content to its user base. "In evaluating Urban Mapping and others, it is clear that not all neighborhood data is equal," stated Bob Upham, director of business development at Yahoo!. "Over our two years of working together, Urban Mapping has been instrumental in helping us power great consumer experiences."

Understanding the Challenge with Neighborhood Boundaries
Neighborhoods are informally defined spaces that have formed over time due to historical or cultural reasons. As they are rarely administratively or politically defined, there are no clear rules that dictate how neighborhoods are defined or named. Because of this informal nature, boundaries are often fuzzy. While it may seem like a good idea to draw hard boundaries between neighborhoods, exclusive boundaries do not accurately describe locations situated on or close to the boundary. "Saying one neighborhood ends where another begins is simply incorrect—it distorts reality," added White.

Urban Mapping's neighborhood data defines boundaries in a way that accounts for the informal nature of urban geography. By recognizing that a location can technically be in two or more neighborhoods, Urban Mapping eliminates binary boundaries and replaces them with conditional boundaries. Because conditional boundaries incorporate this inherent fuzziness, they are more in tune with the way people understand informal spaces, resulting in neighborhood boundaries that are more realistic and accurate. This underlying data representation formed the basis for Urban Mapping’s patent pending approach to defining informal space.

The neighborhood database also assigns a "prominence" factor to all locations situated within the conditional boundaries. This "prominence" factor determines and then assigns a dominant neighborhood to each location, allowing applications to produce binary boundaries while avoiding double counting.

About URBANWARE Neighborhoods
Urban Mapping's neighborhood boundary database is the most comprehensive product of its kind, enabling increased relevance for users and greater precision for advertisers. The boundary collection for the U.S. now totals nearly 70,000 neighborhoods for over 2,500 cities and towns. In addition, Urban Mapping's set of international boundary data now includes roughly 15,000 neighborhoods across Canada and Europe. By geographically encoding boundaries of thousands of neighborhoods, UMI provides precise latitude and longitude points for every neighborhood. The neighborhood data can be accessed through a simple and cost-effective API, and is also available in other formats including XML, WKT, ASCII and SHP.

About Urban Mapping, Inc.
Urban Mapping's location-rich URBANWARE products enhance the value of local content for interactive applications. The company's flagship product, URBANWARE Neighborhoods, is a database of informal space and is used by all major portals, map platforms and Internet yellow page publishers, including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft's Virtual Earth, Idearc's SuperPages.com, MapQuest and AT&T's YellowPages.com. Urban Mapping also offers databases of mass transit systems and off-street parking lots, as well as a novel geotargeting solution focused on the needs of local search. For more information about Urban Mapping, visit http://www.urbanmapping.com or call 415.946.8170.

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