Delivering geospatial information with Web 2.0

Abstract

With the arrival of the Internet, Cartography was able to publish maps on-line, quickly and with no distribution or printing costs. However, the way maps are constructed for Web delivery differs little from computer graphics and discrete multimedia products. Now, accelerated by relatively inexpensive access to the Internet, the availability of small, inexpensive, mobile computers and the availability of social software have changed the way in which users access information via the Internet. This is being facilitated via blogging, building products like Wikis and using Aggregator and Social services. The Internet is now being used in a way where users ‘build’ their own information resources by placing their own information on-line or linking to many distributed resources. Information is stored virtually and accessed when needed and in formats best suited to a particular use. Information is not developed or stored as one complete unit, but ‘built’ on demand using Web-provisioned resources. This chapter considers whether cartography needs to address the concept of ‘decomposing the map’ in the era of Web 2.0, whereby a complete product will be replaced by cartographer-built components in conjunction with user-provided information. Users would ‘construct’ their own mapping product from both cartographer-provided components and their own information.