WIKIPLAN –A Collaborative Geographical Map Building System Piotr

Plans not Maps!

WIKIPLAN – A Collaborative Geographical Map Building System

Piotr Gawrysiak

Warsaw University of Technology

Institute of Computer Science

WUT

ICS2006Wikipedia success

Demand & supply situation

Demand – people are hungry for good quality, free information

• Not everyone can afford Britannica (developing countries etc.)

• Free (as in freedom) information can be put to more uses, it

becomes more than just passive content

• Information repositories that are not free can be manipulated and

thus the information quality & reliability might be poor (while

Wikipedia is peer reviewed)

Supply - this should be obvious to people attending this meeting

• Wisdom of crowds (see James Surowiecki) but…

• Information aggregation mechanism is needed (the Web!!!)

• Ease of collaborative information editing (an entry barrier to

Wikipedia is very low – everyone can contribute and it is easy)

WUT

ICS2006Other content types

Wikipedia is almost text only – what about other media?

Such content must be:

• dispersed / decentralized – so everyone can add his piece

• easily editable in a collaborative way

• useful for wider communities

• Music (or Audio in general) – no easy way to edit this collaboratively

• Sculptures – it potentially could be decentralized, but current technology does

not allow for collaborative, online editing (someday perhaps, with robotic tools?)

• Scents – definitely not easily editable, but it could be very useful. Imagine

wikiparfum database… maybe someday?

• Source code – this sounds interesting. Editing source code „wiki style” is a wild

idea (such software would not even compile most of the time) but, with scripting

languages… hmm…

• Photographs – difficult to imagine the editing process, perhaps retouching could

be collaborative, but there is no „crowd wisdom” to be tapped. On the other

hand the photographs databases are possible – see Flickr!

• Drawings – what about drawings?

WUT

ICS2006Drawings as wikicontent

Everyone is able to write (well, almost…)and

Everyone is able to draw (well, almost…)

But remember – not many people are cartographers!!!

• It is relatively easy to continue writing a text commenced by other person, just as someone can complete a drawing sketched by someone else

• Drawings capture human knowledge (maps, blueprints, activity diagrams, organizational charts etc.) in a way not dissimilar to text

• It is very popular activity (you probably drawn your first drawing several years before writing your first letter).

What is the drawing that you use and / or create most often?

MAPS?

WUT

ICS2006Is it worth the effort?

Demand is there

• Google Maps mashups – this is simply useful!

• Tim Berners Lee arguments for opening OS UK data

• When we need a map, we are tempted to copy it from eg. Google or Maporama – but this is copyright violation!!!

• Commercial maps may contain errors, even deliberate:

• Soviet maps were known to contain non-existant streets – to confuse enemy soldiers

• Commercial maps contain „EasterEggs” to track illegal copying of map data

• What if we want to scratch an itch correct mistakes? Google Map data is not free (as in freedom)!!!

WUT

ICS2006Is it worth the effort?

Supply is there

• Everyone commutes, goes to school, work etc.

• Everyone knows his neighborhood

• We can draw plans – but are these any good?

• Problems:

• Our plans are often inaccurate (in GIS sense) but…

• Are sufficient for orientation and route planning, as long as intersections, and

relative road lengths are sensible and perhaps „crowd wisdom” can help here

• Our (mental) maps can be different – not all people regard all streets as equally

important but…

• This might be an advantage – with traditional maps there is only „one true

world view” – not necessarily ours

• A lot of information can be supplied on a map – favorite pubs, tram stops, wifi hotspots

(warchalking anyone?). One map can even contain different versions of street layout –

there are historians among us, who want to create maps of eg. Victorian London and

compare them with current maps

• An intelligent tool is needed, that would deal with inaccuracy, exploit diversity of

„casual” map data that ordinary people (not GPS fantics) can provide and which will allow

to store & retrieve a variety of map related data

WUT

ICS2006Example – Google Maps Mashups

Famous Craigslist on

Google Maps

…but the view of

Warsaw, Poland is much

less impressive!!!

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ICS2006First efforts

Some experiments with a Wiki for geographical map creation has already

been made(discussed on Wikimania 2005, see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimaps) eg.

Bikemap http://bikemap.openearth.com.au/docs/whitepaper/index.html

Open Geo DB http://opengeodb.de/

Openplans http://www.openplans.org/

Openstreetmap http://www.openstreetmap.org/

...

None are popular (growth profile incomparable to even early days of Wikipedia)

Usually limited functionality (limited usefulness of created data)An example: OpenStreetmap – based on Java (so slow and not available for everyone, requires input of correct

street coordinates – difficult to do without GPS, allows to store only streets and their names)

Why the progress is so slow?

A counter example– placeopedia.com – quick geo-tagging tool for wikipedia entries – it works!

We need a paradigm shift!

Again - a collaborative diagramming tool, simple, not intimidating, dependent on browser only,

with built in intelligence but perhaps sacrificing accuracy would be nice!

The only reasonably active

system allowing to create

maps – but it is still

extremely small (content

& users)

WUT

ICS2006We have much work to do…

This is Google Maps view of London…

This is Openstreetmap view of

London…Note: London has best coverage on

Openstreetmap…

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ICS2006Is it feasible - technology?

The technical ingredients are already out there:

A map editor should be a browser based tool, not requiring any download (low entry barrier)

AJAX holds a promise here, Java or external applications might be used as a „professional” tool for wikipedians

Vector images should be displayed and manipulated

Modern browsers have SVG support built in (IE7 possibly, Firefox, Safari, Konqueror, plugins exist for IE6)

By combining these it is possible to create an online vector editor – see Ajaxsketch

http://www.ajaxsketch.com

Of course we need a versioning & conflict

resolution system but it would not

be very different from this used by

eg. Media Wiki.

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ICS2006Is it feasible – social issues?

Is map data really a good wikicontent?See <<cite source>>

• Diversity of opinion

Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric

interpretation of the known facts – geo interpretation of one’s neighborhood is

a personal thing

• Independence

People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them -

Maps are rarely an issue of hot debates

• Decentralization

People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge – everone knows

best the layout of streets that he walks or drives on

• Aggregation

Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision

– a „professional” map of the world is also a sum of work of many

cartographers

WUT

ICS2006A prototype

We have already started working on a prototype at WUT ICS

Some features:

User interface – Ajax+SVG with Java backend (Tomcat + Hibernate)

Works only in Firefox (so far…)

Simple, flat coordinate system – a map of whole world impossible,

but it is perfect for city plans

Main assumption - geospatial accuracy is not required (but possible)

• Each map object has associated a certainty level (highest – for GPS data)

• Every user can position objects in a place, that seems right to him – or

„confirm” a proposal of other users

• A system is able to calculate average properties of objects based on above

inputs

• It is possible to create objects with undefined properties. For example a

street with unknown length (but joining two other streets), or a river with

only roughly defined shoreline

WUT

ICS2006A prototype - cont.

Anchors

Some properties that are certain are represented by anchors

For example: we might not know the exact length or location of „Parkingowa”

street, but we know that it joins „Nowogrodzka” and „Al. Jerozolimskie”

streets

Wiki tools

• Many possible layers, both for streets and Points of Interest (every user

can create a new layer)

• Possibility to add textual comments (this is traditional wiki)

• A versioning system

• …

Anchors

Anchor extent

One of many

possible placements

of the street

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ICS2006A prototype - cont.

• Note – the system is still very far from being complete or even usable ☺☺☺☺)

Map display mode – street color denotes

certainty level (the more red – the less

confidence), diamonds represent anchors:

red – street to street anchors, green –

absolute anchors with exact, GPS measured

coordinates, street width is user

selectable, POI layer is off

Stress testing the backend engine, apart

from Ajax interface there is also a Java

application interface for direct database

manipulation – online and offline

WUT

ICS2006Applications

Francis Galton observed that

crowds can guess the weight of a cow…

Perhaps crowds can guess also

positions and lengths of streets?

But what to do later? There are actually two questions to consider:

- Where a drawing system can be used (maybe not only for drawing

maps)?

- What to do with the street / POI data once we collect it, and how to

manage it?

Some application examples:

- Street plans drawing on Wikipedia (obvious)

- Country borders, highway maps etc. on Wikipedia (obvious too)

- Augmenting Google / NASA satellite imagery with street data

WUT

ICS2006Applications cont.

- augmenting „professional” geospatial wikis (such as Openstreetmap)

with a „rapid prototyping tool”

- creating diagrams of machinery, circuits etc. (but for this task a much

simpler editor is appropriate – not necessarily dealing with

uncertainty, but still Ajax+SVG based)

- creating databases of POI, for example linking all wikipedia entries

dealing with a given POI

- allowing people to create their own sections of map data – for

example „best pubs in Warsaw and how to get from to another”

- creating standalone open source applications (route planning

software, postal code databases etc.) using free map data

- The list can go on and on…

…there is no limit for uses of free information.

But you already know this.

Questions?

http://[email protected]