Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
even for a layer of user generated POIs. Storing these categories as layers enables
the user to switch them on or off. For the service itself all objects in a layer are
equal, and switching on or off by users means the service itself has no concept
of relevance, or mechanism to capture and consider a communication context. The
original statement “We've found it super useful for checking out what's nearby a
hotel we'll be staying at, orienting ourselves, getting the feel for a neighborhood,
or just browsing around for fun” 7 makes clear that the purpose of POI is quite
different from landmarks, and far from the intelligent communication capabilities
of the machine we are after. This approach to POI is also more prone to commercial
interference such as sponsoring.
4.3.2
Landmarks in OpenStreetMap
Since spatial databases do not have a type landmark in their taxonomies, as
landmarkness is rather a property of existing entities than a type, user generated
content is a tempting approach to collect the necessary data. This temptation relies
on two assumptions:
￿
Landmark data can be collected from scratch, and can be acquired in high density.
Only crowds have shown to be that agile.
￿
Landmarks are cognitive anchor points, i.e., everybody has an intuitive under-
standing of what a landmark is, and for which purpose a particular local
embodied experience of an environment might be a suited reference point.
Crowds formed by people in-situ can report these experiences [ 18 ] .
User-generated content has been defined loosely as content that “comes from regular
people who voluntarily contribute data, information, or media that then appears
before others in a useful or entertaining way, usually on the Web-for example,
restaurant ratings, wikis, and videos” ([ 35 ] , p. 10). OpenStreetMap 8 is a prime
example of user-generated content in general, and especially as user generated
spatial content—some people speak of volunteered geographic information [ 18 ]
OpenStreetMap is a world-wide success story [ 22 , 23 ] . OpenStreetMap is a project
maintaining a platform to create a set of map data that is open, free to use, and
editable for everyone. OpenStreetMap is based on a peer production model, similar
to Wikipedia. The project was founded in 2004, and had reached one million
registered contributors before 2013.
Peer production means that volunteers (registered contributors) upload geo-
graphic information to a central database in the cloud, which can be accessed
by anyone, and edited by registered contributors. Registration is free. Once a
7 http://google-latlong.blogspot.com.au/2009/08/i-didnt-know-that-was-there.html ,
last
visited
3/1/2014.
8 http://www.openstreetmap.org , last visited 3/1/2014.
 
 
 
 
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