From GIS to Web Maps - Participatory Mapping: New Data, New Cartography - page 31

bottom-up approach to data collection with the concerned
populations [WEI 02, p.5]. This method is illustrated by the
participatory mapping project in Keipersol, South Africa,
which involved the local community in the territory-reform
process through the integration in a GIS of mental maps,
texts, stories and photos of the inhabitants [ROU 07].

But was this participatory turn in GIS enough to address
the criticisms? How about online digital maps, whose

participatory dimension also prevails?

2.2.2. From PPGIS to online maps

While the actors in the field of PPGIS have carried out
various experiments to incorporate data from the population
into GIS, Christopher Miller claims that it is the Web
mapping applications that have made a breakthrough in
terms of public participation in mapping. These have
realized the democratization project of the geographical
information with methods that academics and technicians
had not seen coming [MIL 06]. If the ease with which maps
can be created on the Internet is often shown as the reason
why they are used as opposed to traditional GIS, the latter
also suffer from an unsuitable semiology that does not
incorporate the needs of the populations:

The system is predominantly based upon the
scientific map as metaphor and the basic spatial
primitives of point, line, polygon, and pixel. But
what of qualitative forms of knowledge?
Non-Euclidean sketch maps, cognitive and
mental maps, narrative and oral histories,
pictorial images and moving images are generally
excluded from current GIS knowledge

bases. [MIL 06, p.189]

As Desbois pointed out, GIS are inadequate to show a
range of information coming from the population, as they are