CROWDMAP and OPENSTREETMAP: A Technical Comparison John Abimbola Popoola
[email protected] February, 2015.
INTRODUCTION CrowdMap CrowdMap is a simplified online version of Ushahidi, a service that was initially deployed during the 2007/2008 Kenyan post-election violence. It is a hosted platform developed to assist in mapping data and reports, particularly during crises. CrowdMap is one of the products of Crowdsourcing, a term coined together by Jeff Howe in 2006 to refer to the acts by which businesses throw open small tasks to the general public (Howe, 2008).
Ushahidi came up as an effort by Ory Okolloh and other bloggers and software
developers to empower citizen journalism, with the fundamental knowledge that professional journalists are not omnipresent. However, Ushahidi had its shortcomings. It required a user to download and install the software on a computer, which doesn’t augur well with non-IT personnel. Therefore it became imperative for a hosted version to be created, one that doesn’t have much requirements before it could be understood and used. CrowdMap was launched in 2010, a hosted version of the Ushahidi platform. From 2008 till date, over 20,000 Maps have been deployed, and more than 15,000 of those maps are using the hosted CrowdMap platform (CrowdGlobe, 2012).
OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap is also another mapping technology, asides Ushahidi and CrowdMap. It is a free and open-source application that is primarily used for crowdsourcing street and road data all over the world (CrowdGlobe, 2012). As at January 2015, OpenStreetMap has over 1.9 million users all around the world (OpenStreetMap, 2015). Founded by Steve Coast in 2004 with a mission to map the United Kingdom, its users are today spread all over the world (OpenStreetMap, 2014). USAGE OpenStreetMap is a free, editable map of the world, created by the online community of volunteers. It is in a way similar to Google’s Map Maker tool, as it also employs crowdsourcing to improve on the scattered and inadequate geo-data that are associated with its maps, with no financial rewards tied to it (Paul Sawers, 2014). Its popularity and usage has increased over the years stemming from various companies and individuals switching over to it and its map data. In 2012, Foursquare migrated from Google Maps API to MapBox (which is powered by OpenStreetMap). Their reason was that they are in consonance with the fact that MapBox is using the OpenStreetMap data to make great maps (McCarty, 2012). Craigslist, a classified website for advertisements ranging from jobs, housing to community, gigs and discussion forums, also uses a mapping feature for apartment listings that are available on its website. The data are gotten from OpenStreetMap (Ong, 2012). iPhoto, an iOS app made by apple, makes use of map tiles generated from OpenStreetMap (Brian, 2012). The usage of CrowdMap over the years ranges from crowdsourcing crisis-related information to non-disaster related issues. Jon Gosier, a Director of Product at Ushahidi gave some real-world
uses of CrowdMap on Quora.com, a question-and-answer website (Quora, 2011). As at 2011 during the launch of the iPad 2, Hugh Brooks of the Navanti Group, an organization that specializes in using social media and researchers to solve complex communication challenges (Navanti.com), alongside his colleague Ravi Gupta decided to set up a system whereby people interested in purchasing an iPad 2 (given the fact that a lot of people were interested in the purchase) would have substantial information regarding the status of the crowd waiting to buy also (Hugh Brooks, 2011).
They decided to go for a CrowdMap, which featured online
reporting, Twitter hashtag #applelines and the check-in feature. This project saved people a lot of headache of having to travel down only to discover their desired model wasn’t in stock that day, or ending up on a very long queue of buyers. It is officially the duty of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development of the city of New York to know the number of vacant houses and apartments in the city. But a group of people who call themselves VacantNYC took it upon themselves in 2010 to create a platform for crowdsourcing this information. People were encouraged to report vacant properties in their area on the map based on CrowdMap. Over 10,000 reports regarding various vacant properties between August 2010 and February 2011, indicating a remarkable achievement in crowdsourcing (Vacant NYC, 2011). COVERAGE Killian Fox of The Observer, a British newspaper, via its sister paper The Guardian, in 2012 tagged OpenStreetMap as “the Wikipedia of maps” simply because of its editable characteristic (Killian Fox, 2012). Steve Coast, the founder of OpenStreetMap, recalls that his first map data came from when he cycled round a park with GPS, then transferred the data to his computer. He thereafter made a resolve to map the entire world and make the data freely available for everyone
to use in their own ways (Killian Fox, 2012). Over 500,000 registered volunteers have mapped their local environments and made necessary corrections to already-submitted data, without any financial rewards. The coverage of CrowdMap has been likened to what Blogger did to the art of blogging (Keay, 2010). Blogger lowered the barrier that was initially set for blogging. This enabled individuals who had passion for creative writing and blogging to have unlimited access to the blogging system. Likewise, at the advent of Ushahidi, few people were privileged to deploy it for their own uses due to its techy nature of set up. However, with the deployment of CrowdMap, the hosted version of Ushahidi, a larger percentage of maps have been created. OpenStreetMap has brought some cities into limelight. An example is Kibera, the second largest slum in Africa. Until November 2009 when some local volunteers took it upon themselves to fill it in on OpenStreetMap (Killian Fox, 2012). Aside that, the majority of OpenStreetMap users are based in Europe. The 2010 earthquake that rocked Haiti also created the opportunity for collaborative mapping among individuals. New York Times reported that the most complete digital maps of Haiti’s roads, hospitals and other refugee camps were built by OpenStreetMap volunteers (Riva Richmond, 2010), (Steve Lohr, 2011). Also, OpenStreetMap now receives aerial imagery donations from Microsoft, unlike before when you needed a GPS to look at aerial pictures (Killian Fox, 2012). OBJECTIVES According to the repository of Ushahidi on Github, CrowdMap which is based on its parent platform Ushahidi, shares some common goals with it, such as Election Monitoring and Citizen
Reporting (Ushahidi Guide, 2014). Furthermore on its website, the features include team-based collaborative mapping, to moderate content submitted by the crowd and to integrate with various apps. The objective of OpenStreetMap is to create a free, editable map of the world, which would be accessible to anyone who needs it at any time for any purpose. Furthermore, it is on a venture to map the most vulnerable places in the developing world, so that individuals and NGOs can use such maps and data to respond better to crises affecting such areas (Missing Maps, 2015), (WikiProject Cleanup, 2014). METHODOLOGY The approach used in mapping by OpenStreetMap involves the users making use of GPS traces, aerial imagery or their innate local knowledge (Pourabdollah et al, 2013). According to (Sarasua et al, 2012), CrowdMap represents a new model for ontology alignment. Ontology alignment is the process of determining correspondences between various concepts, according to OntologyMatching.com.
This ontology alignment uses crowdsourcing in the
improvement of the accuracy (or not) of already-existing solutions (Sarasua et al, 2012). Knowing fully well that CrowdMap is based on already-existing maps, the system engages the crowd in using these maps to channel in various reports or topics of desire. COMPLEXITY OF USAGE AND LIMITATIONS Some challenges that were highlighted by a research group, CrowdGlobe, according to a survey that was conducted by the group includes: i. Keeping reports up to date and embedding pictures and documents,
ii. The respondents aired their opinions on the need to display data a platform other than a map, iii. Managing and mobilizing volunteer involvement, iv. Some humanitarian organizations highlighted the limited use of the system by traditional humanitarian entities because it was too hard to retrieve the needed information by high-level decision makers. v. The media organizations believe the interface is problematic because of the difficulty encountered in sieving out information for a particular area and/or at a particular time. vi. Also, verification of reports is too difficult and time consuming. (CrowdGlobe, 2012). OpenStreetMap interface, at a first glance, cannot be understood by an average Internet User. Location determination via a personal computer is inexact, as Internet Protocol (IP) address will be used compared to GPS on other devices. The basic objective which is to create a free and editable map of the world is what the owner has kept to. The interface of CrowdMap shows they are using data provided by OpenStreetMap, but the results are not returned to OpenStreetMap.
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