Mapping Your Future

Maps have been with us since ancient times. The Babylonians made maps on clay tablets, the Romans drew the first road maps, and Captain Cook literally put us on the map in 1773.

Today we can call up digital maps and satellite images of almost everywhere on the internet with Google Maps and use in-car navigation technology to guide us around town.

It’s a long way from clay tablets, but the purpose of maps has remained unchanged since Day One: to represent features of the round Earth on a flat surface. Two recent technologies — along with the internet — have made the mapping process accessible to almost everyone.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) have made putting yourself on the map much easier. GIS combines digital maps with the information on those maps. GPS provides accurate locations. When you add your location from a GPS device to a digital map — voila! You know exactly where you are.

This combination of GIS and GPS technology is behind in-car navigation and personal locators for fishing enthusiasts, boaties, hunters and trampers. GPS/GIS units are also used for search and rescue, civil engineering, environmental research and running our cities and towns.

Mash-ups

Mash-ups are the combination of your data and web-based applications. Map-based mash-ups are some of the most popular. Maps.google.co.nz is a great site to get started but there are any number of sites (try Googlemapsmania.blogspot.com for a huge list of Google Maps mash-ups) that provide an awesome array of mash-ups.

Here in New Zealand, Greenpeace has a cool windfarm mash-up,www.yes2wind.co.nz/maps/dynamic7.asp. Or you can keep track of UFO sightings (yes, they are out there… watching) on Ufomaps.com.

You can check out photos from around the world — and load your own — on www.panoramio.com/map. Or you can create your own mashups on Maps.google.co.nz. If you set up a user account you can create your own customised maps of your neighbourhood, town or where you like to go on holiday.

You can add your friends’ houses, their pictures, the local dairy — all sorts of things. You can share your mash-ups with others. Or add your own information on other people’s mash-ups. Once you figure out how to create your own mash-ups, you can find more data and base maps, and create even more mash-ups.

In fact, many people are reporting on things happening right now — the Olympic Torch controversy, for instance (www.sfgate.com/maps/torchrun/) — using mash-ups. Mash-ups are the future of popular mapping.

Mash-ups for winning performance

One person who has been able to take advantage of the combination of computer maps, GPS and the internet is Victoria Beck, the 2007 Open Woman New Zealand Duathlon Champion and Otago University Sportsperson of the Year 2005. “I have improved my performance by using a combination of GIS, GPS and MotionBased — an online performance analysis program,” says Victoria.

When she was training, Victoria wore a small GPS unit on her wrist, like a bulky wristwatch. As she ran and biked, the unit received location signals from GPS satellites in orbit above. A monitor taped to her chest and wirelessly connected to the GPS captured her heart rate.

When she went home, she uploaded the data to her PC and then logged onto the MotionBased website. After processing the data, Victoria could call up maps, tables, charts and graphs that provided a detailed breakdown of her training performance.

“The software showed my heart rate, speed and the gradient I was riding or running on at any given point during my training session. This helped me monitor my performance and see where I needed to improve.”

GIS at school

All of New Zealand’s universities offer degrees in different aspects of GIS, in departments like surveying, land information and geography. GIS graduates work as surveyors and mapmakers and are employed by local councils, Crown Research Institutes and in private industry.

There are at least 2,000 people working in the GIS industry in New Zealand. All of the local councils and many central government agencies, like the Department of Conservation and Land Information New Zealand, use GIS in their everyday activities. The standard 1:50,000 topographic maps and most road maps are produced by GIS.

And any time you see a map on a website — the location of the closest pizza joint or music venue — you can bet it was made with GIS.

You can learn more about GIS at school. Almost 50 high schools and colleges are participating in a GIS education programme sponsored by GIS companies and organised by two teachers — Wellington-based Anne Olsen, and Stephanie Eddy in Auckland. “With GIS,” says Anne, “students can actually see how geography shapes our world.

Our GIS modules — which can be integrated into the Year 12 curriculum — give students hands-on experience in using GIS software and local data to solve problems. We also have modules for other years as well.”

If your school already teaches GIS, you know how exciting the world of computer mapping is. If it doesn’t, talk to your geography teacher and ask him or her to think about bringing the curriculum up-to-date. In the meantime, practise your mash-ups. There is no limit to what you can map!