PhD studentship in collaboration with the Ordnance Survey – identifying systematic biases in crowdsourced geographic information

Deadline end of August 2018 or when the position is filled  UCL Department of Geography and the Ordnance Survey are inviting applications for a PhD studentship to explore the internal systematic biases in crowd-sourced geographic information datasets (also known as Volunteered Geographic Information - VGI). The studentship provides an exciting opportunity for a student to …

Building Centre – from Mapping to Making

The London based Building Centre organised an evening event - from Mapping to Making -  which looked at the "radical evolution in the making and meaning of maps is influencing creative output. New approaches to data capture and integration - from drones to crowd-sourcing - suggest maps are changing their impact on our working life, …

Third day of INSPIRE 2014 – any space for civil society and citizens?

At the last day of INSPIRE conference, I've attended a session about  apps and applications and the final plenary which focused on knowledge based economy and the role of inspire within it. Some notes from the talks including my interpretations and comments. Dabbie Wilson from the Ordnance Survey highlighted the issues that the OS is facing …

Usability of Geographical Information – the case of Code-Point Open

One of the surprises of the Ordnance Survey OpenData release at the beginning of April was the inclusion of the Code-Point Open dataset, which lists the location of all postcodes in England, Wales and Scotland. This was clearly a very important dataset because of the way postcode geography drives many services and activities in the …

Usability of VGI in Haiti earthquake response and the 2nd workshop on usability of geographic information

On the 23rd March 2010, UCL hosted the second workshop on usability of geographic information, organised by Jenny Harding (Ordnance Survey Research), Sarah Sharples (Nottingham), and myself. This workshop was extending the range of topics that we have covered in the first one, on which we have reported during the AGI conference last year. This …

OpenStreetMap and Meridian 2 – releasing the outputs

Back in September, during AGI Geocommunity ’09, I had a chat with Jo Cook about the barriers to the use of OpenStreetMap data by people who are not experts in the ways the data was created and don’t have the time and resources to evaluate the quality of the information. One of the difficulties is …

OpenStreetMap and Ordnance Survey Master Map – Beyond good enough

In June, Aamer Ather, an M.Eng. student at the department, completed his research comparing OpenStreetMap (OSM) to Ordnance Survey Master Map Integrated Transport Layer (ITN). This was based on the previous piece of research in which another M.Eng. student, Naureen Zulfiqar, compared OSM to Meridian 2. There are really surprising results. The analysis shows that …

Terra Future 2009 – OpenStreetMap and Ordnance Survey

I have checked on Twitter to see how the follow-up meeting to Terra Future 2009, last Friday, went. It was a very pleasant surprise to see that the idea that I have put forward in February, that the Ordnance Survey should consider hosting OpenStreetMap and donate some data to it, was voted the best idea …