Grassroots Mapping is a series of participatory mapping projects involving communities in cartographic dispute. Seeking to invert the traditional power structure of cartography, the grassroots mappers used helium balloons and kites to loft their own “community satellites” made with inexpensive digital cameras.
This was a bit lost in the hubbub over the Google announcement, but a few weeks ago we added a feature to order a print directly from MapKnitter and from the PLOTS map archive. Users can now click-through directly from their map details page. Public Laboratory map production is working towards a end-to-end open source solution:
Planning. Getting started with Public Lab map tools, collaborate, learn about safety first
Capture. Taking aerial images
Sorting. Selecting the best images locally or online with mapmill.org
cross-posted from PBS's IdeaLab. How We Got Here: The Road to Public Lab's Map Project
Last week, Public Laboratory announced that public domain maps are now starting to show up on Google Earth and Google Maps. But how did the projects get there? Here's a timeline of a Public Laboratory map project.
cross-posted from PBS's IdeaLab. How We Got Here: The Road to Public Lab's Map Project
Last week, Public Laboratory announced that public domain maps are now starting to show up on Google Earth and Google Maps. But how did the projects get there? Here's a timeline of a Public Laboratory map project.
To date, the documentation and open science literature we've made as a community has been published under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license, allowing anyone to reuse, remix, adapt, improve, and redistribute our works. Today, the PLOTS Web working group would like to propose that we as a community adopt a separate license for our hardware designs, and after much consultation, we'd like to adopt the CERN Open Hardware License.
We held a Ballon Mapping and Kite Making Workshop on the Campus of San Marcos on Jan. 28, 2012 with a group of about 10 people from: Open Street Map Peru, Saberes Nomadas, and San Marcos Univ. (physics, geography, sociology, and geographic engineering depts.)
I've made an instructional video on efficient image sorting with Preview and Finder, for quickly winnowing down big groups of images to small sets, ready for MapKnitter:
Instead of using a balled up piece of tape, a pebble, or some other thing to hold down my camera's shutter, I've gone to using a knot. This makes it easy to hold in place, and makes setting it easier. I prefer a rubber band, but tape also holds it down. tape may be more useful for bulging, non rectangular cameras.
Are you embroiled in an cartographic dispute? Do you disagree with the official version of your geography? Contact us through the public mailing list or get in direct touch with our team to start a grassroots mapping project today!
Grassroots Mapping is part of the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, founded by a group of activists, educators, technologists, and community organizers interested in new ways to promote action, intervention, and awareness through a participatory research model.
Purchase the Grassroots Mapping Forum, our new community research journal/archive/zine/map, where we hope to share ideas, techniques, and stories from the Grassroots Mapping community. It is printed on a single 22.75x35" newsprint sheet, folded down to just over letter size, and includes a full color reproduction of a grassroots map along with essays, illustrated guides, and interviews on the reverse.
We're helping citizens to use balloons, kites, and other simple and inexpensive tools to produce their own aerial imagery of the spill… documentation that will be essential for environmental and legal use in coming yeas.We believe in complete open access to spill imagery and are releasing all imagery into the public domain.
Techniques and tools for people who want to make maps, on the Public Laboratory wiki. Includes readings and case studies on grassroots mapping projects.
