Transport Planning for Major Sporting Events

The People's Map and Getmapping exhibited at the "Transport Planning for Major Sporting Events" yesterday. The conference was held in Barbican, London where various industries specializing in the transportation and major events organisations were present.

Our stand, advertising our raster, vector and bespoke products, as well as Getmapping's vertical and oblique imagery solutions, drew many visitors from a variety of industries. Some of these industries were Planners, Event Security, Local Authorities, Transportation Information Solutions and Transport Map Makers.

In this day and age, maps and spatial products can be utilised in some or other way in almost every industry you can think off.

Product Samples

The People's Map is a work in progress and although we do not have map coverage at all scales for the entire UK, it is our mission to capture this. Here follows a list of images illustrating some of our products:

People's Map 1:10,000 Scale City Data

People's Map British Isles 1:200,000 Scale Data

People's Map British Isles 1:1million Scale Data

Apart from the above raster datasets, we also hold various other vector datasets like UK Admin Boundaries, UK Postcode Boundaries, Railways, Coastline, Rivers, Lakes, Mountains and all the vectors used to compile our raster products.

If you would like to obtain more detail regarding our products or request a sample, please contact us at sales@peoplesmap.com.

They've made it to Barcelona!

Here is a letter from Paul and Chris who drove their £200 banger from Calais to Barcelona in aid of the MapAction charity:

"We made it!

Firstly, as we hope you are now all aware, we made it all the way to Barcelona in our £200 car without any major mishaps along the way.

Secondly, and more importantly, we made our fund-raising target thanks to the overwhelming generosity of YOU - our supporters. Thank you very much. In fact we have shattered our £3,000 target by a long way. When the gift aid element is added onto what has been donated so far, MapAction currently stand to receive almost £3,900 from this event.

Thanks are due also to our corporate sponsors, without whom we couldn’t have taken part in this event. Between them they have more than covered our costs and we have been able to divert an additional £1,000 into the charity. Not forgetting those who supplied the maps, the tracking facility and repaired and serviced our trusted car – The Green Goddess - now living a life of retirement in Barcelona (we hope)!

David Spackman, Chief Executive of MapAction, has asked us to pass on his own vote of thanks:

“MapAction is hugely honoured and impressed by the efforts of Chris and Paul to undertake the Barcelona rally on behalf of MapAction. The daily blog proved fascinating and we were glad of the opportunity to follow their GPS tracklog along the route. We were particularly pleased that they dropped into the MapAction office on their way. They did splendidly well and we’re proud of their sense of fun, practical hard work, and charitable aims.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who supported the redoubtable duo and who made very generous donations to MapAction. It was a wonderful gesture by all those involved and MapAction is greatly appreciative for the kind donations. It has given us all a great fillip.

For the record during the car rally MapAction had volunteers in Papua New Guinea, Kathmandu, Panama, and in Norway/Sweden. We are about to despatch volunteer teams to Sri Lanka with the Mines Advisory Group, to Pakistan with the humanitarian logistics centre, and a separate team to the regional office of the UN in Islamabad. The money raised therefore by the car rally has helped MapAction to provide its present humanitarian GIS service. I hope all our donors will take satisfaction from this current record of charitable effort.

So special thanks to, and admiration for, Chris and Paul in the first instance, and a heartfelt thank you from MapAction to everyone who donated so generously.

David Spackman, Director MapAction”

So thanks again for all your support.

Best wishes

Paul and Chris"

The People's Map would like to congratulate Paul and Chris again on undertaking this challenge for a great cause!

Data Verification Update

All data entered by our contributors are verified by a team of professional cartographers. We have recently upgraded the verification processes and due to the development of this functionality, no verification was performed during this time. We are now trawling through the back log and expect this process to take no more than 2 months.

This task is performed on a first in first out basis which means that the oldest roads are verified first until we have cleared the backlog. From this point onwards we expect items to be verified within 1 week as was always the case.

For those of you who are unsure of how the verification process works, here is a short explanation: When you create any new feature, it is recorded as an unverified feature and will only be displayed in the Unverified Map. This item is then downloaded and checked over by our team of verifiers which will look at the geometry, code and text of the feature created by the user. The geometry represents the placement of the feature, the code represents the type and the text represents the name such as road names and numbers. If all three items is correct, the feature is verified and will appear in the verified People’s Map layer. If the geometry fails verification, the feature is deleted. Please note that cartographic discretion is used when evaluating the geometry and only data that is totally out of place will be deleted. If the geometry pass, but the code or the text fails, only the text is deleted and the item remains unverified until updated.

Please refer to the following blog article explaining the different layers in People's Map. This article a clearly distinguish between the verified and unverified map.
http://peoplesmap.blogspot.com/2009/01/peoples-map-data-creation-process.html

We are currently developing a traffic light system that will highlight the unverified features with different colors according to the criteria for failing the verification process. Currently it not possible for our users to know if the features they created are still unverified because it has not been looked at or it has not yet passed the verification criteria.

If you have any questions regarding the verification process, please feel free to post your comments on this blog or alternatively contact us at info@peoplesmap.com.

An Act Of CARtography

The People's Map donates maps for Barcelona Bangers Expedition

The XYZ Digital Map Company have provided Salford GIS with a range of People's Map, XYZ, and Global Mapping maps with which to decorate their vehicle for their Barcelona Bangers expedition.

The Barcelona Bangers event is a weekend long rally that sets off from Calais and terminates in Barcelona. Although not intrinsically an event for charity, many participant teams take the opportunity to raise money for a charity of their choice.

Paul Coward and Chris Nelson, from Salford GIS, have bought a “battered [16 year] old BMW”, costing £198, for the occasion and intend to raise at least £3000 for MapAction, a non-governmental organisation dedicated to providing field information and relief maps for disaster emergencies.


The two-man team will be departing from Southport on the 21st of May 2009 to join the other teams in Calais, before heading down to Barcelona on a trek, which lasts from Friday the 22nd, to Sunday the 24th of May... providing the car makes it. The one rule regarding the type of car that the 67 teams can use for their trip is that it should have cost under £200.

The participating teams are encouraged to decorate their vehicles, and in an inspired move, the People's Map in conjunction with The XYZ Digital Map Company, have agreed to provide maps for which to decorate the BMW.




We wish Paul and Chris the best of luck and hope their sub £200 banger makes it to Barcelona.


At least they will not get lost!

Mapping the real world

“A car was left teetering on a cliff edge in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, after the driver followed satnav directions down a Pennine footpath”

This was a BBC news headline that appeared on 25th March 2009 and you can read the piece and watch a video at: http://tinyurl.com/d8ztyh

Contrary to what most people think even the best sources of mapping data can be wrong or misleading. What’s the point? I hear you ask. Well if you look at the aerial photograph of the path involved it is quite clear that this could never be considered to be a navigable road.

The People’s Map creation process using aerial imagery and in most cases local knowledge goes a long way to ensure high quality mapping. While this is not full proof it certainly demonstrates the value of our map making process!

Technical Problem: Missing Map Tiles

The People's Map servers experienced some technical difficulties during the morning, but all functionalities have been restored and the site is stable.

Please be aware that as testing and maintenance will continue through the weekend, the map and photography tiles could disappear for short periods of time.

Don't worry, this technical problem will not affect any of the data you have already or will be creating. The only affect is that there is a slight delay in the time your data appears in the unverified map layer.

We apologise in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.

New User and Editing Functionalities Deployed

New People's Map website functionalities were deployed to the website this morning. These functions include 1) New data editing functions, 2) New "Your Statistics" section and a 3) improved "Your profile" section.

1) Road Split: The new editing functionality that was deployed this morning allows users to split existing roads. This function will split a road at the point or node you select. This can for instance be used to split a road where a round about is required or where a road was digitised as one, but actually has more than one name.

We will publish a few tips and uses of the split functionalities in the People's Map forum under "Digitising Tips".

2) A new link to each registered user's personal data creation statistics was added to the website. When this option is selected, you will be able to view all your own data creation stats like how many items were created as well as total length (if appropriate). The stats are displayed under the categories Points, Linestrings and Polygons which again is shown for data created in the last 24hours, week, month, year and all time.

3) The Improved User Profile section now allows for registered users to change there registration email address, password and also there secret question. So when you change your email address or would like to change your password, you can do it all yourself.

We hope these improvements create a better user experience for all and please feel free to comment on these functionalities either via the Blog or via the Forum.

The People's Map Forum

The new People's Map community forum was developed and made available to all People's Map users as part of the launch of the new site almost a month ago.

The purpose of the forum is to keep all users informed of developments, provide them with digitising guidelines & tips and more importantly encourage users to comment on the various aspect of the People's Map and its functionalities.

Here is a list of the existing forum topics:

1) Digitising Tips: Tips to assist contributors to create good quality and accurate data

2) FAQ's: Frequently Asked Questions

3) General: General People's Map related discussions

4) Technical: Technical related discussions, issues, resolutions, etc.

Each one of the above topics consists of various discussion threads where you as users can leave comments and make suggestions. Also note that each topic has a list of threads which is discussions related to that specific topic like to FAQ section illustrated in the image below.

In order for you to comment on any of the forum topics and threads, you should be logged on to the People's Map as a registered user. Please also note that you can either comment directly under the topic thread or you can comment on someone else's comments. To reply, just hit the reply link next to either the thread or one of the comments.

We hope you are finding this forum helpful and please feel free to suggest any other forum threads that you would like to see including in your community forum. We look forward to all your comments.

Top Contributors for March 09

Here are the results of the Top People's Map Contributor as it stood on the last day before the new People's Map site was launched.

Many congratulations to Laurence Newman who is the top roads contributor of all time and to Matus who was the top roads contributor in March. I think Mapman also needs a mention is this post since he was on top of the standings for many months and have contributed a great deal to the People's Map data layers to date. He is still top of the all time log for creating Nodes.

Now that we have launched the new site, we look forward to a few new challengers to the top spot in the contributions standings!

Helensburgh complete in just a couple of days

One of the People's Map contributors has already mapped the entire town of Helensburgh, Scotland since the launch of the new site this week. Here are a few images illustrating what progress can be made in just a day or two:

This aerial photo shows the extent of Helensburgh.

This image shows the original data that existed in People's Map before our contributor started to map Helensburgh.

This image displays the data created by the contributor on top of the aerial imagery.

The last image shows the new data already rendered into the People's Map unverified map layer, ready for validation.

All in four easy steps! Why not map your own town and let us know about it?

The New People's Map is Launched

Many of you who read this blog on a regular basis will know that we have been working on the new People’s Map website for several months. Well today is the day we launch the new site and we are thrilled with the results.

Starting off with the new features you will notice at once that the new map window is much larger, which means less panning and zooming. In Edit mode nodes do not appear unless they are selected, making the mapping interface much less cluttered and easy to use.

We have also improved the map search capabilities, which produce better more accurate results... give it a try and let us know what you think.

Website performance is considerably enhanced especially in terms of panning and zooming. Many data structure improvements were also implemented to improve editing performance, but we will let you be the judge of that.

We have enhanced the discussion forums facility and we’ll be adding topics as they arise. We hope this will encourage better more focused feedback to the benefit of all.

More help is at hand too in the form of data capture guides and screen casts to provide all users & editors with better guidance on the various functionalities. We will be adding to these over time, therefore any feedback or input will be gratefully received.

That’s it! On behalf of everybody in the People’s Map team...Enjoy!

Map Layers in peoplesmap.com

Most of you have probably noticed that there are four different raster map layers in http://www.peoplesmap.com/, but what do these maps represent and how can you use them?

1) The Getmapping Imagery layer contains the aerial photographs used as the base to create our mapping data from.

2) The People's Map layer contains all the verified map data and information created by our various private or commercial contributors. This map only contains data that was verified by our team of professional cartographers and will therefore be visible in the People's Map WMS layer used in GIS applications or our Open Layers API embedded into customer's web sites.

3) The People's Map Unverified Layer contains both map data verified as part of the process briefly described above and all other data created, whether verified or not. All unverified data is highlighted in purple.

4) The Out of Copyright Map is a 1940's map of Great Britain that is used as a reference to create and verify new mapping. Since this map is out of copyright, our users are allowed to use this data freely for our purposes.

Top Contributors for February 2009

Congratulations to Laurence Newman who has overtaken the long standing "Mapman" on top of the All Time Road Creation rankings.

People's Map used on BBC Crimewatch

The People's Map was last night used on BBC Crimewatch. Here are a few snapshots of the Crimewatch presenters with the People's Map 1:1million scale map in the back ground.

You can watch the clip on BBC I-Player: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=crimewatch

People's Map African Connections

One of the People's Map Partners, Geosense, has a data capture and processing division in Cape Town, South Africa. Four members of the SA Geosense team has recently been trained to collect data for the People's Map and are currently actively capturing all roads, to a scale of 1:100,000 mapping for the entire United Kingdom. They have started in the North and will systematically work their way down to the South West tip of England. They have already completed Scotland and have recently started with the North of England. We estimate that this capturing process will take no longer than 6 months and by Summer 2009, you should notice a significant improvement to all major roads throughout the Peoples Map.

Below are a picture of the XYZ Digital Maps trainers (On the flanks) and the Geosense data capture team in the middle.

Apart from the creating 1:100,000 scale data for the Peoples Map, this data capture team also create maps for ad hoc projects, like for instance the London Land Use project. They have captured all land use, like parks, sport fields, lakes, dams, etc for the entire London inside the M25. They have also assisted with the creation of the road network for the Bournemouth & surrounding areas. Images of this data can be viewed in previous posts on the People's Map Blog. Al this data was captured externally from the People's Map website and therefore you can not be viewed in the People's Map data layers yet. We are planning to import this data in due course.

They form a integral part of the Peoples Map data capture team and you will notice many further improvements made by them over the next few years. Between the South African team, the Scotland team and all other individual People's Map editors, we should hopefully map the entire UK at all scales in no time!

Corby road map complete

We recently completed a mapping project for the town of Corby in Northamptonshire. The objective of this project was to map and name all the roads of Corby and the surrounding area.

All the roads were initially captured in the People's Map. A GIS survey team then travelled to Corby to field check the accuracy of the road data created in People’s Map. Since Corby has developed quite rapidly over the last few years, the survey team found that the aerial imagery (2006) was not up to date enough to capture all the roads so embarked on a GPS survey of these roads. As part of this field check and survey exercise, all the road positions and attributes where checked and verified.

The 1st image below shows the raw GIS data in blue that was captured in People’s Map from the 2006 Aerial Imagery as source and the GPS surveyed data in red, overlaid on a snapshot of the existing PM extent. This red GPS surveyed data is not yet visible in People’s Map as yet, but is sceduled to be imported into the online version in the near future.

The 2nd image shows a graphically modified road map of Corby. This data will now be used by our client to create a final map, including various layers like railways, parks, etc.

The People’s Map is proud to say, due to the extent of this data capture project, we currently hold the most up to date map of Corby that exists.

People's Map of Scotland

This is a A0 Map of Scotland that we recently produced for one of our clients. This map was created from the People's Map 1:1,000,000 scale mapping of the UK.

Here is the same 1:1,000,000 data, but only zoomed in much closer. This image below shows the level of detail that is contained within the People's Map 1:1,000,000 mapping. Note that we have coverage to this scale for the entire UK.

Here is a snap shot to illustrate the level of detail contained in the South of England:

Top Contributors for January 2009

Bournemouth, Poole, Christchurch and surrounds complete

All the roads for Bournemouth, Poole, Christchurch and the surrounding areas has now been captured by the People's Map production team. The image below illustrates the extent of the data captured.

This data is not yet visible in People's Map, as this data was not captured within People's Map, but off line in MapInfo Professional. This data is currently being checked and verified and will then be imported into the live People's Map system for all to view and edit.

People's Map Data Creation Process

The People's Map data creation process can sometimes be confusing to our new users, so here follows a brief explanation of how the data creation process works and what data will appear in what layer, at what time of the process.

Step 1: Identify area with no data
Search for the area that you want to create mapping for.


Step 2: Create data
Digitise data by using the editing toolbar. This data will immediately appear in point, line and polygon form.


Step 3: Unverified layer
You will notice that the road you created will appear in the unverified map layer with a purple border. This indicates that the new or edited road has been marked as unverified.



Step 4: Verified layer
This unverified road layer will be exported and validated by a verification process. If the road passes this process, the purple border will be removed and the feature will appear in the People’s Map Layer (Verified). The verification process is undertaken on a weekly basis.

Central London Complete

I am pleased to announce that we have now completed the data capture of all roads in Central London for an area stretching from Hampton Court in the south west to Stratford in the north east. This means that we now have complete data sets for Central London, including all roads, land use, railways, drainage and place names. This data can currently be viewed in the Unverified Map Layer of the People's Map and will be transferred to the verified People's map layer when the data has been verified by our team of professional cartographers. Below is a image of the existing raw data inside the M25.

We have now started with the next phase that is to capture all the roads within the M25. I should rather say, all minor roads, in between the current Central London area and the M25 as all the classified roads have already been captured and now it is just a question of filling in the gaps.

We estimate to complete this phase of the project by spring this year and look forward to have a complete data set for the Greater London area.

Top Contributors for December 2008

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!

This year has been a very productive year for the People' Map. All the various parties involved in the People's Map, from the individual contributor all the way through to the technical development team have all contributed significantly to the progress the People's Map has made during 2008. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our contributors, partners and in-house teams for the work and effort they have put in during 2008 as all have done a great job in contributing to the growth and development of the People’s Map.

We now look forward to the challenges that 2009 will bring the People's Map as we have quite a few big milestones to be achieved during this coming year. We start of early in the new year with launching our new People's Map website, then move on to completing the Greater London data capture project and finally completing the UK 1:100,000 scale data capture project. This is not even mentioning all the other smaller data capture projects planned with various commercial & academia partners as well as the individual contributors. So, just by looking at the above, it seems that 2009 is already going to be a busy year!

On behalf of the People's Map team, I would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and prosperous New Year!!

Top Contributors for Nov 2008

Digitising Tips for December 08

The People's Map user base is growing on a daily basis as more and more people are contributing to the Peoples Map. People have different styles and methods of data capturing, but it is important that we try and keep the end product as simular as possible. It is also very important for us to collect data as accurately as possible as this reduces valuable time spent on data verification, as we would rather like to spend it on data creation and building the map.

I have therefore created this list of data capture tips that will not only assist you with creating accurate data, but will also highlight certain issue and bugs that the system is experiencing and provide you with a work around/solution for each of these.

1) Most of you must have noticed that some of the major roads positional accuracy can be off by hundreds of meters in some areas.

Cause: This data was originally captured to a scale of 1:1,000,000 and was imported into the People's Map. This means that this data is accurate when viewed on a small scale, but not when zoomed in.

Solution: These roads should be moved into the correct position by moving the red nodes of this road to the correct location. Zoom in as close as needed to place the road node as accurately as possible.

2) Sometimes, when you are moving roads, like the example above, to the correct location, a duplicate may appear. It is therefore confusing as to which road is the actual and which is the duplicate.

Cause: All moves are registerred into a database as and when a new point is created, but sometimes a delay appears with this process and a duplicate is created. Eventually the process catches up, but the original road remains as the duplicate, untill refreshed.

Solution: This problem should not occur for much longer than January next year as the new site and database structure will be implemented, but in the mean time: If a duplicate appear, whilst editing, just flick back to and from the "View" mode to "Edit" mode and this duplicate will disappear. You will notice that the new line has been captured and the original (duplicate) has been removed.

3) Sometimes when creating a road, the actual line will change to a black line, without you noticing this. When this bug occurs, the road data will become worthless to us and needs to be recreated.

Cause: We are unsure of the exact cause, but this should no longer be a problem when the new site is launched in the New Year.

Solution: Unfortunately the only existing solution is to delete this road and recreate it. If deletion is not possible, then just leave it as it is and we will clean the data appropriately afterwards.

4) Users sometimes create roads, but forget to actually connect the road created to those it is leading from or into. Good, clean geographical road data are always connected to one another.

Cause: Incorrect Data Capture Methods

Solution: The end node of a road can simply be moved to snap to the node on the road it leads from or into. If there is no node, just create one by clicking and dragging the segment.

I hope you will find these tips helpful. Please feel free to let us know of any other problems that you have experienced whilst creating data in People's Map by emailing support@peoplesmap.com.

Why not use the Thomson Directories Maps?

What do you do when you are capturing new roads in a town or city and you have forgotten the name of the road? Have you ever come to a road in a town and could not remember what it was called, but want to capture this road and the surrounding the area! ................so what do you do?

Leaving the road blank is not ideal and copying it from other mapping sources is strictly forbidden and illegal!! You can check if the road is listed in the "Out of Copyright Map". If not, you can request the Thomson Directories Town and City maps from the People's Map to use as a reference. We have access to over 400 electronic English and Scottish town and city maps and as part of our agreement with Thomson Directories, we can send you these maps to copy the road data from and capture this in Peoples Map. Below is an example of one of the Leicester maps.

These maps cover 361 English and 54 Scottish Towns so the one you are looking for is bound to be there. Just send us an email at info@peoplesmap.com requesting the specific area you are planning to digitise and we will send you the digital copy of this specific map. You can also use your local Thomson Directory as this also have local maps listed.

Please note that the Thomson Directory Maps usually only covers the main town centers and surrounding areas, but this is a good starting point and provides other contributors with a base to work from. Some contributors already requested maps for Milton Keynes and Coventry, but don't worry, there are still 412 towns to choose from! Good luck!!

London Progress

I am excited to say that we are making very good progress in completing the data collection for the Greater London data! When I talk about the London data, I am referring to all roads, drainage, rail and land use inside the M25.

We have so far collected all land use data within the boundaries of the M25. The land use layers consist of data like agricultural land, parklands, educational land, sports fields, etc. This consists of polygon data and will provide the important backdrop to which the other data will be displayed against. Please note that this land use data is not yet imported into the Peoples Map, but will be done by the end of this year. You can see an image of the data created below:

We are making very good progress with the completing the road dataset, at a scale of 1:10,000 for the entire Greater London area. To date we have captured all road data in a grid area stretching from Stratford in the North East to Hampton Court in the South West, apart from a small block in central London. This central London block is scheduled for completion by the end of this year. All Primary roads are collected for the rest of London, but we are now embarking on capturing the remainder of the minor roads in the outer London areas. The image below shows the London data set to date, with the dark grey areas illustrating the completed unclassified roads.

Thank you to all who have contributed so far with filling the gaps in London!! I am really looking forward to seeing this dataset complete in the near future!

Peoples Map API for Local Authorities

I recently became aware that Ordnance Survey is now not allowing for any OS derived data to be displayed on Google Maps as they do not want to allow Google to have perpetual user rights on their data. I am aware that many Local Authorities are either using Google Maps as a inter/intranet mapping API or are moving toward implementing Google Maps. This move by OS will stop the use of Google Maps in Local Authority websites, if the data to be displayed is OS derived. So, why not consider using the Peoples Map API instead?

The benefits of using the Peoples Map API:

1) Allow you to display OS derived data

2) The ability to edit the map data and therefore change/customize the rendered map displayed in the API.

3) All map data displayed in the Peoples Map API is verified by a team of professional cartographers.

If you are looking for an alternative Map API, that will allow you to display OS derived data, without giving away any user rights; and gives you the ability to edit the base map data, please contact us at info@peoplesmap.com for further information. We are more than happy to contact you to discuss how the Peoples Map work and what we are planning for the future. Otherwise, please have a browse through our website at http://www.peoplesmap.com/ and let us know if we can be of any further assistance.

Step by Step Guide to editing the Peoples Map

This is a basic step by step guide to editing the Peoples Map. This guide is specifically targeted at our new Peoples Map editors, but can off course be used by our existing editors to refresh their knowledge. I hope that you will find this Step by Step Guide helpful when famirialising yourselves with the tools. Please let us know if we can add anything else to this guide and send your suggestions to info@peoplesmap.com.

1. Notes before you start editing the map
People’s Map allows the registered user to create and edit map features such as:
- Roads – All type of roads, cycling and walking paths
- Points of Interests – Towns, Hospitals, Car parks, Sport Fields, Churches, etc
- Areas – Parks, Lakes, Buildings, Airports, Rivers, etc

There are two map windows in the People’s Map website that both contain four map layers. You can identify in which mode you are by looking at what tab is highlighted as illustrated in the image 1 & 2 below.

1.1) Image 1:“View” mode

The “view” window is a browser window where road, town and post code searches are performed.

1.2) Image 2: “Edit” mode

The “edit” browser is where the actually edits of data is performed. Also note that the editable vector data layers will only appear in the “Edit” view.

Each of the “View” and “Edit” windows contain four map layers:
- The Aerial Photography – Used as the base to create/edit data on
- The Peoples Map - The verified People’s Map
- Historic Data - This map can be used as guidance when digitizing new roads
- Unverified Peoples Map – This layer shows both the verified and unverified data

2. Login or register.
Having found an area, you can click on the "edit" tab of the People's Map. This will bring you to a page prompting you to sign into your account. If you have not already done so, please take a few minutes to create an login account.

3. Become familiar with the account user page.
Having logged in you will notice that your account options are displayed along the right hand side of the webpage and a grey toolbar appears in the top left-hand corner. This editing toolbar holds the tools that are used to create and edit map objects.

4. Locate the area you are interested in.
First find an area known to you where you want to add or edit an existing feature. You can locate areas in the UK by typing in a post code, place name or road name in the search box. If searched by place name, the map will show the whole town, but when searched by postcode, the map will zoom into the specific post code area. Once you have located a general area, you can switch between the aerial photography and the People's Map to recognize features of the area you are familiar with.

5. Create or edit a road.
5.1 Identify a road you wish to change or add.
You should first identify a road in the aerial image that you are familiar with and would like to add or edit (you can check this by flipping between the aerial images and the map).

Please note - only change or add roads that you personally know. Using other map sources is not allowed.

5.2 Use the editing tools to add or change a road.



Click on the "Add road feature" button in the expandable dialogue, find the beginning of the road and click once on it with your left mouse cursor. This will add a point to the map. Follow the length of the road, clicking as often as necessary to represent the curves. Continue along the road in this manner, adding enough points so that the line you are creating fits nicely along the road in the aerial image. When you come to the end of the road, double click the left mouse button to finish the road.

5.3 Provide the name and details of the road

Once you double-click the mouse button to indicate that you have finished digitizing a road, a dialog box will pop up, prompting you to add road details, such as what type of a road it is, and the name of the road. Please fill this in to the best of your knowledge and click "OK". Your road has now been added to a layer of data that is marked as "unverified". This will be rendered and placed in the map layer that shows both verified and unverified data together. Once the new data has been verified, it will be placed in the People's Map layer.


6. Create or edit a Point of Interest (POI).
6.1 Identify a POI you wish to change or add.
You should first search for and then identify an object that you would like to map as a “Point of Interest”.

6.2 Use the editing tools to add or edit the properties of a “Point of Interest” (POI).



Click on the "Add point" mode button in the editor toolbar, find the feature you want to map and click once on it with your left mouse cursor. This will add a point to the map and a dialog box will appear. Choose what type of POI this will represent, add as much detail as possible into the dialog box and click the “OK” button. Your POI will be created.

6.3 Edit the position, name and details of the Point of Interest.

When you want to change the type and details of this point, double click on the newly created point and the dialog box will reappear. Click on the “OK” button when changes have been made. The POI can also be moved by selecting the point and dragging this to the required position.





7. Create or edit an Area/Polygon.
7.1 Identify an area you wish to change or add.
You should first identify an area in the aerial image that you are familiar with and would like to add or edit.

7.2 Use the editing tools to add an area to the map.



Click on the "Add Polygon” mode button in the editor tool bar, find the beginning of the area and click once on it with your left mouse cursor. This will add a point to the map. Follow the boundary of the area you want to map, clicking as often as necessary to represent the curves. Continue along the boundary in this manner, adding enough points so that the line you are creating fits nicely along the area in the aerial image. When you come back round to the starting point and want to create the last node, double click on this location and the polygon will complete automatically.

7.3 Provide the name and details of the area.
Once you double-click the mouse button to indicate that you have finished digitizing an area/polygon, a dialog box will pop up, prompting you to add the area details, such as what type of an area this polygon represents and the name of the area. Please fill this in to the best of your ability and click "OK". The area is now created in the People’s Map.

7.4 Change the position or shape of the area/polygon.
The shape of the area can be altered by selecting or moving the red nodes, or by clicking on and dragging the segment lines in between the nodes to a new location. The entire polygon can also be moved by selecting the polygon, pressing shift and drag the polygon to its desired location.

The polygon can be deleted by deleted the nodes one by one. The polygon can also be deleted in its entirety, left click to select the polygon and then right click for a “delete object” option to appear. Select this option and the polygon will be deleted.

Bath Data Capture Project

Peoples Map and Bath Spa University are working together on two data capture projects. The Bath Spa 2nd year GIS students are mapping the city of Bath and beyond and the 3rd year GIS students are mapping the entire Isle of Wight.

Getmapping and Geosense, both shareholders in the Peoples Map, have had a long standing relationship with Bath Spa GIS Department where students have been working on Knowledge Transfer Projects (KTP’s). Getmapping/Geosense has also employed a few graduate students into their permanent teams. This relationship has worked well in the past as Bath Spa and the students specifically benefit from working with and in a commercial environment and we as a commercial entity, gain from the skills and expertise of the academia.

With this latest Peoples Map/Bath Spa venture, the Peoples Map benefit as Bath and the surrounding area is accurately mapped in the Peoples Map, but more importantly, the students not only learn and experience how data is captured and processed, but will also see how this data forms part of a commercial product. This gives them insight on how the data they capture, can be used within a commercial project.

In this data capture project, 15 Bath Spa students are using the Peoples Map, Getmapping Aerial Images and tools like GPS, MapInfo & Peoples Map Editing Suite to survey and digitise the entire city of Bath and beyond. In total they will cover an area of 10 square kilometers. Each student have the opportunity to cover urban as well as rural areas where they are collecting roads, point of interests and land use polygons. This project started at the end of September and the students are now one month into their data capture module. The project is scheduled for completion by the 1st of December and we will see the final data displayed in the Peoples Map by the end of this year. All the data created by the students will be put through the normal Peoples Map verification process to insure that this data is correct and up to date before it is loaded into the final Peoples Map layer.

I am really excited to see how the Bath data set will evolve over the next month, but more specially look forward to meet the students and discuss how they experienced this project, what was the pro’s and the cons, etc. The Peoples Map is changing and improving by the day and by receiving feedback from our users, we can keep our improvements relevant to the task at hand!

People's Map Aerial Photography

I am often asked about the photography which is used as the basis for the People's Map. The photography comes from Getmapping's Millennium Map, which was started in 1999. Our idea was to create and maintain a map-accurate, seamless colour photograph of the whole of Britain and make it available to all users at affordable prices.

Detail of the New Digital Aerial Photography

It is extraordinary to think that in those days most people had never seen an aerial photograph of their house or village. Most aerial photography was commissioned by individual Local Authorities which owned the data outright and did not make it available to anybody outside the council. The market was limited almost entirely to 'oblique' photographs taken by private pilots and sold door-to-door.

In the early days we used film cameras to capture the photography on 9 inch square negatives, and the first complete photograph of England and Wales, which was completed in 2001, used 27 kilometers of film which all had to be developed and scanned. We had over 200 people working to stitch all the 34,000 photographs together into a seamless map-accurate 'mosaic' which at that time was the largest seamless photograph ever made. We then put the whole of the Millennium Map onto our website (http://www.getmapping.com/) so that, for the first time, everybody had access to aerial photography of the whole country. We also started to make and sell various products based on the photography such as the England Photographic Atlas (the heaviest book ever published by Harper Collins) and Photoscape (a 3D DVD that allowed users to fly around the country in 3D.

In 2004 we switched to digital cameras and the resulting photography is much sharper and easier to manage. We aim to renew the photography on a 5 year timescale, but the terrible summers we have had for the last two years have put us rather behind schedule. We are hoping for a long hot summer next year.

Intergeo 2008

The recent annual trade show in Bremen – Intergeo2008 – highlighted the rapid growth in demand for geographic data, and in particular the need for more flexible solutions in the future.

Amongst the new technology on show were a large range of vertical and oblique survey cameras, web-based data services, and a growing number of ground based image acquisition systems.

However, a common theme of all of these was the need to set them in a real geographic context, and in particular to have good up to data mapping to support them – such as the People’s Map.

Many were interested in the People’s Map concept, and were impressed by the way it strikes the right balance between open access, flexible licensing and a sound commercial framework (to maintain consistency, accuracy and continuity in the data). They also agreed this was the best way to meet the needs of a changing market.

It was encouraging to see so many new pioneering technologies on show, and to realize that the People’s Map is not just a geographic information source in its own right, but will also become a platform on which the developers of tomorrow can build new and innovative solutions in an environment free from concerns over copyright infringement and uncertainty regarding data maintenance.

Working with the Swindon Link!

We are excited to announce that Peoples Map is now working with the Swindon Link newspaper to get Swindon mapped.

The Swindon Link is a community magazine that is published on a monthly basis. It was first published for the West Swindon community in December 1978 and then in North Swindon from January 1994. Swindon Link is distributed monthly free of charge over 23,000 homes in West and North Swindon. A further 3,000 are left in public places around the town.

Roger Ogle, the Swindon Link editor, realised the need for up to date maps of the Swindon when he moved there more that 30 years ago. He has been creating and publishing maps of West and North Swindon since then. These maps are free to the public as it is paid for by advertising on the brochures and is distributed in the same way as the magazine. These maps, regularly updated by Roger, is still the most up to date maps of this area as he receives the details of new developments direct from the Local Council. Towns like Swindon have undergone major development over the past 30 years as illustrated by the two Getmapping aerial images below. These show how North Swindon has developed in 6 years from 1999 to 2005.

Image 1: 1999 Getmapping Aerial Image of North Swindon

Image 2: 2005 Getmapping Aerial Image of North Swindon

Conventional Map companies are struggling to keep up with rapidly expanding towns and that is why collaboration such as this between Peoples Map and Swindon Link (the public) are so important. I asked Roger what his reason was for creating these maps and he mentioned that Swindon was expanding rapidly, and still is, and because of the layout of the modern day developments, it was very easy to get lost. He was local to the area and felt the need for a up to date map of his local area. A example of one of these maps he created for North Swindon is illustrated in Image 3 below.

Image 3: North Swindon Map by Swindon Link

The Peoples Map is now working with the Swindon Link to involve the Swindon community to get mapping. Together, we want to excite Link readers in the People’s Map and get them actively involved as users and contributors. The two parties will work closely together over the coming years to develop a relevant and up to date map of Swindon. The Swindon Link recently published this article regarding the collaboration between Peoples Map and Swindon Link: http://www.swindonlink.com/features/show/84

Swindon is still ‘virgin territory’ in the People’s Map. We hope that the people of Swindon will react to Roger's article and join in to help keep the map of Swindon up to date. Over the coming months the Peoples Map Blog and the Swindon Link will be keeping you informed on the map progress, so watch this space - and get mapping for yourself and your community.

If you think the Peoples Map can contribute to your community in the same way as we do with Swindon Link, and you have any ideas on how, we would like to hear from you. Please contact us at info@peoplesmap.com and we can discuss this in further detail.

Rasterization Issue Resolved!

The rasterization issue has now been resolved. The map renderer is currently running through the entire Peoples Map database to re-render all the maps. This process has now been running for the past three days and you will notice a significant improvement to the data displayed in the Peoples Map and Unverified map layers, especially on the small scales.

The Peoples Map team wants to thank you for your patience and again apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Rasterization disruption

We are currently fixing a bug in our rasterization process which has caused us to temporarily suspend rendering your modifications to the People's Map.

You may have noticed that gaps have started to appear in the road network and features appear on the rendered layer, but the vector data is absent in edit mode. The patch will fix these problems and others, but force us to re-render amost the entire map at each scale, which will take some time to complete.

We will keep you informed and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

The People's Map is Growing!!

The Peoples Map data coverage is growing by the day. So far, the peoples map users have created more than 100,000km of roads , 40,000 town & place names, 12,000 points of interested, 17,000 km of railways, 30,000km of rivers, 18,000sqkm of land use polygons and also 3,000qkm of lakes & dams.

Currently the following cities are complete: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham. Cities like London, Cardiff, Bath and Brighton are also making very good progress and we are expecting to have complete datasets for Central London, Bath and Isle of Wight by the end of this year. Town centre's for Exeter, Plymouth, Penzance, Padstow and St Ives have also been created. We have also noticed that editors have started to work in Swindon, Bristol, Portsmouth, Reading, Leicester & Norwich.

Unfortunately some editors have not yet started work on a few significant UK cities and towns like Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds, Nottingham & Northampton.

Although this article reflects how much data has already been created, it also highlights that we have quite a bit of work ahead of us to complete a UK wide data set!

Essential Maintenance

The People's Map website is undergoing essential maintenance today and you will therefore only be able to access the site in "view only" mode. This means that you can unfortunately not create or edit any mapping objects during this time.


The maintenance is scheduled for completion by close of play today, but the users will find that they might still only be able to access the "view only" mode. All users will be able to access the edit mode before the end of the week. If you do not have access by this time, or would urgently like to use the People's Map, please contact us via support@peoplesmap.com and we will assist you with the problem.

We appologise for the inconvenience caused!!

The People's Map team

Future People's Map Developments

Dear users,

I am pleased to say that the polygon editor tool is working smoothly. Just to refresh those users that have not yet utilized this tool: It allows you to digitize polygon areas like lakes, parks, buildings, sport fields, etc into the People's Map and classify them according to pre-determined land use categories. This tool allows users to create greater map detail to be added to the People’s Map.

The People's Map team is constantly working on improving the tools and functionalities in order for our users to create better, more accurate data with ease. Although these are only in planning/development phase, I wanted to keep you informed of what improvements you can expect to see in the coming months.

The main improvement you will notice is an increased map screen and a general menu layout improvement. A functionality to split roads is also being developed. This will for instance allow users to split the geometry of an existing road, delete less accurate section and re-digitize the new more accurate section. This tool will also be helpful to digitize the exact path of roundabouts in a road. We are also working on creating another zoom layer in Peoples Map that will allow users to view more detail aerial imagery and allow you digitize building outlines, parks, etc more accurately.

Since the People's Map is a mapping tool for the people, we would like to keep improving the tools and functionalities according to the requirements of our users. We therefore rely on you to inform us of any improvements that can be made to the existing functionalities and tools.

We look forward to receive all your comments and suggestions. If you do not want to comment directly on this blog, please feel free to send us an email to one of the following People's Map addresses.

info@peoplesmap.com

support@peoplesmap.com

Regards,

Chlodwik

New Polygon Editor

We are pleased to announce that the newly developed polygon editor tool is now live. This tool allows you to digitize areas like lakes, parks, buildings, sport fields, etc into the People's Map. A example of the new toolbar and a created polygon is illustrated in the image below.

You will notice that when you complete the digitizing stage of creating a polygon, a extensive attribute list will appear that allows the user to select what type of land or building category has been created. Please choose the type that is most relevant to the area created.

To test this new tool, why don't you digitize your house, local sports field, etc onto the People's Map? If you can not view the polygon tool in your editor tool, press CTRL + F5 in your browser when you next come to the site. This will refresh the People's Map site and load the latest editor toolbar.

Please let us know if you have any queries regarding the new editor or any other features by emailing us at support@peoplesmap.com. We also look forward to receive your comments and suggestions via this blog.

From all of us here at People's Map, enjoy and get mapping!!

PS: As we speak new features and improvements for the Peoples Map are being developed and as soon as these are implemented into the live site, we will notify all users via this blog.

New People’s Map Blog

Dear People's Map users,

I would like to introduce myself – I am Chlodwik Rossouw and I have recently joined the People’s Map Partnership as the Project Manager. I have worked in GI services for the past 6 years as a user of various GIS data as part of the utilities, consulting as well as the local government sectors.

One of my main goals is to build a much closer relationship with our growing band of users. There is a lot going on in the People’s Map world – new users, new applications, new functionality and new datasets – and it is important that we keep you all informed about these developments. It is also important for us to receive feedback from you the users so that we can constantly improve the People’s Map service.

To help improve our communications we are launching this blog which we will be using from now on to keep you informed about People’s Map developments.

So please feel free to comment on any of the posts.

Enjoy & get mapping!!

Best wishes
Chlodwik