For this year’s Geo Awareness Week (November 13-19) GIS Cloud introduces another GIS Day Contest project challenge, awarding best project ideas that contribute to local communities around the world.
The main goal of the contest is to promote initiative in creating meaningful and relevant mapping projects, while showing how innovative geo technologies might benefit to people with different backgrounds.
Project awards
- support in conducting the project idea (GIS Cloud Premium licenses for free, including storage and full user support)
- project promotion
- GIS Cloud acknowledgment and certification of participation
Who can apply?
Private citizens, non-profit and other organizations with socially relevant project ideas.
If you are a college/university student, attending elementary/high school, part of the academic staff, an activist, start-up company, an organization or a person who wants to make a valuable contribution to a local community, you are eligible to apply for the GIS Day Contest project awards. Application language and support is in English.
Examples of project ideas (who won the award in 2015):
- Malaria Risk Map Project (Nigeria)
- Mapping Tribal Burial Grounds in New Zealand
- Disaster Management in Jakarta
Important note: You don’t have to worry about detailed project plan. We are rewarding an idea, not the fully elaborated project.
Application deadline: November 18th, 2016 (00:00 in your timezone)
Selection Criteria:
- Community impact
- Realization potential (is it realistic that project will be accomplished)
- Original and innovative application of geo technologyContest results will be published one week after the applications deadline.
If you have any questions about GIS Day contest, contact GIS Cloud here.
How to apply?
Just fill in the form on the GIS Cloud official blog (at the bottom of the page).
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Google Maps Maker is an OpenStreetMap-like tool for community updates in Google Maps. It has been initially launched in 2008 so that users could map areas which Google could not access to add data to, like Vietnam, Pakistan or North Korea. This week the company announced that it’s shutting down the service in March 2017.
Initially the system worked in such a way that all edits had to be manually approved by Google’s employees. The system apparently didn’t work well and has been changed last year after someone edited a forest in Pakistan in way that it show a giant Android robot peeing on the Apple logo. The new process required other user to approve the edits instead of the actual employees of Google.
What’s the reason behind that business decision? First of all during the 8 years the service existed Google has managed to map almost the entire planet. With that sort of level of detail Google might have found out that Maps Maker edits are not bringing any value added and instead users can intentionally or unintentionally make the data worse rather than improve it…
Another reason for such a decision might be related to the quality requirements by the customers mainly from the automotive business. In the era of autonomous cars they require a full control over the quality of the data. A quick business analysis might have shown that it’s more beneficial to hire 100 new people in Hyderabad, India rather than to maintain the service available for people all around the world.
You can still add businesses and edit their details like opening hours but you will be no longer able to add or modify geometry. Google also announced that it will try to transition some of its current contributors to join the Google’s Local Guides program instead. The idea behind Local Guides is to reward people for adding reviews, photos and new POIs by giving them points and by granting them access to beta features and gifting extra Google Drive storage for free.
