The MapScaping Podcast - GIS, Geospatial, Remote Sensing, earth observation and digital geography

The curbside might not seem like the most obvious focus point in terms of mapping the urban environment but when you start to think of the curb as a highly regulated space and when you consider the number of arrivals and departures that that place on the curb in crowded urban cities you might just change your mind. The curbside is actually an interface between different vehicle traffic and pedestr...

The move from printed media to digital media has had a huge impact on the way cartography is used and consumed. News rooms around the world are not only using maps to illustrate their written content but also as a form of branding. MapCreator is an online mapping software that gives journalists access to cartographic tools. This episode is sponsored by HiveMapper A platform that takes video and cr...

Geomob provides a forum to learn and exchange ideas about any interesting services and projects that deal with location. Everyone working in or curious about the location space or with location services is welcome. In this episode  Ed Freyfogle  introduces Geomob and draws parallels between the projects and ideas being presented in the Geomob community and the trends in the wider geospatial commun...

This is the story of the confluence of open data, just enough availability of hardware, software, computing power and being laser focused about the industry you are trying to serve. Building Footprint USA  is a small company that is curating and manufacturing building footprint data at scale. This is their story, how they got started, what problems they are solving and how they coexist free data....

The future of remote sensing and earth observation might be open, collaborative and involve much more end user education that you expect. Dr Aliastair Graham shares his observations based on 20 years of experience in the industry. Aliastair walks you through what a future where all data is open might look like, some of the projects that are focused on making data more "findable" and "usable" and t...

Geospatial data is not always easy to find. The open data revolution and the abundance of data available on the global market have created a very fragmented environment and it is often difficult to know where to look to find what you need. UP42 is creating a marketplace for geospatial data ( all kinds of geospatial data ) and work flows to process this data. The idea here is that data and processe...

Removing the barriers to entry by making it easy to create immersive geodata visualisations that tell a story and explain a process. Maple Precision  has incorporated insights from the gaming industry to create a platform that organises spatial data for a variety of different open data sources and lets users create 3D animations in web browser.        This episode is sponsored by HiveMapper A plat...

Every building has its own geomagnetic fingerprint and by mapping that fingerprint against a floorplan of the building  IndoorAtlas  is able to provide accurate location and navigation inside. The genius of this system is that it takes advantage of an existing geomagnetic infrastructure.   In this interview you will learn  How the geomagnetic fields of buildings can play a key role in indoor locat...

Location gives context to data but it can also be used to give context to experiences. Radar is a platform for geofencing and location tracking. In this interview with Co founder Nick Patrick we discuss the opportunities around using location to deliver contextualised experiences to users, what these experiences look like today and what we can expect to see in the future.   You are more than welco...

Location intelligence is crucial to managing risk. WatchKeeper International is using real time data feeds from a variety of different sources to monitor and mitigate risk and location is the thing that gives context to the data. In this interview, I talk with the founder of a company who has built a platform that ingests geospatial risk data feeds in real-time, applies rules-based decision-making...

Craig Taylor creates inspirational geospatial visualizations and this is his journey from a formal education in GIS using industry standard tools to creating leading edge geospatial visualizations that tell meaningful stories using software that is designed for rendering 3D animations. You are more than welcome to reach out to me on social media, I would love to hear from you! Map_View on Instagra...

Humanitarian emergencies often strike without warning, destroying lives and livelihoods within a matter of seconds. In the immediate aftermath, the challenge for those responding is to know where to start. MapAction provides geospatial support in the case of a humanitarian emergency.  You are more than welcome to reach out to me on social media, I would love to hear from you! Map_View on Instagram...

Litter is everywhere. Soda cans, plastic bags, and cigarette butts litter the environment, choke wildlife, and threaten our planet. Litterati is tackling this problem one piece of litter at a time. Geotags provide insight into problem areas, while keywords identify the most commonly found brands and products. Throw some machine learning into the mix and we might just be able to model the flow of l...

Traffic on the road is governed by a strict set of well integrated rules covering everything from speed limitations, direction of travel and even who has the right of way in given situations. There are many use cases for drones but if we can't agree on or regulate their flight paths we might never see them integrated into the urban landscape. AirSpaceLink is developing a platform that lets all the...

Fishviews is the Google Street View for rivers. The creators believe that the ability to virtually explore river environments is going to fundamentally change the way we understand waterways. The idea being that 360 immersive experiences will give people context to the data in a way that is simple not possible on a traditional map.  You can follow Fishviews on Facebook and Twitter You are more tha...

Rachel Olney is the founder of Geosite , a company that describes it's self as the Google Drive, or Switzerland, of geospatial. Rachel shares the insights that lead her to start a company that aims to bridge the gap between users that understand the importance of location intelligence but lack the technical expertise to use many of the current geospatial software solutions. Rachel also shares some...

I thought I would take the time to share my background with you, how I became involved in the geospatial industry and share I few things that I have learned from conducting interviews with people in the industry. I also have a few housekeeping messages I would like to share with you.  You are more than welcome to reach out to me on social media, I would love to hear from you! Map_View on Instagram...

Our digital footprints, the posts, and comments we leave online might just be useful the key to understanding how people relate and interact with the urban environment. Geotagged, comments online can be processed using natural language artificial intelligence to sort our digital footprints into a range of recognizable human emotions that are associated with a certain location. This allows us to un...

Andy Allan, the owner and founder of Thundred Forest, talks about how he got involved with the OpenStreetMap project and ended up creating activity specific maps at a global scale. We also discuss what it takes to make and update maps of the world and the opportunities in the digital mapping space as well as what the future might look like. MapScaping.com

Smartphones are going to democratize the precise geolocation in the future. In the past years, android has giving developers access to GNNS measurements which is the step before acquiring a position fix and a prerequisite for precise positioning. One of the major cell phone manufacturers has also added a dual frequency GNNS chipset to there flagship phone. Combine these two elements with positioni...

Esplorio automatically maps your journeys as you move around the world. The idea being that by mapping path we take when we travel we can build a much more nuanced record of our travels. The exact route we took through Rome, where we got on and off the bus. All these little details are part of a journey but not necessarily worth recording on their own. This is the kind of tracking that we will see...

Using computer vision to create and maintain map data at a street-level is something that Google has been doing for years. But what if you crowdsourced that data collection ... what if you could access the database that was created ... and what if anyone could participate. This is an interview will Mapillary, a company that is rethinking the way we create and distribute data. MapScaping.com

Many of the big global mapping platforms focus on the urban environment and this makes sense, urban environments are where most people are and they are growing. But what about the outdoors? This is the story of a mapping platform designed for outdoor enthusiasts. MapScaping.com

Flightradar24 is a global flight tracking service that provides real-time information for over 180,000 flights a day. It's based on a largely terrestrial network of over 20,000 ADS-B receivers. Flightradar started as a side project in 2006 and now has over 2 million users per day. This is a great example of geospatial in the wild. MapScaping.com

Geocoding provides a way of translating between machine and human languages when we communicate location. Machines collect and process location data in terms of latitude and longitude but humans have a much richer vocabulary in terms of describing a location. So we need something that allows us to be able to translate between these two languages, this is where geocoding comes in.