Pity the poor paper map. Once admired for its accuracy, it is now scorned for being less precise than digital maps and hopelessly passé when compared to handheld GPS and satellite navigation systems. Many government agencies and longtime private sector cartographers have stopped or slowed production of paper maps, including the California State Automobile Association, which produced maps that are the standard of excellence for road maps around the world and closed down its mapmaking division at the end of 2008. The U.S. and Canadian governments have greatly reduced paper map production, as ... Read More
The Revolution Will Be Mapped
December 28, 2009 • By • 14 Comments
To get to the headquarters of the Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities, visitors have to navigate a lengthy dirt road past white picket fences, grazing horses and a variety of outbuildings in various stages of disrepair. Set in a one-room former Primitive Baptist church on a 43-acre spread in rural Orange County, N.C., the institute holds a collection of old, ergonomically incorrect wooden desks and metal filing cabinets. The only signs of modernity are computers atop the desks. Institute founders Allan Parnell and Ann Joyner, who live in a modest country house a stone's throw ... Read More
GIS: Cops Favor New Kind of Plotting
June 26, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
At 10:30 one morning in late 2006, two police officers in the city of Toronto parked several blocks away from a nearby school. To passers-by, the police car appeared to have stopped at random; in fact, the pair’s location was carefully planned based on months’ worth of data. When a white van passed less than half an hour later, the officers cautiously followed it before signaling the driver to pull over. By 11:03 a.m., the driver — a sex offender who had been harassing children in the area for more than a year — was under arrest. For Manny San Pedro, detective constable and ... Read More
