The Web and Collaborative Geospatial Mapping : A Position Paper

The initiative of our research is to build a geo-writable web, using open source technologies for people's participation online. This paper is the key underpinning for the new emerging trend “online community mapping” as a conceptualized model combined with information/computer science, geography, and sociology, which we have proposed recently. In particular, we argue that public access to geospatial datasets and tools, as well as mechanism design of collaborative and social software, are crucial factors. We envisage the web as a medium of places, people, and participation (3P), and we outline in this paper an implementation strategy for this vision. A prototype called Web3P is being built to experiment with various design elements and implementation techniques to further facilitate an “online community mapping” process. Note: As of September 12, 2006, the Web3P prototype mentioned in this paper now resides at the following URL: .