Open-Source Geography

Perhaps I am biased, but I believe Geography is a great major with excellent career opportunities.  If you do not know what to study in college, consider taking a Human Geography or Physical Geography course to get a taste for how interesting the science of Geography actually is.  Also, don’t think of Geography in terms of what you may have learned in grade school about where places are.  Geographers do ask “Where” but then they follow up with “WHY?”  This is why I say “science” in that, unlike psychology, it is a discipline recognized as a science by the National Science Foundation complete with rigorous and accepted methodologies.

So here are some reasons to consider Geography as a major:

1. It is intellectually challenging, but relatively intuitive which is another way of saying that it is an “easy” discipline

2. There are more jobs than qualified people. Check out the Geography Jobs Clearinghouse if you need specific examples (http://www.gjc.org)

3. Like statistics, Geography can be applied to every discipline. I can make the case that the social and hard sciences rely on some sort of spatial reasoning.

4. The job market continues to expand and like #2 above the number of jobs outpaces the number of qualified applicants

5. Considering #2 and #4, its a field that continues to grow despite recessionary economic conditions

6. Again, because it is underlooked but a growing field, graduate funding in the form of assistantships (i.e., tuition waivers and paid living expenses) is typically available upon acceptance. Though I don’t have the statistics to support this statement, I imagine that the rate of graduate funding in Geography is the highest amongst all disciplines. I was not a stellar undergraduate, but gained acceptance and funding in all 5 master’s level Geography programs I applied to. With my overall undergraduate 2.9 GPA (admittedly with a 3.8 in Geography) I don’t think the same can be said for psychology or the hard sciences.

7. Finally, and back to my point, since Geography is at least tangentially ubiquitous in every field of the academy, you can choose topics that uniquely interesting to you and still increase your odds for a successful career.

8.  Extremely Cool Technology!

Even though I made Wednesdays “no-blogging days” so that I can get some rest, the SP Gass at Low Tech Times has an interesting article called There’s No Substitute for Looking At A Real Map.  Open Source Geography (dot org, FYI), soon to be moving to its own site, fully endorses this notion of looking at a Real Map.

I am interested in SP Gass’s view on the accuracy of the AAA TripTic.  SP Gass is talking about reference maps and how one’s on paper are much more usable.  Beyond portability of a paper map, paper allows one to come up with their own route.    SP Gass knows what he means when he is choosing a route.  But without expert knowledge or human behavior factored in as a determinant in the route choice algorithm, the computer can never approximate what means, his geographic semantics.  Dr. Martin Raubal at University of California-Santa Barbara teaches a course in Geographic Semantics.

Anyway, flexibility in route choice using online mapping software would greatly improve the service.  As a Geographic Information Scientist, by training, I would suggest to Google that they open their street network dataset to allow a local crowd to suggest alternate routes.  Another option would be to generate a sample of automobiles and collect GPS points along their chosen routes, rather than the predictive routes.

I am still imaging the algorithm and/or data-structure required to enable a sample link on a chosen route be chosen to improve the predictive path.  Especially considering that the data would need to be split into nodes and links.  Not to mention, the process of formatting.  Unless of course, you are generating an cloud-enabled database with a G-Phone Android Program in which these points are collected real-time.

Is this possible?  It seems like it should be considering bluetooth tracking and cell-phone tracking would be a great medium for updating Google Maps.

Also, check out Google’s Newest Feature:  GoogleWalking.  Its still in Beta, but there is a smattering of commentary around the web.

Google Walking Maps by Daily Wireless

Google Maps Walks the Long Way Around by Google Maps Mania.

And this list of 100 Google Earth Mashups isn’t particularly about GoogleWalking, but it is still useful information for improving the semantic web rich with digitized human knowledge.

So some GIS Specialist at Yale has figured out how to produce standardized areal units based on the geographic, latitude/longitude grid and how to produce it on a global scale.   It is GIS of a sort.  Definitely not an ESRI product, but could be converted.

The site is called G-CON, Geographically Based Economic Data.  Note the release of their data for you use and visualization.  Creating a grid in ArcGIS to thier specifications is a relatively simple process.  They also provide fully detailed documentation.