In the ever growing world of technology, mapping will be getting a new face lift thanks to volunteered geographic information or better known as collaborative mapping.

Collaborative mapping is the aggregation of web maps and user-generated from a group of individuals or entities and can take several distinct forms. With the growth of technology for storing and sharing maps, collaborative maps have become competitors to commercial services, in the case of OpenStreetMap or components of them, as in Google Map Maker.

To give you an example of what exactly collaborative mapping is, here is an example: imagine if your friend wanted to get her shoes repaired. You could tell her of a place that might do it, but it might not be the best place. You could make a map of where all the shoe repair shops are, but that sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? What if your friends could help you create that map? Or better yet, what if anyone in the world could help? This is the basis of collaborative mapping.

Another example can be to support a large-scale crowdsourced mapping immediately after natural disasters or other large events where a huge amount of geographical data needs to be mapped and classified. This sort of tool can be life-saving for many.

A big challenge for collaborative mapping lies in assessing data quality and in developing procedures to ensure that volunteers produce high quality data, usable in an authoritative context.

The lack of up-to-date information is undesirable and hindering development, particularly in areas of rapid change such as expanding cities and the developing world. Collaborative mapping is this innovative technology that comes at the right time because maps are outdated in many parts of the world.