Crooks, A. T., Hudson-Smith, A., M., Milton, R., and Batty, M. (2009), Crowdsourcing Spatial Surveys and Mapping, in Fairbairn, D. (ed.), Proceedings of the 17th Geographical Information Systems Research UK Conference, Durham University, England.
Thanks go to gisagents.blogspot.com for putting the post together:
1. Introduction
1.1. GMap Creator
1.2. MapTube
2: Near Real-Time Spatial Surveys
2.1. Mapping the Credit Crunch

2.2. Anti-Social Behaviour in East Anglia
Anti-Social Behaviour in East Anglia.

2.3. The Manchester Congestion Charge
The Manchester Congestion Charge.
3. Geodemographic Profiles of Respondents
4. Discussion
However, the geodemographics of the respondents shows there is an inherit bias in who is answering the questions and there is the question to whether or not respondents are influenced by the maps before answering the questions. Further work is to explore how the maps evolve over time, as each response is time stamped and how this relates to news headlines. Additionally, we are currently exploring the geodemographic profiles of each survey in more detail. We have currently re-run the credit crunch with the BBC with slightly different options to the answer.
The question remains the same – “what single factor is hurting you most about the credit crunch?” But we decided to change the categories slightly:Mortgage or rent, Petrol, Food prices, Job security, Utility bills, or Not affected. This survey ran between 5th October 2008 and 3 February 2009 and has now closed. The final map can be viewed here. During this time we received 20,072 responses, which can be broken down as follows (Figure 8): Mortgage or Rent 11.05%, Petrol 4.7%, Food Prices 11.89%, Job Security 27.25%, Utility Bills 21.92%, and Not Affected 23.20%
5. References
Gibin M, Singleton AD, Mateos P, and Longley PA. (2008) Exploratory cartographic visualisation of London using the Google Maps API Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy 1(2) pp85-97.
Hudson-Smith A, Crooks AT, Gibin M, Milton R, and Batty M (under review) Neogeography and Web 2.0: Concepts, Tools and Applications, Journal of Location Based Services.
Longley PA, Webber R, Li C, (2008) The UK geography of the e-society: a national classification Environment and Planning A 40(2) pp362-382.
Milton R (2008) GMap Creator, OpenLayers and OpenStreetMap CASA Blog. Available at http://blog.casa.ucl.ac.uk/?p=60 .