2022
Hello World!
- Name: Anna
- Location: Barcelona (Spain)
- What do I love about being a Local Guide: I love to share with others the secret and hidden gems of my city so they can taste the real Barcelona.
- I love to share: simple to extravagant-gourmet food places for all budgets, concert venues and also escape room experiences.
- How did I hear about Local Guides: I started reviewing and adding places without knowing that this community existed. Once I discovered it, I jumped, and I got hooked on it
- Fun Fact About Me: I sing in two music bands (jazz and soul) and I’m learning to play the ukulele. I ride a scooter to go to work.
I’m Innocensia Owuor, a Geospatial engineer by profession from Nairobi, Kenya. This post is about the importance of having mapping professionals in the local guides community.
The ubiquity of Google maps in the navigation and transit field confirms that it is a vital tool whose benefits cannot be overlooked in this era. The service continues to present new frontiers which have become the yardstick in this arena and has also made the traditional direction finding resources such as paper maps to fast become obsolete.
The conventional mapping process is very costly and slow, and with the fast-paced world of today, there’s an increasing demand for information to be accurate and timely. This need for instant access to information has been met by Google maps through the local guides community which provides a means for ordinary citizens to be part of the mapping experience. The public can now update and share geographic data of various places around the world in a timely and economic fashion.
With user-generated geographic information from participants with no formal training in mapping, it is bound to have quality issues, therefore, the Google maps local guide community is important as it plays the oversight role which ensures the information added has integrity. Having a background in Geospatial engineering my role in the local guides community is to ensure the data is geographically sound and adheres to key mapping standards. I can’t overstate the importance of input from mapping professionals, as data from Google maps is increasingly being used to inform development planning, decision-making, studies, and research.
