MapChat - A tool for map-based collaboration and communication

The map has a long history as a medium for storing and accessing data as well as for conveying complex spatial relationships. The increasingly pervasive nature of spatial information in society, coupled with advances in visualisation technology, has strengthened the potential for the digital map to serve as either an aid to, or a device for, communication. Realising this potential has proven to be challenging, particularly in pluralistic decision making contexts such as land management where stakeholders (e.g. citizens, local councillors, government experts, etc.) may have non-complementary perspectives, objectives or problem-solving approaches.

To better integrate spatial information tools into these decision making processes, it is necessary to extend the communicative capacity of the digital map medium as well as access to these capabilities. This presentation outlines the current functionality of a new collaborative on-line tool, named MapChat, developed to address these needs and improve our understanding of stakeholders’ decision processes. To facilitate broad-based use and access to the research outputs, MapChat is developed exclusively in Open Source geospatial software (primarily MapServer Chameleon, PostgreSQL, PostGIS).

The tool introduces a new approach to collaborative GIS by allowing individuals and groups to discuss a decision problem synchronously with on-line chat tools that are tightly-coupled to web-based map services. Users can associate text message objects with geographic objects (e.g. arbitrary areas, selected features) and enrich their discussions through explicit linkages between text- and map-based communication mediums. These linkages are retained in a database to allow the spatial and temporal dimensions of participants’ decision processes to be tracked, mined and analysed. In addition to demonstrating some of the capabilities of the software, the presentation identifies planned extensions to the tool.

Robert Feick,
Waterloo University