Mobile Mapping

Mapping has always concerned mobility. The extent to which various aspects and stages of mapping are mobile, however, is a more complicated issue. While early navigational devices such as portolan charts were common in the 14th century, map “apps” have come to define the contemporary mobile mapping experience. Mapping “on demand” is now more possible than ever; ordinarily accessible from mobile touch-enabled interfaces. Technological developments threaten to expand mobile mapping functionality, and deepen mobile mapping ubiquity. A new generation of mass market, dual-frequency GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) chips will afford positional accuracy to 30 cm or better. Automation is likely to shift the nature of mobile mapping, further integrating it into daily lives with the help of ancillary technologies such as LiDAR. Concepts such as immutable mobility, flow, and relationality have enabled a greater understanding of the transformations in mobile mapping; casting attention to mutable maps and necessary protocols and infrastructures. Emergent methodological and ethical issues have concerned the personalization of geodata, geolocational permissions, and moments of mapping failure. New data privacy regulations promise to fundamentally change the mobile mapping landscape in the future, as citizens renegotiate the terms of their engagement with mapping enterprises that rely on the collection of personal “geodata.”