Good Morning All,
We have all heard the phrase “80% of data collected, stored, and maintained by local governments includes some reference to geography.” In one form or another. I found myself looking for some empirical proof of this before I embarked on
quoting the internet which we all know is the oracle of truth.
Apparently the phrase has at least some empirical support, although not total, from some German researchers.
In an 2012 article in press with International Journal of Geographical Information Science, “How much information
is geospatially referenced? Networks and cognition,” the German university academics attempted to test the theory that 80% of information has a spatial component by looking at German Wikipedia articles. The article took two approaches to analyzing scientifically
the statement. The first approach was to look at German Wikipedia articles as a network, with articles as nodes and links within the articles as “edges of a directed graph.” The second approach was cognitive. Articles were categorized as having a “direct
geospatial reference”, “indirect geospatial reference” or “no geospatial reference.” The network approach found that
78% of articles were either tagged with geographic coordinates or linked to an article with tagged coordinates. The cognitive approach found that percentage to be closer to 60% at 57%. The article
is in German but there is a summary in English near the beginning.
The end of Kahman, Burghardt, and Weber’s article indicates real value of the phrase, citing a quote
on Twitter by John Fagan, Head of Software Engineering, Axon Active AG. Agile & Lean and formerly of Bing Maps and Multimap: “that geo quote keeps us all in our jobs. Best not go poking around to see if it’s true.”
78 % is good enough for me, although John Fagan may have a point. (J)
Have a tremendous Thursday!
Joe
Joseph Young
Maine Office of GIS, Administrative Director
Maine Library of Geographic Information, Executive Director
SHS 145
[log in to unmask],-69.802412,822m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x4cb206d051eb934d:0x1075539d44caa8f0!6m1!1e1C:/Users/joseph.young.SOM/Documents/ArcGIS">51
Commerce Drive
Augusta, Maine 04333-0145
VP/Cell: 207-624-2664