COLORADO IS A GEOSPATIAL HUB OF SORTS:
It’s home to Maxar, NOAA offices, and a cluster of
younger satellite startups, all of them full of people
whose geo-knowledge base is generally better than
average. Geospatial Amateurs, based in the Denver
metro area, is another MeetUp that believes in the
personal utility of all this data. “Amateurs” is a
cheeky name. Many members, some of whom are
also part of OSM, work in fields at least somewhat
related to mapping or Earth observation, like en-
vironmental science or transportation. They don’t
want sponsorships or corporate meddling or profes-
sional influence. Instead, the group wants to foster
what leader Brian Timoney calls “roll your own”
projects. It’s DIY, but with images, sensor readings,
and maps instead of needle, thread, and aida cloth.
“The idea,” he says, “is you can answer geospatial
questions that impact your everyday life.”
To keep the club more approachable, Timoney—a
data analyst who runs a consulting firm—has tried
to create a low-key vibe, starting with the MeetUp
descriptions themselves. Take the invitation to the
August 2019 gathering: A scientist demonstrates
how to use radar and laser data to calculate snow
depths on whatever black-or-blue slopes the attend-
ees personally care about. “After this presentation,
you’ll be looking around your ski mountain with
a subtler eye,” read the website, “while the basic
chads clogging I-70 will still be taking a resort’s mid-
mountain snowpack-depth reading at face value.”
At other meetings, members show-and-tell their
homebrewed solutions, which use municipal data-
sets, open-source information from agencies like
NOAA, and legal hacks of companies like the Car2Go
rental service. An actual Chad made a pedestrian
map of sidewalks in the Denver area. Member Adam
Bickford helped a city-council candidate optimize
canvassing routes. And Ricardo Oliveira took the
real-time feed of bus locations and created his own
display. (Those examples happened before big po-
litical campaigns and organizations built their own
versions.) “We want to get the word out about the
rich variety of datasets that are available,” Timoney
says, “and inspire people.”
Around the world, people have been inspired,
particularly by satellite imagery. Teachers send
kids on global scavenger hunts. Homebodies see
places they might never visit, guided by websites
like Google Sightseeing (not affiliated with Google
but rather with two guys). Farmers figuring out
where their corn should go overlay snaps with
Google Earth satellite maps. Hikers pore over them
to find unmarked trails. Hunters consult them to
predict where the animals will be.
If the singularity arrives, those pursuits, though,
will look different: Second graders and skilled alpin-
ists will be aware of the planet as it is—not as it was
last week, last month, or last year. What if you could
watch the travels of a specific herd of elk every day?
What if you could tell how crowded your tourist
destination was an hour ago? What if day-trippers
could peep the percentage of fall-turned leaves
before they set out on the road?AT BACKCOUNTRY PIZZA, MEANWHILE,
the mappers finally have a new arrival, someone
who has never worked on this project before: Travis
Burt, a developer with utility company Franklin
Energy. Burt immediately pulls out his laptop to
learn how to begin merging Denver building data
with the OpenStreetMap grid.
While Spyker and McAndrew chat in the corner,
group leader Fritz tells Burt how to register so that
he can see data from the Denver Regional Council
of Governments—which, according to Fritz, “we
lovingly call Dr. Cog.” Every two years, Dr. Cog pays
to fly picture-taking planes over the metro area.
Analysts then use that imagery to trace the bound-
aries of buildings, accurate to around 3 inches.
While all of the information is public and free, it’s
not especially layperson-friendly. But once it’s in
OpenStreetMap, it won’t be much harder for any-
one to access and understand than Google Maps.
Pinning numbers to virtual buildings is as import-
ant as the shapes and spots on the ground. “We don’t
actually know, even in our super-urban area, what
the addresses are,” Spyker says. That’s a problem for
911 operators, who can’t send responders to a loca-
tion if they don’t know exactly where it is. Because