Mapping Errors

Garmin Recalls Data Cards Showing Inaccurate Water Depths
It’s one thing if your road map has an error in it, quite another if your aviation or nautical maps have an error in them. It can be catastrophic. Which is why, PC World reports, Garmin is recalling data cards that show incorrect water depths off the coasts of Sweden…   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 12:18 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Nautical
How to Report Map Errors
GPS Review explains how to correct an error in a map provided by GPS unit or online mapping service — a process greatly simplified by the fact that, at least in North America, there are essentially only two mapping providers (Navteq and Tele Atlas), which you contact directly. It’s easy…   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 12:11 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Online Maps
Cartography Snafus in NATO Map Game
Catholicgauze points — not for the first time — to a map game on the NATO website with an appalling number of cartographic errors: China has apparently annexed a sizeable chunk of Pakistan, and Cambodia, the Korean peninsula and Japan are under water!…   Read more →
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Posted on Sunday, May 24, 2009 at 3:02 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors
So What If Four Corners Is a Little Off?
It’s not that the Four Corners marker is “about 2.5 miles west of where it should be,” as the Deseret News puts it, it’s that it’s about two and a half miles west of where it should have been. Important distinction. Surveyors were aiming for 37° N 100° W when they placed…   Read more →
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Posted on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 6:58 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Surveying
Errors in Google’s Maps of Toronto
The Toronto Star’s Map of the Week blog discovers several errors in Google Maps’ coverage of Toronto. You may recall that I noticed a bunch of errors in my neck of the woods back in September. The blog entry is soliciting error reports in the comments; “We’ll gather the responses…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, April 12, 2009 at 7:13 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Online Maps, Toronto
Data Errors Skew LA Crime Map
An article in today’s Los Angeles Times uses a geocoding error in the LAPD’s crime map mashup to illustrate the perils of map data error. In the case of the LAPD’s map, crimes at addresses that could not be parsed defaulted to the centre of the city, giving that particular…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, April 5, 2009 at 7:34 PM
Categories: Hacks & Mashups, Mapping Errors
Education Minister Fired over Bad Map
Remember that erroneous map of South America published in some Brazilian school textbooks? The secretary of education for the state of São Paulo, Maria Helena Guimaraes, was fired by the state’s governor over it. Via Vector One. Previously: Brazilian School Textbook Map Omits Ecuador, Bollixes Paraguay….   Read more →
Posted on Monday, March 30, 2009 at 7:23 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Apple Map Omits Greenland, Iceland
A map Apple used during its iPhone 3.0 announcement to show the countries in which the iPhone is available is drawing fire for omitting Greenland and Iceland. Well, from Iceland, anyway. Okay, one Icelander. Just imagine the complaints that would have been generated if Apple had included Greenland — they…   Read more →
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Posted on Friday, March 20, 2009 at 3:30 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Brazilian School Textbook Map Omits Ecuador, Bollixes Paraguay
Okay, how does something like this happen? “A map of South America in which landlocked Paraguay is shown with an Atlantic coastline and Ecuador does not exist may be found in a [sixth-grade] geography textbook used in the public schools of Brazil’s most-populous state,” the Latin American Herald Tribune reports….   Read more →
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Posted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 5:41 PM
Categories: Education, Mapping Errors
A Collection of Accidents
Also via The Map Scroll, a collection of accidents collected by New York Times graphics editor Matthew Bloch while working on maps and other graphics. At right, a 1917 map of Beijing “after trying to use spline-based georeferencing in ArcGIS.” Reminds me of blooper reels from computer-animated movies….   Read more →
Posted on Monday, March 9, 2009 at 12:21 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Cruise Ship Sinking Blamed on Map Errors
Via GeoCarta comes this curious story about a cruise ship accident that may have been the result of faulty nautical charts of the area, rather than negligence on the part of the ship’s crew. In April 2007 the Sea Diamond ran aground and subsequently sank on a reef off the…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 8:53 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Nautical
Bad Mapping Data and Emergency Response
Bad mapping data has serious consequences in at least one area, Chad argues: “Emergency responders can’t get to some locations because the map data they have is WRONG. … That kind of a mistake really is the difference between life or death.” Fortunately, he says, emergency providers have paper maps…   Read more →
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Posted on Monday, November 17, 2008 at 6:22 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Errors in Google’s Transit Ads
Google “has added New York City transit directions and brought its ads to the Big Apple, wrapping an ‘S’ shuttle train that runs between Grand Central and Times Square. Trouble is, the directions it gives in the ads aren’t always correct,” Advertising Age reports. “Specifically, we spotted this erroneous tip…   Read more →
Posted on Saturday, November 15, 2008 at 6:44 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Mass Transit, New York
Three Mapping Errors in the News
Sometimes a mapping error is just a mistake, as when a textbook inadvertently leaves the upper peninsula of Michigan off a map of the U.S. (via GeoCarta) or when a certain V. Putin’s Web site shows four Russian-occupied islands as belonging to Japan (via Vector One). That doesn’t stop residents…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 8:18 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors
More on Tele Atlas and Google
Webmapper explores the question of Tele Atlas’s questionable map quality and the reasons why Google may have dropped Navteq for ostensibly poorer map data — a question I raised in this post. An interesting post, but perplexing given its speculative nature; I thought that, unless I’ve missed something, Edward worked…   Read more →
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Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 at 9:26 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Google Switches to Tele Atlas, Errors Proliferate
As was widely reported, Google Maps is now exclusively using Tele Atlas as its digital mapping data provider, dropping Navteq, which provided data for Google Maps proper but not for the Mobile or API products (All Points Blog, James Fee, Mike Blumenthal, Google Maps Mania). This is presumably the result…   Read more →
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Posted on Wednesday, September 24, 2008 at 7:50 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Online Maps
Georgia on My Mind
Oops. Google News illustrates a wire story about the Russian invasion of Georgia — the one in the Caucasus — with a map whose pushpin is in Georgia, the U.S. state. Hilarity ensues. Those pesky automatic algorithms….   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 9:30 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Inaccurate SBA Map Excludes Eligible Firms
“The Small Business Administration relies on an outdated, inaccurate map to maintain its billion dollar HUBZone program that is rife with fraud, according to a government report,” according to the Washington Post’s small business blog: The report said the map, which is designed to help firms determine if they’re in…   Read more →
Posted on Friday, July 18, 2008 at 12:56 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors
TV Program Shows Nepal as Part of India
Television stations routinely make cartographic errors in their graphics, but I bet none have backfired quite like this. An Indian television program’s logo erroneously showed Nepal as part of India; Nepal was not pleased. Via GeoCarta….   Read more →
Posted on Monday, July 14, 2008 at 7:12 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Two Longviews
The Daily News of Longview, Washington, has a piece about another Longview, Washington that is causing some confusion online: “It may be a field rather than a city, but that other Longview has established its place on the Internet, often on equal footing with the real Longview, and sometimes even…   Read more →
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Posted on Sunday, May 25, 2008 at 11:34 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Errors in Online Maps
Top Causes Of Errors In Online Mapping Systems: “Causes of internet map errors range from digital mapping methodology, data errors, data interpretation errors, usability errors, and errors in interpreting user queries.” Detailed. Via Slashgeo….   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 6:56 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Online Maps
Monmonier on Mapmaking Mistakes
On today’s edition of Weekend America, professor and writer Mark Monmonier is interviewed about mapping errors, beginning with GPS navigation errors — blame the maps, not the GPS signals — and moving on to what, the interviewer asks, the three biggest errors in mapmaking have been. Previously: Mark Monmonier; Review:…   Read more →
Posted on Saturday, March 1, 2008 at 7:49 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Podcasts & Audio
War Museum Refuses to Fix Mapping Error
Two and a half years ago, Bill Schroeder found a mapping error on a globe at the new Canadian War Museum. The globe depicted the Boer War, and labelled Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) as Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia). He’s been after the museum bureaucrats to fix the minor error ever…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, December 2, 2007 at 9:03 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Trap Street Found
Oh, look: Owen found a trap street — a fictitious street inserted by a mapmaker to trap plagiarists. A cul-de-sac present in the 2000 edition of an Oxford map disappears in the 2005 edition; Owen investigates on the ground and discovers it never existed. Previously: Copyright Traps….   Read more →
Posted on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 at 9:43 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Why Do People Follow Bad Directions?
Nicholas Forbes writes with an interesting question about why people follow bad directions — covered here ad nauseaum — that is above my pay grade: I am a Ph.D. student at the University of Nottingham UK. I have been running research recently into the phenomenon in which drivers receieve inaccurate…   Read more →
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Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 at 10:10 AM
Categories: Driving Directions, Mapping Errors, Questions
A Year or More for Corrections and Updates
Don’t expect instant results when you submit errors to a mapping data provider. A dentist whose office is not on the map discovers that NAVTEQ can take as much as a year, if not more, to process corrections or new material. They say they get 80,000 requests a day. I…   Read more →
Posted on Friday, May 25, 2007 at 10:19 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Online Maps
Apparently I’m a Pundit Now
Three weeks ago, I was contacted by a writer for iPass who was working on an article about the accuracy of driving directions on online mapping sites. I provided some pithy comments. Her article is now online and to my surprise I’m quoted all over the place. (I wasn’t expecting…   Read more →
Posted on Friday, May 11, 2007 at 12:28 PM
Categories: Driving Directions, Mapping Errors
Housing Development Built in Wrong Place, Map Blamed
What difference does three metres make? Plenty, according to a story from the Edinburgh Evening News: a mistake in the location of old flats on an Ordnance Survey map is being blamed for a new housing development being built in the wrong location. Three metres is enough, apparently, to overshadow…   Read more →
Posted on Tuesday, March 6, 2007 at 8:39 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Surveying
The Quebec-Labrador Border
GeoCarta notes the news that a boundary dispute between the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador has flared up over Quebec wildlife maps that show part of Labrador as belonging to Quebec. This is not new. The Quebec-Labrador boundary has been in dispute since 1902, and a formal…   Read more →
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Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 at 3:09 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Around and Around and Around and Around
Google gets a bit confused on the road to North Brunswick, New Jersey, Valleywag reports. Update, 1/23: Google has corrected the directions, but Chad has screenshots if you missed it….   Read more →
Posted on Monday, January 22, 2007 at 10:20 AM
Categories: Driving Directions, Mapping Errors, Online Maps
New Zealander’s Campaign to Correct Geographic Names
A retired public servant in Wellington, New Zealand is on a campaign to correct spelling mistakes in New Zealand place names, the New Zealand Herald reports. He’s made a total of 60 submissions to the Geographic Board pointing out errors in various toponyms, correcting them so that they reflect the…   Read more →
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Posted on Thursday, January 18, 2007 at 1:48 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Toponyms
Spelling Errors Persist on Devizes Tourist Map
The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald: “A tourist map of Devizes which is littered with spelling mistakes is still on display more than two years after they were pointed out.” Oops — they were supposed to be changed more than a year ago….   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, January 10, 2007 at 9:58 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Update: The Kims Used a Paper Map
As I noted in an update to my earlier post, the body of James Kim was found yesterday. But online maps or GPS navigation systems cannot be blamed for the Kim tragedy, as some have surmised (based on little more than James Kim’s techy occupation): the San Francisco Chronicle reports…   Read more →
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Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 10:28 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Were the Kims Led Astray by Online Maps?
On the other hand, sometimes stories about being led astray by navigation systems aren’t so amusing. The tech community has been concerned about the disappearance of CNet senior editor James Kim and his family while on vacation: his family was found alive and safe yesterday, but the search for James…   Read more →
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Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 10:00 PM
Categories: Driving Directions, Mapping Errors, Online Maps
State Forest Inadvertently Renamed
Oops. Thanks to a proofreading error, the Brendan T. Byrne State Forest appears as the “Brenda Bryan State Forest” on recently issued AAA maps of New Jersey. Byrne is a former state governor….   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, November 29, 2006 at 8:03 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Map Error Blamed for Israeli Strike on UN Observers
CBC News: “An incorrect map and communications failure led to an Israeli air strike on a UN observer post that killed four peacekeepers. … According to [the IDF’s] confidential report, Israeli artillery were using a hand-drawn map that identified the clearly marked UN post in the Khiyam area of southern…   Read more →
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Posted on Friday, September 15, 2006 at 10:37 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Tourist Map Inflames Argentina-Chile Border Issue
The government of Chile is complaining about an Argentine tourist map of the Andean Southern Ice Field, the boundaries of which do not conform to a 1998 border agreement between the two countries’ presidents. The exact nature of the boundary complaint is not specified, but the article notes that the…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 at 8:56 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Thomas Guides, Navteq on KPCC
On Friday the 7th, there was an item on mapping on Patt Morrison’s afternoon show on 89.3 KPCC, a public radio station based in Pasadena, California. On deck were representatives from Thomas Brothers Maps and Navteq; much of the focus was on field surveying — both aerial and on the…   Read more →
Posted on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 at 12:24 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Podcasts & Audio, Publishers, Roads, Surveying
Crackpot Directions Send Drivers Along a Cliff
BBC News: “Drivers following satellite navigation systems through a village called Crackpot have been directed along a track at the edge of a 100-ft cliff.” Another entry in the annals of errors made by in-car navigation systems. Via Slashgeo. See previous entries: Getting Lost with Mapping Sites; Good Maps, Bad…   Read more →
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Posted on Sunday, April 9, 2006 at 4:06 PM
Categories: Driving Directions, GPS, Mapping Errors
Link Roundup for January 14
Ben Keene, the editor of Oxford University Press’s atlas program (see previous entry), looks at the changes in geography he had to deal with in 2005 (via World Hum). MapQuest has inadvertently left Edmonton off a map of Canadian cities — it’s the capital of Alberta, for those who don’t…   Read more →
Posted on Saturday, January 14, 2006 at 8:32 AM
Categories: Blogs, Books, Cartography, Education, Mapping Errors, Satellite & Aerial, Software
Russian Maps Mislead Foreign Businesses
The International Herald Tribune looks at the disconnect between the official maps handed out by the Russian authorities to foreign businesses, with gridlines diverging from true north and the latitudes and longitudes blotted out, with the relative ease that the same obfuscated sites can be viewed with Google Earth. A…   Read more →
Posted on Friday, December 2, 2005 at 8:53 AM
Categories: Censorship, Security & Privacy, Mapping Errors
Copyright Traps
Publishers frequently use “copyright traps” to prove that someone plagiarized their work. Without evidence of the actual act of plagiarism, it’s difficult to prove that someone publishing a rival phone book, dictionary or encyclopedia didn’t just copy material wholesale from yours, so they insert bits of wholly fictitious information that,…   Read more →
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Posted on Friday, November 25, 2005 at 9:51 AM
Categories: Cartography, Copyright, Mapping Errors
Seminar on Errors in Early Maps
A seminar about errors in early maps takes place this Saturday in Annapolis, Maryland; topics for discussion include extra islands in John Smith’s maps of Chesapeake Bay (see previous entry) and maps showing California as an island….   Read more →
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Posted on Wednesday, October 5, 2005 at 8:01 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Mapping Errors
Campus Orientation Maps
I misspent three years at the University of Alberta; this opinion piece in the student newspaper there, The Gateway, has this to say about the quality of the campus orientation map: “It sucks.”…   Read more →
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Posted on Thursday, September 29, 2005 at 8:45 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors
Counterfeit Maps, Lost Drivers
To save money, some Chinese GPS manufacturers use counterfeit maps instead of official ones; as a result, Shanghai drivers who buy the cheaper units are getting lost. Via GeoCarta and Very Spatial….   Read more →
Posted on Friday, September 23, 2005 at 9:24 PM
Categories: GPS, Mapping Errors
Wrong Map Costs City $15,000
Via GeoCarta, a report that an inaccurate map was responsible for the city of Gearhart, Oregon encroaching on private property during bridge construction. From the article: “City Manager Dennis McNally told the City Council Wednesday the city had poured the concrete footings for the bridge based on an inaccurate map,…   Read more →
Posted on Saturday, September 10, 2005 at 8:47 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors
More About Flood Maps
Forbes reports that FEMA’s outdated flood maps meant that many people in Hurricane Katrina’s path didn’t have flood insurance because, according to those maps, they weren’t in a flood plain and didn’t need it. More generally on inaccurate flood maps from this Atlanta Journal-Constitution article. Via All Points Blog and…   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, September 8, 2005 at 9:43 PM
Categories: Hurricanes 2005, Mapping Errors, Weather & Climate
Protected Forest Logged, Mapping Error to Blame
A protected forest in Tasmania was accidentally logged due to a mapping error, ABC News (Australia) reports. Via Cartography; see also GeoCarta. Update, 10:40 PM: From ABC News, “Forestry Tasmania general manager Kim Creek says the error was caused by incorrect boundary markings on a map.” Via GeoCarta….   Read more →
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Posted on Sunday, August 28, 2005 at 8:16 AM
Categories: Energy & Resources, Environment, Mapping Errors

Note: Entries from 2003 were not categorized and will not appear in the category archives. Please consult the monthly archives.