Portside - While pre-Maria maps of Puerto Rico were fairly complete, their level
of detail was nowhere near that of other parts of the United States.
Platforms such as Google Maps are more comprehensive on the mainland
than on the island, explains Juan Saldarriaga, a research scholar at the
Center for Spatial Research at Columbia University. This is because
companies like Google often create maps for financial reasons, selling
them to advertisers or as navigation devices, so areas that have less economic activity are given less attention.
This lack of detail impedes recovery efforts:
Without basic information on the location of buildings, for instance,
rescue workers don’t know how many people were living in an area before
the hurricane struck—and thus how much aid is needed.
No comments:
Post a Comment