Geotagging

Geotagging associates content (documents, photographs, blog posts, forum posts, etc.) with a physical location (City, State, Country, Ocean, Lat/Long, etc.) and place a map with an icon for the content below the post.

For example, this Wiki Page has been Geotagged with "Honolulu, Hawaii" as seen in the map below.

How do I Geotag content?

1. Automatic Geotagging (text based)

   • By default, all Groups on APAN will have Automatic Geotagging turned off. Enable mapping features to geotag content. The Automatic Geotagging process works by recognizing geographical references in the content of the post and then automatically adding Geotags for that content. For example, if a user posts a Word document and then puts in the description the phrase “the meetings take place in New York City, NY” then the Word document will be automatically Geotagged in New York City, see example in the map below.

   • Automatic Geographical references:

   •  Cities and Towns – New York City or NYC

   • States – Hawaii or HI*
   • Countries – United States of America
   • Relative References – About 125 miles south of New York City, NY
   • Latitude and Longitude – 0924N 1618E (means 9°24’N 16°18’E)
   • Military Grid Reference System Format (MGRS) – 36WF2248402617 (means 36°10’5” N 33°15’0” E)

     For certain Geotags (such as City or State) the surrounding text in the post will be used to assist in finding the correct location. For example, if the post just has “NY” in the description with no context it may not be Geotagged, but if the sentence says “New York City, NY” it will be Geotagged.

     • If users do not want their post Geotagged, they can uncheck the auto-geo tag this post box when creating the po

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2. Automatic Geotagging (data based)

   When a photograph is taken with a mobile device, such as an iPhone, Android phone, or digital camera, the photograph will contain geospatial data which will associate location information with the photograph. This is known as Exchangeable Image Format (EXIF) data. For example, if a photograph is taken in front of the White House with an iPhone the photograph will most likely contain geographical information for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC 20500.

   If a photograph with geospatial data is posted to APAN then the post will be automatically Geotagged. See the example EXIF data below.

   •  (credit: Wikimedia)

3. Manual Geotagging

   Manual Geotagging is the process of typing in a Latitude and Longitude or adding a place marker to the map under a post. This can be done by typing the Latitude/Longitude in or using the place marker icon and zooming in to the exact location the user would like to use as the Geotag.

   • Manual Geotags override any Automatic Geotags.

4. Managing Geotags

   • How do I edit geotags?

     Once a post has been published users can edit geotags by clicking edit on the post and update place markers.

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   • How do I delete geotags?

     Once a post has been published users can delete geotags by clicking edit on the post and delete place markers.

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