Null Island is an inside joke among cartographers: an imagined island situated at 0° latitude, 0° longitude, where maps suffering from data glitches point themselves. If your map is centred on Null Island, something has gone wrong. So of course mapmakers have been having some fun with it—after all, it’s not something you could stumble across by accident. In a blog post, Alan McConchie of Stamen Maps delves into the lore and history of Null Island and its status as an Easter egg on the Stamen Maps platform, where it takes the shape of the island from the Myst game.

(As an update to my 2016 post on Null Island: Alan reports that the buoy at 0°, 0° has ceased to be. Also, the Null Island website, complete with flag, has moved here.)

There’s no shortage of books about phantom islands—islands on the map that later turn out never to have existed—but now the Map Men have done a video about them, using as a narrative hook the case of Sandy Island, and how it managed to stay on maps into the Google Maps era.

Jalopnik describes this as yet another case of blindly following, but I think this is a more specific failure mode. Rerouting due to road closures or traffic jams opens up routes that the algorithm would normally deprecate, and catches more drivers unprepared. It’s one thing when that means a quiet residential street gets an expressway’s worth of traffic, quite another when the second best choice is a dirt track—or a 500-mile detour. When the best answer the algorithm can give you is a bad one, it will still give you that answer.

Previously: Man Dies After Driving Across Collapsed Bridge, Family Sues Google; Google Rerouted Traffic Up Poorly Maintained Mountain Roads During a Blizzard; Google Maps Called Out for Showing ‘Potentially Fatal’ Mountain Routes.

W3W maintains that their algorithm keeps similar combinations “so far apart that an error is obvious. We also worked hard to remove homophones and near homophones like sale and sail.” They rate the the chance of two confusing combinations appearing close enough to be unclear at about 1 in 2.5 million. But in a new analysis of the algorithm, currently in preprint, computer scientist Rudy Arthur argues that despite W3W’s claims this chance of confusion is far higher, and warns against adopting W3W as critical infrastructure (it’s used by emergency services, particularly in the U.K.) without testing and comparing against available alternatives. [The Register]

Previously: What3Words Hasn’t Had the Greatest Couple of Months: A Roundup.

It’s like the #30daymapchallenge in November, in which mapmakers are challenged to make a map a day on a given daily theme, only the reverse: the MapFailbruaryChallenge is about making a bad map on a given daily theme. “The idea is to create the worst map possible.” Bad maps happen; will a deliberately bad map be better or worse? Either way, it’s probably worth stocking up on popcorn for when maps with the #mapfailbruarychallenge hashtag start showing up on our timelines.

(Failbruary. Fai-EL-bru-AIR-y. Say that ten times. And resign yourselves to the fact that Reddit is probably going to kick everyone’s ass on this.)

Update, 19 Jan: There’s an official website now.

OpenStreetMap was always pretty good but is also now really good? And Apple Maps’s new zoomed-in design in certain cities like NYC and London is just gorgeous. It’s cool how there are all these good maps now!

—is unexpectedly more on point than not.

In 2013 I wrote a screed saying that all online maps sucked: that no one map platform had a monopoly on errors. At the time Exhibit A for the suckiness of online maps was Apple Maps; since then, and particularly since 2018, Apple has been putting in the work. Not that they’re done, but still: the product is fundamentally better now than it was then. And it’s not like the other platforms have been idle in the meantime. No one platform is going to achieve Cartography’s ideal of the universal and accurate Map—that’s inherently unachievable—but better? I’ll take better.

Last week, when a snowstorm closed Interstate 80 east of Sacramento, Google Maps started redirecting traffic up poorly maintained mountain roads, which is about as good an idea during a blizzard as it sounds.

.@googlemaps This is an abject failure. You are sending people up a poorly maintained forest road to their death in a severe blizzard. Hire people who can address winter storms in your code (or maybe get some of your engineers who are stuck in Tahoe right now on it). pic.twitter.com/IzagAXzBtA

— Dr. Crystal A. Kolden (@pyrogeog) December 28, 2021

As SFGate reports,

Other dispatches from Twitter allege that the service—particularly its mobile app—directed people to closed-off highways, mountain passes and lakeside roads to get around. This is in direct contrast to Caltrans’ messaging to avoid workarounds. Caltrans District 3 spokesperson Steve Nelson told SFGATE on Monday that they were seeing drivers trying to skirt highway closures with side streets. “They’ll take side roads and try and sneak past the closures, and that never ends well,” he said.

Google engineer Sören Meyer-Eppler responded on Twitter to spell out some of the technical and logistical problems involved in rerouting traffic during bad weather: the difficulty in finding timely data (and in such cases data need to be really timely) and the risk of false positives. More at Jalopnik.

It’s a Spalding ball exclusive to Urban Outfitters, it costs $29, and it hurts my brain. [r/Maps]

To be clear, I think this one’s on Google. A lot of people trust online maps implicitly because they have poor navigation skills and have a hard time overruling what the directions tell them: this is why people keep driving into rivers and onto tracks. It’s a design failure not to account for this in every circumstance.

But on certain maps, in Switzerland’s more remote regions, there is also, curiously, a spider, a man’s face, a naked woman, a hiker, a fish, and a marmot. These barely-perceptible apparitions aren’t mistakes, but rather illustrations hidden by the official cartographers at Swisstopo in defiance of their mandate “to reconstitute reality.” Maps published by Swisstopo undergo a rigorous proofreading process, so to find an illicit drawing means that the cartographer has outsmarted his colleagues.

It also implies that the mapmaker has openly violated his commitment to accuracy, risking professional repercussions on account of an alpine rodent. No cartographer has been fired over these drawings, but then again, most were only discovered once their author had already left. (Many mapmakers timed the publication of their drawing to coincide with their retirement.) Over half of the known illustrations have been removed. The latest, the marmot drawing, was discovered by Swisstopo in 2016 and is likely to be eliminated from the next official map of Switzerland by next year. As the spokesperson for Swisstopo told me, “Creativity has no place on these maps.”

The article suggests these drawings are a coping mechanism, an opportunity to blow off a little steam. I can believe it. [r/MapPorn]

When a map has a mistake on it, when it’s wrong, it does something funny to our heads. We obey our phones and dashboard GPS navigators even when they send us off a cliff. We concoct nutty theories about ancient civilizations because a 16th-century portolan chart had a funny bend on a coastline. We wonder, because someone wrote “here be dragons” on a map, whether dragons were actually real. We make brain pretzels trying to force maps to be truthful even when they are manifestly wrong.¹

Maps have to tell the truth. They simply have to. Maybe that’s why stories about mistakes on the map, and the havoc those mistakes cause, fascinate us so much. Which brings me to three books, all published for the first time in 2016, that talk about map errors of an older kind: islands and other features that appeared on maps, sometimes for centuries, that in the end turned out not to exist.

Long before we got this funny idea that maps had to be truthful, before Edney’s ideal of cartography took hold, maps were full of conjectures, rumours, mistakes in surveying and even some outright frauds.

Take, for example, Frisland. A hoax perpetuated by the 14th-century Zeno brothers of Venice, or possibly their 16th century descendent: the latter published a book of the Zeno brothers’ correspondence in which they described their travels to Frisland, a large island south of Iceland in the North Atlantic with a Latin-speaking ruler. (Many phantom islands of the era seem to be full of previously undiscovered Christian realms where Latin is spoken: they’re a westerly variant of the Prester John legend.) The story was swallowed whole, and Frisland appeared on many maps; England claimed it. It took centuries for the Frisland myth to disappear completely. (Previously: The Invention of Frisland.)

Or for a more recent example, the island of Bermeja in the Gulf of Mexico. First sighted in the 16th century (but not since), it remained on maps of the region into the 20th century. In 2009 a Mexican aerial survey determined the non-existence of the island, which led to some conspiracy theories that it had been destroyed by the Americans: its position might have been important in determining who owned the subsurface oil exploitation rights in the Gulf of Mexico, and an agreement with the U.S. had just been completed on that very issue.

“[A]s the story of Bermeja demonstrates, a fascinating characteristic of many of these misbeliefs is their remarkable durability,” writes Edward Brooke-Hitching in The Phantom Atlas (Simon & Schuster UK, Nov 2016; Chronicle, Apr 2018). Indeed, as all three of the books under review today demonstrate, phantom islands continue to be “un-discovered” into the present day.

But where do phantom islands come from? “Among the multitude of non-existent islands that have appeared on maps over the past few centuries,” writes Malachy Tallack in The Un-Discovered Islands (Birlinn, Oct 2016; Picador, Nov 2017), “the vast majority are the result of mistakes. They are accidental phantoms, caused by imperfect navigation, optical illusions or poor recording by mariners and cartographers. Sometimes, though, there is no accident at all. Islands are invented deliberately, often creating inordinate confusion as a result.” To that list Brooke-Hitching adds mythology and religious dogma, which surely must have been at play with not just Frisland, but Hy-Brasil and Saint Brendan’s Island too; as well as volcanic destruction, because that can be a thing; and, because The Phantom Atlas isn’t just talking about islands, copyright traps.

In the end, the solution to a phantom island is more exploration: repeated voyages and surveys. Of course, establishing that something doesn’t exist—proving a negative, in other words—is much more difficult than suggesting that it existed in the first place. “Often, the process of refuting the existence of an island is more exciting, but also more complicated and dangerous, than its discovery,”² writes Dirk Liesemer in Phantom Islands, first published in Germany in 2016 as Lexikon der Phantominseln (Mare), now translated into English by Peter Lewis and published, last October, by Haus.

So, three books, with the same premise, covering the same territory, often using the same examples, and in much the same way, published at more or less the same time. Must have been something in the water.³ These books are more similar than not. It’s tempting to treat them as a whole. So I will.

Each is a collection of short chapters explaining how an island was added to the map, and how it was found out not to exist. I’m glossing over a lot in that sentence: there are some truly fascinating stories in these books. The Un-Discovered Islands covers twenty-four of them (with another ten briefly mentioned), arranged by theme; Phantom Islands covers thirty, in alphabetical order. The Phantom Atlas has sixty chapters, also arranged alphabetically, and goes beyond islands to other geographical features, and indeed to more intangible subjects, with chapters on the various monsters found on maps, and the ideas of a flat earth and an earthly paradise.

Naturally there is some overlap: a total of 11 mythical islands are covered by all three books, for example. (These are, for the record, Antilla, Atlantis, the Aurora Islands, Bermeja, Buss Island, Crocker Land, Frisland, Hy-Brasil, Saint Brendan’s Island, Sandy Island and Thule.)

Both Phantom Islands and The Un-Discovered Islands are relatively short, at 160 and 144 pages respectively. They’re elegantly designed but more illustrated than mapped, if you follow me. The Phantom Atlas is nearly twice as long and has two to three times the chapters (it also costs twice as much); it fills that space with reproductions of maps and art and other illustrations. (I read the ebook version, which in hindsight was a mistake: you get the images, but not the page layout.) The Phantom Atlas has its eye set on the coffee table: it’s the kind of map book you look at as much as you read it. The other two not so much, but they make up for it with stronger prose: each of these little books make for an afternoon’s pleasant reading, with The Un-Discovered Islands being a little more slight, and Phantom Islands having a somewhat different focus owing to its originally being written for a German audience.

In the end it depends on what you’re looking for. Information on phantom islands is readily available online, but these books spin their tales better, and The Phantom Atlas has better pictures. And these books’ overlap (see above) is not so much that you’d be wasting your time or money by reading all three. Particularly if you find this subject fascinating.

I received a review copy of Phantom Islands from the publisher. I bought the other two as ebooks.

The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps
by Edward Brooke-Hitching
Simon & Schuster UK, Nov 2016 (U.K. edition)
Chronicle, April 2018 (U.S. edition)
Amazon | Apple Books | Bookshop

Phantom Islands
by Dirk Liesemer
translated by Peter Lewis
Haus, Oct 2019
Amazon | Apple Books | Bookshop

The Un-Discovered Islands
by Malachy Tallack
Birlinn, Oct 2016 (U.K. edition)
Picador, Nov 2017 (U.S. edition)
Amazon | Apple Books | Bookshop

Take, for example, last month’s incident where Google Maps’ response to a traffic accident was to route traffic heading toward Denver International Airport along a private dirt road that was muddy and nearly impassible due to recent rains: about a hundred cars got stuck. That Google Maps thought the muddy part of East 64th Avenue was a viable route would not likely have been spotted were it not for the accident; said accident routed dozens of drivers along an unfamiliar route that they had no real option other than to trust Google on. [Jalopnik]

Meanwhile, see Dan Luu’s Twitter thread on Google Maps (and other map providers’) errors, their persistence, and the trouble it can sometimes take to get them dealt with.

Online advertising specialists identified by Google as deft fraud fighters estimated that Google Maps carries roughly 11 million falsely listed businesses on any given day, according to a Journal survey of these experts.

They say a majority of the listings for contractors, electricians, towing and car repair services, movers and lawyers, among other business categories, aren’t located at their pushpins on Google Maps. Shams among these service categories, called “duress verticals” inside Google, can snag people at their most vulnerable.

Those experts and Google disagree as to the extent of the problem. (Which is exacerbated by how easy it is to set up a business listing.) And the scam artists aren’t simply displacing local businesses: they’re resorting to outright extortion: pay up, or we’ll swamp you with bogus listings. [Engadget, The Verge]

IKEA’s going to need extra security.

New Zealand media is all over this: New Zealand Herald, RNZ, TVNZ.

Previously: IKEA Map Poster Omits New Zealand; New Zealand Launches Campaign to Get Itself Back on World Maps; Maps Without New Zealand.

IKEA is apologizing after it was discovered that one of its BJÖRKSTA world map posters left off New Zealand. (Yes, that again.) IKEA says the product will be phased out; it’s still available in my country, for the moment. Note that there are three other world maps in the BJÖRKSTA series (which consists of framed pictures, including art, photos and maps); the other three do include New Zealand.

IKEA had better hope no one finds out about the map art that uses the Mercator projection.

Previously: New Zealand Launches Campaign to Get Itself Back on World Maps; Maps Without New Zealand.

In this case the problem was traced to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which assigned the lat/long coordinates for Pretoria to this family’s front yard. The end result: one home becomes the location for one million IP addresses in Pretoria. (The NGA has since changed it.)

The problem here is twofold. First, a failure to account for accuracy radius: a city or a country is represented by a single, precise point at its centre. That’s a real problem when the data point being geotagged can’t be more specific than “Pretoria” or “United States,” because the geotagging is made artificially precise: it’s not “somewhere in Pretoria,” it’s this specific address. Second is the misuse of IP location data. It’s one thing to use a web visitor’s IP address to serve them local ads or to enforce geographical restrictions on content, quite another to use that data for official or vigilante justice. The data, Hill points out, isn’t good enough for that. [MetaFilter]

Previously: A Geolocation Glitch Creates a ‘Technological Horror Story’.

The problem was traced to OpenStreetMap, one of Mapbox’s data sources. On August 10 an OSM user renamed a number of New York landmarks, as well as New York itself, after a number of alt-right and neo-Nazi memes. The edits were quickly reverted and the user blocked—on OpenStreetMap. They nevertheless entered the Mapbox review pipeline, where they were, in fact, caught and flagged on the 16th, but a human editor mistakenly okayed the renaming of New York to Jewtropolis. A simple human error, but with a delayed fuse: the edit turned up on Mapbox’s public map two weeks later. When all hell broke loose on the 30th, the map was fixed within a few hours.

Vandalism of online maps isn’t a new thing: in 2015 Google ran into trouble when a series of juvenile map edits exposed the shortcomings of the Map Maker program’s moderation system and led to a temporary suspension of Map Maker (it closed for good in 2017) and an apology from Google. Anything involving user contributions needs a moderation system, and OpenStreetMap and Mapbox both have them. But moderation systems can and do still fail from time to time. (That’s a take on this incident that isn’t on Bill Morris’s list.)

Traffic. Traffic congestion is a key feature of mobile mapping, and predicting it involves looking at historical data. CityLab reports on a recent study suggests that time-of-day electricity usage patterns can be used to predict traffic congestion patterns. A household that starts using power earlier in the morning gets up earlier and presumably will go to work earlier.) It’s another variable that can be put to use in traffic modelling.

Trail difficulty. OpenStreetMap doesn’t differentiate between “walk-in-the-park” trails and mountaineering routes, and that may have had something to do with hikers needing to be rescued from the side of a British Columbia mountain recently. The hikers apparently used OSM on a mobile phone app, and in OSM trail difficulty is an optional tag. The wisdom of using OSM in safety-critical environments notwithstanding, this is something that OSM editors need to get on. [Ian Dees]

Previously: The Omitted Island; ‘Potato Drop’.

Speaking of lost islands, invented places, myths and mistakes, our friend Alejandro Polanco’s latest project is this poster map of lost worlds—he calls it “the fantasy map I always dreamed of.” See his blog post (in Spanish) or the project’s Kickstarter page:

Over the last twenty years, in my work as a graphic designer and mapmaker, I have enjoyed reading numerous books on lost continents, mythological animals, phantom islands and cartographic errors. However, I have never found all those ingredients gathered in a single fantasy map. That’s why I decided to create “Lost Worlds,” a poster in which I have compiled some of the main details about lost continents, historical errors on famous maps, islands that once were believed to really exist, fantastic animals. . . . The documentation work has been meticulous and, for the final design, I have chosen the cases that I consider to be the most representative. It is, in short, a map to feed our imagination and our dreams.

Like his previous project, Minimal Geography, it’s full of inset maps and descriptive text. The main map locates lost continents, phantom islands and cryptid creatures; the inset maps include examples of old maps that contain the sorts of imaginary and erroneous features Edward Brooke-Hitching covers in The Phantom Atlas.

Alejandro is, as I mentioned, crowdfunding this map on Kickstarter, where it’s already past its (nominal) target. Available as a digital download; prices start at €6 (higher tiers include other products.

PBS NewsHour talks to Edward Brooke-Hitching about his book The Phantom Atlas, his book about lost islands, invented places, myths and mistakes on old maps. Direct video link, transcript. The Phantom Atlas was published in the U.K. in late 2016 and saw its U.S. edition launch in April of this year. [WMS]

The Atlantic’s Ed Yong looks at a problem in the public health response to this month’s Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo: inaccurate maps of the areas affected by the virus.

On Thursday, the World Health Organization released a map showing parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that are currently being affected by Ebola. The map showed four cases in Wangata, one of three “health zones” in the large city of Mbandaka. Wangata, according to the map, lies north of the main city, in a forested area on the other side of a river.

That is not where Wangata is.

“It’s actually here, in the middle of Mbandaka city,” says Cyrus Sinai, indicating a region about 8 miles farther south, on a screen that he shares with me over Skype.

Almost all the maps of the outbreak zone that have thus far been released contain mistakes of this kind. Different health organizations all seem to use their own maps, most of which contain significant discrepancies. Things are roughly in the right place, but their exact positions can be off by miles, as can the boundaries between different regions. […]

To be clear, there’s no evidence that these problems are hampering the response to the current outbreak. It’s not like doctors are showing up in the middle of the forest, wondering why they’re in the wrong place. “Everyone on the ground knows where the health zones start and end,” says Sinai. “I don’t think this will make or break the response. But you surely want the most accurate data.”

The WHO map in question, reproduced at the top of this post, can be found here. See Virology Down Under’s roundup of maps put out by the various NGOs, which the Atlantic article refers to.