Geographical Map Annotation with Significant Tags available from Social Networks

In this chapter we describe how to extract relevant information on a geographical area from information that users share and provide by means of their mobiles or personal digital assistants, thanks to Web 2.0 applications such as OpenStreetMap, Geonames, Flickr, and GoogleMaps. These Web 2.0 applications represent, store, and process information in an XML format. We analyze and use this information to enrich the content of the cartographic map of a given geographical area with up-to-date information. In addition we provide a characterization of the map by selection of the annotations that differentiate the given map from the surrounding areas. This occurs by means of statistical tests on the annotations frequency in the different geographical areas. We present the results of an experimental section in which we show that the content characterization is meaningful, statistically significant, and usefully concise.