El Gran Apagón

Many people around the world will have heard about the serious power outage that Spain and Portugal had a few weeks ago, as the power grid for almost the whole of the two countries failed for the best part of the day. I know, first world problems for those who live in countries where electricity network failures (or even availability) are still a regular feature of daily life. But the event was still a useful wake-up call on just how dependent we have become on that network for so much of our daily activity, not least because the outage also left people with very limited or non-existent mobile phone and internet coverage.

The blackout happened in the middle of the day when a large part of the adult population was at work, getting home for those whose journey depends on electrified train or underground Metro services turned into a problem for so many. With bus transport and other road transport services overwhelmed by demand the only solution for a lot of people will have been a perhaps unfamiliar walk through a large city like Madrid or Barcelona. And then we get back to the collapse in the mobile telephone network, those mapping services that so many instinctively use for navigation were suddenly just as unavailable as anything else dependent on the internet.

Now it has often been frustrating, as an Open Street Map (OSM) supporter and contributor, to talk to people about the advantages of open maps, see them nodding in apparent agreement and then watch them go with Google or Apple by default as soon as they need to look for anything on their devices. The advantage of having a downloadable non-proprietary map on your phone isn’t usually apparent to many people until something like the power outage happens. But that can be what still works when everything else has failed, assuming of course you haven’t exhausted the device battery trying in vain to use the internet to find out what is going on! Not wishing to be smug about the issue (well, maybe a bit and with good reason), but these days when I see someone going straight to the default providers I won’t be able to resist asking how their navigation worked on the day of the Gran Apagón?

Something else I saw recently was this artcle in The Guardian about the growing number of emergency rescue call-outs in the UK as people go into the hills and get into trouble as the weather changes and they find either their phone has no network coverage, or just that the ‘default’ map they like to use only has a large green polygon covering the area where they have got lost. Because detailed maps where there are no roads, shops, or bars and restaurants never get the same priority for the Apples and Googles of this world. I’ve been using OSM for mountain navigation in Spain and overseas for years now, and it is mostly very good because of the enthusiasm of the community for mapping the trails - many mappers are keen hikers or mountain bikers and they want the routes they use to be available for others.

Now I know all the warnings about relying on digital maps in these environments, when I started using a handheld GPS about 20 years ago a lot of ‘serious’ walkers were very dismissive of the technology. You can’t beat a proper physical map, was a common theme - and not without some truth because obviously devices can always fail. But I can think of at least two occasions without much effort where my Garmin GPS with an OSM background map did the job of getting our group out safely in quite problematic conditions where both visibility and the weather were poor. You should always at least do some prior homework if taking an unfamiliar route, but also be aware that your favourite digital map provider may have zero interest in the area where you are going to spend the day.

Some coverage of this story has has also focused on a common theme these days, that we are too dependent on navigation aids with our devices and that this leads us to become less spatially aware. I’ve got a solution for that too, and it’s called contributing to OSM. I can mentally visualize large parts of the centre of Madrid or other places I frequently map, often with street names and other details - because I am adding data to the map. I’m using my phone to do it, but thinking about and focusing on the geographical features around me.

The sermon for today ends there, but remember that if you are stuck on a mountain when the mist comes in or you are trying to get somewhere when the internet suddenly fails it will be too late to start thinking about the best kind of map to use.