The social impacts of technology have been a concern and a focus of research for many decades. This only accelerated as the computing industry evolved from mainframes to smartphones and laptops. Powerful computing technologies became ubiquitous, concurrently heightening both social implications and societal attention. The United Nations (UN) Millennium Summit, held in 2000, chartered eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The seemingly impossible goals were to be enabled by the use of technology. Since that time, participatory mapping (PM) has emerged as an enabling technology toward achieving those goals. This work evaluates nine of the 22 identified PM applications and is both a relevant and timely contribution.

PM is defined by the authors as the creation of maps by nonexperts, and this appears to include expertise in cartography and computing. Two key requirements for PM are data collection tools and geospatial data representation and visualization tools. The book consists of 11 chapters: introductory and summary chapters and nine chapters in between; each of the nine chapters is devoted to one of the nine tools. Each tool is evaluated using 11 criteria: 1) general information, 2) ethics, 3) cost, 4) technical level, 5) inclusiveness, 6) data accuracy, 7) data privacy, 8) analytic capacity, 9) visualization capacity, 10) openness, and 11) accessibility, as well as narratives of field uses and case studies.

Chapter 1 is authored by the editor(s) and provides definitions of the 11 criteria used for the analysis of the nine tools. Chapter 2 describes the web application Mapbox. This GIS tool is online and has a fee-based usage model. It excels as a basic standalone mapping solution; however, plug-ins are required to support data collection (which is equally important). Chapter 3 describes an open-source application Mapeo. The software is locally repositoried for data privacy and provides basic mapping and data collection tools. Chapter 4 describes the software as a service (SaaS) application Maptionnaire. The subscription cost is at three different product levels and can be a set term or continuous. Prices range from USD 950/month to USD 50K/year for enterprise solutions. This is a hardened tool with a significant user base. Chapter 5 describes Sapelli, a group of open-source applications: Sapelli Designer, Sapelli Collector, and Sapelli Viewer. Chapter 6 describes the SaaS product SeaSketch with data collection and visualization originally developed for marine spatial planning. Chapter 7 describes the web application Sketch Map Tool, which combines analog data collection with digital data processing. Chapter 8 describes Survey123 for ArcGIS Online, a SaaS application from ESRI. This is a hardened set of commercial tools with an extensive user base. Chapter 9 describes the open-source tool Terrastories, providing participatory mapping and storytelling. Chapter 10 describes Ushahidi, an open-source, crowdsourced information-sharing platform. Chapter 11 summarizes the preceding chapters and places the nine tools in a tabular format for the reader.

A unique aspect of the work is the authorship of the nine tool chapters. The authors are teams of owners, administrators, and developers who created and use the tool(s). They have first-hand, intimate knowledge of the tool and a vested interest in its ongoing use and success. Each tool is evaluated using 11 criteria and narratives of field uses and case studies. The diverse authorship results in variation of styles and focus for each chapter; this is particularly true of the case studies. The use of a formalism such as the unified modeling language (UML) applied to a single case study for each tool would provide greater insight into the roles and participation of nonexperts. This may be a future contribution as the field of PM is rapidly evolving and its uses are expanding as well. I recommend this book to those seeking an analytical framework for evaluating PM tools.