{"id":950,"date":"2016-02-19T10:07:31","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T15:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/?p=950"},"modified":"2024-08-02T11:09:41","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T15:09:41","slug":"null-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2016\/02\/null-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Null Island"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"zero-zero\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Zero degrees longitude, zero degrees latitude is literally nowhere: situated in the middle of the open ocean, off the coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea<\/a>, the only thing to mark its presence is a weather observation buoy<\/a> [via<\/a>]. But it’s also a significant set of coordinates, in that it’s the location you might get in the case of geocoding errors<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hence the invention of Null Island<\/a>, an imaginary place to flag geocoding failures. It shows up in version 1.3 of Natural Earth<\/a>, for example, as an island one square metre in size, but coded so that it would never appear in an actual map. Gary Vicchi explains Null Island in more detail<\/a>. As is the way of fictional places, Null Island has grown in the imagination: it has its own website<\/a>, replete with sections on its history, geography, people and economy, and its own flag<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zero degrees longitude, zero degrees latitude is literally nowhere: situated in the middle of the open ocean, off the coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea, the only thing to mark its presence is… More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,28,57],"tags":[311,310],"class_list":["post-950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-cartography","category-gis","category-imaginary-maps","tag-geocoding","tag-null-island","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2391,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2016\/07\/the-wsj-on-null-island\/","url_meta":{"origin":950,"position":0},"title":"The WSJ on Null Island","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"13 July 2016","format":"link","excerpt":"Here's another, more in-depth look at Null Island, a point at the\u00a0intersection of the equator and prime meridian that shows up\u00a0in the event of a geocoding error, this time from the Wall Street Journal\u2019s\u00a0Robert Lee Hotz. [WMS] Previously:\u00a0Null Island.","rel":"","context":"In "GIS"","block_context":{"text":"GIS","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/gis\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1833379,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2024\/08\/null-island-as-easter-egg\/","url_meta":{"origin":950,"position":1},"title":"Null Island as Easter Egg","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"2 August 2024","format":"link","excerpt":"Stamen Maps Null Island is an inside joke among cartographers: an imagined island situated at 0\u00b0 latitude, 0\u00b0 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\u2014after\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cartography"","block_context":{"text":"Cartography","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/cartography\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/null-island-stamen.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/null-island-stamen.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/null-island-stamen.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/null-island-stamen.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/null-island-stamen.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/null-island-stamen.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1791196,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2021\/06\/what3words-hasnt-had-the-greatest-couple-of-months-a-roundup\/","url_meta":{"origin":950,"position":2},"title":"What3Words Hasn\u2019t Had the Greatest Couple of Months: A Roundup","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"3 June 2021","format":"link","excerpt":"The proprietary geocoding system What3words, which assigns a three-word mapcode to each three-square-metre point on the planet, has been getting some grief lately. It\u2019s always been somewhat controversial because it\u2019s a closed system, and because of the steps What3words has taken to protect its proprietary database and algorithms: it\u2019s issued\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Web Mapping"","block_context":{"text":"Web Mapping","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/web-mapping\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1837813,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2025\/03\/google-maps-has-a-lot-of-user-contributed-imagery-in-the-wrong-places\/","url_meta":{"origin":950,"position":3},"title":"Google Maps Has a Lot of User-Contributed Imagery in the Wrong Places","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"12 March 2025","format":"link","excerpt":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CMemCW8aDWs Geography Now was poking around northern Chad in Google Maps and came across a bunch of user-contributed 360-degree images of business interiors that had nothing to do with Chad: they were associated with businesses in Brazil, India, Hungary and so forth. I\u2019m inclined to think these were geocoding glitches\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Map Errors"","block_context":{"text":"Map Errors","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/map-errors\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/CMemCW8aDWs\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1818301,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2023\/09\/what3words-confusion-rate-under-scrutiny\/","url_meta":{"origin":950,"position":4},"title":"What3Words Confusion Rate Under Scrutiny","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"5 September 2023","format":"link","excerpt":"The What3Words geocoding service assigns a three-word mapcode to every three-square-metre patch on the planet, the premise being that three words are easier to remember and share than longitude and latitude to the equivalent decimal places. But the main complaint about What3Words (apart from the proprietary nature of its algorithm\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Map Errors"","block_context":{"text":"Map Errors","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/map-errors\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4149,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2017\/04\/zero-degrees\/","url_meta":{"origin":950,"position":5},"title":"Zero Degrees","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"3 April 2017","format":"link","excerpt":"Jon Wright reviews Charles W. J. Withers's\u00a0Zero Degrees:\u00a0Geographies of the Prime Meridian (Harvard University Press, March 2017) for\u00a0Geographical magazine.\u00a0Zero Degrees is about the effort to establish a single, uniform prime meridian from among more than two dozen rival claims. As Wright writes, \"Withers manages to turn what might have been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Surveying"","block_context":{"text":"Surveying","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/surveying\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Book cover: Zero Degrees","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/zero-degrees-99x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=950"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1833378,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950\/revisions\/1833378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}