Friday, March 27. 2009

Update: California Announces GIO Appointment

Update: GovTech reports that one of Byrne's first goals is to consolidate best available public domain data of the state (6 inches in the urban footprint and a minimum of 1 meter for the rest of California, roads and landmarks) and make it available via thin and thick client. The current Cal-ATLAS provides for upload/download but not viewing. A federal Homeland Security grant has funded the project.

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People's Map - A User Created Non-Crown Copyright Map of the British Isles

The People's Map is a project from GetMapping, The XYZ Digital Mapping Company and remote sensing specialists Geosense. It launched an update to its site on Wednesday, though I just caught wind of it today. I don't think I've heard of it before.

Essentially, the project hosts GetMapping imagery for users to trace to create a non-Crown Copyright map for non-commercial and commercial use. Users register and create data using online editing tools. The data is verified (not clear by whom, how fast or how) then added the map. Use is not quite free for non-commercial use; there is a "delivery charge." For commercial users, there are "fair perpetual licensing arrangements." I could find no details on how prices are determined for either group on the Map website.

The data is rendered at 14 scales and "can be delivered as hardcopy, from 1:10,000 through to 1:1,000,000 scales, and in electronic raster and vector file formats. It is also available as a web feed either through WMS or via the People’s Map Javascript API. Vector datasets consist of the following data layers: Admin Boundaries, Buildings, Built Up Areas, Coastline, Contours, Drainage, Land use, Place name Gazetteer, Points of Interest, Roads and Railways. All these layers are available at all scales."

To date coverage includes: 1:1m coverage of the British Isles, street map data for Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff, London, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bath, Milton Keynes. 1:100 000 coverage for the whole of Britain is expected to be complete by the summer of 2009.

- press release

Cartifact "Raises the Bar" on Online Map Interfaces

The last we wrote about Cartifact was when the company made headlines as the cartographers for Yahoo's in-house version of Yahoo Maps.

Now, Cartifact Labs (the R&D arm of the company) lead Bruce Daniel points out a map space (his term; I'd call it a beta demo built on Google Maps) that among other things raises the bar on Internet map's look and feel. He notes these highlights:

1) custom cartographic platform leveraging power of online APIs
2) new implementation of tools– database search and display, detail bubble, lens, information display tray
3) raising the bar for online mapping design standards
4) extremely flexible architecture for various online map/data presentations
5) addressing the need to present geodata in an appealing and interactive exploratory way rather than a "dump" of unadorned data onto a map

My thoughts after a quick tour:

- This seems far more intuitive than some of the Flex apps I've seen lately (this demo does not use it; further the demo is optimized for Safari on the Mac and Firefox on the PC)
- The implementation of the lens (what we at Cadcorp called the Roamer in the desktop package) is terrific. I think the folks from Telemorphic had such a tool, but it's rarely found on the Web
- The "drawer-like" tools seemed far less jumpy than other implementations I've used. I tend to have them pop up and hide unexpectedly.
- If you are feeling like all Web maps look the same, this implementation will put a smile on your face.

Video below, if you are lazy, but I suggest you just go play with it!

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Education Tidbits

Nicole Minni, a policy specialist in the University of Delaware's Institute for Public Administration (IPA) in the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy, took her third first place honor in five years at the 2009 Towson University Geographic Information Systems (TUgis) Conference on March 18.

Her winning poster in the professional map category is titled “A Digital Based Watershed Atlas for Sussex County, Delaware.” One reason she keeps winning? The prize is a free registration for the following year's conference!

- UDaily

Students in the advanced GIS class at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse got a chance to create a map for the town of in Caledonia, MN's barn quilts (those are quilt patterns painted on barns. The project is detailed on the town website and the final PDF map, aimed at tourist is available for download. The town are about 20 miles apart.

- Caledonia Argus

Virginia Tech's enterprise GIS launched. It's "online presence for the newly created Enterprise GIS Research and Development Administration group within IT, and contains information, tutorials, tools and software geared towards the needs of university researchers, administrators, and related partners interested in integrating Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis or visualization tools into their activities."

- Campus Notice form VT

User Generated Content in Municipal Flood Mapping and Response

These two paragraphs in a story about tackling local flooding in the local paper in Niles, Illinois caught my eye.

Niles' Acting Mayor Robert Callero has announced that the village has made strides in tackling flooding issues, discovering many "hot spots" and programming them into the village's digital mapping system.

Callero said the village had information based on nearly 400 citizen surveys that was being used to plot stormwater data on Niles' Geographic Information System (GIS).

Since most user generated content discussed to date focusses around crowdsourcing map data, restaurant reviews and information during emergencies, this more staid approach seemed worthy of exploration. The author of the article, Tony Bertuca
Pioneer Press, replied to my query about the nature of the survey.

In this case, the village of Niles sent our surveys to homes asking about stomrwater issues. They also made the surveys available online. Using that information, they say they've been able to locate some of the flooding "hot spots". For instance, I've recently learned many of the people experiencing problems live near the cemetery that seems to be the cause of a lot of water run off. Citizens did not plot anything on a map, however, they just answered questions about their address and flooding problems they've had.

The reason they used the surveys is because many of the same people complained of flooding years after year, so it seemed like a localized problem in some neighborhoods. So, the surveys are what the new GIS stormwater map is based on. I hope this helps clarify.

My first thought: John Snow and cholera! Of course here, instead of gathering all the data himself, the village asked the residents, who knew the situation best. Is this what user generated content should mean in government GIS?