GeoServer Map Collaboration Tools - “NYC Street Maps”
December 6th, 2007by Sean Gorman
We’ve been doing work recently integrating GeoServer with GeoCommons to provide more hooks and capabilities for our platform. I was catching up reading the GeoServer blog and saw a new demo they had going to demonstrate their map annotations tools in development.
The map only has a base street map for NYC, but the annotation features and presentation is quite nice. You can add annotations and pictures to the map and all works very smoothly. The ability to create annotations and layer them on top of structured data like crime rates or toxic release points is very compelling. Then users can not only see where a statistical phenomenon is happening but also comment, including confirmation or criticism. For instance add a photo of dead fish in green bubbling ooze at a toxic release point.
We had some fun with the concept about a year ago after a trip to NYC mapping the location of bars and single women then testing out the hot spots. Less altruistic than the example above but again demonstrates the value of adding qualitative comments to quantitative data. For fun I added the heat map we made of the bars and singles to the GeoServer demo. If you go to the lower east side it is the yellow marker on 6th St.
Look forward to seeing if we can make use of the new GeoServer collaboration tools and props to them for all the good work.
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December 7th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Hi,
I did not know about this integration, exciting news. Is there anywhere I can find out more about how you’re using GeoServer in GeoCommons?
December 7th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Hi Andrea,
We wrote a GeoTools driver and have done some other integration, but have not exposed anything yet. The engineer, Mookie, doing the work is out of the country but will put him in touch when he gets back. Also our CTO, Chris Ingrassia, is working on the OGC KML test bed with Chris Holmes, so that had a bit to do with getting the ball rolling. Between the two we’ll get some info to you.
best,
sean
June 5th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Wow. Nice idea asking single women to test out bars–but I can only hope the intention went beyond seeing how good the pickups were at each place! SWWAN, the Single Working Women’s Affiliate Network, is all about “Enhancing the single lifestyle–and making the world a better place for all!” - but we celebrate the courage and creativity we single women apply to crafting lives that are uniquely our own. A LOT of us don’t feel the slightest bit “incomplete” without a mate.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Hi Barbara,
Thanks for checking out the blog. The intention is making data available to people to use in new and innovative ways. In this case it was an application of identifying a demographic that is appealing to a user and places where they might meet that demographic. Some folks may be interested in meeting working singles where there are good cultural amenities (or bars :-). While other users may want to know about locations with families and good school test scores. The focus is on providing the data and easy ways to map it so users can be better informed.
best,
sean