Dataset of the Day: Maker! Plays Cupid
February 12th, 2010by Emily Sciarillo
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| Valentine's day is this Saturday so I thought I'd made a few maps in honor of this lovers holiday. Since one thing lovers do is travel, I made a map of the 50 most romantic places in the world...at least according to Travel + Leisure in 2005. Each icon on the map contains the name of a hotel recommended by the magazine for that place.
Italy has the reputation as the as being the most romantic country in the world, so I made some maps showing where in Italy one would have the best chances of meeting single men or women.
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Popularity: 9% [?]
Better Know a GeoCommons Feature – GeoJoin
February 9th, 2010by Kevin Burke
Often I have had various GeoCommons users ask me, “How do I turn my excel spreadsheet data into proportional shapes like the map below?”
Before now I would have told these users that they would have to use complicated and expensive mapping software. This would allow users to combine spreadsheet data with the desired shapes that they want to view on their map.
I am now happy to announce that with GeoCommons you no longer have to rely on the ways of the past. Now FortiusOne has created the new feature of GeoJoin which allows you to move beyond points and easily visualize regions. Below is a walk-through of the process or click this link to view a video that will visually assist you.
First, I have a spreadsheet of data in excel. The data is of various States in the USA with a corresponding value associated with each State.
Now I want to take this data and visualize it proportionally as the actual shapes of the States on my map. So, after saving the excel spreadsheet as a csv file I then upload it into Finder!
After I upload the file I proceed to the next steps:
Pending layers list. Click Next.
In Step 2 of the upload process click “Join with a boundary dataset”. This is the step I choose to perform the GeoJoin process.
The next part of step 2 allows me to search the Finder! database to find the appropriate boundary dataset to join to the data in my excel spreadsheet. In this case I want to find a boundary dataset of States in the USA. I can either search for the right boundary dataset by searching in the search bar or I can use the categories on the left hand side of the page to navigate to the appropriate dataset.
After the appropriate boundary dataset is chosen, my next step is to choose what attributes in the datasets I want to join together. In this case I’m matching ‘state’ from my data with ‘State name’ in the selected layer. I pay close attention to the message on the right hand side of the box to see how successful my GeoJoin match is.
I proceed through the rest of the upload steps of review, describe, and then map. When making a map in Maker! I choose to map by visual theme and can now view my map proportionally as it appears below.
GeoJoin is a great new feature of GeoCommons. To see a listing of what boundary datasets are available in Finder search ‘referenceboundary’ in the search bar on the Finder! homepage. There is a wide range from international borders to neighborhood boundaries of cities in the USA. Check it out and start GeoJoining today.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Data Dissemination to the Government of Haiti
February 5th, 2010by andrew
Historically, these tools have been useful for the public and media to cover an event - but the question often arose if they were beneficial to responders and citizens on the ground. It's been clear that tools such as OpenStreetMap have had a clear and positive impact on the response and recovery efforts. Organizations from the World Bank, to MapAction, to the Fairfax Search and Rescue teams have all been using OSM as a primary means of maps and routing. OSM volunteers have even been performing rough damage assessement and IDP camp identification.
While these tools have been useful for responders, there was still a disconnect on the availability of this data to the Haitian Government to access and assess the situations. The best data previously available before the earthquake is primarily from 2002, and at the same time most ministries are either non-existent or severely understaffed.
Bringing the Commons
In response, at CrisisCamp DC on Saturday the World Bank initiated an effort to provide the massive amounts of data and tools directly to the government. The goal was to provide a browser, like the Haiti Crisis Map with the imagery and OpenStreetMap roads, data gathering and visualization tools like GeoCommons, public and quality checked sources of Hospital locations, camps, and damage assessment, and the World Bank's own flyover imagery on portable hard drives and onto the desk of the Haitian ministers.A major hurdle, however, was that there were no local copies of the raw imagery data. Thanks to the incredibly hard work of a number of organizations, especially Georgetown, SDSU and Internet2, we were able to move the 1.25 TB of raw data from the Hypercube server in San Diego to Georgetown's servers here in DC in a little over a day. These were loaded onto a series of 6 USB, self-powered hard drives. We chose the self-powered drives so it didn't depend on external plugs or fluctuating power sources.
In addition, we built an offline version of the Haiti Browser that can run by double-clicking an HTML file to run in a browser off of a hard drive or USB stick. You can get the code from here to see how it's done. We also included Delta State's MGRS Atlases for printing map books, and the GPS map images that can be used on Garmin handheld units.
There will also be several engineers deploying with the World Bank to assist in the dissemination of the data, working with the Haitian Ministries and President on using these tools and handling requests for more analysis and data with CNIGS (Centre National de l’Information Géo-Spatiale), Haiti's GIS department.
Enabling Self-Sufficient Government
The goal is to provide the Haitian government with their own capability of using the available tools for situational awareness and decision making. Beyond the immediate response and recovery efforts they are now enabled to utilize these tools for long-term reconstruction and infrastructure. The capabilities and tools should be sustainable and the goal is to close the data loop within the government as well as between external data collection and Haitian data needs and collection. We are moving beyond the traditional problems of leaving disasters without their own data or ability to be independent of the temporary organizations. The entire project is a model of how crowd-sourced data and tool development can have a beneficial impact both on remote support as well as directly to local citizens and government.
In the US and Europe, we're seeing a growing embrace of Open Government and transparency sharing data to citizens for engagement and collaboration. In Haiti, the community is performing a reverse-Gov2.0 - they're providing data and information to the government to respond, and rebuild their society.
A tremendous thank you to the numerous individuals and groups that helped and provided tools or data: World Bank, San Diego State University / Calit2, Internet2, Georgetown University, DigitalGlobe, Delta State University, Sahaha, Crisis Mappers, OpenStreetMap, NOAA, Ushahidi, DevelopmentSeed, TelaScience, STAR-TIDES, CrisisCommons, USAID, GeoCommons, OpenSGI, GeoEye.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Are We Creating an App Junkyard? How to Incubate and Sustain Innovation
February 5th, 2010by Sean Gorman
Popularity: 9% [?]




















