Incorrect maps lead to war

Oh, and on the subject of spatial information and business, GIS is not perfect. Bad data and bad maps can cause a lot of troubles... As recently reported “…a Nicaraguan military commander caused an international incident by leading his soldiers into Costa Rican territory…” Apparently, Google Maps were wrong. There are many disputes around the World caused by less than accurate representation of national borders.

Although the whole premise of the article is now proven incorrect, nevertheless it highlights the importance of using correct spatial data for decision making. Even generally trusted and reliable sources can get things wrong. So, read the small print and disclaimers before embarking on the big decisions!

Bad location can send you broke

All spatial industry professionals know the importance of "location" in many aspects of business operations but the statement may be an eye opener for those not dealing with spatial information for business decisions on day to day basis. An article published earlier this week by smartcompany.com.au and titled: Poor site selection caused Kripsy Kreme crash, Sumo Salad founder Luke Baylis says well highlights the issues.

“Collapsed donut chain Krispy Kreme expanded too rapidly and selected extremely poor sites for its products… the market for ‘fat, greasy food’ remains large and it was Krispy Kreme's expansion strategy that led to its troubles, and not the healthiness of its food… they weren't overly clever in the way the expanded, in terms of their site selection and the positioning of their stores … in lower socio-economic demographics, their product would have had more appeal - people generally aren't as health conscious in those areas, according to research…”

Geodemographic analysis techniques and tools have been around since 1980’s but you don’t have to apply complex statistical models and methodologies to gain an insight into your customers or profile catchment areas of your stores or sales territories. Simple Census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and thematic maps are enough to get you stared and visualise relevant information. As they say, picture is worth 1,000 words! I will continue on this subject with a few follow up posts so, stay tuned. Meantime, here is a link to thematic maps with Census statistics for postcodes, with over 90 various demographic characteristics available for analysis.

Atlas of Living Australia

A new portal has been launched last week to provide rich information resource about Australian plants and animals. It is a "public face" of a $64.7 million initiative, funded over 6 years by the Australian Government and a group of fourteen contributors comprising scientific organisations, universities and museums. It aims to enable any user to quickly locate and access information across the Internet on all aspects of Australian biodiversity. And of course, as the name implies, the portal comes equipped with a mapping application – what better way to provide easy access to such an extensive and geographically diverse range of information!

The mapping application supporting Atlas of Living Australia is built with OpenLayers implementation of Google Map and has quite a few interesting features. In particular, I like the concept of local, regional and species "perspective" to access the information via a map driven interface. Local "your area" view gives a quick snapshot of all the species in visitor’s current location (but Google’s "IP address to location" web service is sometimes not very precise in determining user’s true location). Regions view starts with a long list of areas to choose which is a bit unfortunate but once you make your selection you have a choice to download a large selection of data in csv format.

Species Map is where the real fun starts. You can search for species using common names as well as scientific terminology – lookup feature is enabled so it shows suggestions as you type in the text. Occurrences are then mapped as points or as numbered cluster markers. Click on the map returns a query on how many occurrences of particular species are in 10km radius from a selected point.



I like how selected data layers are managed – they are added to the “current list” at the top of the navigation panel and then can be individually edited (colours, transparency, size of markers). Users can change order of layers with drag-and-drop feature.

The application comes with a long list of contextual layers – too many to mention! All well referenced to metadata and with auto generated legends for easy identification of what various colour scales mean. Created maps can be saved as images for further reuse. And for those in the know, there is an analytical module as well but I will not even try to describe what it can do – as most of such tools, it is designed for a specific purpose, not for average user.

Atlas of Living Australia is a good example of a very powerful online mapping and analysis application created with free OpenLayers implementation of Google Map and integrated with free GeoServer at the back end to manage access to the data for downloads and as WMS and WFS web services to display information dynamically on the map. It did crash on me a couple of times and some image tiles were not displaying but that are just teething problems of a newly deployed application. If something goes wrong you can always start again with a click on reset button. Very convenient feature! Access to all the data via web services is planned in the near future when the application is more stable.

Free map service preview

I am rushing the release of my latest free service offering from aus-emaps.com due to high level of interest in accessing postcode and other administrative boundaries data on a reference map that can be dynamically called from external sites. At this stage the free map service is more like a preview release rather than the real thing but it is good enough for a "show and tell". The full concept behind this service is rather a long story so I will leave it for a more appropriate occasion. For now I will just limit the description to a short statement that it is intended as a free reference map, for embedding into website or linking to, to share location specific information.

Currently it works only with kmz files that can be referenced from anywhere on the world wide web and postcode boundaries from aus-emaps.com. It accepts single and multiple kmz files, as per examples below.

Here are a couple of examples of kmz files with complex information: in this case, Victorian bushfires aftermath (public file extracted from Google MyMaps): http://www.aus-emaps.com/svs/ref/map.php?
kmzl=http://www.aus-emaps.com/data/VictorianBushfiresFeb2009.kmz



And here is an example of kmz file showing the latest world earthquakes from USGS: http://www.aus-emaps.com/svs/ref/map.php?
kmzl=http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/catalogs/eqs7day-age.kmz



Finally, a simple example of referencing Australian postal boundaries map from aus-emaps.com:
http://www.aus-emaps.com/svs/ref/map.php?
kmzl=2601,2220,7000,3122,5000&svs=2,2,2,2,2



Width and height of the map can be easily controlled by adding the following parameter to the URL: &wh=500,400 (size in pixels). Map type selection is with &mt=0 parameter (valid numbers are 0 for street map, 1 for satellite overlay, 2 for hybrid map and 3 for terrain map). This is just a quick demo of basic capabilities to give you a taste of what is possible with a very basic deployment of Google Map API (this one is still running only on version 2). More on this service soon.

World Bank mashup competition

A new mashup competition has been just announced by the World Bank, with prizes ranging from U$15,000 for the winning submission to U$2,000 for honourable mention. All entries must be submitted by 10 January 2011 and winners will be announced in April, 2011.

One of the preconditions of participation is use of World Bank’s free data, launched under its Open Data Initiative in April, 2010. “The Apps for Development Competition aims to bring together the best ideas from both the software developer and the development practitioner communities to create innovative apps using World Bank data… All entrants will retain all intellectual property ownership in their submissions.”

Google Map creators get recognition

Brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen, the creators of technology behind Google Maps, have been formally recognised for their role in developing and launching this popular world-wide service. This week they were named NSW's Entrepreneurs of the Year in the information and communications technology (ICT) field.

Sometimes it takes outsiders to shake out things in stagnated industries, as GIS once used to be. Pitching the idea to Google was a brilliant move (and reportedly very profitable). Otherwise who know where we would be today…


Related Posts:
Ingenuity of Google Map architecture also its main limitation
Free GIS Tools - Google Map

Sutherland Shire Map's a winner

Earlier this week, coinciding with Spatial@gov conference in Canberra, industry associations representing spatial professionals in Australia announced their annual Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards. Amongst many categories there was one that caught my particular attention: People and Community Award. The winner in this category was Sutherland Shire Council with its Online Shire Maps application. It is indeed quite impressive application, well deserving to be a winner. Built with ESRI's ArcGIS server as a backbone and Flex (Flash) front end it is very responsive and quite attractive in design. Developers took advantage of Flash vector and animation capabilities well utilising a wide range of visual effects.

The map comes with a comprehensive set of data and aerial photography layers. In particular, available data layers include simple "white base" map, ideal for drawing objects and annotating text (relevant tools are accessible with a single click on a menu panel), terrain map with hill shading effects, but also a whole range of colour coded thematic maps showing planning and zoning areas, accessibility indexes for public transport on various days of the week or environmental information. Imagery layers include early aerial photos dating back to 1930 through to the latest high resolution snaps from NearMap.com archive. Full set of points of interests and boundary overlays, such as wards or suburbs, is also available from a drop down menu.

The map has a comprehensive legend for all data themes as well as location search function with a range of search options, including latitude/ longitude. Created maps can be easily printed or saved in PDF format. Access to the application does not require login so, the only downside is that user annotated maps cannot be saved as a "work in progress".

Congratulations to the development team at Sutherland Shire!