Monday, January 10, 2011

More free data with Reference Map

I am releasing today another batch of free data for Australia, bundled with free Web Application Service from aus-emaps.com – for linking to, embedding into websites or reuse in third party applications. In addition to postal areas I released a few weeks ago I have added a number of other popular spatial boundary outlines, such as suburbs/localities and the latest Australian tourism regions (2010), local government areas (2010) and Commonwealth Electoral Divisions (2009). All in all, over 10,000 administrative regions individually mapped for your free perusal. Only a few months ago I was asked to pay $1,000's for that data to use as part of Postcode Finder application. It took a few hours to compile but now I have free data available for all my projects, and I don't mind sharing it with others in this specific format (ie. as Web Application Service).

In order to generate a map with a region of your choice just follow these simple steps:

1. Download list of available regions from the above table.
2. Look up naming convention for required region(s).
3. List all required regions in the URL, following this pattern (this example shows how to include one of each region, as listed in the above table)

http://www.aus-emaps.com/svs/ref/map.php?

kmzl= 2000,Sydney_NSW,Sydney__C_,Sydney,Sydney&

svs=2,4,5,6,7

[service codes svs: 2-postcodes, 4-suburbs, 5-LGA, 6-CED, 7-ATR]
[Additional setup options are available, please see full instructions on aus-emaps.com free widgets page]

4. Copy URL to your browser/web page to display the map.

5. If you are interested in adding extra functionality to your site, see also this example of how to script access to the service and embed a map into a web page.

The data is a module of a bigger application I am slowly building over time. So far it includes a reference map, some popular administrative boundary data for Australia and a separate component that is closely linked - user sign up and PDF report download module. So much more is yet to come…


Related Posts:
Free postcodes with Reference Map
More examples of use of Reference Map service
Free Reference Map service
at

2 comments:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 2, 2011 at 10:59 PM

    Arek, I read with interest the fruits of your work. I recently had a professional need to analyse the concentration of superannuation balances by postcode and encountered an identical problem of different concentrations of people in a postcode (many over 53 Year olds are in Glen Waverly!). At the time I wished the spatial data for electorates was available in a usable form!
    Could you consider enabling this data for use in openheatmap? In an unrelated matter, I appreciate your weather updates on Twitter. Chris

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  2. All Things SpatialFebruary 3, 2011 at 9:18 PM

    Hi Chris and thanks for your feedback!

    I will investigate opportunities of integration with openheatmap. I am currently working on enabling thematic mapping to aus-emaps.com site. Since my objective is to create fully portable and freely shareable services the development is going slow but I have long term objectives in mind. I will announce the release on my blog soon!

    Arek

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