Community Story Map

Local Community Engagement, 1 & 2

[Update: Part 3 will tie together community maps and climate mapping]

Local community engagement

[Update 2: we since signed up to an Esri(UK) Nonprofit Programme.

Update: Part 2 builds a story introducing the community.]

This follows my transition introduced last September and last month. I first used Esri  web mapping tools to help me canvass for EU elections in my local community five years ago. I then found local community engagement - online in my old Texan hometown of Houston - 18 months ago with Hurricane Harvey. I presented social aspects  afforded GIS at Esri European Petroleum GIS  conference in London that fall.

Digital ghost towns

Issues with Google's maps are aplenty, as Peter Batty, James Fee and others piped up amidst flurry of crowd-sourcing and free-sourcing etc. In quiet rural Northwest of England, however, Argleton appears to be an enigma - not only is that non-existant locality posted by some web streetmaps, but also searching can post images and businesses nearby - truly a digital ghost town! Having just compared various street maps in my home town, I did the same in the British postcode area: L39 5.

Data tennis match

There is a frantic discussion over the UK Government Data Developers mailing list, over freeing UK postcodes, after the recent freeze of their provision to UK aid agencies. As a business user (not a developer) I use free area code data (kilometer precision), and paid my £50 for 1000 points from postcodeanywehere.co.uk (meter precision). This doesn't negate the need to call for freeing up data sources, but as business I must be practical and timely.