Releasing data really works, Part VII

And now for something completely different - the original posts until Part VI are listed below - I ran across a nice map of Steve Feldman's: He also tried out free data and software to map UK flood maps, an up-scaled version not for professional re-use.

Releasing data really works, Part VI

Three months into posting data on my web service - Part V - I created a short list of free data for Great Britain on my Map Catalog called GB Freebie.

Standards & Metadata, Part VIII

My previous post on this topic stated how careful documentation and appropriate metadata high-grades any information that is shared online by giving origin, context and other information. It helps build bridges and I quipped a well-known tear down this wall that also closed my second last post on free data and apps.

Releasing data really works, Part V

It took five days (after hours) to stand up, learn, tweak and display my East Anglia Fenlands project on Mapcentia's web service. It started with a GISuser group post on LinkedIn on Monday, I used my Amazon Web Service free EC2 trial and GeoCloud2 under beta, and by Friday I had it working and styled. No small thanks to Martin Hogh's original work and help, the result is a simple yet modern and pleasing web map.

Releasing data really works! Part IV

[Update: this was summarised into a story map here posted also on this blog here]

Two years then one year ago I QC'd UK Ordnance Survey data for East Anglia, and sent the polyline spike and kickback errors to the Agency, who posted the corrections this year. They noted the errors I reported fell below their own QC criteria, but they invited me to retest their updated dataset. This issue is topical as  posted on GISlounge on the same topic proposing other tools.

Mapping languages on the internet

[Update: I noted on many of my Google Fusion Table posts that, while the data are still on Google Drive for you to view, GFT no longer offers a polygon or heatmap option, only geocoding by country centroid in its new version. Not sure why, but on this, this, this and another example posted as Iframes not Scripts preserved the old GFT maps.]

Let's explore global language distribution from World Mapper, then language usage on the internet as seen from Wikipedia. This was inspired by an article in The Economist as well as data I previously collected an posted on Google Drive to explore various topics on Google Fusion Tables.

Releasing public data really works!

[03 Nov 13 update: "relooped the loop" by testing the corrected Ordnance Survey data
Feb 2013 update: Ordnance Survey cartography stylesheets made available for QGIS
19 Jul 2019 update: reposted it on ArcGIS Online]

UK Ordnance Survey released Open Data to the public two and a half years ago. English Parish boundaries have been more or less constant since the Domesday survey in 1087. That allowed me to post University of Cambridge Don HC Darby and Yale University student Julie Bowring socio-economic data, by simply adding attribute data to the Ordnance Survey shape files. That onerous, if one-time, task was entirely manual: when 1SpatialCloud launched Online Validation  it seemed only natural to try it out; they actually wrote some simple rules and we thus co-branded as quality assured by 1SpatialCloud Online Validation Service wherever I posted the data. Here are the resulting error shape files:

Roundup of web projects

Is it spring in the air or LinkedIn's new (to me) facility to post projects? Here is a round-up of various projects in the past five years as recently posted on my LinkedIn page:

On-line spatial data validation, part II

[2013 update: Socium is now 1SpatialCloud]

Three weeks ago I introduced Socium's Online Validation Service (OVS). I showed the Ordnance Survey vector data QC, on the UK Parishes used as a geographic unit for the Medieval Fenlands project. Two weeks ago Socium kindly created a new rule, to post unexpected variations in adjacent feature attributes. In an essentially agricultural era, economic wealth of the Domesday period was quantified by Darby via the number of plough teams per parish. That is the attribute the rule was written for (it's hard-wired right now and Socium plans to add metadata pick lists in the future).

How education has changed my life and what I did about it

I consider myself a citizen of the world, as shown in the map below. Born as my parents fled Hungary right after 1956 Uprising. Raised on the expat circuit of an oil company. Emigrated to north America as a student. Lived most of my adult life in north America. Recently repatriated to Europe, yet still work abroad. Education has been a constant thread in my life: first through graduate school, then running continuing education for a local  geological society, and now managing GIS in the resources sector worldwide.

Cloud futures #2: on-line spatial data validation

[Update: follow ups for this project are Releasing Data Really Works Part I and Part IV]

Following vector maps on the web (cloud futures #1), here is a freemium online validation service (OVS) that helps us QC, quantify and clean up spatial data on the web. A speciality of 1Spatial is its spatial validation, an essential first step to setting up proper spatial data infrastructure. They spun off 1SpatialCloud to offer the same service online.

Be the weatherman for others

Last week I posted dust and wind data germane to Kuwait in my banner map. This week take the same layers and mash them up with another service: Here I took a service from ESRI(France) to post volunteer ride-sharers (covoiturage) to their SIG 2011, and added weather and urban data, just to show how easy it is to augment existing offerings.

Social media at work

I've been a LinkedIn member for over six years and have learned to use Groups by now. It's a great place to ask questions among peers, without bothering others who aren't interested in that singular itch of yours. While unfortunately used at times for trawling emails or marketing shamelessly, every once in a while I run across a brilliant idea. Robin Wilson a student at Southampton University, UK, posted the free GIS data links he found and simply asked for more on LinkedIn's GIS group. Well! to date he got almost four dozen replies and he'll post the results here.

Another Take on Climate Change, Part III

[Update: Part IV, more on mapping earth gravity]

The time-space map I looked for in Part II is on esri.com... among many others for certes! Note on the map below that the oceanic trenches indeed lie slightly outboard of the Pacific plate boundaries: as suggested earlier the epicenters are at the prow of the major bend in said boundaries; the shift in landmass, however, renders that link even more graphical.

The stunning beauty of Maps, part III

History and current events are a great opportunity for GIS as they allow to disseminate pertinent information fast to those who need it. They bring out the best in map-making I posted here and here already. Not a few websites posted maps on the Japanese catastrophe, here are those I found from watching Al-Jazeera and my favourite blogs.
NOAA tsunami map (I already posted it for Chilean quake exactly a year ago):

Reading Social Web Maps

Look at this map, and what it doesn't show is as instructive as what it shows. You guessed it, it's the low number of social media hits - anyone on the blogosphere or twitterverse would find those numbers on the low side, especially considering the passion current events in Egypt generated on the ground and online - and I wager doesn't reflect poor map making, but rather the fact the web was tampered with during the events in Egypt.

Google Fusion Coffee Table

[Update: I noted on many of my Google Fusion Table posts that, while the data are still on Google Drive for you to view, GFT no longer offers a polygon or heatmap option, only geocoding by country centroid in its new version. Not sure why, but on this, this, this and another example posted as Iframes not Scripts preserved the old GFT maps.]

Geocurrents posted this interesting dataset from Worldbank's Ease of Doing Business website. James Fee waxed rhapsodic over Google Fusion Tables after WhereCamp5280. So I decided to see how easy it really was to map their Ease of doing Business Rank.

Mappliance (continued)

Tripit is a neat app I use via LinkedIn to post my trips:

Global Poetry System

This is a totally geo poetry project out of the London Southbank Centre! It allows you to post poetry in its largest sense - poems, photos, videos, any multimedia - on this website and tag it by its location.

The power of context, Part III

[Update: I noted on many of my Google Fusion Table posts that, while the data are still on Google Drive for you to view, GFT no longer offers a polygon or heatmap option, only geocoding by country centroid in its new version. Not sure why, but on this, this, this and another example posted as Iframes not Scripts preserved the old GFT maps.]

Ruth Lang created this excellent mashup for the 2010 FIFA World Cup - which coloured all the countries at the beginning and gradually greys them out as they are eliminated - only Spain and the Netherlands are left as at today. This was a labour of love, needing for example some tweeking to work in the Firefox browser, and a testament to SVG.