Feb 26, 2016
Getting the Crowd to Help
How We Built a Mapwiki in Open Source
Information and mapping in the public interestwww.greeninfo.org
About Us• Larry Orman, Executive Director
• Robert Graham, Web GIS Developer
• GreenInfo Network nonprofit 16 years geospatial tech 12 staff
Information and mapping in the public interestwww.greeninfo.org
1.It started with a problem
California’s Parks/Open Space 900 agencies/organizations
49,000,000 acres16,000 units
55,000 holdings
~1.5 FTE . . .
Options?
• Call everyone up and ask for data
• Hand out paper maps to draw on
• Isn’t there an app for that? Use phones and go out
• Just buy the data
What we need is…
The Crowd!
2.Let’s build it
ourselves!
The Recipe1. Sequence the user steps2. Choose data to review3. Actions = Notes, Drawings, Edits, Uploads4. See everyone’s stuff, too
. . . bada bing, bada boom
MapCollaborator™
http://websites.greeninfo.org/mapcollaborator/cpad/
Admin
http://websites.greeninfo.org/mapcollaborator/cpad/
3.Ok, what else?
Recreation Facilities?
Recreation Facilities!
http://www.mapsportal.org/mapcollab_facilities/
School Footprints?
School Footprints?• Megan’s Law – 2,000’
• Tobacco, beverage regulations – 1-2,000’?
• Probation tracking
• Safe routes to school planning
• Etc…
School Footprints!
http://www.mapsportal.org/mapcollab_schools/
Anza Trail?
Anza Trail!
This can all be yours!
Easily adaptable
Core function set
But don’t over do it
(It’s not GIS. . . it supports GIS)
4.Get outta the way,
I want to do it!
The Tools You Need
PostGIS DB
Online spatial database (PostGIS) Map engine (OpenLayers) Map/Data services (MapServer, TileCache, OGR) Web framework (CodeIgniter) Web server stack (Linux/Apache/PHP) Web Pages
(HTML/JQuery)
OL Map
FormsPHP/CI
OGRMapServer/TileCache
Data Actions Get - features (WFS, GeoJSON), Images (WMS, Tiles) Create/Edit - OL features Post - geometry (text), attributes (forms)
DatabaseUsers
Admin
Map
Forms
JS/JQuery
PHP/CI
OGR
PHP/CI
PHP/CI
GeoJSON
MapServer
WFS
WMS
TileCache
PHP/CI/JQuery
More Tools Admin - DataTables.js Exports - PHPExcel, Wkhtml2pdf, pgsql2shp
Directions to watch for CartoDB Google MapMaker/Fusion Tables Ushahidi GeoDjango UTF Grids
Tools can do most anything
Is the crowd willing (and able…)?
We’re all too busy
Make it easy and focused
Use flexible tech
Contacts
Robert Graham – [email protected]
Larry Orman – [email protected]
GreenInfo – www.greeninfo.org