Last fall we participated in the exploration and standardization of KML in the OGC as part of the OWS-5 testbed. The culmination of this effort was demonstrating some of the key features of KML 2.2, integration with other OGC Web Services (hence the OWS), and the broader GeoWeb.
Mapufacture volunteered to put together a demonstration use and screencast for illustrating this that we presented at the summary session of the three day TC (Technical Committee) meeting. The following video is a 3-minute demonstration using KML and the other tools in Mapufacture to create a “Personal Decision Support System” to help find an apartment and office space in San Francisco. It brings together both complex geospatial data such as Census Demographics of Median Age (as a WMS from GeoServer), as well as user-generated content from Craiglist (via a Yahoo Pipe to generate a GeoRSS feed), news from Topix, and events from Upcoming.org.
The resulting map is then viewable on a mobile phone via uLocate’s WHERE platform as you actually travel around to view the suggested listings. We even took it a step further showing an example of using Socialight to leave geolocated notes and attribute information such as number of rooms that is then dynamically brought back into the map and can be used for decision making and visualization.
The video is slightly technical, but gives a good, quick overview of the power of linking together various data sets form both qualified sources as well as user-generated content to aid in decision making and collaboration.
At Mapufacture, we have created a lot of tools to make it easy for users to build and share maps. It’s not always easy to provide powerful tools in intuitive interfaces. And while we’ve definitely seen some really terrific maps created by people, we also understand there are others who may encounter problems with knowing how best to use the site, find interesting feeds and services, or even (gasp!) bugs.
To help assist the community, we’ve teamed up with GetSatisfaction, the next generation of customer service and support, to host our support forums. At our GetSatisfaction site you can share your thoughts, frustrations, successes, and suggestions with the Mapping community.
Beyond just Mapufacture.com, we’ve also included forums for some of the other tools we build, such as the GeoPress blogging plugin for MovableType and WordPress.
There is also a sidebar on our blog where you can see the latest discussions and search our forums. We hope that users sharing with each other we can all build on ideas to make better maps. So if you’ve had problems adding interesting layers to your map, or linking in your personal geospatial streams from blogs, Flickr, or any other tool - please let us know. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
As many may be aware, the football/soccer tournament Euro2008 is currently being played in central Europe. EuroKickoff offers up a Calendar and API for accessing the games.
I imported this feed into Mapufacture to make a map of the events. You can even filter the events with the Mapufacture time sliders.
It summarizes the benefits of aggregating and visualizing multiple geospatial data streams together to aid with awareness and decision making. In this specific case, it is used to monitor health conditions - but the same ideas and technologies can be applied to numerous other domains.
In fact, these tools become really powerful when you merge together disparate data sets. As the article points out, overlaying weather and ambulance tracking, both aspects of a health crisis that may otherwise be overlooked or difficult to access as a health care advisor. They even combined in user content, though in the form of polls. A system could also make use of distributed, web or mobile based reporting and aggregated.
There have been other similar reports by the World Health Organization on Public Health Mapping and GIS, and there is the HealthMap global disease alert map. Verner Vinge’s novel Rainbows End began with just such a scenario where school kids found an outbreak of a lung disease based on a drop in work attendance, traffic, and rise in ambient temperature. This sounds far-fetched, but the article points out where “by aggregating their mapping data, officials were able to forecast West Nile virus activity by dead bird clusters.“.
The power of these tools is exactly what we’re building with Mapufacture - the ability for non geospatial experts to combine dynamic, and potentially complex geospatial data for visualization, analysis and collaboration. Additionally, the output of these tools should be shareable - the aggregated data offered for other applications and organizations to bring into their systems.
It is incredibly exciting to see the benefit of geospatial aggregation realized and utilized in such important domains.
Check out the Mapufacture.com Geospatial Aggregator Collaborative Mapping System
