this is NOT your grandmother's
online map!
advancing your mission with GIS tools
10 April 2010 – NTC'10
33.7555 N // 84.3918 W

this IS an online map of your grandmother

Maps tell powerful stories about
the communities and the world
in which we live. Maps are a
visualization tool, a way to help
us transform columns of data
into useful knowledge about the
people and places around us.

Ewww...
TEXT!
Boring and
unhelpful!

Hooray for Maps!

Acronym Alert!
GIS = Geographic
Information
System

maps are important

“gerrymandering”

A Tale of Two Maps...

A brief history of mapping...

Snow's Cholera Map, London, 1854

Bunge's Maps of Poverty, Detroit, 1971

Bunge's Maps of Poverty, Detroit, 1971

Bunge's Maps of Poverty, Detroit, 1971

Bunge's Maps of Poverty, Detroit, 1971

The old days...

counter-mapping

Geographic Information Systems
●formal
●analytical
●costly
●.gov, .com, .edu
PARTICIPATORY!
DATA AND TOOLS MAPS FOR THE
SHOULD BE FREE! PEOPLE!
BOTTOM UP!
NOT TOP DOWN! neogeography!

http://www.lvejo.org

Common Uses of Nonprofit Maps
Storytelling/Advocacy/Activism
●
Program/Service Delivery
●
Research/Analysis
●
Fundraising/Development
●
Community Resource/Asset Mapping
●

Program and Service Delivery

Storytelling / Advocacy / Activism

Research and Analysis

Fundraising / Development

Kira Marchenese
Environmental Defense Fund

Purpose of map: Why?
Data: What? Where?
Tools: How?

Stakeholder participation
Privacy
Discrimination
Accessibility
Intellectual property

Data: What are we mapping?
Our data – existing databases and
spreadsheets
Data from government, academic, or
other organizational sources
Data obtained from commercial data
providers
Data obtained from the community

Data Acquisition Challenges
Practical: availability, quality, scope
Legal: licensing, copyrights, etc.
Technical: incompatible formats,
technology, etc.
Financial: cost, both to obtain data
and to format/edit it

First Name Last Name Address City State ZIP Status
Alice Alpha 123 Apple Way Anytown US 10001 Donor
Bob Bravo 456 Birch Dr Anytown US 10001 Volunteer
Carol Charles 789 Cactus Rd Anytown US 10002 Donor
Dave Delta 12 Dogwood St Anytown US 10002 Staff
“CSV is the de facto data
format standard for
one-time exports and
data migration projects.”
Source: Peter S. Campbell and the
awesome folks at Idealware.org:
http://www.idealware.org/articles/data_exchange_alpha_soup.php

Data Digression...
CSV – Comma-separated values
KML – Keyhole Markup Language (Google)

SHP – Shapefile (ESRI/Arc*)

Data Digression...
Geocoding 45°31′12″N
123 Main St.
122°40′55″W

http://data.gov

http://geodata.gov

http://www.census.gov

SEDAC: Socioeconomic Data & Applications Center

ECAI: Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative

ECAI: Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative

United States National Atlas

GeoBase.ca

GeoGratis – Natural Resources Canada

VisibleGovernment.ca

Data.gov.uk

Ordnance Survey - UK

Zillow.com Neighborhood Boundary Files

Base Maps:
The Layer Underneath is Often Overlooked
Google
Yahoo
Bing
OpenStreetMap
OpenAerialMap
NASA (Blue Marble)
USGS
...
Any WMS tile server

Balloon + Camera = DIY Aerial Photography!
(grassrootsmapping.org – Shipibo, Lima, Peru)

Google Map of Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya

http://mapkibera.org

OpenStreetMap (global)

Maps of the people... by the people:
Collecting data from the community

WaterGoodness.org

The Mystery of #PDXboom

David Kobia
Ushahidi

The Neogeographer's Toolbox:
Asking the right question
Picking the right tool
Playing well with others

Selecting the right tool for the job
Features vs. Requirements
Simple vs. Sophisticated
Proprietary vs. Free/open source
Expensive vs. Free/low-cost
Browser-based vs. Desktop-based
Components vs. Integration

Quick 'n' Dirty Mapmaking

Quick 'n' Dirty Mapmaking

Quick 'n' Dirty Mapmaking

Quick 'n' Dirty Mapmaking

Getting started with web-based mapping
Google Maps
OpenStreetMap
Google MyMaps
GeoCommons Finder
GeoCommons Maker
Google Fusion Tables Mapping

GeoCommons Finder! and Maker!

GeoCommons Finder! and Maker!

GeoCommons Finder!
and Maker!

Geo-Content Management System
(Drupal + Google Maps API)

Mixing and Mashing...
API – Application Programming
Interface
Web Services
GeoRSS, GeoXML, GeoJSON
Location-based Services
Twitter
Foursquare, etc.

Warden's Facebook Data Crawl Results

Floating Sheep's “Beer Belly of the US”

Mapping Application Architecture

Services
Tile providers:
OSM/T@H
Google Maps
Bing Maps
Database services:
Google API
SimpleGeo
GeoNames
VoteSmart
Sunlight API
GeoCoder.us

Components and Libraries
OpenLayers – JS map rendering in-browser
Mapstraction – JS library for abstracting
mapping provider interfaces
Mapnik – C++/Python rendering on server or
client
ModestMaps – Flash (AS2, AS3) and Python
slippy map generation

Mapnik – Shaded Relief

Modest Maps – Flash Slippy Map

Desktop Mapping
ESRI's ArcGIS tools
GRASS, QuantumGIS, uDIG
Google Earth

Tanya Keen
Google Earth Outreach

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