Open Street Map – if you’re going to edit it, you should look at it first!
Much of the power in it is in the layers you can add over the top, visualising various sets of information. You can also add background layers – like arial imagery from Bing.
To edit it, you need to create an account. Then? You needy to both do the surveying and add it into the system. Some people take notes and sketches, some people use apps.
What do you do if you find QGIS too easy (and like pain) – you start mapping in R.
But what do people in the room do with mapping, and what data sets do they use?
In Birmingham they used Edubase to plot previous ‘catchment’ areas for schools. Some schools do it from the centre of schools, some from the school gates. And some schools have more than one gate… Some were basing it on distance to the nearest train station. It was about creating boundaries, and then you could set up a tool based on postcodes to see if people are within the boundaries are not.
Continue reading Maps, Maps, Maps: good maps, bad maps and accessible maps
Neighbourhood plans are a crucial part of the UK’s planning infrastructure, allowing people to have a serious say in the development of their own area. People in Bramcote decided to take advantage of this – the move to do a neighbourhood plan was driven by a desire to preserve the green belt in the area.
They decided to work on Bramcote ward – a political ward – for simplicity’s sake.
Judith’s first step in building the maps and plans needed for the plan was working out what’s there already. She sought open data that showed what existed within the ward, from walks to infrastructure to the areas of green belt. Local wildlife sites were easily defined – the shapes were downloaded from data.gov.uk, but some local sites weren’t there. They were found at Nottingham Insight mapping, but it wasn’t downloadable. A printout isn’t super-useful for GIS work – and the data wasn’t released for anything but personal use. And the data owners wouldn’t allow permission.
Greenbelt boundaries have been published, so they could see how they’ve been changed. But consultation on planning shapefiles weren’t available for use.
Continue reading Getting the open data you need for good Neighbourhood Planning
WARNING – liveblogging. Prone to error, inaccuracy and howling affronts to grammar and syntax. Posts will be improved over the next 48 hours
Google Docs notes for this session
(Alistair Rae introduced the ideas for this session in a blog post: How to map everything (but you definitely shouldn’t)
The age of open data has created an George Mallory approach to geo data: why did you create it? Because it’s there. Alistair has created loads of maps just because he could. But “why?” needs to be asked more.
Continue reading How to map everything – and how to share it
I’m totally new to the unconference scene and have only ever watched from the sidelines, on Twitter. My experiences of academic conferences makes me think there must be something better, and I guess this is it, so thanks to Giuseppe Sollazzo for inviting me.
By way of introduction, I’m an urban studies academic at the University of Sheffield but I spend a good bit of my time doing data analysis and mapping and sharing it with others. I’ve also collaborated on quite a few data journalism projects over the past 5 years, mainly with Simon Rogers at Google (and previously when he was at the Guardian). You can find out more from my Twitter and also on my blog. Most of what I do has some kind of geo or map component, so that’s what I hope I can bring to OD Camp 3 in Bristol.
Continue reading How to map everything (but you definitely shouldn’t)