new jersey geographer » Data

RULost? I hope not.

John Reiser — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 18:39:23 +0000

Fellow Rutgers grad Jim Barry shared with me a link to a press release on the RULost iPhone app. While I was initially excited to see Rutgers come out with an app to aid students in navigating the huge New Brunswick campus (which is actually 5 campuses split between New Brunswick, Piscataway Township, Edison Township and a small portion in North Brunswick Township) and its extensive bus system, after plunking down 99¢, I’m not so impressed.(...)
Read the rest of RULost? I hope not. on my blog.

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Post tags: HTML5, iPhone App, RULost, Rutgers

GIS & Live Maps for Hurricane Irene

John Reiser — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 13:59:52 +0000

New Jersey is in the path of Hurricane Irene. The last time a hurricane actually made landfall in New Jersey was the 1903 Vagabond Hurricane. The mandatory evacuations are underway (NJ OEM) and to my knowledge, it is the first time the Garden State Parkway has instituted contraflow traffic (NJTA, PDF). Below are links to several trackers and GIS resources to keep you up-to-date on the storm.

(...)
Read the rest of GIS & Live Maps for Hurricane Irene on my blog.

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Post tags: Hurricane, NJ OEM, Twitter, Weather

Statewide 1974 aerial imagery available via WMS

John Reiser — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 13:01:51 +0000

OIT has made the 1974 statewide aerial photography available via their WMS service.

WMS: http://njwebmap.state.nj.us/njimagery

Civil Solutions was the contractor that assembled the source imagery and prepared the seamless dataset for OIT.

The northeastern quadrant of Rowan's Glassboro Campus in 1974.

Same extent, but from the 2007 statewide imagery.

What I find amazing about the data is how clear the imagery is down to very large scale.

Detail of the parking lot north of Mimosa Hall.

And just for fun, here’s an animation of the two images tweened, so you can see the amount of change on our campus in 33 years.

I checked EarthExplorer and there were several single aerial images from the 1950s of the area around our campus, but they aren’t georectafied and mosaicked. I may try to stitch them together so we could have images of the campus and ‘Boro from the 1930s, 1950s, 1970s and 1990s along with our more recent imagery.

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Post tags: Aerial Photography, historic, imagery, OIT

Map Maker for carto-masochists, part 2

John Reiser — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 22:26:30 +0000

After failing to provide data straight from GIS – which is possible using OpenStreetMap or ESRI’s Community Base Map programs – I sat down with Matt, my student intern that is working on developing the campus data in Map Maker. I instructed him to use our Facilites GIS database as a reference for populating the attributes for Map Maker and to have a polygon as a reference to supplement the Google aerial photograph. He began adding in features, but quickly ran into issues with the review process behind Google Map Maker edits.

Map Maker has a moderation process for all of the edits made by Map Maker users. There are two big issues I see with the manner in which Google has implemented moderation. First, you cannot re-edit (or even touch) new features until they have been moderated. That means that if you are adding a development (or a series of roads on a college campus) you cannot link up the roads that have been previously added and awaiting moderation. The moderation puts a serious crimp in attempts to push out many edits in a small area. Mike Dobson has an incredibly detailed write up on the issues he faced in trying to correct data using Google Map Maker. A very interesting read on how difficult it is to contribute minor fixes.

The second, bigger issue is the moderation itself. Crowdsourced moderation relies on people from potentially anywhere in the world to weigh in on edits. Now, it is likely that most of the edits occurring in the United States are being performed by individuals that are familiar with the area; they’re locals. Locals are the best source of information; they have intimate knowledge of the area and they are able to readily field-verify the information in the system. So we have a pool of local users making edits, but the moderators may not have any prior knowledge on an area in which they moderate.

Here’s a perfect example of the issue with this form of moderation. Google provides an attribute field for buildings that records the construction material. The field is restricted to an enumeration set of four allowable values: “Concrete”, “Mud/Stone”, “Steel” and “Wood”. Several of our campus buildings were held in moderation limbo, as a reviewer felt that my choice of “Steel” was incorrect and should instead be “Concrete.” Why would a reviewer feel the need to question an attribute and hold up the data creation process? Mind you, the values in this field does not impact the manner in which the building is displayed on the map, so it is not critical to know before the feature is drawn. What could a moderator glean from an aerial photograph that would justify questioning the local editor? I know the buildings are constructed using a steel structure and they are faced in brick and stone – I can walk up and touch the building; go inside. I spend hours inside these buildings each work day, but I need to provide a moderator elsewhere some justification or proof to have the edit approved.

Matt drew in Rowan Boulevard Apartments, a building with a rather complex footprint, as the building has a series of setbacks dividing up the residential suites inside. He drew it in Map Maker as close as possible, similar to how it appears in OpenStreetMap. This edit was then altered and poorly generalized. The moderator informed Matt that it should not reflect the roof line. There are no stepbacks and the building is near the nadir of the photo, so the roof line is awfully close to the actual building footprint. He spent a considerable amount of time drawing in a feature to have it simply blown away by some one that likely has never been near the actual structure.

Compare the photo to what Matt was finally able to have approved.

The moderation system in Google Map Maker is broken and will continue to be if local users are not given the benefit of the doubt regarding their edits. OpenStreetMap has the ability to revert vandalism or poorly edited features. Know why people don’t vandalize OpenStreetMap? It’s often a pain in the ass to commit large amounts of vandalism on OSM. Unless you’re a programmer, committing large bogus edits to OSM isn’t easy to do. And on the occasions when vandalism occurs on OSM, it is often corrected by local users. Google’s fear of having bad data on Google Maps (even though so many errors pop up all the time through erroneous business entries scraped from search indexes) is hindering the ability of users to contribute to their platform. Google stole several concepts from OpenStreetMap but not the ones that can elevate it to a platform that could truly produce credible maps from locally-sourced volunteered data. The only thing going for Map Maker is that eventually your edits will appear on the main Google Maps site.

I got involved in Map Maker solely to get Rowan’s campus data on Google Maps. I cannot pull data back out of Map Maker, so after I achieve my goal, I will likely never use Map Maker again. Why deal with all the frustration and reap none of the rewards?

Update: Google Maps routes park visitors down a residential street that doesn’t actually provide access to the park, frustrating the local residents. Also, Google Maps Fail on Tumblr.

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Post tags: Google Map Maker, Google Maps, OpenStreetMap

Map Maker for carto-masochists, part 1

John Reiser — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 14:00:07 +0000

I originally wrote the following approximately two weeks ago and it has been lingering as a Draft until now. I decided to wait until the start of the Esri International User Conference to publish this post. The UC has several events planned for their community mapping offerings, here’s my take on how Google’s approach has been less than impressive. Part 2 ~~to follow~~ available here.

Way, way back in March of 2010, I contacted Google through their Map Content Partners form to submit Rowan University’s GIS data to be included on Google Maps. I heard nothing from them – not even an automated response – for several months. In August of 2010, someone in Administration noticed that Google had relabeled Rowan University as Glassboro State College, a name not used since 1992. I was instructed to try and remedy this as soon as possible. I explained that Google had given me the cold shoulder, but I would try some different avenues. The “report a problem” feature in Google Maps did get “Glassboro State College” off the map, but Rowan remained a featureless blotch within Glassboro.

After giving up on contributing data to Google Maps, I was finally contacted by “Brandon” from the Cities in 3D Team. Brandon requested a sample of the data for review. “Finally!” I thought, “now I can submit our data for Google Maps!” I’ll admit, I got excited. In hindsight, the excitement was premature and irrational. OpenStreetMap has been updated to reflect the campus since June of 2009, when I used my Export to OSM script to dump the facilities data into .osm files. I should be focusing my efforts on a custom, Mapnik-rendered set of OSM tiles that look good on top of aerials, a “Google Maps Hybrid” layer of my own. I can then sandwich in custom tiles instead of overlaying my data on top of the annotation. (Compare anno-on-top to data-on-top.)

Anyway, I eagerly await word back from Google that our data will appear on Google Maps. The notice I receive was far from what I wanted to hear. Instead of accepting the data, I’m instructed that due to the small number of objects to be added, I should use Google Map Maker instead. I was pissed.

I find Google Map Maker to be an incredible disappointment on two major fronts; first, I refused to use the service as I felt Google was in the wrong for keeping VGI-sourced base map data under lock and key. The second, which I will elaborate upon tomorrow, involves the Map Maker tool itself. For a company such as “do no evil” Google to create a framework where users can volunteer time to build its GIS repository with no compensation – not even data retrieval – I find completely unconscionable. Compare their data download form with getting data from OpenStreetMap. To non-techies, OSM’s XML format might be intimidating, but it’s data – no forms to fill out or licenses to sign. Sure, it’s not a shapefile… but you can get them too, without signing any agreement. I loved hearing how a group of OSM mappers hijacked a Google Mapping Party (the concept itself lifted from OSM) and got the assembled group to work on OSM. Many others have asked “why Google, why not OSM?” The common thread to most Map Maker criticism and OpenStreetMap’s major issue with Map Maker is regarding access to the data that has been contributed. Why make data created of the third world (and likely by individuals in the third world) a for-sale product for a first world company? Even within your own neighborhood, why volunteer your time if you can’t reap most of the benefits?

Back from ideology to practicality, I wanted the University on Google, solely because Google is the new Mapquest; it’s the go-to map service for the average person. (Quick aside, Mapquest has Rowan University completely mapped out through its OSM-sourced open.mapquest.com.) Brandon’s earlier suggestion of Map Maker wasn’t acceptable because of my open-access advocacy leanings, it was out of time constraints. “You want me to redraw everything?” That wasn’t going to happen and I let Brandon know:

Brandon,

Thanks for the info. My major concern has been getting an “official” set of data on to Google Maps. When Google switched to their own data and pulled place names from GNIS, Rowan University reverted to Glassboro State College, a name last used in 1992. As “the map guy” for the University, I was asked by several offices within Rowan to “fix Google.” While reporting the antiquated name as a problem did get “Rowan University” restored on Google Maps, it brought the lack of campus data on Google to the attention of many in the University community. It has been frustrating for me, as I have attempted to contact Google to provide official data for use on Maps for a considerable time, while also attempting to squash bugs in the Google Maps data on our campus. Being a University, there have been “creative” additions to the campus on Google Maps, such as the fact that one of our largest academic buildings appeared as a Bed and Breakfast for about a month.

I would like to provide Google with a set of data out of our Facilities GIS DB that is the same source for our printed campus maps. The previously sent data, reformatted to match your requested schema, is from either survey data or from a 3″ planimetric image. The address information included in this layer matches Gloucester County’s 911 data. This is as official as it gets.

Google Map Maker is not a viable option for me. The data for Rowan University that is available through OpenStreetMap was generated through an export utility that I wrote. It is the same source as I emailed you previously, except that it dates from the summer of 2009. Very little of what is on OSM was hand redrawn. Not only would it be a considerable time sink for me, the tools in Map Maker would not be able to reproduce the high quality data that already exists.

Through the Geovisualization course I teach, we are offering students the opportunity to build SketchUp models of the campus as a final project. Several of the buildings have been completed and I will be uploading them soon. The entire campus is not complete, so if you would like a shapefile with extrusion data, I’d be happy to resubmit the data with those additional attributes.

Again, I would like to thank you for taking the time to respond to me. I understand that the Cities in 3D team might not have the 2D maps as their major focus, but if you could direct my request to the correct group, I would be incredibly grateful. I initially filled out the Data Provider form in March 2010 and have resubmitted the form several times after receiving no response. I even pestered Ed Parsons over Twitter to no avail. So, I am truly appreciative of your assistance in this issue.

Thanks,
John

Brandon responded with two points that made me bristle. First, Rowan was too small for Google: “the number of buildings on campus provide a relatively low priority for Google.” This is a 215 acre campus with 50+ structures, it’s not huge, but it’s also not insignificant. Second, I was encouraged “to do as much as you can on your own, or as part of
your class with the students help.” No one volunteers my cheap labor for projects other than me, buddy.

Through the reconfiguration of our program offerings, Geography and Environmental Studies students are required to have an internship or directed study as part of their capstone research experience. I was able to find a student that really excelled at contributing to OpenStreetMap and asked him if he would be interested in working on updating three map services: Google (via Map Maker), OpenStreetMap (via JOSM) and ESRI’s Community Base Map via (ArcInfo for Advanced Desktops). He agreed and began working on updating Google Maps. I finally bit the bullet, signed into Map Maker and started working with him on some of the edits.

Tomorrow, how Map Maker can only make bad maps.

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Post tags: Google Map Maker, Google Maps, OpenStreetMap

2cm Photography of the Ongoing Flooding in Queensland

John Reiser — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 04:45:47 +0000

NearMap has released an interactive map showing the imagery acquired this week of the flooding around Brisbane. 2cm imagery, less than a week old, available around the world through the internet. Pretty soon, laughing about how some fools think the images on Google Maps are real-time will be a thing of the past.

Unmoderated communities aren’t communities.

John Reiser — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 13:46:29 +0000

Without a fear of social repercussions for anti-social behavior, online communities without moderation often devolve into a cesspool. Take for instance InsiderPages, a hybrid yellow pages with reviews. There are countless sites like this out there, all suffering from the fact that bizarre and often inflammatory comments may include keywords that bump the site higher in search rankings. There’s no real incentive to police the comments, which gives us gems like this:

InsiderPages users’ thoughts on the Cowtown Rodeo Flea Market.

Despite the term “flea market” the Cowtown Rodeo’s market isn’t a low place. It’s an outdoor swap meet that caters to the agrarian marketplace of Salem County. However, the first few comments on the listing are an argument over our current president’s stance on immigration. Completely irrelevant discussion, yet it remains there. NJ.com is perhaps one of the biggest offenders; leaving downright profane comments on race at the bottom of many articles. Without moderation, the comments become something else entirely; anti-social outlets for the individuals and a bump in SEO rankings for the site. A losing situation for anyone looking for unbiased information.

I’m sure not all of the sites are gaming SEO through comments; some may be simply understaffed. On the other hand, when you consider the time individuals waste in the innumerable echo chambers like this one, the mind boggles. God bless America.

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Post tags: community, Internet, new jersey, nj.com, salem county, social networking

Location-based services may be a hard sell.

John Reiser — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 15:01:41 +0000

Google Latitude, not overwhelmingly adopted

I’m working on a few concepts for integrating GPS locations received from mobile browsers into our mapping applications. One idea has been to employ the location of a student’s smartphone by placing them on the campus map and identifying the quickest route to their on-campus destination. While location-based services have been a hot topic for the past two years now, I’m still unsure of how readily the non-technical public will accept the concept. I still have GIS students that find the amount of data accessible to them intimidating and “scary.”

(...)
Read the rest of Location-based services may be a hard sell. on my blog.

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Post tags: geolocation, gps, Location-based Services, magic, Privacy

Changing Landscapes: Final Thoughts

John Reiser — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:00:11 +0000

After all of the hustling to get, in my opinion, a rather significant web application together in little under a month by myself, I feel that I can offer a few thoughts on managing a project with limited timeframe.(...)
Read the rest of Changing Landscapes: Final Thoughts on my blog.

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Post tags: Changing Landscapes, Land Use, new jersey, New Jersey State Atlas, Web Mapping

Changing Landscapes: A Million Little Tiles

John Reiser — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 12:00:03 +0000

The New Jersey Land Change Viewer, the online component of the Changing Landscapes research project required the generation of approximately one million map tiles. These tiles needed to be served quickly – the online viewer is meant to make the findings of the project and the ramifications of New Jersey’s urbanization patterns readily apparent to the general public. Long wait times do not help get your point across, so we used Amazon Web Services to store and distribute the map tiles.

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Read the rest of Changing Landscapes: A Million Little Tiles on my blog.

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Post tags: Amazon, Apache Tomcat, Arc2Earth, Changing Landscapes, CRSSA, geolab, Geoserver, GIS, Google Maps, TileCache