new jersey geographer

ESRI has just released an add-in for ArcGIS 10 allowing ArcGIS users to download data from and contribute to OpenStreetMap. Marten Hogeweg announced the tool and news spread pretty quickly. While I agree with the favorable reception the tool has received, it’s still in need of work. Having said that, I must also say that this is the first tool I’ve come across that reliably downloads OSM data into a geodatabase based on a user-defined extent. Coupled with a basic symbology tool, it provides very easy access to OSM data. The average GIS user is not one that is necessarily comfortable with XML-formatted data; they want “a shapefile” and this tool delivers that. The retrieval by extent functionality is very important – in a state like New Jersey where we have 566 small municipalities, a GIS user in a borough or even a county would be inclined to download just their area of interest. The statewide shapefile downloads provided by CloudMade left something to be desired.

While the download functionality is pretty straightforward, the workflow to contribute edits back to OSM is a little convoluted. I’ll take you through the process as I downloaded a portion of Rowan University’s campus and updated OSM with some recent changes on campus. First, I opened a new map document, added in the 2007 aerial photography (for reference) and set my coordinate system to NJ State Plane in feet.

Getting Started

Download and Symbolize OSM Data

The property of a randomly chosen "John Smith"

Mecklenburg County (Charlotte), North Carolina is currently facing an information-sharing predicament. POLARIS, their county-wide interactive web map, currently serves up property ownership information as part of the real property and tax records in the county databases. The county is looking to remove the ability to search by owner to locate land records, mainly because the police are concerned that criminals may use the system to target officers’ homes. I appreciate the concern for the safety of the police force, however theoretically anyone could target anyone else using public records. Just because you have a hammer doesn’t mean you’re going to start hitting people with it. Intentionally crippling a web service and reducing accessibility should always be seen as a major step backwards. (more…)

There’s been a flurry of posts across the web about Please Rob Me, a site that aggregates check-ins on sites like FourSquare, illustrating the fact that we’ve known all along: people are willing to release more information than they realize. Outrage follows once the fact that technology allows information to be easily aggregated and distributed is demonstrated like this. (more…)

Just two days after I wrote about OpenStreetMap, PC Pro, a UK computing magazine, posted a blog about the brilliance of OpenStreetMap.  This entry is a much better introduction to OSM than what I previously wrote.

Over on MetaFilter today, there is a great post filled with links to interactive maps detailing various aspects of the recession and the eventual rebound in the economy. In looking through these maps, I’m irked by the cartographic conventions employed by some of them. Google Maps has started a dangerous trend: representing everything possible as a point on a map.

For example, take Richard Florida’s “The Shaping of America” interactive map in The Atlantic. The map relies on points of varying size to show the number of patents, the population and income levels for selected US cities. The size and color of the point is an indicator of the city’s performance relative to the surrounding “metro average.” There’s no definition of what these “metro areas” are. They are not delineated on the map. The boundaries of the city are also not reflected.

Why is this a problem? While not having the city outlined is concerning, the truly egregious flaw is that the theme of the map is dependent on a ratio without well-defined boundaries. Take, for instance, Trenton, New Jersey. Trenton is slightly north of the geographic center of New Jersey, however it is routinely grouped with “South Jersey” and is rarely grouped in “Central Jersey.” The parts of the State that identify themselves as “Trenton Metro” are limited to adjacent municipalities, if that. So what is the “metro area” of Trenton? Is Princeton included in Trenton? That would absolutely set Trenton above average for all three indicators mapped.

Map depicting just a few of the boundaries for Trenton, NJ

Now consider the New York Times Immigration Explorer. The Times has been cranking out some amazing maps lately and this one is no exception. This temporal, thematic map is rendered using Flash. It shows the 3,000 or so counties within the US with great detail and clarity. Ethic groups as a percentage of total population are reflected on a chloropleth map while the overall population is shown using dots of varying size. We’re back to the dot map, but it’s very different from the Google Dot Map above. The dots are sized in proportion to the total population, not an ill-defined sample. Also, the Flash interface allows the user to manipulate the base size of the dots, which allows the user to discern differences in population in the most sparsely inhabited regions.

Immigration Explorer would still convey its intended message if the cartographers behind it employed a dot map like the Shaping of America. Considering the data is explicitly by county, a point map could be used without introducing ambiguity. However, considering the geographies represented by the Shaping of America map are not well-defined, we are left guessing what we’re actually trying to represent with those dots.

Google Maps (and KML, the language for user-defined data in Google Earth) supports lines and polygons. Granted, there are more hoops to jump through to get vector data into Google Maps, but there are ways to do it. Maps that really require representation using polygons should not be constructed using points & Google Maps. Using Google Maps isn’t what’s important. Making sure your map delivers its intended message is essential.

What was initially a concept project has ballooned into a movement promoting an open, candid discussion about local architectural issues. Architecture 5¢ is an attempt to get the public talking about architecture. I think this is a great idea – I feel the average person does not understand the roles architects, planners and engineers play in their lives everyday. Architecture should not be a practice reserved only for college graduates apprenticing at a firm.

Planners must make a push in this direction. Planning has to be approachable. We’re far less appreciated than architects and our work much less tangible. (Architects point to a building. What do we point to?) We know our work is important (and thankfully our clients know this, too) but that’s not enough. Planning is the key to uniting the individual buildings into a greater urban fabric.

The recent trend towards incorporating charrettes or visioning sessions is a step in the right direction. However, we must make our work (in draft and final form) as open and available as possible. Workshops and public hearings should be a part of every project. Planners need to excel at outreach and get the people and stakeholders involved to the greatest extent possible. GIS can aid in outreach efforts through coordination, presentation and as a feedback channel. We need to be at the forefront of all development projects, from major redevelopment down to streetscaping. If we don’t get the public involved, not only will we produce less effective planning documents, in their eyes we’ll be just another professional group billing a town.

Currently on Rowan’s homepage is an article on the Geography Department‘s work on bring GIS to the greater university community. The article focuses on our recent web mapping work; specifically the Land Use Change viewer and NJ State Atlas.  I’m quoted several times in the article, so I’m excited about that.

Direct link to the full article: http://www.rowan.edu/today/news/index/FS/118

GIS for Dummies has been released. Aren’t there already too many people abusing GIS?

Doesn’t the advanced nature of GIS preclude a “Dummies” book? I can understand Google Earth for Dummies, as that software is geared more towards general use, but this just baffles me.

Today, Ogle Earth has posted an excellent article on images from Google Earth that have gone missing. The imagery is of an area in Pakistan. Apparently Dianne Feinstein commented that the US military has been using a base in Pakistan for the staging and deployment of unmanned drones. This comment precipitated a chain reaction of reissued statements and denials. The images in question showed aircraft similar to those of the Predator drones. This image has since been removed from Google Earth and DigitalGlobe.

Ogle Earth sums up the issue quite well:

Did both Google and DigitalGlobe separately receive a request from a government (presumably the US, but possibly Pakistan) to remove this imagery from public scrutiny, and comply, or is there a contractual obligation/legal obligation on the part of Google to remove imagery from Google Earth if DigitalGlobe removes it from its product list? Did DigitalGlobe make a mistake in publishing the 2006 imagery available in the first place, considering that the US military has “shutter control” of the satellite’s cameras? Or perhaps (and I’m merely speculating), since the Predator drone operations are run by the CIA and not the US military, were shutter control orders somehow not properly relayed via the usual channels?

I’d love to find out exactly why the images were pulled. Once they’ve made the rounds, it’s almost pointless to remove them. Haven’t we learned from the Streisand Effect?

Automobile manufacturers are cutting back on production as they cannot sell what they have on hand. This results in the staging areas at the ports becoming crowded with new cars that have nowhere to go. I find this ironic (in the Alanis Morrisette kind-of way) in that the icon of mobility and freedom is now a immobile burden. How will the car dealers handle this back log? I sure hope it involves a man in a cowboy hat with a loud tie screaming that “everything must go!”

Seriously, I do hope that the industry realizes that bailouts are not a sustainable method of survival. They need to adapt to changing markets and lifestyles. And they should all be working to that goal, because I believe that the first one to the ring will be the only one to survive.