The following is a brief listing of some of the projects in which John has been a significant contributor or is the primary lead.
Personal Projects
NJParcels.com
Initially developed as a proof-of-concept for how a parcel-based, assessment lookup tool should work, NJParcels.com has grown into a resource for over 10,000 daily users. Pulling information from publicly-available flat files and spatial data, NJParcels.com strives to provide people with insight into properties around the Garden State.
ChupaESRI
I previously relied on a few public ArcGIS Server instances that exposed FeatureServices to the web. Over time, the FeatureServices were disabled, leaving only the MapServices available. As I needed access to the data, but wanted to be able to perform analyses on it, I wrote the ChupaESRI module (think “chupacabre”) to suck down the features via the MapService API endpoint.
Rowan University Projects
NJ MAP
From 2012 to 2014, I was the sole developer and database administrator for the NJ MAP project. One subcomponent of the project, “Growth” was an attempt to catalog all of the visible development that occurred between 2007 and 2012 within New Jersey. I developed a web application to allow the public to create an account and begin searching through recently-released aerial photography. I also developed a process through which our interns could perform quality control on the data. This video details how Rowan students conducted QC efforts on 8,000 square miles of New Jersey in a way that reduced duplication of efforts and ensured data quality.
Interior Space Mapping (aka “Space Finder”)
Working with Rowan Facilities and a handful of excellent GIS students, I developed an interactive, mobile-friendly interface to locate classrooms, laboratories and meeting spaces across Rowan University’s Glassboro campus. This project is a proof of concept and has been presented to the President to demonstrate our internal capabilities for other spatial projects, such as freshman orientation maps, accessible route planning, and even nearest restroom locators.
ArcGIS License Monitor
In my role as Geospatial Research Laboratory Coordinator, I managed our GIS infrastructure, including software licenses for products like ArcGIS for Desktop, Idrisi, and CityEngine. I have developed a tool to help keep tabs on software usage in Rowan’s computer labs and virtual desktops. The tool is also freely available under the GPL.
Various Programming Tools
I have developed several tools for GIS users benefit, including an export utility for ArcGIS to save line and polygon features in the XML-based format used by OpenStreetMap. I’ve also developed a script (that can also be run in ArcGIS) to take a directory of photographs and create a shapefile/feature class out of the locations stored within the Exif metadata.
Whenever possible, I will post the code and/or data behind a project to Github.
Former Projects
New Jersey State Atlas
New Jersey State Atlas was developed in the summer of 2007 in response to the lack of open source mapping platforms available within New Jersey state government. At the time, I worked at the state-level planning office and our “online mapping” was limited to downloadable PDFs. The first project, the State Plan, was developed using Mapserver and the Google Maps API on shared hosting as a proof-of-concept for low-cost, detailed web mapping using NJ state data.
Another project developed under the New Jersey State Atlas moniker is an interactive Journey-to-Work visualization, using data from the 2000 CTPP dataset. Clicking on the map will identify the NJ municipality and display counts of those residing within the municipality or those living elsewhere, working within the municipality.
While not promoted elsewhere on the site, the School Location tool was used by the NJ Office of GIS in 2010 to help crowdsource correcting the locations of a geocoded schools database delivered to OGIS by the NJ Department of Education. Volunteers selected by OGIS were able to log in and move the schools point data. The data was made immediately available back to OGIS via a WFS connection.
New Jersey Land Change Viewer
The New Jersey Land Change Viewer was the interactive mapping component of Rowan University’s “Changing Landscapes in the Garden State” report. The fourth iteration of the report, published in 2010, details the agriculture, forest and wetland lands lost to urban development over a 21 year period. The Land Change Viewer allows the public to view the impacts of growth on a neighborhood scale.
Data Resources and Tools, post Superstorm Sandy
In the immediate aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, I developed several tools for viewing, assessing and cataloging the damage to the New Jersey shore. These tools allowed residents and other interested parties to get a sense of the damage caused by the storm, surge, and subsequent tidal flooding. One application allowed the public to match up Civil Air Patrol photography to a location on the ground using oblique aerial photography.