GeoData Solutions

The thought of returning to conflict sparked by recent events have made me re read the saddest book I have ever read. It is a book called Lost Lives and it details practically every person who was killed in our “troubles“. The book gives a paragraph on each person detailing how and where they were killed, it reminds you that behind the statistics and news headlines there was once a 3 dimensional person.

Following on from this book and attempting to do the same thing (and a lot more) on the web is the CAIN Web Service (Conflict Archive on the INternet). They are currently starting a new project which “…will involve mapping location data related to victims and commemoration onto the Web. Some of the work will involve using proprietary software, such as Google Maps/Earth, to provide users with enhanced ways of manipulating, visualising and interpreting the data. In addition Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software will be used to analyse the data and to produce high quality maps”.

It has been many years since my last visit to Rathlin Island so I thought the next trip could be combined with a mapping party to add some detail to the rather blank map in OpenStreetMap.

Map of Rathlin Island before the mapping party

Some useful links.

Rathlin Island Ferry Ltd
Soerneog View Hostel – unsure if it has WiFi yet
Further accommodation on the island – unsure if these have WiFi yet
Ardaghmore B&B Ballycastle
Rathlin Development & Community Association

Get in touch for more details. See you there?

So if you can’t afford the vast expense or take the time to understand the complex licensing schemes how do you use high quality map data that we have already paid for?

Well if you live in England, Scotland or Wales the Ordnance Survey is starting to gradually open up its data silos with the OS OpenSpace API. However here in Northern Ireland we are still stuck behind the iron curtain. OSNI doesn’t supply its geodata to OpenSpace but a feint at openness was suggested with the map viewer that is GeoHubNI.

It’s actually a fairly decent viewer compared to their previous attempt and allows the user to view both large and small scale map data.

Now this is all very well if all you want to do is view or print but that’s it, that’s all you can do here…no mashups or spatial analysis possible.

Right now there’s no way of combining external data with OSNI’s maps to build tools such as fixmystreet.

The launch of google’s navigation software for android phones and other mobile services that rely on the cloud got me thinking about our current mobile data choices here in Northern Ireland.

The five major mobile phone companies 3g coverage can be seen below (these taken from their sites – official ofcom report here).

Vodafone

Orange (the darker the better)

O2 (the darker the better)

T mobile (only around Belfast!)

3

Opendatani is the Northern Irish equivalent of data.gov in the US and data.gov.uk in the UK, however it appears to have stalled since it launched in July this year with a grand total of 4 datasets available.

The example below is one of these datasets mapped. A simple illustration, but makes it fairly easy to find your nearest health and social care provider in Northern Ireland rather than navigating through a badly designed website or scrolling down a list. We need more datasets like this!

View full map

After reading this and agreeing with Matt’s statement that “…Belfast needs a free-to-access Municipal Wi-Fi network” and noting that the “…response we got back was that the area already had BTOpenZone, which, if you investigate is notable for it’s absence in the area”.

A quick search on BT Openzone’s coverage map of the area shows that even they don’t claim to have great coverage in the area. The red spots are BT’s coverage and the black line is the approximate boundary of the Cathedral Quarter.

A spot of wardriving was required to prove or disprove this. There are a number of hotspots around the area but the survey proves that they don’t provide anywhere near like 100% coverage.

View full map

The wifi sniffing software used was Vistumbler and the usb GPS device was a Globalsat BU353.

The map data can be downloaded in kml format here or kmz format here.

Recently finished reading Cryptonomicon.

“For the first couple of weeks he spent in Manila, his work consisted of walking. He walked all over the city carrying a handheld GPS receiver, taking down latitudes and longitudes”. p89

“This time it’s a detailed rendering of the cityscape of Manila…he gathered the data for the damn thing by walking around town with his GPS receiver”. p103

“Depth could be obtained by putting a green light on the head of every person in London and then recording their tracings for a few nights…One day a person would walk out…carrying a highly accurate street map of London, reconstructed from the information”. p117-118

Cloudmade use the freely available  OpenStreetMap geodata but package it in an easy to use manner.  One major improvement is the development and the use of ’styles’ to personalise each map.  The embedded map has a ‘Red Alert’ style.