march 2009 archives

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Cartifact champions web cartography

Today's launch of Cartifact Maps marks another step in the evolution of web cartography. The new website aims to create a visually enhanced environment for custom cartography focusing on Los Angeles for this beta release. It certainly succeeded in this by unchaining the map design from the rigor of the Navteq base map that still dominated the Yahoo Local map redesign by Cartifact almost two years ago. With the new map design they have achieved a much better balance between the representation of land cover, neighhourhood boundaries, the terrain and the street network. But then again, it's not just another online mapping portal where the street network simply is the main theme to be mapped!

Although the mapping application is built around the JavaScript-based Google Maps API, the custom map tiles make sure the app certainly has its own look and feel. The underlying data for these custom map tiles was created by Cartifact themselves, but was also sourced from the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection (historical maps). Instead of switching between map types across the full view port or offering a hybrid map, Cartifact Maps uses a lens tool to view these additional map types directly on top of the base map. The additional map types show at the same scale as the base map, but users can also use the lens to zoom in on a particular area either choosing the same base map, or any of the additional map types. The historical maps even give users the opportunity to use the lens even as a time machine!

The lens tool is not something you often come across. An early example of an online mappping application that used the lens for magnification is the Internet Atlas of Switzerland. Also, Multimap used to have a lens tool to reveal an aerial image of the area below the lens. I am very happy to see this clever bi-modal usage of the lens tool on Cartifact Maps!

There's a lot of custom mapping happening in LA. For example, the Los Angeles Times has asked its readership to map their neighbourhoods. The newspaper hosts a web application built with PostGIS and OpenLayers, where visitors can select one of the 87 neighbourhoods and change its borders!

Full disclosure: Bruce Daniel from Cartifact notified me by email yesterday about the beta release.

Friday, March 20, 2009

UK crime maps scrutinised

As of January 2009, every police force in the UK has published its mapped crime statistics online in response to a Home Office initiative to take the rollout of local crime information to the next level. Although the publication may encourage accountability and empower the community, it could just as well hit local house prices if crime-ridden neighbourhoods become stigmatised or it may feed local criminal intelligence, leading to crime hotspots. Furthermore, a recent study from Cimex's User Experience team reveals that these crime maps leave users more bewildered and confused than before.

Generally, crime maps were found to be confusing and lacking the interactivity that was one of their key objectives. These maps are supposed to be reassuring, but we found them to be too unclear and lacking professionalism — to the point of users doubting the websites' credibility

The crime maps for all 43 police forces in England and Wales can be accessed by clicking on the respective areas on the map below. A subset of these websites was compared to the non-governmental websites UpMyStreet and EveryBlock that publish local crime statistics for the UK and the US respectively. Interestingly, EveryBlock is a project by Adrian Holovaty who created Chicagocrime.org, one of the first mapping hacks/mashups, combining crime data from the Chicago Police Department with Google Maps.

Thirty of the 43 police forces use CrimeMapper, a hosted solution from RKH to build online, interactive crime maps. The actual OS maps and the JavaScript-based mapping API come from ISYS Systems Ltd. The crime maps provided by the Metropolitan Police Service uses Google Maps. Also the Flash-based InstantAtlas tool is used by quite a few police forces, for example Thames Valley Police.

On a positive note, the Power of Information Task Force comments that the initiative to publish mapped crime statistics should also be an objective to create better availability and consistency of the underlying crime data sets so that other parties can innovate with their own versions of crime maps. This view ties in nicely with the submissions for the Show Us a Better Way competition for web service ideas that use public data. Remember Matthew Somerville's accessible version of the National Rail Enquiries train timetable?

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Mapping 2.0

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that SHOW®/USA goes to show, that Web 2.0 has brought cartography more than just slippy maps, at last. We're really beyond red dot fever! A few other websites that really emphasise this point are GeoCommons, Google Map Maker Directions, and CloudMade Style Editor.

GeoCommons Finder! is a browser-based application for finding, organising and sharing geographic data. Usrs can either search the data sets by tags or browse the repository by category. They can also upload a data set in some common data formats, including spreadsheets as a CSV with Latitude and Longitude columns, ESRI shape files, and KML files. GeoCommons Maker! gives users the tools to make interactive, Flash-based maps with their own data and/or GeoCommons public data. Everyone can view the maps, zoom and pan around, explore the map legend, and read the map details to fully understand the data set.

Although Google Map Maker is really a walled garden, the latest release of the Directions feature mollifies my judgment to rate this web application over OpenStreetMap. For each driving instruction, users can modify the attributes of the road segments (e.g. street name, form of way, direction of traffic flow, speed restriction), but also the turn restrictions between road segments. With these changes, users can help to improve the resulting driving instructions, but actually help building the topology of the road network and help enrich the map data. All in all, it will simply give Google the map coverage and details in areas where Tele Atlas doesn't provide its MultiNet product, yet...

CloudMade sources its maps from OpenStreetMap and aims to continue the democratisation of geographic data and to expand access to open geographic data through a range of simple, yet powerful tools and APIs. The introduction of the CloudMade Developer Zone is particularly marked by the launch of its StyleEditor. This web application lets anyone create and share customised cartography that you can use to distinguish your applications. Users can change colours, line thickness, and visibility of all map features to make the map style emphasise their particular theme and to make it blend in with the rest of their web applications. It certainly marks a next step in the democratisation of cartography.

Andrew Turner, CTO at GeoCommons, will be moderating the panel discussion Neocartography: Mapping Design and Usability Evolved at SXSWi 2009. Going by his background and the resumes of the other panelists, this should be one to attend if you make it to Austin, Texas.