Getting the Crowd to Help

How We Built a Mapwiki in Open Source

Information and mapping in the public interestwww.greeninfo.org

About Us• Larry Orman, Executive Director

• Robert Graham, Web GIS Developer

• GreenInfo Network nonprofit 16 years geospatial tech 12 staff

Information and mapping in the public interestwww.greeninfo.org

1.It started with a problem

California’s Parks/Open Space 900 agencies/organizations

49,000,000 acres

16,000 units

55,000 holdings

~1.5 FTE . . .

Options?

• Call everyone up and ask for data

• Hand out paper maps to draw on

• Isn’t there an app for that? Use phones and go out

• Just buy the data

What we need is…

The Crowd!

2.Let’s build it

ourselves!

The Recipe1. Sequence the user steps2. Choose data to review3. Actions = Notes, Drawings, Edits, Uploads4. See everyone’s stuff, too

. . . bada bing, bada boom

MapCollaborator™

http://websites.greeninfo.org/mapcollaborator/cpad/

Admin

http://websites.greeninfo.org/mapcollaborator/cpad/

3.Ok, what else?

Recreation Facilities?

Recreation Facilities!

http://www.mapsportal.org/mapcollab_facilities/

School Footprints?

School Footprints?

• Megan’s Law – 2,000’

• Tobacco, beverage regulations – 1-2,000’?

• Probation tracking

• Safe routes to school planning

• Etc…

School Footprints!

http://www.mapsportal.org/mapcollab_schools/

Anza Trail?

Anza Trail!

This can all be yours!

Easily adaptable

Core function set

But don’t over do it

(It’s not GIS. . . it supports GIS)

4.Get outta the way,

I want to do it!

The Tools You Need

PostGIS DB

Online spatial database (PostGIS)

Map engine (OpenLayers)

Map/Data services (MapServer, TileCache, OGR)

Web framework (CodeIgniter)

Web server stack (Linux/Apache/PHP) Web Pages(HTML/JQuery)

OL Map

FormsPHP/CI

OGRMapServer/TileCache

Data Actions Get - features (WFS, GeoJSON), Images (WMS, Tiles)

Create/Edit - OL features

Post - geometry (text), attributes (forms)

DatabaseUsers

Admin

Map

Forms

JS/JQuery

PHP/CI

OGR

PHP/CI

PHP/CI

GeoJSON

MapServer

WFS

WMS

TileCache

PHP/CI/JQuery

More Tools Admin - DataTables.js

Exports - PHPExcel, Wkhtml2pdf, pgsql2shp

Directions to watch for CartoDB

Google MapMaker/Fusion Tables

Ushahidi

GeoDjango

UTF Grids

Tools can do most anything

Is the crowd willing (and able…)?

We’re all too busy

Make it easy and focused

Use flexible tech

Contacts

Robert Graham – robert@greeninfo.org

Larry Orman – larry@greeninfo.org

GreenInfo – www.greeninfo.org