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Leveraging Interactive AJAX Web Tools for Online Maps
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Presentation at GeoWeb 2009 – Academic Track
Steven Romalewski
CUNY Mapping Service
The Graduate Center / City University of New York
July 2009
The Challenge
GeoWeb 2009 – CUNY Mapping Service 2
1. Transit connections between where people live and where they work across Nassau and Suffolk counties;
2. Long Island’s downtowns in relation to multi-family housing density plus access to parks and open space;
3. The communities with the highest proportion of multi-family units compare with regional views of age of housing stock;
4. Income attributes of any given community plus its concentration of rental units;
5. Brownfield locations compared with population patterns by race/ethnicity;
6. All of this and more with aerial photography …
… on a map,
all at once,
interactively,
online.
The Long Island Index wants to show (among other things):
Mapping Multivariate Data
GeoWeb 2009 – CUNY Mapping Service 3
• Multiple symbol types
Some traditional
cartographic
techniques …
• Small multiples
http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/2009/06/reading-comprehension.html
• Multivariate dot density maps
• Different textures
http://makingmaps.net/
• Transparency (eg., color coded DEM “draped” over hillshade)
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Map display on the desktop
GeoWeb 2009 – CUNY Mapping Service 4
Integrates many of the multivariate approaches
Map display on the desktop
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Also can leverage emerging geostatistical software packages with multi-framed display of integrated data
http://www.geovistastudio.psu.edu/tutorials/
Data_Mining_in_GeoVISTA_Studio.pdf
Map display on the desktop
GeoWeb 2009 – CUNY Mapping Service 6
But…
How does this translate online?
http://stats.oecd.org/OECDregionalstatistics/
Online map display
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PROs
• Interactive
• Zoom in very close or out very far with ease
• Add or remove “layers” of data from the map
• “Slippy” maps easy to navigate
CONs
• Single frame generally rules out small multiples
• Multiple symbol types (including dot density and texture) generally don’t translate well for thematic/analytical maps
o but they can work well overlaying roads with choropleths, for example
• Transparencies would work, but until recently the cumbersome nature of webpage redraws makes this clunky
• Also, challenge of keeping it simple while making GIS analytic tools accessible
• Open Source movement rapidly making new tools more accessible, encouraging experimentation and early deployment
o Geoserver & Mapserver, OpenLayers, etc
• ESRI also enhancing their toolkit
o New ArcGIS Server tools – caching, etc
• Some early adopters of innovative approaches:
o www.DataPlace.org www.PolicyMap.org www.MapTube.com
Enter AJAX, applied to online maps
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• Online mapping in a post-Google Maps world
o Ease of use and intuitive display
o Relatively easy integration of multiple data sets from disparate sources (ie, mashups)
o No need to click on a “i” tool to access attributes, or click a “hand” tool to pan the map, for example
http://sanbernardino.ca.crimeviewcommunity.com/
New York-area examples
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Early 2006, CUNY Mapping Service established with broad mandate – help CUNY researchers and others leverage the power of GIS in their work, and continue developing cutting-edge interactive online mapping systems
1. Long Island Index project asked us to develop interactive mapping feature for www.longislandindex.org
o Index background – needed to make complex issues more understandable to public (esp. to visualize inter-relationships and multi-level spatial patterns) and to engage people via the Web
2. A second project is a complete overhaul of the Open Accessible Space Information System (OASIS) website (www.oasisnyc.net), first created in early 2000 using ArcIMS in collaboration with ESRI, USDA Forest Service, and more than 40 local NGOs, public agencies, businesses, and individuals.
A hybrid “geo stack”
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Technology choice: combination of ESRI/Microsoft with open source JavaScript frameworks
• ArcGIS Desktop and ArcSDE/SQL Server to manage the data sources.
• ArcGIS Server to generate web map services from MXDs and generate cached tiles for selected map layers.
• OpenLayers consumes WMS resources, manages and displays the map layers, and provides map navigation tools.
• Dynamic data feeds are also provided via REST web services.
• Ext JS provides the overall web framework and enables us to relatively easily integrate AJAX-style tools such as dynamic transparencies.
With the exception of the satellite/aerial photos, we host all map layers
• Simply too much data to simply mash it up with a basemap from Google Maps or Microsoft and we wanted cartographic control.
When you select a village: 1. It’s highlighted in orange; 2. Local statistics and charts
are displayed; and 3. The overview map shows
where on LI you’ve zoomed to.
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The Long Island Index interactive map – visualize your community in new and powerful ways
Map your village
See population or housing patterns in and around your community
Map education statistics district-by-district – NEW for 2009!
Add transportation routes, schools, environmental sites, special districts, and more
The transparency slider
0% transparent
50% transparent
100% transparent
reveals what’s underneath
Compare aerial photos with Census and land use patterns
0% transparent
70% transparent
100% transparent
Click on the red marker for a bird’s eye view
Explore regional views of key demographic indicators
You can zoom out to see the entire island, and then double-click on the list to zoom back in and see
community-level detail.
For more info, contact:
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Steven Romalewski, Director Phone: 212-817-2033 [email protected]
CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research The Graduate Center / CUNY
365 Fifth Ave., Room 6202 New York, NY 10016
www.urbanresearch.org
David Burgoon, Application Architect Phone: 212-817-2038 [email protected]
