For the past 15 years, delivery of location-based community information has been fragmented across departments and delivered through archaic and inconsistent user interfaces. In short, user needs and their experience weren’t considered so much. Over the past year, we’ve had a chance to work with the eCityGov alliance to create a new information service that was focused on the end user and how they could efficiently access the information they need.

The new NWMap.net landing page

We are very proud of the new NWMaps.net, launched this past June. It takes the best conventions of web-design and provides an efficient means to access a plethora of community information from property-based information to community demographics, from environmental resource information to commercial property listings. NWMaps.net is a one-stop shop for the citizens living in the central Puget Sound Region.

Based on ESRI’s ArcGIS Server and Javascript API,  NWMaps.net starts with a data schema common across the member cities and an aggregation/validation process scripted in python that unites each city’s data into a common database.

The application has a true service oriented architecture that not only incorporates web map services, but mashes in several other web services (permits, parks and commercial property listings) from third-party sources. This architecture not only allows for extensibility when other data come online, it also provides a means by which the data and services can be exploited directly via their REST endpoints by other applications.

The real advantage of NWMaps comes from the user experience it provides. Site layout is simple. There is a Home page, a Results page and a Map view Page. The home page provides a single search box that will accept addresses, place names or parcel numbers. As far as we know, this is the first time this kind of custom search has been provided. We think it responds to users’ expectations for a Google-like search experience, including type-ahead suggestions and search criteria disambiguation.

Flexible search via a single box

In addition to the flexible parameters, users can pre-select the composition of their results by choosing a “Quick Search” option. If one is selected, related themes are promoted on the results page, putting the specifics they are looking for front and center.

Quick searches allow users to focus their results

While the information accessible to the user is voluminous, we did not want to overwhelm them with pages and pages of results, so each result topic is contained in a results panel, collapsed by default. While the information is initially hidden, feedback on the number of results is given (where relevant) on the results bar.

Results grouped by theme

While the name of the site is NWMaps, the map doesn’t dominate the experience… unless the user wants it to. In the normal site flow, the user enters a search on the home page and once taken to the results page is presented with a set of “map snapshots” that give the user map-based visualizations of information within the immediate vicinity of their search result. If the user wants to have a “traditional” web map experience, they can go directly to the map view which incorporates both the unified search and a set of map tools that support a variety of specialized tasks.

The Map View page and specialized tools

This post is already getting long, but there is a lot more to share about the NWMaps.net which I’ll include in a follow up post. In the meantime, Check out the new NWMaps.net, we think it’s pretty cool.

A few weeks back I had the opportunity to visit ICIMOD on behalf of the SERVIR program. ICIMOD is the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development  that serves eight member countries of the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region.

ICIMOD is the latest institution to join the SERVIR program as a regional node (the other nodes include RCMRD in Kenya and CATHALC in Panama). The week in Kathmandu was spent taking a deep dive in to the technical issues and challenges associated with deploying sophisticated mapping applications and geo-processing services in this part of the world. The joint team dug into geodatabase models, ISO metadata profiles and dataset publishing amongst other topics.

ICIMOD already has a talented group of developers and the MENRIS division already hosts some great applications including the Mountain GeoPortal. Now that the partnership with SERVIR is firmly in place, the plan is to create some specific thematic and regionally focused mapping applications. Several environmentally focused systems are planned that will initially focus on addressing fire mitigation, land use change and the cryosphere.

Of course it wasn’t all work. We we’re hosted to a traditional, five-course Nepali dinner in one of the nicest hotels in Kathmandu. The local team was also kind enough to show us around the city for some quick visits to famous Buddhist and Hindu temples. SpatialDev is looking forward to continuing work with the team at ICIMOD and SERVIR.

Hackers Save the World

Sound interesting? Here’s how you can become a part of it: Attend the Random Hacks of Kindness (www.rhok.org) Hackathon in Nairobi and develop open source software that saves lives, alleviates suffering and helps communities to recover after natural disasters strike. This event is the weekend just before WhereCampAfrica.

The Back Story

Random Hacks of Kindness is a joint effort founded by Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, NASA and The World Bank, dedicated to bringing software developers together to respond to challenges facing humanity in the area of natural disaster risk. We start with problem definitions, created in collaboration with the Crisis Commons through consultations with NGOs, governments and experts in the field from around the world, then we invite hackers to a come together to organize and go to work putting their skills to use to solve those problems with open source software solutions that make a difference on the ground. At a RHoK hackathon, new technologies are born, existing platforms are built upon, and innovative new ideas attract attention and support. At the close of the hackathon, teams present the technologies they have developed and prizes are awarded.

The Details

The next Random Hacks of Kindness Hackathon is happening in five locations around the world on June 5^th and 6^th, including in Nairobi at the iHub on the 4th floor of the Bishop Magua Centre Ngong Road (directly opposite the Uchumi Hyper) (http://www.ihub.co.ke). Join in two days of intensive hacking with hackers from Washington D.C., Sao Paolo, Jakarta and Sydney. Check out the full agenda for Nairobi or learn more about the global RHoK hackathon locations at http://www.rhok.org/events/rhok-1-0/nairobi-kenya/.

Why Do This?

• Save the world: You have the skills to make a difference. Hacks developed at the last RHoK hackathon were used on the ground in Haiti and Chile following the devastating earthquakes there in early 2010. The world needs these solutions.
• Exposure: Got a new product, idea or technology to share with the hacker community? Put it to work at the hackathon.
• Assistance: Extend the function and applicability of your existing products or software through global crowdsourced development.
• Input: Get real-time feedback from Subject Matter Experts in software and disaster risk.
• Insight: Learn about what other companies and developers are doing in the same space.

Sounds great! How do I sign up?

Sign up on our Nairobi registration page at http://rhoknairobi.eventbrite.com/. We’ll see you there!

If you are interested in assisting with the organization at one of the global hackathon locations, please contact thea.clay@secondmuse.com

Over the past few weeks the team has been experimenting with extending the popular FrontlineSMS platform with location intelligence. For those who are not familiar with FrontlineSMS it is a platform that enables users to send and receive text messages to groups of people through mobile phones. While it is heavily used by NGOs working in developing countries, it works just as well in Seattle as it does in Kampala. The goal of adding location smarts to SMS messages is to match the location of user requests with other layers of geographic information. This might include market prices at the closest market, local soil types, weather or other nearby projects.

To do this we are need to overcome several challenges

a) we want something that works completely off-line

b) the solution has to be lightweight, simple, and work on multiple operating systems

c) no license costs for re-distribution

Also, right now FrontlineSMS has no notion of user sessions. That is, each message is sent independently in what amounts to a stateless environment. We want to locate someone first and then tell them something about their local environment in 160 characters or less.

The technical components for this include the FrontlineSMS External Command capability, php and the spatial extensions to SQLite known as spatialite. For our location database we are using geonames. We configured the external commands to launch our own php script based on an incoming keyword. In this case when the user texts the keyword FIND followed by a place name, FrontlineSMS is able to launch our custom script. If we are able to locate the person the script echos back several options.

The achiellies heel of this approach is the accuracy and completeness of the geonames database. Geonames does not get the location right in every single case, but its right alot. There is not a lot we can do about this in the short term but in the long term it is possible to include additional points of interest (POI) data from both Open Street Map and Google Map Maker. Also, anyone does have the ability to update the geonames database, either locally or on the server and we are tracking unsuccessful geocodes attempts along with the successful ones so at some point it may be possible to go back and update the missing locations.

For Part 2 I will be describing the technical detail along with steps to create the database locally and enable the FrontlineSMS access. For Part 3 I will be detailing how do actually do the spatial queries with spatialite return something meaningful to the users. We will also be releasing the php code once we have everything working properly land have removed any embarrassing flaws.