[maps.soton] Future Maintainability

[Christopher Baines]

Its looking more and more likely that I will be graduating and getting a
job soon, which has got me thinking about the future on the maps stuff
that I have been working on.

I am therefore interested in trying to help anyone who wants to continue
working on any of the projects I have started, before I leave. This
could be just setting up development environments, or better documenting
something that is not well understood, in any case, please just let me know.

I have copied in a couple of the people who showed interest on the Open
Data Maps groupsite group [1]. As far as I can see, it has been dormant
for some time now, and some of the information is now out of date (most
of this is stuff that I added, and have not updated).

The projects divide up as follows:

Software:
    leaflet-soton
    uos-live.js
    maps.southampton.ac.uk

Cartographic:
    sum-carto

Data:
    hartley-library-map-data
    mfd-location
    OpenStreetMap


List of Projects
================

## maps.southampton.ac.uk

Seems to be going well. I think there have been some unpublished changes
made to the version on maps.southampton.ac.uk, and therefore I couldn't
integrate these. I have some changes that are in my opinion ready to be
released.


## leaflet-soton

Also going ok, this is a bit harder to work on, as the data processing
side of it is a large (~2000) line JavaScript program. It is also not
possible to run this reproducibly as it talks to both a PostgreSQL
database, and sparql.data.soton.ac.uk. The function of this component is
to pull data from OSM (from a PostgreSQL database), the University (from
sparql.data.soton.ac.uk) and from the couple of datasets that I have
written [5][6] and generate a single json file for use in leaflet-soton.


## uos-live.js

I started writing the uos-live.js [4] very recently, its used in
leaflet-soton for the bus times.


## sum-carto

sum-carto is the modified version of openstreetmap-carto that controls
how the tiles look. This currently exists on kanga-cb15g11.soton.ac.uk.
I have not published it, as it could do with being re-written as a neat
set of patches on openstreetmap-carto (as I did not have the skill to
do this initially).


## mfd-location

The mfd-location [5] dataset is a very incomplete dataset that contains
the location of printers, it is pulled in to leaflet-soton.


## hartley-library-map-data

The hartley-library-map-data repository [6] contains a digital version
of the maps which the library publish in image form. This is pulled in
to leaflet-soton. I am going to try talking to someone at the library,
to see if they at least know about this. In my opinion, its not very
usable, but this is more due to the lack of information about the rooms
and corridors in the library.


## Southampton University Map App

There is also the Southampton University Map Android application. I am
planning to remove this from the Play Store before the end of Easter. I
stopped using it years ago, and the data and software is quite out of
date. Despite this, Google tells me that it is currently installed on
628 devices, and has been used by 2692 people (it had only been used by
around ~150 people when I stopped developing it).


## OpenStreetMap

Lots of the information that is presented on maps.southampton.ac.uk
comes from OpenStreetMap. Especially in the case of the indoor data,
this might not be very beginner friendly to edit. Keeping OpenStreetMap
up to date is an essential part of keeping leaflet-soton, and thus
maps.southampton.ac.uk up to date.

There is also lots of indoor data, that could do with being added to
OSM. I may try talking to SUSU, in addition to the library, to let them
know about this alternative to their image based indoor maps.


1:
https://groupsite.soton.ac.uk/Administration/Open-Data-Maps/Pages/Home.aspx
2: http://git.cbaines.net/maps.southampton.ac.uk/
3: http://git.cbaines.net/leaflet-soton/
4: http://git.cbaines.net/uos-live.js/
5: http://git.cbaines.net/mfd-location/
6: http://git.cbaines.net/hartley-library-map-data/
7: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.cbaines.suma
   (soon to be removed)
8: http://git.cbaines.net/southamptonuniversitymap/