[maps.soton] Re: Future Maintainability

[Dover M.S.]

Hi Chris,

I¹ve highlighted your work to Irene Purdie, over in Comms, who¹s my main
contact on campus maps, and is in charge of getting Campus Maps Boards up
etc. Trying to get Comms. on board is probably a good idea, they have
little idea you¹ve produced all this work and it¹s out there.

If you look at the updated web pages for campus etc, it uses embedded
Google Maps etc, with occasional links to maps I¹ve produced (I wasn¹t
involved in any of this redesign, apart from a few requests to redraft
maps). Comms sees maps etc as falling under their remit, and will go
forward with their vision for maps etc if not presented with alternatives.

I¹ve been trying to push for something like Project Drake over at
Cambridge, but I¹ve had, if honest, little progress. I think it needs this
level of institutional involement towards a set goal (web maps and paper
maps united using same data, controlled and updated spatial data sourced
from OpenstreetMap, etc).

I don¹t have the clout individually  to push something like Drake through
to upper management, either here at G+E or centrally, and currently happy
to admit I don¹t currently have the leaflet, JS knowledge etc to take over
your work.

Maybe it would be a good idea for us all to to try and  meet up after
Easter, in person, and see if we can try and work out the way forward as a
group?

Cheers

Mark
Mark Dover
Senior GIS Cartographer
Geography and Environment
University of Southampton

Room 1009, Building 44, Highfield Campus

Southampton, SO17 1BJ

Tel. +44 (0) 2380 594649
www.southampton.ac.uk/geography
Twitter:  @SpatialGeek
My current Job Calendar: http://bit.ly/1hMwF64

Too brief? Here's why! http://emailcharter.org






On 30/03/2015 15:44, "baines c. (cb15g11)" <cb15g11 at ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:

>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.asp
>x
>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/