North River Geographic Systems Inc

Spatial Problem Solving

rjhale

The Meddling Kids and OSM at Red Bank High School

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The great Open Street Map experiment at Red Bank High School continues.

Actually it “continued” about a month ago. I’m just getting around to talking about it. For those of you who haven’t been keeping up, I have a class full of kids mapping in Open Street Map. It started in the spring with seven kids. This fall it ramped up to somewhere around 30. Yes – for two weeks I probably have the premier OSM mapping organization in the world. It was discussed at the first US State of the Map conference in Atlanta and we’ve done the talk in a few other places. If you wish to take a look at the Power Point slide please feel free. We do the work in Mapzen.  My entire pitch to the kids starting off – How well do you know your neighborhood? How many turns to get here….how many houses on your street….what about fire hydrants? Put what you know on a map.

This year was a bit troublesome for myself and for the teacher. Thirty kids are a lot to deal with. I had it easy. I made an appearance and disappeared. She was stuck jumping from computer to computer answering questions and putting out fires. What made this interesting or a bit different for me….well – let me list it out:

  • The kids that claim to have OCD hate and love doing OSM. All you have to do is say the roads need to be aligned with the aerial photography and they are off and running.
  • By off and running – we purposefully don’t explain how the software works. No body cares. Most of the kids are computer literate enough and they won’t make the same mistake generating data and moving existing data.
  • I put two of the thirty on JOSM. They were both smart. They were both moving faster than the others. One male. One female.
  • One kid complained about the imagery. He started a mini revolution among the class. They wanted more accurate and more timely imagery. Please think about that one. Google earth/GPS/Imagery has made enough of an impact to where kids know when imagery is out of date – there are enough land marks that they are familiar with that are missing that this raises questions. It is no longer an issue of explaining how imagery is taken from above the earth. It’s now a commodity to them. It’s familiar.

Anyway – good things happened and bad things happened. A few kids screwed up some buildings – some kids put in tags that weren’t readily apparent (as in they read the WIKI).  Nobody vandalized the map. Out of the thirty no one did something malicious on purpose.

So what good does this do:

  • We (myself and the teacher) with Hamilton County Science teachers in less than a month to make a pitch that they all need to do this. Teach your kids to be spatially aware.
  • I’ve gotten enough traction that I asked ESRI for a GIS Lab for the school. They have one as soon as I install the software. Which means we will be on the edge of teaching a mini GIS course for the students. Thank you ESRI.
  • We will be putting Red Bank High School into a GIS using existing data. This will get pushed back into OSM by yours truly.
  • I need to make a plot of all the data that the kids have put into OSM….to enter it into a Poster competition. I am not looking forward to that at all.

I leave you with a screenshot of what they have done. Yes – there is a lot of green….and bunches of buildings….and power lines….and the nuclear power plant (I left that off the screenshot). Good things are happening in Chattanooga with OSM.

Diving into the Deep end….

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At least I think it’s a bit deeper. I will not be worried about hitting my head in this pool.

I seem to be a lightening rod for questions these days. I apparently am faking it better than I thought. My niece came over the other day. She’s taken on a project and amazingly enough hasn’t had any GIS classes. As the GA URISA Education chair for a few more days that mostly horrified me….as me the mild-mannered GIS dude it completely horrified me.  To me that is the equivalent of getting out of college and barely being able to turn on a computer (assuming your major has a component that will touch GIS).

Her project was simple enough…to me. To her it was a mountain. Two things needed to be done – generate random points and put those points on a GPS. I can do that in ArcGIS – at least the random point generator easy enough. I can load the data into a GPS several different ways. But I was bored and I…er we needed a challenge. A challenge that would get her close to finishing what she needed…and not going the ArcGIS route just yet.

I am currently a bit fascinated with Open Source GIS software….which you should be able to tell from the last few posts. I downloaded the OSSGeo4W installer from http://download.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/osgeo4w-setup.exe a few months back. Actually longer than that as I got to teach the Open Source GIS Workshop from URISA over the summer. Actually looking back over the year I’ve had two or three really good things that have happened. This being one of them.

I installed the basic setup on my niece’s computer. That basic setup gave her quite a few tools.

The best tool was QGIS – Quantum GIS. If you haven’t used it you should give it a try. It’s not ArcGIS. I consider that a good thing for now. If you’ve used ArcGIS it’s not going to be that hard to deal with. If you’ve never used any GIS – it’s not going to be that hard to deal with. QGOS 1.6 (Capiapo) was just released. For an open source project it’s quite robust. I actually used a search feature to pull in a WMS layer of Hamilton County TN in less than a minute. (I just searched for “WMS Tennessee” in the add WMS GUI).

In less than half an hour we had walked my street with a GPS unit. Used QGIS to download the data and symbolize it. Traced the empty lot at the end of the street and generated random points inside that lot. I have no doubt I ran through that too quickly and she will have questions. But the nice thing is I don’t have to worry about a 60 day timeout. At the end of this we will finish it up in ArcGIS. For all the niceties of Open Source GIS it still doesn’t make cartographically pleasing maps (In my opinion).

It does make me think though. A buffer is a buffer. Nodes are connected by a line. The science of GIS is the science – be it ESRI software or something else. I search for an answer…and really having more than one tool to get to that end point is a good thing…..Until I’m tossed out of the ESRI Business Partner Program for suggesting that. Hehe.

The real fun in all this…..I get to play the grumpy Uncle. The “just because we did it differently doesn’t make it any less right” Uncle if they are nuts enough to start asking questions on why she did it this way…..

At some point people are going to wise up and stop asking me questions.

A Conundrum

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Conundrum: A difficult and intricate problem.

I’m starting to resurface. A bit. I’ve been working on a job and just had a major breakthrough. One that will let me finish it I think. I’ve been busy wrestling with problems. Problems with work or problems at work and problems that have nothing to do with work. The personal ones are the worst. More on that later.

Anyway I had the chance to go and speak at the National Trails Conference that is being held in Chattanooga. GIS is making enough headway into everything that they had a lot of people that wanted an overview of ArcGIS. They had a mixup with the normal guy who does this and asked if I could come in and do the workshop. Ten years ago if you asked me to speak for four hours I would have had a coronary. Now it’s hard to stop in four hours. That’s the bad thing about workshops for me – knowing when and where to stop. I can’t explain ArcGIS in four hours. I can’t explain anything in four hours.

The conundrum hit me when I started speaking or actually it’s been hitting me for quite some time.  I’m an ESRI Certified/Authorized Trainer. I’m an ESRI Business Partner. I’m a business sponsor of URISA. I can teach the Open Source URISA Workshop. I’m also a GISP. My problem is turning into what /how do I answer certain things.

Problems started immediately at the workshop. People started asking questions. Good questions. Questions of a GIS nature and not so much questions about ArcGIS. How do I get my data on the web? How do I convert my GPS file from my Garmin Unit? How do I create a profile of my trail? What constitutes GIS data? Where does data come from…?

In starting this business I had a few goals. Two of them were become an ESRI Business Partner and become an ESRI Trainer.  I attained those goals. The fun started earlier this year when I became more heavily involved in GA URISA. I taught a workshop on Open Source GIS Software. I knew about Open Source ( I use Ubuntu. I ditched Microsoft Office for Open Office). I knew about Open Source GIS software (GRASS, QGIS, etc) before the workshop but I hadn’t used it. In order for me to teach it I needed to use it and I have. I like it.I like the history behind it. I like the fact that just about all the commercial GIS software have toes in the Open Source World.

The whole thing about Open Source GIS Software is that it’s standards based. It’s not flavored towards a particular vendor. A WMS is a WMS. Things work (not perfectly all the time). As a GISP I should give the best answer possible. My conundrum: what if it’s not an ESRI answer. I really wished the workshop had been an introduction to GIS. I would have felt better about giving it. We covered the basics of ArcGIS from adding data, symbology and plotting. I need to change a bit on what I did – I tried to cram too much into four hours. Probably out of the four hours we spent an hour talking about data and GIS Issues.

One gentleman wanted to share out his trail data with users. My suggestion was Open Street Map. One wanted to convert GPX files. My suggestion DNR Garmin, GPS Babel, or Quantum GIS.  How do we put a map on a web page? Geoserver, Open Layers, MapServer, ArcGIS Server. There wasn’t one answer to fit – but a lot of answers that would work.

At the end of the workshop one of the guys came up and asked if I was an ESRI representative. I answered yes….then no. Then sorta yes since I am a Business Partner. Then sorta no since they most likely wouldn’t claim affiliation with me (I think).

What am I? I’m a GIS Guy who owns a company that will solve geospatial problems. In front of me I’m running ArcGIS 10. To my left I have PostGIS and Quantum GIS running. It makes me more capable. It makes me more deadly. It makes me better.

…but I do worry.

US State of the Map Conference 2010

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If you missed it – you just missed it.

On August the 14th – a little over two weeks ago – the  US State of the Map conference was held in Atlanta. It was excellent – I think it will be one of those events where I will say “I was there” 5 years from now.

OpenStreetMap has been one of those things I’ve had a hard time wrapping my head around. It took me months to get comfortable editing. Once I did I found it hard to stop. I’ve made more mistakes than I care to admit. I’m trying to decide now how to fix some attribution mistakes I made in adding data. I think I’ll have to take the “eat the elephant approach” to fix them – but they will get fixed.

The big thing that struck me about this conference was….well two things.

The first was how these guys (non-gis people) were doing in essence GIS work. They had the luxury of not being bothered by all the stuff I worry about – and because of that they made an excellent map. I’ll toss data if I think it is bad. I would rather have no data than bad data. It actually got me to think that maybe bad data isn’t really all that bad – no data is the problem. If you have nothing – you truly have nothing. Anything is better than nothing (in most cases). I really began to understand the term “Crowd Sourcing”.

Second – OpenStreetMap is changing. The idea behind GIS data is changing. I watched Learon Dalby stand up in front of a group of maybe 100 people and offer all the roads in Arkansas to OSM. Free. No License. No Nothing. Take them please. There was dead silence in the room. It was beautiful. In reality – what good does it do a state/county to collect data and then do nothing with it…except sell it…oh yeah and serve it out in a map over the internet. Give it away – give it to Google, give it to OSM……Make it available to the people. Learon’s reasoning…the New Madrid Fault. When it lets loose what will we use for the rescue? The data he has given away. Look at Haiti and what happened. There was no data for rescuers. The New Madrid earthquake will make Katrina look like it never happened.

I watched as a representative of the US Census made a case for using the map and the data and contributing back to the map. I watched as representatives from local US Gov’t made cases for using the map and the data and contributing back to it. I found it interesting that both talks centered around this approach. Use the data – contribute back. Not get the data and share it out from an overpriced server with a flex front end.

I found it to be more interesting to watch the people in the audience. People I thought would be really overjoyed at this – didn’t seem to be. It was interesting….possibly a bit telling as to the internal state of OpenStreetMap. I like the politics of mapping – it’s always been a guilty little pleasure. How do people react…how do they not react…..how good is your poker face. Mine is terrible. I guess that’s why I try to watch everyone else in the room.

So OSM is starting to serve whether it likes it or not as a…a National Map of sorts. A data repository. A place that data can be stored and shared. It wasn’t built for this and the concern was evident at the conference. What do you do? My gut feeling is the recent deal with MapQuest is going to result in a better backend for OSM. I really think Google should take notice. Google should help. After all – The opposite of “Do no Evil” is “Do all Good”…correct…maybe. This would be a good thing to do.

Anyway – I’m rambling a bit. It was an excellent conference. Oh yeah – the price for admission. $35 dollars.Yes. $35 dollars.

I watched OSM grow just a bit in the US. Actually I think it grew a lot in two days.

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