North River Geographic Systems Inc

Geospatial Problem Solving

address

Offline Editing Plugin: TN911 Project

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One of the weirder problems we had on moving the ESRI setup was editing the data. It wasn’t the normal “hey lets add an address” but it was tackling the idea of “We need to edit the data in the field”.

As it was explained “the way we did things”  was to drag the data out in the field with the editor because they were running a simple Arcmap/FBGDB. Now that we had moved to a Postgresql database I wasn’t keen on people “carrying the data out”. I preferred they connect to the database and edit it like civilized folk.

That is a problem because the county is rural and connections are sketchy and all of that led back to the idea of “Take a copy of the data with you”. We had a mobile solution but nothing making my life easier.

There is a plugin that originally caused much angst and it is called the OfflineEditing Plugin. It’s seriously the most no-thrills thing you will find in QGIS.

At one point in the early stages we had a lot of errors and I couldn’t figure out why. We have an ID attached to each feature that never changes. The client had discovered the plugin and it would let you check data out and edit it and check it back in. Which was what we wanted to happen…..except back when 3.0 was brand new we had a lot of things change unexpectedly. I had a trigger setup that added the primary key to the features ID. So data would come out. Data would go in and between the triggers and functions the ID would change. To the client this looked like a great solution. The intern thought it was awesome. The guy watching things change in the database didn’t have much joy.

I’ve not touched it since 3.2 or 3.4 in QGIS was out.

I’m running a “beta” (3.17) copy of QGIS at the moment. So I built a quick database and decided to play. It checks your data out and you then have a seamless offline dataset stored in a geopackage (the original data is in a postgresql database). I check it out and edit and check it back….and……

It worked. ID’s were respected. Sequences were maintained. I added data and checked data in and Edit Dates and Edit Times were also saved (at the time of check-in). Since I checked the entire database out and checked it in things I didn’t work on received a new edit date. Which – I think there is a way around that but that goes beyond the 1 hour test today. Which – given the 2+ years since I’ve touched it this plugin may have been working fine for a bit.

So what does this mean? Well – you can take your laptop and check your data out and go into the field. AWESOME IT’S VERSIONED….well not in the way ESRI versions anything so you will overwrite some data if you aren’t careful. It does make this setup a little more flexible although I’d rather toss this into a mobile app and only worry about the things we need to worry about – in other words if you’re working on addressing in a neighborhood I only care about that neighborhood. Which means I’d probably split that data out – check it out – edit it – Check it in and then merge it into your original data. More work but safer. I like safe.

Overall – a much better experience with the Offline Editing Plugin this go around.

Fishbones for the TN NG911 Address Server

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It’s been a bit since I’ve talked about the TN address server. I’ve been slowly adding more functionality to it and some of that functionality has been more difficult than others.

If you’ve played in the address space any length of time you’ve heard of fishbones – and that is simply drawing a line from the address point to it’s “spot on the street”. Granted if you’ve ever done an addressing project from scratch (I had the joy to do that a few years ago in the Caribbean) it makes a lot of sense. You can quickly see problems where lines cross over other lines or where addresses have no lines at all.  Please read up here if you are so inclined.

There are probably multiple ways to do this  but I’ve gotten fishboning (if that’s a word) running in the TN NG911 Address Server. In PostGIS with less than 25 lines of SQL (and I’m quite proud of myself – 5 years ago I sucked at SQL. I still suck at it – but way less).  While it’s not quite ready for prime time it’s close – I’m just trying to figure out what I can pull out of this that makes the County’s job easier in the addressing realm. I’d love to move it to python at some point – and it’s probably doable (well I know it is – it’s just doing it).

Three things happen:

  1. I join the address point to the closest road using ST_LineLocatePoint
  2. Does the closest point fit the address range on the street (double bonus I also check left and right).
  3. Finish it up with ST_Makeline to join the spot closest to the street to the address point.

Which quickly shows something is wrong here:

Bonus for this one as is it’s not incredibly obvious what the problem is at first glance….UNTIL you see you have an addressing issue where you have 2, 3, and 4 on the same side of the street.

Hurrah for misspelled street names by leaving a W off

Anyway – there will be more announcements coming like this “running in the cloud” and other things. I’d like to get the fishbones running once a night or realistically run the one for the new address. Why not both probably. Anyway – pretty nice for an ArcView/FGDB Replacement.

Open Addresses

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I’m old. I think today I’ve talked about AMLs, watershed Analysis, digitizing tables, and now I’m going to cap that off with something completely different. I should just say I’m well seasoned instead of old.

I’m getting used to “open data”. You hear it more and more and as I complained in one of my last blog posts open is only great if you can find the data.

I’m never exactly sure what a “open data ecosystem” is or if I would know if I ran into it….BUT – the US Open Data Institute is putting up a bounty for US Addresses. Which makes me chuckle a bit – and not in a bad way. The data gets fed into the OpenAddresses Initiative which, had I been paying more attention, I believe spun out of addressing in OpenStreetMap. The address file is up to 500 something Mb (you can download it). Well this fixes the last problem of finding the data.

I’m not sure of the familiarity of the local government with GitHub. I’m working my way into it. I’m pretty sure if someone from a local Gov’t asked someone at OpenAddresses they would probably help aforementioned local gov’t format the data into an acceptable form. Given the work I did last year with addressing…I can’t imagine a coherent file of address data. BUT….if you look at the map it’s happening. If you notice the SE US is particularly bare. That should be fixed.

So – upload your addresses. Learn some json. Learn a little “Git off my lawn hub”. Contribute.

Foot Washing and an Address

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By day four it was a joke between myself and Laurie.

Laurie: “Are you taking pictures of me?”
Me: “Only your shoulder. If you were to pose elegantly I would get one of you”.

2013-03-28_15-11-19

Laurie: “What time will we finish today?”.
Me: “What time do you need us to be finished?”
Laurie: “There is foot washing at church tonight so I must be ready”.

We had almost been in the USVI a month and were just finishing the first study area. It was also the week before Easter. People were getting a bit nervous the closer we got to the Holiday. Holidays in the islands always need a bit of padding on either side – I think this one was turning into the four days of easter. Maybe five. Apparently it is a big deal to go camping also on the beach.

Also the idea of foot washing had me curious. I heard people calling it “Maundy Thursday“. So I asked Laurie what denomination he belonged to and he answered “Church of God.” Being a Chattanooga Native I immediately had to ask “So Have you been to Cleveland TN?”. Cleveland is home of the Church of God headquarters.

Laurie: “No No but I do want to go. We send people to the meeting every year and I haven’t gotten to go…yet”.

Maps are important. Location is everything.

Me: “Laurie do you know where Chattanooga is located? I’m 30 miles from Cleveland”.

He threw down all the bags and hugged me. “God has brought you to the Islands I AM SOOOO HAPPY”.

We finished up that day early and everyone left. We heard the final word of “please don’t work tomorrow”. Except we had one more street to do and that was done quickly and early enough no one noticed as we drove down the street. I think our quickest addressed street was on Good Friday.

It hasn’t quite been a year but I do miss the insanity of the islands.

April Georgia URISA Workshops to benefit Joe Bless.

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From the email grab bag! It’s too late for one of the workshops – not too late for the other. It’s never ever too late to donate.

Dear Georgia URISA members and friends,

In an effort to raise some much needed funding for Joe and his family, Georgia URISA is presenting two workshops to benefit the Bless family.  Building an Address Repository Using the FGDC Standard workshop will be held April 16th.  GITA SE has now donated a second workshop, Using AutoCAD Data in ArcGIS.   For both, we were able to get everything donated in terms of licensing, instructor time and classroom space, so 100% of the funds raised for this workshop will go directly to the Bless family to help them get through the challenges that they are now facing.   Special thanks go to Sara Yurman and Tripp Corbin for agreeing to teach the classes pro bono,  Natalie Culpepper for donating classroom space at the ESRI offices in Alpharetta, and Keri Brennan for donating the URISA workshop license for us to use at no cost.  This has all come together in a short period of time so that we can provide assistance in a timely manner to Joe.  Please take this opportunity to leverage some great training at an affordable cost while helping out one of our colleagues in his time of need.

A fund is also set up for you to give directly to the Bless family.  Here is the link to the donation page:

https://fundly.com/aiding-the-bless-family.  Every dollar helps them to buy clothes for their children, food, and to repair the house so that they can move back home.  If you would rather to donate time, then rest assured that construction helpers are not going out of style any time soon.   Contact me at President@gaurisa.org, and I can connect you with their friend who is the contractor for the repairs.  

Visit http://gaurisa.org for more info!