Bridging the Gap Between the GeoWeb and GIS is developing IIGLU

What is the IIGLU product? (The final Product Post, not the last ever blog post)

2011-11-11T17:25:00.012Z

IIGLU is more than just a piece of software!

Geographical Information Systems are hard to use – IIGLU makes them easier.

IIGLU stands for Interactive Integrated Geospatial Learning and Understanding.

This is a framework for teaching geospatial information concepts to learners outside the discipline of GIS. So how will IIGLU work for you?

Are you a teacher, lecturer or geospatial expert?

You will first need to develop a Use Case which will help your target audience understand geospatial concepts. Click HERE to see some examples – please feel free to make use of these yourself.
Once you’ve done this, you will need to build this use case into a e-learning scenario (the software environment is in alpha phase of development an will launch at the end of FEB 2012). This is a little like writing a script for a play – see HERE for examples of the preparation process and HERE for a video of how to build the scenario using the IIGLU tools.
The final part of your work is to bridge the gap between your scenario and a real GIS environment – you do this via the Wiki. Click HERE to see some examples of how.

Are you a learner new to geospatial / digital mapping?

We’ve developed a decision tool to help you find out where to start – click HERE to see how it works.

Links in the decision tool will take you to an e-learning environment, where you will be able to interact with maps, videos and text and learn how GIS concepts can be applied in your discipline. Click HERE to see a video of the e-learning environment

If you want to find out how to do the things you’ve learned about in a GIS software package such as ArcGIS, you can follow the links to the Wiki – click HERE for some examples.

Next Steps:

IIGLU is in Alpha development phase at the moment, with an expected roll out in Spring 2012.

Thoughts on how the IIGLU e-learning environment can be further developed in the Future

2011-11-10T20:46:00.014Z

For the project team it feels like IIGLU is only just getting started and what we have developed is a proof of concept e-learning environment which we think has great potential. We have identified a couple of ideas for future development, which include: Within the e-learning software we are developing each learner interaction with the map window is currently being recorded by the software and stored in a database - we call this recording of tutorial states. This has potential in 2 directions:

Delivering Feedback as Part of a Game Environment. Users will be able to step through the tutorials and as they complete tasks the system will deliver personalised feedback based on how successfully they completed it. This will be achieved via the use of a weights matrix (defined during user testing) that stores a tolerance ratio, which is the difference between the tutorial state of the teachers actions and the state of the learners interactions. So if the teacher writing the scenario asks the student to create a buffer that is 10m from the point of interest and the user types 15m they will be given points for drawing a buffer but not full points because the distance was wrong.
Tutorial State Tracking & Usability Analysis for Indepth User Understanding: The recording of user interactions with the map tutorial state will enable us to explore how users are interacting with the tutorials and inform further usability analysis and understanding.

Extend tutorials to include more geospatial concepts: The e-learning environment is not replicating a desktop GIS but provides a facility for exploring geospatial concepts without the complex interaction functionality of a GIS. With this in mind there is scope to expand the tutorials which currently focus on the question "how do I make a map" to questions such as "how do I collect my data?", "how do I store my data?", "how do I analyse my data?"

Integrate external data repositories automatically into the spatial database: Currently teachers can upload data, in the form of KML files. which as part of the server side of the system are stored in a spatial database (POSTGRE SQL) a future extension to this would be enable users to automatically select data /upload from higher education repositories such as DIGIMAP, ShareGeo, UK Boarders

Project Blog Posts - Table of Contents

2011-11-10T19:01:00.021Z

Development of our Product - IIGLU

11/what-is-iiglu-product-final-product.html: Product description of IIGLU framework
11/iiglu-elevator-pitch.html: Elevator Pitch for IIGLU framework
02/project-plan-post-5-of-7-project-team.html: Project team
11/iiglu-our-logo.html : Developing a brand for our product
11/thoughts-on-how-iiglu-e-learning.html: Futures ideas for development of the e-learning environment
09/iiglu-how-usable-will-it-be.html: Discussion on how usable will the e-learning component of the IIGLU framework be, with screen cast
08/development-update.html: Development update in the form of a screen cast
06/decision-time-google-maps-vs-openlayers.html :Discussion on which development environment we should use
05/g3-few-months-in.html: Progress report
02/project-plan-post-3-of-7-risk-analysis.html: Analysis of project risks
02/project-plan-post-2-of-7-benefits-to.html: Benefits of the project
02/beyond-g3-project.html: Thinking ahead about after the project
02/project-outline.html: Description of the G3 project

Understanding Users:

08/what-is-todays-equivalent-to-jon-snows.html: Thoughts on the modern day equivalent of the John Snow Map
08/open-geo-health-workshop.html : Exploring issues of GIS in Health Care
05/if-gis-were-language.html: User interviews raised the question of whether you need to understand the language of GIS to grasp map making?
05/importance-of-knowing-location.html: User Interviews with stressed the importance of teaching non technical disciplines the power of knowing a location - which can be digitally mapped
04/gis-not-spss.html: Undergraduate consider SPPS and GIS to be the same quantitative skillset
03/urban-design-user-expert-interview.html: Summary of user interview using a Word Cloud
03/congratulate-me-im-data-scientist.html: Thinking about new roles as data scientists
02/background-narrative-for-g3-bridging.html: Summary of our typical user , a use case

Understanding User Interactions with Geographic Information and GIS

/07/just-quick-pointer-to-recording-of-my.html : Presentation of eye tracking experiments given at State of The Map, Vienna.
07/gis-are-still-hard-to-use-interface.html : Discussion on notoriety of desktop GIS and how difficult they are to use
07/state-of-map-presentation.html : Summary of the Presentation given at State of The Map
05/moving-search.html: Example of the Eye Tracking Experiments
05/child-of-ten-standard-of-user-interface.html: discussion on usability from the perspective of a child of 10.

Teaching and Learning Geographic Information

11/yes-it-is-possible-to-do-phd-in-gis.html : Claire's thoughts on Spatial is Special
10/what-makes-spatial-special-my-kates.html: Kate's thoughts on Spatial is Special
07/reflective-teaching-practice-2-do-i.html : Thoughts on teaching spatial databases
07/we-asked-readers-of-blog-to-identify.html: Results of questionnaire posted on blog asking about prioritising geographic concepts for new learners
06/metaphor-for-introducing-teaching-map.html: Using metaphors to teach map projections
06/reflective-teaching-practice-do-i-need.html: Thoughts on teaching map projections
05/is-gis-discipline-or-inter-discipline.html: Thoughts on the state of GIS as a discipline
05/quick-question-on-geographic-concepts.html: Questionnaire post on blog asking readers how they would prioritise geographic concepts for new learners
05/important-geographic-and-cartographic.html:
02/representations-of-scale.html: Thoughts on use of scale in scenario development

IIGLU - The Elevator Pitch!

2011-11-10T10:05:00.014Z

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are hard to use – IIGLU makes it easier. IIGLU is an interactive online framework to support learning and teaching of geographic and GIS concepts.

If you want to make a map for the first time OR are interested in teaching students/new learners how to make a digital map with existing data - IIGLU will support you through the process.

For teachers, lecturers and geospatial experts

IIGLU helps you to develop a use case to describe the characteristics of your learners and identify their learning needs. You can develop and build e-learning scenarios for students to play back. Supporting students learn geospatial concepts without worrying about the complex interactions required of a desktop GIS. Finally to bridge the gap between the e-learning scenarios and a real desktop GIS package a wiki enables you to share your knowledge.

For new learners of geospatial/ digital mapping

IIGLU helps you learn how to make a map for the first time - you can use a decision support tool to guide your mapping choices. The IIGLU e-learning environment allows you to interact with maps, videos, text and images usng examples from specific disciplines to walk you through the conceptual framework of digital mapping. Finally you can apply your learning to desktop GIS using the knowledge base on the IIGLU wiki.

IIGLU - our logo

2011-11-03T14:03:00.006Z

IIGLU is more than just a piece of software. IIGLU stands to Interactive, Integrated, Geographic, Learning and Understanding. It represents the result the of work the JISC G3 project has been conducting over the last month. We have been developing a framework for teaching geographical information concept to learners from outside the discipline.

We came up with the name as a take on the word Igloo because it is made of large building blocks which represent the steps of understanding in our framework. As you complete each step you build your understanding of the concepts that underpin digital mapping (desktop and web based). Also an igloo is sort of shaped like a globe, and this project is about geography and digital mapping so we wanted to incorporate a globe into the design.

As part of the frame work we are developing a tool to support new learners : for more information have a look at the post : an IIGLU is born.

Hope you like it!

Yes, it is Possible to do a PhD in GIS without including any maps (or, what makes spatial speical - Claire's view)

2011-11-02T10:37:00.001Z

Kate's post (below this one) provides a very good insight into what makes spatial special - for her, a "picture is worth a 1000 words". When we were discussing the post, however, I thought I would also propose a complementary view. I guess my equivalent sentence would be "you may not need a map at all". Indeed, for me "spatial" would also include these:

and also these:

Working with spatial data offers a different way to understand your data that you couldn't achieve in a simple spreadsheet or text-based approach. In addition to that, 'spatial' for me goes beyond traditional geographical scales. You can look for different patterns, and answer questions such as 'what lies within 30km of here?' or 'what is next to this building?' or 'I want to build a new underground tunnel - who owns the land above me?', 'How can I get from A to B on the Underground?' If I had to list what makes spatial special, the list would focus more on what you can do with data in a GIS that you can't do elsewhere, which might include:

topological operations - e.g. containment, intersection, adjacency, meets, touches
networking operations - e.g. shortest path, travelling salesman
metric operations - e.g. distance, area, volume
topological consistency analysis - e.g. does the data have holes, slivers, undershoots and overshoots

and potentially others such as pattern detection, statistical analysis, spatio-temporal analysis and so forth. The results of this analysis may be presented as a map, but may be given in another form - a journey planner gives you a list of waypoints for your route, the population within a London Borough may be given as a number in a report.

If you think about it, Kate's view and mine have quite a bit in common, and probably reflect our different specialisations - amongst other things, Kate is a Usability and Human Computer Interaction expert, whereas my work focusses more on databases, 3D GIS and back-end programming. No doubt there are many more answers to the 'what makes spatial special' question too.

And for those of you who are interested - my PhD was about performance of topological analysis in 3D GIS. Here's an example of the visual output:

Images from:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Tube_map_1908-2.jpg
http://activerain.com/image_store/uploads/1/9/9/6/2/ar126056378926991.jpg
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQJvI_BjNgt2QSkemv5E7X7Nparv2mb1Bpvt52aErg2C-bnsRoE0w
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSbpUkXUCwxAaA6vWC04xVsAcpofaC9XbZYjF6BoPFG4OBaa7_O

What Makes Spatial Special – my (Kate’s) perspective

2011-10-14T10:11:00.012+01:00

When I started on our master’s degree in 2003 at University College London the first week was an induction week. We were introduced to each lecturer in the department (Prof Muki Haklay, Prof Paul Longley, Jeremy Morley and Dr John Illife) and were giving an introductory series of lectures called spatial is special – I still remember them reasonably well. The notion of spatial is special is one of the first discussions included in GIS texts and introductory lectures. So, let’s consider the conventional reasons for why spatial is special, they include:

Geographic data is multi dimensional
There are lots of it – it is voluminous
It can be represented at multiple scales
It requires a projection system to turn a 3D real world into an 2D computer model or paper map
Special analysis techniques are required – nearest, furthest etc
It can be laborious and time consuming to collect, process and analyses
It is expensive and complex to maintain up to date geographic data
I t is cross –disciplinary in nature and can be used to link disciplines

(adapted from Longley, Goodchild, Maguire & Rhind (2011). Geographical Information Systems and Science, John Wiley and Sons: Chichester)

This is the technical response, but there is an emotive reason behind why spatial is special, and for me it is related to the age old adage “A picture tells a 1000 words”. Here in Portsmouth I teach to undergraduates in lectures with 200 students. I see my job as inspiring enthusiasm for exploring issues in human geography and I do this by finding relevant maps, images and TED talks to bring subjects/sub-disciplines to life.

For reasons unbeknown to me, there is a consensus amongst our undergraduate cohort that they don’t like GIS/ Geospatial data/ making maps. This bothers me, I am a map geek and I hope to inspire them to change their mind. So, even if the students don’t remember my name, they know me as the one that uses a map(s) in every lecture. Why do I do this? Good maps bring abstract concepts, theory and data to life. They help stimulate the imagination and aid knowledge production. They simplify and generalise complex issues in ways that members of the public and new learners can understand. It is inconceivable for me to imagine giving a lecture on migration without the aid of maps to illustrate movement.

How do I benchmark a successful lecture with 200 students? Students are not fiddling with their phones, whispering to each other, falling asleep or slouched in their seats. If they are engaged, attentive and interested it shows on their faces and in their posture. Last year, I remember giving a lecture on the subject an “Introduction to GIS and health”. There are so many powerful maps that can be used in this subject area, examples include:

John Snow’s map of Cholera
Changes in life expectancy as you travel from tube stop to tube stop
Patterns of malaria across Africa
Sptaial-temporal maps of population differences
Noise mapping in low income neighbourhoods of London
Mapping Internally Displaced People (IDP) in Haiti
Cartograms of population to reveal inequalities

When such maps are used in lectures to illustrate and communicate concepts and bring geographic data to life – the reward is a positive student reaction and a realisation that maps are useful. This is particularly evident if lectures reflect real world issues in the news. This lecture was delivered this year at the time of the during this lecture we also discussed the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan – highlighting health issues of such a crises and then looked at how different maps and mapping hacks of the incident could be used to explore at risk population groups. This type of linking between maps and real world issues bring to the fore the potential of geospatial applications for decision-making and problem solving issues in human geography.

IIGLU - how usable will it be?

2011-09-12T14:22:00.004+01:00

By now if you have been following the blog you will know that the team are interested in the usability of geospatial technology and that we are developing an e-learning environment for teaching and supporting the learning of geospatial concepts. Hence, the blog post an IIGLU is born. IIGLU is the name of our tool and stands for Interactive, Integrated, Geospatial, Learning and Understanding. We like the name IIGLU because in its other sense an igloo is a construction that uses building blocks to slowly build up and develop - rather like the teaching geospatial concepts where complex ideas are broken down into smaller parts. IIGLU has two components one where teachers can record their tutorials and one where the students access the tutorials and play them back.

In a previous blog post I discussed the Child of 10 usability standard. The idea behind which is that a child of 10 can do something in 10 minutes. We have considered this standard throughout the development of the IIGLU application. What you see in the sneeky preview is prior to the CSS and the interface design scripting. Patrick, our developer is working on this as we speak.

For students using IIGLU it will be straightforward and intuitive to use without requiring any help documentation or instructions. Students should be able to log in, select a scenario or geographic concept and then work their way through the tutorial steps using a simple next or back button. Simplicity is the underlying premise. We have placed priority on the user friendly development of this component.

We have also given priority to the geospatial concepts and knowledge building process and not to the complex interactions with the map. Therefore, 3 types of multimedia are currently supported: HTML, Map, and You Tube Video. So there is this great video from the TV series West Wing all about the distortions that result from map projections: it is the perfect way to introduce new learners to map projections (see previous post on reflections of teaching map projections). The e-learning environment will enable complex geospatial concepts to be presented without the frustrating interactions required with learning with a desktop GIS.

Percentage of Older Population

2011-08-31T10:24:00.003+01:00

An IIGLU is born, or a project development and brand update

2011-08-25T17:26:00.005+01:00

This is the first one of the overdue development activity updates from the JISCG3 project. I have been busy over this summer with the development of the web interface, which we now christened IIGLU. The idea of IIGLU comes from “Interactive Integrated Geospatial Learning and Understanding” (to be honest, the second I only comes so we could grab the most popular domains!). This name is a take on the word Igloo, which is made of large building blocks representing the different steps of geographical understanding in our tutorial. Conveniently, an igloo is also sort of shaped like a globe/earth, returning the focus to gegography!

With the name set then, we are now ready to release a first demo of the tool, which I quickly put together this afternoon and recorded in this screencast:

As you can see from the video, we now have a functionally complete web-environment, where registered users can create new interactive tutorials, and classify them in different overarching scenarios. Each tutorial consists of a series of 'states', using different mediums such as rich text, videos, and most importantly an interactive web-mapping environment. The idea with the states is that we can provide in each tutorial a set of anchor points to which a learner can return if they get lost, all the while preserving a rich interactive user experience, especially when it comes to the web-mapping. Further development of functionality will focus on the inclusion of more spatial functionalities, as well as thematic formatting, to make this a much more rich environment encompassing a wide range of geographic concepts.

There are still plenty of rough edges to trim, and we need to put a nice face on the functional interface. We have just completed the design of a website logo, and will attack the styling of the User Interface this week. So hopefully, in a couple weeks time, I will be able to give a much more polished presentation of the system!

Technical Development details (warning, geoweb-geekiness ahead!!):

The technical design of the tool consists of two major components:

Server-side framework (we used GeoDjango, a spatially aware web development framework as the basis). The server manages the user and tutorial creation, editing and management, and serves all the tutorial data and connected spatial datasets for use by the client in a standards compliant manner (GeoJSON), with all the data residing on a PostgreSQL + PostGIS database.
Client framework (developed in JavaScript/JQuery) enables a rich user interaction experience, with a dynamic and fast guidance of the user through the tutorials, and efficient tracking of the user state and progress through the tutorial.

You might notice that we use OpenLayers as our mapping library, which slightly contravenes the previous conclusions we arrived at in this project regarding appropriate web-map API's. These conclusions reached previously about ease of development and deduplication of effort, achieved by reusing legacy codebase from different projects, were rendered irrelevant after switching to a structured web development framework, ie (Geo)-Django, and enabled us to use OpenLayers instead to take advantage of greater capabilities and openess of this library.

What is today’s equivalent to Jon Snow’s Map?

2011-08-10T11:36:00.004+01:00

The question that was raised by James Reid from JISC during the workshop I was leading at the open geo health event. I would be interested to hear what the readers of this blog think? The workshop was discussing “why GIS is under-utilised in the NHS?” The term GIS in this sense is probably better replaced by location or spatially enabled technology as it encompasses the extent and breadth of contemporary desktop/web/mobile technology.

The question, “What is today’s equivalent to Jon Snow’s Map?” has resonated with me and got me thinking. To consider the answer to this question – we must first understand why the map of cholera deaths is so important: Here are my initial thoughts:

Example of an early GIS – on paper with different layers (pumps, deaths, location of water companies and places of interest such as brewery/ poor house/ plague burial plot).
Represented a paradigm shift in thinking related to cholera transmission – by providing an evidence base for the theory that Cholera is transmitted by water and is not air-borne.

Is there a modern health mapping equivalent? In the world of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and humanitarian aid for which health is a component, I would propose that the crowd-sourced mapping of Hati has had considerable impact with a group of volunteers creating geographic data by tracing up-to-date satellite imagery and using the resulting data to develop applications for use by crisis responders.

In the field of Health, there are two other applications that come of the fore: Health Maps and EpiCollect. Health Maps began in 2006 and aggregates content from resources such as the World Health Organisation to provide real-time information on emerging infectious disease outbreaks. The recently developed EpiCollect is a mobile application tool that facilitates the collection of user content via questionnaires or surveys. Both of these initiatives are useful but whether they are the modern day equivalent of John Snow – I am not sure.

Open, Geo, Health Workshop: GIS in the NHS

2011-08-08T20:32:00.004+01:00

I am leading a workshop at the Open, Geo Health Workshop in Edinburgh - #gecohealth. This is a JISC organised event.

I am hoping to encourage a discussion related to the future role of GIS in the health (NHS). As a researcher not only in usability I have a special interest in Health and Health inequalities.

It has long been my belief that GIS is under-utilised in the NHS. So whilst there are lots of new opportunities for Geo and Health - we need to identify what really needs to change to embed practice within the NHS. Whilst now more than ever before GIS is more affordable and more accessible with lots of useful data that can be applied to the health care setting - many barriers (social, political, technical, economical) still exist. The technical merits and low cost of Open Source Software are not enough to drive a georevolution within the NHS.

I see a number of the geospatial projects JISC have recently funded as having a future potential to aid decision-making in health. One of which is our project. Once the G3 project software is launched in October, I will develop a scenario around Geographic Concepts and health inequalities and hope that it will prove useful to health care professionals.

Reflective Teaching Practice (2) - Do I need to Know There is Such a Thing as an R-Tree Index?

2011-07-31T15:41:00.000+01:00

I've recently been working on a paper about teaching database and spatial database concepts to GIS graduate students, using a self-paced tutorial, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and Open Data (PostgreSQL/PostGIS, QGIS and Open Street Map). Once of the aims when setting up the tutorial in 2010 was to open the material to other students - i.e. to make it available to non-GIS specialists. At the time, I didn't realise that that would be exactly what this JISC G3 project is aiming to do to but now I find myself faced with a similar question to the one raised previously on this blog:

Once we get to including material about Spatial Databases (in an advanced version of G3), what content is relevant to non-GIS specialists?

Here are my first thoughts:

What We Should Include:
I think that any material relating to databases should certainly explain their advantages - concurrent access, central storage, security, single source of truth. We should also include information about data types - text, number, date, and in particular the spatial data type - how to store points, lines and polygons in the database. Connecting the GIS to the database and viewing and editing the data is also fundamental.

R-Tree Index (from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-tree)

As a more advanced topic, I would also include at least some SQL querying in the material - with links to further information, and some information on indexing and spatial indexing. These days, students are sometimes dealing with quite large datasets and I think it will be useful for them to know how to improve the performance of their system. So, for me, the R-Tree should be there (yes, it is complicated so perhaps we can leave out the detail?)

What Should Be Left Out:

E-R Diagram (from http://en.wikpedia.org/wiki/E-R_diagram)

I think that for most students there is no need to include concepts of Entity-Relationship diagrams. Similarly, conceptual, logical and physical design and concepts related to normalisation should be excluded. Most of the JISC G3 users will be using data that has already been modelled, and very few of them will be collecting data from scratch and therefore require tutoring on how to model the real world in a database.

As you can see, overall I found myself erring on the side of 'include', most likely as I am an "expert" in the subject and for me all of it is important. I suspect that this dilemma will face us again and again as this project grows and more material is added. This also highlights the importance of the use-cases and talking to end-users when developing this type of material.

(With thanks to Kate Jones for the re-use of the title of one of her blog posts.)

State of the Map EU - Presentation

2011-07-16T13:18:00.003+01:00

Just a quick pointer to the recording of my presentation here at SOTMEU. So, far a great and vibrant conference, and our research into usability issues in OpenStreetMap was well received. I was particularly pleased by the positive reaction from a lot of conference attendants to our work, it seems that most core community members are well aware of the issues we raised, and recognise the need for improvement.

This small research project from us then represents the first of an ongoing effort to better embed and implement a usability engineering culture in this great project!

GIS are still hard to use! The interface design of a desktop GIS ensures they are NOT easy to learn....

2011-07-12T12:46:00.005+01:00

Desktop Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are not user friendly they require time and effort to learn and remember. They are not intuitive and for new learners the first time they are faced with a GIS can be overwhelming experience, where do you start? These difficulties are nicely summarised in the user interviews I have been conducting.

One of our specialist users described their first and so far only encounter with a GIS. They were looking to just explore what the software could do – without being able to dedicate any real time to learning it. They successfully downloaded some geographically referenced data from Digimap (it was actually MasterMap). They then started the GIS programme and spent 5 to 10 minutes trying to open the data that had just obtained, in that time they did not succeed to open the data so they gave up and made their map in Photoshop. They found GIS too difficult to use. From a usability perspective this represents an issue in learnability. The design of the desktop GIS meant that the new learner failed in the first hurdle- adding existing geographical data to a map.

The notion that desktop GIS are hard to use is not new. More than 15 years ago in 1995 Traynor and Williams discussed the issues of usability in GIS presenting a paper with the title, "Why Are Geographical Information Systems hard to use?" at the annual ACM conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Today, desktop GIS are still just as difficult to use!! The interface design really does not make them easy to learn. Will this change as the development of VGI web-mapping interfaces progresses since they rely on contributions by the general public?

Open Street Map: State of the Map presentation

2011-07-12T11:00:00.006+01:00

Just a quick note from the JISCG3 team, Kate and Myself we will be presenting our usability research on VGI editors at the the 1st European State of the Map Conference of the OpenStreetMap project held 15th-17th July 2011 in Vienna, Austria.

The talk will draw upon our previous work in evaluating the usability of the Potlatch editing environment, an online data editing interface for OpenStreetMap.

This presentation presents one of the first systematic investigations into the usability of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) editor front-ends, using established best practice in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research. The two front-ends evaluated are Potlatch 2 and Google Map Maker, to present contrasting views of the user experience of two major VGI projects. Two user groups with no prior experience of VGI contribution were instructed to enrol and contribute data to both VGI projects, and their interaction with the two services were monitored using a mobile eye tracker and video screen capture software in a computer lab environment. The resulting data was analysed to reveal how users interact and experience VGI editors, as well as highlight deficiencies and differences between Potlatch 2 and Google Map Maker. The results from this research project are a set of recommendations for the future development of these editors, specifically relating to improving the user experience and ease of use of VGI editors.

The talk will be recorded and hopefully put online after, I will link on this blog to it as soon as possible afterwards.

Hope to see you there, and looking forward to the discussions!

Prioritising Geographic Concepts for Teaching New Learners GIS: results from our blog poll

2011-07-05T11:24:00.009+01:00

We asked readers of the blog to identify the priority of teaching certain Geographic Concepts to new users whilst quite a few people viewed the questions only 21 readers completed the poll. Firstly, I would like to thank the blog readers who completed our quick survey. The table below summarises the concepts that we used in the poll. A graph at the bottom of the blog post shows the results.

Geographic Concept	Details	Example
Beginning mapping	importance of location	zoom, pan, layers
Geographic data modelling	raster versus vector	Points, Lines, Polygons and Pixels....
Cartographic theory	fundamental principles of cartography	simplicity, harmony, no map junk ...
Data generalisation	introduction of types of and need for generalisation	Simplification, Selection, Omission, Displacement, Aggregation...
Data classification	introduction to data classification rules and type of classification	Natural Breaks, Quintiles, Geometric Progressions ...
Mapping conventions	elements that enhance user understanding of the map	scale bar, legend, north arrow, symbology....
Simple spatial analysis	introducing simple analysis computed using GIS	buffer, distance, overlay....
Uncertainty in geographic data	Impact of uncertainty on data	Modifiable Areal Unit Problem, ecological fallacy

With such a small N we do not have a any statistically valid results but what we do have is some useful thoughts that support the thinking of the project team and the development of the scenarios and resulting site development.

We asked readers to prioritise the concepts based on a linear scale of 1 to 5, where a score of 1 represented a concept that was not relevant to new learners and a score of 5 signified a must teach concept for new users. Using these values, I have calculated a quick and dirty Score of Importance for each of the priorities, see the graph at the bottom. This score alongside the free text comments helps us to identify quickly what our readers think are the most important concepts to teach new learners of GIS.

Results :

All of the concepts are relevant for new users of GIS to learn – but the timing of when they are introduced is what is most important
The most important concept is associated with beginning mapping and why spatial is special
New users need to be aware of the issues that result because GI models are simply an abstraction of reality and they need to be familiar with how reality is represented using data models.
Principles and practical cartography were rated (slightly) more important to teach before introducing simple spatial analysis and uncertainty
The details of datums and map projections are beyond the scope but it is important for users to recognise the internal bias that may result from a map projection

Metaphor for Introducing & Teaching Map Projections: The world as a Piece of (Digital) Graph Paper

2011-06-29T10:33:00.004+01:00

The ins and outs of projection systems can be complicated to introduce to new learners of GIS – and how much do you really need to know to create your first map? Over a coffee in the sunshine (it was hard work teaching summer school in Malta) Claire and I were discussing the question: How do we introduce map projections to new learners?

It turns out we both start with a demonstration. Claire uses her fist to represent the globe and her other hand to represent the piece of paper that is then wrapped around the globe (somewhat like the rock, paper scissors game). I on the other hand use a Clementine and a piece of paper – the paper crumples resulting from wrapping the paper around the Clementine represent the distortions that occur during the projection process. We both then go on to talk about grids etc...

Both of these illustrate the problem of modelling a complex reality in 2D. So if new learners imagined that a giant piece of graph paper is wrapped around the globe and that each place on earth is then marked on the graph paper it is possible to visualise the fundamentals of digital mapping.

The map window in a GIS is in essence a sheet of digital graph paper. One possibility is to harness this metaphor in our tutorials. Projection systems can be introduced simply within our scenarios, perhaps by activating and showing the grid (ie the sheet of graph paper) and asking the user to observe the coordinates changing as the mouse is moved horizontally and vertically.

It is important to understand the basics if you are using data that is not GIS ready. For example, one of the practical’s I have designed for the International GIS summer school at the University of Malta that I teach on uses a data set of road traffic accidents in England (from the UK open data initiative). The text file contains the X,Y location of each accident as an attribute field. In order to create point data of each accident the students need to know:

1) Why there is such a thing as a coordinate system?
2) How to identify fields containing coordinate data in the data set?
3) What coordinate system the fields represent?
4) How you can view the coordinates change as you move the mouse over your map

Reflective Teaching Practice: Do I need to know there is such a thing as a map projection?

2011-06-19T13:33:00.005+01:00

Myself and Claire have just arrived back from the Island of Malta, where we both participate in the International Summer School in GIS held at the University of Malta. We both design and deliver lecture material targeted at professionals who are discovering how GIS maybe useful.

We were discussing our observations of the students and how they learn and interact with the GIS software and its theoretical principles.

One subject up for debate was, "do new learners of GIS and its concepts need to know immediately about projections?" There is a tendency to be puritanical about what concepts new learners of GIS need to understand putting aside this tendency, our conclusion was: “Not necessarily”.

Let me explain. Most everyday users of Bing Maps, Google Maps etc interact with the map quite happily without needing to know that a projection system makes it possible to create the digital representations of the world. The same can be said for users of navigation systems in cars or on phones.

Therefore, it is only natural that a new user of GIS, creating their first map using off the shelf Shape files or MapInfo Tabs (for example taken from Edina’s Digimap service), does not need their first interaction to introduce the complexities of coordinate systems that enable real world to be projected in 2 dimensions. It is only when their data they want to map is not GIS ready that they need to be introduced to a projection system.

Decision Time: Google Maps vs OpenLayers

2011-06-07T11:32:00.006+01:00

Last weekend I attended the 2011 edition of WhereCampEU, held this time in sunny Berlin. It was a great conference, and Kate and myself presented our recent work on geoweb usability at the conference, even though we haven't had a chance yet to do a comprehensive analysis of the user experiments data we collected. I will put online the presentation in due time. Some lively discussions ensued about the nature of OSM, differences between traditional GIS interfaces and neogeography applications, and to what extent it should conform to establish practice in terms of UI (established by Google with for example the Search Bar).

The second day came with a set of more advanced technical discussions, most notably a discussion session on differences between webmapping frameworks (nicely captured in this whiteboard). This discussion was of particular interest to the JiscG3 project, as we need to decide which webmapping framework to implement.

One of the first conclusions from the discussion was that altough there are other libraries, for most geoweb developers, the choice really comes down to Google Maps API vs Openlayers (on its own or inside a UI framework such as GeoExt or MapQuery). The conclusions from the discussion can be summarised under the following headings:

The documentation and code examples for OpenLayers, when compared to the Google Maps API documentation still leaves a lot to be desired. For example, the OpenLayers code documentation often leaves out important details regarding necessary options, which are hidden in an options object. And while the provided code examples are good at showing what can be achieved, they fail to guide the user through the architecture and development process necessary for the development of OpenLayers applications.
Some users felt that OpenLayers necessitates a much deeper understanding of GIS to be able to develop functionality than Google Maps API. I guess this goes hand in hand with the more advanced functionalities of OpenLayers, for example by supporting OGC services such as WFS and WMS.
OpenLayers was also criticised for its default UI elements, which are relatively primitive and unpolished in today's Web2.0 world.

I won't go into much detail here, as the discussion and its outcomes have been discussed by both people in the session, as well as members of the OpenLayers team.

For our project, the decision between OpenLayers or Google Maps API clearly presents a trade-off between the characteristics and benefits of both libraries, as well as practical resource considerations.

For OpenLayers speaks the ability to include different base maps, and the inclusion of a wide set of layers from different data sources. This openess comes with the price of increased complexity and development resources needed, and the issue of integrating and developing an coherent set of UI elements for our site.

The Google Maps API on the other hand presents perhaps a more restricted set of functionalities, precluding the easy integration of different basemaps at this stage. But the Google Maps API is easier to develop for, with an excellent documentation and help functions guiding developers through the architecture, examples and options for developing a web mapping application.

In the end, and through discussion in the team, the winning argument was the fact that we are making use of an existing code-base from a previous project, which was built on top of the Google Maps API. In practice for the JiscG3 project, both libraries would be suitable, and so the decision for the Google Maps API allows us to reuse the existing codebase as a solid and proven basis on which to minimise new development time, and focus on the new functionality needed for this project.

OpenLayers isn't completely out of the picture though, and provisions are being taken in the codebase to facilitate at a later stage the replacement of the web mapping libary, when more flexibility for example in terms of basemaps is needed.

Is GIS a Discipline or an Inter-Discipline?

2011-05-28T10:15:00.001+01:00

As a new lecturer, I am attending a Post Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education course. Although I'm only in my first year of the course, we were invited recently to attend a seminar held by the second year students, who are looking at curriculum development. As well as the interesting range of topics investigated, what struck me was the fact that all the topics could be directly relevant to research into Geographical Information Science education, in one way or another.

In particular, a discussion about the disciplinarity of Machine Learning struck a chord with me. To address the disciplinarity issue, my colleague started by showing a diagram of other disciplines he thought related to his field. My version, for GIS, would start with this:

but of course there are many more areas that could be included. A discipline can be defined as "a branch of knowledge, typically one studied in higher education" (http://oxforddictionaries.com/), so certainly GIS is a discipline in that sense, but it would be interesting to find out which other disciplines people feel contribute to GIS?

(Thanks to my fellow students for the concepts)

... A quick question on geographic concepts?

2011-05-25T18:04:00.009+01:00

Important Geographic and Cartographic Concepts for Beginners to GIS?

2011-05-25T17:30:00.005+01:00

I have identified a list of broad geographic and cartographic concepts that are being considered for inclusion into our tool that has begun development. On analysing the interviews with the expert users, in combination with my experience of introducing GIS topics to new users the following concepts are being prioritised.

Beginning mapping – the importance of location and scale
Geographic data modelling – how representations of reality are created with different GIS data models
Cartographic theory – fundamental principles of cartography that aid useful and usable maps to be produced
Data generalisation - introduction of types of data generalisation and why it is necessary
Data classification
Mapping conventions – elements that enhance user understanding of the map
Simple spatial analysis – introducing some simple of analysis that can be computed using GIS eg buffers and distance

If you have an opinion you can send us your thoughts via this quick questionnaire

Open Street Map: Moving the Search

2011-05-23T08:08:00.006+01:00

Last week Patrick blogged about usability experiments we were conducting with online editing tools for volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) - Open Street Map was the subject of the experiments.

His post : Usability and the GeoWeb - Don't make me think!

The post discussed is how usability of web GIS acts as a barrier to adoption. Eye tracking experiments we conducted showed how even the location of common functionality, such as "Search" impacts the user interaction and user experience.

Three days after the Patrick's original blog post, we have noticed that the search function for the OSM website (the object of our experiments) has moved location....this is an impact for our project.

We are really pleased that OSM were able to respond so quickly and we are delighted that our work is already having an impact for users of OSM.

The new location of Open Street Map search function is located at the top of the page were the users expect the search to be located. This is more in line with the F-pattern in which we view web pages. Whilst this is not the perfect location, it is much improved.

(watch this space there is more to follow.....)

Usability and the GeoWeb - Don't make me think!

2011-05-18T16:52:00.011+01:00

Hi, this is Patrick, the technical lead developer on the project, and I have put off blogging here for far too long. I hope that I can catch up with my other team members and write about some of the interesting issues I have encountered through this project.

One of the primary concerns in this project for me are barriers to adoption, ie. how we can make an easy to use, fun online environment for users to learn spatial concepts. This concern also motivated me to develop another research project looking at usability in OpenStreetMap, that I am currently working on, which has profound implications for the design of this project.

Altough OSM is thriving, 70% of visitors who open an account do not go on to make a single edit to OpenStreetMap. To investigate why this is the case, we analysed through eye tracking and screen capture ten OSM novices through their first experience registering, adding and editing information to OSM. You can catch a brief peak into the first results in another blog post I did on my personal research blog, at spatialknowledge.eu.

OSM is an interesting case study of geo web usability because of the fact that users do not simply consume geo data, but are actively engaged in creating and editing new geographic data, resulting in much more advanced spatial learning challenges, including different spatial data types (point, line, polygons), how to define attributes and ontologies, dealing with different data layers and even advanced GI concepts such as topology.

A basic example you can see in this video below, which highlights the importance of putting common web interaction elements where users expect them. In this case, the Search functionality's position is the last place the user is looking, when it is one of the most common used functions.

The finished research will highlight not only specific usability problems that the OSM project currently has in engaging and supporting their user community, but also give a fresh view of the way non expert GIS users approach and interact with spatial data consumption and creation. This research then should give this project a profound insight into how non-experts approach and understand geo data and concepts, and how this can be translated into usable and engaging interactions and interfaces.

Other JISC Projects

2011-05-14T18:00:00.002+01:00

If you are curious about the other projects in this funding stream, a good starting place is here: GECO Summary Description of jiscGeo Projects

G3 a Few Months In

2011-05-14T17:10:00.006+01:00

We’re now a few months in to the G3 project, and here’s the story so far:

- We’ve conducted and documented a number of in-depth interviews with members in our target groups of urban design, urban anthropology, history and environmental management.

- The interviews have been analysed, common themes and tasks identified, scenarios developed and then ‘translated’ into the language of GIS so that they can be implemented as teaching tools. We’re now looking at identifying data for each scenario.

- We’ve designed the end-to-end architecture of our scenario creation tool – this wasn’t as easy as a simple web site design, given that we want to build something extensible – i.e. that can grow as more scenarios are identified.

- We’ve set up our webserver, migrated a massive amount of existing reference code across, and started looking at the design of our scenarios from the end user perspective. We plan to use a step-by-step approach to allow our students to move through the learning process at their own page. The tool will validate that they understand the concepts as they go through.

- We’ve talked to a number of people involved in GIS teaching to identify how they approach introducing people from other disciplines to GIS.

So, we’d like to take the opportunity to say thanks to all the people who have participated in the project so far! We’ve promised most of you anonymity, but watch this space to see how your input has shaped the work.

If GIS were a Language......?

2011-05-11T19:23:00.003+01:00

As part of the annual GISRUK conference this year (which was held at Portsmouth, I organised an unprogramme session in the spirit of Where Camp. This is something new to the attendees of GISRUK but nevertheless it gave the project team the chance to introduce the project and debate some of the issues we have been engaging with as a team. One of the discussions centred on the idea that if GIS were a language – what would be the equivalent of saying, “hello, my name is Kate”.This is interesting because in one of my project interviews a participant discussed the langauage of GIS too.

The analysis of the interviews a have enabled me to build a list of geographic concepts that our scenarios will support but we are interested to know what your thoughts maybe...... Which geographic concept do you think is the starting point to learning a new language of GIS? In the not too distant future we will be posting a questionnaire to collate your opinions.

Importance of knowing location

2011-05-10T10:06:00.005+01:00

The user interviews are revealing many insights that as a GIS expert I take for granted. One of the interviewees revealed that just being able to maps of things they are interested in is a big thing for their field. We should not take for granted the simplicity and importance that just knowing about location means we can create a map.

So one of the first geographic concepts that we need to consider is that almost everything happens somewhere, and by knowing this where, we can build a map.

Child of Ten Standard of User Interface Design

2011-05-05T10:16:00.007+01:00

A useful benchmark in user interface design is the Child of Ten standard. This means that a child of ten should be able to learn to do something useful with the system within 10 minutes. This indicates that a system is “easy to use”. In 1998 Al Gore discussed this in the context of GIS and digital globes as cited by Goodchild his paper “the Use Case of Digital Earth” in 2008.

I do not know if this has actually been validated for digital globes such as NASA World Wind or GoogleEarth but from personal experience I am absolutely certain they are easier to use, easier to learn and easier to remember the functionality than proprietary desktop GIS.

In this project we aim to develop a useful and usable GeoWeb application for non experts and so this benchmark could be incorporated into the testing and development phase – can non-experts learn to do something in our application within 10 minutes? Something to consider.....

GIS not SPSS!

2011-04-26T19:51:00.003+01:00

My undergraduate dissertation students seem to run in the opposite direction if I suggest they use a GIS to explore their data. Why is this?

On discussion, it seems they consider GIS to equal numbers and statistics which they are afraid of. This is also a theme identified in the analysis of the user interviews I have been conducting. My interviewees, in the main, are not quantitative researchers with a little knowledge of GIS but think it could be potentially useful for their subject area. They are much more comfortable with using data that are non numerical in nature. This has got me thinking...

Do you have to a high degree of statistical literacy to “do GIS” ?
Does the idea that to "do GIS" you need to be good at mathematics act as a barrier to entry?
Is the idea true, to "do GIS" do you need to be good at mathematics?

Congratulate me - I'm a data scientist

2011-03-22T09:50:00.004Z

(And, if you are reading this blog, you might be one too).

David Flanders (at JISC, who fund the G3 project) has asked us to comment on a report about the O’Reilly Strata Big Data conference (the report can be found http://cottagelabs.com/strata-2011-review/) and to comment how we think that Big Data will impact our project. I was also lucky enough to attend a workshop on linked data last week (hosted by the British Computer Society and the UK Location programme). As I see it, there is a lot of overlap between these topics.

Firstly, what do I understand by ‘Big Data’ and ‘Linked Data’? Well, for me the words ‘Big Data’ refer to large datasets (multi-millions of elements). However, in the Strata report, ‘Big Data’ is defined in a broader context – it is about processing and managing data (especially large data) and gaining a competitive advantage from analyzing this data and combining it in new ways. ‘Linked Data’ also seeks to make new information from connections between individual elements of data – but in perhaps a much more defined way, using Universal Resource Indicators and Triples.

What strikes me about both ‘Big Data’ and ‘Linked Data’ is that they are two perspectives on the same problem – there is an amazing amount of information out there, and most of it is not stored in standard relational database format (tables, keys, constraints). The unstructured nature of the data makes it far more difficult to extract useful information, make links between datasets and generate new thinking from this data.

However, do ‘big data’ and ‘linked data’ really refer to new problems? Perhaps in terms of the sheer variety of datasets that are now available, and the format it is stored in. On the other hand, we’ve been trying to share and combine data for a very long time to generate new information. Indeed, one of the strengths of a GIS is the ability to create spatial joins on data - linking two items of data that occur at the same location – rather than traditional relational joins. More datasets and different ways of storing and publishing information just make this problem more complicated.

Will these issues impact our project? Not in the short term, as we are providing pre-packaged datasets to be used in pre-created scenarios (so the integration is done already). In general, however, data issues are certainly worth thinking about as GIS professionals.

Oh, and why are we now data scientists? – because, according to the Strata report, we “manage and explore large datasets, and perform up-to-real time analysis”, perform “science-like activities – statistical analysis, complex computational problems” and are “employees, searching for ways to add value to products.”

Urban Design User Expert Interview Summary

2011-03-18T16:49:00.006Z

This word cloud summarises one of the interviews I conducted with user experts as part of the JISCG3 project. It highlights words repeatedly spoken during the interview and is a useful way of indicating several themes we discussed:

· The scale used in urban design projects from context to site to building

· The importance of software such as AutoCad and Photoshop

· The use of maps

· The use of GIS

The word cloud provides a recap of the interview prior to moving on to more conventional qualitative analysis, which begins with the identification of themes used to encode all the interviews transcripts. I particularly like the placement of the 3 words GIS, think and maps!

As part of the project we are interviewing experts from urban design, environmental management and anthropology in order to develop useful use case scenarios particular to new GIS learners from different disciplines.

Project Plan Post 5 of 7 - Project Team, Relationships and End-User Engagement

2011-02-27T10:42:00.014Z

If you've been reading this blog so far, you've hopefully now got some ideas about the JISC G3 project (if not, please let us know!). So, the next post in this series is the 'who we are' post. However, a far more important issue before we get to that is 'who we hope you might be' - in other words, who makes up the community for the project?

There are two main communities for the project - firstly, a community of end users. You will typically be students, researchers or academics in departments such as archaeology, anthropology, computer science, health research or medicine, biology, environmental science and so forth. You will probably have used a web map (e.g. a Google Map) at some point, and may have heard of a Geographical Information System but think that the software is very complicated and that you can't use your data on a map. We hope that the tools developed by this project will give you some ideas about GIS and how you could use it, and make it less scary. We'd love to hear from you with any ideas as to how to do this and how you think you could use maps in your work.

The second community we hope to form is a group of GIS developers who can take our tools and add scenarios and expert information beyond the life of the project. These people will know what a GIS is, and also have web development and database skills. The will, perhaps, make use of the tools we develop for their own teaching, and will also add additional use cases and scenarios to the project.

And finally, who are we? We are a team of four people based at UCL and the University of Portsmouth. Our skills cover GIS, Human-Computer Interaction and Web Development and we are all involved in GIS teaching. In alphabetical order:

Claire Ellul used to be a GIS consultant and is now a Lecturer in GIS at UCL, specialising in spatial databases and web and mobile GIS. She was responsible for the technical development of the Community Maps project, and will oversee technical issues on JISCG3. Claire is Principal Investigator on the project.

Kate Jones is a Lecturer in Geography at the University of Portsmouth. She specialises in Usability in GIS and GIS and Health. Kate is responsbile for the development of the use-cases/scenarios, making sure we understand our users on the JISCG3 project. Kate is Co-investogator on the project.

Muki Haklay is a Senior Lecturer in GIS at UCL, specialising in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Usability in GIS as well as having extensive research expertise in Citizen Science and Community engagement. He will provide HCI expertise to the project.

Patrick Webe r is a Research Fellow in GIS at UCL. He specialises in spatial and location-based analysis but also has extensive technical expertise with open source GIS, and will be responsible for the technical development of the JISCG3 project.

Project Plan Post 3 of 7 - Risk Analysis and Success of Plan

2011-02-27T10:04:00.006Z

On one hand, this project is relatively low risk - we are dealing with technology (OpenLayers, a PostgreSQL/PostGIS database, Javascript, PHP, HTML) that we have already used extensively as a team, and working from a starting point of a previous project (Community Maps).

However, experience shows that the technology aspects of this project should set a few small alarm bells ringing - they are all open source, and this is risky in terms of available support and problem solving. Equally, we run the risk (as does any technology related development or teaching) of potential changes in versions requiring upgrades to our code (the upgrade of our Community Maps project due to a changing Google Maps API highlighted how extensive some of these version changes could be).

How to mitigate this risk - well, the relatively short time-span for this project (Feb - October 2011) allows us to select a version of each platform and stick to it. Beyond that, as we will be making extensive use of the tools in our own teaching, we will upgrade as and when required - documenting our code as we go along will help to facilitate this, as will opening the code up as a resource to the GIS community.

And other risks? We could discover, having talked to our user community, that GIS really isn't for them (or they're just not happy to engage in the project). We hope that this is unlikely - our users are members of interdisciplinary project teams which plan to make use of GIS - but we have identified fall-back scenarios in health epidemiology and coastal environment monitoring, just in case.

Project Plan Post 2 of 7 - Benefits to the Sector and Achievements for Host Institutions

2011-02-27T09:55:00.005Z

The JISCG3 project provides us with a very useful the opportunity to gain an increased understanding of the mental models used by non-experts when engaging with GIS, which in turn will benefit our teaching and research activities. In fact, as part of the project, we are working with anthropologists, historians, geographers and environmental scientists - and they will provide a really important input when developing our scenarios and concetps.

We intend to make use of the JISCG3 tools during our teaching, and hope that colleagues will also do so - all the code will be published for reuse. As part of the project, we also hope to identify opportunities for further interdisciplinary research or teaching collaboration, as a result of the greater understanding of GIS gained by our expert users and equally of our greater understanding of their research domains.

Project Plan Post 1 of 7 - Aims, Objectives and Final Outputs

2011-02-27T09:22:00.011Z

Most students and researchers are familiar with using maps on the internet or on a mobile phone – in particular, Google Maps - for tasks such as finding their way between A and B or finding the nearest cash machine or Italian restaurant. They can easily navigate around the map, and know that clicking on a point will pop-up some information.

What they maybe don’t realize, however, is that every time they do this, they are using a Geographical Information System (GIS). What’s more, a GIS could be a very useful tool for their studies and research as it provides a different way of looking at data –by putting data on a map, you can identify links, trends and patterns that aren’t obvious when you are looking at spreadsheets or databases.

The JISC G3 Project – Bridging the Gap between the GeoWeb and GIS – has been set up to overcome the disconnect between using GIS for day-to-day activities and as part of research or studies. We will develop a number of web-based tools to allow students to start with the familiar (panning and browsing a web map) and move towards more advanced GIS concepts. This will allow them to then make use of the more sophisticated GIS packages that are available to them (ArcGIS, MapInfo Professional, Geomedia Professional). Rather than teach abstract concepts, the tools will focus on scenarios related to discipline-specific use-cases, highlighting areas where GIS could be useful to individual groups.

The final output of the project will be a series of open-source tools and scenarios, which can then be added to by others as and when required.

Representations of Scale

2011-02-21T11:08:00.003Z

I myself, have struggled with the issues of scale in health data whereby social and geographical scales interact but are very complex to model. The choice and use of scale naturally impacts the results of the analysis, and its limitations and complexities have been widely acknowledged in the human geography literature (Goodchild and Proctor, 1997, Longley and Batty, 1996, Sheppard and McMaster, 2003 and Atkinson and Tate, 2000). Indeed, even the terminology has different meanings, describing the same spatial data, a geographer may refer to it as small scale whereas an ecologist could refer to it as large scale. Therefore, representations of scale are something we should consider in our problem scenarios and discussed in the user interviews.

To use an example from health care: commonly web-mapping applications in health simply present data at one scale – so having a zoom function can be redundant functionality as the map never changes. What you often see is a thematic map showing the level of deprivation for a particular administrative boundary layered on top of a reference map but the detail in the thematic map never varies regardless of the level of zoom. If we were developing a health scenario around diabetes, what would be great to see is the layers change from household risk when the user is zoomed into the building detail on the map and then as you progressively zoom out the data changes. So with different zoom levels the data changes scale from individual to street to output area to lower super output area etc in line with the scaling of administrative boundaries/ policy decision making in the UK. This type of zooming would illustrate to new users of GIS, the issues of scale that experienced users of GIS take for granted.

Taking this one-step further, what would be nice is to have a zoom function that corresponds more to functional scale (similar to what Claire suggested in the post relating to the use of scale in biology). With functional scales of analysis, data are summarised and generalised according to the spheres of influence associated to the phenomena being mapped. So in the diabetes example risk data would be organised by the individual, neighbourhood community, GP catchments, (GP Constoria), hospital catchments etc.

Beyond the G3 Project

2011-02-18T07:57:00.000Z

It is probably quite unusual to be thinking about things beyond this project when we've only just started work, but I've had a number of conversations over the last two years that highlight the potential of web mapping tools such as Google Maps in teaching in other disciplines that don't work at 'geographical' scale.

For example, biologists and nanotechnologists work at sub-mm scales - but more importantly they also have representations of cells from gene level to cell and tissue level - in other words, they work with what the GIS world calls 'Levels of Detail' and 'generalisation'. Apparently it is not yet possible in biology to automatically generalise from the detailed data upwards, but a web map that replaces the 'map' with cell-related images at the different scales would be a useful teaching tool (and is very easy to create with existing technology and web mapping tools).

Having such a 'map' would allow students to zoom in and out between the various scales and to click on various objects and identify them (linking to additional material). In other words, this could be a useful teaching tool. Animated data (what the GIS world calls time-series data) - showing the interaction between objects at a single levels - could also be included.

Perhaps something to think about as we are developing our tool kit?

I'd welcome some feedback from anyone out there who could provide more concrete, relevant details and terminology for what could be shown at the varying scales.

(With thanks to the people at the Crucible dinner at UCL last night for a very interesting conversation about scale)

Project Outline

2011-02-16T14:59:00.000Z

The G3 Project wants to create an interactive online mapping tutorial system for students in urban design, anthropology and environmental management. By choosing a discipline specific scenario, key geographic concepts and functions will be presented to novices in a useful and useable manner. Users will be introduced to freely available geographic data relevant to their particular discipline and know where to look for more. G3 Project will create a framework to support learners and grow their confidence without the notoriously difficult complexity of desktop mapping systems.

Background Narrative for G3 – Bridging the Gap between the GeoWeb and GIS

2011-02-16T14:54:00.000Z

Matthew is a student studying for an MSc in Anthropology at a University in London. His dissertation project will explore the relationship between betting shops and their impact on the surrounding local neighbourhood.

Since the information is geographical, and he is interested in understanding the spatial patterns, he wants to organise, analyse and visualise the data that he will collect during site visits in a map form. The information will include the locations of different types of shops in combination with the qualitative perceptions gathered from interviewing local residents and the researcher’s personal observations.

He is not confident with new computer systems and has no background knowledge of geography or mapping systems but has heard from his supervisor that a GIS could be very useful.

His university uses ArcGIS as its desktop mapping system but he does not know how to begin using it, what sorts of data formats are required or even how to open different datasets within the system. He discovers it is very difficult to teach yourself how to create a map – even though he uses Google maps to find the location of various social events. He has tried reading the help file but it is not so useful to a novice, as there is a lot of unfamiliar terminology. He feels overwhelmed as it is so complicated and confusing to use. He is not really sure where to start.