Jeff Meyer wrote
The plan is to deliver an easily searchable repository (content & searchable clearinghouse) of quality map content to cover the entirety of human history. Along with it would be a freely distributable, open source map player. People could then link their existing maps, add modifications, build new map content, etc.
I happen to be finishing up my GIS credentials and geography/cartography degree right now and was thinking about playing around with the free software GRASS GIS program this summer. See http://grass.baylor.edu/ and the GRASS Wiki http://grass.itc.it/wiki2/
It would be neat to tie GRASS into MediaWiki for map creation. I'll see if I can get that to work later this year (at least for creating simple maps).
There is a whole bunch of public domain GIS data out there (mostly in the U.S....). It would eventually be neat to have a place to do GIS editing on the Internet to help maintain and extend those data. As it is, the public domain GIS material created by the U.S. government is made into proprietary products by GIS firms who clean up, extend, and then sell the data. AFAIK there is no free content alternative.
WikiGIS perhaps? I better snag that one... Done. WikiGIS.org and WIkiGIS.com are reserved for the Wikimedia Foundation if and when the foundation wants those domains.
Which reminds me, Wikimedia.org is about to expire... I better fix that.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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"Daniel Mayer" maveric149@yahoo.com schreef in bericht news:20040228035231.5119.qmail@web12826.mail.yahoo.com...
Jeff Meyer wrote
The plan is to deliver an easily searchable repository (content &
searchable
clearinghouse) of quality map content to cover the entirety of human history. Along with it would be a freely distributable, open source map player. People could then link their existing maps, add modifications,
build
new map content, etc.
I also think that a wikiGIS would be the most up to date manner to set up a site of maps. The problem is most users will not be aware of the enormous power of GIS methods to produce and edit maps. It takes some time to getting to know the software (but it can be done, even if you are above 40).
In the Netherlands, most GIS data are owned by publicly funded organisations, but cannot be used freely. To the contrary these data a very expensive.
Elly Waterman
Elly Waterman wrote:
In the Netherlands, most GIS data are owned by publicly funded organisations, but cannot be used freely. To the contrary these data a very expensive.
This is the case in most of Europe. The issue is discussed on the EGIP mailing list (European Geographic Information Policy), http://www.ec-gis.org/egip/
The aforementioned GRASS and other free mapping software are discussed on the FreeGIS mailing list, http://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/freegis-list
Both lists have archives available online.
Most GIS systems are organized as "layers", such as rivers, roads, city names, county borders, elevation, vegetation types, etc. To compile a map for a specific purpose, you select some of the layers, a particular area, scale (zoom), and projection (transformation of coordinates). The more layers we can make available, the better. But a wiki-like project could be useful even if it only produces a few such layers, for example a list of city names and their coordinates. This can easily be edited in text using today's wiki technology. In Wikipedia's case, each name (of cities, counties or rivers) can also be tied to the disambiguated name of a Wikipedia article, so clickable maps can be compiled.
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Elly Waterman wrote:
In the Netherlands, most GIS data are owned by publicly funded organisations, but cannot be used freely. To the contrary these data a very expensive.
This is the case in most of Europe. The issue is discussed on the EGIP mailing list (European Geographic Information Policy), http://www.ec-gis.org/egip/
From that, I can't seem to figure out if the issue is an access one (we can't get the data) or a legal one (we're not allowed to use the data). If the latter, I think we can safely ignore it, at least in the US: a simple database of factual data is not copyrightable in the US, so once we can our hands on it, we can do whatever we want with it, regardless of what the person who put the data together says we can do with it.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
From that, I can't seem to figure out if the issue is an access one (we can't get the data) or a legal one (we're not allowed to use the data). If the latter, I think we can safely ignore it, at least in the US: a simple database of factual data is not copyrightable in the US, so once we can our hands on it, we can do whatever we want with it, regardless of what the person who put the data together says we can do with it.
I haven't looked deeper into this, but there is always contract law that can cover holes in copyright law (you get raw data under an agreement that you will pay damages if it gets disseminated). If you only speak English, you could start to dig out mapping data from Britain or Ireland. Many Europeans think "it cannot be done", and need the inspiration from outsiders with a naive view of things.
Ordnance Survey Britain, http://www.ordsvy.gov.uk/ Ordnance Survey Ireland, http://www.osi.ie/
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Delirium wrote:
From that, I can't seem to figure out if the issue is an access one (we can't get the data) or a legal one (we're not allowed to use the data). If the latter, I think we can safely ignore it, at least in the US: a simple database of factual data is not copyrightable in the US, so once we can our hands on it, we can do whatever we want with it, regardless of what the person who put the data together says we can do with it.
I haven't looked deeper into this, but there is always contract law that can cover holes in copyright law (you get raw data under an agreement that you will pay damages if it gets disseminated). If you only speak English, you could start to dig out mapping data from Britain or Ireland. Many Europeans think "it cannot be done", and need the inspiration from outsiders with a naive view of things.
Ordnance Survey Britain, http://www.ordsvy.gov.uk/ Ordnance Survey Ireland, http://www.osi.ie/
What this issue all comes down to is what do we want on a map and in how much detail. Do we want an overlay system, and is it technically feasible?
A project to develop a totally wikifiable map system would be ideal. My first approach would be to look at the possibility of creating a series of 1-degree-square maps for the entire world. That's 360 x 180 = 64,800 maps (but with only 1/3 of these being for land areas) If these are done as a series of overlays the reader should be able to choose which features he wants to include.
I don't see copyright as a big problem unless we want to start insisting that we need to copy other work that is already on the net. The 1-degree squares are not in such a fine scale that it can't be created from public domain material. Even if in the worst case we consider only the United States and Antarctica (for which the USGS has accepted mapping responsibility), that's a lot of work that will keep many people busy because of the large geographical expanse in these areas alone.
Ec
This is kind of the direction that the GWHAT project is discussing. (www.gwhat.org)
It should be possible to do a layer-based system that uses public domain mapping information.
The GWHAT intent is then to overlay the background geographic data with historical content targeted at K-12 to start.
It is also the intent to make this content Wiki-accessible/Wiki-fied.
"Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net wrote in message news:4044DDB0.7090201@telus.net... <snip>
What this issue all comes down to is what do we want on a map and in how much detail. Do we want an overlay system, and is it technically
feasible?
A project to develop a totally wikifiable map system would be ideal. My first approach would be to look at the possibility of creating a series of 1-degree-square maps for the entire world. That's 360 x 180 = 64,800 maps (but with only 1/3 of these being for land areas) If these are done as a series of overlays the reader should be able to choose which features he wants to include.
I don't see copyright as a big problem unless we want to start insisting that we need to copy other wor.k that is already on the net. The 1-degree squares are not in such a fine scale that it can't be created from public domain material. Even if in the worst case we consider only the United States and Antarctica (for which the USGS has accepted mapping responsibility), that's a lot of work that will keep many people busy because of the large geographical expanse in these areas alone.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
What this issue all comes down to is what do we want on a map and in how much detail. Do we want an overlay system, and is it technically feasible?
An "overlay" system, i.e. one based on layers, is inevitable. Some layers, e.g. satellite images and vegetation types, are best represented as rasters, while others, e.g. rivers, borders, roads, are best represented as vector data. These are GIS fundamentals that you are hardly going to change.
I found out that the phrase to google for is "collaborative mapping". Much seems to be happening in and around London. Knowhere.co.uk is a rather old site, not wiki, and only has 2000 nodes (city names). OpenGuides.org is a little newer, wiki-based. Confluence.org has photos from many of the 360 x 180 points on the globe where integral degree lines intersect. Even people from the British Ordnance Survey (ordsvy.gov.uk, the governmental mapping agency) are interested in playing along these lines, although they haven't promised to donate any mapping data. "Collaborative" doesn't always mean "free" (in either sense of the word).
If you look at my May 1994 project "Real World Interface" and imagine there are "edit this page" links on every page (as there aren't), you get *one* idea (not the only one) of what a geo-wiki could look like, http://www.lysator.liu.se/rwi/ (click Sweden and the southern third to get started).
Hi Daniel - Isn't GRASS raster only? If so, are you thinking of that as one of several options? If not, cool, but will that make some interesting vector data inaccessible? Thanks, Jeff
"Daniel Mayer" maveric149@yahoo.com wrote in message news:20040228035231.5119.qmail@web12826.mail.yahoo.com...
Jeff Meyer wrote
The plan is to deliver an easily searchable repository (content &
searchable
clearinghouse) of quality map content to cover the entirety of human history. Along with it would be a freely distributable, open source map player. People could then link their existing maps, add modifications,
build
new map content, etc.
I happen to be finishing up my GIS credentials and geography/cartography
degree
right now and was thinking about playing around with the free software
GRASS
GIS program this summer. See http://grass.baylor.edu/ and the GRASS Wiki http://grass.itc.it/wiki2/
It would be neat to tie GRASS into MediaWiki for map creation. I'll see if
I
can get that to work later this year (at least for creating simple maps).
There is a whole bunch of public domain GIS data out there (mostly in the U.S....). It would eventually be neat to have a place to do GIS editing on
the
Internet to help maintain and extend those data. As it is, the public
domain
GIS material created by the U.S. government is made into proprietary
products
by GIS firms who clean up, extend, and then sell the data. AFAIK there is
no
free content alternative.
WikiGIS perhaps? I better snag that one... Done. WikiGIS.org and
WIkiGIS.com
are reserved for the Wikimedia Foundation if and when the foundation wants those domains.
Which reminds me, Wikimedia.org is about to expire... I better fix that.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Do you Yahoo!? Get better spam protection with Yahoo! Mail. http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools
On Sat, 28 Feb 2004, Jeff Meyer wrote:
Isn't GRASS raster only?
No:
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org