People’s Map Adds Administration, Postcode and Health Authority Boundaries

The People’s Map has added new Administrative, Postcode and Health Authority boundary layers to its growing list of data products. Administrative layers include Unitary, County and Metropolitan Borough Councils. Postcode data includes areas, districts, sectors and centroids. Other boundary information includes Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trusts, all supplied by People’s Map partner XYZ. These are all available for use in GIS and local information systems and in other digital file formats suitable for use in general office software and the web.

One of the first to benefit from this new data are Geowise who now offer a ‘Map Pack’ to compliment its InstantAtlas™ statistical visualisation platform. “Some of these layers are unique. The Map Pack we offer is the most cost-effective way of delivering ‘fit-for-use’ boundaries for InstantAtlas,” said Mike Forster Managing Director of Geowise.

People's Map Update on RSPSoc 2009

The RSPSoc conference was once again a big success bringing in businesses and academics from all parts of the remote sensing and photogrammetry industry. Throughout the week there were many seminars and discussions linking to the current hot topic; freeing restricted datasets.

The People’s Map caused much debate in the presentation Chris Mewse gave on Thursday on how our map product is likely to change the landscape of digital mapping in the UK. As mentioned in the previous blog, the presentation aimed to encourage Universities and Online Learning Resources to adopt the People’s Map as an education and teaching tool. This concept has been met with much interest and we will start rolling out more trials of our WMS and GIS Data feeds very soon.

We’d like to thank the RSPSoc committee for holding such an interesting and diverse event, and also everyone who visited our stand and attended our presentation.

People’s Map to present at RSPSoc in Leicester

This week, the UK’s largest Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry (RSPSoc) conference is being held in Leicester. This yearly event covers all aspects of the Earth Observation industry and aims to promote links between commercial, industrial, academic and international organisations to combine technologies and skills.

Remote sensing plays a key factor in the way the People’s Map works. We have been using high-resolution aerial photography, supplied by Getmapping, since we began and it allows our users to populate the map with accurate and up-to-date information. As an independent base layer of imagery it means our mapping stays free of Crown Copyright and empowers people to use the mapping in the way they want, without traditional restrictions.

As the People’s Map continues to improve its level of detail, we are beginning to assist higher education institutions by providing fit-for-purpose mapping through easily managed raster and vector feeds. Students can use the data for geomatics projects and develop their map skills through understanding and involvement of the map production process. The first trial will take place this academic year in the Remote Sensing and GIS department at Bath Spa University.

Chris Mewse (People’s Map & Getmapping) will be presenting this topic at the conference on Thursday in the learning seminar of RSPSoc. If you are unable to attend, please contact us if you would like more information.

Links:
RSPSoc - www.rspsoc2009.org
Getmapping - www.getmapping.com
Bath Spa University - http://www.bathspa.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/gis.asp

People’s Map Underpins Edinburgh Festivals Guide

Visitors to this year’s Edinburgh Festivals including the Fringe were able to locate the numerous venues for the thousands of events with a new map based on the People’s Map of Edinburgh. The map produced by the Festival Fringe Society was available stand alone at A3 sponsored by Becks and also bound into the Official Guide to the Fringe sponsored by Magners.

People’s Map enables map makers to create their own styles and colour ways and then add data relevant to specific use, safe in the knowledge that the base map provides the vital geographic foundations. The large A3 map features colour coded locations for all the main Edinburgh Festivals’ venues including the International Festival, Art Festival, Fringe, Book Festival, Jazz & Blues Festival, Edinburgh Mela and the Military Tattoo. The map also contains information on Edinburgh’s wide variety of year round tourist attractions, bus and rail routes and much more. The smaller bound-in map provides information specific to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

This quality, detail and scale of mapping also exist for Birmingham, Glasgow and soon to be London. Apart from using this data for just map creation, this data is also available in GIS vector formats and also via the Openlayers API and People's Map WMS service.