What Problem Are We Trying to Solve With Mapping Software? Mapping software is often used by individuals to create interactive maps that will engage users. Though mapping software is helpful mapping out locations, however, there are also disadvantages when it comes to using these softwares. In particular, there is lack of efficiency when creating maps within a short period of time. Also, there is no single map that integrates and maps out all the data, for example, the locations of art communities and art supply stores in Canada. Other disadvantages may include:
- Reliability issues - as web mapping software is highly dependent on the internet
- Limited screen space on the computer, and
- Complexion that is involved in the process since mapping tools need to be mastered.
Thus, five different web-based mapping tools are compared based on the four categories: ease of use, visualization capabilities, total cost of ownership and exporting/sharing options (e.g. HTML, URL sharing, KML export formats). In the end of this comparison, one mapping software will be chosen as being the most effective mapping tool to use.
What Are The Different Tools That We Are Looking At
- Tools that are web based
- Easy to update & publish to webpages and/or share links with collaborators
- Good visualization graphics and options for displaying data (specifically the capability to add layers & multiple datapoints)
Types of Campaigns That We Would Use Maps - Neighbourhood Campaigns: Provide our volunteers with mobile and interactive maps for highly effective door-to-door outreach regarding the Timeraiser
- Events with Computer Kiosks: Develop clean map interfaces to provide participants with insightful visualization of causes and trends
- Research: Improve our overall capability to see trends as they are emerging in cities across Canada
Neighbourhood Day Campaign 2010 |
CN Tower Climb 2009 - Civic Footprint Kiosk |
Research
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RhizaLabs | Google Maps |
Fusion Tables |
MapQuest |
ArcGIS Explorer |
Quantum GIS
| | URL | http://www.rhizalabs.com/ | http://maps.google.ca |
| http://new.mapquest.com | | http://www.qgis.org | | Rating* | 9 of 10 | 7 of 10 | 6 of 10 | 3 of 10 |
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| Key Feature | - Open source
- Layer Multiple dataset
- Simple, powerful visualizations for points, poly lines, and polygons
- Update your maps with new data automatically (specifying the timeline, monthly)
- Controlled Source Crowding
- Relate to statistical data spatially
- Customize the maps with symbology, colours, etc
- Export data to spreadsheets, google earth, ESRI shape files, GeoTIFF raster imagery
- RSS syndication (embed live or static visualizations)
- Controlled user authorization
- Can create 3D google earth presentations
| - Enable users to personalize their own maps
- Can collaborate with others
- Easy to use
- Able to publish the map and make it public for sharing with other users
- Easy to edit
- Offers simple visuals
- Able to add content to mapped location (i.e. additional information under description)
- Create placemarks with customized icons
- Able to embed pictures and videos to the map
- Able to create shapes that highlights a region/ neighbourhood
- Able to add map data from a KML, KMZ or GeoRSS file
- Offers different view (i.e. zooming, streetview, etc.)
- No training is required
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- Visualize table data through maps and other formats
- Several ways of visualizing data (i.e. maps, charts, timelines)
- Can collaborate with others
- Able to turn location tables into a map in minutes
- Able to publish the map and make it public for sharing with other users
- Show a heat map of point locations
- Able to see the data without downloading it
- Able to merge data with multiple people's data
- Data can be private, public or shared
- Data's viewers can leave feedback on the data per column, row or cell
- Easy to tack changes over time
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- Functions similar to Google Maps
- "My Maps" personalization, which enables user to personalize what attractions will show up on their map
- Able to print maps, share through mobile phones, send maps to an email account or sync maps onto social media websites
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- Easy to explore, visualize and share GIS information
- Access ready-to-use ArcGIS Online basemaps and layers
- Fuse local data with map services to create custom maps
- Add photos, reports, videos, and other information to map
- Perform spatial analysis (i.e. visibility, modeling, proximity search)
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- User friendly Open Source GIS
- View and overlay vector and raster data in different formats and projections without conversion to an internal or common format
- Create maps and interactively explore spatial data
- Create, edit and export spatial data
- Perform spatial analysis (i.e. network analysis)
- Ability to publish map on the internet using the export to Mapfile capability
- Map annotations enable users to insert text (to describe the place) to the map view
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| Drawbacks |
- Some mapping skills required
- Costs (i.e. not free software)
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- Location of site might be inaccurate
- Cannot directly merge data with the mapping software to create map
- Time-consuming
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- More complicated to use compared to Google Maps
- Inaccurate mapping of locations (i.e. address in Ontario mapped shown in the U.S.)
- Complex, thus need more time to master the mapping tool
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- Lacks sophistication
- "My Maps" function can be personalized to a certain extent (i.e. cannot personalize pins)
- Do not offer collaboration with other users
- Lacks good visualization
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- Might be difficult to operate considering the 2D and 3D display modes
- Upgrade to a different version of the software might be costly
- Collaboration with other users is limited
- Require users to download a seperate software
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Maps lack good visualizations
- Requires GIS experience in the operations (i.e. coding)
- Mainly designed for data viewing, editing and analysis
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| Cost |
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| Integration Notes |
- Open source
- Can integrate easily
- Supports many file platforms, including the ability to convert to ESRI shapefiles
- Publish public maps
- Openness associated with data sharing
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- Able to collaborate with other users
- Easy for sharing, either send it through the map or paste the link in email
- Also able to send map to mobile phone
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- Supports the integration of data from multiple sources by performing joins across tables that may belong to different users
- Able to keep the data private, share it with a select set of collaboratetors or make it public and thus crawlable by search engines
- Collaborator to conduct detailed discussions of the data at the level of tables and individual rows, columns, and cells
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- Does not support the integration of data from different sources (i.e. spreadsheet)
- Difficult for sharing
- Not suitable for export or sharing data
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- Supports many GIS file formats such as shapefile, GeoTIFF, MrSID, IMG and KML
- Able to email maps and layers directly from the application
- Integration is easy - do not need to convert data
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What Tool Have We Selected:
- We are currently researching all potential software
Ultimately, we have selected
Google Maps as the most effective mapping software to create mobile and
interactive maps for different campaigns uses. In particular, the ‘Google My
Maps’ function is easy to operate even if one lacks experience with programming
or creating web pages. This application
system enables users to integrate data and any relevant information (i.e.
pictures/ links) with their personalized maps. Nonetheless, maps
can be customized to show different layers of boundaries and neighbourhoods
within a city. This visualization organizes and displays data so that it is relatively
easy for individuals to use the maps. Google Maps also enable users to publish
and share their maps publicly in search engines. Unlike Fusion Tables, Google
Maps can be time-consuming because data does not merge automatically with the maps itself. Yet Google Maps has the option allowing multiple users to
collaborate with each other on one map. Most importantly, maps can be easily
shared (either by email or a link). Thus, these are the many reasons why Google Maps has been selected to be one of the best mapping software to create interactive maps for campaign uses.
Work Flow - Created an user-account named maps@timeraiser.ca
- All google spreadsheets with mapping data have changed owners to maps@timeraiser.ca
- This allows for consolidated work-flow and ongoing map development
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