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Topic: Adding Locations

I've been trying to move forward with site based reporting pages (which is coming along ok) and have been uploading location boundaries to the (BRC) warehouse. However, it seems these locations are restricted to my website only and i have no way of making them public as with the majority of BRC location boundaries.

Making them public would have several benefits, first it appears that because my locations are tied to the website a log-in/user id is required to view them. This is was preventing me from displaying the boundaries to non-logged in users (i circumvented this by coding a dummy user). In addition to this i am unable to allow the locations by other websites or developers (e.g. in iRecord activities).

What would be the best way to get location boundaries onto the shared warehouse and available publically?

Natural History & Biodiversity Data Enthusiast

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Re: Adding Locations

Hi

Good to hear of your progress.

I expect that only the superuser can make locations available to all websites sharing a warehouse (or a selection of them). In this case it means me or one of my colleagues at BRC.

For locations that you create which you would like to share with everyone I suggest you email David Roy, head of BRC, and put the case that these boundaries should be shared widely.
Currently the public boundaries fall in to categories of national scale such as LRC boundaries, National Nature Reserves, Vice counties etc.

If your sites are along the lines of local nature reserves, country parks or SSSI, I note that there are national data sets of these which can be viewed at http://www.natureonthemap.naturalengland.org.uk/ We might be allowed a copy which could potentially save some effort and be of more widespread interest.

With regard to you having access to locations created by other websites (e.g. in iRecord activities) I foresee that might be more difficult if we need to ask consent of the creator to grant you access and then do that on a location-by-location basis which would be time consuming. I might be over complicating that though.

Regards,
Jim Bacon

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Re: Adding Locations

Thanks Jim,

That's fine and makes sense. The majority of sites i am trying to share are Local Wildlife Sites so a national combined data-set doesn't currently exist, i'm really trying to pull recording focus right down to the local level so focus on sites what local groups and individuals find important.

I meant that it would be nice for an iRecord user to also have access to the boundaries i am uploading. We have a local naturalist group (Merseyside BioBank Active Naturalists) which is pursuing direct use of iRecord and setting up recording activities. I would like for them to have access to the boundaries i upload. Similarly, i am also doing some work on behalf of the Local Trust who is keen to get more people recording around their reserves.

Do develop the forms i was hoping to upload their reserve boundaries and create iRecord activities (and eventually perhaps something integrated into their website) for feedback for their volunteers, reserve visitors and site managers.

I'll stick with my workaround and hand draw boundaries for now!

Natural History & Biodiversity Data Enthusiast

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Re: Adding Locations

Hi

I think it is much more straightforward if you want the boundaries you have created through your website to be available through iRecord. There is no issue with permissions and we don't need to share them globally across all websites using the warehouse, just between the two sites.

We could conduct an experiment. Would you be able to provide me with the id of one of your locations?

Jim Bacon.

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Re: Adding Locations

Freshfield would be a good one as this is a LWT reserve and they have already expressed an interest in an iRecord activity.
location id is 189682

Thanks Jim,
Ben

Natural History & Biodiversity Data Enthusiast

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Re: Adding Locations

Hi

Sorry. Straightforward it will not be. When I edit your location I can tick a box to say I would like to share it with the iRecord website but when I click the save button I get an error message which simply says "The record could not be saved."

I've also been poking around to see what locations are made available to users and how that is done. It rather looks like you can see the globally shared locations and your own locations. That might mean that, even if I could do what I intended, it might only have made the location available to you (although that might be sufficient to allow you to set up the activity groups on behalf of others).

I was hoping we might be able to do something quickly. Unfortunately I'm going to have to leave this for now as I'm too tied up with other things to get in to fixing whatever the problem might be.

Jim Bacon

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Re: Adding Locations

No problem Jim, thanks for taking a look.
It sounds like you are getting the same error as me when i try to edit a location via the warehouse.

Natural History & Biodiversity Data Enthusiast