1 Reply by SOLL-ak

  • SOLL-ak
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  • Registered: 19-12-2011
  • Posts: 22

Re: 'My Map' Reporting of recorded sightings via 'Submit Sightings'

My Map Reporting

1   Is it possible to show those 'tear drop' shaped blobs (I've seen them on other google maps to represent the position of something and they come up with a white box with a few details typed in) where people have recorded by ticking a species record (or an orchard, pond or field).  These would be an alternative to the single click data entry records shown.
2   Is it possible to make these 'tear drops' a specific colour according to either the 'species' (orchard or  pond)  or alternatively according to one of the other data field (attribute) entries fulfilling a specific value (yes/no or a check box)
3   For the 'white' boxes that appear when you click on a polygon or record shown on the map reporting - presuming it is possible to specify what information is shown in the white box e.g. if you didn't want the grid ref, but wanted it to show selected attribute/datafield values only?  How easy is this to achieve?

The SOLL (Sevenoaks Living Landscape, part of Kent Wildlife Trust) group have a range of ideas  on what they are aiming for with the 'interactive mapping' - mainly to get the community engage with the project by being able to 'connect' good wildlife habitats e.g. a pond, hedgerow.  It is important that people can easily enter their 'orchard'.  However, it is also to link someone with an apple press with someone who has an orchard (don't know if you've seen the landshare website, but that was mentioned at todays sub-group meeting on the mapping).  I hope at next Weds Steering group meet to be able to clarify what is reasonably achievable using Indicia (even if we might not be using it an entirely conventional 'species recording' way.   It will be very helpful for me to be able to demonstrate to or advise the meeting some of the range of options for 'submit sightings' and the 'My Map reporting', even if I won't be able to get it working by next Weds - answers to some of the questions will help give the group realistic ideas of what might be possible.

Thank you for all of your help so far and your endless patience!
Anne

2 Reply by johnvanbreda

  • johnvanbreda
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  • Registered: 27-04-2006
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Re: 'My Map' Reporting of recorded sightings via 'Submit Sightings'

Hi Anne
1. Those "tear drop" shaped blobs are typically used on Google maps as they are the default markers. We use a different mapping library called Open Layers and tend to draw actual recorded shapes for grid squares, or circles for point records. Open Layers can overlay bitmap images instead of the circles though so you could replicate this, but it would take some development skill in OpenLayers to do this.
2. Again, yes this is possible - the formatting options for Open Layers are enormously powerful, but again, it will require some programming effort to do so. The easiest way to do this would be to use the reporting system and the report map form. The Wiki page on  writing reports (http://code.google.com/p/indicia/wiki/Reporting) describes how a column definition in the report output can be mapped to featureStyle, so for example you could colour each shape on the map according to your species. You would need a custom report written to do this though.
3. This can also be done. At the moment the option to do this is not exposed through the report map form, though it will only take me a few minutes to do so so I'll try and fit that in. However you may prefer to wait for the next release of Indicia to pick up this functionality in case other changes made to reporting have knock-on impacts to you. If you want to risk it I can let you know which files to change!
Best wishes

John van Breda
Biodiverse IT

johnvanbreda's Website

3 Reply by Jim Bacon

  • Jim Bacon
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  • Registered: 03-11-2008
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Re: 'My Map' Reporting of recorded sightings via 'Submit Sightings'

Hi Anne,

The second part of your post raises some interesting questions for me.
What could we do with Indicia?
What should we do with Indicia (or the BRC Warehouse)?
What can be better done with Drupal?

You could establish a survey on the warehouse of Equipment that had a species list of apple press, strimmer, chainsaw, shredder, trailer etc. You could add custom attributes of for hire, for loan, for sale etc. You could then create maps of where there are apple presses available for loan. You could overlay that on a map of orchards.

However, my time in replying to this answer and the resources used to provide warehouses at BRC are paid for by the UK tax payer. The justification is that gathering and sharing species or habitat information allows us to monitor biodiversity, inform government policy, influence planning for the benefit of conservation and direct conservation effort (just to list a few things off the top of my head). Developing Indicia is hoped to improve the quality, quantity and flow of records meaning we can be more effective which is good for wildlife and good for human well-being. Moreover, by making Indicia general purpose and freely available, it is hoped that it will be used by many organisations, saving them the cost of developing their own systems.

So, you can imagine, if a profit-making organisation asked to use the BRC warehouse for biological recording we might want to negotiate terms. And if a train-spotting society asked to use the BRC warehouse we might decline although they would be welcome to use Indicia on their own servers.

What you are describing falls in to a delightfully grey area in the middle where you would be working for conservation but gathering records that do not serve my interest in species and habitat distribution. Drupal to the rescue.

Indicia has been developed with a warehouse that supports biological recording via any client that can connect to it. Typically that client is a website, (though mobile applications are another possibility) and the website can be built with any technology you like. We are increasingly building our websites around Drupal, however, as you are, and this has the capacity to be configured and store all sorts of information in its database, just like Indicia. This can lead to the blurring of boundaries between the two. In fact, you could almost build your website just with Drupal and without Indicia (dare I say it!). Of course the big draw back of this is that your data becomes confined to your website and reintroduces the problems of data flow and sharing that we are hoping to reduce with Indicia. Drupal contributed modules are also not as effective at dealing with a wide range of spatial data as Indicia is.

In order for you to use Drupal to identify who has got an apple press I would look at using the Content Profile module to allow users to build a list of the equipment that they have, the Location module to associate location information with that profile, the Views module to select what I want to be displaying and the GMap module to present it on a map. Of course I haven't actually tried this!

Jim Bacon.