Mapping Land Cover Change through time.

Even since I read about the map comparison template for ArcGIS Online maps I’ve been itching to give it a try. The template enables you to compare three ArcGIS Online maps side-by-side. It can provide real insight into data that is changing over time, or data on different themes for the same place. I can see real uses for this template in comparing County Development Plans between revisions, in comparing Census results between years or even in comparing Census themes to reveal relationships between socio-economic variables.

What I really needed was some good source data to provide a time series to illustrate the power of this sort of mapping. I remembered that the EPA collects Corine Land Cover information on a systematic basis so I contacted them to get a cut of the data pertaining to Ireland for 1990, 2000 and 2006. Very helpfully the EPA were able to provide me with the data for each year in esri shapefile format coded with consistent land use classes and complete with the all important legend file for symbolisation. This was a great starting point for building my maps and my web application.

I took an initial look at the source data in ArcMap to see what the structure of the shapefiles was. There have been some changes to the way Corine data was recorded and coded over the years. As the source materials used as input to the classification have improved there have been corresponding improvements to the classified data. The supplied shapefiles had similar structure and a consistent coding scheme.

For performance reasons its best not to use shapefiles to create web services. So I created an empty Geodatabase using ArcCatalog. I adopted the schema of the 2006 shapefile as the schema for my Feature Classes. I then loaded the data from each shapefile into the its corresponding Feature Class, one for each year taking care to map the relevant source fields to the target schema. Having done that I then created indexes on any fields I would be using for display or labelling. The resulting Feature Classes were in Irish Grid so using ArcToolbox I re-projected them to Web Mercator which is ideal for use with the ArcGIS Online basemaps. My data was ready now I could create some web services.

Getting the data ready.

Using ArcMap I authored a map for each Corine year by simply loading each Feature Class and applying the legend file the EPA had provided. I filled in the document properties and the layer properties with some basic descriptive metadata for my maps. Using the Map Publishing Toolbar I was then able to publish my maps as web services to our Amazon based ArcGIS Server in the cloud. It doesn’t get any easier than this.

Authoring the map.

So now I have three web services, one for each of 1990, 2000 and 2006 in a public folder on my ArcGIS Server. I can now mashup these services any way I please. I’m going to use ArcGIS.com so that I can the use the resultant “webmap’s” in the map comparison template. Now you’ll notice that each web services has a “View In: ArcGIS.com” link on its endpoint. Clicking the link creates an ArcGIS.com webmap which I can then save in my Content Gallery. I take the opportunity to edit the webmap Description, Credits and Access Use and Constraints to acknowledge the EPA.

At this stage have the three webmaps that I want to use with the map comparison template. I open the first map on ArcGIS.com and click the Share button. There are loads of different ways to Share your Maps on ArcGIS.com including Facebook, Twitter, iFrame or web application. I want to make a web application so I choose that option. From the Web Application Gallery I choose the map comparison template and download it to my IIS server. OK so now I need to drop the GUID of each of my webmaps into the downloaded template so that the web application knows which maps it’s supposed to be comparing. It’s not difficult and it’s well described in the template readme document – if you can cut and paste (and who can’t!) you can do it.

Sharing the Map.

The moment of truth! I hit http://46.137.120.35/CorineCompare/index.html and up she comes. The web application lets me navigate to any location and see the Corine data mashed up on the ArcGIS Online Topographic basemap. I can right click to synchronize the scale and location to see how any location has changed through time or I can permanently synchronise the maps. Even the Identify Tool is synchronised – clicking on one Map returns results from all three (sweet!).

The finished application.

A good enough day’s work I think. Except for it hasn’t taken me a day. Start to finish, it’s taken about 4 hours to create and publish this application. So it’s no trouble, if you have some Irish data that you would like to give the “comparator” treatment drop me a line and I’ll try to help you out.

ED

Could GIS have saved Meath County Council €4.06 million?

Last week’s judgement by Mr Justice Peter Kelly against Meath County Council in the case of Darlington Properties Limited makes sobering reading. The Judge awarded Darlington €4,060,000 on the basis that the Council had misrepresented the opportunity available to Darlington to construct a distributor road to link a property it purchased from the Council to the Ashbourne Town Centre.

In fact there was no such opportunity as the Council had previously granted planning permission on adjacent lands to Nuas Investments Ltd. that precluded the possibility of such a road being built. This fact did not become apparent to Darlington until after they had purchased the lands from the Council. In fact it did not become apparent until they commissioned a full planning search on all adjacent properties. However the Council were in possession of that fact, and in the opinion Mr Justice Peter Kelly, by incorrectly making reference to the potential future existence of such a distributor road in the brochure of sale, the County Development Plan and various correspondence and dialogue they were guilty of misrepresentation.

It’s unfortunate for Darlington Ltd., Meath County Council and the ratepayers of County Meath that this situation has arisen. It’s even more unfortunate when one considers that with the appropriate use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) it could have been so easily avoided. So how could GIS have helped?

Recording the polygonal extents of all Planning Applications in a GIS is the practise of many Local Authorities. The topological operators in a GIS can then evaluate issues such as overlap, adjacency or proximity. This would have enabled the Council to become aware that planning permission previously granted to Nuas precluded the possibility of Darlington constructing a distributor road.

Meath County Council's Online Planning System

Publishing these polygonal extents on an interactive mapping system linked to the Council planning database is also now the norm. However the Meath County Council system restricts itself to displaying only the centroids of Planning Applications. Had the full polygonal extents been published Darlington may have had a better chance to become aware of the problem with the lands they tendered to purchase.

Relying on human interpretation of the complex topological relationships between planning applications and other constraints layers such as development plan zoning, heritage constraints or environmental constraints is not infallible. At Esri Ireland we have been working with a number of Council’s to develop a constraints analysis algorithm that will analyse any planning application (or any other shape) for its spatial relationship (intersects, contains, crosses, touches, overlaps, proximity etc.) with any constrains layer published from an authoritative source. Had this software been freely available on the Internet to Darlington they would have been easily able to check any constraints to their intentions on the lands for which they tendered. In fact it would have been open to anyone including the Council to do the same.

As is so often the case the crux of this matter is information – who knew what, about where and importantly in this case, when. I would be very surprised if Meath County Council deliberately misled Darlington at the time of sale. It seems more likely that there was a human error, a process failure or a system failure. I do think that this failure could have been detected much earlier had GIS been used more effectively along the lines suggested above. Likewise had the data underpinning the decisions been openly and publicly available along Gov 2.0 lines all parties could have made more informed decisions.

As a conclusion, we are often asked about return on investment in GIS, here is a case where a very small expenditure could have saved a very large expense!

ED

Geographic Information Underpins new Programme for Government……….but was it by design or by chance?

I have read with great interest the new programme for Government and was pleasantly surprised to see that so many of the promises being made in this document will very much depend on the innovative use and application of Geographic Information (GI) in order to see them through.

From the Programme of Government:

• Geographic Information will be a key component in “developing Ireland as a ‘digital island’ and the first-mover when it comes to information technology by ensuring more progress on e-Government and moving Government services online”
• Geographic Information and systems is Cloud-ready and will have a role to play in “making Ireland a leader in the emerging IT market of cloud computing………”
• The greater use and application of geographic information in the public sector has to be a “target key technology area and sector where innovation can be applied”
• Geographic Information will underpin the “prioritisation of a single farm payment system” for the agri-food sector.
• Geographic Information will be fundamental to “Improving the e-capability of our tourism product” which is identified as a priority.
• Geographic Information will be an important tool in the decision making processes surrounding the “prioritisation of investment in school building, non-national roads, healthcare and job creation”.
• Geographic Information already plays a crucial role in the “key priority areas identified by the Government, including energy, water and forestry” where “we will make significant additional investments, over and above current plans, over the next four years in ‘next-generation’ infrastructures in energy, broadband, forestry and water”.
• The innovative use and application of geographic information and systems will be mission critical to “Irish Water, a new state company that will take over the water investment maintenance programmes of the 34 existing local authorities”. To a next generation telecoms network that will “provide next generation broadband to every home and business in the state”.  To a “21^st century Smart Grid”, and to “BioEnergy Ireland, a new state company that will merge Bord na Mona and Coillte”, two organisations that already make extensive use of geographic information in the management of our natural resources.
• Geographic Information will help with “targeting up to €2 billion in sales of non-strategic state assets”.
• Let’s believe that Geographic Information will be one of the “measures to tackle the problem of social welfare fraud”, which we know is a major untapped resource that will have a positive impact on reducing fraudulent activities.
• The use and application of Geographic Information will be fundamental in reduction of costs associated with implementation of domestic “water metering”.
• “In  local  services,  we  will  establish  a  website  –  www.fixmystreet.ie  –  to  assist  residents  in reporting  problems  with  street  lighting,  drainage,  graffiti,  waste  collection  and  road  and  path maintenance in their neighbourhoods, with a guarantee that local officials will respond within two working days”…..Need I say more other than please Mr. Kenny don’t go and re-invent the wheel, this service is here already!
• Geographic Information will have a crucial role in bringing forward “a coherent plan to resolve the problems associated with ghost estates” not to mention its role “in achieving the best possible value for public investment in social housing”.
• Geographic Information will be a key resource in “tackling anti-social behaviour and the plague of low level crime that is so destructive of community life”.

There are many more but I’ll not go on.

Of course these are all very bold statements and I am sure there are many associated questions, all of which begin with how?

• How will geographic information and associated systems help with fulfilling all of these promises?
• How can Government access this fundamental and vital resource?
• How does the innovative use and application of geographic information and associated systems actually help reduce costs, increase efficiencies and help make better informed decisions?
• How will Government do all of this when we simply have less money, less people, less capability and less time?

Well, Mr. Kenny, in the immortal words of a child’s “knock knock” joke…….. Let us in and, not only will we tell you, we will show you.

There is little doubt in my mind that Geographic Information is an information management resource that must underpin this new Programme for Government.  From page 1 the programme states that “new approaches and new thinking will form the constant backdrop to the coalition’s style of governance” and while, for the GI community in Ireland, there is nothing “new” about the value we bring to the decision making processes in the public sector, it would seem that now is the time for GI to really prove itself in terms on value contribution, business benefit and return on investment.

The key question for all of us GI professionals is; will we be given the chance?

Paul Synnott, Country Manager