|
The Illustrated Guide to Nonprofit GIS and Online Mapping is an eBook published by Community Cartography Project's MapTogether.org website and released under a Creative Commons license. This review covers "version 0.99" which was published on 23rd February 2010.
The Illustrated Guide to Nonprofit GIS and Online Mapping (download here) is a 46 page e-book intended to be a basic introduction to the world of geospatial IT for non-profit organizations. It is published as a part of the MapTogether project which describes itself as: The MapTogether project provides free map-related training and tools for community and nonprofit groups around the world. Our resources include software, data sets, online mapping services, documentation, and training services. With the growing awareness of geospatial technology and its potential for use in the comminuty / nonprofit arena, MapTogether look to be filling an important gap. We shall probably hearing more from them, and I believe this book will help to publicise their existence. The book starts by covering basic information such as why non-profits should be bothered by geospatial information, why it is important, plus basic definitions of terms such as GIS, GPS, raster, and vector. After the most basic definitions are covered, but before diving into the basics of what makes a GIS; a number of application areas and specific applications are provided. These are useful as they whet the appetite of the reader (who is more interested in his/her non-profit) before they have a chance of being 'switched' off by the relatively dry text covering vectors, rasters, points, and polygons. That is not to say this discussion is badly written, but this is always going to be of less interest to the average reader than "what can I do with it?". These application areas include: Program and Service Delivery eg. meals-on-wheels); Research and Analysis (eg. correlating heat deaths and poverty); Fundraising and Development (eg. election canvasing; planning environmental test regimens); Advocacy, Activism and Storytelling (eg. campaigning against mountain top removal mining); and Community Resource Mapping (eg. mapping of local dangers and issues). Two areas get a lot of attention and are probably important eye-openers to people who are looking at geospatial technology for the first time - and especially online mapping. First, issues of ethics and privacy are described in a number of places. Many well-meaning organizations have been tripped up by these issues, so it is useful that they are brought up at this early introductory stage. As well as the much-talked-about issues of privacy, the book covers issues of discrimination, community representation, and intellectual property. Secondly, a number of pages are devoted to data sources. This covers the practicalities (so, what do you want to map?) but also the availability of suitable data with an appropriate cost and license. The cost of good map data is usually a big surprise to a lot of people who are researching their first map application. This section of the book provides a good overview of the various options - everything from using a commercial provider through to acquiring it yourself. The book covers geospatial data (eg. from the census bureau) as well as basemap data. The book finishes with a list and discussion of a number of web sites and desktop applications that could be used to create a working geospatial application. This is a brief overview and only gives a taster of what is available. It is more interested in illustrating the range of options rather than listing all options, eg. OpenStreetMap, GRASS, and ArcGIS are all listed. However, it is strange that the list includes both Google Maps and Google Earth, but fails to mention Bing Maps (nee Virtual Earth). Bing Maps and Google Maps have similar licensing, and Bing Maps is arguably the more sophisticated. The list also only includes essentially complete systems - it does not mention toolkits and user-installed servers. Using libraries and servers like OpenLayers, MapServer, and GeoServer are a popular way of producing sophisticated web map applications - especially for those with low (or non-existant) budgets. However, they do require technical expertise which is probably beyond most of the book's intended audience. So, in summary, The Illustrated Guide to Nonprofit GIS and Online Mapping is an excellent, gentle introduction to the world of geospatial technology and online mapping for the intended audience of non-profit organizers with limited existing geospatial expertise.
 |
Twitter @geowebguru
Subscribe to this comment's feed