Tiling is one of the big pieces to put together nice, interactive maps. How The Post is replacing Mapbox with open source solutions describe the tech behind solving this problem with Open Source software.
Category: maps
I’ve been having a conversation for a while with @kamal_hothi and @aschiff on maps, schools, census, making NZ data available, etc. This post documents some basic steps I used for creating a map on ethnic diversity in schools at the census-area-unit level. This “el quicko” version requires 3 ingredients:
- Census area units shape files (available from Statistics New Zealand for free here).
- School directory (directory-school-current.csv available for free here).
- R with some spatial packages (also free).
Google Maps continues to include some higher resolution images (if not maps) for some parts of the planet. I was able to find the place where I used to live in Santiago at the level of buildings and houses. And here is where I used to study Just have a look at the centre of the pictures.
Distances between Christchurch places where I have lived at some point of my life (obtained using Geobyte’s city distance tool):
- Hobart, Australia: 2442 km.
- Palmerston North, New Zealand: 431 km.
- Valdivia, Chile: 8647 km.
- Mendoza, Argentina: 9487 km.
- Valera, Venezuela: 12876 km.
- Los Teques, Venezuela: 13255 km.
- Santiago, Chile: 9351 km.
- Concepcion, Chile: 8930 km.
It should be relatively easy to tag the images with every conceivable story that one is blogging about, although a bit time consuming. However, for most places I write about, imagery resolution is too broad for anything useful. I am sure it is just a matter of waiting a couple of years to sort out this issue.