Build web maps

Social Change Online supplies packaged solutions for map centric, web browser based delivery of information and services, centred on our flagship web mapping product, WebMap Composer.

Why web maps?

Most information is associated with location, eg rainfall, births, traffic counts are recorded at a location; customers and services typically have street addresses.

Location commonality is used to spatially integrate information from disparate sources; spatially integrated information can be visualised as an interactive map that can be queried, panned, and zoomed to show different levels of detail.

"The concept of spatial relatedness ... is a quality without which it is difficult or impossible for the human mind to apprehend anything."

(The Nature of Maps, Robinson and Petchenik)

Web maps use the Internet to extend the reach of interactive maps. Organisations and communities can be better informed and therefore operate more effectively.

"The uses of maps in human communication continually increase and diversify, reflecting the range of interests, knowledge, and aspirations of what can and should be 'apprehended'."

(The Mapmakers, Wilford)

Why Social Change Online?

Social Change Online take web mapping one step further; with our solutions, not only can you present interactive maps on the Internet, your map content can sourced from anywhere on the Internet.

Social Change Online specialise in the application of OpenGIS® Consortium interoperability and portability standards to web mapping; this experience is encapsulated in our web map application builder, WebMap Composer:

Add maps to your website

WebMap Composer is a spatial portal builder with a highly effective tool set for building user friendly map centric applications. WebMap Composer makes it easy to create and publish interactive mapping applications on the web.

In real time, WebMap Composer can source content from compliant map servers anywhere on the Internet, enabling your organisation to access up-to-date data and maintain focus on managing your own information without the expense of sourcing, importing and maintaining redundant copies of third party data.

Complete service provision

Social Change Online provide project services for all aspects of web mapping:

• Implementation and customisation services for WebMap Composer including:

  • Training for application builders, administrators and developers

  • Ongoing support and software maintenance

  • Optional hosting Service

• Wrappers to deliver legacy data as OpenGIS® compliant streams

  • This process is known as Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) enablement. A white paper is available here.

• Tools for spatial data upload to OpenGIS® compliant servers

Practical solutions with web maps

Social Change Online web mapping solutions excel where any of the following are important:

• Real time integration and presentation of distributed spatial data sources

• In-situ access to third party data

• OpenGIS® standards compliance

• Portal facilities for managing application and content collections

• Inexpensive web map application development

• Flexibility and future proofing

• Minimal or zero cost third party data and associated service infrastructures

For more information, please visit http://webmap.socialchange.net.au

Real time integration and presentation of distributed spatial data sources

Eg Emergency service planning & operations staff managing the response to a severe storm front can view field the latest crew deployments, river heights, radar images of cell activity, incident reports and updates on interactive web maps. Police and Utilities coordinators can access the same information services, but tailored to their own needs.

This type of scenario applies to traditional domains such as Policing, Defence (Intelligence and Operations) and Asset & Facilities Management, but also Health (Epidemiology – eg tracking SARS), Tourism, coordinated Transport and more.

Social Change Online solutions use OpenGIS® standards to integrate / bridge a wide variety of services independent of hardware and software platforms.

In-situ access to third party data

Maintaining current, correct and complete third party data and then distributing and tracking it can be a nightmare. Social Change Online web map solutions access available third party data from its point of truth.

In New South Wales, the Community Access to Natural Resource Information (CANRI) spatial data infrastructure serves more than 150 datasets in situ belonging to more than 10 custodian agencies. WebMap Composer middleware is used to broker these services and provide end user web map applications for:

• The NSW Natural Resource Atlas

• Planning NSW's PlanConnect

Social Change Online is currently contracted to supply hosted web mapping and e-services for up to 130 NSW Local Government Councils, using the CANRI infrastructure.

OpenGIS standards compliance

Social Change Online web mapping solutions use OpenGIS® interfaces and encodings.

Portal facilities for managing application and content collections

Social Change Online can bring to bear extensive skills in catalogue management, including the use of hierarchical vocabularies (families of tree structured keywords), for building, managing and searching registries of large data collections and applications. Such registries, in conjunction with user management, are the foundation of spatial portals. Spatial portals can be flexibly linked with traditional web portals. WebMap Composer is a spatial portal builder.

Inexpensive web map application development

Social Change Online web map solutions make extensive use of reusable, proven components. With WebMap Composer it is possible to create sophisticated web mapping applications with no coding, saving time, money and maintenance headaches.

Flexibility and future proofing

Use standards compliance to choose best-of-breed software for any function, without the cost and wholesale change of propagating proprietary software throughout the network.

Discover and access data that may not have been anticipated, predicted or prioritised during system design.

Minimal or zero cost third party data and associated service infrastructures

Many potential web mapping applications are constrained by needing access to data that would be prohibitively expensive to locate, access, update, format, symbolise and serve in their entirety.

The NSW Nature Conservation Council uses WebMap Composer to access data and services on the CANRI infrastructure at minimal cost.

Many other spatial data services are available on the Internet, for example ESRI's Geography Network; in Australia, service providers for the Australian Data Spatial Infrastructure include Geoscience Australia (Federal Government), Natural Land and Water Resource Audit (Environment Australia, Federal Government) and WALIS, the Western Australian Land Information System.

For more information, please visit http://webmap.socialchange.net.au