Geolocation Enrichment Tools

Siri Slettvåg

Culture Heritage Expert / WFM

sis@avinet.no

Overwiev

What am I going to talk about?

LoCloud

Geolocation Enrichment Tool

What is it?

Why did we make it?

What can you do with it?

Step-by-step guide to a geocoding project

A tool to add geolocations to existing data

• Can be used with any tabular data

• Makes it easy to update original data source

• Easy to plug into existing work flows

• Crowd sourcing-ready: create with users for users

locloud.avinet.no/demo

www.locloud.eu

What is it?

• An easy way to find and search for relevant content

• Enables map based presentation and exploration

• XY is a useful way to integrate ANY content

BUT

• Little XY metadata on culture heritage content (and on content in general)

• Need for an easy tool for adding coordinates to existing content

Why do we need a tool for geocoding?

Geography excellent

for exploration

I know what I am looking for and I know it exists in there

I am interested in information that is relevant to a location

• little XY metadata

• XY only way to integrate ANY content

• enables map based presentation and exploration

• opens up deep content

• metadata enrichment

• multi level quality control

Improving existing content with spatial metadata

Why has the tool been made?

• user management

• roles: administrator, editor, guest

• upload CSV text files (CSV = Comma Separated Value)

• edit title, XY, confidence or any attribute

• filter by area, category

• add point, line, polygon on map

• lookup name sources

• lookup various map, location providers

• add WMS (web map service) layers to map

• select base map

• zoom, drag zoom and pan

What the tool can do for you

A comma-separated values (CSV) file stores tabular data in plain-text form.

CSV is a common, relatively simple file format, that is widely supported by consumer, business, and

scientific applications. Among its most common uses is moving tabular data between programs that

natively operate on incompatible formats. This works because so many programs support some variation

of CSV at least as an alternative import/export format.

A Web Map Service (WMS) is a standard protocol for serving georeferenced map images over the

Internet that are generated by a map server using data from a GIS database.

(source: Wikipedia)

you may download geocoded data in different formats as:

• KML (used in Google Maps, Google Earth..)

• GeoJSON (used in various GIS applications as Open Layers, Google Maps)

• RDF (for linked data / semantic web / triple stores)

• CSV

When you have finished your geocoding process and are happy

And you are now ready to show your content on a map

• A lot of people contributed to the specification

– LoCloud partners

– Rough outline sketched during LoCloud kick off

• Afterwards implemented by AVINET

– Leading Norwegian IT consultancy, R&D company

– Specialized in GIS, LD data infrastructures and apps

– Tested extensively by National Archive Norway

• Released under GPL and supported licenses

How it was made

geocodingstep by step

Prepare file: all kind of tabular data can be uploaded. Save file as CSV.Only requirement is a unique id and a representative name

http://locloud.avinet.no/demo

Data sources

Top menu

Item listGeocoding form

Search databases

User management

Map, map tools

Search results

Overview over User Interface

Manage users and user level / roles

Start geocoding!

Select an item: Jenter med ball (Girls with ball)

View info: attributes of the selected source item

View image

Add place name and search

Select base map

Add add point, line, polygon on mapAdd confidance

Once more: next item listed: 17. mai tog

Upload file

To sum up: step by step

• Prepare file

• Log in

• Upload file

• Create users

• Assign access

• Select data source

• Filter data source

• Select item

• View information

• Specify geometry

• Select base maps

• Edit attributes

• Set quality

• Search for entities

• Use alternative sources

• Download data

• Starting with X million non-geo records is difficult

– Will take a long time to reach interesting sample size.

– Easier to get help to improve than create from scratch

• Solution: combine automatic and manual approach

• First auto-enrich using available tools

– List tools (AnnoCultor etc)

– LoCloud Geocoding Tool for Desktop

• Then use LoCloud Geocoding Tool

Automatic Geocoding

Avinet Geocoding

Tool for Desktop

Involves potentially hundreds of database

lookups per geocoded record

Best suitable for desktop in order not to

«break» or «overly stress» shared server

infrastructure

Adapted to specific national datasets – key

registries include:

• Property

• Address

• Persons

• Named entitites

At the outset adapted for Norwegian

registries but can easily be adapted to any

other European/national key registry

Best of luck!

Siri Slettvåg

Culture Heritage Expert / WFM

sis@avinet.no

www.avinet.no