[ckan-discuss] Ideas for data mashups and improved visualisation for CKAN

[Ben Scott]

Hi Gavin -

We're using CKAN for the Natural History Museum's data portal, and I've been evaluating options for the data explorer/visualisation as it's the one bit of CKAN that doesn't quite meet our requirements.  We have a huge dataset of millions of specimens, and need map & table views which display all of them, so people can view species distribution etc., 

The Canadensys portal is a nice example of what we're trying to do: http://data.canadensys.net/explorer/search?view=map

So for us paging the results isn't going to work - and maybe this is a common issue? So we're planning on replacing CKAN's current map with CartoDB - it's open source and renders points server-side so you can display millions of items. 

http://cartodb.com/
https://github.com/CartoDB

We're planning on working with Vizzuality - the team behind CartoDB - to build a CKAN plugin to do this. 

I'd be great if our work could be of use to the CKAN project.  I'd be more than happy to give some more details of our plans - and hopefully it'd be something that might work for CKAN too.

All the best,
Ben



On 24 Jul 2013, at 11:38, Gavin Chait <gavin.chait at okfn.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> We would like to massively improve the data explorer and visualisation
> functionality on CKAN and are looking at open-source libraries and toolkits
> we may be able to use.
> 
> Our brief is as follows:  
> 
> Search and select data from CKAN, overlay datasets the data to create
> mashups, and present these in an engaging and easy-to-use embeddable visual
> format.  Data would also include geospatial. Data could include transport,
> air quality, energy usage / resource efficiency, and licensing of premises /
> planning. 
> 
> There have been some cool new initiatives from infogr.am, Dataseed and
> Datawrapper.de. There are also some great geospatial visualisation
> libraries, like Kartograph.
> 
> Our interest is in open source solutions to look at:
> 
> 1. Managing diverse data alignment for the mashup;
> 2. Outputting that data to an embeddable visualisation.
> 
> We can build on Recline and improve it, or we can work with another existing
> library that offers us greater flexibility.  We don't want to start from
> scratch, though.
> 
> We would love to hear your ideas and suggestions as we look to the next
> generation of CKAN data explorer.
> 
> Thanks and appreciated
> 
> Gavin
> 
> 
> Gavin Chait
> Head of Services | skype: whythawk | M:  +44 (0) 78 9495 7090 | @GavinChait
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> Empowering through Open Knowledge
> http://okfn.org/
> 
> 
> 
> 
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