[geo-discuss] Free geo-data: what next?

Thu Nov 30 21:26:21 UTC 2006

On 11/30/06, Jo Walsh <jo at frot.org> wrote:
> dear all,
> On Thu, Nov 30, 2006 at 11:04:06AM +0000, Rufus Pollock wrote:
> > What a great idea. Markus: if you want the database dump just let me
> > know and I'll send it to you.
>
> Here's the condensed numbers representing signups per country, i was
> writing a script a while ago to just generate a shapefile for Markus
> with this info embedded in it, I got bogged down in trying to find
> perl libraries that would let me alter and write to dbf files, which
> i had assumed would be easy.

Maybe offtopic: to render the list a DBF table, just use OGR
(http://www.gdal.org/ogr/drv_csv.html):

1. add names to the columns (so, add this 1st line):
Country,number
Austria,193
Belgium,103
Cyprus,8

change ':' to ',' for CSV and save as 'geodatapetition_nov_2006.csv'.

2. generate new file 'geodatapetition_nov_2006.csvt' (note the t):
"String","Integer"

3. convert:
ogr2ogr nov_2006.dbf geodatapetition_nov_2006.csv

Ready is the DBF file.

Now join 'nov_2006.dbf' to my country SHAPE maps
(http://mpa.itc.it/markus/europe_maps/):

ogr2ogr -sql "SELECT y.*,x.number FROM europe_countries y \
    LEFT JOIN 'nov_2006.dbf'.nov_2006 x ON y.country = x.country" \
    geopet11_2006.shp europe_countries.shp
qgis geopet11_2006.shp

Works!

> this is from eu_map in okfn user's home...
>
> This is the breakdown of signatories per country from the petition.
>
> Austria:193
...
[ the numbers should be probably normalised by country population?]
...
> United Kingdom:719
>
> Interesting to see Germany and Spain really significantly more active
> and that the UK is *not* among the few very responsive countries,
> which surprises me given the situation that geodata is in here.
> Perhaps a lot of this comes down to press/blog coverage and the
> activity of local groups, as much as reflecting the intensity of
> interest in the issue. Perhaps we're more resigned to proprietary
> stance here, and in different civic information environments in
> different countries the propositions of INSPIRE seem more extreme,
> more unlike the current art and desired state...?
>
> If there is any more data / detail you need, do let me or Rufus know.
> There is city-level data too ...

I'm little short on time currently, but you have seen how easy it is
(and could be completely automated in order to generate these maps
for a Web site; for this better use GRASS/PHP to make the map, see
for example:
http://grass.itc.it/spearfish/php_grass_earthquakes.php
).

cheers
Markus