harmonyst.org

Dave Bollinger’s dbGroupToC is a fantastic improvement to the default ArcIMS html client interface. “It is capable of grouping any number of layers into any number of groups which may be collapsed and expanded. It supports visibility toggling at both the layer and group levels. It supports a single “swatch” per layer to indicate legend rendering, as well as an optional “legend” per layer which can include detailed legend rendering if desired. It distinguishes between layers which are completely visible, and layers which have been flagged visible but are not visible at the current zoom level. It is relatively browser-independent, requires only minimal changes to existing code to implement, and is clearly broken into code and data modules.”

You can download it, and instructions for installation, here.

Basically:

1. Copy the entire dbGroupToc directory to the website directory which ArcIMS uses (so dbGroupToC is a subdirectory).

2. Replace the default toc.htm file, located in the website’s directory with the toc.htm included in the dbGroupToC directory you
just copied.

3. Add the following bit of Javascript to “MapFrame.htm” in
the website’s directory before (or after) the other included JavaScript files

4. Clear your browser cache and reload the website to make sure the ToC has been updated.

The FAO has made the 2007 GAUL available from the geonetwork site (search for “GAUL”).

The GAUL is comprised of the best, most recent Level 0, 1 and 2 boundaries for every country in the world. There are also quite a few level 3 ,4, 5 etc. boundaries when available. Moving from VMAP or ESRI boundaries to the GAUL would represent a significant improvement the detail and accuracy of your global geodatabase.

You need to contact them for an account which grants download privileges, as the layers are not distributed to the general public.

I’ve been waiting for this report to be published in full for a long time, and now it’s available here on the FAO site. The report is a very detailed review and inventory of gobally consistent geospatial databases, and it is being used to inform core geodatabase construction by the UN Geographic Information Working Group (UNGIWG). Anyone aquiring data for a global geodatabase or doign GIS at international level will find this to be a critical and comprehensive view of what geodata is out there, where it comes from, what it is good for, and and how to get it.

Working with the RALLY Foundation’s assessment of Central City New Orleans, I’ve been mapping some of the primary data collected. The easiest way to geocode is to use the batch geocoder here:

http://www.batchgeocode.com/

The site uses Yahoo’s Geocoding API which is based on NAVTEQ and Tele Atlas street data, hence it can give more accurate results than a TIGER-based geocoder.

I simply export unique household identifiers and their addresses from SPSS to DBF-IV, open it in Excel, and copy and past it into the html batch geocoder interface. Once the geocoding is done, I copy from the interface and paste back into excel. Save it as excel, import into SPSS, and then merge back into the original db (make sure to sort HHID in ascending order for both databases).