Local governments have their work cut out for them, especially small governments with limited funding. Not only do they need to collect important geographic data for their service area, they need to disseminate data to the public. Network GIS programs are expensive and most small governments don’t need more than one GIS expert, but they still must work with people in the field. One license to a robust GIS program like QGIS or ArcGIS is all that’s needed.
The GIS administrator does all the heavy lifting of data entry, digitizing and geoprocessing. With field data collection, non-GIS users working for the city don’t always have the expertise or access to a GIS program. This is when admins transfer the data to Map Mavin to facilitate collaboration between all users. For this example, the admin needed information on tree health in the city and had an existing layer on trees, including the tree type, overall health at the last checkup and location.
Uploading GIS data to Map Mavin is as easy as a button push inside of ArcGIS. As the city has a license to Esri products, the admin took advantage of the free ArcGIS-to-MapMavin plugin. This automatically transferred the layers in their map, along with styling, to their Map Mavin account and created a new map.
After they loaded the layers, the admin could modify the data, add in background information and make final tweaks to the web map. Once the map was ready to go, the admin moved to the permission window. Here they set the map to private, so only authorized users could view and edit layers. From there, the admin added the email addresses of all the users helping with data collection and set their individual permissions to edit. Once saved, the system sent emails to the users, inviting them to the map.
The admins work is done, now it’s up to the users in the field to add information to the tree layer. After signing up for a free Map Viewer account, they accessed the map and located the trees that needed updating. They then edited the data for each tree, updating overall health. The information was immediately updated in the admin’s account. Once they finished field collection, the admin downloaded the modified dataset and added it back into their GIS.
With Map Mavin, these small organizations don’t need to finance a large GIS suite. Instead, they can collect, catalog, edit and share data all within one system. When it comes to collaborating with employees and members of the public, it’s not always easy to share interactive maps. By exporting their datasets to Map Mavin, they can quickly collaborate with all their stakeholders.
Katie Nelson
Geospatial Ninja
(303) 718-7163
katie@apollomapping.com
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