Cartagen
Cartagen is a set of tools for mapping, enabling users to view and configure live streams of geographic data in a dynamic, personally relevant way. Today's mapping software is largely based on static data sets, and neither incorporates the time dimension in its display nor provides for real-time data streams.
How might communities use it?
Applications include mapping real-time air pollution, citizen reporting, and disaster response. Cartagen, built in HTML5, and viewable on mobile devices such as the iPhone and Android platforms, helps users to analyze and view shared geodata from multiple sources. Cartagen is a dynamic map renderer which employs Geographic Style Sheets (GSS), a cascading stylesheet specification for geospatial information—a decision which leverages literacy in CSS to make map styling more accessible. However, GSS is a scripting language as well, making Cartagen an ideal framework for mapping dynamic data.
At what stage of development is it?
Cartagen is being tested and is available for testing: http://wiki.cartagen.org/wiki/show/HomePage
Other collaborators: David Small
Comments
Has this been used to track crime in neighborhoods? Where burglaries occur, for example. I’m wondering if you could start to discover cartographic patterns that could help solve bigger issues.
Crime is just an example.
With powerful mapping tools such as these, there is an opportunity for users to create their own maps – not just pushpins and overlays,
but completely designed maps which incorporate rich and dynamic data, and most of all maps which tell stories. Instead of a single canonical map for everyone, individuals and communities can make locally and personally relevant maps.
This set of tools for mapping looks like a very promising project,
good luck to the project team and keep us all informed on its progress and how its use has benefited small
community groups.
I found this project on Github and I was impressed. One question: Why the google code repository is no longer being maintained?
Hey ionutpop - The codebase was moved to Github a couple years ago. Sorry - i'll see if i can make it more clear that it's no longer officially at Google Code
http://github.com/jywarren/cartagen
Oh, i see -- your question was why Google code was deprecated, or why we don't maintain both? Backporting to Google Code via the SVN-git bridge was a bit too much work, and I'm quite a bit more satisfied with Github as a version control system.