What's New in District Online (Release 3.2)

Since our last revision of District Online in March we've been working hard to bring our users some more functionality.

Without waffling on I'll get straight down to what we've done;

The first thing that is very important to the day-to-day use of District Online is increasing the frequency of our NLPG updates. We now update these on a weekly basis. Our updates are received from GeoPlace LLP on a Monday so that's the day the database gets updated. This keeps District Online users more in tune with the LLPG datasets that may be used locally.

To complement the weekly updates for NLPG, we've also included some new functionality in the NLPG Search tool. Users can now search by UPRN (Unique Property Reference Number) and USRN (Unique Street Reference Number). This should make District Online a lot easier to use in planning departments, for example.

The NLPG tool also has a new feature that allows you to include historic addresses. So now, by default only the current addresses will show and you have to tick a box to have the historic addresses included.

You'll also notice that the NLPG points now appear at 1:2500 without labels instead of 1:1250 scale. This is something that was requested by one of our customers. We thought it was a great idea so have applied it to all our Web GIS accounts.

The next new feature is in the Print tool. We've included an 'output to PNG' option which means users can embed mapping in other documents more easily than with just the PDF output. A PNG file is the same as a JPG image file and is supported by many pieces of software, such as Microsft Word, PowerPoint or Paint. You'll notice that the PNG export doesn't include a border which means you won't need to crop the image to make it fit and look right in other documents.

The final new feature in this update is the Circle tool in the Scratchpad. This allows you to create a circular polygon around a point on the map. You can specify the size of the circle in metres. Circle objects created with this tool work in exactly the same was as other objects, so you'll be able to use it with the Data Extraction Tool to export text information from other layers. I may have gone a bit overboard with this new feature in the image above!

Well, that's all for now! We're already working on our 3.3 release and i'll be sure to keep you informed with other news and info from the Web GIS team soon!

Winchester City Council releases Planning Maps website powered by Getmapping

Winchester City Council have today launched a new webpage that gives residents 24/7 access to an online tool to create high-quality planning maps.

This new service allows residents and businesses to create map extracts to accompany planning and building control applications. The service is based on Ordnance Survey MasterMap and Getmapping's highly detailed national aerial photography coverage.

This new site has major advantages for the residents of Winchester City Council as they now have a trusted online resource to buy their maps direct from the website without needing to make trips to the Council offices. Of course, residents can still visit the offices and use their suite of computers to produce their planning application map on the web.

This new services also has benefits for the Council itself. Enquires by email, phone or in-person regarding planning application maps can now be referred to this website for a quick and easy way to produce high-quality, consistent maps. This makes the drop-in centre more efficient and thus offers a better service to their public.

To access the new site, click on this link; Winchester City Council: Online Planning Maps and click on the link at the bottom of the page.

Getmapping can create online planning map services for Local Authorities at no cost and in a very short time. The Winchester City Council site was live within a week. For more information, contact myself (Chris Mewse) on email or twitter (CMewseGM).

Parish Online joins the Getmapping Web GIS family

When we launched the Web GIS Portal for our District Online customers we always wanted to migrate our Parish Online customers, which were on a separate website, onto the same system. We saw many benefits to doing this (which i'll come on to) so over the last few weeks we have put in place a number of changes. Let's have a look at what we've done....

Firstly, we have a new online ordering system that allows new Parish Councils to sign up for a free 30 day evaluation of Parish Online. After the trial period is up, there is an option to pay the low annual subscription fee and they'll be able to use Parish Online for all their Parish responsibilities.
We're really happy with this and hope it brings more Parishes into this mapping community.

These new Parish Online users will be able to log in using the Web GIS Portal and consequently have access to the new tools that are available in the new system, which brings me onto the next new update....

New Parish Online users will be presented with a new mapping interface. It hasn't dramatically changed, but is the result of the improvements we've been making to our other product, District Online. Let's run down the new features;

• A new layer control. This organises the map layers more neatly and can expand and contract to incorporate new layers. It also pops out from the left-hand side to help when you're choosing layers.
• A measurement tool. This tool allows you to measure points, lines and areas. You will find it under the Tools menu bar.
• Map View Parameters. This is a simple tool that displays coordinates for the edges of the map view. It also displays coordinates for the centre of the map window. This is also under the Tools menu.
• Legend. This is under the Map menu and shows you the layers that you have visible.
• Data Extraction tool. This allows you to extract information about the mapping data. For example I could extract a list of addresses from a particular road. You can extract information from any layer and export it to a CSV file (which can be used in Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice). Details on how to use it are in the Help files once you've logged in.
• Scratchpad tool. This is a new layer that can be used to annotate the map. Using this layer for temporary annotations means it doesn't get mixed up with your asset information in your Parish layers.

I'm sure these new tools will become very useful to our Parish Online users.

So what else is new?! Well, new Parish Online users are no longer restricted to what Ordnance Survey data they can see. The new PSMA licence agreement means our Parish customers are now able to view Ordnance Survey mapping for the whole of England, Scotland and Wales. This also includes the new Ordnance Survey OpenData layers so we were more than happy to add these into Parish Online. This is great news for our new users.

We've also secured an agreement that lets us add in mapping layers from Natural England. So now, all new Parish Online customers will be able to see a national coverage of this useful data. Here are the layers;

• Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB)
• Countryside Rights of Ways (CRoWs)
• National Park boundaries
• Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs)
• Ancient Woodlands
• RAMSAR Sites, and,
• Environmentally Sensitive Areas.

Historic Woodland from Natural England. (Copyright Getmapping & Natural England)

We hope that these additional layers and all the updates i've mentioned make Parish Online a lot more useful for day-to-day Parish tasks.

For existing Parish Online users we will be migrating accounts over to the new system in the next few weeks. We'll notify you when your account has been updated and you can then use the new Web GIS Portal.

If you are a Parish Clerk or Councillor, give it a go! You've got nothing to lose, and we're sure you'll love it! Use this Parish Online Ordering System to get your account.

Please let me know what you think of the updates by getting in touch with myself (Chris Mewse) using the Comments below or visit our Parish Online Community group on LinkedIn!

Understanding the Colour Infrared and Elevation Layers

By now, users of our Web GIS will be familiar with the aerial photography and Ordnance Survey base layers available in the application. They give context to the GIS information on the map, and also provide an insight to what the built environment is like.

But there's more! Getmapping also produce Colour Infrared (CIR) and Elevation Models (DSM, DTM) (DSM pictured above) which are available as base layers in the 'Other Mapping' group in the Layer Control. These layers are a little different to normal aerial photography layers so let me explain what they are.

Colour Infrared (CIR)

Our aerial survey cameras collect four bands of information; red, green, blue and infrared. With normal photography we take the red, green and blue data and produce a true-colour aerial photograph. The infrared band isn't used in true-colour photography because humans can't see infrared light, but it is still a useful band to have. To show the infrared information we display infrared as red, green as red, and blue as green. This gives us a false-colour image.

Infrared is emitted by the sun and reflected by the chlorophyll in vegetation (if you remember your school science classes!). The amount of infrared reflected can tell us whether vegetation is healthy or not, or even what type of vegetation you are looking at.

In the images above we can compare aerial photography with CIR. We can see that the trees are a brighter red than the bowling green between the tennis courts, indicating that short, worn grass may not be as healthy as the trees. We can also use the CIR to analyse materials. The tennis courts at the bottom of the aerial photography image are green. Does this mean they're grass courts or green-painted tarmac? Well if we look at the CIR we can see that there is an extremely weak amount of red in the image so we could conclude that that court is tarmac painted green.

Digital Elevation Model (DSM and DTM)
The next dataset to show you is the Getmapping Elevation Model. This product is split into two seperate layers; the Digital Surface Model (DSM) and the Digital Terrain Model (DTM). These are two height layers that give you very different views of the earth.

The DSM is a representation of the ground, including all the buildings and vegetation. The DTM is the same data but with all the buildings and vegetation stripped away, leaving the bare earth. To make the elevations easier to see, we apply a range of colours and shading to the data. So blue is the lowest, moving up through green, orange, red and finally white as the highest. This can give you a very unique perspective on what is happening on the ground compared to aerial photography. For example, we can see from the image above that the dark shadow in the centre appears to be where the ground has been excavated and flattened. This, funnily enough, is the same location as the tennis courts in the CIR example!

So we'd encourage you to explore these layers, get accustomed to them, and see if you can use them for your work in interesting and new ways! If you have any questions, get in touch through the User Forum or in the comments section of this blog.

What's New in District Online (Release 3.1)

One of the advantages of using a fully hosted Web GIS is that we can deploy new versions of the application quickly and with minimal disruption to the user. Gone are the days of waiting years for new updates to be released and then having to install them on every single computer at a cost of thousands!

With District Online, as soon as we make changes to the application, you can see them immediately. This means we regularly make updates and apply new functionality without disrupting your work.

So the end of March brings one of these updates, and while the mapping interface itself may not appear to have changed much, we have made some fundamental changes in the administration panels and the core back-end code. Let's take a look at all the changes we've made.

There are a few things in District Online mapping interface that you will notice. Firstly, the left panel where the options to choose base layers (such as Aerial Photography and Ordnance Survey mapping) can now be undocked to present an easier view of the base layers, as well as the GIS layers such as Tree Preservation Orders or Flood Map zones.

What's more, you can now expand and collapse these groups of layers to give you a clearer view of the GIS information that is available to you.

For staff at Bath & North East Somerset Council you will also notice that there are many more layers to choose from. This is an ongoing programme to give more staff access to more information, all through the simple District Online interface. So if you notice that your department's data is not in District Online yet, make arrangements with your GIS team and you can benefit from sharing your data with your colleagues.

Now I won't go into detail on the administration panel updates because the majority of people won't have access to them, but the key functionality changes allow the administrator to create these new groups of GIS layers and assign them to users. These layers can now be assigned custom colours, symbols and labels based on their attributes and data types.

So, as ever, have a look at the updated District Online and hopefully you'll be using it every day!

Any comments or suggestions, drop us a note in the User Forum (currently in need of some input!) and one of our team will reply.

An easier way to log into the Web GIS using Google Chrome

We have just published a new Google Chrome Web App that allows users to quickly gain access to the Web GIS. Click here to go to the Web Store (if you're using Chrome).

By installing the Web App in your Chrome browser you will have a large link that will take you to the homepage. If you are already logged in then it will take you straight to the mapping.

Although Google Chrome only accounts for approx 10% of traffic to our Web GIS, we'd like to promote the use of the newer modern browsers such as Internet Explorer 8 and 9, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. These new browsers support modern webpage formatting and allow us to implement clever functionality that is not possible in browsers like Internet Explorer 6 which is 10 years old this year!

So if you're using Chrome, give it a go!

Redesigning Local Services at the Barbican

Today we have a stand at the "Redesigning Local Services" event at the Barbican Centre in London. We'll be demonstrating our District Online and Parish Online web applications as well as showing some of the new mapping products we supply; obliques, 3D building models and height data.

The event is being held in the large greenhouse in the Barbican exhibition centre. I'm surrounded by palm trees, tropical birds and there are streams of koi carp. Certainly not the most normal venue but cool nonetheless!


If you're heading to the event come and see us, and if not get in touch!