GLADMap

Global Layered Administrative Distrcits Map Create country boundary and administrative district maps for sharing via GEOJSON service.

Inspiration

Global Humanitarian agencies engaged in transitional environments that have experienced some sort of shock: natural disaster, economic collapse, or conflict.

One of the problems they are facing right now is the insufficient systems for managing mapping data. The incomplete or incorrect maps, and admin layer data can be costly, even dangerous. The lack of timely data and information impacts decision making and coordination with other organizations.

As an example, in April 2015 when the intense earthquake hit Nepal emergency response teams moved to the affected regions of the country, where they were coordinating with multiple local and international Organizations, to serve communities and beneficiaries.

The team members realized that some of their help actions were inefficient due to errors and discrepancies they found in their maps. In consequence, they had to meet with developers and local communities to update the maps, so that they could reach the beneficiaries as it was planned from the beginning. The whole process took weeks.

We proposed an open source collaborative mapping tool that allows users to share and update admin boundaries for each of the affected countries works. This tool is a central map service that contains a GEOJSON based data feed and transforms Shapefiles and KML and stores them in a central GIS database. It has a searchable map interface that allows users to coordinate with other organizations and donors where they are working and areas that are underserved.

Using gdal/ogr to convert geodatabase to GeoJson

On mac -

brew install gdal
Using ogr2ogr we can convert files to GeoJson
ogr2ogr -f "GeoJSON" {target_file}.json {source_file}.{gdbtable/shp/any geo format}

More details (courtesy SARA SAFAVI) - http://slides.sarasafavi.com/gdal/#/

Visualize any geojson online

http://techslides.com/demos/d3/d3-geo-renderer.html

Adding/Updating GeoJson for any one country

If GeoJson exists for your country, then you will have to delete it manually. This is not done by script to avoid delete horrors as update might turn in an empty file. GeoJson files are stored and present at $PROJECT_HOME/data/*.json. File format is {country code}_adm{2/3}.json example AFG_adm2.json. Country code is ISO ALPHA-3 Code. And adm2 and adm3 defines granularity level of map.

cd $PROJECT_HOME/app/py
python download_and_convert_one.py <country code>

Successful execution example-

$ python download_and_convert_one.py 
	Usage -
	python download_and_convert_one.py <country code>
	EXAMPLE -
	python download_and_convert_one.py AFG
$ python download_and_convert_one.py AFG
Processing country AFG
Trying path - http://biogeo.ucdavis.edu/data/gadm2.8/shp/AFG_adm_shp.zip
Saved in - ../tmp/AFG_adm_shp.zip
Saved ../tmp/AFG_adm2.shp
ogr2ogr -f "GeoJSON" ../data/AFG_adm2.json ../tmp/AFG_adm2.shp
Finished execution

Downloading all data and converting them to GeoJson

cd $PROJECT_HOME/app/py
python download_shape.py # Downloads and extracts all shape files
python convert_to_geojson.py # Uses ogr2ogr for converting files to geojson

Querying geojson for an area using query_geojson.py

usage -
python query_geojson.py COUNTRY_ISO_CODE ADM_LEVEL_1 ADM_LEVEL_2 ADM_LEVEL_3
example for Afganistan and Ethopia -
python query_geojson.py AFG Badakhshan Ishkashim
python query_geojson.py ETH 'Afar' 'Afar Zone 1' Afambo

Example -

cd $PROJECT_HOME/app/py
python query_geojson.py IND 'Uttar Pradesh' Bijnor Dhampur

We use git lfs to manage large sized json files. In future we can create a zipped folder for all files and use docker to deploy app

Instructions to Run/Deploy on server

Navigate to the intended folder for deployment
Run the following commands:

sudo apt-get install python-pip
git clone https://github.com/toladata/GLADMap.git
pip install -r requirements.txt
unzip app/static/data python run.py

The server starts running
Navigate to http://0.0.0.0:5000/ to see the landing page
Navigate to http://0.0.0.0:5000/globe to see the globe version

Using REST service to export GeoJson

/export-geojson/<iso_code>/<ADM_LEVEL_1>/<ADM_LEVEL_2>/<ADM_LEVEL_3>
Example -
http://localhost:5000/export-geojson/USA/California///
http://localhost:5000/export-geojson/IND/Uttar%20Pradesh/Bijnor/Dhampur

Screenshot:

andrewtpham/Maps-CE