One of the things that I’ve recently discovered is iMapBC. If there is something to be said about our province, we really do love our camel case when it comes to naming things run by the provincial government.
The government of BC has published thousands of datasets online, many of these datasets are spatial or geographic data. If you are good using APIs and GIS systems, you can access the datasets to use as you wish. Of course, this creates a barrier to using this information. iMapBC lowers that barrier, and lets you quickly and easily populate a map with the geo-datasets that have been made available by the province. You can also export the maps with datasets displayed, and add some simple customizations.
As an example, the following map plots the Surrey, Township of Langley, and City of Langley municipal borders around Willowbrook Mall.
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| Where the City of Langley, Township of Langley, and Surrey meet. Select map to enlarge. |
As another example, below is a map of the Agricultural Land Reserve in the South of Fraser.
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| The ALR in Metro Vancouver. Select map to enlarge. |
Having access to, and being able to easily use data, is important to helping us understand the world we live in, and make informed decisions. iMapBC is a simple way to start exploring the large amount of geographic data that only used to be available to experts.
1 comment:
Yup, pretty strange boundaries in that area. Township of Langley Fire Department and Langley City Fire-Rescue respond in tandem to every incident at Willowbrook Mall.
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