Results: Winter Term 2011/12

"Collecting Human Geographic Data for the Collection of User-oriented Maps” – Summer Term 2012

Marcus Götz, Christopher Barron & Pascal Neis

This web page provides an overview about the results of a field course with students from the University of Heidelberg.

Within one term, a total of 20 students divided into seven groups, have been creating maps for a distinct topic or application field. Thereby, the students did use free and open geodata from OpenStreetMap (OSM). In addition the students collected data by themselves and added it to the OSM community. After a brief introduction to the OSM project in general and the definition of the requirements for the individual maps (groups), the students collected and processed their data within one month. Thereby, they used at first the existing data in OSM, as well as publically available information, for validating the completeness and correctness of the OSM data. Thereafter, the students used GPS receivers and their local knowledge for collecting their own geo-data, which also has been donated to the OSM community.

For the creation of a web-based map, basic techniques of HTML, CSS and OpenLayers have been taught. In the end, the different groups compiled a report with their working process, gained knowledge and experiences. Additionally, these results have been presented and discussed with the other students of the course. Below, you can find the resulting web maps as well as a short abstract of the corresponding report.

student accommodations-map

(Manuela Raab, David Alsters & Julian Käflein)

Searching for an apartment in their respective university town is a frequent hurdle on future students' ways to their studies. Due to the bad housing market situation in the city of Heidelberg the amount of affordable living space here is especially small. As a result, dormitories run by Studentenwerk Heidelberg as well as private operators are not only cost-efficient but also necessary for plenty of students. Often, information about the dormitories is only available on the operators' respective websites. Especially for privately owned dormitories there is only incomplete or inconsistent information available. The rarely mentioned location of the dormitories in the city is also a matter of interest for students. Consequently, an interactive "dormitory-map" displaying the location of dormitories in Heidelberg along with their respective information concerning the living conditions such as furniture or common rooms can provide swift and comfortable support for students in search of living space. In the course of the project we gathered all necessary data by using available online sources, contacting dormitory-operators and collecting data on our own, e. g. by generating GPS-Tracks. We added the gathered information to the OSM-servers, where it is displayed well-arranged to the users on a layer including Pop-up-windows activated by mouse click.

Map of postal service providers all over Heidelberg

(Steffen Boettcher, Florian Rühl & Max Wibel)

Everyone already faced the problem with finding a nearby mailbox with earliest possible collection times in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Therefore we (three students of the University of Heidelberg) decided to create a map visualizing the postal service infrastructure all over the city of Heidelberg. Everyone can use the map fully free via the Internet. It unitesthe two most important providers of mail services in Heidelberg, Morgenpost and Deutsche Post, with all their post offices, mailboxes and stamp-machines as well as selling points. Moreover the map contains the most well-known parcel services operating in Germany like DHL, Hermes, GLS and DPD with all their urban branches and parcel machines. In total 122 objects are visualized and marked within the map with special icons, which are characterized and described on the right hand of the page. Furthermore the items shown in our map can supply all necessary information describing the objects like opening hours, collection times or addresses, by clicking on the icon this information pops up in a separate window.

organic food-map

(Julia Busert, Claudia Dellmann & Josepha Merz)

The web-page “alternativ Einkaufen“ focuses on alternative ways of shopping in and around Heidelberg. “Alternative ways of shopping” in this context means to buy food not in commercial supermarkets but in organic-based and regional shops. Following the increasing request for these kind of products, we collected contact details, such as name, address, phone number and opening hours of a huge number of organic shops, regional farm shops and local farmers´ markets and fed this information into OpenStreetMap, where it is being stored and accessible to everyone. Based on this “free” database we designed a map in which user may choose between organic shop/farm shop and farmers` market. However, it has to be mentioned that the term “regional” doesn´t necessarily correspond with the term “organic”. Thus, “organic shops” put much more focus on the wide range of organic products offered, whilst in the category farm shop and farmers´ market particular attention is paid to regional and local farming. On clicking on a little apple-symbol, which represents the location of this particular shop/market, a window pops up revealing all the specific information about this place as, for example, contact details, opening hours and a picture of the building. This web-page does not only make shopping much easier for its user, but also support regional and organic shopping in and around Heidelberg.

pub-map

(Katharina Anders, Konstantin Badelt & Christian Rittershofer)

Visiting a bar and having a couple of drinks is one of the most common forms of social gatherings in todays' society. Due to the rising number of bars, and the emergence of various bar types, like pubs, cocktailbars, lounges, cafebars, etc. trying to find the perfect bar can turn out to be quite problamatic. The fundamental problem often is, that finding the bar, one feels most comfortable at, is often too difficult and can be time consuming. In order to reduce the effort to locate the perfect place for the given occasion, be it a cocktailnight with friends, a romantic place for a date, or just the occansional afterwork beer, the project "Bar Map Heidelberg" was created. The Map uses open source geodata, which are provided by the project OpenStreetMap. Filtered by several criteria, the map characterises the different types of bars and classifies them by using various icons. Furthermore, detailed information is given in popups. The information includes opening hours, contact data, as well as a picture of the bar, which allows the user to get a first impression it. On top of that, the user has the opportunity to visit the bars homepage, using a hyperlink, which is also integrated in the popup window. All in all, the map is the best way to find a bar in the shortest period of time, whether you just moved to Heidelberg, or just want to try something new, this site offers detailled information about every single bar in the city. Due to the fact, that the map bases on open source data, the map is up to date, as soon as the information is changed in OpenStreetmap.

hydrant-map

(Julian Bergemann, Julia Mini & Philipp Neumayr)

If a fire starts it is important for the fire brigade to be in a position to put out the fire as fast as possible, therefore fire hydrants are necessary. But information about the type, the position and the diameter of a fire hydrant aren't available in an interactive map. This makes the search for an suitable fire hydrant harder. These fact gets changed by the webbased fire hydrant-map of the district Neuenheim in Heidelberg, which is based on OSMData. For our Project all fire hydrants were tagged with GPS-marks and were then uploaded in OpenStreetMap with additional information. Our final work is a map of fire hydrants for which all in all 493 fire hydrants and additional information were picked. During the building the map was fixed in an interactive website and more information was added. It is important that the fire brigade should be able to get the information very fast, therefore the map is findable in the center of the website and the legend is right beside. The map shows information about the position, the type and the diameter of each fire hydrant. Three symbols are used for the type of the fire hydrants, which shows if it is an underground, pillar or wall hydrant. If the '+'-sign at the upper right side of the map is clicked, a menu opens. The menu allows the fire brigade to select different diameters or types of fire hydrants to be shown on the map.

leisure-map

(Ines Funke, Jonas Gütter & Fabian Stoll)

In course of the field trip „Human Geographical use of freely accessible geo data“ at the University of Heidelberg during the summer term of 2012 the students Ines Funke, Jonas Gütter and Fabian Stoll created a user orientated, interactive web-map of Heidelberg showing the city's sports and leisure facilities. In total 280 objects, such as outdoor sports grounds, gyms, public swimming pools, horse back riding halls, barbecue zones, the zoo and the Botanical Garden were mapped. The relevant facilities are all run either by the city of Heidelberg or by incorporated societies of such and lie within the city grounds. The examined area was extended to the entire city of Heidelberg to ensure a research aid even for the population in the further outlying districts. GPS (Global Positioning System) is a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) that can be used free of charge for satellite-based positioning and navigation. A GPS compatible instrument was used in the field study to obtain the data. The regarding coordinates as well as the geo-referenced photograph and additional information were collected for every facility. Afterwards the data was inserted in OpenStreetMap (OSM), a freely accessible internet data base. For this step, the students worked with the offline-editor JOSM (Java OpenStreetMap Editor). This editor allows the creator to download extracts from the OSM-map data base, to work on them offline, and to subsequently provide the other OSM-users with it. Finally the homepage was created using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML allows the creator to differentiate the website content regarding size, colour and position. For this purpose the information is described with several attributes, so-called tags, and saved in an HTML file. The latter can be opened in the desired form by any web browser (e.g. Firefox, Internet Explorer). To be able to show the map, that is mainly based on selfcollected OpenStreetMap data, dynamically, the students used the Open-Source-Software OpenLayers. It was possible to highlight the tagged objects in terms of colour through another Open-Source-Software, that is Overpass API. In addition, pop-up commands have been integrated into the HTML file.

parking-map

(Benjamin Schumacher & Robin Oeden)

In many German cities it’s very hard to find a parking for your car. This also applies to the city of Heidelberg. Additionally the university town Heidelberg has well-developed bicycle paths, so many citizens and students use them. Because of the limited bicycle parking, many people park their bicycles on footways or in the pedestrian area without protecting it. Our project was to provide information so that cars and bicycles can be stored better, faster and safer in Heidelberg. For this purpose, data from the districts Neuenheim, Bergheim and Altstadt were collected an entered in Open Street Map (all in all 200 parking were entered, checked and corrected). The result is an interactive map showing all parking from these districts. By clicking on each parking a pop-up window will open with all information to this parking.