———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Nan Stolzenburg
Date: Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 12:04 PM
Subject: mashup webinar
To: jocelyn.hittle@gmail.com

Hi. The webinar ended before I could formulate a question – but here it is…I work for very small rural communities. We build our own GIS databases using New York State’s data sharing clearinghouse. How can mashups be effectively used in rural areas where the kind and level of information shown in the webinar is not available? What are mashup applications that could be used in rural areas?

Thanks for passing this question on.

Nan Stolzenburg

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 10:02 AM, JENNIFER COWLEY wrote:

Dear Nan,

Thank you for your question. Below is Harsh’s response, followed by my own.

I don't completely agree with a point raised in the question: To illustrate - Consider how difficult it was earlier to buy some obscure book in a small town. Nowadays, you just have to wait for Amazon or B&N to deliver. Likewise, mashups and other Web 2.0 technologies have had a multiplying effect in places where there was none, thus benefiting small towns in more proportions than big cities in some ways.

But for starters: any small town would have the standard layers for a mashup - USGS, Census, FEMA, HUD, CDC etc, on top of its state's clearing house datasets. However, if a critical mass of layers, a diversity of data and a sufficient granularity of details is still not achieved, I recommend that the mashup zoom-out to include surrounding regional entities and discuss how the small town is effected by those. Leveraging Desktop GIS's growing mashup-friendly functionalities would also help. Finally, don't limit yourself to what you think a mashup layer should only be.

I concur with Harsh’s assessment. I’d think about this in terms of the data that you do have available. The mashup is a way for you to take data that is accessible and be able to simply map it. So for example, if you were working on a small town’s plan you may want to highlight locations of historic buildings or other data. Some of the examples we highlight are more urban in context, but you can use whatever data is available.

Jennifer Evans-Cowley, PhD, AICP

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