Day 4: Web Mapping

Today we will explore web maps (aka webmaps) and web mapping (aka webmapping). Web maps are a means of dynamically and interactively visualizing geospatial data. Today, you will learn how to create web maps in 3 different ways:

online, through platforms such as uMap and Google MyMaps,
with coding, powered by Leaflet, and
with QGIS, using the qgis2web plugin.

Each of these methods of web mapping has its advantages and disadvantages which we will discuss. Moreover, while we emphasize that web mapping can be done entirely online without any coding necessary, we believe it important to have a basic understanding of how web maps work. To this end, we will break down the “anatomy” of a web map in a code editor in order to understand how the various components of a web map work together. By the end of the day, you will be equipped with the fundamental knowledge and skills to begin web mapping on your own.

Morning Session 9am - 12pm

Introduce and demo uMap and Google MyMaps, two online platforms for webmapping
Hands on activity 1 - small groups assigned different datasets to map using either GoogleMy Maps or uMap
Anatomy of a webmap - conceptual intro to leaflet

Afternoon Session 1:30pm - 4pm

Hands on with Leaflet - tinker with boilerplate map
activity could be - run selection of data in qgis -> export as geojson - then wrap as javascript and add to project. multipart vs. part be aware for points. solve using centroid.
qgis2plugin (webmapifying a pre-made qgis project)
hosting with github (make sure there’s time for that)

Also, i want to integrate this in somehow to webmapping - its a tool from the data collector tool Digital Democracy (now “awana digital”) you pointed out way back when http://lab.digital-democracy.org/code/leaflet-side-by-side/

COULD MOVE the following content TO NEXT PAGE - ON INTRO TO WEBMAPS

What we will make

Below are examples of webmap made with uMap, Google MyMaps, Leaflet, and QGIS.

_{View in Full Screen}

_{See full screen}

_{View GitHub repo}

Before the day (or make this reminder at end of day 2)

To do - make sure you have google and umaps account.

Data

We will be working from the Day3 subfolder of your DHSI-workshop-data folder. Inside, you will see today’s data further organized into 3 subfolders relevant to webmapping online, webmapping with Leaflet, and webmapping with QGIS respectively.

We will webmap using data primarily from the City of Toronto’s open data portal. This data is licensed under the Open Government Licence - Toronto. This allows us to modify and adapt the data! The following datasets are from the City of Toronto. They have been reformatted to be legible to the various tools and platforms we will work with today. Take a moment to browse the datasets online.

The QGIS Project includes province (and water features?), data from government of canada as well as - ?? from natural earth data. Data from The Government of Canada is licensced under the Open Government Licence - Canada; Data from Natural Earth is public domain and therefore free to use.