CREATING A STATIC MAP DISTRIBUTI

STATIC MAPPING SOLUTIONS - These are three brief activities involving Internet mapping using static maps. The first is a mini-example of a map distribution web site, the second uses the HTML version of mapping where polygons are added to map images and URLS linked to those polygons, and finally a composite data and image page created through ArcMap and/or MS Access. None should take more than a half hour and each results in a URL which you are to e-mail me so I can check it.

CREATING A STATIC MAP DISTRIBUTION WEB PAGE

A significant proportion of all Internet users when they think about the Internet and mapping just want a site they can go to, download an existing map and print it out. After all, a lot of map use (if not most) takes place away from a computer. These people have no interest in fancy tools and buttons, they just want a map.

Task - Imagine you are the GIS technician for a regional planning agency and you have created a region-wide map for the state-required regional plan of conservation and development. As part of the public information and participation process you have been told to create a web page that will give the public access to the draft maps for comment. The maps you are going to use are not perfect, e.g. they have have no street names on them which will make it difficult for the public to make comments such as..."northwest of the intersection of Broad and Main you have proposed a classification of __________________. This is entirely too high a level of proposed development for this sensitive area."

Rather than have you do an entire RPO of 15-20 towns go to N:\int_gis_map\labs\static_mapping and copy the three PDF maps in there (New Britain, Plainville, Bristol) into a folder in your studata workspace. You are going to build a simple html file with Front Page with a table containing links to these maps for downloading. A simple example is at http://cfd312014.students.ccsu.edu/website/Regional_plan/map_access_page__regional_plan.htm but you should make your own.

Some FrontPage Hints:

Mostly you type just as in a word processor
You insert a table from the Table menu; know the number of rows and columns you will need.
To create a hyperlink, type in the text, e.g. New Britain, highlight it and type ctrl-K. This opens an Insert Hyperlink dialog and you can browse to the map file you want to be linked.
Make sure you have a link so people can get Acrobat Reader if they need it (see the example).

E-mail me the URL when you have completed this part of the activity.

AN HTML MAP WITH GEO-HTML

In html (Hyper Text Markup Language) there is a <MAP> element that allows you to assign a URL to a mapped out section of a graphic image. The <MAP> need not actually be a map; it can be any graphic file, jpeg, bmp, gif, etc.. that a browser will recognize and display.

The <MAP> element has one required attribute, its name. So a <MAP> element is opened with a statement like this:

The various areas on the map are defined with <AREA> statements and each has the following attributes

Syntax	<AREA>
Attribute Specifications	SHAPE=[ rect \| circle \| poly \| default ] (shape of region) COORDS=`Coords` (coordinates of region) HREF=`URI` (linked resource) TARGET=`FrameTarget` (frame to render link in) NOHREF (inactive region) ALT=`Text` (alternate text) TABINDEX=`Number` (position in tabbing order) ONFOCUS=`Script` (region received focus) ONBLUR=`Script` (region lost focus) common attributes

The SHAPE attribute describes the type of shape and rectangle is the default. When using real maps as <MAP> elements it will usually be poly. Points would have to be represented by circles and lines by skinny polygons.

COORDS are the coordinates of the area expressed in screen units. These are not the map coordinates but the graphic screen coordinates when the area was created. They are expressed like this:

COORDS="x₁, y₁, x₂, y₂, ..., x_N, y_N".

Because polygons must close the first and last pair of x/y values must be the same and the points go either clockwise or counter-clockwise around the polygon.

HREF is the linked resource you want people to go to when they click on that <AREA> of the <MAP>. If they are to go nowhere NOHREF must be in the <AREA> element.

Here is a map element with <AREA> elements from a web map at http://www.geography.ccsu.edu/harmonj/int_gis/geo_html/some_gis_resources.htm

The <IMG> tag preceding it is the image over which the map was drawn. This image was produced by ArcView GIS 3.3 and exported as a jpeg file. ArcGIS allows export to other usable graphic file formats as well. This style of internet mapping uses no data but creates a map on top of static graphic output, in this case, a graphic of the Mountain states region.

PRODUCING THE <MAP> ELEMENT

There are lots of freeware products on the web to create these map tags over an image. We use a product called geo_html. Go to their website (it's in Russia) at http://www.fegi.ru/geohtml/ and download and install unless it is already on your machine.

In ArcMap pick a four state area and using the data at c:\esri\esridata\usa, create a shapefile of your four or five states, give it a projection, export it, bring in just those states to the data frame, symbolize them with a color, put labels on and export it as a GIF file. I have found that using no borders on the polygons work better, particularly if you are likely to shrink the map to fit in a small spot on the web page. The export is at whatever size it is on the screen.

Open geo-html and from the File menu go to New Map. Browse to your GIF file and bring it in. If you want to make it smaller by changing the width and height values do it here - keep the aspect ratio by dividing the original numbers by the same value, e.g. 2.Pick up the irregular polygon tool on the second bar and begin clicking around your first state polygon. You do not have to exactly match the borders, just come close. The polygon you are digitizing over the image does not appear on the web page. Double click to complete a polygon. Once you have done all your states click on the HTML Source tab.

Here is one I prepared for KY, TN, NC and SC.

<HTML>

<HEAD>

<TITLE>untitled</TITLE>

</HEAD>

<BODY>

</MAP>

</MAP>

</BODY>

</HTML>

Notice there is a place holder "#" in the HREF = attribute. This is where the URL will go.

To find the principal GIS URL for your states go to http://www.nsgic.org/states/index.cfm at the National States Geographic Information Council and paste your states' clearinghouse URLs into an instance of Notepad.

In Geo-html click the L button (Object List) and the Object List will appear in a box

When you highlight a PolyArea its outline will appear on the image. You can change the name of the poly area to the state at this point. Then click the I button (Area Inspector)

Alt - this is what appears when you move over the polygon; it is what computers with software for the blind "read" and tell the user what they are over.

Coords - these are what you have digitized - in screen pixels not real world coordinates

Href - enter your state's clearinghouse URL here. I am really sorry but cutting and pasting does not work in this text box and you will have to type it in from the Notepad file.

Id - this is what you just named it.

Fill this in for each of your states.

When that is done, in Front Page open N:\int_gis_map\labs\geohtml\geospatial_data_clearing_houses.htm and save it to your studata folder for this activity. Replace the YOUR NAME HERE with your name and inside this <td> element

YOUR <IMG> AND <MAP> ELEMENTS HERE

</td>

you paste material from the HTML source in your Geo-html window. All you need is the <IMG> and <MAP> elements; do not copy the rest of the stuff in. Make a folder in your c:\arcims\website folder and copy the geospatial_data_clearing_houses.htm file and the image file into it. E-mail me the web location (including your computer name) when you are done and I will take a look.

STATIC MAP AND DATA HTML PAGE

You really do not need expensive software to produce web pages with a map image and data related to the map image; you can do it with any GIS software that allows you to export tabular data as html tables and will create graphic images of the features in the table. Once you have both these elements you can insert the image into a table element in the html page to link the data with the image, at least visually. As always, there are several ways to approach this but they all have the same steps:

Produce the desired map with the features identified in such a way that they can be linked visually to the table, i.e. the map must have labels on the features that match with a column in the html table. So if it were a land parcel you might have the Parcel Identification Number visible on the map image.
Export the attributes of the desired features as an html table. If you are working with a personal geodatabase, MS Access will export queries and tables as html pages. Both ArcMap and ArcView 3.x have scripts at http://arcscripts.esri.com/ that also do this
Edit the exported html page with an html editor and insert the map image so the user will see both the map and the data.
Place the html page on a website

Of course, this is not dynamically linked to the data; it is a snapshot of when the data was exported and the map made. This is not a solution for data that changes frequently unless you automate it. Go to http://cfd312020/website/cromwell_ex/47_23-2.html for an example.

Activity

Go to n:\int_gis_map\labs\MS_FP_ex and copy the geodatabase and mxd files to your lab workspace. Open the mxd file and select a parcel to map. From File>Export choose the PNG format (Portable Network Graphics) and export it with the parcel id, e.g. 47_23_5.png; remember, no spaces in file names. Place it in a folder in your c:\arcims\website folder. You may choose which of the next two export processes you want to use:

ArcMap - go to http://arcscripts.esri.com/ and search Visual Basic for ArcGIS Desktop and html in the search box. Locally, the dll file to create html reports is in n:\int_gis_map\scripts_dlls and is called MyReport.dll. From the Tools>Customize>Commands window click on the Add From File button. When the Create Html Report tool appears in the right hand box you can drag it to a toolbar. Make sure the desired parcel is selected and go through the process to select the fields you want on the table, some formatting information and save the html file as,e.g. 47_23_5.htm. Because of how this tool works if you specify too many fields you will not see them all on the screen and they certainly will not all print.

Or you could export the html through MS Access...
MS Access - open the geodatabase in MS Access. Highlight the queries tab, right click on the Parcel_Query object and open it in Design View. In the Criteria row enter your parcel id in the first column, e.g. Like "47 23 5" Close the query box and double click on the query; it should run the query and pop up the selected fields in the query box. Go to File>Export>Save as Type and pull down to HTML Documents and save it to the same folder you put the PNG file in.

Finally, open the htm file in Front Page and at the top, go to Insert>Picture>From File, navigate to the PNG file and size it to fit over the tabular content, Save the file and e-mail me the URL so I can open it and take a look. Try some more to get good at it - it really can be done in a minute or so.