street view on google maps
If you haven't already, check out the new Street View feature on Google Maps. This link drops you in the middle of Times Square.
It'll be a while before we get this feature for Metro Manila and we probably don't need it just as yet. We could use some updated street vector data for google earth.
A good friend asked if we could get GPS maps and GPS mapping service for our metropolis -and the answer is: OF COURSE! But first we have to make the map data, which exists, readily available to the public.
To speed that up, we should get Congress to declare all Namria datasets as open source and free to the public. Same thing goes for all the road and traffic datasets from the National Center for Transportation Studies. (Link may be down.)
(I bet the not-so-intelligent will claim that the datasets are sensitive and keeping them undertabs is a matter of national security. Right. Like the Rizal day bombers used GIS data to plant bombs.)
2 comments:
I think that Google will buy/license some local GIS company's data set for Google Maps and Google Earth first. Like www.mapcentral.ph's data. It's comprehensive enough to be added to Google Maps already.
Anyway, we're beat by Singapore and Thailand at having street data in Google Maps.
This document (pdf) lays out our National Geographic Information Infrastructure which was supposed to have been completed by 2005. I can't find any current updates on the project.
Thailand has a National GIS Policy but i can't seem to find a philippine analog to that initiative.
Sing meanwhile -well, it's just a city, right? So it's easier to get the data -plus they have an excellent urban redevelopment authority.
Cartographers are fond of saying "we map what we want to know" so I guess there are a lot of things we're not prepared to know just yet? or that we don't know we need to know?
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