Renee,
I would second Rich's suggestion to work on crowd sourced observations.
Here are a few other application ideas...
WhereIsTheWeed.org - citizen reporting on invasive species
BikeFriendlyRoutes.org - compiling alternative transportations routes,
perhaps building on OSM's data and pgRouting analysis capabilities
IllicitDischarge.org - This one deals with water quality. Create a site
that users can report outfall pipes that discharging into ditches,
tributaries and rivers. Many of the county governments in my area have
been doing this to trying to stop point discharge contamination. Have
the community find the pipes, and then the health department can test
them.* *See http://tinyurl.com/5ec2bc
Also, for creating interactive websites with Python, you might have the
student look into the Django/GeoDjango web framework
(http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/GeoDjango) to present your
OpenLayers maps.
- Tyler
Rich Gibson wrote:
What a great opportunity, and responsibility, you have with this student!
It seems that big chunks of the 'Geoweb stack' have been settling down, so
it is now relatively easy to set up real geographic apps, so the challenge
is now to create compelling applications.
I think it would be reasonable for your student to set up an instance
of feature server
and open layers and create a database backed site to capture, map, and report on
crowd sourced environmental observations. I'd love to see 'mytoxicstew.com'
or 'toxicplume.com' come into existence is something of a platial for
personal observations of
pollution.
Like "The small smoke stack was emitting a thin grey smoke for 1/2
hour this morning"
(Think of what Neal Stephenson's 'Sangamon Taylor' could have done in _Zodiac_
if only they'd had openlayers and feature server!)
The student would have the fun of hacking on some solid existing code,
could experience
the magic of researching additional data layers and then being able to
map them simply
by updating a single point in the code, and potentially create something cool.
And it would vaguely fall within the terms of your grant :-)
Cheers,
Rich
On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 2:14 PM, R E Sieber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi Everybody,
I need some advice. I've got a second year geography undergraduate doing
a three month internship. I want him to do something with the Geoweb and
with Python. He knows ESRI products (okay, ArcGIS 9.2) and a tiny bit of
programming/scripting but that's it. As some of you know, I've got a
grant to investigate the potential of the Geoweb to enable a dialogue
between government and the public around issues of environmental/climate
change. So it'd be good if his work could support the grant. Can you
think an encapsulated thing that he could do in that time?
On another related matter, I'm part of a Microsoft initiative to
determine what computer education should be taught to the next
generation of scientists who are not computer scientists or software
engineers. Obviously, I'm interested in the kinds of computing skills
that geography/environment students would need to move from Web 1.0
GIS/mapping to the Geoweb. It's a challenge because of the limited
number of non-major courses a student can take and the number of
pre-requisites that are often required of cs or engineering courses.
It's also a challenge because I would want them to essentially learn how
to learn about software so even non-geeks can move with the innovations
in Web 2.0 (3.0?). I'd appreciate any thoughts you might have.
Thanks,
Renee
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Tyler A. Erickson, Ph.D.
Research Scientist
Michigan Tech Research Institute
3600 Green Court, Suite 100
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
W 83.6889°, N 42.3021° (WGS84)
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