Digimap for Digital Humanities: An event at King’s College London

ecls/ / Digimap News, Training & Events

Bush HouseEDINA were delighted to co-host an event with King’s College London exploring the benefits of Digimap.  We were joined by a full complement of staff and students from both King’s College and other neighbouring universities at the impressive Bush House, and would like to offer our warmest thanks to staff at King’s College for making the arrangements.

We heard two fascinating talks from Dr Stuart Dunn (KCL) and Dr Stuart Brookes (UCL).  Dr Dunn talked about the identification and mapping of corpse roads by combining different types of data from a variety of sources, including historical texts and map data from Digimap. These ancient pathways exist in several areas of the country but their location is shrouded in the mists of folklore.

 

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Dr Brookes gave a fabulous insight into how our reading of historical landscapes can explain and inform the development of our country today and how maps and spatial data play a key part in this analysis. Not only can this analysis explain the past but can also begin to predict future developments.  In particular he demonstrated how spatial data has assisted in demonstrating how ancient roads have impacted the growth of modern day transport networks and urban areas.

 

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EDINA’s Director, Janet Roberts, gave a short talk about the value of Digimap and the use of data, highlighting particularly the importance of data skills to graduate employability and economic activity in both the short and medium term.

Both Dr Dunn and Dr Brookes have made use of a range of data from Digimap in their research and demonstrated the immense value that Digimap can bring to so many aspects of research and teaching. Having a wide range of data available in one place, with support available from EDINA, makes maps and map data easily accessible and usable for all staff and students from any discipline, novice and expert user alike.

This event was held in part to help broaden the use of Digimap at King’s College into more departments. There is a recognition that Digimap is a key resource at a high level at King’s College…

“An astonishing resource to have available which could be useful to all sorts of surprising research and teaching contexts across the faculty”

Professor Simon Tanner, Pro Vice Dean (Impact & Innovation), Arts & Humanities

… so we were very happy to do what we could to help. If you would like to showcase your own use of Digimap and promote the use of maps and spatial data throughout your institution, please get in touch (edina@ed.ac.uk). We look forward to co-hosting other similar events elsewhere.

New Digimap Webinar Schedule

ecls/ / Digimap News, Training & Events

EDINA is pleased to announce a new schedule of webinar dates. Some topics have yet to be confirmed. Please book a place….just click any webinar to go to the booking page.

If you have suggestions for other webinar topics relating to Digimap, please drop us a line on edina@ed.ac.uk or 0131 650 3302.

Digimap at Digifest: 6-7 March 2018

ecls/ / Digimap News, Training & Events

EDINA will be exhibiting at the Jisc Digifest 2018 conference on 6th and 7th March at the ICC in Birmingham. Come and talk to us about exciting developments with Digimap!  We will have demonstrations of all the Digimap services and staff on hand to answer any questions. We will be at Pod 19 in the Exhibitor Zone and DigiLab area.

Digifest 2018

Directions on how to get to the ICC are here: International Convention Centre Broad Street, Birmingham, B1 2EA.

 

Ask us anything!

ecls/ / Digimap News

Digimap have scheduled two “open surgery” webinars, open to all Digimap users.  These hour long sessions offer the opportunity for you to ask any questions you may have about Digimap.

EDINA Geo team
EDINA Geo team

Our team have a wealth of experience of mapping data and can help you with:

  • using the service – how to get the map or data you need
  • personalising your map with annotations or data
  • the maps available within the service
  • using your data in GIS
  • copyright queries

We’d welcome questions about any aspect of the service, or if you’d just like to give us some feedback that would be very welcome. Hope to see you there.

Book now!

NOTE: Previous webinar recordings, along with slides and Q&A transcripts can be viewed on the webinar materials page.

Digimap comes of age

ecls/ / Digimap News, Of Interest

Those with long memories will remember the launch of Digimap on 10th January 2000.  This means that the service has just turned 18!happy-birthday

Much has changed since then, with a move from a single mapping application to “lite” and advanced versions through to the recently updated Roam mapping application available today. Changes in web mapping technology have moved on apace, licensing has developed considerably, the range of data available within Digimap has expanded and the number of users and range of uses has increased exponentially.  Digimap has enjoyed many ringing endorsements over the years and EDINA will continue to ensure that Digimap offers value and benefit to the academic sector.  Happy Birthday Digimap!

How Carto has changed since 1998
Four versions of Digimap Carto, the advanced mapping tool. Technology now allows us to combine both simple and advanced functionality into a single application, which we now know as Roam!

 

Roam
2018: Ancient Roam from the Historic Digimap Collection

Additional vertical aerial imagery for Digimap

ecls/ / Data Changes & Additions, Digimap News, Of Interest
Night time aerial imagery of London Waterloo and the London Eye
Night time aerial imagery of London Waterloo and the London Eye

We recently made available, through the Digimap Lidar Collection, a wealth of Vertical Aerial Imagery data captured by the Environment Agency for England.  The Environment Agency has been capturing vertical aerial imagery since 2006 on a project by project basis, so the coverage is not continuous across England. Availability grids for each year of data are available in the Lidar Download application. Data is available in some locations for multiple dates where the location has been surveyed on more than one occasion.

Some of the imagery was captured at night time giving an insight in to the effects of urban light pollution.

Data format

The data is supplied in the raster ECW (enhance compressed wavelet) format, which should be readable by most modern GIS and image processing software.  The data is tiled and tile sizes range from 1km x 1km to 5km x 5km and the resolution of the data ranges from 10cm to 50cm. There are three types of imagery available:

  • True colour – red, green, blue (RGB)
  • Near Infra-Red (NIR)
  • 4-band (RGBN)
RGBN aerial imagery of Spurn Head in Humberside
RGBN aerial imagery of Spurn Head in Humberside

Access

Lidar download is available to all institutions that subscribe to Aerial Digimap, meaning that subscribing institutions now have access to another detailed aerial imagery dataset.

For information on subscribing to Aerial Digimap, please see the subscription page.

 

If you have any questions about the new data or Digimap please contact us:

  • Email: edina@ed.ac.uk

Mapathons

ecls/ / Of Interest

On a recent visit to the University of Exeter the Digimap team learned of their regular Mapathon sessions.  Dr Damien Mansell from the University of Exeter’s Department of Geography has kindly written a short piece about their mapathons for this blog:

Logo_geo_hosts_missingmapsThe second week of November was an important one for Geographers and Geography departments around the world. Not only was it Open Street Map Geography Awareness Week but on the 15th of November it was also GIS day. Both initiatives are international forums to develop interest and understanding of the subject, the technology of Geographical Information Systems, showcase applications, raise public awareness of the significance of place and encourage collaborative mapping. To celebrate, the University of Exeter Geography department hosted a Missing Maps Mapathon. The mapathon collaborates with British Red Cross and Humanitarian Open Street Map Team to map an area where humanitarian organisations are trying to meet the needs of vulnerable people. This mapathon was mapping the Kurigram District in Bangladesh in order to effectively implement disaster risk reduction activities, to enhance resilience to future floods. During the 2 hour mapathon which included wine and pizza, The University of Exeter volunteers managed to make 2,272 map edits which included 2,035 buildings and 1,134 km of roads. The humanitarian aid projects continues at Exeter and we encourage you to host a mapathon for yourselves! http://www.missingmaps.org/host/

mapathon

Images copyright Dr Damien Mansell/University of Exeter

New Digimap Roam for all Collections

ecls/ / Digimap News, New Features, Of Interest

On 30th November 2017, we released Beta versions of our new Roam mapping application for all Digimap Collections. Log in to Digimap and click on each Collection to find the link to each new Roam:

New Geology Roam

The functionality of the new application remains the same, but we hope you agree that the updated look is easier to use.

Most importantly, BOTH versions of Roam (new and old) will run in parallel for an extended period of time to give users the opportunity to get used to the new interface. We will review this at the beginning of March 2018 with a view to establishing a date for withdrawal of the old application.

New Aerial Roam showing the London Eye
New Aerial Roam showing the London Eye

Known Issues

All applications have undergone thorough testing, but there are still a few issues that we working on, for example some elements can be slow using Internet Explorer. If you spot anything that is not behaving correctly, please report this to us.

We encourage you to try the new beta versions and we welcome any feedback you have.

  • Email: edina@ed.ac.uk

Beta version of OS Roam now available

ecls/ / Digimap News, New Features, Of Interest

On 3rd October 2017, we released a Beta version of a new Roam mapping client for Digimap’s Ordnance Survey Collection.  OS Roam – Beta is available next to the existing version, simply log in to the Digimap service and select Ordnance Survey Collection to view the new beta version:

OS Roam - Beta

Whilst the functionality remains the same, we hope you agree that the look and feel of the interface is more modern. The majority of functions are available from a new menu panel down the left hand side, which is hidden by default, maximising the area available for the main map element.

There are some issues we are aware of in this version, which we are working on, for example, some elements can be slow using Internet Explorer and Edge.

New versions of the Roam applications in all other collections will be available in due course. Both new and old versions will run side by side for an extended period of time to give users the opportunity to get used to the new interface.

We would encourage you to try the beta version and we welcome any feedback you have.

  • Email: edina@ed.ac.uk