Ito World

The Future of Cities, Mobility and Growth

2009-11-16T07:57:00.000-08:00

Peter Miller, our intrepid CEO, will be dusting down his gown and venturing back to University College London on Wednesday 18th November.

He will be giving a lecture on "The Future of Cities, Mobility and Growth" as part of a series of seminars on Virtual Environments, Imaging and Visualisation.

The event starts at 6pm, and you need to register here.

Visualising Transport Data for Data.gov.uk

2009-10-26T04:05:00.000-07:00

Data.gov.uk is the Cabinet Office's project to open up government data and make it available for reuse. At Ito we take a great interest in all things open (maps, data, you name it), so when we were invited to take part in the data.gov.uk Developer Camp we leapt at the chance.

These events usually bring together some of the best minds in the UK, and over just a couple of days we saw a lot of exciting work going on from some very talented people. Our intructions were simple:

We duly obliged, and as industry partners of the DfT on the Ideas In Transit research project, it made sense to work on the traffic count data that had been made available as part of data.gov.uk.

It can be hard to make meaningful information from huge amounts of data, a graph and a table doesn't always communicate all it should do. We have been working hard on technology to visualise big datasets into compelling stories that humans can understand. We were really pleased with what we came up with in just one and a half days, see for yourself:

Data.gov.uk Traffic Visualisation Slides from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

And if you fancy, see me present this in best Geography teacher style:

Data.gov.uk Dev Camp - Visualising Traffic Data from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

And finally, we have all the visuals up as images on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/itolabs/sets/72157622542739701/

All videos and images released under CC-BY-SA.

From Time to Time Update

2009-07-22T04:19:00.000-07:00

We have just updated the From Time to Time image set on Flickr, detailing the edits made in the past year on OpenStreetMap for various places around the world. A number of areas of high activity in the past month are clearly visible.

In central Africa details of the Africover project import into OpenStreetMap stands out. Further progress on this import is available here.

Large scale recent activity is also visible in South Korea where the main road network and location names have been added country wide.

Lots of work is also evident in the Pacific Northwest, particlularly in the Victoria, BC; Seatle, WA; and the Olympic National Park area where US National Park Service and US Forest Service data is being imported (details here and here) .

Visit the From Time to Time Flickr set to view more updated OSM 'A Year of Edits' images from around the world.

Stop Areas, Hail and ride, Flexible Zones and more tests for NaPTAN Management

2009-04-30T00:40:00.000-07:00

ITO has released a new version of the NaPTAN Management service which now provides many new functions. The upgrade was commissioned from us by the Transport Direct team at the Department for Transport with input from Traveline.

Stop Areas
Stop Areas can now be viewed on the main map browser. Stop Areas are currently optional within NaPTAN however this map of Ipswich shows that most, but not all Stop Points are within Stop Areas. In some other parts of the country there are no stop areas at all.

Bearings
Bearings for Stop Points are now shown as arrow-heads in the direct the vehicle will leave the stop for all stops where the bearing field is populated. The image of Bishopston below shows that most of the stops appear to have good bearings although there are some odd ones towards the south of the area that are at 90 degrees to the road that need attention.

Hail and ride
Hail-and-ride stops are relate to sections of road where a vehicle will stop on request. The are defined using a central point and two nodes at the start and end of the section. Some Hail-and ride sections don't have geocodes for the start and end and others for others the start and ends are not on a road. In addition to displaying this information on the map there are also new tests for hail and ride sections (see below).

Flexible zones
Flexible zones are used by demand responsive areas and define a area within which a vehicle will stop on request. Both the slippery map and the stop feature pages now show the extent of flexible zones.

New tests
We have added new tests for hail-and-ride stops to check that there are locations for the start and end of the section, that these are on the road and that the total length of the hail-and-ride section is not too long. There is also a new test for Stop Points within 4 meters of each other (2 meters for BCS stops). These new tests are initially available as 'observations' and can be adopted as 'warnings' at the regional level.

We have also relaxed the existing 'geocode outside' test to avoid picking up so many minor issues, and have tightened up the 'locality shape' test so that it now picks up more potential issues. This has resulted in a number of 'resolutions' of geocode outside warnings and new 'locality shape' warnings on the 30 April even though the underlying data hadn't changed.

Key to symbols
One can open a 'key' to the symbols used on the slippery map. Click on the word 'key' to open it. The image below shows the key when it is opened.

Better search
The search box now uses phonetic searching so it is now more forgiving of different spellings. A search for "Kings Lynn", "King's Lynn" and even "kings lin" will return features containing "King's Lynn" and "Kings Lynn".

Tutorial video
We have produced a 7 minute introduction to the NaPTAN Management product.

How to access the service
The NaPTAN service is currently only available to UK transport professionals involved in the management and use of NaPTAN data within the UK. You can request a subscription using this form. There are aspirations to provide wider access to the service in the future.

We have upgraded OSM Mapper!

2009-03-05T13:09:00.000-08:00

We have just upgraded OSM Mapper. There is a new user interface with some great new features. We have increased the maximum size of areas by a factor of three and have made it easier to manage longer lists of areas. You can now save your favourite views into the data and export data as KML.

Better handling of areas
Areas used to be listed across the screen in the order in which they were created and as the list grew the map would be pushed down the page. The areas are now available from a selection list and the processes of editing areas, creating new areas and deleting areas have been cleaned up. You can also set a default area.

Views
Using the new view feature you can save many different, er, views of an area. There are some standard views such as 'sessions', 'users' and 'tags'. You can also add your own views by selecting the information you are interested in and saving it with a suitable name. Check out this short tutorial to see how easy it is to create areas and views and then use them for real.

Using OSM Mapper - An Introduction from ItoWorld on Vimeo

Advanced views
Ok, so that covers the basic stuff about creating and using areas. The following tutorial shows how to create some more advanced views into the data, including looking at who has been editing particular features, taking RSS feeds for selected features and creating list of names for waterways and streets. It shows how to set your OSM username from the profile page in order to use the 'filter by me' and 'filter by not me' feature.

OSM Mapper - Using Advanced Views from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

KML Export
A powerful new feature is the ability to export selected data as KML. Select an area and a view and then select 'Export > Map as a KML file' from the menu above the image. Give it a name, save it to your computer and then check it out in Google Earth. The image below shows some schools in Bristol in Google Earth. One school is shown in yellow, and the rest in blue.

You can also check out a KML view of London railway network and the UK Railway network

Have fun and tell us what you think. If you spot any problems then definitely tell us what's up and we are ready to get them fixed.

OpenStreetMap Animation for 2008

2008-12-31T04:49:00.000-08:00

We have produced an animation of edits made to OpenStreetMap around the world in 2008.

OSM 2008: A Year of Edits from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

OpenStreetMap is a wiki-style map of the world and this animation produces a flash of white each time a new way is entered or when an existing way is updated. Some edits are a result of a physical local survey by someone with a GPS unit, other edits will have been done remotely using aerial photography or out-of-copyright maps. Others are based on bulk imports of official or commercial datasets that are available using a suitable 'share-alike' licence.

OpenStreetMap started in 2004 and the rate of contributions has been accelerating with four times as many people contributing to the project in 2008 compared to 2007 and with bulk imports of data for the Belarus, India, Italy, USA and for many other places.

Supporting OpenStreetMap is an important part of ITO's business which is focused on providing high-quality on-line transport and mapping services to both organisations and individuals in the UK and around the world.

We also post still images on Flickr.

Major NaPTAN Upgrade and Other Improvements

2008-12-12T06:58:00.000-08:00

We are doing a major site upgrade this weekend. Hopefully, we will only be offline for about five minutes on Friday evening 12th December and should then be back with some new functionality. We are upgrading the main ITO website, making significant improvements to the NaPTAN product, and adding some minor fixes to the OSM Mapper product. There are also a number of behind the scenes changes that make improvements in the future easier.

NaPTAN
The NaPTAN product is a free online service for UK transport professionals involved in the management of the NaPTAN dataset which is a database of all the points of access to the UK public transport network. New users can request a subscription through our website. We perform tests on this data on a daily basis and allow users to see what is current in the dataset. We have improved a number of these tests as well as added some new ones.

We have introduced a 'manual warning' feature where users can flag an error for features (such as a bus stop or a locality) for which they believe the information given is wrong. The 'warning' consists of a text description field and this information will then appear in reports for the relevant data owners and managers. Other users can then update the issue as 'resolved' if they have fixed the associated problem or as 'suppressed' if they believe the fault report is in error.

We have added new tests to check the information used to snap on-street stops to roads. This information is important when presenting bus stops on maps that show where to access services. We now report on bus stops where the street name given in NaPTAN dataset does not match any nearby streets in the roads dataset and also where the bearing in the NaPTAN dataset does not match either of the directions of travel away from the bus stop along the selected road (for example where the bus stop says that buses leave to the north but the road of the appropriate name runs east-west).

We now import all the data associated with Hail and Ride stop points and display the relevant information on the Stop Point page.

We are testing the locality+qualifier to spot non-unique combinations in the UK to ensure that ambiguous locality names (such as Cambridge) have a qualifier (eg Cambridgeshire or Gloucestershire).

We have provided a link to OpenStreetMap as well as to Google Maps and Multimap etc from the 'view' menu on maps and this can sometimes be a useful alternative source of mapping data. In some places the data is still incomplete, but in other areas it is more up-to-date than the information available from commercial sources.

NPTDR 2008
We are currently working closely with the Department for Transport, Traveline and Thales on the 2008 release of the NPTDR dataset which contains details of all public transport movements in the UK. We are currently testing this database of 1.3 million public transport journeys against some thirty quality checks on a daily basis.

Although this product is now moving to our production servers, it will initially only be available to a small number of subscribers who are directly involved in the preparation of the data. We expect to be able to make this product available to all NaPTAN users as soon as the data is officially released.

Other Improvements
We have updated the website with new graphics on our home page and each product now identifies who has sponsored it.

We have added a messaging system so we can warn our users of planned downtime or current issues with the system. These messages will appear in the top bar if they are applicable.

We have hopefully resolved the issue with RSS feeds for users who are not logged in which was affecting OSM Mapper users and possibly also other users.

OSM Mapper Now Available for the USA

2008-10-24T18:54:00.001-07:00

OSM Mapper is now available for the United States (and everywhere else). To find out more about OSM Mapper read our initial blog entry. Take a look at where work is being done across the USA. In the image below the bright spots show areas with recent edits and the background colours show when the main TIGER data was imported.

Looking more closely you can see a lot of activity in New York:

It is also possible to see who has actually been doing the work (click on any image to access a more detailed version):

Across on the West Coast there has also been a lot of work in the Bay Area:

Around New Orleans:

And many other places. Why not subscribe for free and find out what is happening your area?

This product was developed with support from Ideas in Transit.

Expanded Coverage for OSM Mapper

2008-08-29T06:38:00.000-07:00

OSM Mapper coverage has now been extended to include Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australasia, South America and Canada. The only area still missing is the USA which will be added at the next stage.

OSM Mapper is a product (free to use after registration) that allows users to analyse and view data for areas of interest, but until now coverage has been limited to Europe. To find out more about the product's features, see the original announcement.

Here is an image showing nice team-work in Melbourne, Australia.

The following images show examples of recent activity around the world. Please note that currently only ITO staff can create such wide-area images.

Zooming out from Melbourne we can see where there has been recent activity across Australasia.

Head north and see what been happening in Japan, parts of China and North and South Korea.

Moving west we can see what is going on in India. The big bulk upload of trunk roads arrived in February 2008, courtesy of Automotive Navigation Data. Since then there have been some busy areas, possibly due to the series of mapping parties held in India.

Moving further west we can see activity across Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt and Palestine with a lot of progress in the past few months.

Skipping existing coverage in Europe, we can see Canada - with lots of activity in the more densely populated South.

Heading down to South America, we can see that clearly some areas are doing a lot of work.

Finally, if the place you are really interested in is the USA then subscribe to this blog and we will post here as soon as we are set up to handle all the TIGER data.

If you want to find out more about the product and how to subscribe or use it then read our original announcement.

We would like to thank Geofabrik for providing free access to their daily version of the OSM datafile.

This product was developed with support from Ideas in Transit, a five-year research project following user-led information technology innovation in the transport domain funded by the UK Department for Transport, the Technology Strategy Board and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

'OSM Mapper' for OpenStreetMap Contributors

2008-07-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

I am just back from the amazing second State of the Map Conference in Limerick at the weekend where we showed our new free product, OSM Mapper, that allows contributors to OpenStreetMap to monitor and improve the quality of data in their areas. We got the conference delegates to try it out and they seemed to be pleased. The few initial snags are now resolved and the servers are holding up well so it is time to open it up more widely.

Since the conference we have expanded the area available from the UK to the whole of Europe, and have moved from a weekly to a daily update. The next challenge is worldwide coverage which we will do as soon as we are confident with Europe. Btw, the new version of Potlatch that went live today means that it is now possible to click on the 'Potlatch' link from ITO Mapper and enter Potlatch with the relevant feature already selected.

Using this product you can set up one or more areas to monitor and analyse in a variety of ways. You can even establish RSS feeds to get alerts when other people make changes within areas of interest. You can also generate beautiful images to download and post anywhere as (CC-by-SA).

You can show the main contributors to the map using a view colour-coded by contributor. This image shows the top contributors in the Paris area.

You can also see how long it has been since different parts of an area have been modified over various time frames. The next image shows changes in Berlin in the past month.

You can focus on a particular aspect of the data, eg railways, waterways, schools etc. This map shows the various railway systems in London.

You can subscribe to an RSS feed for recent changes to railways in London. As the feed contains GeoRSS data, you can also view the feed in an appropriate viewer like Google Maps.

With filters, you can select features that are missing data. For example, this image shows a breakdown of unnamed residential roads in North London.

You can check for changes in an area by other people. This image below shows edits made in Ipswich by people other than PeterIto.

An RSS feed is also available to monitor the area above for changes by people other than PeterIto.

This image shows where we currently offer coverage (and also shows recent edits in the area).

Why not subscribe to our product, check out a tutorial slide presentation, or look at various images on Flickr?

There are a number of current limitations that will removed in due course: The coverage is Europe only. There is an size limit when selecting areas; this is large enough to cover most European cities - however the ability to generate images of very large areas, such as whole countries, is restricted due to the high processing times involved. Updates are normally daily and are unlikely to become more frequent just yet. It doesn't pay any attention to point features, only ways, so it is good for analysing roads and parks etc but not letter boxes and bicycle parks. We intend to offer functionality to allow people to share areas; you can do that now by sharing URLs, but we will implement a more formal approach in due course. Finally, deleted features are not picked up in the RSS feeds so you won't be warned if someone has deleted a feature, however big it is! Stay tuned to this blog for information about future enhancements.

Please give us feedback by commenting on this post, using the comment link at the bottom of each page in the product, or emailing support 'at' itoworld.com.

NaPTAN Management Product - Major Upgrade

2008-05-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

At ITO, we have just added a lot of new functionality to our on-line NaPTAN management service.

Firstly we have added a 'product' bar at the top of the page which allows you to access your profile, to log out and to change which product you are accessing in preparation for the release of new products soon. In the near future we will be adding additional products and users will be able to switch between different products by clicking on the appropriate one on the left of the title bar.

Within NaPTAN we have added the ability for regional managers to add additional tests to the ones being tracked (warnings) from the list of observations. Regional managers will be enabling appropriate ones for their region after discussion with individual areas in the coming weeks.

We have opened up access to any person with a legitimate reason to use the NaPTAN product. To invite someone go to the 'NaPTAN' main page (by clicking on naptan in the left menu, or by clicking on NaPTAN in the product bar) and click on 'invite users'. Then just type in the user's email address and a brief introductory message. Legitimate users include council officers, contractors and volunteers who have a role to play improving NaPTAN data.

You can also now subscribe to a region or area summary page now using an RSS reader and we have added a 'watch' facility; click on the watch link at the top of locality, stop and other pages and it will create a link to the page from your main NaPTAN page.

We have also made some adjustments to some of the newer tests in response to feedback.

The Story So Far

2007-11-18T20:45:00.000-08:00

ITO has been busy for the past 18 months building a high quality on-line model of the UK's transport system, and has been working with data providers and data standards to improve the source data.

We are contracted to provide on-line data quality improvement services to the UK Department for Transport (DfT), every local transport authority in the UK and Traveline. We perform a range of consistency checks on a daily basis, and are currently implementing a whole raft of new tests on the UK's scheduled transport data, including tests on stop naming (there are nearly 400,000 bus stops in the UK and their names should conform to consistent conventions - they don't!), tests that all stops are correctly allocated into a hierarchy of places, and on the transport schedules themselves it highlight potential problems (missing stops, incorrect date ranges, conflicting descriptions and physically impossible timings).

We use Navteq road data, actively contribute to OpenStreetMap project and are in a research partnership with Ordnance Survey Research Labs.

We have worked on a number of key CEN data standards for the exchange of public transport data, including IFOPT (for the exchange of transport interchange data), SIRI (for the exchange of real time scheduled transport data), and we are on a DfT working party to define a data standard for cycling related infrastructure.

If you think that all sounds like hard work, then you would be right, but we now have access to a transport model for the UK with nearly every road and scheduled transport service (bus, rail metro, tram and ferry), and we also have increasing coverage of cycling facilities and have good working relationships with nearly all the UK transport data providers.

We are now in a strong position to provide analysis services to transport authorities and government to guide policy decisions and implementation, and to support effective two-way communication between authorities and the general public on transport matters.