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Re: introduction + municipal FOI

Posted by Daniel Haran on Jan 17, 2006; 5:29am
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/introduction-municipal-FOI-tp165p168.html

Hi,

On 1/16/06, Michael Lenczner <[hidden email]> wrote:
> hey daniel - could you tell us what you wanted to do with these files?
>  and what are shape files for those of us who aren't gis guys?
>
> in the mean time i'm going to go check out the events on your blog.
>

There's a long-ish explanation as to what shapefiles are in the appeal
letter I sent, linked from that blog entry. I'll try to make it more
concise.

A shapefile is a storage format for points, lines and shapes with
associated attributes (name and type of place, boundary type, etc).
Points are specified by longitude and latitude; lines and shapes are
composed of many points.  Software used in Geographic Information
Systems (GIS) can read these files and compute spatial relations. The
shapes for federal ridings is made available for free in the form of
shapefiles, and can be used by a GIS for mapping and (much!) more.

My first objective was to have a web-based interface that let people
enter their address or postal code, and have it return their
councillor. Assuming you can determine an address' longitude and
latitude (known as "geocoding"), a GIS can tell you which shape
contains it.

The second objective is more ambitious: to let advocacy organizations
determine who the councillor is for any given member address. I want
an organization to be able to express this type of request from their
member database:

"Show me all members
who have expressed concern about 'green spaces'
and who are in district 3, 4 or 6"

There are more advanced uses that could be made from these shapefiles
and other data. A GIS can help answer all sorts of interesting
questions dealing with spatial relations. How many people are within a
10 minute walk to a bus stop, park, school, pub, grocery store or
bank? We can analyze through demographics, crime and other data sets
that are geographically annotated.

Perhaps the best part of doing it with this type of technology is that
this software could be re-used for any city which made its shapefiles
public and for which a geocoding service exists.

If I haven't bored you all to tears, are there any more questions? :-)

Daniel.