The Opportunity Agenda, with support from the Health Policy Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, commissioned a series of papers that explore best practices for integrating maps into health advocacy, using case studies to present key strategies for effective use and overcoming technical hurdles.

Using Maps to Promote Health Equity

Webware has the list here.

From the article:

“Google Maps is dynamic. Making customized maps through the service isn’t very difficult. But there are a variety of third-party tools on the Web that help you create fully customized Google Maps mashups. From Flickr geotag integration to wedding event mapping to just doodling, you can do it all.”

The Handbook on Geospatial Infrastructure in Support of Census Activities takes into account the recent technological developments in the geographic information area, which have been reflected in the recently adopted United Nations Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses, Revision 2, and puts into the hands of census planners and related personnel a technical guide on the contemporary methods, tools, and best practices that would support their census mapping operations more efficiently. An official copy of the Handbook is now available on-line and set to be published in print form soon.

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/sources/census/2010_PHC/Publications/Series_F103_more.htm

I came across this article that shows what can happen when you don’t get it all right. To quote…

The Los Angeles Police Department is battling a virtual crime wave in downtown L.A. caused by an Internet map coding error.

If the department’s online crime map is to be believed, one might thing that a downtown location just a block from the LAPD’s new headquarters is the most crime-ridden place in the city. In the past six months, that location experienced 1,380 crimes–4 percent of all crimes mapped–or roughly eight a day.

The crimes were real, but a coding error with the system’s geocoding–the process of converting addresses into map points–caused the crimes to be represented at a default location, according to a report Sunday in the Los Angeles Times. The mistake caused many crimes to be mapped miles away from their actual locations, causing false trends to be reported while masking real ones, according to the report.

You can read the full story here

Happy New Year to all!

Came across this post on the very excellent Strange Maps blog. Since I find myself residing  in the pits of the front legs, I thought this would be an appropriate way to start off 2009. At least I don’t live in Owen Sound. To quote:

Elephants are native to Africa and India and… Canada? Well, not really, but if you tilt your average north-oriented map of Ontario 90 degrees to the right, the province’s southern peninsula will show a more than passing resemblance to an elephant, tooting its trunk.

The full article can be found here.