Interactive mapping

A friend recently sent me this as an example of interactive mapping...

Basically readers of stuff.co.nz have been sending in their images of the Rena oil spill and the locations from where the pictures were taken, and then stuff has used googles maps to locate the pictures on a map...so simple yet very effective. Check it out Rena interactive map.

I like this idea, that you can look at the big picture, yet as a user, interact with the map to see a close up aspect and feel like "you're there, in the moment at the location.

To incorporate this idea into my project, I'm going to use a similar "big picture aspect" to show the locations of various three-water infrastructure components, then use the software to zoom into various locations, and give the viewer an actual view of the infrastructure. It will probably be the case that the viewer will recognise the infrastrutcure, having driven or walked past it, and never realised it had anything to do with their water use.

I had a similar moment last week. I emailed the Council infrastructure people about the locations of outfall pipes. The helpful stormwater people sent me a link, explaining that there are literally THOUSANDS of these outfall pipes throughout Auckland...I only thought there were a few main ones!

So I made a quick snapshot of an area between Grey Lynn and Avondale, showing the patterns of the various infrastructure underneath us.

The green lines indicate the stormwater pipes, the red are the wastewater, and the blue are the freshwater pipes. I find the layout of the them interesting. The stormwater follows a more fluid pattern, following the waterways in the city. The blue is more aligned to the street networks (obviously to service the households), and the wastewater doesn't seem to have a set pattern, it cuts across properties and diverts away from main transport routes. I wonder what the reason is for that.

If you want to check it out for yourself, here's the link Auckland Council GIS site

Back in the game!

Sorry team, took a little unintentional break there from the water blogging world. But I'm back! And with a new vision for the project as it turns out.

The original idea had been to display all the controls around planning water on a map somehow. Buuuuut that proved to be too hard in the context of the assignment. So after a long hard think about what story of Auckland's water I really wanted to tell, 3 long blacks later I realised I wanted to tell THREE stories...because Auckland has three waters.

In previous projects, when I have tried to explain the concept of Auckland's three waters to innocent bystanders, I've been dismayed with the blank look I've received when the concept of wastewater, freshwater, and stormwater all being intrictaely linked through our actions, washes over them without necessarily being registered.

Yet, in our highly engineered lifestyle, our daily lives and routines are highly regulated, as well as highly regulate, the way in which water passes in and out of our lives almost seemlessly and invisibly. So I've decided to get this concept out there visually through my project. I think its important we all understand where our water comes from, where it goes, what happens to it, and all the little indirect contacts we have with water that impact it and its quality at different stages of this never ending water cycle we're part of.

Speaking of water cycles, so I've got back into researching and found this neat water cycle graphic. Its shows exactly the interactions we have with water that I want to map in my project.

Thank you "good" magazine for being such a rad source of all things sustainable http://good.net.nz/magazine/twelve/features/water-fight

Right, back to the research.