Tuesday, October 16, 2007

GeoDjango for Environmental Informatics

So I found a very cool Django project called GeoDjango. It is a geo-spatial extension of the Django code project and seems to be a very promising application framework. I’m still very new to GIS, yet my interests and program of study is meant to incorporate some of the elements that this project seeks to address.

One of the things that I’m really interested in as a correlation to using L.V. patterns is the integration of simple geo-spatial data for community groups to collaboratively develop, extend and utilize in their work.

Along with the usage of this data is the ability to create maps to help in decision-making. However, next to the application of maps and collaborative mapping is the need to preserve community memory and the decisions that groups make to address community resource issues.

Along, with the potential to use Django as a framework for through the web GIS, I have been looking at applications such as EarthBrowser and Google Earth. Both seem promising additions. However, I was reading the EarthBrowser blog and he notes his interest in Django and I’m wondering what he is doing to enable through the web geo-spatial views. Plus, it seems at this point EarthBrowser is a much more rich application. Perhaps, this is due to its long development history. I guess in this sense I'm pretty agnostic. I just want whatever is cheapest, i.e. free and easiest to integrate into my web apps.

Anyway, with the ability to integrate these elements and along with the integration of a collaborative pattern language design module it is hoped that we can begin to provide not only the quantitatively appropriate data, but also a qualitatively appropriate approach to the design and usage of this data.

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