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Welcome to MapTogether!

Maps tell powerful stories about the communities and the world in which we live.  Maps are a visualization tool, a way to help us transform columns of data into useful knowledge about the people and places around us. 

The MapTogether project provides free map-related training and tools for community and nonprofit groups around the world.  Our resources include  software, data sets, online mapping services, documentation, and training resources.  In addition, our geographers provide free in-person "community mapping clinics" in cities across the United States and Canada.

Planning the most efficient route with Optimap

Submitted by jim on Thu, 2010-03-04 09:00

Does your organization provide services in the community regularly?  Do you have regular routes of sites to visit: neighborhood elderly, community centers, or even regular errand runs?  There are many situations when a local nonprofit or community organization needs to plan a logical route between multiple locations in a city or region.  But what's the most efficient route when you have several - or a dozen - sites to visit?

In the computer science world, this is a classic computational challenge that programmers have long studied, referred to as the "traveling salesman problem" because of its original context: given the distances between each city, what is the most efficient route between a number of cities, so that you visit each city once and only once?

Breaking Through Canada's Data Wall

Submitted by jim on Mon, 2010-03-01 09:00

Disclaimer - I'm an American who is just dipping his toe in the waters of open data and transparency issues in Canada - I welcome input from those more informed :-)

After releasing our "Guide to Nonprofit Mapping" last week, we quickly got inquiries from countries outside the US seeking localized and translated versions (which is underway! :-).  While exchanging emails with some colleagues in Canada, I started researching the availability of Canadian data sources.  First, I tried to find the Canadian equivalent to the US federal government site Data.gov, a repository of publicly available data from executive branch agencies in the US government (the UK has a similar site, data.gov.uk).  The closest thing I could find after some cursory searching was the website for Statistics Canada (StatCan) the official government body tasked as Canada's central statistical agency.

Africa Map: Browse and Explore African Datasets

picture layer in Africa MapThe Africa Map project, currently in beta, is an online map and data viewer created by Harvard University.  The map combines data sets of numerous categories from a wide variety of sources, allowing thematic maps to be viewed and explored.  The purposes of the project, according to the project web site:

  1. Interact with the best available public data for Africa
  2. See the whole of Africa yet also zoom in to particular places
  3. Accumulate both contemporary and historical data supplied by researchers and make it permanently accessible online
  4. Work collaboratively across disciplines and organizations with spatial information about Africa in an online environment

URL: 
http://africamap.harvard.edu/

The Illustrated Guide to Nonprofit GIS and Online Mapping

thumbnail image of Maptogether NPO GuideWe're pleased to announce the release of the first public version of MapTogether's Illustrated Guide to Nonprofit GIS and Online Mapping. 

Interactive Map of US County Public Health Statistics

Submitted by jim on Sun, 2010-02-21 18:35

screenshot of County Health Rankings siteA new website called County Health Rankings analyzes public health statistics for each county in the US, creating state-by-state reports of the healthiest counties.  The website, a joint project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, analyzes healh factors (statistics about disease incidence, tobacco use, etc.) and health outcomes (such as life expectancy) to create county-by-county rankings of each state.  These rankings are then mapped for each state, using Flash-based Fusion Maps software (not free/open source) so that users can drill down to access county-level data.