Monocle has a great photo feature in May 2007’s issue about “the brands that make our lives work”. In this particular instance, Monocle examines the Finnish fire department, and looks at what brands are represented when laying out the department’s equipment.

In addition to the obvious infrastructure tie, I think it’s interesting to look at the brands (i.e. companies) that are behind our daily lives. That’s infrastructure itself. Of course, it’s from Europe where they have a broader view of what’s behind the scenes, and they aren’t afraid to bring it out into the open…

(Though you can’t see the brands due to Monocle’s subscription requirement, know it’s mostly Siemens and other European companies. No surprise… but do pick up Monocle if you see it!)

I was recently looking on the Internet to see what I could find for maps of fiber optic cable routes in the US. I wanted to find something like the maps on An Atlas of Cyberspace, but I wanted more detailed, vector format, nation-wide data files I could use to make my own maps.

I couldn’t find much–at least not detailed, not vector, and the data was never free. But come to find out, you can buy this high-quality, detailed data. It’s very expensive, but it seems there are (otherwise) no obstacles in terms of getting it. That is, you don’t need to be a government or telecom company to look at it. The prospects also look unfortunately bleak for using an FOIA request to get it from public records which might contain the data.

One commercial data provider kindly gives you a sample map from their product to see the level of detail they provide. The area of focus for the sample? Washington DC. How handy. And I thought this stuff was hard to get because of the “terrorism risk”? Just another way corporate control over what-should-be-public-information makes private companies tons of money… sigh.

This past weekend, I created a map of one of the sensor rides I made this past summer. The tool I used was OpenLayers, a full WMS mapping client written in JavaScript(!). Let me repeat that: the whole thing is written in JavaScript–there are no server dependencies, besides the WMS servers. It’s really amazing, actually.

I started creating my map by modifying an example I found on the OpenLayers site. It had a reference to TIGER data already in it, so I could see the streets of Pittsburgh. TIGER data is the stuff from the Census Bureau. It’s free, since it’s US Government created, but it’s also horribly out of date–Three Rivers Stadium is still in there; it was demolished in February of 2001. Many streets were also labeled incorrectly.

I continued by adding a layer from Pennsylvania’s PAMAP program; satellite imagery that is much more current. I found this data through PASDA, an excellent resource for Pennsylvania spatial data, by the way. Kudos to Pennsylvania for releasing this imagery (I guess they have to?)–it’s “Google Maps quality” (i.e. the high-resolution stuff you used to pay big money for), but free of watermarks and free to access via WMS. They even have the entire state covered.

One caveat I ran into while adding the data to my OpenLayers map was finding the “layer name”. I didn’t specify this correctly at first, and instead of satellite tiles, I got a stretched image that said “bad layer name” or some such thing. The solution was to get the WMS metadata and look at it to find the layer name. In my case, the WMS service was at this URL, so I needed to request this URL (note the extra parameters at the end), and look at the resulting XML for the “Layer” elements. In each of those there is a name attribute–that is the name you need to use when initializing WMS object. Considering all this, my call to the constructor ended up being (all one line):

var wms_pamap = new OpenLayers.Layer.WMS( “PAMAP High-Res Imagery”, “http://maps.pasda.psu.edu/wmsconnector/com.esri.wms.Esrimap?Servicename=PAMAP_AerialPhotography”, {layers: ‘2545811822′ }, {numZoomLevels: 16});

Getting the satellite data on there, I had a pretty full-featured map. Next was to add the path of my ride. I had this in KML already, since I had previously visualized this data in Google Earth. I added the layer with OpenLayers’ KML support, but I found a problem–a bug in OpenLayers prevented KML data from displaying correctly when the files were large. The issue had been partially addressed by somebody else–I finished the job, and submitted a patch (still needs unit tests).

I finished up the map by writing a simple JavaScript function to take data from a static data structure I hand-populated, and create markers from them on the map. Each marker annotated a point where I saw a spike in the recorded gas or noise levels along my ride.

The final map’s files are available here for you to download and see. In the end, I think the map came out nicely–given more time and more familiarity with the framework, I hope to make the line representing my ride vary in color or size to indicate the level of gas or noise present there. But it’s a prototype.

The promise of OpenLayers seems really great–a portable, open source, client-side, web-based spatial data viewer. Given the increasing popularity of spatial data and mapping in general, I think this will be very useful for those wishing to provide or collect data to/from the public. You could use Google Maps to do this, yes, but who knows when Google might start putting strategic ads on your maps? Besides, it’s Google. Don’t they control enough information already?

The only caveats with OpenLayers I ran into were the complexity of OpenLayers and its API (it’s *really* full-featured), and the variability in the quality of WMS servers. OpenLayers delivers on its end of the bargain–it visualizes data available through a WMS. Unfortunately, however, WMS servers have no such uniform code of good behavior. The PAMAP data, for instance, kept going in and out on a Friday night. Perhaps I was accessing it during the server’s maintenance window? I also tried to add a layer of projected ozone concentrations from the NOAA, but that WMS didn’t respond at all. This sort of issue brings up an important caveat in the age of distributed computing: differences in the availability of resources, bandwidth and care taken when managing the machines that serve you implies risk if you begin to rely upon them for your operations. At least Google has an incentive (a financial one) to keep their machines running; the state of Pennsylvania? Well, I don’t know… they do try, I guess.

I know this might not be anything new, but I recently noticed a trend in some of my collected photos of things energy-related: the branding of various legacy energy sources as “eco”. So far, I’ve seen gasoline, coal and ethanol branded as “eco-friendly”. No doubt you’ve seen the TV ads from BP, Chevron or Shell extolling their new “clean energy” initiatives; but have you seen the latest railcars or billboards?

Despite increasingly prolific evidence to the contrary, big energy companies seem to think that if they keep saying it enough, it will become true. “Coal: clean green energy.” Granted, West Virginia (and parts of Pennsylvania) *is* coal country, so nobody around here wants to see “old coal” go away. This was confirmed during my work in MacDowell County, WV. During interviews with the economic development agency and other locals, the loss of coal operations was spoken about as a huge blow to the state; losing the little bit that’s left would be seen as even worse. It’s been hard for people to find new jobs after working for coal companies all their lives. How is coal supposed to stay relevant in today’s eco-fetish society? (Besides China being a huge new consumer of coal–maybe not from West Virginia, but still…) Personally, I think coal is a struggling, but likely soon to die enterprise.

In my opinion, there’s clear winners in the alternative energy fest, and clear losers. Losers? Big coal. American auto companies (with crappy, unpopular hybrid offerings). Big winners? Asian automakers (think Prius. Think profit.). And ethanol. Ethanol’s all the buzz, and who’s on the “receiving end” of this huge revenue stream? Check out ADM’s stock performance. Not bad. Can’t beat those government subsidies, and fickle environmental trends both going your way–nothing’s better for the stock price!

Today, while waiting in bed to get up, I heard some screaming outside the window. Something like, “Can you move over? There’s plenty of room over here…” Getting up to check it out, I noticed a blue Honda mini-van behind the recycling truck going down my street. The recycling truck was picking up the blue bags on each side, as usual. She was asking the recycle truck to move so she could get by.

The recycle guy responded with something like “it’s not my fault, people aren’t supposed to park on both sides of the street”. She waited there for awhile, and I just went back to bed.

About five minutes later, I hear this constant horn sound–roughly two minutes’ worth. I got back up, and saw her hanging out the window, this time yelling, “I gotta catch a plane!” in-between her honks. The recycle guys didn’t respond, and kept throwing bags into the back of the truck. A minute or two went by, and finally she yelled, “Fuck you!” and did an eight-point turn-around, going back down the street the way she came. Others waited patiently behind her.

What’s so interesting about this? Well, besides just being plain rude, there was clearly a “me first” attitude here (no surprise there). A rational person would have turned down the alley roughly 10 feet away, and gone around the block to get past the blockage. Secondly, there was a lack of respect for the fact that the recycle guys have a job to do–they can’t pull over next to everybody’s house to pick up bags; it’d just take too long. They have hundreds of homes to stop at.

Maybe an isolated incident, but still an interesting glimpse into what is perhaps a daily occurrence for the public servants of Pittsburgh who are forced to deal with narrow streets.