OUseful Info

Making the Most of Google Maps (or not): Gloucestershire Emergency Water Points

Click here for a map of emergency water points in Gloucestershire (as of 18:00 23/7/07)

The most recent, official list is here: Severn Trent Water website

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Well it seems as if we're in the middle of a national emergency, so for my 500th OUseful.info post here's something charitable - a Google Map (made the slow way) of water bowser locations in Gloucestershire, as of Monday 23rd July 1900hrs:

Here's a tinyurl to the map: http://tinyurl.com/2m43m5

The data is sort of correct as of Monday 23rd July 1900hrs, although the list isn't complete.

The data was taken from the Severn Trent Water website:
Bowser Locations Gloucestershire Monday 23rd July 1900hrs

The data is given as a list of locations, of the form:

Bowser Locations in Abbeydale

NEWSTEAD RD ON F/P
ABBEYMEAD AV
BROADLEYS RD
ABBEYMEAD AV
UPTON LN

The site also proudly suggests:
We recommend you use Google Maps to view your area and locate street locations.
with the link pointing to a Google map over Gloucestershire.

I pondered for a while building a screenscraper and geocoder to plot a map from the data on the page (or cut and paste it into a Google spreadsheet and from there geocode it with the Google maps geocoder API), but in the end I opted for the slow and painful route to try and see what sorts of errors the automated route would choke at.

And so, I created a Google MyMap, cut and pasted the addresses into the map search box, then saved each result to the appropriate MyMap, moving the balloon to the correct location if necessary.

Doing this, I noticed there are quite a few typos/errors in the street names ("Ave" rather than "Rd", for example) but foolishly didn't record them. (I assume these are errors on the Severn Trent site). Locating the points accurately was also difficult (so there may be a few errors).

I also noticed that there are a few 'dated' location names (or do we still have GPO Sorting Offices?).

Some locations appear to be duplicated in the list.

At times, the 'local area' clusters that are used to group location appear to overlap, or drift from the supposed locale.

If the locations change, or more or added, the map will rot badly. If new locations are added, then depneding on how they are added/flagged it may be easy or difficult to update the map.

[UPDATE: 01:00 24/7/07 - the Severn Trent listing appears to have been updated, and now lists bowser locations as of 22:00 on 23/7/07; however, as I suspected might happen, it's not possible to see the changes that were made to the earlier posting, so it's hard for me to update the map... one reason for live scraping, I guess ;-) So how could the Severn Trent folks have helped matters: by adding a [added 22:00, 23/7/07] label to updated items maybe (easy)? Or using a public read only access wiki, with history features enabled? (and maybe a wiki way for people to suggest corrections to incorrect road names, as well as tightening up the actual location of the bowsers?) (harder).]

Anyway - the map is there, and hopefully contributing to Google searches [though now it's out of date and maybe even incorrect...so maybe I should take it down? I wonder, once a bowser location is posted, does that location remain fixed for the duration of the emergency? It would make sense to me if that is the case (i.e. once you've found a water location, you don't need to hunt for it the next time you need it... In which case, the map will only ever show fewer locations than is actually the case.)].

Here's a link to the map again: http://tinyurl.com/2m43m5

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PS Another thing that came to mind is that in such situations, is there a need for an "IT/web hacker" equivalent to RAYNET, The Radio Amateurs' Emergency Network?

Local council IT practitioners are not necessarily as up-to-speed as members of the Lazyweb, even if local services aren't under the sorts of pressure that an emergency presents...

[UPDATE 01:15 24/7/07 So for an example of the emergency web stratgey, the srwater.co.uk (good URL, huh? Not that I was expecting severntrent.co.uk or anything...(that's the share price and press room website - no emergency info...!)) front page is currently a listing of the water bowser locations, with a small link to the 'normal' website. I don't know how the site normally handles incoming emails but I'm guessing server load has toppled it over:

An error has occurred

HOST: www.stwater.co.uk
SCRIPT: /server.php
QUERY: show=nav.5614
Message: Undefined index: currentTemplate
File: E:\boxuk\amaxus\private\inc\class\common\XslTransformer.class.php
Line: 334
Time: July 24, 2007, 1:11 am

]

For some time I've been thinking about volunteering activities, but I'm not really that practical away from a keyboard... so maybe I need to look around to see if there is something like a Webnet organisation - "The Web Hackers' and Data Mashers' Emergency Network" - that I could maybe contribute to?

Anyone know of such a thing? I know there have been ad hoc applications created to help out in dire times, but is there a latent, standing group out there who can help out with pulling together information services when necessary?

PPS a couple of examples: the search for Jim Gray, Thames Valley Flood Map.

PPPS Here's an embedded view of the map, (built using an online Embed Google 'My Maps' tool):

Not all the mapped points seem to be displayed, so I guess there must be a limit on either how many points can be listed in a MyMaps KML file or how many the map embedding app can cope with?

PPPS Here are some more flood news related mashups.

Posted by ajh59 at July 23, 2007 11:09 PM