Greg Lauer

The presentation documents recent fieldwork in the Pacific using GoPro Max 360 cameras to collect transportation and associated attributes such as power poles and related utility infrastructure for an ABD-funded project.

The Author traveled to Nauru and Thursday Island to undertake fieldwork. As time in-country was limited it was decided to use GoPro Max 360 cameras mounted on a vehicle to capture features. The GoPro has an inbuilt GPS and can capture 360 panoramic images and video. Every road and many private roads were driven and data was captured. Video data was first processed using the batch processing tool in the GoPro desktop app, and then uploaded to both Mapillary and Google Streetview. Mapillary uses computer vision to automatically extract map data from images and we can then export to QGIS. We also use the Mapillary JOSM plugin to update Open Street Map.

Using a suite of open-source applications including Ruby on Rails and Solr we have built a geospatial discovery app. Through a standard web browser, we have made geospatial resources accessible to all users regardless of expertise with user-friendly searches through a map interface, keyword searches, and faceted browsing.

Finding and consuming relevant geospatial data has always been difficult. We have created an open-source Ruby on Rails software application for discovering geospatial content, including GIS datasets, web services, and digitized paper maps. It also provides easy download and export options for reusing geospatial resources. By harvesting open (and closed) data portals we create metadata that then can be discovered easily. Through the extensible and open frameworks metadata is easily able to be shared between individual applications.