Project Description: (You Can Read the version of this Inglés article here )
Proof of Concept of Google Earth Browser Plugin which used its potential as a display engine for Geographic Information and statistics through the creation of an application that allows you to explore information interactively Colombia's state procurement published in the Single Procurement Portal (PUC http://www.contratos.gov.co/puc/ ).
( Note: The information in this application is only for testing purposes. The official data from the PUC can find them in the direction http://www.contratos.gov.co/puc/ )
Online Links
- View Online Application (Requires Google Earth plugin can be downloaded at the following location: http://code.google.com/apis/earth/ )
- Screencast 1: Statistics 3D Display
- Screencast 2: Consultation on Contracts
Project Challenges: Provide
consultation system based interactive maps and graphs for Single Procurement Portal of Colombia so users can browse and view the recruitment information taking into account the location Geographic investment in the country.
This proof of concept of an interactive query system for the PUC would allow users a more efficient way to display the information in hiring Colombia compared to searches where there are currently only limited to alphanumeric criteria filters.
Technical Challenge:
For the project presented many technical challenges in different topics:
- Information Extraction: Although information can Single Procurement Portal be accessed freely by users on page http://www.contratos.gov.co/puc/, there at the time a Web Service, RSS and open programming interface that enables communication with other external systems. For our system VGICC could use the information the PUC was required to implement Web Scrapping techniques (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping) that allow the automatic extraction of information published in the Single Procurement Portal.
- Transformation, and Loading Data Georeferencing: Once extracted information was necessary to transform PUC Georeferencing and the location of the contracts regarding the political division of Colombia by Municipalities. Later that information was loaded into a spatial database published on the engine PostgreSQL / PostGIS.
- Interactive Visualization of Geographic Information and Statistics on the Internet: One of the main technical challenges was to allow VGICC interactive Web tools easy to use for displaying geographic and statistical information. To meet this need won utilities and 3D geographical representation provided by the recently published service de Google Earth Browser Plugin (http://code.google.com/apis/earth/). Dicho plugin permite la interacción con el motor de visualización de Google Earth a través de técnicas de programación basadas en KML, Javascript/AJAX. Gracias a este marco de trabajo (tal como se demuestra en la prueba de concepto) es posible realizar aplicaciones Web que permitan explorar la información ya sea desde el punto de vista alfanumérico como el Geográfico.
Funcionalidades Básicas Implementadas:
Permite visualizar de manera geográfica información consolidada por Departamento y Municipio. Se implementaron dos formas básicas de interacción:
- selection through Lists Departments: Selecting a department from a list is closer to the area it covers. On the centroid of each municipality shows a bar that is proportional to the total amount of hiring that has taken the town.
- filters through Selection Consultation on map: The user has the ability to interact with municipal information available on Google Earth map. In the balloon tips in Google Earth displays the information of those contracts and the amount of contracts affecting the city selected. In the same way you enable a link "View contracts," that allows the consultation of all contracts that affect this region. That list in turn allows you to view detailed information for each of the contracts as well as the link to information published on the PUC (Recruitment Portal only).
Benefits:
Allow users to query the Single Procurement Portal alternative forms of exploration and discovery of information from state investments made in Colombia through 3D visualization techniques and spatial / geographic information on state contracts developed in the country.
Tools:
- Google Earth Browser Plugin
- Javascript, Ajax, Adobe Spry Framework for
- Ajax Java, Grails
- Postgresql, PostGIS
Lessons Learned:
No But the great virtues that currently owns the Google Earth Browser Plugin, during the development of VGICC were some bugs in rendering the plugin between different browser versions.
for instance it is the next segment display for the department of Boyacá:
However, in some machines the polygons are displayed incomplete:
or even on other computers is completely inconsistent rendering:
This inconsistency was reported in the Google Groups forums but so far there has been no satisfactory solution the incidence (For more information see Google Earth Browser Plugin : Polygons don't Correctly render )
