Final Product
September 13, 2013
Positive Places
has reached the end of development and as of October 1st all
functions of the POS Tool will be complete and available to the general
public.
Introductory Product Information
POS
Tool provides information on the provision and location of public open space
(POS) and the facilities and amenities provided within parks across the Perth
and Peel regions. POS Tool delivers wide applicability to the general public,
planners and developers, and researchers alike.
For the general public, the Tool offers a quick and simple way to find parks in your local area and see what facilities are provided. Users can find closest parks to an address, locate a park with certain facilities or simply browse for
parks using the intuitive map interface.
For
planners and developers, the POS Tool
provides support for local and regional planning decisions focused on the
provision of parks and park amenity. Users can visualise and assess the spatial
distribution of POS (including parks, nature and bushland) by suburb or local
government authority and analyse summary data on POS provision, park amenity,
gaps in current provision and future needs.
For
researchers, the POS Tool provides an opportunity
to assess POS-related information for use in research projects
requiring data on POS (including parks, nature and bushland, school grounds,
and residual areas). POS variables can be exported and used in combination with
other information sets such as census or your own data.
Instructional Product Information
Using the simple
search tool users can search for POS by address, POS name or by suburb and LGA.
Once identified, the location of a POS can be visualised in the map viewer and
information concerning the facilities and amenities provided by a POS can be examined.
An example of a single POS search is shown in the figure below.
If searching for
POS by suburb or LGA, statistics concerning the number of POS, the distribution
of POS facilities, area and number of persons living within a certain distance (catchment)
of POS is returned. This information can then be downloaded as an Excel
spreadsheet for use in reports or linked with additional information. An
example of a suburb search is shown in the figure below.
POS Tool also
offers a suite of advanced functions that can be reached following a quick
registration process. These include the ability to draw a user defined area of
interest directly on screen and the
ability to upload a user defined region as a GIS shapefile for which POS statistics are then calculated. In addition, the POS
Tool allows users to scenario test the relationship between changes in
population structure for a user defined area and the provision of POS. An example
of the POS scenario testing tool is shown in the figure below.
Recently, the POS
Tool has been nominated for a Planning Institute of Australia WA Innovation
Award and is currently being used to examine the relationship between POS
access and health outcomes by the researchers at the Centre for the Built
Environment and Health. Outside the Centre, research informed by POS
Tool includes the influence of POS on housing prices and the relationship
between airborne pollutants, POS and men's health.
Getting started
Please refer to the
deployment guide (link coming soon) on instructions on how to download and build the POS
Tool.
Documentation
There are a number
of manual and document resources available:
- User manual - http://www.postool.com.au/static/documents/POS_Tool_Users_Guide.pdf
- Blog - http://positiveplaces.blogspot.com.au/
- Google Source Code repositories - https://code.google.com/p/positive-places/
- Technical documentation - https://code.google.com/p/positive-places/w/list
- Overview diagram -The following diagram outlines the POS Tool architecture.
Product re-usability information
The POS Tool was
developed as a standalone web GIS application drawing upon open source java
script libraries and a geographic web framework in conjunction with an object-relational database management system. The system may be
of interest to those delivering geographic information through open source web
based GIS applications. Whilst the application in its entity is less useful to
developers, the specific GIS data manipulation and query components written in Python
may provide solutions to complex spatial data handling and query problems
including network catchment calculations and dasymetric mapping approaches
often implemented in proprietary GIS.
Contextual Product Information
POS Tool is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License. As POS Tool has been developed
through feedback from a number of stakeholder workshops, targeted stakeholder
interviews and user assessments of the software, the application is considered
mature and fit for purpose. Although the sustainability of the product has
been considered throughout the project and POS Tool has been designed to
function with limited intervention, maintenance may occur in a number of ways
as appropriate:
·
GAIA Resources will provide 2 years of web hosting and hardware
warranty.
·
An automated data upload procedure has been built-in to the system
allowing for data updates to be implemented by CBEH staff without intervention
from GAIA Resources.
·
The team at CBEH may continue to identify new components to be added to
POS Tool extending the applications spatial analytic capabilities.
·
Further enhancements and fixes may be conducted by GAIA Resources as
additional funding opportunities become available.
·
The code is open source so that other groups can draw upon our innovations.
·
The system has extensive documentation to explain the use and design of
the system as well as data collection and manipulation.
