Within the framework of inter-administrative collaboration and cooperation, on September 27, 2005, the AOC Consortium and the Cartographic and Geological Institute of Catalonia (ICGC) signed a collaboration agreement for the construction of an infrastructure. of common spatial data of the local Administration, the so-called IDEC LOCAL project.
IDEC Local materialized with the Geolocal service, with the mission of promoting the use and application of geospatial information in all economic and social areas, as well as facilitating the accessibility of this information in such a way that the needs of administrations, organizations, companies and citizens were covered.
During these almost 15 years of joint work with the ICGC, Geographic Information Technologies (GIS) have evolved enormously. If a few years ago access to cartography was a complex problem, technologies were scarce (or very expensive) and the strategic importance of geoinformation was low, nowadays the perception is very different.
We are facing a more mature market where local bodies have different agile, practical, useful, mobile and free technological alternatives, which have emerged from both the private and public sectors, which can help cover all the needs of a us local for the purpose of producing and publishing geoinformation. At the level of the legal framework, it should be noted that this has evolved a lot, and we find different Directives and Laws that encourage geoinformation to become a right for a citizen, who in fact increasingly understands it as a "comodity".
A good example of this market evolution is the InstaMaps solution of the ICGC (from which Geolocal is derived), understood as an open web platform for the creation, publication and sharing of maps on the Internet.
instamaps allows the non-expert user to create their own geoinformation, either by drawing it, or by uploading their data files, facilitating access to geoinformation from different data sources such as open data portals or consuming data directly from social networks, WMS services and access to remote data files.
instamaps is a constantly evolving solution, free and open to administrations, companies and citizens that facilitates the promotion of geoinformation and open data. More information on the service link (https://www.instamaps.cat)
Given this context, the role of the AOC Consortium in this area makes little sense right now. Thus, -and on the basis that the Geolocal solution is based 100% on InstaMaps-, the AOC and the ICGC have agreed to migrate the Geolocal service directly to theinstamaps of a general and public nature that ICGC offers and guarantees its evolution.
Mine currently uses Geolocal… how will it affect me?
It will affect you very little. Over the next 12 months, the AOC and the ICGC will carry out the work of progressive migration of Geolocal user entities to the standard version of InstaMaps. including migrating all of your map galleries.
This will involve the transfer of all existing maps in private galleries to the new one instamaps, so it will be functionally the same, although you will require one new username and password access to the new environment, which must be requested from the ICGC. From now on you will have a standard solution instamaps with the entire existing Map Gallery migrated, and with all the evolution forecast that ICGC has in its portfolio, as well as the guarantee of support and resolution of incidents by the ICGC.
In the coming days the local entities users of Geolocation will receive a letter for EACAT with the details of the procedure to request the new username and password from the ICGCinstamaps if they wish.
SITMUN another public and quality alternative
Another solution in this area that is already well established in the territory and available to the local world is the SITMUN Municipal Territorial Information System developed by the Diputació de Barcelona which was born to respond to common needs of the councils of the demarcation of Barcelona in terms of GIS, especially those with few resources, with the intention of providing them with the knowledge, analysis and management of territory, but with agreements with the other provincial councils is already extended to the entire Catalan territory. Currently, the SITMUN solution is also provided by the three other provincial councils through a collaboration agreement.
SITMUN makes available to the councils, and other local entities, cartography produced by different administrations, in a homogenized and / or harmonized way at the provincial level, through a visualization module that allows the consultation, analysis and printing of information related to the territory . It also has an administrator module that allows you to manage access to and availability of data.
You will find more information on how to join the SITMUN Network at the following link (https://www.diba.cat/web/idebarcelona/xlsitmun).
We hope so with instamaps as with SITMUN,-fully current and compatible solutions-, local bodies can continue to grow in the promotion and use of geospatial information.
From the AOC we will continue to promote the reuse of data and geoinformation from solutions such as the open data platform, presented on March 7 at the AOC Innovation Workshops, where it is now possible to publish sets of own data in standard formats that make it easy for you to publish views in map format as well.
More information at: https://www.aoc.cat/2019/03/14/els-ens-locals-poden-publicar-les-seves-propies-dades-al-portal-de-dades-obertes/
