Mapping Fire Hydrants in the Staff Site

I have just uploaded pages to the Custom section of the demo Staff web site that lets users map fire hydrants and keep track of them in a database. You can add hydrants visually using a map. You can look up a street address and find all the nearest fire hydrants. This is just a test system that I am working on for a customer but it is also a fun example of the kinds of things you can do with web-based data. You can play with the pages yourself by logging on at www.zpdemo.zpuser.com/staff and using the Dashboard from the Main page to go to Custom Options. From there you will see a menu of options for working with the fire hydrant maps and data.

Web Page Map Markers Fixed

When I changed my map control on the Staff web site interface a few months back, we got better looking maps but lost the ability to click on markers and get additional info displayed. I've finally got the markers working the way they should again. Also cleaned up a few other aesthetic issues on the Staff web pages.

Upgraded Google Maps in Staff Web Pages

Each ZP SQL customers Staff web site now uses upgraded Google maps in most instances. The primary advantage is that now the Street View option is available for these maps. If you have not used this feature before, you'll see a little person icon in the upper right corner. You can drag that icon onto a street that the Google team has photographed and see pictures of all the buildings around you. You can move around in the interface and see a 360 degree photographic representation of the street. It's pretty cool. Of course, not every area has been photographed yet so your results will vary accordingly.

Web Site Linking Follow-Up

To expand on my last post, we've added special pages to the Staff web site that make it easy to link to specific property records by passing either a parcel number or Property ID. An example parcel pass would look like this: www.zpdemo.zpuser.com/work/linkparcel.aspx?parcel=500-12-003. We also added an extra parameter that lets you link specifically to our mapping page, our driving directions page, or the page that tags neighbors with a certain radius. An example link for directions would be: www.zpdemo.zpuser.com/work/linkparcel.aspx?parcel=500-12-003&link=directions. A new tutorial is available on our web site called "How To Link To ZonePro SQL Web Sites" that explains this option further.

Driving Directions Now Available

Another of the new Geo-coding  options on the Staff web sites is a page for Driving Directions. This page automatically displays a map showing the route from one location to another, along with written directions. You can save your From location, which I expect would be your community's office so that it defaults to that starting point each time. The To location defaults to the most recently selected property record. Of course you also have the option of typing in your own starting and ending locations.

Using Geo-coding to Find Neighbors

Each ZP SQL customer's Staff web site will get some new pages devoted to Geo-coding options. These are options that use the Latitude and Longitude fields to do mapping, etc. The most exciting page, I think, is the Find Neighbors page. This page uses the Latitude and Longitude fields to calculate distance between property records. It gives you the option to find neighboring properties around a starting property record and then uses the Tag field to mark these records. You can then print reports or labels for these records from the Mailing Label report screen. I've set up the Find Neighbors option to find properties at a radius of a tenth of a mile, a half a mile, or a mile. This option should be useful in many cases where you need to notify neighboring properties of a change a specific property wishes to make. This option only works if surrounding properties have their Latitude and Longitude values filled, so to facilitate that process another new page can be used to Map Streets. This page allows you to select a street name from a drop-down box and will then fill in the Latitude and Longitude fields for every property on that street that has a valid address. It's a quick and easy way to populate these fields.

Fire Hydrant Inventory

I'm working on a really interesting project right now that spun out of the mapping options in the Staff web interface for ZP SQL. I have a customer who wanted to know if we could add a database for fire hydrants and then map those as well. The prototype pages are in testing right now but the site allows you to enter any address and then shows a map of the closest fire hydrants to that property. The fire hydrant database contains Latitude and Longitude fields just like our property database does. In this case though, the customer has to supply the values for those fields because we can't geocode them the way we can an address. Fortunately, inexpensive GPS units make it fairly easy to construct your own database of positional coordinates. One of the bits of code I had to develop for this exercise is a way to determine distance between two geocoded points. This is used to find the nearest fire hydrants in this site but will be very useful for distance calculations in other web-based scenarios too.

Mapping Mania

Okay, one more post about mapping. I've already discussed how the ZP SQL web interface provides a way to include maps as part of the Property page. The really exciting part for me, however, are the mapping options that involve multiple properties. I've implemented a few of these options already. From the opening page you can view a list of recent permit activity or upcoming inspections. Both of these lists also have a mapping option. These maps plot a point for each record in the list. So, if in the last week you had issued five permits, your map would show five flags pinpointing where the activity occurred in your community. (Just like with the Property page, when you call the mapping option it will automatically geocode any properties listed that don't yet have their latitude and longitude defined.) Clicking on the individual markers on the map even displays some brief information about the record it represents. This is very cool stuff. If you have ZP SQL I definitely suggest you go to your web site and try this feature out. If you don't have ZP SQL you can still go to our demo web site and see how it works. In addition to the opening screen the option is implemented for several of the Recent Activity buttons. Just look for the "Show Map" map on any screen.

Adjusting Geocoding

In my last post I mentioned how the ZP SQL web interface will automatically geocode a property prior to showing it on a map. Again this is done by passing a street address to the Google Mapping Server and getting back the latitude and longitude. It turns out that is not a very precise science. In other words, the geographic point that the latitude and longitude represent is not always exactly where you may think it should be when placed on the map. My understanding of this process is that the Mapping Server does not have an address to point database that it uses to return the geocode. Rather there is some estimating that occurs based on the address number and the range of addresses on the street. Of course, there are also issues where you don't have a complete address (a vacant lot perhaps) and therefor can't expect a very precise returned geocode. And of course there is also the issue of coming up with a single point to represent a much larger polygon of some kind. All of this led me to seek out an easy way to allow users to adjust the geocode setting for any given property. This option is now available from the Property page of the ZP SQL web interface. It opens a new page that shows a larger map of the property in satellite view so that you can see buildings and structures. You can then move the marker that represents the property to a new location on the map and then save that point as then new geocode representation for that property.

Automatic Geocoding With Google Maps

When we rewrote the Property Screen for ZP SQL we added a couple of new fields for Latitude and Longitude. Last month we started putting these fields to use. The web-based interface for ZP SQL now has the ability to automatically geocode a property record using Google Maps server. Geocoding is the process of determining the latitude and longitude of a given point or, in our case, address. We've added logic to the web pages that passes the street address of a property to Google Maps and gets the latitude and longitude in return. We then store these values in the database. This happens each time you request a map of a given property. (Did I mention that you can now display maps as part of the Property Screen in the ZP SQL web interface? It's very cool.) This geocoding process happens behind the scenes, automatically. Of course, it only needs to do this for properties that don't yet have geocode values. It is self-populating the database and eventually, your latitude and longitude fields will be completed filled. How cool is that?