NYC Plow Tracking Adds Mobile Web

Today’s snowfall may not have closed the City schools but it brought the third activation of PlowNYC. Developed at the request of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and in collaboration with the Department of Sanitation, PlowNYC is a web-based mapping application that shows DSNY snow operations progress.

Figure 1

Streets are color-coded into time slices that represent the last time a street was serviced by a DSNY vehicle (plow or spreader). Figure 2 shows the time slices and the colors that represent them. Thus, in this case, streets with a color of green have been serviced in the last hour.

Figure 2

Global Positioning System (GPS) data are received from each equipped DSNY vehicle and transmitted to the operations center. The data is then coded to the street segment it falls on, with the time stamp of the GPS location. The streets are then processed to determine which time slice they fall within and then rendered as map tiles.

Due to the large amount of time required for data processing and map generation, the map is refreshed every fifteen minutes. The last and next update times are shown in the header. In Figure 1, the last update was at 9:45 am with the next update at 10:00 am.

New for this activation is a mobile-web version. Upon loading, individual devices are determined and the appropriate version of the application is served to the end user’s client (web or mobile). The mobile web version is accessed via the same url http://maps.nyc.gov/snow. Figure 3 shows how the application appears on an iPad.

Figure 3

PlowNYC is also accessible from the Office of Emergency Management’s Severe Weather site. the search form shown in Figure 4 is available during a PlowNYC activation.

Figure 4

PlowNYC shares many of the same components as NYCityMap. Geoserver and GeoWebCache are used to access and render the data as tiles. The mobile web version uses OpenLayers.

Hurricane Sandy Preparation: Hurricane Evacuation Zone Finder

In preparation for Hurricane Sandy, the DoITT GIS group launched a new Hurricane Evacuation Zone Finder on Friday October 26, 2012.  The application was rapidly developed and deployed using Mapbox. Over the course of the devastating storm, there were nearly 6 million map views. We hope the information was easily understood and beneficial to the residents of NYC.

Mapbox is a cloud-based platform for publishing maps. The open source cartography tool TileMill was used to style the DoITT map data (layers).  The layers were the updated evacuation zones and the evacuation centers. The City’s internal geocoding service Geosupport was utilized. With the ability of the cloud to handle large bursts in traffic and scale dynamically, DoITT GIS plans to utilize cloud-based offerings for future emergencies and large-scale events.

NYC Election Districts

The U.S. Constitution requires the redrawing every ten years of congressional and legislative boundaries (i.e., election districts) to account for shifts in population. This is referred to as redistricting. Concurrently, reapportionment is the redividing of a fixed number of seats in Congress (435) to be in proportion with a state’s population to the population in the U.S. As both of these efforts are based on population, they coincide with the U.S. Census Bureau’s decennial release of the federal census.

New York State convenes a Legislative Task Force to aid the legislature in meeting its constitutional mandate. This effort was completed earlier this year and resulted in new election districts. These new election districts apply to this coming election as they define the areas the to-be elected officials represent. In advance of these newly elected officials taking office in January, NYCityMap will be updated with the new election districts. There are numerous resources for comparing the new and old election districts. One of which is an interactive map from the New York Times.

Until then, NYCityMap will display the election districts for the currently elected officials. To see who is your elected official follow these instructions. To determine where to vote, use the Pollsite Locator. This site utilizes the new election districts to provide citizens their polling location based on the address of their residence.

New NYCityMap Map Tiles

The underlying basemap used by NYCityMap are pre-generated map images (i.e., map tiles) that comprise a tile set. Each zoom level (i.e., hash mark on the zoom slider) has it’s own set of tiles at that specific scale.  The NYCityMap tile set is shared by other mapping applications for efficiency and consistency of look and feel.  In total, the NYCityMap tile set is comprised of 2,003,057 number of map tiles totaling approximately 16 GB.

Using map tiles has become the industry standard. Maps are composed from a grid of image tiles. The grid extends beyond the viewable area so that users can pan without the need to retrieve additional tiles. Breaking the map up into smaller sections also allows the browser to download those images more quickly than a single giant map image. When a user pans out of range the browser only needs to download a few new tiles to fill in the view.

The below examples show some of the updates made in the new tile set. These included updated data and improved labeling.

Updated Data:

Improved Labeling:

Renamed Streets:

Single Field Search: The Missing Manual

In February we released a major enhancement to NYCityMap, the single field search.

With this new input field NYCityMap now supports more search types and formats than ever before. Some of them might not be obvious so we thought we’d provide you with this (no longer) missing manual.

The following types of locations are accepted by the single field search:

• Borough/Block/Lot (BBL)
• ZIP Code
• Community District
• City Council District
• Borough
• City
• Neighborhood
• Street between intersections
• Intersection
• Coordinate
• Building
• Place of Interest
• Address

Before we begin to discuss each of these in detail, you should know that all search input is considered case-insensitive.  So whether you enter ‘CITY HALL’ or ‘city hall’ you will get the same result.

Borough/Block/Lot (BBL)

Each property in New York City is identified by a set of 3 numbers called the Borough, Block, and Lot (BBL). BBLs are used by many city agencies to identify real estate for taxes, zoning, construction, and other purposes.

The Borough number is always first:
1 = Manhattan
2 = Bronx
3 = Brooklyn
4 = Queens
5 = Staten Island

The Block number is second and can be up to 5 digits.

The Lot number is last and can be up to 4 digits.

An example, the BBL of City Hall is 1001220001.

When it comes to searching for a BBL in the new single field search, several formats are accepted:

• 1001220001
• MANHATTAN 122 1
• MANHATTAN/122/1
• MANHATTAN-122-1
• 1 122 1
• 1/122/1
• 1-122-1
• manhattan block:122 lot:1

If the BBL is not found, no alternates will be suggested.  For a BBL search you must get the numbers exactly correct.  If you are not sure what BBL you are looking for you can find the BBL of a property in the Building & Property Information panel on NYCityMap or by identifying the map at the desired location.

ZIP Code

There are two formats of ZIP Code that are accepted, the typical 5-digit ZIP or the extended ZIP+4 format.  Here are some examples:

• 10007
• 10007-1602

If the ZIP code is not found, no alternates will be suggested.  For a ZIP code search you must get the numbers exactly correct.  If you are not sure what ZIP code you are looking for, you can search for another location type, like address, and then turn on the ZIP Code layer from the “Show Additional Data on Map” menu.

Community District

There are 59 community districts in NYC.  You can search for them using several formats:

• 101
• Community District 101
• 84 Queens
• Community District: 3 Staten Island
• 3 Staten Island
• Staten Island 3
• Bronx Community Board 12
• Board 101
• Board 1 Manhattan
• Board Manhattan 1

If the district is not found, no alternates will be suggested.  For a Community District search you must get the input exactly correct.  If you are not sure what Community District you are looking for, you can search for another location type, like address, and then turn on the Community District layer from the “Show Additional Data on Map” menu.

Read more about Community Districts on the Department of City Planning website.

City Council District

The New York City Council is the law-making body of the City of New York.  It is comprised of 51 members from 51 different Council Districts throughout the five boroughs.  You can search for them using several formats:

• 10
• city council district 10
• city council district: 10

If the district is not found, no alternates will be suggested.  For a City Council District search you must get the input exactly correct.  If you are not sure what City Council District you are looking for, you can search for another location type, like address, and then turn on the City Council District layer from the “Show Additional Data on Map” menu.

Borough

In order to see the boundary of a particular borough in NYCityMap, you can search by borough name.  Several abbreviated formats are accepted.  Here are the acceptable values by borough:

Manhattan

• manhattan
• MN

Bronx

• bronx
• the bronx
• BX

Brooklyn

• brooklyn
• BK
• BKLYN

Queens

• queens
• QN

Staten Island

• Staten Island
• SI

These borough formats can be used in several of the other search types, like address and intersection.

City

For 4 of the 5 boroughs, the borough is equivalent to the city (Manhattan = New York).  However Queens is made up of 44 different cities.  City is a searchable type in NYCityMap.  Here are some examples:

• Flushing
• Rego Park
• Woodside
• Astoria
• East Elmhurst

If the city is not found, no alternates will be suggested.  For a city name search you must get the input exactly correct.  If you are not sure what city you are looking for, you might try searching by ZIP code instead.

Neighborhood

New York City’s neighborhoods are constantly changing and for that reason hard to pin down geographically.  But we know that we have many NYC visitors who use NYCityMap and may want to get a general idea of the vicinity of a neighborhood.  For that reason we have added a neighborhood search type.  Searching for a neighborhood name will take you to roughly the center of the requested neighborhood.  There are 296 neighborhoods available in NYCityMap, here are a few:

• Battery Park
• Brooklyn Heights
• East Harlem
• East Village
• Highbridge
• Riverdale

Street between intersections

If you want to search for a block you can do a street between intersections search, also known as a blockface.  This is a segment of a street bordered by two intersections.  Take the example shown in the image below, Broadway between Park Place and Barclay Street in Manhattan:

This blockface can be entered into the single field search in several formats:

• Broadway between Park Place and Barclay Street, MN
• Broadway between Park Place & Barclay Street, MN
• Broadway bw Park Place and Barclay Street, Manhattan
• Broadway b/w Park Place and Barclay Street, 10007
• Broadway btwn Park Place and Barclay Street Manhattan
• Broadway btwn. Park Place and Barclay Street MN

To extrapolate the format, you would get:

<On Street> <between> <Cross Street> <and> <Cross Street> <Borough>

The <between> can be specified as any of the following:

• between
• bw
• b/w
• btwn
• btwn.

The <and> can be specified as any of the following:

• and
• &
• &&

The <borough> can be specified in any of the formats listed under the Borough search description.  The borough can also be left out if you are unsure, the system will attempt to locate the blockface within each of the 5 boroughs.

If any of the street names were not understood, alternate suggestions for similar names will be made.  For example, if you entered “Brodway between Park Place and Barclay Street, MN” then “Broadway between Park Place and Barclay Street, MN” would be suggested.

Intersection

An intersection is the meeting of any two streets.  Like a blockface search several formats are accepted and they can be extrapolated as:

<Cross Street> <and> <Cross Street> <Borough>

The <and> can be specified as any of the following:

• and
• @
• at
• &
• &&

The <borough> can be specified in any of the formats listed under the Borough search description.  The borough can also be left out if you are unsure, the system will attempt to locate the blockface within each of the 5 boroughs.

So if we were to search for Broadway and Park Place in Manhattan, any of the following formats would be acceptable:

• Broadway and Park Place, Manhattan
• Broadway @ Park Place, 10007
• Broadway at Park Place, MN
• Broadway & Park Place, New York

If any of the street names were not understood, alternate suggestions for similar names will be made.  For example, if you entered “Brodway and Park Place, MN” then “Broadway and Park Place, MN” would be suggested.

Coordinate

You can search for coordinates in latitude and longitude or NY State Plane.  As with other searches, several formats are accepted:

• <x> <y>
• <x> / <y>
• <x>, <y>
• x:<x> y:<y>
• x=<x> y=<y>
• <longitude> <latitude>
• <longitude> / <latitude>
• <longitude>, <latitude>
• lon: <longitude> lat: <latitude>
• lon=<longitude> lat=<latitude>
• long: <longitude> lat: <latitude>
• long=<longitude> lat=<latitude>

Here are some example coordinates:

• 982574, 198961 (City Hall, Manhattan)
• -73.9858 / 40.7485 (Empire State Building, Manhattan)

If your coordinates fall outside of New York City the search will result in an error.

Building

Buildings in NYC have a unique Building Identification Number (BIN).  This 7-digit number number is  assigned by the Department of City Planning.  Most users will not be familiar with the BIN number they are looking for, if you would like to find a BIN number you can use the Department of Buildings Buildings Information Search application, but most users will search by address instead.

For example, the BIN number for 52 Chambers Street in Manhattan is 1079146.

Place of Interest

Major sites within New York City can be searched as a place of interest without having to know the specific address.  Even including a borough on this search is optional.  Here are some examples:

• Statue of Liberty
• Empire State Building
• Empire State Building, MN
• Yankee Stadium
• Citi Field

Address

Last, but certainly not least, we have the address search.  For the address search there are too numerous formats accepted to list them all.  There are however only 3 components that your address search must include: house number, street, and borough.  Borough can be indicated by borough name, borough abbreviation, ZIP code, or city.  You may in some cases provide more information than this in your search input, and that is okay, but the extra info will be ignored.  Here are some examples, all of them result in the same address search for 52 Chambers Street in Manhattan.

• 52 Chambers Street MN
• 52 Chambers Street 10007
• 52 Chambers Street Manhattan
• 52 Chambers Street, New York
• 52 Chambers Street, New York, NY 10007
• 52 Chambers St, MN

As with places of interest and other searches, you do not have to include the borough, but it will make your searches more accurate.  If no borough is included we will attempt to find that house number and street in each of the 5 boroughs, any successful hits will be returned for you to choose from.

If  the street name is not recognized, alternate suggestions for similar names will be made.  For example, if you entered “52 Chabers Street, MN” then “52 Chambers Street, MN” would be suggested.

Feedback

What are we missing?  Submit feedback and let us know.

NYCityMap 13.0 Release Notes

Single Field Search

The NYCityMap current release includes a major revision to how searching is undertaken.  After receiving numerous feedback and suggestions, we implemented a greatly simplified search function.  The previous search function remains but has been changed to an Advanced Search.

Instead of requiring users to specify a search type, a single-field entry has been implemented with this release.  The application parses (i.e., separate into its individual component parts) the input to this single field to determine the search type and then executes the search.  Search input that can be parsed and is not ambiguous (e.g., same address in multiple boroughs but the user did not include the borough),  will center the map on the search location.  Input that cannot be parsed or for which a match cannot be found, will generate an error message in the Advanced Search widget.  If the search results in multiple candidate locations, these will also be presented in the Advanced Search widget as suggestions.  Each suggestion can be clicked on to perform the suggested location search.  See the example below for the search ’2 Broadway’ that returned three suggestions.

We’ve also improved how our suggestion list is populated in the hopes that we’ll be able to suggest the location you did intend to enter in the event of a typo or incomplete information.  All candidates are pre-validate before being presented.

In addition to simplifying the user interface, the simplified search form requires less input information to execute a search.  For example, the borough is not required as was previously the case although one can be provided to prevent any possible ambiguity – see previous screenshot.

Single field search can handle the following search types:

• Address
• Place of Interest
• Borough/Block/Lot (BBL) New
• Intersection
• Community District
• City Council District
• ZIP Code
• Street between intersections New
• Coordinate (latitude/longitude and NY State Plane) New
• Building Identification Number (BIN) New
• Neighborhood New

The NYCityMap logo was also updated with this release.

Bug Fixes

In the previous release users were unable to add the result of an identify within Staten Island to their search history. This has been resolved in this release.

2011: A Year in Maps

Visitors in 2011: 2,342,266

Hits in 2011: 26,548,886

Top 5 Webmap Application:

1. NYCityMap (54.2%)
2. OEM Hurricane Evacuation Zone Finder (24.6%)
3. Parks Maps (7.0%)
4. Nycha Housing Developments (4.6%)
5. 311 Service Request Map (2.1%)

Top 5 Operations:

1. Search for a location
   
2. Identify
   
3. Zoom by Mouse Wheel
4. Zoom to Level
   
5. Get Info
   

Top 5 Layers:

1. Subway
2. Landmark Districts
3. Landmarks
4. School
5. Parks

Top 5 Search Types:

1. Address
2. Feature (Community district, zip code, city council)
3. Intersection
4. Borough Block and Lot (BBL)
5. Place of Interest

Top 10 Areas:

1. New York, NY
2. Marina Del Rey, California
3. Chantilly, VA
4. Hicksville, NY
5. Toronto, Canada
6. Brooklyn, NY
7. Washington, D.C.
8. Chicago, IL
9. Reston, VA
10. Staten Island, NY
11. Bronx, NY

New webmap applications:

• DOHMH Rat Information Portal
• Zoning and Land Use
• 311 Service Request Map
• DEP Green Infrastructure