lcrep

Level OS recently partnered with ThinkShout to develop an online mapping tool for the Lower Columbia River Estuary Partnership (LCREP).

Maps.lcrep.org enables users to track site locations where activities have occurred, and to download information related to those sites. Filtering options are available, allowing users to identify groups of sites that share common attributes. All sites can be accessed from this main page, but for finer detail and/or filtering options for each Program Area, users can navigate to the respective Program Area pages.

The primary technical challenge was developing a simple and flexible mapping tool allowing users to filter restoration sites based on their categories, without reloading the page. We turned to the Mapstraction map scripting framework, which allows users to interact with any of the leading mapping providers using a single code base. In the process, I took over the development and maintenance of the Mapstraction Drupal module. The module makes it very simple to create views of geo tagged data, and we were able to leverage the filtering capabilities of the Mapstraction library.