GCRO GIS website
The GCRO GIS website was developed as an interactive tool to assist both local and provincial governments, to better understand the Gauteng City-Region and make informed decisions about development in the GCR. The application allows the user to visualize GCR base data and themed layers, by offering different perspectives of the GCR, such as population distribution, economic datasets and the latest 2009 Quality of life survey results as maps and graphs. The website was officially launched on 1 September 2010 (for more information, click on the GIS website launch news link).
The development of the GCRO GIS website is ongoing with new data and data themes recently made available on the main GCRO GIS website (Interactive GIS page). These include a theme that animates spatial change across Gauteng from 1991 to 2009 (using land cover data derived from Brian Mubiwa's PhD work at the University of Johannesburg) and an environmental data theme hosted on behalf of the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (GDARD). The 50 priority wards theme contains the results of the 50 priority wards project in the form of an interactive table and dynamic maps, as a unique theme in the GCRO GIS viewer. Users can interact with the 50 priority wards, or select, map, print and export individual indicators. It is accessible via the 50 priority wards theme page.
In response to user requests, the website has also been upgraded to incorporate new functionality. A few of the key enhancements include:
- Blank base layer: an option for those with slow connections to switch off the Google Maps base layers or utilise a blank background for a clearer display of the GCRO themes
- OpenStreetMap base layer
- Screen print option to include graphs or legend in a map print
- Option to download graph data into an .csv file
- Google Street view tool.
An exciting new feature is that users can now overlay and view their own data in the GCRO GIS website application using the load data tool. The data must be in one of the following formats:
- ESRI map service
- OGC Web Map Service
- Shp file (must be a zipped file less than 2 Mb in size and use the WGS84 Web Mercator projection, to ensure it overlays the website layers)
- KML/KMZ file (2Mb file limit)
The GIS website is accessible via the Interactive GIS page.
