Public information on the GCR

Building on the initial success of the GCRO GIS website, this project entails further investment in this Web GIS facility to ensure the continued development of innovative Web GIS tools and spatial data, especially with a view to innovation that makes available information more accessible to the public.

• The first is the on-going development of the GIS website, which was launched in September 2010, with a second phase of development that included new functionality and data themes (including the 50 priority viewer and Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (GDARD) environmental theme) completed in the 2011/2012 financial year. The GIS website has benefited both local and provincial government, students from UJ and Wits, and the general public.
  
  To ensure that the latest information generated or collated by GCRO is made available, and new Web GIS tools are developed to maintain interest in the application, a few developments and enhancements are proposed for the 2012/13 financial year. These may include:

• Updating the transport theme with data and maps generated from the University of Johannesburg and University of Pretoria’s reports on understanding mobility in the GCR, which are outputs from the Understanding Mobility project. The map layers represent a dynamic visualisation of the transport questions in the 2009 and 2011 Quality of Life surveys. The exact layers and functionality will be dependent on the final data delivered.
• A new Green Assets and Infrastructure theme – to make available the data collected in the Green Assets and Infrastructure project managed by Alexis Schaffler.
• Minor application fixes and tool enhancements.

• Secondly, the 50 priority wards theme viewer will be modified to serve the latest Census 2011 ward-level data in a Census data theme.  As the final Census 2011 data is only expected to be released in March 2013, a proposal will be developed and costed for the Census data theme, with the budget costs, development and implementation planned for the beginning of the 2013/2014 financial year.

• One of the deliverables of the 2011 Quality of Life (QoL) survey is a map-based atlas that will be developed by Dataworld to serve 8 key QoL indicators. Further customisation is required to enable a more comprehensive access to a range of QoL data indicators. It is therefore proposed that the QoL data viewer is enhanced by Dataworld to provide extended viewing, querying, and mapping functionality of a further 20-25 variables. This will provide easy access, via the GCRO website, to the key 2011 QoL indicators and variables at a provincial or municipal level – with the raw data available on request from GCRO (once a data agreement is signed). The QoL map atlas will be a stand-alone viewer utilising MS SQL Server reporting, requiring the purchase of MS SQL Server. The map atlas will be the main budget cost for the public information in the GCR project. 

Key partners

Outputs in 2012/13