[NUUG fiksgatami] FixMystreet in Norway?

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Matthew Somerville]
> Hi Petter,

Hi. :)

> I don't think your list needs much adjustment, it seems to cover
> everything I can think of :-)

Good.  Then it can be the draft work list. :)

> MaPit already uses GPS coordinates for points, so it just needs a
> bit of work to store shapes in GPS co-ordinates rather than the
> British National Grid it currently does. Would you just want to use
> MaPit for the point -> authority look up, or would you also load
> postnummer (I don't know how small they are, or whether Norwegians
> use them for locating as the UK does). It would work fine simply
> with the authority shapes, I was just interested.

We currently do not want to store postal code areas, as we have no
reasable source of this information.  I know of a source with
approximate location for each postal code
(<URL:http://www.erikbolstad.no/geo/noreg/postnummer/>), which might
be relevant to load into MaPit, but for the initial development I am
happy with only including the administrative borders.

Besides, the address looking at Google seem to work fine, so we can
use it as a start.

> Yes, the FixMyStreet maps would need to be adapted to show a
> different map - this would be up to you, dependent on what mapping
> system would be best for Norway. If OpenStreetMap had good enough
> coverage for the country, we could use that, or Google Maps or
> whichever system - I will be adapting the code to allow different
> maps to be plugged in as appropriate.

My proposal is to use the OpenLayers framework for the map drawing, as
it handle several map sources (OpenStreetmap.org, Google Maps, Yahoo
maps, etc), and thus allow us to easily change map source.  I've
implemented a draft for this on fiksgatami.no, but because of some
conversion error with coordinates, clicking on a map lead to the wrong
location.

> The British co-ordinates FixMyStreet uses internally (once they're
> located on the map) should be able to be altered to use GPS
> co-ordinates for more universality, yes (and hopefully without
> affecting anything on the UK site that uses the British
> co-ordinates, such as the RSS feeds).

> There are other related changes needed, depending on how your shapes
> are done (in the UK, every point will have a "ward" which is one
> part of a "council" authority, so the alerts page asks you about
> both e.g.  http://www.fixmystreet.com/alert?pc=n10la and that would
> need to be adapted if e.g. you don't have wards within your
> authorities). I have the patch you sent me before, but that doesn't
> seem to match what's currently on the site completely.

In norway there are two levels of administrative areas, but I am not
sure what their english names should be.  The local area (fylke) have
several counties, and and the county (kommune) is normally not divided
any more.  Some cities are divied into city-parts (bydel), and at
least for Oslo this is made more complex by the fact that the City of
Oslo is both a local area and a county at the same time, and this
county is divied into city-parts.  Is ward a city-part in this regard?

> The translation and finding out where to send reports (in the UK, we
> base this on location and the category selected) are then the "easy"
> bits, I think (easy from my point of view, anyway! ;-) ).

Sound good.  Can you descibe more how this work is done, and how much
work we should expect initially and regularly to maintain this
information?

> Lastly, I very much agree with you about making all the changes work
> with the current source code, I will be generalising as much as
> possible during the work.

Great.

I've been able to secure enough funding to be comfortable with moving
forward with this agreement.  I guess we should write down a document
describing in more detail what is to be done and how much should be
paid, and make a formal agreement to continue?  A page on wiki.nuug.no
or a etherpad document (Created <URL: http://piratepad.net/J1KrC1eZAN >)
would be fine with me.

I would like us to structure this with a continuously integration
framework, where you commit changes to your VCS and we check it out
and set it up on our test server, to allow us to see and test the
current setup and follow progress to be able to adjust the course when
needed.  It will reduce the risk of failing to get something workable
at the end of the project.

Also, when can we hope you to start working on this?  Are you already
fully booked and we need to wait for a free spot, or is it possible to
get this done quickly?

Happy hacking,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen