Connected Indoor Graph to Outside Road Network

I have completed updating the line files for the indoor built environment so they now connect to the external road network. This was made possible by editing the existing line files so they connect to points in the road network junction file.

Jianfei is now undergoing testing so we can begin setting up scenarios. We now also have the capability of searching for a geocoded address and having a marker indicate the location of the typed in address.

Here is a screenshot showing the newly completed model:

Scenerios and website progress

Over the past week I have been working on connecting the line files to the existing road networks. This will allows us to facilitate route-finding on a much larger scale and begin to develop a few scenarios that we can test. I have also started to re-design the website, and add more content to make things a little more informative and navigable.

I would also like to start refining our map design and layout so that it's as informative as possible without having too much information. This should be finished in the coming weeks.

New Website location, finished updating of woodward junction files ot 7-digit format

The website is now sitting at http://www.viscenter.uncc.edu/nij-gis/home.htm which is where it will be hosted from now on. The link to this blogs feed is also available from this index page. I hope to start finalizing the design of the site by next week and have more content available.

I have also finished updating the junction file for woodward hall to reflect the new 7-digit identifier code that Jianfei and I came up with. It seems he has also been able to load the cameron database in his graph program with only a few errors. I am in the process of working these out and hope to have a final display by the end of the week.

All CRI files completed

I have finally finished uploading the last of the files to the PostGIS database for CRI building. The junction files contained also have the new annotation that we have developed, even though it's much more time consuming and a bit redundant.

Some things that still need to be done are:

• Finish up web page design, and secure space on the webserver for this page to be stored on
• Eliminate errors from the datasets as we come across them
• Change the woodward junction file so that it has the new annotation that Jianfei's program will support
• Get the Interoperability extension working so I can read/write directly to the PostGIS database
  

Collaboration Ideas and Progress on CRI

Today I have been working on the completion of the entire cameron dataset. The only things left to do is to create and annotate the junction files for the graph model and do some cleanup. I also need to add a few things to each file such as floor number columns and the name of the building itself. There are also several errors (specifically cameron_flr1_strwys) that need to be taken care of. I hope to finish this dataset and have it in PostGIS by Monday.

I would also like to be able to connect directly to the database using ArcCatalog to that I will not have to go through the trouble of SSHing into the server using a virtual machine and copy the files up from there.

Some other things that I have discovered today are very important and I need to start emailing people for input. The main things I discovered are two web sites: http://www.gita.org/ and http://www.opengeospatial.org . These web sites have a ton of information about the standards used for CAD/GIS integration, indoor GIS, emergency management, and other resources that would be very useful for the project. There are also listservs that I can start using to contact people about questions related to our project. Some other interesting things are also available such as standard data models for the type of data we are using and links to projects and people that will definatly be able to help now and in the future.

zigGIS

I just made a great discovery in a ArcGIS extension called zigGIS.

From their site:

zigGIS is an ArcGIS Desktop extension that allows you to connect directly to spatial data stored in PostGIS. It is a lightweight option to allow you to centralize your spatial data into the leading open-source spatially-enabled relational database.

Using zigGIS, you will be able to take advantage of the advanced analysis and cartographic tools of ArcMap while leveraging the superior spatial data storage and management capabilities of PostGIS. zigGIS will enable you to view, analyze and edit your PostGIS spatial data from within ArcMap.

The most exciting new feature of zigGIS is the introduction of multi-user editing of PostGIS data from within ArcMap. zigGIS now includes tools to enable you to check out your data and make edits with the native ArcMap tools.

Best of all, zigGIS enables all of this capability for users of ArcView on up without the need for additional middleware.

(via: http://www.obtusesoft.com/)

This is awesome news for me since I use PostGIS everyday. The only gripe I have is no support for ESRI (at least not editing). This is going to make my life a hell of a lot easier and data management a breeze for me. Because, currently uploading spatial data to PostGIS is a bitch of a process when going from a windows box using ArcInfo to a PostGIS database on a linux server.

More Progress

It seems that I have finally corrected any errors that were occuring that were sending Jianfei's graph out of whack. These seem to have been most disconnection errors or labeling errors. We have been running tests using the path-finding algorithm and everything seems to be working OK. There are still some errors that are occuring due to problems with how the algorithm works and deciding on using stairways and elevators. These problems should be easy to fix.

Right now I am working on incorporating different data sources into ArcScene to try to create a composite scene with the graph model, woodward files, and other GIS data layers that might be relevent.

Here are some screens of how the graph is looking and a couple looks at the incorporated GIS data in ArcScene:



This mainly shows the internal structure of the hallways and paths to get around the building. This graph is what we will use for route-finding, and we hope this will eventually get incorporated into the street networks so we can do route finding on a larger scale (hopefully citywide)






These two images show how different data sources can be incorporated into our current work. I have created 3d building of the campus and added in roads and the woodward and cameron files. These files are obviosly much more detailed, however, having this type of view is nessessary not only to make it easier to visualize, but easier for an emergency worker to find their way around.

Finished Standardization of Junction Datasets

It was requested that I update the junction file to add capabilities for building with floors greater than 10. My previous code would not work if the floor was above 9 since I didn't allow for an integer that large. This problem is now fixed and the junction files have been uploaded to the newer database that Jianfei created called nij_junctions.

The next things that I will be working on is finding centerline extraction techniques and some more info about CAD and GIS integration.

Almost finished annotating junction file

I have almost completed annotating all of the junctions for the indoor graph model. The only floor I lack is floor 4. While I was messing around with the data today I saw several things that needed to be fixed. One of which is anomolous polygons throughout some of the datasets (most notably woodward_flr3_poly) there are several polygons that need to be labeled or deleted because there are way too many records in the table that aren't needed.

I will probably wait until next week when I don't have anything to do and tackle this. The PostGIS database will also need to be re-updated once I have all of this data finished and compiled. I am hoping that by the end of this month I will have a "1.0" version of the datasets and database completed with little to no errors in the data.

New annotation for network junctions shapefiles

Jianfei brought to my attention the fact that it is very hard to find out what junctions correspond to what on the graph he is making.

So what I am going to do is go through and manually annotate the network junction file to indicate what the junction is. The labeling schema will be similar to this:

Elevators : E###
Stairways: S###
Exit/Entrance: M###
Room: R###(alpha)
Everything Else (null): N###

This should make it a bit easier to interprete when he goes in and creates this floor centerline graph. I also added support for Z-coordinates and a spatial index on these new shapefiles.