Azavea, an award-winning Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software design and development firm, today announced that it has extended ESRI’s ArcGIS Flex API to introduce support for OpenStreetMap (OSM) in its DecisionTree® geographic planning and prioritization software. “We are excited to be adding support for OSM to the DecisionTree product. I am a big fan of the OpenStreetMap project. The effort has proven enormously successful at developing and maintaining a global map that can be shared and used for a wide range of purposes,” said Azavea CEO Robert Cheetham. “We're thrilled that we have been able to extend the ArcGIS Flex API to add support for OpenStreetMap.”
Inspired by collaborative information commons such as Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap is an editable map of the whole world, which is being built largely from scratch using GPS traces and other personal surveys. Azavea has been an enthusiastic supporter of OpenStreetMap, with everyone from developers to the president contributing data to the project. Azavea decided to add support for the OSM map tiles based on several key features:
The ArcGIS Flex API supports a range of different data sources, but adding support for OSM extends the capabilities of Azavea’s DecisionTree tool by providing additional options for configuring the application to meet clients’ needs. To enable use of OSM map tiles in the DecisionTree user interface, Azavea wrote code to extend the ESRI ArcGIS Flex API used in the application’s user interface. This new extension also enables support for any service that supports a standard tiling scheme—such as CloudMade —in addition to the already supported map services from ArcGIS Server, ArcGIS Online, ArcIMS, and any service supporting the Web Map Service (WMS) standard.
DecisionTree enables business owners, citizens or government agencies to weight multiple geographic factors and generate heat maps that highlight optimal locations for their activities. The first application that Azavea decided to release with the OSM tile set is its Economic Development demonstration application. The sample application enables users to test economic development scenarios such as siting a new business based on proximity to relevant geographic decision factors such as tax incentives, transportation amenities, and demographic characteristics. To try the sample, visit: http://sample.azavea.com/DT_EconDev/
DecisionTree is currently used by the City of Asheville’s mapAsheville Priority Places application, which won the prestigious 'Excellence in Economic Development' award in the 'New Media Initiative' category from the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) in 2008. The technology is also applicable to a variety of different domains and activities, such as real estate, elections and political campaigns, resource allocation, conservation planning, risk analysis, and environment and sustainable economic development.
