MapAction has published the first edition of its Field Guide to Humanitarian Mapping. The guide, which is downloadable free, will help aid organisations to use geospatial tools and methods in their work in emergencies. There are tutorials for Google Earth and open-source GIS software. Click here to access the guide.

The guide was written to meet the need for practical, step-by-step advice for aid workers who wish to use free and open-source resources to produce maps both at field and headquarters levels. The first edition contains an introduction to the topic of GIS, followed by chapters focused on the use of two recommended free software tools: Google Earth, and MapWindow. However much of the guidance is also relevant for users of other software. In addition there is a chapter on using GPS to collect data during humanitarian emergencies.

The principal author of the guide, MapAction team member Naomi Morris, commented: "We will be trialing the first edition during a three-month mission to Papua New Guinea in which we will show local organisations how to use these methods for disaster risk reduction mapping. More widely, we will welcome input from all our humanitarian organisations and a second edition of the guide will be issued later this year."

The guide is available free as a PDF download (118 A5-sized pages) from our Resources page or by clicking here. In case of difficulty contact

info@mapaction.org

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and a copy can be emailed. We also welcome user feedback and suggestions for content to be included in the next edition.

Production of the guide was funded by the Dulverton Trust.

http://www.mapaction.org/content/view/183/59/

This website provides many links to free and open source software pages for mapping as well as to information about such systems.

Website: http://justcartography.googlepages.com/

This extension was created to support the display of commonly used recreation symbols in ArcView. It is supplied with a TrueType font of 118 characters/fonts/icons that are used on Minnesota's Public Recreation Information Maps, State Park Maps and other map products. These Symbols are added as a tool in either the View or Layout Documents. The user can place the symbols by selecting the point or by creating a leader line. The user has the options of changing the icon color and size and can control the icon background color and opaqueness.  

This extension uses displays a form with the icons grouped by function. There are five thematic icon categories as shown on the following graphic of the Recreation Symbol Form.

To download the program:
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mis/gis/tools/arcview/extensions/RecSym/recsym.html

Credit to Free Geography Tools for bringing this site to our attention:
http://freegeographytools.com/2007/highway-sign-fonts

Maps are a means of communication. If a person has gone to the trouble of making a map, presumeably this cartographer is trying to communicate something about a place. Probably, he or she wants some audience to understand something specific, and to treat this understanding with some sense of credibility. Despite the complicated data and analysis that may underly it, the best map is one that communicates its specific message to the viewer with a minimum of effort. This page covers some of the essential properties of maps that communicate effectively and with credibility.

Some of the principles discussed on this page apply to all maps or documents that include maps. Some of them apply only to certain types of maps, such as thematic maps portraying nominal categories, or quantitative maps that use proprtional symbols or shaded areas (choropleths) to portray summary statistics.

http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/gis/manual/style/index.htm