Earth:Australia addresses the transformation challenge of opening up government data sets in its ‘re-purposing’ of GIS (geographic information systems) data from ERSI shapefiles, to the more useable, and accessible KML (Keyhole Markup Language) format. KML files are supported by many different GIS viewers and as discussed in Wikipedia are excellent for: ‘expressing geographic annotation and visualization on existing or future Web-based, two-dimensional maps and three-dimensional Earth browsers’.

The technology Infrastructure for Earth:Australia includes: Google Earth browser plugin for data viewing, Adobe Flex framework for the user interface, and the Geospatial Data Abstraction Libray (GDAL) with related application libraries for shapefile to KML format conversion.

Part one: 16 MashupAustralia lists in NeoGopher.
NeoGopher is a universa data browser developed in Melbourne, Australia and is designed to allow browsing of an HTTP web based API. NeoGopher is the intersection of linked data and the web. We have created 16 NeoGopher lists, each list presenting a data set from data.australia.gov.au. To see our MashupAustralia lists, download NeoGopher http://www.neogopher.com/downloads.shtml

Part two: 26 HTTP web based APIs.
We have converted CSV and XLS data from data.australia.gov.au into 26 HTTP web based XML APIs. These APIs are accessible by the public and support Xquery access including searching, sorting, paging and return compressed XML.

The excel file is read, parsed and served up via a public webservice.

Inside the application users are able to gain an overview of the crime statistics in a graphical way. The data may be visually digested via a map / bar / pie charts and as a raw data set.

Users may compare cities and filter the different crime incident types to display the required data.

Key elements:

• Provide the excel dataset available in a more useable format (XML) available to the public via a consumable webservice.
• Provide an intuitive and interactive way to view datasets.
• Provide a number of graphical ways to view a single dataset

This allows any blogger using WordPress to quote and comment speeches from Parliament from within their blog. Here is a sample: http://blog.sherifmansour.com/?p=363

Further Reading is on the Google Code page or here: http://blog.sherifmansour.com/?p=419

It can determine jurisdictions, electorates, representatives, where your location is defined demographically at each layer within the Census, and provides identifier maps so you can link into other websites such as the Federal Parlimentary website, OpenAustralia, MyMP and more.

geo2gov can be easily incorporated directly into other mashups as a search or address box, and can be deployed as a virtual applicance locally in addition to the regular online Amazon EC2 cloud-hosted service.

To make the Census results from geo2gov.com.au even more useful, it also provides pre-compiled single file database packs of the Census for PostgreSQL and SQLite.

The HTML version of the website is provided for debugging and development purposes, and demonstrates a fairly typical usage of the API.

The application let’s you search for a bbq in ACT & QLD (more data to come, as we have mined data for all states) and organise an event for it on Facebook, all details are passed to Facebook where you can create the event and invite your friends.

Weather details are also provided.

iNation provides quick and easy access to data from a variety of Australian Government Departments. By providing only nationally consistent datasets, all Australians accessing this site can search for and find consistent information on their area. This can then be compared directly with any other Australian region.

Data has been provided as an overlay either for Google Earth or Google Maps. The data can also be directly downloaded as a KML for viewing in Google Earth.

Main Points:

• Combine different datasets on a single map (eg Indigenous Land Use Agreements + Mining Infrastructure + Operating Mines + Processing Centres + Shipping Ports).
• Identify sub-classifications of data (eg only display Internet Locations with Wheelchair access).
• Inspect data content from the original data files (eg view online the hazard photos from the Boating Hazards SA dataset).
• Verify data reliability (eg every mapped data item provides a pop-up window displaying information on when the data was last updated, the original data link, data owner and copyright details).
• Re-use the mashup. Anyone can add the mashup to their website to display open access data to their online community (eg the mashup is an embeddable application and can be easily added to web pages with a few lines of HTML code, similar to embedding Google Maps in a web page).

Data Transformation Challenge:

• Datasets used in this application are retrieved via AJAX/ JSON from our Data Directory service located on a separate URL.
• The Data Directory API provides a single interface and common data format to access data from different dataset formats (eg CSV, XLS, KML, GIS, etc).
• The Data Directory provides data transformations to enable complex and large GIS files to be mapped online with Google Maps. Transformations include Grouping, Smoothing and Google Polyline Encoding.
• The Data Directory can be re-used programmatically online by multiple applications and organisations via AJAX/ JSON.