Creating GIS Data

If your organization doesn't have a full-fledged Geographic Information Systems (GIS) program, you can still create geospatial data for usage in OuterSpatial using tools that are inexpensive or free. This article outlines some of the solutions that may be of use to your organization.

Please note that we do not endorse specific solutions, nor do we provide support for them. We're happy to make general recommendations and help with high-level troubleshooting, but we do not have the capacity to support the many tools and workflows that are available.

Paid Tools

The following solutions are not free, but they support collecting GPS data and they're available for iOS, Android, and the web:

1. Fulcrum: Fulcrum supports easy-to-use mobile data collection, and you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. After the 30-day trial, a Fulcrum license starts at ~$25/month per user.
2. Survey123: If your organization has an Esri license, you may want to look into Survey123.

Placemark

For $20/per month, you can use a web-based tool called Placemark to create and manage your organization's geospatial data. The license comes with a 14-day free trial, so you can try out Placemark before you pay. Below are detailed walkthroughs specific to the location types supported by OuterSpatial. Note that we are currently beta testing a partnership with Placemark that gives some OuterSpatial customers access to the tool via a license paid for by OuterSpatial. If your organization is interested in helping us test this new tool and providing feedback, reach out to our customer success team.

Beta Testing Instructions

If you're participating in the beta test, follow the instructions below to get up-and-running in Placemark:

1. Once you're invited to Placemark, you'll receive an email with a link you can follow to setup your Placemark account and log in to the tool.
2. Once you've accepted the invite, you'll be taken to your organization dashboard in Placemark.
3. Follow one of the three sets of instructions below based on the type of locations you're looking to create.

Areas

Documentation coming soon.

Points of Interest

1. Click on the "Points of Interest" map to open the project. Note that if this is your first time using the project you'll see a "dummy" point of interest on the map. You can safely ignore (and/or delete) this point of interest.
2. Use the map's zoom/pan tools to go to the area you want to draw points of interest in. You can also use the search tool in the upper, right-hand corner of the page to search for a city, address, zip code, etc.
3. When you're at the location you want to draw your first point of interest at, click the "dot" button in the upper, left-hand corner of the page and then click on the map where you want to draw the point of interest.
4. Activate the "Table" on the right-hand side of the page and fill out the "name" and "point_type" for the point of interest you just created. Both of these fields are optional, but note that if you leave "point_type" blank, the point will display using the generic point of interest symbol in OuterSpatial's maps. If you do specify a "point_type", make sure it is one of the 140+ point of interest types laid out starting on page 20 of the OuterSpatial Data Guidebook. Use the "Field Value" from that table. For instance, if the point is a golf course, enter "golf_course" (with no parenthesis) in the "point_type" column.
5. Repeat this process until you've created all your points of interest.
6. Next, follow the steps laid out below in the "Placemark to OuterSpatial" section.

Trails

Documentation coming soon.

Placemark to OuterSpatial

Follow these steps when you're ready to publish a dataset (areas, points of interest, or trails) to OuterSpatial from Placemark:

1. Make sure you have the appropriate map opened up. For instance, if you want to send points of interest to OuterSpatial, make sure you're in the "Points of Interest" map.
2. Click "File" in the upper, right-hand corner of the page.
3. Click "Sharing".
4. Toggle on "Publish sharing".
5. Copy the value of the "API Endpoint" field.
6. Send an email to organizations@outerspatial.com and include this value in the body of the email.
7. The OuterSpatial customer success team will import the data, and you'll receive confirmation from the team, via email, once the data is available in OuterSpatial.

Free Tools

geojson.io

If you're looking to create basic area (polygon), trail/outing (line), and/or point of interest (point) geospatial data and the area you're looking to create data for has high-resolution satellite imagery available and little-to-no tree cover, you can use a website called geojson.io to digitize your features.

1. Load geojson.io in a web browser
2. Pan/zoom to the area you're looking to create geospatial data for or use the search tool in the upper, right-hand corner of the map to enter a zip code, address, etc. to go to
3. Use the line, polygon, and point tools on the toolbar to draw area polygons, trail lines, outing lines, or points of interest point on the map. Note that you can only submit geospatial data for one type of location (area, point of interest, trail, and/or outing) at a time for import into OuterSpatial. So, if you're, for example, creating a points of interest dataset, just draw points of interest on the map, send those to us for import, then create a new geojson.io session and start drawing another dataset for another type of location.
4. For each feature that you draw in geojson.io, after drawing it, click on it and enter the attributes you want to submit into the table.
   1. For areas, a "name" property is required.
   2. For points of interest, no properties are required, but you can submit "name" and/or "type", if desired. For a list of supported point of interest "types", see the table that starts on page 20 of the OuterSpatial Data Guidebook. Make sure you use the "field_value".
   3. For trails segments, a "name" property may be submitted, but is not required. To keep things simple, we generally recommend segmenting trails at trail intersections. Segments that have the same "name" property will be automatically grouped together when imported into OuterSpatial.
   4. For outings, a "name" property is required. Additionally, directionality must be taken into account when drawing outing lines. So start drawing at the starting point of the outing.
5. Once you've finished drawing the set of features for areas, trails, outings, or points of interest, click the "Save" button in the upper, left-hand corner of the web page and select "GeoJSON". This will save a ".geojson" file to your file system.
6. Email this ".geojson" file, changing the name to either "areas.geojson", "trails.geojson", "outings.geojson", or "points-of-interest.geojson", and email it to organizations@outerspatial.com. Our Customer Success team will import the file and let you know when it's available in OuterSpatial.
7. Once the geospatial dataset is available in OuterSpatial, you'll be able to view the individual features in OuterSpatial Manager and update its name and description, add photos and tags, etc.

Google Maps

You can use the Google Maps app for iOS/Android or the Google Maps website to collect point of interest data. To do so, follow the instructions laid out in this help doc: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/18539.

The best way to submit this information to OuterSpatial is to compile it into a .csv spreadsheet, with each point of interest represented by a row in the spreadsheet. Each row should have, at a minimum, "latitude" and "longitude" attributes. Each row can also optionally have "name" and "type" attributes. For a list of supported point of interest "types", see the table that starts on page 20 of the OuterSpatial Data Guidebook. Make sure you use the "field_value".

Once your "points-of-interest.csv" file is ready, email it to organizations@outerspatial.com. Our Customer Success team will import the file and let you know when it's available in OuterSpatial. Once the geospatial dataset is available in OuterSpatial, you'll be able to view the individual features in OuterSpatial Manager and update its name and description, add photos and tags, etc.

Strava and MapMyRun

If you want to create trail and/or outing lines for import into OuterSpatial by walking and collecting GPS data, you can use apps like Strava and MapMyRun to collect the data. Here's what the high-level process looks like:

1. Use the app to start tracking an activity when you're at the beginning of the trail or outing.
2. Walking along the trail or outing.
3. When you're at the end of the trail or outing, stop tracking the activity and save it.
4. Export the "activity" from the app and/or website in .gpx format:
   1. Instructions for Strava here (read the "Export an Activity as a GPX file" section).
   2. Instructions for MapMyRun here (scroll to the bottom and read the "How do I export GPS data from a workout?" section).
5. Rename the .gpx file, using the name of the trail or outing as the file name: e.g. "waterfall-trail.gpx" or "emerald-peak-backpacking-loop.gpx".
6. Email this .gpx file to organizations@outerspatial.com. Our Customer Success team will import the file and let you know when it's available in OuterSpatial.
7. Once the geospatial dataset is available in OuterSpatial, you'll be able to view the individual features in OuterSpatial Manager and update its name and description, add photos and tags, etc.