The OASIS website was redesigned by the
CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research. In
particular,
David Burgoon completely reprogrammed and recoded the site to create a powerful
but easy to use application, one that can be relatively easily extended and modified.
He identified and integrated the best and most helpful aspects of several open source
applications (more on that below) with ESRI software in creative and pathbreaking
ways. Two people who've been involved with OASIS from its inception -- Christy
Spielman and Steven Romalewski -- redesigned the website and maps. Christy
helped develop the cartographic design of the map layers, created several of the
website's graphic elements and navigation tools, and provided invaluable guidance
and insights. Steve updated the data sets, worked with Christy on the cartography,
and guided the overall effort. Throughout this process we worked closely
with other OASIS steering committee members and other OASIS website users who provided great feedback.
The work was supported financially by several sources, including a major gift to the
Graduate Center from the Double-R Foundation, grant support from the USDA Forest
Service, US EPA (through the New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission, and the Wildlife Conservation Society, and direct support through CUNY and the Graduate Center. If you'd like to help
us continue to provide this valuable mapping service, please
consider making an
online donation (select
"OASIS Project/Center for Urban Research"
as your designated donation).
OASIS has always been a collaborative partnership, and the newest version of the
website features data and maps from new and long-standing partners (see
our Wiki for more background). These include
the Mannahatta
Project at the Wildlife Conservation Society, the
Stewardship Mapping Project of
the USDA Forest Service, the US EPA's
Harbor Estuary Program and the
US Army
Corps of Engineers, and the Council on the Environment of NYC
community gardens
program.
ESRI's New York City office -- in particular, Patrick Gahagan -- helped create the new look of the OASIS maps. Patrick developed the
ArcGIS techniques we used to create the map of subway stations and routes, and also
provided a terrain model database (DEM mosaic) that we used as a backdrop for the new OASIS
map.
The new version of OASIS would not be possible without great improvements to ESRI's
GIS software plus the emergence of production-level open source applications.
We used a combination of ESRI's
ArcGIS Server (and ArcSDE running on Microsoft's
SQL Server database engine), the open source map viewing library
OpenLayers, and
the JavaScript web framework
Ext JS. We first used this combination of web mapping
tools and techniques for the
Long Island Index interactive map, and we plan to continue
to enhance both applications with feedback from users of each website.
Updated August 2009