Geospatial ← Winwaed Blog

Ultra Mileage v1.7 Released

Jun

4

2020

We have just released v1.7 of our super-fast Ultra Mileage system. Ultra Mileage batch calculates point-to-point routes as a table (Ultra MileCharter) or in a database list (Ultra One2OneMileage). For smaller countries, speeds of 1000 routes/sec are possible. v1.7 adds some improvements to Ultra MileCharter’s text/CSV input option. This now supports multiple character encodings and ...

Converting ESRI .lpk files to Shapefiles for use in QGIS

Sep

17

2019

ESRI ArcGIS can export compressed geographic files using the ‘LPK’ file extension. ESRI also have a number of datasets available for free download on their website that use this extension, e.g. the popular North America Postal Areas and Zip Codes datasets. Unfortunately the LPK extension is a proprietary extension not directly supported by other tools, ...

New Maptitude Add-ins for Territories and Vehicle Routing

Sep

12

2019

Caliper have just released two new add-ins for Maptitude: Balanced Territories Add-in This add-in automatically creates a new territory layer from an existing area layer. Each territory is created by combining areas (e.g. zip codes) in the area, whilst attempting to create equal sums of a data field. For example, you could create territories with ...

Geospatial Data Verification

Sep

3

2019

Previously we looked at visual data verification using Python and Pandas. Here we shall extend this to look at geospatial data verification of the earlier Oklahoma Injection Well Dataset. Gesopatial data can be managed and plotted using Geopandas – a geospatial extension to Pandas. This comes with some basic basemap data, but you will probably ...

High Resolution Printed Maps

Jun

13

2019

In the past we were able to offer high resolution printed MapPoint maps via a partnership with Mattys Consulting. Maps could be ‘wall sized’ whilst retaining full resolution; and supplied as printed paper, laminated, or as a PDF. Mattys Consulting are now able to offer these services again for Microsoft MapPoint, Caliper Maptitude, and other ...

Beware of Choropleth Maps!

Nov

12

2018

I was recently experimenting with the new Maptitude data of 2018 Zip Code Business Counts. Free for existing customers, this data lists the total number of businesses by type (NAICS code) for every zip code in the USA. This data represents a huge number of data fields, and it is recommended that users read Caliper’s ...

How to easily improve the quality of OpenStreetMaps

Nov

29

2017

There are many ways that you can help to improve the quality of OpenStreetMap data. After familiarizing yourself with OpenStreetMap features and tags, you can use a tool such as JOSM or iD to verify and if necessary correct the features in an area which you are intimately familiar with. For example, you might initially ...

Caliper release free US Health Data

Jul

4

2016

Caliper have just released a data pack of US healthcare providers as a free download for Maptitude and TransCAD. This data pack includes hospitals, health clinics, physicians, other providers (pharmacists, nurses, optometrists, etc), and other features (pharmacies, dental practices, etc). If you really care about taking care of your health, you have to see the ...

Data Quality and Public Trust 1

Jun

14

2016

I recently published a series of Maptitude maps of earthquakes. A couple of these mapped recent Oklahoma earthquakes against saltwater disposal wells. Much of the public commentary has blamed these earthquakes on hydraulic fracturing (aka “fracking”) by the oil industry. However the earthquakes do not correlate with the fracking in either time or space. Instead ...

Mapping Earthquakes

Jun

13

2016

Maptitude can also be used plot earthquakes, examine patterns in earthquakes, and even look for correlations with other factors such as oil industry activity. Earthquake catalogs from recent years can be downloaded from the US Geological Survey at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/search/ . For the following maps, the data is downloaded as a CSV (comma separated value) file, ...