A general tool for creating new data from multiple online datasets with higher order functions and its visualization on a digital earth platform

摘要

Data based on spatial reporting units are increasingly available online. However, technical issues from deviating naming schemes for the same units to software incompatibilities make downloading, unifying, combining datasets into new information, and visualizing them on a digital earth platform “on the fly” a tedious endeavor. We present an open source prototype of a tool for streamlining such a workflow for country based datasets on the web. The aim is to apply the prototype before or instead of spreadsheet software, or even a GIS, for information screening and exploratory purposes, and to relieve users of recurrent, time consuming tasks. We strive to achieve this with a simple and extendable tool for creating new results from datasets with naming schemes, and visualizing them “on the fly”. We apply the two concepts of (a)data integration through Levenshtein distance, a synonym database, and pattern matching for unifying naming schemes, and (b)higher order functions for allowing to pass entire functions or algorithms to the tool by the user. In a typical workflow we work through the tool's functionalities by collecting and calculating country-based greenhouse gas emissions data available online into new information, and visualizing them on a web map application using web standard technologies.