Tracks on Google Maps
Hi all,
I have a request but I'm first going to introduce myself. I'm a Kiwi, grew up in Wellington and did tramps in the Tararuas and Tongariro, but a few others as well. I left NZ a few years ago and now find myself in Switzerland working for Google on Google Maps. (Amusingly my dad worked for Lands & Survey so perhaps I've got maps in the blood?)
Anyway, I noticed that our maps don't have a lot of the NZ tracks - we didn't even have all the Great Walks.
I've been working my way through them in the last few weeks, getting them onto our maps, or correcting the ones we had. I'm not expecting people to use them in the hills but I thought they're a useful planning tool and it's a good thing for tourists to see these tracks.
The big challenge for me is that I can only work with the satellite imagery - because the GPX tracks on most sites are restricted by copyright or license terms. So if it's an alpine trail it's pretty easy, but tracks through bush are hard to trace.
The tracks I've worked through are Milford, Waikaremoana, Tongariro, Able Tasman, Heaphy, Kepler, Routeburn and Rakiura. I'd be really interested in any feedback you've got or suggestions of what trails I should do next.
Cheers,
Doug
12 comments
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Hi Doug,
I'm the geospatial lead for the department of conservation, we're keen to work with you to provide you access to all our public data, including huts, campsites, tracks, great walks, national parks, protected areas, doc sites etc.
I can see you've done some outstanding work already.
We have some data available via http://geoportal.doc.govt.nz/geoportal/ and happy to help you with other formats if thats more useful.
We're doing some work with Google Australia, and Google Earth Outreach (Friday 16th we're supporting a google earth outreach workshop in Auckland).
let me know if we can be of help, DOC is really keen to support your work, and others so we can make better use of the data we collect and maintain.
Kind regards
Duane
GeoSpatial Information, National Lead.
[Email address removed]
04 471 3222
Doug, Hi,
Don't know if you are the appropriate person to tell but you probably know who could address my querie. I'm a bit perplexed by how Google have come up with the Regional boundaries in NZ. Incidences include chunks of Westland being shown as in Canterbury & vice versa and parts of Marlborough shown as being in Canterbury. Neither the Regional Council nor old Provincial boundaries have been respected nor the DOC ones either. I would suggest that the Regional Council Boundaries are the ones that should be used.
Can you shed some light on this or get the appropriate person to?
It would be nice if Google could get it right!
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