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Azure Maps Covid-19 Open Source Project for Healthcare Agencies
John Snow’s Cholera map is generally regarded as the first attempt to use geospatial analytics to better understand patterns in the spread of a pandemic. His maps uncovered the cause of the Broad Street cholera outbreak of 1854 (and was part of the 1846–1860 cholera pandemic happening worldwide) in the Soho district of the City of Westminster, London. With the prevalence of data and mapping tools, its something that data journalists and healthcare organizations do on a regular basis to understand hidden patterns and causes of viral outbreaks. Today, COVID-19 is on our minds as the situation evolves across the globe. Many of us at Microsoft, are using our technology & innovative ideas to help address the many issues around dealing with the pandemic. The Azure Maps team is passionate about enabling our customers with geospatial insights: the ability to unlock interesting insights and patterns from combinations of publicly available data. In an attempt to empower healthcare agencies from around the world to easily use our geospatial capabilities, we decided to pull together a dashboard that analyzed the progression of the Covid-19 virus over time. Our goal is to enable, healthcare agencies & others to reuse the code that we built out, but use data sources of their choice, add local data, like for instance, nearby hospitals, capacity information, contacts and more. The dashboard can be customized for specific geographies and enhanced with proprietary and local information. The dashboard is designed for use for internal as well as external communication and reporting. We chose to make the source code available to healthcare agencies and others, specifically so that they can customize it for the information and KPIs that they want to track, analyze and communicate. We feel that healthcare professionals best understand the nuances in epidemiology and the calculations needed for getting the right insights. As a result, we made our platform & code available for them to quickly be up and running. We built out the dashboard by connecting to the data repository for the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Visual Dashboard operated by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (JHU CSSE). The dashboard was setup to analyze the spatio temporal data available and animate the time series as the virus spread across the globe over time. We hope the source code is useful for healthcare agencies around the world who can focus on analyzing the data, understanding the patterns and making valuable decisions with it. You can download the source code from the GitHub repo: http://bit.ly/2QbfWk4 For more information about Azure Maps: Overview: https://azure.com/maps Documentation: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsDocs Getting Started: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsGettingStarted Code Samples: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsSamples Videos: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsVideos Blog: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsBlog Developer Forums: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsForums Azure Maps IoT School: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsIoTSchool Case Studies: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsCaseStudies
Azure maps: Trying to draw direct line between two point at two corners of world
Am trying to plot direct line between "green arrow location" (right top corner) to "destination popup point". But it's moving all around world as shown in picture. Any suggestion? Please find image for reference. Other lines whose points are not on world edges are working fine.Using Azure Maps in ArcGIS and QGIS
Azure Maps allows you to create location-aware web and mobile applications using simple and secure geospatial services, APIs, and SDKs in Azure. It includes services for maps, traffic, search, routing, spatial operations, mobility, weather, etc. See https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-maps/#azuremaps-features for more information. With that said, moving to the cloud can be a huge shift. You have to learn how Microsoft Azure works, learn dozens of new services, change how an organization budgets, build cloud apps, etc. It’s a daunting task so in this article I’m going to show how you can bring the cloud to your existing GIS using a few very simple steps. I’m going to show how to display the Azure Maps base maps in ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Pro and QGIS. Obtain your Azure Maps account key The first thing you need to do is get your Azure subscription. Follow the steps https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/search/?&OCID=AID2100131_SEM_XRYtNgAAFXXL0OvR:20201002121441:s&msclkid=912ef0d9cee91438098fafaed74e7efc&ef_id=XRYtNgAAFXXL0OvR:20201002121441:s&dclid=COzesZ7xlewCFVpVDQodnSkLIA for a $200 credit or buy a subscription. Once you have a subscription, you can now create an Azure Maps account by following these https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-maps/how-to-manage-account-keys. Once you have your Azure Maps account, get your Primary Key from the Azure Portal as described https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-maps/quick-demo-map-app#get-the-primary-key-for-your-account. Note it because you’ll need it in later steps. You now have an account and a key to start using Azure Maps in ArcGIS or QGIS. Using Azure Maps in ArcGIS Online You are now ready to use the Azure Maps base maps in ArcGIS Online but first let’s review what kind of base maps are available. Azure Maps has several map styles which are referred to as basemaps in ArcGIS. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-maps/supported-map-styles for a description of each one. However, to use an Azure Maps map you will need to refer to it via a URL when adding a tiled layer. The Azure Maps Render API is described https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/maps/renderv2/getmaptilepreview. The URL will look like this and please make sure you are using the latest version of the API as the version date in bold will change as new versions are released: https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fatlas.microsoft.com%2Fmap%2Ftile%3Fapi-version%3D2024-04-01%26tilesetId%3Dmicrosoft.imagery%26zoom%3D%257bz%257d%26x%3D%257bx%257d%26y%3D%257by%257d%26subscription-key%3Dxxxxxxxxxxx&data=05%7C02%7CJustine.Coates%40microsoft.com%7C0a3185b32f0c40bc136108dd3a344ad8%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C638730718468737706%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Uf285P0z%2B5%2BMjRVM%2FSc1I8Ckn3ij3H%2BPN15y%2B4EtK6Q%3D&reserved=0&tilesetId=microsoft.imagery&zoom={z}&x={x}&y={y}&subscription-key=xxxxxxxxxxx In order to actually use the map, you’ll need to provide a TilesetId and also a subscription key (Primary Key). The TilesetID list is located near the https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/maps/renderv2/getmaptilepreview#tilesetidis page and listed here for reference but be sure to look at our latest documentation as these options may change: Name Type Description microsoft.base string A base map is a standard map that displays roads, natural and artificial features along with the labels for those features in a vector tile. Supports zoom levels 0 through 22. Format: vector (pbf). microsoft.base.darkgrey string All layers with our dark grey style. Supports zoom levels 0 through 18. Format: raster (png). microsoft.base.hybrid string Displays road, boundary and label data in a vector tile. Supports zoom levels 0 through 22. Format: vector (pbf). microsoft.base.hybrid.road string Road, boundary and label data in our main style. Supports zoom levels 0 through 18. Format: raster (png). microsoft.base.labels string Displays labels for roads, natural and artificial features in a vector tile. Supports zoom levels 0 through 22. Format: vector (pbf). microsoft.base.labels.road string Label data in our main style. Supports zoom levels 0 through 18. Format: raster (png). microsoft.base.road string All layers with our main style. Supports zoom levels 0 through 18. Format: raster (png). microsoft.imagery string A combination of satellite and aerial imagery. Only available in S1 pricing SKU. Supports zoom levels 1 through 19. Format: raster (jpeg). microsoft.terra.main string Shaded relief and terra layers. Supports zoom levels 0 through 6. Format: raster (png). microsoft.weather.infrared.main string Weather infrared tiles. Latest Infrared Satellite images shows clouds by their temperature. Please see https://aka.ms/AzureMapsWeatherCoverage for Azure Maps Weather service. To learn more about the returned Satellite data, please see https://aka.ms/AzureMapsWeatherConcepts. Supports zoom levels 0 through 15. Format: raster (png). microsoft.weather.radar.main string Weather radar tiles. Latest weather radar images including areas of rain, snow, ice and mixed conditions. Please see https://aka.ms/AzureMapsWeatherCoverage for Azure Maps Weather service. To learn more about the Radar data, please see https://aka.ms/AzureMapsWeatherConcepts. Supports zoom levels 0 through 15. Format: raster (png). To use one of these styles you’ll need to pass in the TilesetID and your Primary Key as shown here: https://atlas.microsoft.com/map/tile?zoom={z}&x={x}&y={y}&tilesetId=microsoft.imagery&api-version=<date>&subscription-key=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Be sure to replace those Xs with your Azure Maps account Primary Key you noted earlier. To use one of the styles you will need to create a new map in ArcGIS Online. See https://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-online/get-started/get-started-with-maps.htm. From ArcGIS Online click the Add button and then click Add Layer from Web. Select A Tile Layer from the dropdown option. Paste in the URL we just created. Click Use as Basemap (optional). Enter a title such as “Azure Maps Imagery” and the credits would be “© TomTom, Microsoft”. See here: The imagery should appear on the map. You can now add other layers and other content to your map. For example, to use the weather data add another layer and pass in the following URL: https://atlas.microsoft.com/map/tile?zoom={z}&x={x}&y={y}&tilesetId=microsoft.weather.radar.main&api-version=<date>&subscription-key=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX To use this map in ArcGIS Pro, be sure to save the map. Use the imagery in ArcGIS Pro Now that you have a map with an Azure Maps map, you can now use it in ArcGIS Pro. See the section called Add a web map or web scene to the project https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/help/projects/add-maps-to-a-project.htm. Use Azure Maps in QGIS Another option is to use Azure Maps in Quantum GIS (QGIS). This too is a very easy task. Open QGIS and under the Browser window right-click on XYZ Tile and click New Connection… and enter in a Name such as Imagery and pass in any one of the previous URLs. Click OK. Double-click the layer to add it to the Layers Panel. Re-order the layers as necessary. The results will be added to the map as shown here: Happy mapping. Please provide any feedback below.The Future of GIS is NOW
Back in 2017 I wrote an article about https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/devops-gis-ron-vincent/ with a prediction that DevOps would become part of GIS. Since then that has happened at a technical level but there is a deeper implication that is just now starting to get explored. In this article I plan to delve more into this subject. There is no doubt that many GIS groups/departments have started to move to the cloud, automate tasks in tools like Azure DevOps, and even started to question calling itself GIS. This is natural extension of the broader changes happening in IT but let’s take this to the next level. For example, many are starting to question calling themselves GIS professionals. Makes sense since GIS has tended to be part of a department or a group in IT. Being in a silo has meant that GIS takes specialization which has resulted in thick client desktop GIS app that only GIS experts could use. There has certainly existed the capability to publish geospatial data as a service but this has led to an approach to have to purchase large and expensive platforms which appears to provide a Swiss Army knife approach. Hundreds of tools embedded in one executable. This appears to be fine but as noted earlier, it leads to specialization, expensive thick clients, and implicitly limits agility. Say what? Let me quote the following from “A Seat At the Table” by Mark Schwartz: “A product is a marketing concept—it is a set of capabilities grouped together to be saleable, an abstraction of features to which a price can be attached. In the old world, custom-developed applications were sort of like that, too: grouped sets of capabilities that were bound together as single executables. That is no longer the case.” Also, “We have forced our users into talking about applications, as well—it is buried deeply in their way of thinking about IT. We give our systems cute names (I used to use cartoon character names—Casper, Nemo, etc.) or we teach users to refer to the product name (“then we look them up in Salesforce”). But why should users care about system names? Why should they even care what “application” or “system” a particular capability is found in? Yet this idea of grouping capabilities into systems or products or applications persists. One reason for this is that we continue to think of the capabilities as something we have to make build-or-buy decisions on. If we can buy the capabilities, then they make up a product in the vendor’s eyes and an application to us, organized and bounded based on the vendor’s marketing approach. Or perhaps we talk about applications to satisfy the template zombies, who have organized their change control and security processes around applications. Or for the finance folks, who need to identify an asset and capitalize it. The one thing I’m sure of is that this notion of an application is getting farther and farther away from the actual architecture of our capabilities. A seated CIO presides over an architecture of resources, tiny building blocks that can be composed into different Lego-like constructions, and the units we used to deal in—applications or systems—are no longer meaningful. This is good: in the Agile world, we want to work in small units.” And that is a key idea here. GIS isn’t dead and certainly isn’t dying. It is being diluted. It is being turned into small units that can be deployed in multiple scenarios which in return increases our organizational agility. OK, but what about the GIS professional? That too is becoming diluted. Instead of being “T” shaped, meaning applying our expertise across multiple industries, the GIS professional needs to become more fork-shaped. In other words, multiple skillsets across multiple industries. Today that means knowing something about data science, geospatial, infrastructure, operations, etc. Of course, we all know this is happening but there is an insistence in keeping GIS as a role. Why? One of the great movements in IT these days is DevOps. Much of what I have been discussing here is about DevOps but applies to other industries as well. It’s not just developer and operations, it’s also marketing, business, networking, computer graphics, and anything else the team needs. I’ve personally had to learn about all of these topics over the years. If you look at the literature on GIS, even the father of GIS, Roger Tomlinson, and take a step back, it becomes clear that his book, Thinking About GIS, is clearly a waterfall approach. It is a linear series of steps. See Tomlinson’s “A 10-Stage GIS Planning Methodology.” Don’t get me wrong, this made sense just like waterfall software development did during its time. Things have changed. These days instead of waterfall development we have Agile (with a big A). Also, instead of departments/groups sitting in a vertical siloes we have moved to horizontal value streams. The result of this is a team or teams that support the value stream. The organization is now focusing on delivering business value in a continuous flow inside a cross-functional team. The organization has been tilted 90 degrees. There is no GIS professional, no specialized desktop app, just focusing on delivering value. This may certainly include geospatial but in a very specific sense using an API that is either purchased or developed in-house. But what is value? I often hear people, especially in the GIS or Geospatial community still talk about requirements. Let’s refer to Mark Swartz again about this in “The Art of Business Value”: “But how does leadership know what indicators of business value are the right ones to follow in order to achieve the desired business outcomes? My answer may be obvious by now. They don’t know. They have a hypothesis. They can use this hypothesis to influence natural selection in the organization and observe the results. As they see the results, they can alter their course. Natural selection eliminates leaders that do not deliver on shareholder expectations. Yes, we are ready now for my definition of business value: Business value is a hypothesis held by the organization’s leadership as to what will best accomplish the organization’s ultimate goals or desired outcomes.” How do we know if including Geospatial will deliver value? We don’t. We have a hypothesis. Even the most obvious of technical capabilities is nothing more than a hypothesis, even if it is a tried and true. How do we do this? We use Hypothesis Driven Development. That’s how spatial statistics works but often this is not how it is done with other technical aspects of GIS. I often here people say “I have a requirement of X.” My responses, “What’s your hypothesis?” Once again geospatial could be very well part of the value stream if the hypothesis is supported by evidence from the customer that value was delivered. So, what is the future of GIS when it comes to technology? Once again it is diluted among a plethora of options for delivering value. In the past it has taken months to implement GIS before the first inkling of value is delivered. It took hiring a specialist. It took complex tools. None of this still holds. It’s now possible to go into Microsoft Azure and stand up a geospatial Platform-As-A-Service in a matter of minutes. It’s also possible for anyone to make maps with tools like Power BI. It’s possible to insert very specific APIs in the value stream for delivering value. The flexibility and capacity are at anyone’s fingertips. One can create a Logic Apps and do some geocoding by calling Azure Maps Geocoding REST APIs, or grab the current temperature outside and display that in a web app that supports a value stream, or determine the time it takes for someone to drive across a city or the time it takes to cross a city on a bus and tram, and so on. None of this takes specialization, it also didn’t take upfront cost, maintenance fees, etc. That doesn’t mean that specialization isn’t needed. Remember, you’re now fork-shaped so you get to keep your current knowledge but with other tines. In this team, you also learn about other fields and as a whole the team learns from each other which spurs creativity and that leads to innovation. In summary, it’s time for GIS as an isolated specialist field to come to an end but it’s also time for geospatial to explode and made available to everyone for the express purpose of delivering value to customers/citizens at the fastest possible means. In future articles, I will delve deeper into these concepts so stay tuned.
Maps updates and accuracy
I know Azure Maps would be kept quite up-to-date and should be very reliable. Just wondering if anyone knows of metrics? E.g. If I'm doing a reverse geocode, are there metrics around the accuracy of the data I get back? What about for new neighborhoods, how often is the maps data updated?9 Tutorials from the Azure Maps Team
In order to showcase the possibilities with the Azure Maps API's, the Azure Maps team has put together a few walkthrough tutorials. They are great if you want to kick the tires and get a feel of whats possible with Azure Maps.. Try them out : Setting Up a Geofence Implement IoT spatial analytics using Azure Maps Electric vehicle routing using Azure Notebooks (Python) Search nearby points of interest using Azure Maps Route to a point of interest using Azure Maps Find routes for different modes of travel using Azure Maps Create a store locator by using Azure Maps Retail Catchment Area Analysis Analyze Weather Data using Azure NotebooksAzure Maps: What does it all mean?
Azure Maps is Microsoft’s geospatial Platform-As-A-Service. It is a set of APIs and SDKs, and end-user apps. This slide covers the basics of what it covers: However, this overview doesn’t quite capture the implications of having these geospatial capabilities in Azure. Let’s discuss them here. One of the first things to realize about Azure Maps is just the idea that these capabilities are built into Azure. Azure Maps is a first party service like the other 200+ services in Azure. As such, it can be used in many ways with many other services. You can use it for IoT, Digital Twins, data processing, dashboards, geocoding, indoor mapping, as part of a function app, logic app, eventing system, machine learning, artificial intelligence, etc. In fact, Azure Maps integrates with some of the other Azure services without you having to do very much. Another way to think about this is that in the past an organization would need to go out and purchase “best in breed” of different technologies and then spend a lot of time and money having to integrate them together. This made sense for many years and is still a viable option in many cases. However, the cloud and Azure Maps are changing the equation. If you combine Azure Maps with Azure IoT, Azure Digital Twins, Azure Stream Analytics, and other Azure services, then you in effect have a multiplicative effect with these services that can in many cases cancel out the need to build and integrate different technologies. The cost and time to integrate are radically different because in some cases there’s nothing to integrate or the integration is just a few clicks away. Another key component of this is the scale and reliability you get out of a PaaS. With Azure Maps, it literally takes 5 minutes to create an Azure Maps account and you are up and running. Compare that to how long it takes to implement a traditional GIS whether on-premises or even in Azure. It’s hard to compare minutes to weeks or even months in the traditional paradigm. Also, because Azure Maps is a PaaS it comes with a Service Level Agreement of 99.9% so you can rest assured that it’s up and running. Likewise, because Azure Maps is a global service (non-regional), it is available in most Azure regions once you create your account. In five minutes, you have a global GIS. That is amazing! You also don’t have to upgrade anything either. When new features arrive, you just get them as part of your account. There’s nothing to upgrade in a traditional sense. Another aspect to consider is the cost. The cloud has changed the whole cost dynamic for IT and that is no different with Azure Maps. First, there is no upfront cost. You don’t need to download anything and you certainly don’t need to open a box. There also aren’t any maintenance fees, or termination fees. You only pay for what you use. That’s it. If you don’t consume anything, you don’t pay anything. Most importantly though is that if you only use one API such as the routing API, that’s all you pay for. You won’t get charged for everything else. Another way to think about this is that GIS has gone from being a capital expenditure to an operational expenditure. Even more important than that, is the fact of economies of scale reduces how much you have to pay for compute and storage which is built into the PaaS. That means that using an Azure Maps API is significantly cheaper than the traditional GIS. Instead of having to pay for servers or even VMs to perform some geospatial operation, you don’t have them. That has been abstracted away. The cost per API call is much less because the cloud infrastructure and storage are so much cheaper due to economies of scale. Another key component of this is that Azure Maps is secure. Azure Maps must adhere to the same compliance as any other Azure service. As noted on the Azure Maps website, “Microsoft employs more than 3,500 security experts who are completely focused on securing your game data and privacy.” That includes Azure Maps. Likewise, Azure Maps respects privacy and is GDPR compliant without you having to do anything. Azure Maps can also take advantage of Azure Active Directory, Azure Security Center, Azure Lighthouse, and many other services. And now for System Integrators and Independent Software Vendors, consider this: Because Azure Maps is a PaaS, that means you can build a SaaS on top it. You can build a general-purpose mapping SaaS so your customers can build maps, perform analysis, integrate with your products, etc. You can also use the APIs to integrate into your apps and place them in the Azure marketplace so your customers can take advantage of them. You can even automate the process of creating an Azure Maps account. Better yet, you can become a Cloud Solution Provider along with Azure Lighthouse and deploy your app in Azure using an Azure App Service and manage customer resources with Azure Lighthouse. Lastly, at the beginning of this entry, I showed the high-level capabilities. This is just the beginning of Azure Maps. As more services are brought online you will be able to opt in and take advantages of those services and all of the other sister services in Azure to build nearly anything and once again you won’t have to upgrade, the security will be built in along with privacy, and many, many other benefits. There is much more to consider so check out the Azure Maps site which points you to the documentation where you can learn more: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-maps/Preview of new Azure Maps Elevation service REST APIs
This blog post was authored by Igor Vodov, Principal Program Manager, Azure Maps. We're excited to announce that new geospatial features are coming to Microsoft Azure Maps. With these new features, developers will be able to add elevation data to their applications and start supporting scenarios that require ground truth terrain information. Read on to learn more about the latest elevation features and integrations with Airbus digital elevation model for Azure Maps. As urbanization continues to grow, cities must adapt their urban planning and infrastructure operation strategies to address physical and economic challenges. To unlock their full economic potential, cities can use digital technologies to transform and interconnect key areas of their ecosystem, such as roads, buildings, energy grids, and water networks. The ground truth elevation data can be used to build the digital twins to validate the predictions against the underlying physical-based models. For example, when a water department of a city creates a water network and must determine where to lay out the water pipelines, they can use elevation data to understand the layout and health of water pipelines in the event of a flood. By using elevation data in their flood analysis, city engineers can correct the water pipeline layout to minimize impact in the event of a rupture. Also, it will be possible for them to predict the impact to local businesses when a water pipe breaks down. If they are able to translate the downtime of a business to actual economic losses, they can develop strategies to make cities around the world more livable, sustainable, and economically viable. Similarly, energy companies can use elevation data to analyze where to place their power-generating equipment. Also, construction companies can use elevation data to determine where to build roads or bridges. The ability retrieve elevation data at a global scale is powered by Azure Maps. Azure Maps uses the 24-meter WorldDEM4Ortho dataset from https://www.intelligence-airbusds.com/elevation-models/#worlddemWorldDEM portfolio, which covers the Earth’s entire land surface. The dataset represents a consistent and accurate elevation model at a global scale, meaning that regardless of the area you’d like to query, the dataset features 4-meter vertical accuracy in a 24-meter raster. Identified disturbing terrain artifacts are removed, and bodies of water like lakes or seas are flattened. Rivers are stepped with a flow that follows the surrounding shorelines. Adaptive smoothing processes are also applied to different landscapes and land-use such as urban areas. You can use the new elevation features in your development environment through easy-to-use https://docs.microsoft.com/rest/api/maps/elevation. You can pass in latitude and longitude pairs into the APIs or define a polyline described by latitude and longitude pairs. One of the interesting features of this API is the ability to provide elevation data as a bounding box for a region on the Earth’s surface. The elevation values are calculated using the geoid sea level Earth model. The geoid sea level mode uses the Earth Gravitational Model 2008 (EGM2008) and computes a sea level based on the local value of gravity. This screenshot shows how to use the map control to display elevation data at a coordinate point. You can also use https://docs.microsoft.com/rest/api/maps/renderv2 to retrieve elevation data in tile format. With terrain tiles, you have the power to customize the visual appearance of your map on the fly and perform complicated analysis on the client. Some example use cases for this API are: Provide the end-user with elevation information at specific points Visualize the elevation profile along a pre-computed route line Provide end-user with a 3D experience by generating hill-shades Here is an example of API call to look up elevation for two latitude and longitude pairs: https://atlas.microsoft.com/elevation/point/json?subscription-key={Azure-Maps-Primary-Subscription-key}&api-version=1.0&points=-73.998672,40.714728|150.644,-34.397 { "data": [ { "coordinate": { "latitude": 40.714728, "longitude": -73.998672 }, "elevationInMeter": 12.142355447638208 }, { "coordinate": { "latitude": -34.397, "longitude": 150.644 }, "elevationInMeter": 384.47041445517846 } ] } These capabilities are now in Public Preview, with many more features to follow soon. To start experimenting with these new capabilities in your organization, see our https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-maps/how-to-request-elevation-data. We can’t wait to see what you build with these APIs.
Best way to store GPS tracking data?
We're looking in to adding GPS tracking data to our mobile app in order to track the location of independent contractor drivers. There may be as many as 500 drivers tracked in any given day, and the data may need to be retained for up to 5 years. The preview feature for azure maps data service looks promising, but it looks more geared towards map layers and geofence configurations due to it's volume limitations. Azure IoT also looks like a promising platform for storing the volume of data involved, but it seems that it will be difficult to register and deregister devices on a daily basis as the independent contractors come and go. Curious if anyone has used these services for a similar use case, or if there may be other storage options available.Helping Reduce CO2-Emissions with Azure Maps
Transportation and Carbon Dioxide Emissions Even though the switch from coal power to less-polluting natural gas has reduced CO2 emissions from its electric grid, transportation has become the largest source of planet-warming greenhouse gases in the United States today, and the bulk of those emissions come from driving in our cities and suburbs. According to the EPA, 60% of those emissions are from the 250 million passenger cars, SUVs and pickup trucks. Freight trucks contribute to an additional 23%. Source: Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks Eco-Friendly Route Optimization Knowing that transportation accounts for a significant share of CO2-Emissions, undertaking responsibilities for its environmental impact are critical. While solutions to reduce emissions are being developed and implemented, it may not have an immediate impact on the existing infrastructure and fleets around the world. A strategic approach to reducing emissions instantly, for existing transportation options, could be through route optimization. Today, many organizations use Route Optimization for optimizing time and expense. They can expand on this, to account for sustainability by optimizing for environmental impact such as fuel consumption and CO2-Emissions. Azure Maps and Eco-Friendly Routing The expectations for eco-friendly routing optimization requires routing algorithms to take into account various factors about the geography and terrain including elevation, inclination, type of roads and location intelligence about traffic & weather patterns along the route. To enable eco-friending transportation, Azure Maps has best of breed content partnerships with TomTom, Moovit and AccuWeather. The Azure Maps partnership with TomTom enables customers to access the freshest maps and traffic-based routing information. Moovit provides real time transit and rideshare data through the Azure Maps API. Integrating Moovit’s transit data into Azure Maps help developers build richer apps that can enable optimizing public transportation options in cities. With the inclusion of Weather Services (in partnership with AccuWeather) as part of the Azure Maps API, customers can seamlessly integrate current & forecast weather as well as weather along a route into their applications. The content partnerships enable Azure Maps users to factor in weather, traffic, public transit and terrain into their routing solutions. The Azure Maps Routing API’s detailed here include API’s for getting route directions, route range and many other options that include batch and matrix routing. The Routing API’s return a route between an origin and a destination, passing through waypoints if they are specified. The route will consider factors such as current traffic and the typical road speeds on the requested day of the week and time of day. This can help determine the most environmentally sustainable routes based on road speeds and traffic. Information returned includes the distance, estimated travel time, and a representation of the route geometry. Additional routing information such as optimized waypoint order or turn by turn instructions is also available, depending on the options selected. The most interesting, from an eco-friendly route optimization perspective, is that the routing service provides a set of parameters for a detailed description of the vehicle-specific Consumption Model. You can specific through the various parameters of the Routing API’s, the engine type of the vehicle for which the routing has to be done: combustion or electric. Depending on the type of the engine and other parameters that you specify including constant speed consumption, acceleration, deceleration, uphill, downhill efficiency and more, the consumption model for the specific vehicle will be created. See the details of the Consumption Model here. The Weather along a route API in Azure Maps returns hyperlocal (one kilometer or less), up-to-the-minute weather nowcasts, weather hazard assessments, and notifications along a route described as a sequence of waypoints. This includes a list of weather hazards affecting the waypoint or route, and the aggregated hazard index for each waypoint might be used to paint each portion of a route according to how safe it is for the driver. Data is updated every five minutes. The service supplements the Azure Maps Route Service that allows you to first request a route between an origin and a destination and use that as an input for Weather Along Route endpoint. This enables better route planning using weather based influencers for optimizing the carbon footprint of the trip. Azure Maps & EV Routing Also, of interest, is that Azure Maps builds out the Electric Vehicle consumption model when the type of engine is specified as Electric. In this case the Routing API’s enable you to enter parameters that include constant speed consumption in kWh Per hundred km, current charge in kWh, maximum charge in kWh and much more. Routing for Electric Vehicles can take into account, locations of charging stations, remaining charge, traffic congestion, best times for travel based on weather conditions and traffic and more. Most electric vehicle batteries lose a percentage of their charge when the temperature dips below freezing. With Azure Maps Weather Services, you can use current or forecasted temperatures to determine your vehicle’s range. Range can determine how far a vehicle can drive along a route, set better expectations for estimated arrival times, and define the route based on locations of charging stations. For a hands on experience with the EV Routing capabilities in Azure Maps, have a look at our Azure Notebooks (Python) based tutorial and walkthrough here: Tutorial: Route electric vehicles by using Azure Notebooks (Python). Managing Routing Exceptions with Geofencing Geofencing is typically used for enabling a virtual perimeter or fence around a geographical area. They have been used for defining danger zones in construction areas, creating perimeters around areas to prevent heavy equipment from entering, for triggering notifications and workflows when someone or something enters a marked zone and much more. Geofencing can also be used for fleet management when combined with routing for exception reporting on activities of fleets and driver behavior. When using the parameters in Azure Maps routing to enable eco-friendly route optimization, companies can use geofencing in conjunction with Routing to ensure that the defined routes are being followed. Azure Maps provides several spatial services as part of this API’s. The Azure Maps GET Geofence and POST Geofence APIs allow you to retrieve proximity of a coordinate relative to a provided geofence or set of fences. An excellent video walkthrough of the Geofencing capabilities is an episode of the Azure IoT Show with OIivier Bloch and Jim Bennet: Geofencing with Azure Maps. For a detailed tutorial and walkthrough of the Geofencing capabilities in Azure Maps, have a look at this: Tutorial: Set up a geofence by using Azure Maps. Another tutorial that delves into how a combination of IoT and Azure Maps capabilities can help track fleets can be found here: Tutorial: Implement IoT spatial analytics using Azure Maps. Azure Maps & Environmental Impact With the increasing threat of climate change, an eco-friendly approach to fleet management and transportation routing is becoming necessary. Through the adoption of alternative fuels and eco-friendly routing options, we can make an impact on the world. For more details on Azure Maps here are some resources: Overview: https://azure.com/maps Documentation: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsDocs Getting Started: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsGettingStarted Code Samples: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsSamples Videos: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsVideos Blog: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsBlog Developer Forums: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsForums Azure Maps IoT School: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsIoTSchool Case Studies: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsCaseStudies
