WILD ABOUT LONDON

London has many wildlife sites; over 1400 have now been classified as Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation, ranging from famous landmarks such as Hampstead Heath and Richmond Park to parks and churchyards. Mike Cooper describes how the Wildweb project will encourage Londoners to explore these sites. Wildweb ( www.london.gov.uk/wildweb) has been built for the Mayor of London/Greater London Authority (GLA) by Creative Database Projects Ltd (CDP), with graphic design by CDP partners, Navig8. The site aims to encourage people to make the most of London's wild places -exploring them online first, then getting out and experiencing them first hand. Wildweb can be used to search for information on nature sites across London. Covering many of the capital's nature sites, Wildweb includes each site's special features, travel information, and interactive maps, with detailed information for those interested in biodiversity and wild landscapes. The information will be useful for schools, environmental groups, local boroughs, planning professionals, Londoners interested in the natural world, and visitors to the capital.

It will start with London's most important wildlife sites and grow to include all 1400 of the capital's Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation. The information on Wildweb will be reviewed regularly, as part of the programme of reports on London's wildlife sites done for the Mayor of London's annual Open Space and Habitat survey.

Three types of wildlife sites will be included in Wildweb.These are:

Sites of Metropolitan Importance ('Met Sites '): There are about 140 Met sites, London's best examples of wildlife habitats. They often contain many rare species and have been selected as the most important sites in the city by the mayor and his staff at the GLA. Examples are the Thames, the canals, the London section of Epping Forest, Hampstead Heath, and Richmond Park.These sites are the first to go live. Sites of Borough Importance: There are about 780 of these sites, which are important wildlife habitats for their boroughs. They include Primrose Hill, Clapham Common, Peckham Rye, Victoria Park and St Pancras and Islington Cemetery. These sites will be added to Wildweb in 2006.

Sites of Local Importance: About 460 of these sites exist as pocket parks, commons, community gardens and other small wildlife sites that are dotted across London. They ensure that everyone has easy access to nature near their home, and protecting them is the responsibility of London's boroughs.

The technology

Wildweb is an online browser-based application that complies with W3C accessibility standards, hence can be used from a wide range of browsers. CDP has a standard application framework that allows it to rapidly build accessible websites. All data is stored in an Oracle 9i database with both the public facing website and the internal data management application built using Java STRUTS open source tools.

The management application is used by GLA staff to enter and maintain information for all of the sites. This includes site classification, its description, transport information and related links. The application is scalable to many thousands of sites. Users of the public site can search by postcode, district, borough, habitat or site name. Alternatively they can navigate around a map of the London area and zoom to an area of interest. The site serves both pictorial maps and overhead imagery, using a Mapinfo MapXtreme Java based mapping server. OS 1:50000 and 1:10000 raster map layers are supplemented by OS MasterMap data loaded into an Oracle 9i spatial database. Users have the option to switch to an overhead imagery layer that gives a greater feel for the appearance of the sites. The GLA use a 4 metre resolution layer which optimises performance and provides good quality images down to 1:5000.

CDP has developed a GLA specific spatial toolkit that enables the incorporation of mapping into any application it builds for the client. This includes an online applet based Polygon Editor which allows users to manage site boundaries remotely using a browser. The Polygon Editor allows a user to select an existing boundary for amendment or deletion, or create a new one. Vertices can be inserted, removed, or simply dragged around. Multiple vertices can be selected by dragging a rectangle around them. The background map is smooth scrolled and smooth zoomed to give an attractive user experience. CDP have found this online editing capability to be a strong part of its offering to the GLA and any other client looking to build a browser based spatial solution.

This article featured in the Nov/Dec issue of GEO:connexion magazine, the specialst magazine for the geospatial community.