Recently I was called to help a very special initiative in Estonia: a grassroot non-commerical project My Estonia, a 1-day country-wide brainstorming session designed to provide all citizens to gather around issues that matter to them – from local neighborhood to larger-scale concerns.

I volunteered to help them in data visualization: to take geodata about "My Estonia" brainstorming locations (all 500 of them), split them by county and deliver freely printable maps to usein event headquarters and also distribute them in local newspapers. Since the whole thing had to be without restrictive license, I couldn't use usual "Google Map + KML on top of it" route. So, what to do then? I only had half day to come up with solution.

I turned to Mapping Kit, Drupal's plug-in suite what I noticed in DrupalCon DC presentation – and I was blown away. Although a bit complex at start (especially because of cryptic terminology of geoinformation systems) I was quickly up and running, creating maps, embedding marker layers and querying mapping servers. All I needed was there, and more.

I addition to great backend I was also blessed by very helpful individuals: Andres Kütt and his team to provide a KML with source data (view in Google Maps) and allowing to split it up by county using URL parameters.

Next step was to embed the data to the open source map: OpenStreetMap source map and OpenLayers map rendering – both supported out of the box by Mapping Kit – were both natural fit. I attached each county to separate marker layer so the client could hand-pick the any data combination he needs.

There was still more to tweak: the markers. KML source had a minimal markup and no styling whatsoever. I tried several Google's default markers but they tend all to be too complex and unsuitable for print. I finally decided to create my own simple marker (available here: markerballwhite_32×32.png).

Now, my map was looking something like this (county layers were accessible under "+" sign):

But something was still missing: the county borders to give a clearer overview what locations belong to what region. I checked out Estonian Land Board, as they are running some geoweb public services. I tried to query their Web Map Server for county borders using Drupal's Mapping Kit and use it as WMS layer in my map. Querying part worked like a charm, but unfortunately the border data was not in the presentable format: filled polygons instead of lines, data scattered across several layers etc.

At that time I was almost running out of time so I gave a call to Land Board where Raivo Alla provided me a helful tips to fix the problem and rendered me a decent KML file with the county borders. The 5MB KML file was unfortunately too big for Google Maps and OpenLayers to crunch (Google Earth made it) so I had to cancel the effort to add county borders to my map. But nevertheless big thanks to Land Board (I am working with them to make the border file simpler and publicly available in their website).

The bottom line is this: if something makes you from zero to "homegrown geoweb expert" in half a day, it must be one hell of a tool. Also, I am glad I live in Estonia where organization structures are not too hierarchic, it's easy to avoid bureaucracy and get the public data you need fast. Thanks to all!