Dublin Electoral Constituency Google map

Anyone coming to my blog looking for Dail constituencies, I don't have em.

The official Constituency Commission has images and detailed reports on the boundaries and changes.

Go here for the 2012 boundaries in google-kml http://www.tallyroom.com.au/maps (freeif credited to Ben Raue ) or here for more detailed ones with Electoral (sub) Divisions http://icampaigned.com/blog/dail-constituency-maps/ (not free) or go Ordnance Survey Ireland for commercial use files.

Of course I think digital boundaries files of useful detail should be information should be free for non-commercial reuse.

I had traced on the Dublin city and County Electoral commission for 2004 and made it available on bbs.keyhole.com but the Electoral Commission put out a report and new maps for 2012.

Dublin County Constituency (draft v2.0) and for Google Earth program and for Googlemaps to view in your browser

A lot of outer Dublin wasn't very clear in GE but they updated some areas like the Dublin mountains so I can trace the border more accurately, but not the very northwest of county Dublin.

Just the Dublin City Electoral Constituency (draft v2.0) for Google Earth program and for Googlemap to view in your browser.

So I've updated them here I consider it still a draft until more eyes have been on it to spot any mistakes I may have made. I had hesitated on publicising them more because I thought maybe bad maps are worse then no maps. But along as have caveats about their accuracy people may still find them useful. At some point I saved an old map over a newer ones I had double checked which so I wasn't sure which I had double checked which browned me off on the whole thing. As new higher resolution photos of Dublin appear the lines no longer match exactly...:/ And the commission maps doesn't stretch and match over the GE satellite image either. I don't think they'll ever be perfect.

I'll add links descriptions, TD's, election result and other constituency stats.

2004 Dublin City and County Constituency Commission polygons and map overlay draft 2004

The Index of streets of the electoral register for Dublin City might be helpful to you, via Vocal Voter.
Dail at wikipedia Politics.ie Dail wiki Boundaries at electionsireland.org South Dublin

View Larger Map

PS. The creator of itison.tv has pointed there the OSI have new web service called Smartmaps He shows us some different views of Tara, Rath Lugh and Lismullin. There have couple of different types of maps you can buy but you can't seem to preview them. Also strangely there are earlier maps then the ones at the NPWS with maps from ~2003 that shows the scar of the M3 going through Tara, these aerial photos are very different a step clearer and brighter feel 70's.

PPS. Eirepreneur continues to jump start Irish uses of new mapping apps by giving an example of a collaborate google mymap, he has started one on wifi hotspots. I hope to find a project to create my own and get people involved. I was wondering would it be efficient to use this collaborative method to create maps for the constituencies for the rest of Ireland and the European and local elections, but I don't know whether hand traced maps data would eventually be useful for anybody to use and mash up to display other information. Any other ideas for useful Irish collaborative maps?

Tara Hill Skryne Valley Google Map

    
    
The white line marks the planned M3 tolled motorway route the green the existing N3 with the text labels marking points of interest with clickable photos. The yellow lines show the extent of Tara core complex with the red lines indicating defensive earthworks on the western boundary.The blue outline is the Tara hill core with the concentration of monuments. The red outline is the wider Kingship and Landscape of Tara researched by Conor Newman. The purple line is the old railway/alternative route.

New in browser GoogleEarth version of this map. 
Multiple Googlemaps of Tara and the M3 Motorway

Tara: Kingship and Landscape

This blogpost is based on the research of Conor Newman from the book The kingship and Landscape of Tara edited by Edel Breathnach. These are my amateur maps I would be happy to have any corrections, distinguishing between myth and fact is quite difficult even for the academics and there is also a lack of data and research on Tara. The Tara kingship and landscape covers a wide area of the country and even the royal city of Tara covers some 20km2 comparable in size to the other royal cities in Ireland. The planned M3 motorway transgresses the inner core of this area.

Most societal areas are determined by rivers and their watersheds and also heights. To define the Tara kingship and landscape we first have to define all the areas that bound it.

The Tara K&L forms a triangular area bounded by rivers on three sides on the western side is the one of the largest rivers in Ireland the Boyne, to the east the Hurley river and to the south the watersheds of the Boycetown and Boyne rivers and Dunboyne Ward Rivers.

The Hill of Tara is the well known place where there is concentration of monuments but kingship and landscape of Tara extends much further beyond that and can be describe by 3 main areas; The Hill of Tara, the boundary of the defensive forts and the overall area of influence of the kingship of Tara. The Tara outer area was also known as Brega at some point.

Here are the areas with modern towns and road map.

The Bronze age defensive ring of raths boundary with modern road map and towns. This can be compared to the a satellite map on earlier post and Con Conner's map of the Royal city of Tara.

Most of the Tara monuments were built in the neolithic and early bronze age, with defensive forts built in the bronze age and ritual monuments altered to defensive use at the hill in the age.

So the purpose of this post and these maps is to show that the Tara kingship and landscape was spread over a very large area and that the M3 motorway certainly transgresses the larger area but it is also transgressing the inner core area of bronze age defensive raths and the many monuments within that area, affecting the focal point of the entire area which is the Hill of Tara. The Tara landscape was described by Fenwick, Breathnach and Newman in their submission to an Bord Pleanalain 2003 as

The core Tara landscape can be best defined by highlighting the following defensive sites: Skryne, Rath Lugh, Rath Miles, Ringlestown Rath, Riverstown defensive earthwork, and Rath Maeve.

In blue the planned M3 crossing the core Tara area near the hill of Tara.

Googleearth kml's of the three basic areas

More mapping info on tara

googlemapsmania one of the main mapping blogs on the web included my page in a post, thanks to them hopefully more people will hear about the threat to Tara.

They also had a link to LookAroundIreland. A site using interactive photo panoramas and googlemaps to show tourist and heritage spots around Ireland. Including Tara and Liafail. Also a fantastic panorama from the central chamber of Newgrange.

I don't know how long this has been around on www.archaeology.ie It is live Record of Monuments and Places map... you can zoom in anywhere in Ireland to see archaeological features on detailed map, highlight them with a box and then it will list what they are, unfortunately it doesn't actually give the name of the specific feature only the type like 'hilltop fort' or ''barrow.

They still don't seem to have a straight list of national monuments available on the web. the one on the OPW site was taken down because they said there were too many errors on it.

Aerial photos of Ireland are available at the National Parks and wildlife service website for Ireland, I don't know how much of Ireland they cover but I seen numerous areas which are better quality and more recent then googlemaps. It primarily shows special conservation areas with aerial photos overlayed with contours.

I've already mentioned Megalithmania and the Modern Antiquarian.

Megalithomania Reports on numerous archaeological sites in Ireland with additional geographic information. You can view notes, photos and then view it place marked in googlemaps and search to view other megaliths in the area.

The Modern Antiquarian uses a similar system Juliana Cope's online personal antiquarian guide. I also discovered their own downloadable kmls for googleearth, with all the sites marked with a photo popping up beside aswell. Even has google v4 and v3 version

Google mapping in Ireland

This is review of the Irish googlemapping and link archive for me. (Or is this what they call link baiting? :), I found it very interesting to look at google analytics to see what visitors have come, I'm liking google at the moment). Anyway even though Ireland has such a high use of the net and Google's European headquarters is here I still feel there isn't as much Irish google mapping out there as you'd think.

Spatial Ireland A blog that has comprehensively covering happenings in Irish mapping since 2004.

mapeire.com A Irish geo-directory (not being worked on).

openeir An open source map of Ireland using GPS way points, it says, seems to have gone into hibernation.

Openstreestmap.org Collaborative Open source GPS map of (roads of) the world and Ireland.

http://mkmap.com/dublin Dublin Bus routes on a editable googlemap. An excellent site that already list 35 dublin bus routes so you can follow exactly which road the bus goes on its route, afaik nothing like this is available from CIE on paper or web. It was called dublincitybus.com but now allows you to add and edit your own maps and add lots tourist info like bars and hotels.

Dublin Rail Lines and stations Dublin transport.kmz
The Rail in Meath old tracks and planned and potential new ones. Still need to be looked over by someone Irish rail knowledge. rail.kmz

Dublin cycling routes on routeslip.com A few dozen GPS recorded cycling routes around Dublin.

Dartmaps See where the darts trains are in real-time. Was this the first and cleverest Irish google maps mashup?

Election: Some efforts were made to use googlemaps in the recent election although they weren't fully completed. Politics.ie constituency googlemap.

Daft.ie A functional use of googlemaps. A warning though the place mark points to the midpoint of the street rather then actually where the place is.

Contour maps of the world including Ireland

heywhatsthat See a panorama of the mountains viewable from your view point, with contours and visible field.

Geocaching Ireland Geocaching is treasure hunting with GPS to find hidden caches.

A topo map for Ireland Data for a contour map of Ireland via a Scottish site via NASA raw data, there isn't any proper product for this freely available yet. Can use for your GPS unit or view on your computer.

Why aren't OS map not being free for non-commerical public use? like in most countries Interview with the OSI (pdf) Questions asked about lack of affordable digital mapping.

mountainviews.ie Extensive collaborative gazette of mountain hikes and views.

Megalithomania Might have the most extensive use of googlemapping for Ireland with reports on numerous archaeological sites in Ireland with additional geographic information. You can view notes photos and then view it place marked in googlemaps and search to view other megaliths in the area.

The Modern Antiquarian uses a similar system, Juliana Cope's online personal antiquarian guide.

mymaps When I first looked at this a few months ago, I thought it was astounding, the uses are endless, it incredible simply and quick to use, but at same time its a bit limited in what it will allow you to do, but now they introduced mapplets and there's alot more hacks and how-tos around it its becoming easier to figure out how to use it. I found it it fristrating that I couldn't use polgygons/polyines I used to map info in googelearth in googlemaps I still don't think you can but I have used the mymaps interface to add simple lines to my embedded googlemap on this site.

I don't know why googlemaps chose and continues to use these default placemarks and info-windows they are oversized and ugly, thankfully I found a javascript class that let me float text on my maps so you can immediately see what to click on. LabeledMarker page. Although I havn't found a way to make the info windows smaller when they open so the fit around the info.

Transformative? I've occasionally worried about copyright, although I think I once read about things being ok if its a transformative use of it and hand tracing maps could fall into that category in (googleearth). But I've always tried to credit and ask permission for use from the littleguys.

Flash Earth A flash interface where you can switch easily between googlemaps/yahoomaps/virtual earth NASA maps and others.

eirepreneur A blog that was supposed to be about public relations/marketing but which is increasingly about using technology to network for your business and pushing the use of Web 2.0 in Ireland including googlemaps.

Misc Maps Uses.

Various places of interest in Ireland
Dublincrime.com Mapping Dublin's crime stats.(not updated)
roaddeaths.ie Mapping road deaths (ceased updated 10/08/07)
pumps.ie Petrol pump prices by location.
Properpint.com Dublin pub guide based on googlemaps (beta)
Dublin traffic info mapA mash up of AA roadwatch info.
Map of Dublin traffic cams This doesn't work anymore, pity something that should be resurrected. See it at http://www.programmableweb.com/mashup/dublin-web-cams

Useful layes/kml for google earth.
Outline of Ireland's counties
Image overlay of Ireland topography A 15mb! image from NASA site.
3D buidlings of DublinA few of Ireland Buildings done is 3D in sketchup to view in googlearth.
GB & Ireland Grid-Lines Layer

http://www.geograph.org.uk Geograph is a mosaic map of the UK and Ireland represented by photos takens at those location.

Main googlemaping sites
Googlemapmania blog (Ireland tag).
www.ogleearth.com

I haven't explored yahoo maps very much yet, anytime I used its been very poor, although I keep reading that its Irish coverage is better then google but I think that in relation to its road maps rather then its satellite imagery.

I don't really get geocoding. ( I guess it being able to type in a placename and being brought to its coordinates). Ireland has it now.

September 07 updates

Some of the Irish government webpages are brilliant, well done to the people seeing these through. Although the OSI retains full copyright of its data, its unfortunate that they don't release the info for amateur/personal/non-commercial use), I have used grabs of their maps for my maps but I haven't published them I don't know how jealously they guard use of their maps. I don't know if they'd go after amateur users...so I haven't included grabs of their maps in anything I put on the net.

Digital GSI maps of Ireland
Hmm maybe this says otherwise, its free to access and use, I guess publishing is different who ever said putting something on the net for othes to see was 'publishing'?. Geographic Institute of Ireland Oceanographic maps of Ireland and its territories

National Parks and Wildlife service maps These maps show National Parks and Specials Areas of conservation. They over layed on very useful aerial maps/contour maps of Ireland. These maps are more up to date and higher res then many google sat maps.

Archaelogical Survey of Ireland Map of record monuments protected list, over old map with contour lines. Pity it doesn't name them, just there number and the RMP list is not online because they say it has too many errors on it. Ill have to find another list.

irishspeedtraps.com A detailed googlemap of Irish speed cameras you can even download them to your sat nav, purely for safety purposes of course.

Cycling in Dublin Routes/Times A busy cycler's record of routes and times in and out of Dublin city.