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opentraildata / opentrails-project-ideas

A place to collect ideas for projects using OpenTrails data
http://open-trails.herokuapp.com/
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Convert GPX to OpenTrails #9

Open alanjosephwilliams opened 10 years ago

alanjosephwilliams commented 10 years ago

Description

Tons of folks record their GPS traces as the hike, run and ride trails. That data is typically exported in the GPX format. A tool or script to convert GPS into OpenTrails would be one way to diversify the input sources of OpenTrails.

I think the potential applications for this data among trail stewards and park governments are broad. We could see some valuable analysis conducted with sets of traces a la Strava's Metro dataset, or it could be a quick way to verify trail alignment and visitor experiences.

alanjosephwilliams commented 10 years ago

Per the suggestion of Alex Woo (not sure if he has a GH handle yet), here are a couple of tools we could use as a starting point:

AndyDangerous commented 10 years ago

Is this still a thing? I happen to know about a gpx2geojson converter that could maybe be exposed as an API. Even if not, I'd be happy to help put something along those lines together.

alanjosephwilliams commented 10 years ago

Hey @AndyDangerous! Absolutely. Other projects have been getting more love because the primary use case of OpenTrails is helping governments/stewards publish official data for visitors—which is typically held in ESRI formats.

That said, so many park governments are interested in using open data as a way to improve the quality of their data over time. Converting gps traces into OpenTrails is a the beginning of that—getting traces recording by avid trail users back in front of the rangers and stewards.

Could you link to the converter?