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Help Please Re Geo Mapping in Evernote


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Posted

Ideas please for this challenge:

I'm working on a human rights issue that involves prisons and prison shipment routes in foreign countries. This info is often contained in documents I've ingested into Evernote in PDF. These documents typically contain info such as "a prison was seen at this place (local name, sometimes lat/long) at a general time" or "I was held at a prison at this place and saw other prisoners."

I'm trying to find the most effective way to map the locations for these text documents and then use them (both by name and lat/long or other geo identifier) to build a dossier on each one. This could also include flow/movement of prisoners, eg "100 prisoners were seen at place X in June, they were then reported to have been moved to place Y in July" + a separate report that says "In July, about 100 prisoners arrived in place Y."

Going forward, I'd like to be able to add info to these places, from new witness reports to satellite images.

Is there a good way to do this in Evernote and/or an Evernote app? Or is there a good program outside Evernote, which would take experts from Evernote, or is good enough to use entirely separately?

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

BTW, these forum suggested IdeaPlaces might be a step, but I don't see any download for Windows.

Thanks!

 

 

 

  • Level 5*
Posted

Hi. I can understand what you're looking for,  but making all that data available by map sounds like something a bit beyond the capabilities of any current software.  Lateral thinking throws up a few possibilities,  but these all require more investigation - they're not turnkey fixes.

Easiest (probably) to configure:  Google Maps.  There's a My Maps feature which allows you to 'bespoke' your maps;  and GMaps is available via any browser and on mobile.  You could use note links to connect locations with more detailed notes.

Other mapping software includes commercial geographic analyser Caliper - http://www.caliper.com/  - and a quick Google search for 'mapping apps' turned up millions of other hits,  so a general trawl through what's available might be helpful.  There's also "what three words" - http://what3words.com/ mapping software that uses a unique combination of three words to define every 3 meter square location on the planet.

In terms of flexible and visual presentations,  there's VUE (Visual Understanding Environment) http://vue.tufts.edu/index.cfm which broadly allows you to mix pictures and text in a mind-map layout,  and mind-mapping generally.  There are many mind-map options,  which would allow you to group diverse information into specific geographical areas,  including Docear,  which is an academic PDF-reader / catalogue / mind-map...http://www.sciplore.org/projects/docear/  I tend to use Freeplane - http://www.freeplane.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page - for general purpose mind-mapping.

Finally there's MohioMaps - not a mapping solution at all,  but by using tags on your notes you'd see groupings of notes by tag - which could be countries,  or towns or whatever.

And in all cases above I'd suggest you contact the company (where possible) and explain your intended humanitarian use,  they may be more helpful to you...

There's a learning curve issue with all of the above,  but you can start collating your documents immediately in Evernote,  tag those that contain location data - and work out at more leisure which of the mapping software options will work for you. 

Hope this is helpful - let us know how you get on!

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