Useful Links #2

I attended a conference on road junction design on February 2011 and Mr. John Smart of the British Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation brought to the audience's attention the "Manual for Streets" as a useful guide on providing for vulnerable road users.

For those interested in urban planning and design, you can get it for free in pdf format here:

http://www.dft.gov.uk/publications/manual-for-streets

Useful Links #1

If you are into rural design or location planning or just curious about an area you have not visited before, I would like to point out a couple of sites that have helped me in my work.

First one is Wikimapia (http://wikimapia.org/). It uses satellite images from Google Maps (WGS '84 coordinate system) while allowing users to mark areas of interest and add additional information.

While not a reliable source as it depends on users, it can offer a good overview of a selected area in no time.

 

 If you are working in Greece, another good site is the public spatial data repository named Geodata.gov.gr (http://geodata.gov.gr/geodata/). This initiative is based on an E.U. directive of digitising and uploading the entirety of the Greek records for all to see and it ranges from civil services records to Corine 2000 land usage and hydrographic data. 

Tha data displayed in the maps can either use Google Earth images or Cadastre aerial orthophotomaps. The website utilises 3 reference systems (CGRS, WGS'84 and the Cadastre System) and I can say fro experience that the transformation is accurate.