Governmental and scientific institutions often have a problem communicating their data treasure to people outside their community. Presenting geospatial data in an appealing and accessible way is a challenge, especially when non-scientific people are the target audience. The app "UmweltNAVI Niedersachsen" sets out to do just that and demonstrates it using institutional environmental data. A person can discover the data in the immediate vicinity or in other locations. The data can be displayed either as polygons or as map layers (e.g. geotopes, noise and radiation pollution, flood areas, occurrence of wolf and lynx). When opening a dataset, the person receives various detailed information combined from different sources, like Wikipedia or Observation.org.
The app was designed for a broad user community of education, interested individuals or experts. Easy navigation, understandable operation and various functions that invite to discover are here to appeal to people of all ages. A knowledge area deepens the topics and allows dedicated viewing of individual datasets. Other functions, such as "geo-caching" of datasets, a quiz or the possibility to upload own photos to the data, are intended to motivate people to engage with the topics.
The project was initiated by the Lower Saxony Ministry for the Environment, Energy and Climate Protection/Germany and was implemented together with the companies Bearingpoint and wemove digital solutions. The principle of presenting geodata can also be applied to other areas. The software is basically available for subsequent use.
The poster shows essential aspects of the app and intends to arouse interest.
https://umwelt-navi.info/