MapX key concepts#

Projects#

MapX offers dedicated environments (projects) where users can find specific maps, statistic data and/or story maps (views). Each project contains a set of views that have a common topic, or that are relevant for the institution/organization that manages the project or that cover a specific geographical area.

Projects are managed independently of each other either by the MapX team or by its partners. They can be opened to the public to reach a large audience or set to “private mode” so that only its members can access it. Being a member of a project allows access to content and features that are not available to public users. Every registered user in MapX can make a request to the administrators of a project to join it as a member (only possible if the option has been activated by the administrators).

Roles#

MapX has four types of roles which are incremental:

  • Public

  • Member

  • Publisher

  • Administrator

User rights (roles) are configured per project and will define their degree of freedom in each project. For example, a user can have a public role in a project X while being a member in a project Y and an administrator in a project Z at the same time.

Public#

Public is the default role users have in MapX when they are unlogged or when they are not granted a specific role in a project. This role offers basic rights over the content of a project:

  • visualization of content published without restrictions (i.e., maps, attribute tables, dashboards, story maps)

  • creation and export of static maps

  • approximate overlap analyses of views

  • draw new geometries on map and export them

  • download spatial data (requires to be logged in)

Member#

Members of a project can access non-public content and can be granted the right to edit a specific view in this project.

Publisher#

Publishers have the ability to add in the MapX database new data to the project (only vector data) and create content such as maps and story maps. They can be granted the right to edit and/or delete content in the project and can also grant the edit rights over a view to a specific member.

Administrator#

Administrators are in charge of managing the project and user rights. In particular, they can edit the preferences of the project (title, description, country/ies to which the project is associated, theme, projection), can invite new members to the project, change the roles of specific users, accept or deny requests of membership, set the project public/private, define if the project accepts membership requests from external users, define the default organization of the views in the views panel, and can delete the project.

Special roles#

MapX has two type of special roles which are configured per instance (i.e., valid in all projects):

  • Superuser

  • Developer

Superuser#

Superusers have access to advanced MapX features to manage the application and its content. For security and confidentiality reasons only MapX instance managers should have this role. For https://app.mapx.org/ , superusers are the MapX development team within UNEP/GRID-Geneva.

Developer#

The developer role is assigned on a case-by-case basis by the MapX team and provides access to tools for creating and editing dashboards and custom code views. This organisation ensures that only users with enough knowledge of web development are able to code content in the application and thus minimizes the chance of having content in MapX that may negatively affect the user experience.

Data organisation#

A two levels-data management system exists in MapX: “sources” and “views”. Simply put, sources are raw spatial data stored in the MapX database while views are a cartographic representation of it. As you will see below, the concept of view can go beyond this simple definition.

The different types of views available in MapX are:

  • Vector tiles views are used to display on the map data published in the MapX database.

  • Raster views are based on external data services as MapX does not support raster storage.

  • Custom coded views are fully customisable views that allow, among other things, to display data from external sources or to implement advanced features (e.g., drop-down list, slider). Advanced knowledge in web development is required to code this type of view.

  • Story maps are communication products consisting of a mix of spatial data and other types of information (text, images, graphes, videos).

  • Local GeoJSON views are a special type of view allowing users to visualize their vector data without having to upload it to the MapX database. The data is thus temporarily stored in the user’s browser.

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