KWAZULU-NATAL DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT

GIS WEBSITE USER MANUAL:

Welcome to the KZN Department of Transport GIS Website!

This manual will show you how to find your way around the interactive data area and explain some of the drop down menus found on the Web Portal.

In recent years the Internet has emerged as an extremely popular and effective means of sharing information, data and technology amongst the Department’s Head Office, Regions and other stakeholders. This manual was developed to support and strengthen the user base at the KZN Department of Transport’s GIS website.

HOW TO USE THE WEBSITE?

To use the KZN DOT website, open an Internet/web browser, for example Internet Explorer, on your computer. This can be done by going to Start – Programs – Internet Explorer or by double clicking the icon on your desktop (screen).

Once the web browser has opened, type into the address (URL) bar. You should then see the Welcome screen for DOT’s GIS website similar to the one shown below.

The Welcome screen consists of two main sections: Menus and Live Maps.

Menus

There is a variety of menus available. These are:

  • Home

Link to the Department of Transport’s main website

  • DOT Systems
  • GIS Meta Data

Description of various datasets

  • Map Requests

Download District or LocalMunicipality maps, request a customised map

  • Documents
  • GIS & Data Downloads

Downloading of data and drawings

  • KZN: DOT GIS

Overview over directorates, contact details and user feedback

  • Admin

For system maintenance only

Some of these menus are freely accessible, others require the user to be registered and logged in. The facility to register as a user can be found by clicking on

GIS & Data Downloads – Login / Register – Register to Download (as shown in the screenshot below). Simply complete all required items, read and agree to the disclaimer (tick the box) and click on the ‘Register’ button.

Live Maps

The other prominent feature on the Welcome screen is a blue spinning globe with an arrow pointing to it. Simply click on the spinning globe to access the map section which draws its data live from the Geographic Information System (GIS). This will allow you to explore, zoom in to various areas, review imagery and access a variety of information sources.

Once you have clicked on the blue globe, a new window of your internet browser will open in which the geographic data will be displayed. Please observe the status bar of your browser while the page is loading. This may take about 30 seconds on a good connectiondepending on the network/connection speed.

Once the page has fully loaded, your screen should show something similar to the screenshot below:


Troubleshooting: Website Display

  • If your browser does not display the ‘Find Road’, ‘Find Farm Name’,

‘Find Farm No.’, ‘Find RRTF’ and ‘Layout Printing’ buttons on the top left, try clicking on the compatibility view button as indicated below.

  • If the Map Contents section shows instead of the symbol, right click on and click ‘Show Picture’.
  • Should at any stage your session expire, you can click the Refresh button ofyour browser to refresh the session.

PAGE LAYOUT AND COMPONENTS

The pages that make up the GIS website are laid out in a manner that allows users to quickly and easily find and use tools to browse and query the map. A typical GIS webpage would consist of the following (refer to the screenshot below for the corresponding numbers):

  1. Main map window
  2. Overview map
  3. Tools/buttons for working with the map
  4. Map contents: Legend items (layers)
  5. Scale bar
  6. North arrow

1. The Main Map

The main map is the largest display area on the webpage and visualizes the data that are currently displayed. In the example above we see KwaZulu-Natalwith towns and in the background the DOT Regions.

2. The Overview Map

The overview map always shows the whole area (in this case Kwazulu-Natal) and becomes important when the user has zoomed in to a smaller area on the main map, thus showing the locality of the main map in relation to the whole area. In the example below, the main map is zoomed into Pietermaritzburg while the overview map still shows the whole province but indicates the area of the main map with a red square.


3. Tools and Buttons

The tools and buttons allow the user to interact with the map. If the user clicks on a button, the map will change in some way; an example is the Overview Map Button to switch the overview map on or off. If the user clicks on a tool, some other user input is required as well; an example is the Zoom Tool whereby the user clicks on the tool and then has to click on the main map (or draw a rectangle on the main map) in order to indicate to the programme which area should be zoomed to. In order not to complicate matters, the terms tool and button are often used interchangeably.The various tools/buttons and the functions they perform are described below:

/ Zoom In
Zooms in to the area of the map that you click or drag a box around / / Forward Extent
Zooms forward to next map extent
/ Zoom Out
Zooms out from the area of the map that you click or drag a box around / / Magnifier
Magnifies a portion of the map area by a factor from 2 to10 as selected
/ Pan
Pans the display in the direction that you drag the mouse pointer / / Map Identify
Displays attributes (information) of features on the map by clicking on them. Use the drop-down arrow to view attributes for different layers
/ Full Extent
Zooms to the full map extent / / Measure
Returns the XY coordinate of a point, length of a line, area of a polygon as drawn by the user as a sketch; allow for the values to refresh for each click
/ Back Extent
Zooms to the previous map extent / / Show/Hide Overview Map
Switch overview map on or off
/
  • Click on the tool and type a road number, e.g. D 1014 (make sure you use capital letters: D, not d)
  • Click the ‘Find’ button. Wait for the Results section to expand and execute the Find Road query. This can take a minute or so depending on the connection speed and caching.
  • Right click on the road number D1014 once displayed in the Results window and click either ‘Zoom to’ or ‘Pan to’ (pan will maintain the current viewing scale, zoom will fit the scale to the whole road)
  • You can use % as a wildcard to find, for example, the N3 and all its sections (type N3%) or all provincial roads that end with a 9 (typeP%9); click on the > or < sign to see the next or previous results if not all are displayed; a maximum of 50 results are returned.

/
  • Click on the tool and type the farm name in CAPITAL letters, e.g. UITKYK; the tool is case sensitive.
  • Click the ‘Find’ button. Wait for the Results section to expand and execute the Find Farm Name query. This can take a minute or so depending on the connection speedand caching. All farms with the name Uitkyk are displayed with their respective farm numbers
  • Click on the + sign in front of one of the farm names (e.g. number 49) to expand and review the attributes
  • Right click on the farm name to zoom or pan to the result
  • You can use % as a wildcard to find, for example, all farmnames that start with “Water”. Type WATER%; click on the > or < sign to see the next or previous results if not all are displayed; a maximum of 50 results are returned

/
  • Click on the tool and type the farm number, e.g. 1097
  • Click the ‘Find’ button. Wait for the result to appear in the Results section. This can take a minute or so depending on the connection speed and caching.
  • Two results were returned for Pampoen Nek and Berning. Click on the + sign in front of one of the farm names to expand and review the attributes
  • Click on the – sign in front of the same farm name to minimize the attributes
  • Right click on “Farm Parents (2)”, the heading of the two individual farm results for 1097, and click Zoom To Selected Features
  • Move the mouse over the results section and the farms in the main map area and observe how the colours adjust highlighting each farm as the mouse pointer moves over them
  • The % sign can be used as a wildcard, e.g. 100%9

/
  • Click on the tool and then on the drop down list
  • Select the required RRTF area
  • Click the Find button and wait for the results to display in the Results section
  • Right click on the result to zoom or pan to the feature

/
  • Click on Layout Printing
  • Select A4 or A3 Landscape
  • Select the output format
  • Type the required map scale, e.g. 10000
  • Type the relevant date (no specific date format is required)
  • Type a title for the map
  • Click the Submit Job button and wait for the output to display in the Results section
  • Click on the hyperlink to display the map in a new window
  • If you wish to save the map:
  • JPGformat: right click the map and click ‘Save Picture as …’
  • PDF format: Click the button ‘Save a Copy’
  • Interactive PDF: You can click on the Layers tab and then on the + signs and ‘eye’ icons to switch layers on and off

General Notes /
  • The Results section can be resized by moving the mouse over the edge and then dragging the double arrow up or down or left or right
  • Use the up or down triangles on the right of the Results section to hide or show the results
  • Click ‘Clear All’ in the Results section to clear all results

4. Map Contents: Legend Items (Layers)

The Map Contents section (legend) lists all layers available for display in the main map area. Those layers with a tick mark are currently visible in the map display area (switched on). The user can tick or untick (make visible or invisible) any layer depending on requirements.

If a layer has a tick mark that is grey and cannot be switched on or off, this means that the layer is not available at the current scale. Zooming in and out of the main map will allow to show or hide these layers. Many layers are not available when viewing the full extent to avoid cluttering the map; these will come on as the user zooms in to an area.

The minus or plus sign next to a layer’s tick mark can be used to show or hide the layer’s legend.

5. The Scale Bar

The scale bar represents a distance on the map and the labels indicate how far that distance would be in on the ground. If the scale bar on the bottom left of the main map area is about 4 cm long and the labels read 0 on the left and 120 km on the right, then the map is at a scale of about 1:3 000 000 (scale equals distance on the ground divided by the distance on the map).

6. The North Arrow

The north arrow shows the orientation of the map and indicates true North. It is located in the top left hand corner of the main map area. Together with the three other arrows it can be used for scrolling as an alternative to the Pan tool. The two buttons (+ and -) below the north arrow can be used to zoom in and out as an alternative to the Zoom tools.

KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transport: GIS Website User Manual Page 1 of 9