Interactive map with navigation to learn and understand environmental work and impact at a golf course

Summary

In June 2011, the Environmental Committee at Saltsjobaden GC received a research grant from STERF. The objective of the project “Interactive map to learn and understand environmental work and impact at a golf course” is to stimulate and encourage golf clubs to conduct structured and effective environmental work and, as a result of this, inform and communicate the work with stakeholders in an accessible, educational and easy way. Stakeholders are both internal (members, board and employees) and external (e.g. green fee players, authorities, neighbours, etc.). By using interactivity, linked to the golf club’s home page, a prototype for this navigation has been developed, to inform about environmental work and impact.

There are many ways of doing this. The most common way is to develop a clickable home page, where the user decides which information is of interest. To develop such an interactive home page a web tool is needed. In the project, we have tested some different web tools for generating interactive presentations and some programming languages for home pages. All are more or less complicated to use and often need regular usage of the program to remember how to do things. We concluded that we need a simple platform to which we can add the environmental information. The platform that met most of the criteria we set was Google Maps. Google is a well-established company, working on the principle that everything should be free of charge for the user. Google has developed the map tool Google Maps, which is now is loaded in almost every PC and/or smart phone. Google Maps includes a comprehensive search tool and also a tool for every user, to publish their own information on maps and share it with others. This tool is useful for environmental information from golf clubs, since we prefer to illustrate environmental data on maps (spatial). Our users, e.g. golfers, are also very familiar with maps, at least with course guides and other types of map tools, e.g. to measure distances. Google Maps is regularly updated and new functions are added now and then. The information added from the golf club can be published on both Google Maps and Google Earth.

By using Google Earth, the members/users can publish their own photos from the area and thereby participate in developing the ‘information database’. In the future, it may also be possible to ‘walk’ the golf course in Google Earth and see the course in ‘street view’. We will contact Google and suggest they develop ‘street view’ images of the Saltsjobaden golf course. If you are interested in seeing the Saltsjobaden golf course in Google Earth, use the link below, click KML, and open the link at the left bottom corner. Then use your mouse and point to the different parts of the course; back tee, front tees, fairway, green, bunker, etc. or the symbols on each course.

http://maps.google.se/maps/ms?vps=2&hl=sv&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=204684366051337756305.0004cf022e93036278605

Fundings (kSEK)