What is an Area of Responsibility (AoR)?
An Area of Responsibility, in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), is a map layer that delineates the boundaries of a project area on the map. A geospatial object that captures an area is called a polygon.
Why would you like to create an Area of Responsibility map layer?
When you collect (geospatial) data within a specific area, having a visual representation of this Area of Responsibility is of interest to show which observations are within, and which ones are outside your project area.
Moreover, Sensing Clues uses the Area of Responsibility layer to automatically collect information from satellites and open sources, such as roads, buildings, land-use, vegetation indexes and more. These in turn are used to improve prediction maps.
How to create an Area of Responsibility map layer.
1. Navigate to https://geojson.io/
2. Zoom to the location where you want to create an Area of Responsibility. You can use the search button on the top-right of the map.
3. Click on the Draw a polygon button to start creating your Area of Responsibility. Start with one of the corners of your project area.
4. Keep adding points clockwise along the boundaries of your project until you have captured the complete area. You can finish the polygon by clicking on the first point that you created.
A JSON representation of your object appears on the right side of the screen, there you see the coordinates that make up the object.
5. The final step is to download your object so that you can share it and/or load it into a (geospatial) software.
Select GeoJSON from the Save-menu on the top left of the map to save the map layer.
6. You find the map layer in your download folder on your computer. It has the name map.geojson.
Rename it into AoR.geojson.
7. Send the file to hello@sensingclues.org (include your name and that of your organisation) or upload the file to your personal geo-json folder at the Sensing Clues Upload Service.