How to...

To launch the National Map and display some basic data follow these steps.

• Display the National Map by using the URL http://nationalmap.gov.au.
• Select the Data Catalogue tab to view the available data providers.
• Select a data set you want to display by clicking in its check box. The spatial data will be immediately displayed in the map view, but it may not be immediately obvious if the spatial data selected does not cover a large part of Australia. (You can adjust this in a subsequent step.) You may need to click on the various data provider names and data set group names to view the list and data set you require. You can click on a data set's information marker (the "i" in a circle to the right of the data set name) to see the available metadata related to the data set. This may help you choose the correct data set.
• Select additional data sets if you wish.
• Click on the name of a selected Data Set to cause the Map View to zoom to a view which just encloses all of the features in the Data Set. If the Data Set contains isolated features at each side of the country, this may not change the view very much and you will need to zoom manually.
• Zoom manually by moving your mouse pointer over the map and using your mouse wheel to zoom in or out further.
• Click and drag the map to further show the region in which you are interested.
• Click on a feature (that is, directly on a point or line, or within a region) to show data about the individual feature.

You can perform these steps in any order as required to tune your display of spatial data.

Click on the feature which is displayed on the map. You can click on Points, on Lines or within Regions to see a display of the information available from the spatial data provider for that particular feature.

For Points and Lines, you need to click quite accurately to identify the feature. For Regions, clicking on the boundary will give ambiguous results. Click within the region.

You cannot find out further information about the features which are part of the base maps.

If you have a data file which contains latitude and longitude information, or contains a column with a region ID which Naitonal Map can identify as a State, Postcode or ABS statistical region, you can display its contents over the National Map map view in addition to the National Map data.

There are three ways:

• Drag your data file onto the National Map map view. The format of the data file will be auto-detected.
• Click on the Add Data button. A dialog will appear where you can select your spatial data file's format and then browse to the file.
• When your spatial data file can be accessed on the internet using a URL, click on the Add Data button. A dialog will appear where you can select your spatial data file's format and enter the URL which points to the file to display.

Supported formats include GeoJSON, KML, KMZ, CSV (with latitude and longitude columns or a column with an identifiable region ID) and various other formats. CSV files with latitude and longitude columns will display one point feature for each line of the file. CSV files with a region ID column will colour the found regions.

As for National Map data sets, you can click on the regions or points to see the data available for that location. If the file is a CSV file, the data from all columns will be shown in the feature information dialogue when you click.

You can also use all of the features of the Now Viewing Tab on the data you have loaded as well.

There are three ways:

• Make a screen dump and email it as an image. (See your OS instructions on how to copy a screen dump to the clipboard.) This will share all information, even if loaded from a local file or URL.
• Click the Share button, copy the given URL (shown in the first text box) to the clipboard and paste it into an email which you send to the recipient. They can click on it in the email or paste it into their browser to see the same view as you. You can use a URL shortening service (such as bit.ly) if you want to simplify the URL that you send.
• Click the Share button, copy the HTML fragment (shown in the second text box) and paste it into an HTML file, which you then make available to the recipients. When the recipients display your web page, they will see the National Map view within that web page.

Note that only the first method will also show the data you have displayed from a local file.

The second two methods will show the data you are displaying from an included URL, provided that URL is also accessible to your recipient.

The National Map encourages data providers to publish their spatial data using this platform. There are two routes you can take to publishing.

• Any spatial data which is added to data.gov.au using a protocol or format supported by the National Map (such as WMS) will automatically appear in the data.gov.au section of the Data Catalogue tab for the National Map. See WMS Data Sets for a list of spatial data sets already on data.gov.au. See the data.gov.au Toolkit for a detailed reference on using data.gov.au and using it to publish your own data sets.

• If you require your data set to appear under a separate category of the National Map Data Catalogue, you will need to contact the support for National Map by emailing to nationalmap@lists.nicta.com.au for more information. You will need to provide an internet accessible service in a standard protocol to access your data set on the internet and appropriate references must be added to the National Map configuration.