Mapping Software

There are a variety of mapping software packages and online resources that can be used to make maps for ministry. This article reviews resources that field researchers are using.

MAPPING SOFTWARE
Global Mapping International ArcView system
Excellent! The offer the Global Mapping Ministry System, features the latest GIS technology. They have several data bases as well. Of course the software is costly. It has a fairly steep learning curve. If a person is computer savvy, it shouldn't be a problem. The upgrade package has a lot of what you need such as roads, political divisions, topography and an optional database of 2 million inhabited places. They do their pricing on a sliding scale so as to make it available for ministries in places with little financial resource. www.GMI.org

Philcarto
The Brazil team has moved over to a free mapping program called Philcarto . They love the fact that it is free, The program runs in French, English, Portuguese and Spanish. The program is developed by a Geography prof in France. The site is all in French, but once installed, you can choose the language. http://philcarto.free.fr/

EP3
MAF has developed a piece of software called EP3 for capture church data. It should work for any country of the world and any language. Developed for use in Central Asia, it supports Russian and other languages. EP3 is an excellent capture software but has limited reporting and mapping. As a result a third party developed a reporting back end for it. Ultimately the results are placed on Google maps. You can see the final results at http://e-star.ws Click on the tab that says “Christian Presence Map”. This software also has features that allows the tracking of Church Health along the line of Natural Church Development.

DIVA
DIVA is a free GIS mapping software package originally developed to map sweet potato locations in Latin America, but is useful to do basic Church-based mapping. There is good documentations, a fast start guide, tutorials, examples and some advanced features. The learning curve is relatively short. (When I say a short learning curve, I mean a couple of days.) It is possible to add your own demographic and church data. Also there are links to free map and data sets. The software uses standard file formats (when working with some other “free” software packages, they sometimes use some unique file formats that were not highly compatible.) It is not possible to edit data within the DIVA program. So I've been using the Open Office DB program (again free http://www.openoffice.org/) for this task. http://www.diva-gis.org/.

MapMaker
MapMaker is another free software package, called This is geared to those who want (or need) to make their own maps from scratch. Lots of features and documentation. Obviously greater mapping power means a longer learning curve. But hey, it is free! http://www.mapmaker.com/v3/index.htm.

ONLINE RESOURCES
Google Maps
More are beginning to use Google Maps to display their information online. Here are a couple of examples:

Mission Atlas Project (MAP)
Check out the Mission Atlas Project (MAP) at http://worldmap.org. They have volunteers who take on mapping projects. If you'd like some one else to map your data, this is worth checking out.

Chris Deckert had a site running for a couple of years that does all the mapping on line and used google maps as the background. It was great, had excellent security and I loved using it. He recently took it off line, because of not many people using it. He said he would be working on a simpler version that would meet most ministry mapping needs with less cost. I don't know what the current status of that project is, but I would recommend you contacting Chris to see and also to ask for any other suggestions. He is in Richmond, VA and has a degree in GIS and works for CCC (did the first mapping of the Jesus Film Project, for example). See his site at www.worldmap.org. Chris' email is "cdeckert@ccci.org"