October 2023 Summaries

Modernizing spatial apps in the cloud with CARTO accelerates the development cycle by providing developers with technical resources to guarantee performance and scalability when integrating, visualizing, and interacting with large spatial datasets hosted in cloud data warehouses. CARTO offers a complete set of tools for interactive visualizations and applications using spatial data, drastically reducing development and maintenance timeframes and making visualization cost-effective. The platform is framework-agnostic, allowing developers to build their application using vanilla JavaScript or popular frameworks like Vue, React, or Angular. It uses deck.gl for visualization, which leverages web-GL technologies and GPU rendering for accuracy and performance. CARTO's cloud-native platform supports the visualization of large datasets directly from a cloud data warehouse, reducing the need for complex backend APIs or ETLs. The platform provides tools like Dynamic Tiling technology, pre-generated tilesets, CARTO Workflows, and the Data Observatory to enhance spatial application development.

The Extreme Citizen Science lab at University College London (UCL) has developed a participatory mapping project, "Crowdmapping for Food Security in Ethiopia," which aims to support communities in tackling pressing concerns of water scarcity, food insecurity, and conflict. The project uses human-centered design principles and co-designs tools with local people, enabling them to create their own maps and democratize geospatial analysis. The mobile app connected to the CARTO platform links local communities with varying levels of GIS expertise, allowing for simple spatial analysis and sharing data with other stakeholders. To overcome technical challenges such as limited internet access and electricity scarcity, the team uses locally stored data and provides solar chargers and power banks. The project also aims to promote open-data sharing from the ground-level knowledge of local communities, making a positive impact on people's lives by empowering them through geospatial data.

Virtue Foundation, a non-profit organization, has partnered with CARTO to develop VFMatch.org, the first mapping-and-matching global health platform. The platform aims to reduce inefficiencies in healthcare delivery by bringing together key players such as medical professionals, healthcare facilities, governments, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector. VFMatch.org is currently in beta and scheduled for an official launch in October 2023. It features five key components: Nonprofit Listings, Healthcare Facilities, Volunteer Opportunities, Country Maps and Key Information, and Toolkit for Nonprofits. The platform uses geospatial data to address the challenges of healthcare access in underserved populations and increase the efficiency of global health philanthropy.

CARTO has released several new features in Q3 2023, including enhancements to its Builder and Workflows tools. The company has upgraded the Time Series widget in Builder to provide more precise control over temporal data aggregation and analysis of multiple time series. Additionally, CARTO has added support for Markdown syntax in map descriptions and widget notes, making it easier to create engaging and informative maps. Data Observatory subscriptions are now available as data sources in Workflows, allowing users to incorporate and process subscription data seamlessly. The company has also released new components for advanced Statistics and Retail Analytics, Geographically Weighted Regression, and Commercial Hotspots, which can be used in Google BigQuery. Furthermore, CARTO has introduced viewer credentials mode when creating shared BigQuery connections, enabling organizations to collaborate on maps using a shared connection. Development teams can now use their existing Single Sign-On integrations to authenticate users and access applications directly. The company has also added the ability to control application visibility through its usual sharing options. Additionally, a new area in the Product Documentation focuses on CARTO Self-hosted deployments, providing detailed information on deployment options, architecture diagrams, and step-by-step installation guides.