Feature Request/Idea: Display dataset search results on a geographical map

[PaulBoon]

Add the option to display search results (datasets) that have location information (coordinates in the metadata) on an interactive map. The map could either be an alternative 'search results view', instead of the paged list view, or it could be on the side along with the facets.

This feature request comes from the archaeological community that uses our Dataverse archival system specfic for archaeological research data (excavation results etc. ).
Most dataset in that archive (https://archaeology.datastations.nl) have a location specified in the metadata which was used in our previous online system (non-Dataverse) to display the dataset locations on a map.

As a prove of concept (PoC) I developed javscript code that gets inserted into the custom footer (html) file. This script will add 'tabs' for the 'listview' and the 'mapview' just above the result listing area on the dataverse page. When the 'mapview' tab is selected the map (Leaflet with OSM tiles) is displayd with markers for every dataset that has coordinates.

Explanantion and code of the PoC can be found here:
https://github.com/Dans-labs/landscape-analysis-GeoMapDataverseIntegration/blob/main/experiments/MapViewExtention.md

Some screenshots from our test site:

Demo screencast:

GeoMapViewDemoOnTestServer.mp4

One of the main challenges is that the community will have those coordinates in different places (custom metadata) and also in different systems, so configuring that is not straightforward in TSV files.

Configuration would be to specify;

• The subverse/collection for which you want it (default root)
• The query addition needed to retrieve the metadata fields (from a custom block).
• The script code (or some other 'pluggable' code) to extract and convert that metadata into geojson

Another changeling thing is the relative long time it takes to get the results from the search API and the fact that the total number of results might be high; 150k hits on our archive for instance would require 150 http requests. Also, 150k markers on the map is probably making it unusable.

[pdurbin]

@PaulBoon thanks for creating this issue. I'm planning closing the corresponding support ticket.

Also, I kicked off a thread on Zulip to discuss this map of yours. Looks great!