防災訓練・災害対策 and anything else related to disasters of any kind

After the missile launch this week and the many questions people in the Lucky Island had about where the nearby evacuation sites etc were, I made a map with My Maps, using open data from KOKUDOKOTSUSHO (nlftp.mlit.go.jp/ksj/gml/datalist/KsjTmplt-P20.html): My Maps

It took a while to figure out how to convert the data to something Google Maps could interpret, but in the end it worked, and after doing random checks it looks like the locations are accurate. If anyone is interested I can draw up an instruction for how to import the data to Maps.

It took quite a while to figure it out (probably cause I did it wrong or at least not a very convenient way), but I'll see if I can make it understandable. 

1. Unzip the data
2. There ought to be two .xml files. Open up the one that doesn't say META using Excel, as an XML table, and if there's an error msg just click OK.
3. If it's the same as for the Lucky Island-data, the data is shifted vertically halfway down the rows, starting from column 'ns3:id3'. If you copy paste the data for the name of the evac. site (column: 'ns1:name'), the address (Column: 'ns1:address') and the coordinates (column: 'ns3:pos')  (plus all other data you'd like to include) adjacent to each other, the data set should line up correctly. It might be easiest to just make a separate file with just those three columns. I added another column manually with the municipality just to make it easier to color-code them later.
4. Save as a .xsls file.
5. Open My Maps
6. Add a layer, and choose Import
7. Import the .xsls file
8. The first option will be to indicate the column for the coordinates. Choose the column with the coordinates, and indicate that the format is latitude-longitude
9. Secondly it will ask for the name of the titles of the marks, for which you choose the column with the names of the evacuation sites.
10. PROFIT!

Now, My Maps does have some import restrictions, in that it only allows 10 layers per map, and only 2000 entries can be imported at once, so you might have to do it in installments. I divided them up by region within the prefecture, cause there are 7 of them, allowing for 7 layers. It might require some more tweeking, but this is the basic method I used.