Glossary of Terms

This knowledge base article outlines some key OuterSpatial terms. You'll see these terms used throughout OuterSpatial Manager and Mobile, and they're also used extensively in our knowledge base articles.

1. Communities: An Organization, and its associated locations (Areas, Outings, Points of Interest, and Trails), can be added to one or more Community. Communities are generally made up of a collection of Organizations that share a common trait or geographic area. At this time, OuterSpatial’s communities are either states or provinces (Alaska, New Hampshire, Florida, Alberta, etc.) or “sponsored communities” like Bend, California State Parks, Daycation, Trails LA County, or TrailsMV — though we expect the community model to grow and evolve over time.

2. Organizations: All data and content in OuterSpatial is managed underneath a single “Owner” organization. However, one or more additional organizations can be set up as “Manager” or “Partner” stewards for any given Location and certain types of content (Articles and Events) can utilize Locations from other organizations. An Organization can be anything from a public land management agency, like a parks and recreation department, to a nonprofit partner to a private company to a direct marketing organization.

3. Geospatial Data: In OuterSpatial, the term "Geospatial Data" is an umbrella term used to describe geospatial data like Area boundaries, Points of Interest, and Trail center lines that originates from a GIS system in your Organization and gets imported into OuterSpatial. Geospatial Data is not a requirement to use OuterSpatial.

4. Locations: Locations are created when an Organization’s Geospatial Data is imported into OuterSpatial or you create an Outing in OuterSpatial Manager. Locations are similar to “features” in a traditional GIS system. OuterSpatial currently supports four Location types: Areas, Outings, Points of Interest, and Trails. Each Location is made up of a geometry (polygon, point, or line) and a set of attributes.

5. Content: In OuterSpatial, “Content” is an umbrella term used to describe interpretive information created and maintained by organizations in OuterSpatial Manager. Examples of content include Bulletin Board items, Articles, Events, Social, Images, Documents, and Paper Maps.

6. Media: Images, Documents, and Maps are the supported media types in OuterSpatial. You can use OuterSpatial Manager to upload/create Media and then attach it to existing Locations and Content.

7. Attributes: These are similar to “properties” in a traditional GIS system. They are keys and values associated with a Location or piece of Content. Internally, OuterSpatial utilizes attributes to group and symbolize data and support search and filter operations.