Yet ANOTHER reason why I love The Big Bang Theory. “I’m surrendering…to fun.” The sad part is that they probably won’t make the 52 promised episodes.
Sean Gillies Blog—Geoprocessing for humans: a pip requirements file
In the geospatial software I'm writing and using these days, concerns are well separated. Fiona reads and writes features. Only. Shapely provides computational geometry algorithms. Only. Pyproj (not my work, but a favorite package) transforms coordinates between spatial reference systems. Only. The separation of concerns helps keep interactions between them predictable and as a user you pay only for what you eat.
A programmer-analyst's daily work has all the above concerns (and more, probably). A pip requirements file makes installing all three packages as easy as installing a single package like osgeo.ogr. I've uploaded one to GitHub: https://gist.github.com/1689767. This Gist includes an example of using Fiona, pyproj and Shapely together. Fetching them all, assuming you've got pip and the GDAL/OGR libs and headers already on your system, is just:
$ pip install -r https://raw.github.com/gist/1689767/34dedfd28546d41f8dbd7a08ccf2c8abf9ebdf6a/mersh.txt
Spatial Galaxy—QGIS: Running Scripts in the Python Console
The QGIS Python console is great for doing one-off tasks or experimenting with the API. Sometimes you might want to automate a task using a script, and do it without writing a full blown plugin. Currently QGIS does not have a way to load an arbitrary Python script and run it1. Until it does, this post illustrates a way you can create a script and run it from the console.
There are a couple of requirements to run a script in the console:
- The script must be in your PYTHONPATH
- Just like a QGIS plugin, the script needs a reference to qgis.utils.iface
Setting up the Environment
By default, the Python path includes the .qgis/python directory. The location depends on your platform:
- Windows: in your home directory under .qgis\python. For example, C:\Documents and Settings\gsherman\.qgis\python
- Linux and OS X: $HOME/.qgis/python
To see what is in your PYTHONPATH you can do the following in QGIS Python console:
import sys sys.path
While you could use the .qgis\python directory for your custom scripts, a better way is to create a directory specifically for that purpose and add that directory to the PYTHONPATH environment variable. On Windows you can do this using the Environment Variables page in your system properties:
On Linux or OS X, you can add it to your .bash_profile, .profile, or other login script in your home directory:
export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/home/gsherman/qgis_scripts
Writing the Script
With the environment set, we can create scripts to automate QGIS tasks and run them from the console. For this example, we will use a simple script to load all shapefiles in a specified directory. There are a couple of ways to do this:
- Write a simple script with a function that accepts qgis.utils.iface as an argument, along with a path to the shapefiles
- Create a Python class that uses an __init__ method to store a reference to the iface object and then add methods to do the work
We will use the latter approach because it is more flexible and allows us to initialize once and then call methods without having to pass the iface object each time.
The script looks like this:
#!/usr/bin/env Python """Load all shapefiles in a given directory. This script (loader.py) runs from the QGIS Python console. From the console, use: from loader import Loader ldr = Loader(qgis.utils.iface) ldr.load_shapefiles('/my/path/to/shapefile/directory') """ from glob import glob from os import path class Loader: def __init__(self, iface): """Initialize using the qgis.utils.iface object passed from the console. """ self.iface = iface def load_shapefiles(self, shp_path): """Load all shapefiles found in shp_path""" print "Loading shapes from %s" % os.path.join(shp_path, "*.shp") shps = glob(path.join(shp_path, "*.shp")) for shp in shps: (shpdir, shpfile) = path.split(shp) self.iface.addVectorLayer(shp, shpfile, 'ogr' )
Running the Script
To open the console use the Plugins->Python Console menu item.
The comment at the head of the script explains how to use it.
First we import the Loader class from the script file (named loader.py). This script resides in the qgis_scripts directory that is our PYTHONPATH.
from loader import Loader
We then create an instance of Loader, passing it the reference to the iface object:
ldr = Loader(qgis.utils.iface)
This creates the Loader object and calls the __init__ method to initialize things.
Once we have an instance of Loader we can load all the shapefiles in a directory by calling the load_shapefiles method, passing it the full path to the directory containing the shapefiles:
ldr.load_shapefiles('/home/gsherman/qgis_sample_data/vmap0_shapefiles')
The load_shapefiles method uses the path to get a list of all the shapefiles and then adds them to QGIS using addVectorLayer.
Here is the result, rendered in the random colors and order that the shapefiles were loaded:
Some Notes
- When testing a script in the console you may need to reload it as you make changes. This can be done using reload and the name of the module. In our example, reload(loader) does the trick.
- You can add more methods to your class to do additional tasks
- You can create a “driver” script that accepts the iface object and then initializes additional classes to do more complex tasks
1. I have plans on the drawing board to implement this feature.
Bing Maps Blog—Four New Bing Maps V7 Modules
By Ricky Brundritt, EMEA Bing Maps Technology Solution Professional
In September of 2011 we started the Bing Maps v7 Module CodePlex Project. The purpose of this project is to create a single place where developers can find and share useful modules that expand the functionality of the Bing Maps V7 API. Currently, there have been 10 modules submitted to the project. With a number of new modules in development, it’s safe to say that this project is definitely worth looking into. Today I would like to highlight the four newest modules added to this project.
Point Based Clustering Module
I created this module based on feedback received around the Client Side Clustering Module that I created some time ago. The older client side clustering module uses a grid based algorithm which is fast, but requires re-clustering the data every time the map moved. This allows for 5000+ pushpins to be clustered in a fraction of a second but often results in pushpins jumping around the map as you pan. The point based algorithm prevents pushpins from overlapping and jumping around by only clustering the data when the zoom level changes. Additionally this module keeps track of clustered information for each zoom level, making the algorithm faster the more you use it. This improved UI experience does affect performance and as such this algorithm is recommended for 2000 or less pushpins. Interested in reading more about how this algorithm was created? Check out this blog post.
GPX Parser
I created this module due to a number of requests I had received for such a module. This module allows you to easily pass in a URL to a GPX file and have it parsed into an EntityCollection which you can then render on Bing Maps. GPX is a type of XML file that is commonly used by GPS devices. It can be used to describe waypoints, tracks, and routes. Majority of the XML tags for V1 and V1.1 of the GPX schema are supported and all data is stored in a Metadata property, which is added to each entity.
Route Optimization - RouteSavvy Module
This module was created by OnTerra Systems, a Bing Maps Partner.
In today’s economy, it is more important than ever that companies optimize and manage their supply chains more efficiently. Given today’s fuel costs, product delivery with high quality of service and short delay times is paramount. Distribution accounts for a large proportion of the overall operational costs of a producer. Hence, effective and efficient management of transportation and distribution of goods are becoming increasingly important.
One of the key problems in this process is the optimization of delivery routes to customers. This problem is known as the “Travelling Salesman Problem” (TSP). RouteSavvy is a web service that helps solve this problem.
RouteSavvy is a simple but powerful tool that can take anywhere from 3 or 4 locations to hundreds of locations. It reorders them based on whether you'd like to visit them in a "round-trip" OR as a one-way trip, with the last stop chosen either by you or by the software (whichever is preferred).
Web developers can now easily integrate the RouteSavvy API into their web application by adding the RouteSavvy Map Module. The map module uses Ajax to call the RouteSavvy web service to optimize a given set of locations.
Here is a screen shot of a set random location optimized for a round trip:
Mini-Map Module
This module was created by OnTerra Systems, a Bing Maps Partner.
The Bing Maps Ajax v7 control doesn’t include support for adding a Mini-Map. The Mini-Map module adds a small map at the right corner of the parent map that’s collapsible and shows the extents covered by the current map. This module adds a mini map at the top right corner of the screen. Mini-map view helps to give a zoomed out overview of your location. Here is a screen shot of the implemented Mini-Map module:
I hope you find these new modules useful!
Spatial Sustain—Geospatial Analyst Goes Rogue with Street Signs About Drones in NYC
There’s an interesting story today in Forbes about hoax signs placed in the streets of New York by an unnamed geospatial analyst. The signs warn, “ATTENTION: Drone Activity in Progress,” and “ATTENTION: Local Statute Enforced by Drone.” The perpetrator is an Iraq veteran who has grown concerned about the use of drones for domestic purposes. [...]
got geoint?—Friday’s Food for Thought: Needing to “Leap Ahead”
Welcome to the Friday’s Food for Thought post from got geoint? Who doesn’t love Fridays? It is the time to unwind, recharge and often assess one productivity during the previous four days. Speaking of busy weeks, the Pentagon proposed its future budget cuts yesterday. While this will certainly usher in an era of “doing more with less,” there will still be plenty of growth opportunities in the GEOINT sector. Speaking of growth opportunities, USGIF just announced an open solicitation to its membership for a Tradecraft Development Subcommittee Co-Chair. Don’t miss out on this one!
Pentagon Cuts to Hit Defense Industry
The budget cuts the Pentagon proposed Thursday stand to hit nearly every part of the defense industry, from makers of fighter jets and warships to providers of services such as information technology support. Facing rising political pressure to trim spending, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta proposed cutting the budget by $487 billion over the next decade. There were notable exceptions to the austerity. The Pentagon is seeking to protect spending for building unmanned systems and for developing new ones. Funding for an unmanned Army system known as Gray Eagle would be spared, and the Pentagon vowed to invest in sea-based intelligence systems like Fire Scout, a Northrop Grumman-made drone, and in space systems.
More About What Won’t Get Cut
Space News also pointed out that planned upgrades to space capabilities including GPS, the Space-Based Infrared System for missile warning and Advanced Extremely High Frequency secure communications satellites will be preserved in the request, expected to be delivered to Capitol Hill in mid-February. Programs to defend U.S. and European territory against ballistic missile attacks also will be preserved, officials said, but some regional interceptor programs will not see funding increases that had been anticipated.
Needing to “Leap Ahead to Defeat the Enemy”
NextGov points out that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta comment yesterday about “leaping ahead to defeat the enemy” across many domains, including space and cyberspace
Adjusting to a New Budgetary Culture in Space
Intelsat General’s CEO discusses how we are in “hunker down” mode when it comes to dealing with new budgetary realities for space.
Defense Cuts Imperil Our Security
After the International Atomic Energy Agency dropped the bombshell news that Iran has accelerated its drive to build a nuclear weapon, you’d expect leaders on Capitol Hill to hold a flurry of hearings on how to counter the threat. Instead, congressional hearing rooms have been booked solid to discuss how to slash national security spending. Budget cuts dominate the debate, while the prospect of a nuclear Iran barely raises eyebrows. The defense cuts proposed under the debt ceiling deal would leave the U.S. with far fewer options for confronting an Iran armed with the bomb. Congress has already cut $450 billion from the Pentagon budget. Read the full Op-Ed by retired Navy Rear Adm. Ernie Elliot here.
No Music This Week
Since these budgetary changes are serious business, we are not featuring a music video this week. Though be sure to come back next week, as we will be amping up our efforts to “find a popular culture thread” that reinforces what is happening in the GEOINT sector.
Happy Friday.
Geospatial Science and Technology Blog—Who Will Regulate Robots?
by Ryan Calo, Stanford Center for Internet and Society, January 20, 2012 As robots leave the factory and battlefield and enter our homes, hospitals, and skies, it is not clear who will come to regulate them. But we can begin to spot some interesting patterns. Students of this transformative technology should keep their eye on [...]
Slashgeo.org—Google Earth 6.2 Released: Seamless Globe and Google+ Integration
Yesterday, Google released Google Earth 6.2.
From the announcement: "With Google Earth 6.2, we’re bringing you the most beautiful Google Earth yet, with more seamless imagery and a new search interface. Additionally, we’ve introduced a feature that enables you to share an image from within Google Earth, so you can now simply and easily share your virtual adventures with family and friends on Google+. [...] We’ve also made some updates to the search feature in Google Earth. Aside from streamlining the visual design of the search panel, we’ve enabled the same Autocomplete feature that's available in Google Maps."
On the welcomed seamless globe: "While this change will appear on all versions of Google Earth, the 6.2 release provides the best viewing experience for this new data." Sri Lanka, before and after:
A quick reminder, Slashgeo has its Google+ page too (but it's inactive at the moment, that doesn't mean it's not worth adding it to your circles ;-).
Related, the GEB shares an entry named Google Earth 6 now required for Street View.
All Points Blog—Nokia Sells Off Media Advertising Business
In another sign Nokia is reshaping itself comes its decision to get out of the advertising business.
Finnish group Nokia has sold its media advertising business to a U.S. startup Matchbin as it focuses on core businesses, a company spokesman said on Friday without disclosing detail... Continue reading
All Points Blog—Pretty Imagery in Google Earth and other Google Maps/Earth News
Google Earth 6.2 had a "prettier" version of its imagery. No, it's not new data just a new smoothing algorithm.
Today, we’re introducing a new way of rendering imagery that smooths out this quilt of images. The end result is a beautiful new Earth-viewing experience that preserves... Continue reading
Google Earth Blog—An amazing 3D tour of the Costa Concordia
Last week we showed you the fresh satellite imagery and tour of the wreck of the Costa Concordia. It was a great file that helped to show what happened, but now Peter Olsen (who just days ago unveiled the excellent Terra Nova models) has built an incredible 3D tour of the wreck, with the entire journey animated!
The speed has been increased to save time, so you don't have to wait 2-1/2 hours for it to finish, but it's otherwise as accurate as possible. To see it for yourself, simply visit the Costa Concordia Disaster Animation page in the Google 3D Warehouse and choose the "View in Google Earth" link.
If you're not familiar with using Tour files in Google Earth, simply click the "Double-click me!" text on the left to get it started, then click the play button at the bottom to step through the introductory slides, as seen here:
Fully animated tours like this are a great way to recreate events, and Peter is one of the best around at creating them. A similar example you might want to check out is his recreation of the 1977 Tenerife Airport disaster from a few years ago. Great job, Peter!
GeoIQ Blog—2011 in Review
We’re fast into a new calendar year, predictions have been lain and we’re already beginning to see the emergence of some new and exciting technologies that will change future markets.
Last year was an incredibly exciting year for GeoIQ. We were fortunate to work with a number of amazing users that are solving hard and meaningful problems. We launched products that have had an indelible mark on changing the mapping and geospatial web and a few new capabilities that we’re just getting started with.
A New Kind of Basemap
Nearly a year ago today we rethought the basemap when we launched Acetate. Our goal was to move beyond the cookie cutter standard maps that are confusing when visualizing thematic data and instead build a clean context where the data are more easily read and understood. And beyond just a simple “basemap”, Acetate peeled apart the map where data fits within the other layers of roads and placenames for a beautiful composite map.
We made Acetate the default basemap on GeoCommons as well as provided a terrain version. And because Acetate was built with open data and open tools we have distributed it to our users both online and offline in the field and behind firewalls – providing a simple mapping experience to everyone.
What we were hoping for, and happily saw occur, was the adoption of Acetate and the concept across the community.
GeoCommons 2.0 & Collaboration
Last Spring we revamped our user experience and launched GeoCommons 2.0. With the new capabilities, easier to create maps for everyone we felt that we truly opened up mapping and analysis to the world. To date, the community has grown to over 80,000 users per month and 4 million maps – considerably large for what used to be considered a niche domain.
For the first time, we provided free and open access to powerful geospatial analysis. At Where2.0 I spoke about Collaborative Analytics – enabling groups and organizations to quickly and easily share insight and make decisions together. Through GeoCommons anyone is able to ask a question and see their answers within a few minutes. But the true power occurs when they share this with their colleagues or friends – whether that’s within their team’s wiki or posting it to Facebook.
Beyond just a better user experience, we also did a lot under the hood to leverage the scaling of the Cloud. We can now dynamically increase or decrease GeoIQ on demand based on usage, ensuring that data is globally and immediately available. We also made this a core capability to the GeoIQ platform so that organizations deploying the GeoIQ platform behind their firewalls can do it quickly and easily.
The point is that only through collaboration of analysis can we reach concensus. Last year we shared with the world that idea, and looking forward we have a lot of concepts on how to make this more capable for monitoring and alerting on new information.
Graceful Degradation & HTML5
Web Browser innovation has evolved to a new era of web technology that we’re now starting to utilize. Historically Adobe Flash was the only way to provide truly performant and highly interactive visualizations. It still is the most powerful technology with nearly ubiquitous adoption. However, we’re finally seeing the advent of web native formats that are open and provide similar capabilities. Last year we introduced the capability for fully Javascript HTML5 maps when a user didn’t have Flash available. This ‘graceful degradation’ allowed users with Flash available to use the best performance, but also users the viewed maps on iPads or other devices to use the HTML5 maps seamlessly.
Looking forward this concept of appropriate interfaces for the user is being extended to more mobile screens, and even smaller and offline tablets. You can’t presuppose how or where a user will want to see and use their data so we’ll be pushing more into making GeoIQ maps and data available wherever, and however, you want.
Realtime Maps
Never content to merely improve capability we sought to introduce new ways to access and analyze realtime streaming data. Just as much as users are moving from desktops to mobile, data are moving from static captures to continous and dynamic. GeoIQ provides simple and easy access to these new streams of data that can be combined with static and organizational data to not just visualize, but monitor emerging information and see the impact of events.
The new technology we launched powers GeoIQ Social which has been used from monitoring events to helping search and rescue teams respond to cries for help. Like everything we do at GeoIQ our technology crosses domains to the common elements of time and space to help find solutions and measure their impact.
So those are just some highlights of where we’ve been and what we’ve done. It only begins to convey how busy, and excited, we’ve been the last 12 months alone in developing new and innovative technology that have helped our users and improved our customers. We’re looking forward to the upcoming year planning to develop and share with the word just as much – and even more – in pushing the boundaries of collaborative mapping.
All Points Blog—LightSquared Update - Javad Letter: GPS Companies Can’t Handle the Truth - 1/27/12
In a letter to the FCC, Javad CEO Javad Ashjaee reitarates that the testing procedure used to explore the impact of LightSquared on GPS was political, not scientific. He concludes with a familiar quote as to why his filter-enhanced soutions were not tested:
There can be only reason... Continue reading
All Points Blog—NGA to Procure Less Imagery but More Capacity, FBI RFI for LBS Intelligence
The U.S. Defense Department intends to reduce planned purchases of commercial satellite imagery in 2013 as part of a broader initiative aimed at reducing U.S. military expenditures by $259 billion over the next five years, according to a Pentagon planning document released Jan.... Continue reading
Vector One—What Could the Davos World Economic Forum Gain From Geospatial Understanding?
In the ‘Perspectives’ column this week— “What Could the Davos World Economic Forum Gain From Geospatial Understanding?” This week the World Economic Forum is taking place in Davos, Switzerland. While much of the discussion is focused upon economic policy development, the technological and conceptual linkages that contribute to economic growth and wealth are not [...]
From High Above—Bloomfield River and Wujal Wujal, Queensland 3D animation
The Bloomfield River is a river situated in Queensland, north of Daintree. The river enters the sea north of Cape Tribulation. Wujal Wujal is the name of a relatively small Aboriginal community on the north and south sides of the Bloomfield River as seen at the end of the video. This fly-through has been created [...]
Cameron Shorter—Presenting at GeoNext conference
I'm speaking at the GeoNext conference, and will be answering audience questions on the topic of:
"Where to start with Geospatial Open Source Software, and how to build a business around Open Source products".Speakers at the GeoNext conference are covering topics around emerging geospatial business trends, which are being driven by such things as mobile phones, commoditisation of data, and web 2.0 principles such as crowd sourcing. It is running in Sydney, Australia on 29 February 2012. More details here: http://geonext.com.au/
If you will be coming, then let me know and come and say hello.
LiDAR News—LiDAR Magazine Available Online and in Print
With all the work that goes into producing LiDAR Magazine I just want to be sure that everyone is aware that third digital version is now available here. Continue reading →
Click Title to Continue Reading...
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bbbox.me—Celebrating FME2012 with Leaflet, OSM and MapQuest!
The old FLEX-based OSM extractor has been around for a while. A week ago I decided to rewrite it in HTML and it’s now in live beta!
In short http://bbox.me/osm lets You search and zoom in any area and get a ready-made FME Workbench for that particualar place.
This is making it real easy to extract smaller areas of OSM-data straight into FME.
- Dont forget to tribute OSM-data and MapQuest (and FME from www.safe.com) if You use it !
(If You do use Internet Explorer and have problems getting search to work. Try adding bbox.me to trusted sites).
The major supergreat components I used was:
- Leaflet
- Open MapQuest and tiles.
I will publish new and fresh 2012 Workbenches later on but for now I just include a small instruction. Just this at Your own risk!
Click to enlarge:
The old OSM-extractor in Flex should still work. Read about it here:
/Regards
Ulf Mansson (Månsson)
Esri: Silverlight/WPF Blog—ArcGIS for SharePoint 2.1.1 released!
We are pleased to announce the release of ArcGIS for SharePoint version 2.1.1. This is a quick-turnaround maintenance release to fix critical bugs that were identified in the 2.1 release. The ArcGIS for SharePoint team has worked hard to address these issues quickly to minimize their impact on our users. The issues addressed include:
- A license timeout that will occur on Feb 1st, 2012
- The ArcGIS Location Field does not load on SharePoint subsites
- The ArcGIS Map Web Part does not load on Windows XP clients if data containing characters with diacritical marks (e.g. ü, ä, ñ, etc) is included in the map
Users that are currently using version 2.0, 2.1 beta, or 2.1 final can easily upgrade to the latest version. To do so, simply run the setup and select the upgrade option.
Users that have version 2.1 installed must upgrade to version 2.1.1 to continue using the product.
As always, you can check out the ArcGIS for SharePoint Resource Center for information on getting started, help using the product, and samples to show you how to build add-ins for the Map Web Part. And if you have questions, be sure to take advantage of the ArcGIS for SharePoint forum to get help from the community.
The ArcGIS for SharePoint TeamMapDotNet Blog—Digitizing in Dynamics CRM
MapDotNet offers the most advanced drawing and digitizing SDK for Silverlight and WPF. Here’s an example of polygon digitizing and editing in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Some of the exciting features we support are:
Very large and comple
Esri Insider—Traveling Through Time with GIS
A "time machine" is a plot device frequently used in science fiction. From H.G. Wells' groundbreaking 1895 novel The Time Machine to Marty McFly's use of a temporally-enabled DeLorean in Back to the Future, time travel has certainly captured our collective imagination. But the science behind time travel is dubious at best. And even though we can't actually physically move backward of forward in time, we can at least experience some of the thrills—and benefits—of time travel through temporal analysis.
Geospatial professionals are well versed in visualization of spatial relationships and dependencies. But when looking for relationships and dependencies, examining proximity in time can be equally important. Pioneering environmental planner Ian McHarg put great emphasis on chronology, or the placing of geographic layers in chronological sequence to show relationships, dependencies, and causation through time.
"We found the earliest events, mainly of geological history, had pervasive and influential effects, not only on physiography, soils, and vegetation, but also on the availability of resources," McHarg states, describing an early environmental planning study in his book A Quest for Life. He calls his discovery of chronology, or the order or sequence of geographic features through time, "…a most revelatory instrument for understanding the environment, diagnosing, and prescribing." McHarg's chronology is an important concept to grasp as it can lead us to a deeper understanding of structure and meaning in the landscape.
Using chronology to visualize the past is certainly an important tool to help us understand the present. But can we do even more with this geographic knowledge? Can we use it to predict the future?
The Problem of Prediction
Predicting the future is an elusive exercise. Just pick up an old magazine from the 1960s that talks about what life will be like in the year 2000, or watch a movie or read a book set 50 years out. While highly entertaining, nobody ever gets it right. Very few get even remotely close.
We need to move beyond passively trying to "predict" the future towards actively creating or "designing" the future.
The real problem of predicting the future is one of complexity. "There really is only one past" notes Stephen Ervin of Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, "but there are multiple futures." So if predicting the future is so difficult, impractical, or downright impossible, should we even bother trying? Is there anything to gain from such folly?
Perhaps we need to move beyond prediction, and find a different way to think about our relationship with the future. "The future can't be predicted," said environmental scientist and systems thinker Donella Meadows, "but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being."
Envisioning the Future
As McHarg states in his book To Heal the Earth, "Processes, laws, and time reveal the present." Meadows echoes this idea, noting "we experience now the consequences of actions set in motion yesterday and decades ago and centuries ago." Projecting this same concept of chronology forward in time, we can study the past in order to both understand the present and envision the future. As I heard someone say at the 2012 GeoDesign Summit, "By designing geography, you’re designing history." We need to embrace this idea.
"In a very real way, designers create the human environment," says William McDonough in Twenty-First Century Design. "They make the things we use, the places we live and work, our modes of communication and mobility." From a building to a highway, from a city to a utility network, geographic design decisions we make today can have huge consequence on the lives of future generations.
We have the geospatial tools and techniques in place to understand how the past has created the present, and through thoughtful and careful application of these same tools and techniques we can more actively design the future. Trying to shape our current actions to ensure the best possible future is a delicate balancing act with many complex factors to consider. But it offers hope for a future ideally suited for both humans and the environment.
Instead of asking what the world might look like in the future, we should start asking ourselves: What do we want the world to look like? And how can we make it happen?
By Matt Artz
AnyGeo—Nokia Shutting Down Navteq Mobile Developer Resource NN4D
Well, with all the hooplah, reorganization, restructuring, yadayada going on at Nokia the past year or two you can’t really be surprised when you hear something to the effect of Navteq Developer resource NN4D being shut down. Well that’s exactly what we’ve been hearing around here and to yours truly no big surprise I guess! [...]
Spatiallity—Proposed NYS Senate & Assembly districts available in GIS format
If you’re hoping to use GIS or any of the online mapping tools to map the legislative district lines in New York State that were proposed today by the state’s redistricting task force, you’ll have some work to do. The Task Force released PDF maps as well as “block assignment lists” for the proposed districts. [...]
Between the Poles—FOSS4G North America 2012 to be held April 10-12 in Washington DC
Following last year’s well-attended international FOSS4G conference in Denver Colorado, the North American community of free and open source geospatial software developers, users, and advocates are planning a regular annual event in North America. The first FOSS4G-NA conference is scheduled to take place April 10–12, 2012 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. FOSS4G-NA will bring together many public and private-sector stakeholders at the forefront of some of the world’s most innovative free and open source software to discuss and work on building tools to help solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. The organizers have confirmed Michael Byrne, the Federal Communications Commission’s Geospatial Information Officer and the force behind the National Broadband Map, as a keynote speaker.
Important dates:
1/23/2012 Call for Papers
1/23/2012 Pre-Registration Opens
2/9/2012 Early Bird Registration Closes
2/10/2012 Regular Registration Opens
3/1/2012 Papers Submission Deadline
3/15/2012 Confirmation of Accepted Papers
4/2/2012 Close of Online Registration
Between the Poles—OGC Open GeoSMS Standard approved
The OGC Open GeoSMS Standard is an extended Short Message Service (SMS) encoding and interface for exchanging location content between devices or applications. The OGC has just announced that the OGC membership has voted to adopt Open GeoSMS as an OGC standard. The OGC Open GeoSMS Standard is available publicly.
Google Earth Blog—Google Earth 6.2 Released with Google+
Google not only released all new more beautiful imagery of the Earth today, but they also released a whole new version of Google Earth - version 6.2. You can download it here. The biggest news is the integration with Google+:
Here is a quick list of the new features:
- Integration with Google+ - you can now sign into your Google+ account and you can Share your current view with Google+. This feature could have meant that your "My Places" content would be shared on different machines, but apparently they have not implemented that capability yet.
- New Search Interface - Google has made substantial changes to the way searching is done in Google Earth. The results look more like Google Maps. You can also now get walking and biking directions just like in Google Maps. Search results also happen dynamically. They have put a lot of effort to updating the search capabilities in Google Earth to bring it in line with Google Maps. The font is much bigger - actually, it seems a bit too big. You may need to increase the width of your sidebar to be able to read the results better. See screenshot below.
- New graphic rendering - Google has made changes including turning on anisotropic filtering by default.
- New Imagery in Google Earth Mobile version - The new version of the imagery of the Earth also appears in the mobile version of Google Earth.
- Improvements to Network Links - better handling of parallel loading of network links.
We will keep adding to this list as we find significant new features. More details from Google are available in the release notes.
Here is a screenshot of the new search results:
My Georamblings...—Planning to Prepare Your Data Pays Off
As we have covered a few times in class, geomatics is:
the discipline of gathering, storing, processing and delivering of geographic information
We use spatial data to answer a particular question. There is an interesting article over at the Esri Training Blog about up front data work, addressing possible pitfalls and how it all pays off in the end.
Geo Gears, Nuts & Bolts—Intellectual Property vs Copyright
In the past I have often used the terms Intellectual Property and Copyright to mean essentially the same thing, without realizing that this was incorrect. Maybe that was because English is not my native language, but probably not since I have actually heard several others making the same mistake as well.
This morning in a discussion on this topic on the OSGeo Incubator mailing list, Frank Warmerdam explained the difference between the two terms and now I better understand why the terms Intellectual Property and Copyright should not be confused, especially in the context of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).
I thought I'd share a copy of Frank's great explanation here in case it helps others better understand the distinction:
This morning in a discussion on this topic on the OSGeo Incubator mailing list, Frank Warmerdam explained the difference between the two terms and now I better understand why the terms Intellectual Property and Copyright should not be confused, especially in the context of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).
I thought I'd share a copy of Frank's great explanation here in case it helps others better understand the distinction:
Daniel,
I believe the rationale behind avoiding the term Intellectual Property
has two parts.
First, it attempts to conflate a variety of very different legal mechanisms.
Primarily copyright, patents and trademarks. Giving them all one name makes
it harder to separate out things we might agree with (copyright) from things
we might not (ie. Patents).
Second, it expresses these legal mechanisms in a manner that implies that
they are some sort of fundamental or manifest right rather than limited
government granted monopolies intended to serve specific needs of society
[...]You can read the full email and the rest of the thread here.
MapDotNet Blog—Looking to relocate your geospatial business?
The 40+ employees here at ISC love to live, work, and play in sunny Tallahassee, Florida. Tallahassee is what I'd call a "multi-directional" town and it is perfect for outdoor enthusiasts and raising a family. Drive a few miles sou
Spatial Sustain—The USGS NetQuakes Web-enabled Earthquake Sensors Looks for Volunteers
The U.S. Geological Survey’s NetQuakes project is rolling out a new network of seismograph sensors that will form a denser network of readings to better measure ground motion during earthquakes. The new type of digital seismograph connects to a local network via WiFi and transmits its data direct to the USGS after an earthquake of [...]
Between the Poles—Obama says infrastructure needs investment
President Obama in his State of the Union speech specifically called out infrastructure as requiring significant investment. He said that "our infrastructure used to be the best", and mentioned countries such as Russia, China, South Korea, and several European countries that are ahead of the US in some sector of infrastructure. He also referred to the American Society of Civil Engineers' Intrastructure Scorecard that assigned a grade of "D" to American infrastructure.
He said that the Administration is proposiing to redouble the rebuilding efforts that were initiated over the past two years and identified attracting private funding as important for this effort. He specifically mentioned two initiatives.
High speed rail
Within 25 years the goal is to enable 80% of Americans to have access to high speed rail. He mentioned routes in California and the Midwest that are already underway.
High speed wireless
Within 5 years the goal is to make it possible for businesses to provide 98% of Americans with access to the next generation of high speed wireless coverage.
AnyGeo—Webinar – Hear All About FME 2012 From Don and Dale
Recall Safe Software recently announced the release of FME 2012. Well, today you can hear all about it direct from Don Murray and Dale Lutz at Safe Software. What I’m talking about here is a webinar titled “What’s New in FME 2012″ being put on by the Vancouver-based team. The webinar runs 3X today (Jan [...]
Geospatial Science and Technology Blog—Legislating Privacy After US v Jones
Legislating Privacy after U.S. v. Jones: Can Congress Limit Government Use of New Surveillance Technologies? by Robert Gellman, JD, Communia Blog, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, January 25, 2012 The Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Jones, a case that addressed the use of global positioning system GPS tracking devices for law enforcement purposes, is [...]
got geoint?—Google Maps Gets Game-ified and Offers Public Alerts
Google is creating gaming concept that brings us back to our childhood. Do you remember those games where you had to guide a marble through a maze by tilting and adjusting the game board? Google is creating virtual version of this where you guide a “digitized” marble through the streets and avenues on Google Maps. The as-yet-to-be-named game will launch next month and, of course, will be on Android-powered devices. Be sure to check out the video about this new game in this post.
And, check out this real-life version of the game:
Finally, on a completely unrelated note, Google has recently added a Public Alerts feature in Google Maps. So, gaming and providing the tools to keep people safe. Nice.
LiDAR News—ADESK Labs Announces Feature Extraction for Revit
This is a free technology preview that allows you to work with point cloud more easily in Revit. Continue reading →
Click Title to Continue Reading...
Click Title to Continue Reading...
My Georamblings...—Updated NJ Parcel Dataset
An updated version of the New Jersey parcel data has been released on the New Jersey Information Warehouse. It looks like there were a number of changes to the dataset, specifics are documented here.
Google Earth Blog—Google Releases Pretty Earth
Google has just this morning released a new, prettier, version of the Earth for Google Earth. The short version is that it now looks much more Earth-like and less like a bunch of satellite and aerial photos patched onto a sphere. And, it really does look MUCH better!
Since Google Earth was first released in 2005, Google has made thousands of changes to their imagery. Changes to how the imagery looks (colors, contrast, lighting) when combined so it has a more pleasant look from space. One of the most frequent comments about Google Earth is "why are these ugly patches of rectangular images on the Earth?". Well, Google has released today a new attempt to address the problem.
Some of the changes Google has attempted to its imagery were not successful. For example when they attempted to cut images that showed away from the coastlines which removed a lot of valuable information. Google later provided access to that valuable imagery in in the historical imagery layer. Or the time they tried changing the colors in a detrimental way, which they quickly removed a few days later.
Today, Google has finally combined many different attempts, and suggestions from the Google Earth user community, and implemented a major change to the imagery that greatly improves the look of Google Earth. The most obvious change is that the "patchwork" of random-looking rectangles of imagery from different sources is no longer obvious. But, Google's new imagery is much more dramatic than is obvious. They have altered nearly all the imagery of the Earth and made major improvements to the contrast, lighting, and consistency of the imagery at all levels. And, they have used features inherent to Google Earth's abilities to transition at different zoom levels to smoothly move between imagery that is very pleasing to the eye.
These changes are subtle if you don't have access to the way things looked before.
Here are some comparison shots showing the dramatic change before and after in just a few places:
Before/After USA
Before/After Africa
Before/After China
As you can see, the improvement is dramatic when you compare the old to the new. But, once most people start using this, they'll probably quickly forget how it used to be and just accept the new look. However, we should really appreciate the huge effort Google has made to pretty up the Earth, and thank them for a job well done!
Spatial Law and Policy—The Spatial Law and Policy Update
With apologies for the gap in posting this, please find below the most recent Spatial Law and Policy Update prepared for the members of the Centre for Spatial Law and Policy
Privacy
EU proposes 'right to be forgotten' by internet firms (BBC)
Google blurs woman's Street View pratfall (cnet)
Compromise on Draft European Data Protection Regulation in Reach (Global Privacy and Security Compliance Law Blog)
Data and privacy rears its head at DLD (Tech Crunch)
Consumers ditch websites with poor privacy policies (PC Pro)
Is It Legal for an Employer to Secretly Track an Employee's Personal Vehicle 24/7 for One Month? Perhaps! (Workplace Privacy Counsel)
How Data Sensitive Are Your Customers? (Forbes)
Schools to Monitor Obese Students, Raising Privacy Fears (Education News)
A privacy-centered economy (TechWorld)
National Security/Law Enforcement
Supreme Court Deals Blow To Government Surveillance, Saying Warrant Needed For GPS Tracking (Forbes)
Aus becoming surveillance state: Ludlam (ZDNet)
East Bay firm keeps log of private cars' locations (SF Gate)
Intellectual Property
The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism (Harper's Magazine)
SOPA, Internet regulation, and the economics of piracy (ARS Technica)
Data Quality
Personal Musings On The Authority Of OpenStreetMap (Archaeogeek)
What Caused Cruise Ship To Run Aground? (Sky News)
Costa Concordia: Rock Not Charted or Erroneous Navigation? (Hydro International)
Smart Grid
Smart utility meters dial up backlash (The Detroit News)
Spatial Data Infrastructures
Enabling Transit Solutions A Case for Open Data (Georgia Institute of Technology)
NGAC Delays Action on FGDC Until April Meeting (Directions Magazine)
Is There Room for Private Industry and Entrepreneurs in Spatial Data Infrastructure? (Vector One)
Remote Sensing
U.S. Government Looking To Lower Landsat Costs (Space News)
Satellite Images Reveal North Korean Progress on Nuclear Facility [Wired] (Space News)
Alternative Futures: United States Commercial Satellite Imagery in 2020 (Innovative Analytics and Training)
The Budget Threat and What Could be Lost (Imaging Notes)
Crowd-sourced
CITIZEN SCIENCE AND VOLUNTEERED GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION: CAN THESE HELP IN BIODIVERSITY STUDIES? (Brian Klinkenberg, University of British Columbia)
Tribes Effectively Barred From Making High-Tech Maps (Geodata Policy)
French Speedcam Warning Ban: NAVX Seizes Court Over New Law (GPS Business News)
GNSS
LightSquared claims interference tests were rigged (TG Daily)
Another test finds LightSquared satellite service interferes with GPS (The Washington Post with Bloomberg)
Miscellaneous
How fragile are the networks that we depend upon for today's GIS? (V1 Magazine)
Censorship in the world's largest democracy (Aljazeera)
Earthcomber Suing Real Estate Sites for Patent Infringement (Directions Magazine)
Mobile Technologies for Child Protection (Mobile Active)
Getting “Internet Freedom” Straight (Tech Crunch)
EU proposes 'right to be forgotten' by internet firms (BBC)
Google blurs woman's Street View pratfall (cnet)
Compromise on Draft European Data Protection Regulation in Reach (Global Privacy and Security Compliance Law Blog)
Data and privacy rears its head at DLD (Tech Crunch)
Consumers ditch websites with poor privacy policies (PC Pro)
Is It Legal for an Employer to Secretly Track an Employee's Personal Vehicle 24/7 for One Month? Perhaps! (Workplace Privacy Counsel)
How Data Sensitive Are Your Customers? (Forbes)
Schools to Monitor Obese Students, Raising Privacy Fears (Education News)
A privacy-centered economy (TechWorld)
National Security/Law Enforcement
Supreme Court Deals Blow To Government Surveillance, Saying Warrant Needed For GPS Tracking (Forbes)
Aus becoming surveillance state: Ludlam (ZDNet)
East Bay firm keeps log of private cars' locations (SF Gate)
Intellectual Property
The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism (Harper's Magazine)
SOPA, Internet regulation, and the economics of piracy (ARS Technica)
Data Quality
Personal Musings On The Authority Of OpenStreetMap (Archaeogeek)
What Caused Cruise Ship To Run Aground? (Sky News)
Costa Concordia: Rock Not Charted or Erroneous Navigation? (Hydro International)
Smart Grid
Smart utility meters dial up backlash (The Detroit News)
Spatial Data Infrastructures
Enabling Transit Solutions A Case for Open Data (Georgia Institute of Technology)
NGAC Delays Action on FGDC Until April Meeting (Directions Magazine)
Is There Room for Private Industry and Entrepreneurs in Spatial Data Infrastructure? (Vector One)
Remote Sensing
U.S. Government Looking To Lower Landsat Costs (Space News)
Satellite Images Reveal North Korean Progress on Nuclear Facility [Wired] (Space News)
Alternative Futures: United States Commercial Satellite Imagery in 2020 (Innovative Analytics and Training)
The Budget Threat and What Could be Lost (Imaging Notes)
Crowd-sourced
CITIZEN SCIENCE AND VOLUNTEERED GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION: CAN THESE HELP IN BIODIVERSITY STUDIES? (Brian Klinkenberg, University of British Columbia)
Tribes Effectively Barred From Making High-Tech Maps (Geodata Policy)
French Speedcam Warning Ban: NAVX Seizes Court Over New Law (GPS Business News)
GNSS
LightSquared claims interference tests were rigged (TG Daily)
Another test finds LightSquared satellite service interferes with GPS (The Washington Post with Bloomberg)
Miscellaneous
How fragile are the networks that we depend upon for today's GIS? (V1 Magazine)
Censorship in the world's largest democracy (Aljazeera)
Earthcomber Suing Real Estate Sites for Patent Infringement (Directions Magazine)
Mobile Technologies for Child Protection (Mobile Active)
Getting “Internet Freedom” Straight (Tech Crunch)
All Points Blog—Google Public Alerts and other LBS News
Google announced a Public Alerts page on Jan 25. The idea is to keep you informed of emergency alerts for floods, tornadoes, winter storms, and other dangers that may be headed your way. But, it's completely query driven, not location-based in this first attempt. Google is seeking... Continue reading
All Points Blog—Army Looking to Build NGA Data Center
The US Army has put out feelers for companies that may want (and be able) to build a data center for the Department of Defense’s agency that provides geospatial intelligence support to the military.
The Army has issued a “sources sought” notice for a potentially US$10m-plus... Continue reading
All Points Blog—GISCorps In Seven Countries and other International GIS News
URISA reports that 25 GISCorps volunteers have recently been deployed to 9 new missions in 7 countries including Libya, Indonesia and Samoa.
- URISA News (not sure why it's not a press release)
The Cultural Heritage Administration [Korea] said Thursday it will launch a new... Continue reading
GeoSolutions' Blog—Improving GeoServer SQL Server support
Dear All,
in recent times we were hired to improve GeoServer SQL Server support story.
The SQL Server store was created and maintained during spare time by Justin DeOliveira, however due to lack of production usage, and work time to pour on it, it failed to reach to the same level of robustness and speed as the best supported stores, such as Oracle and PostGIS.
Our work this week tried to close this gap with a number of little and big improvements that make the code run faster and in a more reliable way:
- add support for connection validation (very important for SQL Azure, which is very keen on closing pooled connections in your face)
- use binary encoding, instead of text, to transfer geometries from the database
- support for data paging at the database level
- make sure the rich database test suite we have in GeoTools is fully implented for SQL server, ensuring good support for use cases such as dynamic SQL views, proper date/time encoding in filters, and the like, both on the development series and on the stable series
Our develoment focused on testing the code against both SQL Server 2008 and SQL Azure. SQL Azure is the SQL database one can use in the Microsoft Azure cloud system: while it does look a lot like SQL Server 2008, it does not quite behave the same way in all cases, and requires a specific JDBC driver to work properly.
There are still some improvements missing on the table, such as geography columns support, but we're sure you'll be able to get more out of a production usage of GeoServer and SQL Server now.
Interested in sponsoring further improvements? Looking for professional support service that deliver for your group? Let us know!
Interested in sponsoring further improvements? Looking for professional support service that deliver for your group? Let us know!
All Points Blog—Pictometry: One Third of U.S. Counties Use Us
I found the reference to one third of US counites using oblique imagery in a local news story on a new user in Minnesota:
The aerial oblique imagery services were purchased at a cost of $127,719 from Rochester, New York headquartered, Pictometry, using non-tax levy recorder fee and... Continue reading
All Points Blog—Chamber of Commerce Printing Visitor Maps and other Government GIS News
The number one request for the Cape Cod Canal Chamber of Commerce? Printed maps. So, instead of a guidebook the Chamber will print free maps, with ads on the back.
- Wareham Week
The Canadian Institute of Planners reminds you:
With less than a week to go before nominations... Continue reading
Between the Poles—Department of Interior to require full disclosure of hydraulic fracturing fluids on federal lands
The impact of hydraulic fracturing on water quality in the US is getting a lot of attention, most recently from the EPA nationally and specifically in Wyoming.
Last year the Wilderness Society surveyed the fracturing fluids requirements in state statutes to see whether they require public disclosure of hydraulic fracturing chemicals. As part of the survey they called the oil and gas commissions in each state to confirm their findings.
The Wilderness Society found that of the 33 states where drilling occurs, only Wyoming requires full public disclosure of the chemicals in hydraulic fracturing fluids. Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee required some disclosure of chemicals, but not to the public or in sufficient detail.
In his recent State of the Union speech, President Obama confirmed that the Department of Interior will require full disclosure of hydraulic fracturing fluids for any use of hydraulic fracturing on public lands. The Department of the Interior has already announced that it is drawing up safety regulations for drilling on federal lands. To date all hydraulic fracturing has been on private lands, but when the guidelines are in place federal lands will be opened to drilling.
Ed Parsons—My ENTER2012 presentation
Yesterday I had the pleasure to present at the ENTER2012 eTourism conference in Helsingborg, Sweden. The ENTER conference is an excellent combination of academics and practitioners, a mix that other industry conferences would do well to replicate.
My presentation was on the continuing innovation is geospatial technology and how the addition of both social and curated content may impact on destination and travel solutions.
Here are my slides, as usual not that useful if your were not in the audience!
Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)
Directions Magazine—2010-2011 Review of Publicly Traded Location Technology Stocks
Editor in Chief Joe Francica provides an encapsulated review of publicly traded geospatial information and location technology companies. The global economic turmoil has had a dramatic impact on this technology sector, with few companies delivering positive gains for shareholders. The roller-coaster ride of the last two years is unlikely to change but opportunities exist for investors who believe that location-based information is still an essential driver of business.
More about: business intelligence, database, geospatial technology, gis, google, lbs, location intelligence, location technology, stock market, surveying, utilities
GIS Lounge—New Plant Hardiness Zone Map
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has released a new Plant Hardiness Zone Map (PHZM). The map is the first updated in over twenty years and incorporates greater accuracy and detail since the last map from 1990. The new map was developed by the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Oregon State University’s (OSU) PRISM Climate Group and is available [...]
Spatial Sustain—A Webmap I’ve Been Waiting On
If you’re like a lot of skiiers, you’ve found it hard to best navigate the snow conditions and weather of your favorite place. Being a spoiled skiier in Colorado, with a lot of local options, just compounds the problem. Chris Helm (@cwhelm) and Brendan Heberto (@bheberto) — both Coloradans — have just created an elegant [...]
AnyGeo—Webinar To Look At Open Source Geo Solutions For Small Business
Here’s details of a webinar that should appeal to many. The focus of the event is hot topics such as free tools, and open source software, with a focus on the small business owner. Some details… GIS professionals thinking about taking their careers to the next level and starting their own business need to tune [...]
AnyGeo—MapMyFitness Adds Dog Walk Tracking With MapMyDogWalk
I’m a fan of the “MapMyFitness” suite of apps, (you know, these are cool tracking services that store your walks, runs, rides etc… using a mobile client and provide for sophisticated social sharing and more) and now I can even track and share my dog walks thanks to the latest solution, MapMyDoogWalk. The app was [...]
Between the Poles—Distributech: Demand response (DR) - a business opportunity for owners of commercial buildings
In the US historically electric power utilities have attempted to build enough capacity to meet peak load. For example, California uses 5% of its electric power generation capacity less than 50 hours a year. But peakers, as the power plants are called that are only fired up to meet peak load - typically on a hot July or August afternoon, are expensive. Power utilities can reduce their CAPEX and their OPEX, and customers' power bills, by shaving peak load.
Demand Response
One of the ways that power companies in the US are increasingly turning to is demand response (DR). DR is an agreement between the power utility and a customer, such as a residential, industrial, or commercial site, which allows the utility to shut down or otherwise reduce the power demand from some of the facilities or equipment at the customer's site. It can be a manual process where the power utility contacts the customer and negotiates the shut down of some part of the customer's power equipment, or increasingly the DR process is automated.
DR can be a win-win-win for everyone. The customer reduces his/her electric power bills, the utility doesn't have to fire up a peaker or build new power plants, which benefits the utility, the customer, and the environment. Recently FERC has mandated that a negawatt should be compensated at the same rate as a megawatt. In other words, customers should be paid the same for reducing load by a megawatt as a generator is paid for generating a megawatt. Utilities have found that industry has generally been responsive to DR programs, but have not found the same level of interest among owners of commercial buildings. Commercial buildings are responsible for about 20% of total energy consumption in the US and about the same proportion of emissions.
At Distributech, Brendan Owens of the US Green Building Council (USGBC) and Peter Wiegand of Skipping Stone outlined an initiative to increae awareness among owners of commercial buildings of the benefits of DR. The USGBC is responsible for the widely used LEED program for certifiying buildings as green according to a number of criteria. Onwers who are interested in certifying their buildings according to the LEED scorecard can get a LEED DR credit if they participate in a DR program. A directory of commercial building owners who are participating in DR programs has been compiled.
The USGBC and Skipping Stone and other partners including Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and the Environment Defence Fund have started the Demand Response Partnership Program
(DRRP) to educate owners of commercial buildings about the benefits of DR and to encourage greater adoption of DR by this sector. They have announced that Southern California Edison has agreed to support the effort.
AnyGeo—Smartphones Are Most Popular Home Device And Enable Multi Tasking
No huge surprise here in some recent research findings from RazorFish that show the smartphone as being the most favored home device. Interesting to see that the handy gadgets are enabling more multi-tasking at home, but also are enabling users to slip out of awkward social situations! The findings are based on responses from more [...]
Spatial Galaxy—Using the QGIS Raster Calculator
The raster calculator allows you to perform mathematical operations on each cell in a raster. This can be useful for converting and manipulating your rasters. Operators include:
- Mathematical (+, -, *, /)
- Trigonometric (sin, cos, tan, asin, acos, atan)
- Comparison (<, >, =, <=, >=)
- Logical (AND, OR)
To perform operations on a raster or rasters, they must be loaded in QGIS. The raster calculator is accessed from the Raster menu and brings up the dialog:
Let’s look a few examples.
Simple Mathematical Calculation
Doing a simple calculation is easy. In this example we have a Digital Elevation Model (ancc6) loaded in QGIS. The DEM contains elevations for a 1:63,360 quadrangle in Alaska. The coordinate system is geographic and the elevation value in each cell is in meters. If we wanted to create a raster with elevation in feet, we can use these steps to create the expression:
- Bring up the raster calculator
- Double click on ancc6@1 in the raster bands list to add it to the expression
- Double click the multiplication operator (*)
- In the expression box, type in the conversion factor for meters to feet: 3.28
This gives us the following expression:
ancc6@1 * 3.28
To complete the process, we specify a name for the output raster and the format we want to use. When you click OK, the operation will be performed and the new raster created, giving us a GeoTIFF with cell values in feet. If you leave the Add result to project box checked the output raster will be added to QGIS once the calculations are done.
If you only want to operate on a portion of a raster, you can use the extent setting to limit the area included in the calculation.
Using a Mask
Sometimes you might want to mask out part of a raster. An example might be one where you have elevations ranging from below sea level to mountain tops. If you are only interested in elevations above sea level, you can use the raster calculator to create a mask and apply it to your raster all in one step.
The expression looks like this:
(my_raster@1 >= 0) * my_raster@1
The first part of the expression in parentheses effectively says: for every cell greater than or equal to zero, set its value to 1, otherwise set it to 0. This creates the mask on the fly.
In the second part of the expression, we multiply our raster (my_raster@1) by the mask values. This sets every cell with an elevation less than zero to zero. When you click OK, the calculator will create a new raster with the mask applied.
Simulating a Rise in Seal Level
Using the raster calculator and a mask we can visually simulate a rise in sea level. To do this we simply create the mask and overlay it on the DEM or perhaps a DRG (topographic) raster.
The expression to raise sea level by 100 meters is:
ancc6@1 > 100
The output raster contains cells with either a 0 (black) or 1 (while) value:
The black areas represent everything below an elevation of 100 meters, effectively illustrating a sea level rise. When we combine this with a suitable background we can demonstrate the results:
We added the DRG for the quadrangle and overlaid it with the mask layer. Setting the transparency to 70% allows the DRG to be seen, illustrating the effect of raising sea level.
The raster calculator is a powerful tool. Check it out and see how you might use it in your analysis and map making.
Bing Maps Blog—New Bing Maps Features Help You Feel Spatial…<3
Coming back after the holiday season with a lot of energy, the Bing Maps team kicked off 2012 with releases of a new routing engine and the WPF control. Today--only 2 weeks later--we are now announcing several new features in the Bing Spatial Data Services and the Bing Maps Account Center. New features include a data source for traffic incidents, the ability to find points of interest (POI) along a route, wildcard-searches in your POI, incremental updates of POI data sources, improved reporting and more. Happy New Year! Are you feeling the love? 
The Bing Spatial Data Services provide a REST interface that allows you to geocode or reverse-geocode your own POI data sources in batch-mode, manage these data sources and query your own or some public POI data sources that Bing Maps provides in a spatial context.
In this release, we added the following features:
- Incremental Upload - Your own data sources now support incremental updates by setting the parameter ‘loadOperation’ in the Data Source Management API to ‘incremental’. So, once you’ve uploaded a data source of X number of locations into the Spatial Data Service, if you just want to add a few records you can just send those few records. We’ll handle the add and update functions for you!
- Wildcard Searches - New Query Options support wildcard searches through filter criteria. Let’s say you want to query your data source to find the nearest locations around a point AND you want to filter the results based on the beginning or end of a keyword. For example, let’s say you have a “Store Manager” field in your data source. You can look for said manager by last name, “%Smith” or first name “John%” so you get all the Smiths or Johns within a region.
- Traffic Incidents - Traffic Incidents for North America are now available as a public POI data source and can be accessed through the Query API. Now the traffic incidents you see on Bing Maps are available to you in your applications via a spatial query.
- Find Near Route - The Bing Spatial Data Service supports now an additional spatialFilter which allows you to search for POI along a route. This is a game changer. Let’s say you’re a coffee company and you want to empower your users to have the ability find all your locations along their drive from, say Seattle to San Francisco…now you can! The Find Near Route Feature allows you to spatially query the points you’ve uploaded into SDS within a 1 mile buffer of your route.
http:// spatial.virtualearth.net /REST/v1/data/
439698230d90496596083f3fe7aafeb2/
TrafficIncidents/
TrafficIncident
?key=[YOUR_BING_MAPS_KEY]
&$format=json
&jsonp=callbackFindTrafficIncidentsNearRoute
&spatialFilter=nearRoute('47.678558349609375,-122.13098907470703',
'47.60356140136719,-122.32943725585937')
You will find a complete sample using the Bing Maps AJAX Control version 7 for visualization, the DirectionsManager class for driving directions, the TrafficLayer class for traffic-flow information and the Bing Spatial Data Services for traffic-incident information along a route here. Alternate versions of the SDK are available in PDF and .chm format, as well.
Note: Neither the Wildcard-search nor the spatial-filter ‘nearRoute’ are supported with the public data sources NAVTEQNA and NAVTEQEU.
The Bing Maps Account Center is the portal through which you can find information for development with Bing Maps, and also manage your account. It contains links to interactive and traditional SDKs, a facility to generate Bing Maps Keys, a web user interface to manage your own POI data sources and a reporting service through which you can retrieve statistics about your Bing Maps usage.
In this latest release we added the following features.
- Additional data validation has been introduced for the upload of your own POI data sources.
- Before it was already possible to add and edit records in a data source that you uploaded through the portal. You can now also download and delete data sources.
- Image capturing adds now additional security during the generation of Bing Maps Keys.
- Additional reports have been added to provide more details on the use of specific Bing Maps Keys.
We certainly hope you’re feeling special (and spatial!). We’re investing quite a bit of energy into Bing Maps and hope to see some killer apps. Happy Coding!!!
Johannes Kebeck & CP
Geospatial Science and Technology Blog—Evaluating Access to Spatial Data Information in Rwanda
by Felicia O. Akinyemi, URISA Journal 2011, Volume 23, No 2 Abstract: Access to spatial data is of growing interest to practitioners and society for the use of geospatial technology pervades all fields, and all sectors of the economy can use the same information in different applications. Means of data access appropriate to any given [...]
Sean Gillies Blog—Notes on learning Clojure
I'm learning Clojure and having fun with it. I never learned a Lisp in school like many programmers my age did. The one variant I did try, about 15 years ago, was Scheme. I did a little Gimp scripting with it but nothing else. I think I had to mature a bit before I could appreciate the Lisp style for what it is.
For a language that's designed to be more simple than easy, it's surprisingly easy to use Java classes in Clojure. This is the first code I've written using JTS classes in a while.
user=> (.buffer
(.read (com.vividsolutions.jts.io.WKTReader.) "POINT (0 0)")
1.0)
#<Polygon POLYGON ((1 0, 0.9807852804032304 -0.1950903220161282, ...))>
I assumed I'd have to write something like a Python C extension module to do this and am thrilled to be wrong.
Spatial Sustain—Government Cuts Hit Copenhagen’s Mapping Agency
The Copenhagen Post reports that the Environment Ministry is set to lay off 115 positions from three different agencies, including 25 from their Mapping and Surveying Agency. The cuts come as the ministry works toward a 2.5 percent reduction in their budget that will double to 5 percent in 2015. The entire Environment Ministry is [...]
Mapperz - The Mapping News Blog—switch2osm Make the switch to OpenStreetMap
A nice clean website promoting Open Street Map.
"switch2osm Make the switch to OpenStreetMap"
OpenStreetMap won’t charge you
OpenStreetMap is...
Map and GIS News finding blog. With so many Maps and GIS sites online now it is hard to find the good from the not so good. This blog tries to cut the cream and provide you with the newest, fastest, cleanest and most user friendly maps that are available online. News has location and it is mapped.
Map and GIS News finding blog. With so many Maps and GIS sites online now it is hard to find the good from the not so good. This blog tries to cut the cream and provide you with the newest, fastest, cleanest and most user friendly maps that are available online. News has location and it is mapped.
