Geospatial Contractors Cynically Attempt to Take Over US Federal Mapping

by Brian Timoney (MapBrief Blog: http://mapbrief.com)

Geography · Economics · Visualization

 

 

The party is over.

 

During the 1990s anything related to IT was expensive and fat profit margins were easily procured. Post-9/11 was very good for geospatial contracting with both the escalation of defense spending to support three wars as well as the mushrooming requirements of the Department of Homeland Security. But now sequestration–and its impacts on the DoD in particular–are the unmistakable sign that a golden era of contracting has drawn to a close.

 

But over the last decade another geospatial industry sprung up–the one we’re all familiar with: Internet-based, massive high-performance platforms taking full advantage of the plunging costs of computing to elevate mapping to its current status as a core component of the everyday web experience.

 

After a couple of decades of easy living, what would you do when confronted with the prospect of competing against lower-margin, faster-paced innovation?

 

You wouldn’t settle for half-measures, that’s for sure.  No, you too would get your lobbying group MAPPS busy helping draft something like H.R. 1604 “Map It Once, Use It Many Times”: a private sector takeover of Federal mapping activities in the United States.

Read the rest of this article here: http://mapbrief.com/2013/05/08/geospatial-contractors-cynically-attempt-to-take-over-us-federal-mapping/

 

Helping in an Emergency: Bringing Your GIS Skills to the EOC

Incident Command Training Recommended!

How can the wider community of GIS professionals make their skills available to state and local organizations during an emergency? Zach Borst, Regional Outreach Specialist at DEMHS, has been helping VCGI understand that one of the big barriers to any member of the general public helping at any Emergency Operations Center (EOC) is lack of familiarity with the Incident Command Structure (ICS). This affects both attitudes and ability to function in the midst of a potentially chaotic situation. People who have this training are seen as potential assets to the folks running an EOC, whether at the state  or local level.

So, in an effort to follow-up on the interest expressed by many members of the GIS community to “DO MORE” the next time an emergency happens, we are passing along information about some online and upcoming live (Free) ICS training. If you want to be in a position to be as helpful as possible, consider the following (we will pass along future opportunities as they come up!):

ICS 100 – Online Intro Course – Free – everything you need is downloadable from the web site – this may be required before you can attend additional trainings like the one below: http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/courseOverview.aspx?code=IS-100.b

ICS 200 -  Incident Command System for Single Resources & Initial Action Incidents

• Date:  April 24, 2013
• Times:  8:00AM – 5:00PM
• Location:  Chittenden County Sheriff’s Office, South Burlington, VT
• Flyer with more info
• Registration Form

VCGI Web Services Expanded – Documentation Posted

VCGI, in collaboration with VT’s Enterprise GIS Consortium (EGC), has developed a portfolio of “web services” which allow users to bring map layers and imagery into their GIS projects or map mashups without actually downloading any data. By connecting to the service of choice via the internet (a live internet connection is required in order for the images to appear in your GIS project) users can access a variety of resources.

VCGI provides Web Map Services (including a basemap and contours), Imagery Services (black and white, color, infrared, various ages and resolution levels), and Geocoding Services. Services are often available in two forms: 1) cache and 2) non-cache. Cached services (*_CACHE) are designed to be used in browser or mobile web applications which utilize imagery at specific scales and need the fastest rendering performance. Non-cache services (*_NOCACHE) render the imagery to the client application dynamically; this allows clients such as ArcGIS Desktop to ask for the data in different ways (eg: different stretch or band combinations). Many of the services are also available in VT State Plane or Web Mercator projection/coordinate systems.

Services available and information on how to connect is available at the VCGI website: http://vcgi.vermont.gov/warehouse/web_services

Webinars Coming Up: Open Source, Emergency Mapping, VCGI’s New Website, QGIS, Census…

Plenty more webinars are scheduled for the next 6 weeks or so! See if any of the topics interest you and register today!

 

Click on the link below each webinar date for more details and link to registration.

 

The promise and the reality of free and open-source desktop GIS software

Tue, Feb 19, 2013 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

http://vcgi.vermont.gov/node/635

 

QGIS: Creating Map Layouts – Printing and Exporting

Tue, Feb 26, 2013 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

http://vcgi.vermont.gov/node/636

 

The New VCGI Website

Tue, Mar 5, 2013 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

http://vcgi.vermont.gov/node/638

 

Mapping for Emergency Management (repeat)

Tue, Mar 12, 2013 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM

http://vcgi.vermont.gov/node/639

 

Mapping With Census Data: Linking Tabular Data From Factfinder2 With VCGI’s Shapefiles

Tue, Mar 19, 2013 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

http://vcgi.vermont.gov/node/640

 

 

Feel free to contact me if you have questions about how a webinar works!

An object-based system for LiDAR data fusion and feature extraction

Jarlath P. O’Neil-Dunne, UVM Spatial Analysis Lab

An object-based system for LiDAR data fusion and feature extraction is the title of an article headed for publication in Geocarto International, but what it boils down to is our experience doing high-res land cover in Philadelphia.  Before I highlight the key points (who reads anything more that 140 characters anyway?) I did want to thank Sarah Low, formerly with the City of Philadelphia and now with the Forest Service, for all of her help and valuable feedback.  Funding came from ARRA grant, “Restoring Ecosystems in Fairmount Park” (10-DG-11244419-025) ……

 

For the rest of this article, click here: http://letters-sal.blogspot.com/2012/06/object-based-system-for-lidar-data.html

Browser Cartography: A Manifesto

“Toner” tiles by Stamen Design

Bill Morris, Geosprocket, LLC

Hear me out for a minute . . .
. . . I’d like you to make maps intended for online viewing. 

This is partially a selfish impulse; I’m going to throw a rock through the window if I see another “PDF Download” link masquerading as a web map. I’d also like you to do this to save a few trees from their 24″-by-36″-poster fate, but mostly it’s because we’re at an inflection point in cartography . . .

. . . I think the public – the folks who show up to input forums for development projects, and who want to know how far it is to the next lean-to on the trail – are now fully-literate in maps. Mapquest started this process and Google advanced it, but now there are tools beyond those to help you engage your audience on computers and mobile devices (No, Trimble, I am not referring to the Juno. Screw that.). Many of these tools happen to be open-source . . .

See Bill’s blog for the rest of this article: http://geosprocket.blogspot.com/2012/05/browser-cartography-manifesto.html

FOSS4G North America 2012

Bill Morris, Geosprocket, LLC.

I had the good fortune to make it to this year’s iteration of the Free and Open Source for Geospatial (FOSS4G) tech conference – North American edition (other sections of it will be occurring in Germany and China). Having missed the O’Reilly festival of place, it was a great opportunity to catch up with – as one attendee put it – “The real makers in the world of map ” …. While there was more afoot than I could ever have followed entirely, I took note of two items… Click here for more: http://geosprocket.blogspot.com/2012/04/foss4g-north-america-2012-noted-points.html

2011 Bedrock Geologic Map of Vermont Now Available

April 11th, 2012

The Vermont Geological Survey at the Agency of Natural Resources, the United States Geological Survey, and University of Vermont have participated since the early 1980′s in a cooperative venture to produce the new bedrock geological map of Vermont. The map has a 2011 publication date which is 150 years (sesquicentennial) since the first 1861 geologic map of Vermont and 50 years since the 1961 Centennial Geologic Map of Vermont.

The map incorporates 30 years of new approaches to geologic mapping and the technologies that support it. As a fundamental data layer, it is a show piece of the present understanding of Vermont geology. The map will be the geoscience base for years to come, helping us to address Vermont’s environmental issues and informing our interaction with and protection of our natural resources.

More about the GIS data, accessing PDFs of the Map, etc. Here: http://ow.ly/aBQEa

Map Morsels IX

Jonathan Frishtick, GPS/GIS Mapping

As always, please let me know if you like one of these entries.

1.  Put learning Mandarin on the back burner and learn how to code. You have put it off long enough. You’ve been thinking about it for years. You know it will help you in whatever discipline you are in. It’s time to dive in. http://www.codecademy.com/#!/exercises/0

2. Threats from sea level rise and storm surge to all 3000+ coastal towns, cities, counties and states in the Lower 48.  http://sealevel.climatecentral.org/

3. Fonts in ArcGIS symbols, from Aileen Buckley, ESRI Map Center.                                                                               http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2012/03/28/fonts-in-arcgis-symbols/

4.  Google Earth Where in the World.             https://sites.google.com/site/sightseerwhereintheworld/

5.  Google Search Features.                                http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features.html

6.Google Voice Search.                                  http://www.google.com/insidesearch/voicesearch.html

7.  World Bank Announces Its Crowdsourced Map Data Will Be Free for the Crowd  http://techpresident.com/news/21989/world-bank-announces-its-crowdsourced-map-data-will-be-free-crowd, via the Spatial Law and Policy blog.

8.  The National Archives and Records Administration has made individual records from the 1940 Census available to the public for the first time. http://www.census.gov/1940census/

9.  From Google Maps Mania:The Outlook is Cloudy on Google Maps

Plane Finder, the real-time plane tracking website, has added options to view both the cloud layer and the weather layer on its Google Map.   To view the new weather layers on Plane Finder select ‘Map Options’, ‘Map’ and then select the ‘cloud’ and / or ‘weather’ check buttons. Martin Kleppe of Ubilabs has created a rather beautiful example of the cloud layer in action on a styled Google Map. This example map uses dark map tiles which contrast nicely with the new fluffy white clouds.

Map Morsel VIII

Jonathan Frishtick, GIS/GPS Mapping

 

LiDAR Mapping Helps Archeologists                                                                                                                                    http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/archeology-lidar-mapping/

Japanese disaster imagery one year later                                                                                                          http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2012/03/japanese_disaster_imagery_one_year.html

WeatherMob, a Social Network Around the Local Forecast http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/sxsw-weathermob-a-social-network-around-the-local-forecast/.                                                                                 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weathermob/id463729367

A Skeptic’s Lament: James Randi on the American psyche.                                                                                         http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/opinion-randi-maya-skeptic

Real time twitter feeds in a Google map interface:                                                                                                             http://tweereal.com/

Do you want to receive an email when Google updates a particular location’s imagery? https://followyourworld.appspot.com/

In the wake of the Tohoku-oki tsunami, scientists now know that seafloor topography affects the strength and height of a tsunami even in the deep ocean and at great distances.                                                                           http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=77331

Where has Aaron been?   Maybe he is just a tad obsessive.                                                                                          https://geoloqi.com/blog/2012/03/data-portraits-powered-by-3-5-years-of-data-and-2-5-million-gps-points/

Map pages show threats from sea level rise and storm surge to all 3000+ coastal towns, cities, counties and states in the Lower 48.                                                                                                                                                           http://sealevel.climatecentral.org/

Pareidolia: I see faces…                                                                                                                                                          http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2012/01/14/machine-pareidolia-hello-little-fella-meets-facetracker/

Lyme Disease Surge Predicted for Northeastern US, Due to Acorns and Mice, Not Mild Winter                          http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120316094452.htm

New hardiness zones show warming trend in Vermont http://vtdigger.org/2012/03/15/new-hardiness-zones-show-warming-trend-in-vermont

Time-Lapse Video Shows Stars and Earth From Space Station                                                                                  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/stars-time-lapse-space-station

Will 2012 be the year of the Open Map?                                                                                                                http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/daily-report-some-sites-bypass-google-maps/               https://plus.google.com/u/0/118383351194421484817/posts/foj5A1fURGt

Strange Days: NASA Earth Observatory’s land surface temperature anomaly map. Noted in the article was that Climate Central reported that in Rochester, Minnesota the overnight low temperature on March 18 was 16.6°Celsius (62°Fahrenheit), a temperature so high it beat the record high of 15.5°Celsius (60°Fahrenheit) for the same date.                         http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=77465                                                                              The Doors: Strange Days  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NSz-9qqgKE

Anything Frank Jacobs writes is worth reading.                                                                                   http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/all-hail-sealand/

U.S. Defense Department Develops Map of Future Climate Chaos                                               http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=us-defense-department-develops-map-future-climate-chaos