GIS: Online Tutorials and More

The Harvard Design School (GSD) has an online manual for GIS which, while customized for a GSD audience, has much useful information for anyone learning or using GIS. Topics included here: "Beginning a GIS Database," "Digital Elevation Models," "Clipping an Ocean Polygon," "Reclassifying Data with Lookup Tables," "Converting GIS Layers to DXF," "ArcMap Data Management Tips," "Designing for Visibility," "Geocoding," "Mapping with Quantitative Data," and "Elements of Cartographic Style." There are also tutorials, some of which are publicly available: ArcMap Data Management, ArcMap Projections, Mapping Census Data, Georeferencing Scanned Maps and Aerial Photos, Raster GIS in ArcMap, Vector Procedures in ArcMap, Modeling Terrain with Contours and Surfaces, Modeling Surfaces with Mapped Images, and more.

Geo-Targeting: BBC Multicasting 5 Broadband Streams of Olympics Coverage

The BBC is multicasting five broadband streams of Olympics coverage, a total of 1,200 hours, using the Real 10 player as well as H.264 video and AAC audio standards. To ensure that the streams can only be viewed in the UK, the BBC is also using Geo-IP, a geo-targeting software from Quova. I confess I wasn't familiar with geo-targeting services, but a quick google turned up this backgrounder and a list of vendors. [I had originally thought of geo-targeting as a "feature" — shows how fusty I am! — but apparently others (Slashdot and Wired) think it's an unreasonable restriction. Censorship seems a bit strong to me, though.]

Noise Levels in Paris

Interactive website depicting noise levels in the city of Paris.

Inter-American Workshop on Access to Environmental Data

A summary of an Inter-American workshop on access to environmental data, just released, provides a good survey of regional and global initiatives and scientific, technical, policy and institutional issues. "Scientists in many Latin American countries already have significant capabilities and data resources that would be of benefit to North American researchers through increased collaboration. Latin American researchers similarly would be afforded new or enhanced capacity-building opportunities and greater exposure to North American data management principles and know-how of direct relevance to their activities."

PostGIS

"PostGIS adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database. In effect, PostGIS 'spatially enables' the PostgreSQL server, allowing it to be used as a backend spatial database for geographic information systems (GIS), much like ESRI's SDE or Oracle's Spatial extension." Released under the GNU General Public License.

MapHub

"MapHub is a web-based, multi-user, group managed information storage system and map. Collecting information about people, places, events, and notes, can help to document unseen narratives and histories in public or private theme-based Hubs. The project is in development.

"MapHub researches the introduction of a geographic and historical data sharing application in an urban landscape. MapHub is a peoples’ map - a map of an urban geography determined not by traditional methodology but instead by the members who participate and contribute everyday in the experience of urban life. MapHub is both a tool and a platform that gives users pen and paper to record their unique and situated perspectives and then deliver that documentation to others.

"The web-based software facilitates individual spatial and temporal narratives managed and distributed through a simple social network. Based on a Geographic Information System (GIS) backend built on open source packages, MapHub manages data as visual symbolic objects specific to Hubs organized thematically. Aside from having a personal Hub based on immediate to distant social or participant networks, alternative Hubs based on themes such as health code violations, past job experiences, safe biking routes, or corporate violations of local regulations are possible. These thematic Hubs will help to promote alternative and peripheral knowledge of the cultural, historical, and current urban geographical landscape of localized spaces."

MapHub grew out of conversations between the Carbon Defense League (CDL), a self-described media arts and engineering practice and writing collective, and the Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA). IAA appears to be dormant, but their mission was/is "to study the forces and structures which effect self-determination; to create cultural artifacts which address these forces; and to develop technologies which serve social and human needs." IAA's last documented project was a van which could print messages on the pavement that would then be visible from tall buildings and low-flying airplanes; sort of like skywriting in reverse.

Integrated GPS/Video Solution

Red Hen Systems is selling a fully integrated GPS/video collection solution. The VMS-X saves all audio, video and GPS data to a single medium and will attach to any camera with a Sony Intelligent Accessory Shoe. WAAS-enabled, 10K point track log, digital compass.

Degree Confluence Project

The goal of this project is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location.

Rethinking GIS and (Homeland) Security / Oracle 10g

Rethinking GIS and (Homeland) Security, by Jeremy W. Crampton, in the Apr 04 issue of GEO World. ""The war against Iraq in 1990-91 was the first full-scale GIS war." (Neil Smith, 1992). The same issue also contains a review of Oracle 10g.

Location and Media

Reblogged from sindikk.aeshin:

I came across two interesting experiments involving location metadata and media today.

First, scientists Roberto Cipolla and Duncan Robertson at the University of Cambridge are building a system for inferring location from image content:

Roberto Cipolla and Duncan Robertson have developed a program that can match a photograph of a building to a database of images. The database contains a three-dimensional representation of the real-life street, so the software can work out where the user is standing to within one metre.

Their project is the inverse of the Mobile Media Metadata project, which aims to infer image content from contextual metadata (including location). It is interesting to consider how the technologies might work together: taking a picture of a building tells the system where you are (South Hall). Knowing where you are tells the system what you are doing there (attending class), from which it can infer who the people in the picture are (your classmates)…

Second, artists Pall Thayer, Sara Kolster, and Pete Gomes are playing with the concept of geocinema, using open-source tools to superimpose GPS coordinates on video on real-time. Cool, but how much more interesting would it be if they could:

1. convert those coordinates to higher-level semantic location metadata ("the place I passed out last night"), and
2. use that metadata not just for superimposing on the video but as input for determining the structure of the video narrative?

Sensor Web, GeoICT

     I recently stumbled on an article by the research staff at the GeoICT Lab entitled GeoSWIFT: an Open Geospatial Sensing Services for Sensor Web, which was published in November 2003. The GeoICT Lab, part of York University (Canada), was "established to advance the development of innovative geospatial information and communication technology, and integrate geomatics and ICT technologies for innovative spatial applications." Their areas of research include Open and Distributed Internet and Wireless GIS, Ubiquitous Mobile Geocomputing and Location-based Services, Web-based 3D/4D High Performance Geospatial Visualization, and Web-based Spatial Data Mining.
     Sensor Web @ GeoICT: "With the presence of cheaper, miniature and smart sensors; abundant fast and ubiquitous computing devices; wireless and mobile communication networks; and autonomous and intelligent software agents, the Sensor Web has become a clear technological trend in geospatial data collection, fusion and distribution. The Sensor Web is a Web-centric, open, interconnected, intelligent and dynamic network of sensors that presents a new vision for how we deploy sensors, collect data, and fuse and distribute information."