GIS, Maps and Katrina - Sept 2

Coverge of mapping, GIS and geospaital technologies on Sept 2.

Opinion

“Let’s get one thing straight: Reports that the entire city would flood under 10-15 feet of water, or that the French Quarter and surrounding areas were under water, are ignorant and inexcusable. These and similar shots have been available to any customer with the money to pay for them since the crisis began, yet the TV networks in particular seem to be unburdened by even a single clue about any of this stuff.”
Linux Pipeline Blog

Reporting

“The rescuers used a digital GPS tracker to log the location so another crew could retrieve the body later Thursday.”
St. Petersburg Times (Florida)

“This is not just a frivolous use of new toys by geeks with too much time on their hands. These experiments [mapping mashups] can help people find out whether their house is under water, which streets are accessible and what has happened to their neighbourhood.”
BBC News

“According to Newmark [founder of criags list], page views on the site were up four times the normal amount on Tuesday, and where community-based forums such as “lost and found” see a few posts a day, Tuesday there were well over a thousand.”
Wired

Data

“GlobeXplorer is providing the following aerial and satellite images of the disaster locations as a free service for members of news organizations and general Internet users.”
Disaster Images Page
GlobeXplorer

ORBIMAGE Gallery
ORBIMAGE

GIS, Maps and Katrina - Sept 1

As Katrina continues to impact the south eastern United States, GIS and mapping have been a huge part of the rescue and relief efforts. Here’s a round up of what the press, bloggers and data providers are offering.

Geospatial in Reporting

“The U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wetlands Center, headquartered [in Lafayette Louisiana], has geographers using a variety of satellite and aerial photos to plot the map coordinates of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people still stranded on rooftops and in trees in New Orleans so rescuers in boats and helicopters can find them.”
The Advertiser (Lafayette, Louisiana)

“On Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina came ashore, Eqecat Inc. of Oakland was predicting it would cost insurance companies $15 billion to $30 billion. When the storm lost speed and veered away from New Orleans to a less- populated area, Eqecat reduced its insured-loss estimate to $12 billion to $25 billion. Three hours after Katrina made landfall, Eqecat trimmed its prediction again, to its current estimate of $9 billion to $16 billion.
San Francisco Chronicle

“The storm virtually wiped Waveland [Mississippi] off the map, prompting state officials to say it took a harder hit from the wind and water than any other town along the coast.”
Associated Press

“Washed away main routes will hamper that rescue. Officials were working on plans Wednesday afternoon to map a “back-roads” route [from the SuperDome] into Texas [Astrodome].”
Keyser Mineral Daily News Tribune

Commentary

“IF YOU THREW a dart at a map of the United States 999 times, you could not hit a worse spot to locate a metropolis [than where New Orleans is].

“Before Katrina struck, a proposed federal study of how the city could survive a Category 4 or 5 hurricane was shelved because of the cost of the war in Iraq, while funding for the city’s main flood-protection plan was slashed.”
Philadelphia Daily News

“...a researcher could have Nexised the New Orleans Times-Picayune five-parter from 2002, “Washing Away,” which reported that the city’s 100,000 residents without private transportation were likely to be stranded by a big storm. In other words, what’s happening is what was expected to happen: The poor didn’t get out in time.”
Slate

“The Geospatial industry and community responded to last year’s Indonesian tsunami with an outpouring of ... flashy web maps. Let’s ease up on the maps this time, and focus on the material aid and relief desperately needed by the people injured and displaced by Hurricane Katrina.”
import cartography [blog]

“MSNBC’s mapping feature (via Scoble) is seriously overproduced”
The Map Room [blog]

Maps and Images

“The imagery posted on this site is of the Gulf coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama after Hurricane Katrina made landfall.

“This imagery was acquired by the NOAA Remote Sensing Division to support NOAA national security and emergency response requirements. In addition, it will be used for ongoing research efforts for testing and developing standards for airborne digital imagery.

“Please note that these images are uncorrected and not rotated. The approximate ground sample distance (GSD) for each pixel is 37 cm (1.2 feet). The images have 60% forward overlap, and sidelap unknown. Image file size is between 2 MB and 3 MB.”[While it says here this imagery is no longer available until further notice, I found it was via this index.]
NOAA, Via The Shelby Star

“Please do NOT add markers that ASK for information, only add markers that PROVIDE information.” [Request on Google Maps-based site for posting updated information on the status of areas impacted by Katrina.]
Via Google Map Mania

Hurricane Katrina Before and After
Space Imaging

Hurricane Katrina Media Gallery
DigitalGlobe

JavaScript “Slider” App for Comparing Before/After DigitalGlobe Images [I only got this to work in IE, not FireFox]
Chris’ GISmos

The Impact of Hurricane Katrina (Flash Interactive Maps)
The New York Times

Katrina Regional Aftermath (Flash Interactive Maps)
MSNBC

Google Will Like Tiny Satellites?

Red Herring offers that tiny satellites may replace larger ones in the future. Ok, fine, that’s not a new idea. So, what’s up with this subhead? “University of Toronto researchers see ‘nano’ satellites as the digital imagery answer to kludgy Google Earth.” Kludgy Google Earth? As another blogger recently noted, how is it these folks don’t know that Google doesn’t create the data, it licenses it from others who have the satellites in orbit? The article goes on, “Google Earth has generally been well received, but some users have criticized its images as inconsistent in quality and found its technology to be kludgy.”

NGA Provides Imagery to FEMA from “Spy Satellites”

Reuters reports that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) “spy satellites” have been providing imagery of the hurricane stricken areas of the south east to FEMA since Friday. The agency also provided “after” imagery including its first “first cloud-free satellite image of downtown New Orleans. The image was snapped by a commercial satellite.” So, NGA is now, I guess with its licensing deal, giving away commercial imagery. We at Directions contacted several of the commercial satellite imagery vendors and hope to share some once it is available.

More on ChicagoCrime.org and its Creators

Government Technology has an interesting article about Adrian Holovaty, the fellow behind chicagocrime.org, the mashup between Google Maps and a Chicago crime database. Among the interesting tidbits:

“Holovaty’s site is built using open source software—Apache Web server, the PostgreSQL database server and the Python programming language.”

“In total, Holovaty estimates that he has spent about 50 hours on chicagocrime.org, and Web designer Wilson Miner estimates an additional 30 hours on the design and presentation.”

“Because of all the interest from organizations wanting similar features on their Web sites, Holovaty and Miner are developing standard pricing to create similar Web sites for paying clients.”