Agricultural Private Investigator Uses Landsat to Identify Farm Insurance Fraud

On GIS Day NPR reports on how technology is helping the USDA crack down on farmer illegally garner insurance payments for crops they did not plant. Among the tools? Landsat imagery. There’s also data mining which helps identify (spatial) situations where everyone in say a county had a fine year with corn, but one farmer put in a claim.

GIS Day Stands on its Own?

I want to share an observation as we head into today’s celebration of GIS Day. I read through a dozen or so press releases touting map galleries and global positioning satellite walks (oops!) and noticed that the company behind this event, ESRI is rarely mentioned. What is mentioned is that it part of National Geographic’s Geography Awareness Week and or Geography Action (though few people seem to know what that is). So, does that mean that GIS Day stands on its own? Or does it mean that ESRI can pull back its involvement/marketing? Has it become the grass roots effort ESRI describes on the GIS Day website?

Stephen Whitaker Takes Home Greenwhich GIS Data

After a court (many courts actually) decided in his favor, consultant Stephen Whitaker (and anyone else who has the money) can acquire three CDs that contain aerial photos of all 46.4 square miles of Greenwich. Property line and building footprints are another $70. But, sewers and manholes are not in the databases, since they are a security concern. Whitaker noted in Greenwhich Time that the cost is quite high since the reproduction, which he says takes five minutes, is far less expensive. There are still issues outstanding: The state Freedom of Information Commission has yet to rule on the release of the additional infrastructure information.

Celebrity Voices from Your Nav System

Mr. T, Burt Reynolds and Dennis Hopper have signed on to be the voice of your navigation system – so long as its from Wanderlust Media, Data by Tele Atlas. Celebrity voices will go for about $10 and generic ones (surfer, cowboy, whatever) will be $5. I guess its ringtones all over again!

Mapping the Lunch Room

The Green Bay Press from Green Bay Wisconsin reports that West De Pere Middle School will hold “Mix is Up Day” – where kids can’t sit at their regular lunch tables. Nope. They’ll be assigned randomly to a new one for the day. To get students thinking about diversity, classes drew maps of the lunch room and who sat where. “Many lunchroom maps used the same labels — preps, jocks, geeks, nerds, skaters, bikers — and some used just two basic groups: cool and not-cool. “ Map what you know!