Maine Fisherman, Researcher, GIS User, Wins MacArthur

A Maine fisherman and researcher of the distribution of fish in the Gulf of Maine, Ted Ames, got the call he’d won one of the 25 $500,000 prizes just last week. His connection to GIS? He researched the nature and distribution of fish by interviewed older fisherman and corroborating them with scientific studies. Then, he put the whole thing in a GIS.

Canada: $100 million for Landuse GIS

Canadian Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Andy Mitchell announced his government will invest $100 million in the development “of an Internet-based service that will provide a recognized source of information, analysis and interpretation of land, soil, water, climatic and biodiversity data to assist land-use managers in their agri-environmental planning.” It’s a GIS, it says later in the release. More importantly it says it will use “proven Geographic Information System (GIS) technology.”

Updated Go-Geo!

Gary Price at Resource Shelf tipped me off that a new version of the Go-Geo! portal was launched on September 1, 2005. Go-Geo! is the UK academic spatial data portal operated and maintained by EDINA National Data Centre, University of Edinburgh. It’s sort of an academic (that is aimed at academics) “geospatial one-stop” as is a “key component of the UK academic Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) and is financially supported by the Joint Information Services Committee (JISC).” I wish it were head and shoulders above the U.S.’s geodata.gov so we could steal some ideas, but it’s about the same in many ways.

GIS, Maps and Katrina - Sept 19/20

Coverge of mapping, GIS and geospatial technologies on Sept 19 and 20.

“A Michigan native, Miller came to the University of Maine for his master’s degree in geology and stayed, working for the past seven years working as the Maine Forest Service Geographic Information System coordinator. ’If you go back probably 10 years ago, this technology was not available,’ Miller said. ‘You didn’t have the software and technology. It was cumbersome to us and not accepted by a lot of people as a tool that could be useful.’ Miller admits the challenge of using his specialized training and experience in such a high-profile emergency drew him to volunteer. But he said the real incentive was much more personal. ’I just thought it would be the right thing to do,’ he said.”
MaineToday.com

“Three Tulane assistant coaches had to use GPS to locate their houses in New Orleans.”
Miami Herald

“Thales Navigation, its professional products and Magellan(R) consumer business, provided hundreds of GPS units to search and rescue teams, government agencies, and local authorities in the Gulf Coast region. In addition, Thales donated $50,000 to the American Red Cross.”
Thales Press Release

“Digital Angel Corporation and its distributor, Schering-Plough donating implantable RFID (radio-frequency identification) microchips and scanners to animal shelters along the Gulf Coast to help in the extensive pet identification effort following Hurricane Katrina. To date, Digital Angel has provided 2,000 microchips and 28 scanners that Schering-Plough is distributing to various animal shelters along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.”
Digital Angel Press Release

University Libraries and GIS

Since I’m not studying or teaching at a university anymore, it’s nice to see “what’s up” at the local ones. MIT Libraries has a long geospatial resource list. The MIT community can check out GPS receivers for a day at a time or use 3 GIS workstations. It’s also possible to run ArcGIS remotely using VPN and on a Mac via Citrix.