Dr. Oz Likes GIS and other Health GIS News

Dr. Oz and his crew were in Philadelphia giving 15 minute physicals and compiling the data from them for the mayor. Medigadget did an interview with Oz's  medical unit clinical event director, Mike Hoaglin and caught this gem about GIS.

Medgadget:  Are there any trends in medical technology or innovation (e.g. quantified self, big data analytics) that you and Dr. Oz are particularly excited about?

Hoaglin:  In general, much of the data out there remain untapped and hold a treasure trove of information that can really transform the way we think about health. We’re particularly excited about the potential of decoding unstructured data through natural language processing technology, where we can pull critical data elements from prose writing. Incorporating GIS technology into disease surveillance will allow the earlier intervention in devasting health crises as tell-tale symptoms are reported earlier.

- Medgagadget

URISA’s Best Web GIS and other Open Source GIS News

A City of Cornwall employee has been recognized for his efforts in creating a unique on-line mapping site for the City.

GIS Applications Specialist Denis Lalonde of the City of Cornwall (Ontario, CA) received the gold medal prize in the Best Web GIS category of the Best Geographic Information System Challenge Awards from the Ontario URISA chapter.. The awards are organized by the Ontario chapter of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA).The app is built on MapGuide and includes city businesses, transit routes and times, property lines, addresses, subdivision plans, zoning, municipal utilities, points of interest, historical air photos.

- Cornwall Seaway News

Open-source development, because of its collaborative nature, moves faster. One dude writes it, another improves upon it. ESRI, a vendor of proprietary geographic information systems, and Microsoft, our database vendor, don't offer some of the advanced features my staff has created for a location-based business app using open-source tools PostgreSQL and PostGIS.

Because of the speed of innovation and advanced features of open-source products, we were able to create an app with a far faster end user response time than if we had relied on the two proprietary vendors. I'll take the agility any day, even though the skeptics have warned me of the dire consequences of using an open-source database.

-  Jonathan Feldman, contributing editor for InformationWeek and director of IT services for a rapidly growing city in North Carolina writing in a commentary titled Open Source: Why Are You Still Waiting? at InformationWeek.

Although some of the proprietary vendors such as ESRI were demonstrating at the [FOSS4GNA] conference, it's unclear what unique capabilities they can continue to provide given all the open source choices.

- From a recap of FOSS4GNA by Jim Collinsworth (published May 22 - not sure why) on the BreakThrough Technologies blog

Google Renames Google Earth Engine, Offers Free License to Non-Profits

We learned of the name change to Google Maps Engine at the Location Intelligence Conference, but I guess it was not the right venue to announce free licenses for non-profits.

We didn’t think “Earth Builder” reflected the true capabilities of the product or vision that we have for easily accessible geospatial data. So, today we're renaming Google Earth Builder to be called Google Maps Engine. Today we’re also announcing the launch of our Google Maps Engine grants program for nonprofits. 

I for one always found the "Builder" name awkward and was never sure what Google Earth had to do with it.

- Google Enterprise Blog

Location Intelligence 2012 - Photo Montage

Here's a photo montage of the day's events taken at Directions Magazine's Location Intelligence Conference, May 22, 2012.

Presentations Can Make Great Sessions, But so Can Good Questions! #LI12

I've been moderating sessions today at the Location Intelligence Conference. I'm very pleased all my speakers have stayed within their time; it makes my life so much easier. It also means we have time for a good number of questions. The session on Embedded Geospatial Capabilities in Enterprise Computing and BI Solutions included presentations on how the FCC implemented its enterprise solution, how the Dept of Defenses is working with open source geospatial in the imagery arena, a new international geocoding offering and well, one speaker who simply wrapped up what the others said. When we got to the Q & A part of the session I could not imagine where things might go... but go they did!

• We talked about the challeges of geocoding in Turkey - which renamed all of its streets and hence has two different geocoding data sets.
• We talked about the challenges of geocoding in Russia - where municipalities and regions use different coordinate systems.
• We talked about if its possible to provide a confidence level for geocoding in different parts of the world.
• We talked about what happens when open source software gives you the "wrong" answer.
• We talked about if you should start with open source or non-open source software if you expect to have a hybrid solution in the end.
• We talked about the open source sofware in the iPhone (look it up if you don't know)

Two things stood out for me when the questions started popping:

• Several were from our student volunteers (go students!!!)
• Presenters who focused on other topics in their presentations, took up and addressed questions outside their realms and added greatly to the conversation.

Sometimes the presentations do not forshadow the fun and excitement to be had in the interactive part of the session.