KUOW Weekday: The Arts of Maps (Thursday)

KUOW, based at the University of Washington, hosts its “Weekday” radio program on “The Art of Maps” (9 am pacific) today (Thursday).

Maps tell you more than simply how to get from here to there. Nearly any kind of information can be put into a map. Perhaps that is why cartography is so compelling to artists. What can artists do with maps? What makes maps such a unique art form? Today on “Weekday,” we explore the map as art.

Podcast available as of Friday at the page noted above.

Oregon Data Portal Opens

Phase One of the The Oregon Spatial Data Library was launched in November 18 for GIS Day. “The Oregon Spatial Data Library provides easy and convenient ways to find, access and share geospatial data.”

It’s all ESRI-based, including an ArcGIS Server viewer. Strangely, the basemap that appears has “For Official Use Only” stamped on it. I could not find out why. You can download data (it’s actually e-mailed to you) in many formats (MIF, shapefile, E00, KML, GML, GeoJSON, DWG) from the download page, but the viewer only exports bitmaps from what I can tell.

- press release (Note to PR people: this release has not made it to any news sites yet!)

Seen During Geography Awareness Week III

“Unlike flat paper maps, GIS, short for geographic information systems, allows people to analyze relationships between many layers of information at once.”

- From an article on Helena 5th graders who attended a GIS Day event at the Montana State Library on KFBB TV.

Wisconsin Bill: Stop the Presses on State Maps

Rep. Brett Davis, R-Oregon, a cosponsor of the bill states: “This specific bill saves the state taxpayers $250,000 by not allowing the Department of Transportation to print state highway maps,”

A surplus of more than 400,000 maps will only last 6 months.

- Channel 3000

Why I got an e-mail from Wolfram Research

Colin DeCair at Wolfram e-mailed to let me know about an interesting geosci modeling tool built on Mathematica. I had to do some research but now recall that Wolfram Research (the folks behind the in the news Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine) is also the company behind Mathematica. In fact Mathematica made the new engine possible per the company.

What is Mathematica? “the ultimate technical application and environment” That means its good for modeling, among other things. Yu-Feng Lin, a hydrogeologist at the Illinois State Water Survey (I know of them because they make cool solid models) is using it to understand groundwater recharge and discharge patterns. The app he and his team are building “provides a generic pattern-recognition approach that supports virtually any spatial decision support system (SDSS) used to assist in management applications such as water resources, land use, and agricultural development.”

- Wolfram Blog