New Online Maps

The Urban Forest map for San Francisco is online and ready for searching and contributions. “You can search by species, including by popular name or proper Latin name, and by location—to find the nearest cherry blooming or date palm ripening near you.”
Autodesk, and support from the City’s Department of Public Works and the non-profit Friends of the Urban Forest made the map possible. It was launched on April 21, but is just getting local press. It’s been the one touted MapGuide Open Source effort Autodesk has touted for some time. (2007 PR)

- NBC Bay Area

David Allen of Chesterfield, N.H. is a bookseller, but he’s putting nearly 100 historical Vermont maps online — including one that for the first time used the name Vermont. They are scans.

- Times Argus (The story was picked up via AP, but none of the versions I found included a link; even the Times Argus only included links to specific maps.)

Sometimes new online maps are about current data in a nostalgic form. How about Seattle’s current map but in true 8bit form? 8Bit Seattle is just that. The brainchild of Seattle native Brett Camper and sponsored by JetCityOrange and Azalea Software, it’s part of an expansion of a concept that started in New York. A larger rendition, searchable by address, is available on the broader 8-Bit Cities site, along with maps for Amsterdam, Austin, Berlin, Detroit, London, Paris, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.

- TechFlash

International Tidbits

Bahrain has added five new geospatial slides to its national geographic database per General Informatics Organisation Geospatial IT Director Dr Khalid Abdulrahman AlHidan said. They include the geoid, land heights, and provide health and demographic details and join more than 25 other layers. It’s interesting to me that the article on this announcement refers to the layers as maps (very understandable) but then fails to note what the geoid is.

- Bahrain Business News

FahrasQatar is an interactive online business directory developed by ictQATAR. The company ran a business plan competition
to select the first company to be part of ictQATAR’s new Digital Content Incubation Centre, which aims to help grow a sustainable digital content industry in Qatar. The winning plan included GIS:

In their winning business case, Mohamed al-Sada, Reem, Fahad and Mohamed al-Kuwari outlined an ambitious strategy for the ‘Qatari Yellow Pages’ that would focus on better integrating a Geographic Information System (GIS) into the site, improving its ‘search engine marketing’, enhanced security and better functionality of the site across multiple platforms, such as mobile phones.

- Gulf Times

Pune’s Great Software Lab (GS Lab) along with the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune is modeling the spread of Japanese Encephalitis (JE) in Gorakhpur district of Uttar Pradesh. The portal and the map-based tool are designed to help researchers visualize data. An NGO, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), pushed the project forward.

- Indian Express

Local GIS Tidbits

How often should we fly the county? In Auglaize County, Ohio, the plan had been every 4 years, but that’s changed.

The plan now is to conduct a new flight and use that data for county mapping every five or six years.
“Doing one every other year just isn’t justified,” Reinhart said. “We want to be able to show a difference in what has transpired during that time.”

The county had to postpone flights when funds, derived from housing sales, dropped. But with funds coming back in, and a deal with the state, the county plans for a 2011 flight for about $70,000 out of county coffers.

- Wapakoneta Daily News

Wisconsin’s Sex Offender Map has been online for two years. Lance Wiersma, director of the Sex Offender Programs for the Department of Corrections admits “It can be a little overwhelming. You look at, ‘Where’s my house compared to all these dots on this map?’” She offers some insights into how the public should understand the map.

“Really what this map shows is that sex offenders cross all demographics, as far as income, race and social status, all parts of all neighborhoods,” Wiersma said. “And so people should be aware of that and shouldn’t be thinking, ‘They’re not in my neighborhood.’ ”

- Kenosha News

Traveling in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest this weekend? You are required to have a map of what type of motor vehicle can be used where. If your vehicle is not where it should be you will be fined. There are no longer signs noted approved vehicles.  The new free map is part of new laws about traffic management.

- KomoNews

Followers of @LACoSurveyor on Twitter will receive info “on tract map and parcel map recordations throughout Los Angeles County, including the unincorporated areas and all 88 cities” as well as other land surveying and development-related topics, such as proposed legislation or policy changes, and updated subdivision processing guidelines.

- The Signal