Friday, August 24. 2007

New Hurricane Risk Prediction Site for New Orleans

The Army Corps of Engineers developed the Google Earth-based maps with the city, businesses and local groups.

In creating the Web site, the Corps of Engineers ran 152 future storm scenarios on supercomputers to estimate water levels that could be expected under different weather conditions across the Louisiana coastal area. The scenario variables included barometric pressure, maximum wind speed, storm size, how fast the storm was moving and direction of storm track.

- GCN

Monday, July 9. 2007

Google Earth vs. Pictometry

The Sherrif in Cullman County Alabama got a new toy recently and showed it off at the area July 4th events. It's a surplus Hurricane Katrina trailer now outfitted as a mobile command center. That's not the interesting part, this is:

The unit’s computer system is equipped with Google Earth, which is a broadband 3D application that allows users to view three-dimensional maps by combining satellite imagery with the Google Search engine.

I note this because Pictometry was doing very well settling itself in exactly this space with its oblique imagery solutions. Certainly, the Google Earth client is maturing, as are the datasets, but I suspect the aerial obliques still have an edge (and are provided in many areas on Microsoft's Live Search Maps). Moreover, the idea of depending on broadband in time of emergency sounds dodgy; you'd want that data local, woudn't you? Perhaps data is available in addition to the Google Earth data? I hope so.

- The Cullman Times

Thursday, May 24. 2007

New at Directions Magazine

Posted today at Directions Magazine:

- GIS Applications during Response to Hurricane Katrina: Small, Local Government and State Government Experiences
- deCarta and Yahoo! Part Ways: Two Perspectives
- Product Review: DeLorme XMap 5.0 GIS Enterprise

Interested? We have a feed of articles from Directions Magazine or you can subscribe to e-mail newsletters.

Tuesday, April 3. 2007

Podcast: The Human Element in Geospatial Technology Hits the Mainstream

As we've been involved with or heard of GIS implementations around the world there's a recurring rejoinder: "It's not the technology preventing its implementation, but the people" which is short for politics, power and related issues. Now that geospatial technology is maturing and moving to the mainstream that same theme is popping up. And this week, we had some great examples, including the world's (and the U.S. government's) reaction to Google's changes to its Katrina area imagery.

The podcast is 15 minutes long and was recorded on April 2, 2007.

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Friday, February 23. 2007

GIS Lessons from Katrina

Officer.com has a nice summary of "After the Storm: Technology Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina" a session presented at the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) conference in October 2006. Among the presenters was ESRI's Lew Nelson who listed four lessons regarding geospatial from the storm. The big themes: standards, data sharing, preparedness.

Monday, October 2. 2006

USGS Wetlands Team Wins Award

A team from the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wetlands Research Center in Lafayette, Louisian were honored in DC for its search and rescue work and scientific assistance during and after Katrina.

The team received the Service to America Medal, specifically aimed at recognizing the accomplishments of federal employees. The team did search and rescue and made lots of maps. Apparently, the team received an ESRI SAG award this summer, too.

- via Daily Advertiser (LA)