International Tidbits
Local Government Online (LGOL) has commissioned a website, www.elections2010.co.nz, that gives space for local candidates to put forward their views and engage with voters. As far as LGOL is aware this is the first nationwide site allowing public questioning of candidates online. It was built by Wellington-based SilverStripe and runs on open source software using the company’s own content management system using geodata from Auckland-based Ko-ordinates.
Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), the gov of Bangalore, in India installed GIS three years ago. The good news? The number of tax paying properties have gone up: in 2009-10, 7.5 lakh properties had paid taxes where as in 2010-2011, nine lakh properties have already paid their taxes. The bad news? The number of defaulters has also gone up: In 2008, “there were about 2.8 lakh defaulters, in 2009 there were about four lakh defaulters and this year the number has gone up to a whopping seven lakh property owners.” Still, officials are not deterred.
Deputy Commissioner D L Chandrashekar, however, remains optimistic. “We are conducting a door-to-door validation of the information that we have collected under the GIS. We will bring the defaulters to book,” he says.
Ushahidi, via CrowdMap in an app called Pakreport, is now in use in Pakistan to help those impacted by the floods. However, it’s not clear it will be as effective as was its use in Haiti.
OCHA’s Verity, however, cautions: “Regarding Pakreport specifically: I am not 100 percent sure that Pakreport.org has proven to be as successful as Ushahidi was in Haiti. I believe this is due to the longer delay in getting it set up, the slightly more convoluted texting procedure, and literacy issues.”
How do you impact international policy? With an app.
The Facts on the Ground app promises to provide an easily accessible overview of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, with up-to-date data on new building and population numbers. It was launched last week by the Israeli rights group Peace Now and its sister organisation in the United States, Americans for Peace Now.
Green dots mark government-approved settlements, while red ones show where settlers have established settlement outposts without government permission. Each settlement is identified by name and there are details of when it was established and whether its residents are secular, religious or nationalists.
The application, which is available for free download, is aimed not just at the layman but at “policy makers, shapers and wonks”, said Ori Nir, a spokesman for Americans for Peace Now.
- The National Newspaper (Arab Emirates)
Chinese scientific researchers successfully drew a 1:100,000 scale land cover map of all of Antarctica under the support of the National 863 Program. This is the world’s first land cover map of Antarctica and the first batch of Chinese-owned important Antarctic scientific data.
AuScope, a not-for-profit collaboration between universities, the CSIRO and other science organisations, is giving
$43 million geoscience body for the study of geoscience. Among the likely uses is enhancing geospatial research.
