Local GIS Tidbits
Memphis, TN is letting an RFP for IT services to serve its 4500 city employees. With the exception of Radio Maintenance, GIS and six Information Technology Officers, all IS departments are currently outsourced.
A Western Australia government produced map showing where genetically modified canola is being grown has some in a tizzy. The government’s map, per anti-GMO activists, lacks detail - it just reveals the number of farms and hectares in GMO production per shire. The anti-GMO lobby launched its own map “pinpointing” the GMO farms. Per the government, the acreage is about 1% of the total cereal crop of the state. The map, from Gene Ethics, among others for the other Australian states is on this document directory page. Map format: jpg.
- AAP
It took five years and influx of money from La Plata County (Colorado), the Colorado Water Conservation Board and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to consolidate 30 years of paper flood maps into today’s version. The county has been in the National Flood Insurance program since 1980, so if a homeowner is in a designated flood plain and has insurance, the new maps won’t make a difference. Residents in a newly designated flood plain will face an added cost above their homeowners insurance.
Warren County, KY has completed a map (pdf) of which areas do not fall within 5 miles of a fire station. The goal is to help those trying to get insurance rate cuts offer an official document to agents. In the past those agents have used MapQuest to determine eligibility. Some insurers do not use distance as a factor, but many do, adding up to a 30% premium to policies. About 2000 people in the county do not live within the five mile mark.
More than 2,000 people in Warren County live more than five miles from a fire station, which can lead to insurance rates of up to 30 percent higher than those who live closer to stations. There are also discussions of adding fire houses.
In partnership with the California Department of Water Resources, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service and others, NASA will provide weekly processed satellite images of California farmland to farmers. The photos will show farmers which of their crops are in need of water, and which aren’t, enabling them to use space-age technology to inform irrigation decisions. The imagery should provide better information than the daily estimates that do not take things like site specific conditions or annual variability in the weather.
