India
Illegal billboards are the issue in Bhubaneswar. The tool to fight them? GIS and satellite imagery.
[Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation] BMC's deputy commissioner Priyadarshi Mohapatra said, "We are planning to take the help of GIS (geographic information system) system to control the hoarding management in the city." Mohapatra added: "The images captured by satellites can help us to monitor advertising agencies so that they do not cheat us. Photographs generated through high-resolution satellite images will be fed into computers to know the exact size and location of the hoardings. After the images are obtained, we can do physical inspection to compare the data."
- Times of India
In Thane, the issue is private building on government owned land. Again, GIS to the rescue!
"Government has asked Thane Municipal Commissioner to submit a report on these illegal structures in a week's time by taking the help of Global Information System (GIS) platform to map out slum pocket locations and various other aspects," they [city officials] said. Based on the review of these encroachments, a policy will be formulated, they added.
- IBN Live News
Hyderabad-based Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) has initiated work on multi-hazard vulnerability mapping of the country’s entire coastline to help authorities take up precautionary measures in the event of natural disasters.
The result will be a 3D map from which the most vulnerable areas can be identified.
- The Hindu
North Korea
In a report submitted to the parliamentary committee on defense, the ministry said North Korea has been developing the new Global Positioning System (GPS) jammer with a range of more than 100 kilometers, among other devices for electronic warfare.
North Korea had imported jammers from Russia, but they only jam 50-100km.
- Yonhap News
by Adena Schutzberg on 09/07 at 05:40 AM |
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If you are feeling bombarded by the latest and greatest for 3D visualization you are not alone. This week I was struck that news about augmented reality seems to be percolating again. I sensed a lull in the action in AR over the last few months but now both Layar and metaio reloaded with recent announcements. Layar announced their Layar Vision (watch the video below), an enhancement to their platform with more realism and metaio announced a conference on AR plus something called The Augmented City (watch the video below). (See the news on all recent AR announcements.)
In particular, watching the Augmented City demo by metaio I was trying to determine who their audience would be. The demo shows a more dynamic view of a modeled city with location-based advertising placement and other external stylizing of building facades. But I had to question if the technology was more for city managers or was it truly more consumer oriented.
In general, the buzz around building information models, that learns toward the integration of more internal building information, and LiDAR point clouds that render external building and road features with true location accuracy got me thinking about a convergence with AR and the intended audience.
The camps of architects and engineers, remote sensing geospatialists, and the augmented reality folks have pieces of the visualization puzzle that provide aspects of 3D that could, but don't have to, come together. But you should rightfully ask who the audience is for all of these visualization model types and are the products they produce useful to each. You see, we love our techno toys without realizing whether they are useful ... technology in search of a market, if you will. But these visualization tools are begging for convergence or integration. Whether they should or not is the question.
Continue reading...
by Joe Francica on 08/11 at 02:31 PM |
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“The implication is that our internal sense of space is actually rather flat – we are very sensitive to where we are in horizontal space but only vaguely aware of how high we are,” said Professor Kate Jeffery, lead author from UCL Psychology and Language Sciences.
That conclusion comes from studies of animals and their ability to "map" whether they are high up or not. Brain studies show that animal brains only weakly track elevation.
- Indian Express
Gov Tech interviewed Greg Franklin, the newly appointed deputy director of health information technology for the California Technology Agency. Data integration was among the questions.
You mentioned that next-gen 911 and GIS could theoretically integrate health data. What might technology deliver?
From a GIS standpoint, being able to map, for example, concentrations of uninsured populations or concentrations of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. How would you do that? You have health information exchange, so the assumption is that providers will be able to capture data though electronic health records — and be able to make data transactions from specialists to primary care providers and move the data around. At the same time, if you are able to capture that data and you have a geocoding service — and some organizations already have it — you can geocode that data. But that data is collected through a central point, maybe through an HIE system itself.
From a mapping standpoint, you would be able to look at pockets of [the population] that may be enrolled — let’s say, in a commercial health plan like Blue Shield of California. You may be able to see a lot of diabetes in Blue Shield of California’s population, but where is it geographically. If it were found in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Fresno, that would allow you to tailor certain health-care programs and target those populations in those geographic areas. Is the geocoding [data] part of the HIE mainframe or should it be retained locally at the provider’s organization? Those things would need to be worked out. But clearly there is opportunity to have this massive endeavor to geocode the data moving around the state and be able to report on that from a mapping standpoint, and allow targeting at those specific geographic sites.
- Gov Tech
Kate Jones writes on the G3 blog:
The question [What is today’s equivalent to Jon Snow’s Map?] that was raised by James Reid from JISC during the workshop I was leading at the open geo health event. I would be interested to hear what the readers of this blog think? The workshop was discussing “why GIS is under-utilised in the NHS?” The term GIS in this sense is probably better replaced by location or spatially enabled technology as it encompasses the extent and breadth of contemporary desktop/web/mobile technology.
One suggestion: crowdsourced maps from Haiti. Another: H1N1 maps from a few years ago. Interesting question!
- G3 blog
by Adena Schutzberg on 08/11 at 03:00 AM |
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TouchTable: always a crowd pleaser but what's really new? In the five plus years since they first appeared at the Esri UC conference there have been some improvements to three key areas:
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Form Factor: The table is offered in 32" 46" and 84" displays
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Touch sensitivity: resolving the number of touch points on the display has been increased to 60 and "palm rejection" is accommodated. Here, the sensitivity is resolving how the display senses pressure points from one user.
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Network connectivity: the way one user can collaborate with another in a remote location has been added. That is, as one person moves the display from one location, a TouchTable device in another location in the same office or miles away will also move.
TouchTable (click for larger image)
Gatewing: Gatewing is a lightweight unmanned aerial vehicle that probably stole the show based on the number of people gawking at this 2 meter-sized styrofoam air wing. What's cool is that it takes off by itself and its flightlines are pre-programmed. There are no worries about crashing this thing because it simply bounces. It holds a 2 kg payload of a digital camera and all the emphemeris data is recorded for easy upload to a mapping application. The most useful applications for Gatewing is in mining operations or other small scale projects that perhaps involve no more than a several square kilometer area
Gatwing (click for larger image)
earthmine
earthmine had their vehicle outside the San Diego Convention Center and was give demos of their equipment. We recently covered their announcements on All Points Blog.
Rolta
Rolta was demonstrating their OneView Mobile application built on ArcEngine that's being used for applications in damage assessment and asset inventorying. It runs in a disconnected environment but has strong synchronization capabilities that can control security settings.The complete Rolta OneView solution is a BI platform for enterprise operational management.
PLW ModelWorks
I was really struck by the high definition rendering of building facades this company was offering. It's worth peeking at the data sets they have produced for cities as the building features are rendered beautifully.
TerraGo
TerraGo is back leveraging Adobe IP and is also working hard at establishing some fairly significant technology partnerships with Hitachi, Overwatch,and BAE. TerraGo version 6 now becomes a platform SDK on which other applications can be built and the company is looking towards offering TerraGo Mobile on the Android platform.
Astech Mobile Mapper 10
The Ashtech Mobile Mapper 10 is a ruggedized unit with battery life lasting 20 hours. At 380 grams and using a SiRF chipset that assures quick connect time Ashtech believes the unit offers some benefits that include a competitive $12K price tag.
Accela Analytics
Accela, a government solution provider, was demoing a nice activity tracking and analysis app for the iPad. Built on Accela's Automation platform that integrates with ArcGIS, the app allows government workers to access their agency data on the go. The app was built to have a basic, simple user interface that would be configurable according to the role of the individual, from city manager to field personnel. The app is available for free on Apple’s App Store. (Images below courtesy of Accela)
by Joe Francica on 07/13 at 05:09 PM |
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Jack Dangermond announced Esri is acquiring Procedural.
--- original post 7/23/2010 ---
"GIS is one of the coolest technologies in the world." - Kathleen Maher writing about Procedural and its CityEngine technology in VEKTORRUM.
by Adena Schutzberg on 07/11 at 08:12 AM |
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