Free Mosaic for Illinois County and other Government GIS News

Phillip K. Mol of G-1 Aerial Surveys has offered to replace a 1978 aerial mosaic that hangs in the Bureau County, IL Court House. He does such work for about $1000 but will give the county a new one for free. No, there will be no new pics - he'll assemble it from IDNR and USGS orthoquads that date to 2005. But, he does want his company to get credit on the image.

- News Tribune

The City of Indio [CA] has been approved to receive grant funding in the amount of $47,000 from the California Office of Traffic Safety to implement an automated traffic collision and tracking program with Geographic Information System (GIS) capabilities. "This is a significant upgrade and modernization of how we'll be able to prevent collisions and make Indio's roads safer. This program will greatly assist the city in proactively reducing the number of reported traffic collisions city wide, said Indio's Mayor Glenn Miller.

- My Desert

As many as 56 medical marijuana facilities in Colorado are located within 1,000 feet of a school, according to an I-News analysis of school addresses and licenses issued to more than 700 medical marijuana facilities statewide.

Federal and state laws require a 1000 foot buffer. So, the feds are cracking down as they recently did in California. GIS was part of the analysis.

- Inewsnetwork.org

Forget OSM and Google Maps, Hillsborough, NJ is using GreenMap.org for its community mapping efforts.

- Hillsborough Patch

Malaria Logistics Map and other Health GIS News

Hokey Min of the College of Business Administration, at Bowling Green State University, explored Africa's maralia problem via logistics. The paper appeared in the  International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management.

Min has developed a comprehensive supply chain map that reveals the labyrinths of African logistics infrastructure, distribution channels, government regulations and business customs. This map could help improve access to anti-malarial drugs as well as avoiding disruption to the drug supply chain.

- Kruger Park News

The Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, an advocacy group for health care reform, has launched a new website with an interactive map to help the uninsured find care around the state.

Sadly, the news story  had a bad link to the organization and no link to the map itself. 

- Chieftain

A study in Toronto determined where you live has an impact on your likelihood of having a heart attack. Despite looking at many different potential impacts, the conclusion is clear:

The study concluded those neighbourhoods with highest household incomes and higher levels of education were all associated with lower risk.

- 680 News

Colorado Springs Looks at Economic Gardening and other Government GIS News

State Rep. Pete Lee would like to lend a hand to promising local, small-but-growing businesses. One bill that the Colorado Springs Democrat plans to push in the 2012 legislative session would promote statewide establishment of "economic gardening."

Economic gardening is a concept first explored in Littleton. The idea is to offer businesses technical assistance, such as data from geographic information systems, or GIS, that will give them a clearer and fuller understanding of their community and customers.

- Colorado Springs Independent

The city of L.A.'s transportation department released an interactive online map of bike lanes and routes this week, the first of its kind from the agency.

The map shows existing and planned bikeways from the city’s bicycle master plan, a measure passed by the Los Angeles City Council in March 2011 that calls for an eventual network of 1,680 miles of linked bikeways.

- LA Times Blog

St. Paul's Frogtown neighborhood now its own GIS, thanks to a member of the Frogtown Neighborhood Association, Tait Danielson Castillo. He's using it to map crimes, trees and other data avilable from the city. And, he's using the GIS in unique ways, per one local GIS user.

"The way he's using it, I don't think it's common at all," said Jeff Matson, coordinator of the Community GIS Program at the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs at the University of Minnesota. "I've been waiting forever for someone to run with it like he has."

- Star Tribune

Quote of the Week - 12/22/11

“That’s an artifact of GIS,” he said. “We have no intention of going through the natural area. John (Stokes) asked it to be moved, and I said I would.”

- Aaron Million describes how a map in his proposal to FERC, showing that his pipeline routed through Soapstone Prairie and Meadow Springs Ranch, was an error. The Regional Watershed Supply Project, also known as the Flaming Gorge Pipeline, was covered in the Coloradoan.

Health GIS Tidbits - 6/27/11

WellPoint's affiliated health plans have launched an emergency room program and education campaign incorporating Google Maps to make it easier to find and use retail health clinics and urgent care centers for non-emergency conditions when regular physicians are not available.

- press release

CEHI's Community Assessment Project [Durham, NC] aims to measure the role of such factors on human health, particularly that of women and children. Researchers will layer the data gleaned from the May-September field collection with current information on tax values, crime, demographics and locations of health care providers, schools and day care centers.

This summer's collection will cover 30,000 tax parcels and look "for everything from foundation damage, to dead animals, to security signs. He said the scale of the study, involving such a great chunk of the city, makes it stand out from others he's reviewed."

The Community Assessment Project is tied to a birth outcome study called Healthy Pregnancy, Healthy Baby in which pregnant women are assessed during doctor's appointments for health and quality of life. The health of their babies is assessed after they're born, and information about their neighborhoods figures into the overall analysis.

- The Herald-Sun

Why might readmissions to the hospital in one Denver Zip Code be so high? Mapping the data on health care and the nature of the community might help reveal the answer.

One northwest Denver ZIP code in the readmission pilot stood out with high rates of elderly residents returning to the hospital. Overlaying census data for the neighborhood shows an area in transition, with new Latino families moving in and white homeowners aging in place.

 

[Jane] Brock [medical officer of the Colorado Foundation for Medical Care] said further research could explore whether aging homeowners have few connections to their new neighbors and don't seek help with rides to the drugstore, grocery store or doctor.

Pilot studies are combing tabular and spatial data to help address this challenge: The sickest 1 percent of patients spend nearly 30 percent of a health system's money.

- Denver Post via Spatial Sustain

A study that geocoded malaria cases in Brazil and used LANDSAT data (in a way I don't quite follow) confirmed:

Environmental factors and their alteration are associated with the occurrence and spatial distribution of malaria cases in rural settlements.

- 7th Space describing work in the Malaria Journal