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Tagged: connecticut

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

According to a recent BusinessWeek article, an increasing number of students are participating in virtual internships where they connect with their employer through the internet. Frequently, these opportunities are offered by small startups; however, experts say even larger companies are beginning to search for virtual interns, or e-interns. The U.S. State Department, for example, launched the Virtual Student Foreign Service, which helps students find online internships at State Department domestic offices and diplomatic posts abroad.

Goegraphy matters less for internship. I wonder if GIS shops more likely to go virtual?

US News Univ Directory

Mystic Seaport announced Jeffrey J. Dunn will join the Museum as the new supervisor of the Treworgy Planetarium. He's now a GIS Analyst at UCONN working on his PhD. And, he's a contributor to Very Spatial.

Stamford Plus

A Czech academic is leading efforts to draw up a new map of city centers, not according to their official names but rather based on the commonly understood slang names to have often survived for centuries in spite of the “proper” titles.

Jaroslav David, who teaches Czech studies at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Ostrava in the east of the country, has led a team which has completed the first part of a four year project funded by the Czech Ministry of Culture.

- Czech Position (great name!)

by Adena Schutzberg on 01/31 at 03:00 AM | Comments | Bookmark and Share

Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Nottingham seems to have turned a "first place finish" in the energy price increase rankings into a GIS services aimed at saving government and residents on electricity bills.

Nottingham was identified as the UK city most sensitive to rising electricity prices in a study by GIS specialist Esri UK and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). The study applied the technology to socio-economic data to map which areas of the UK will be hardest hit by rising energy prices this winter.

That turned into a grant.

The council won £200,000 in funding from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and is working with the Nottingham Energy Partnership and Esri to develop and deliver the maps, which go beyond standard static maps of energy flows. Dynamic mapping will comprise layers of information that may be updated to inform decisions on energy generation, development and reducing its carbon footprint.

The system, already in use internally, will be made available to the public. It's not clear how residents will use the dymnamic mapping but they can use it to find if their house might be a fit for solar panels and how much they'd save with new windows. The article is not clear on if the city has full 3D model of residences for calculating savings.

- The Guardian

A shoutout is due to a father and son team who are helping Washington state get its redistricting done fairly.

Vancouver resident John Milem was dubbed the “ultimate redistricting geek” in a tweet Friday by Seattle Times politics writer Jim Brunner. On Sunday, the state Redistricting Commission passed a resolution recognizing Milem as the equivalent of the redistricting volunteer of the year. Milem describes himself as an “advocate for redistricting in the public interest.”

Without pay or position, the 75-year-old resident of Vancouver’s Fircrest Neighborhood attended all of the commission’s 18 public forums around the state and all of the commission’s other regular and special meetings in Olympia, with the exception of three. (He missed two meetings because he was taking part in Clark County’s redistricting process for county commissioner seats). His son, Mark, customized open-source software on which Milem developed independent state maps, suggestions and corrections that would streamline the election process and represent the character of communities. 

Thank you for your service!

- The Columbian

The Greater Bridgeport Regional Council (GBRC) is asking the state of Connecticut for a $1.4M grant to develop GIS mapping system to be shared by several towns.

GIS is designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage and present all types of geographically referenced data. It's the merging of cartography, statistical analysis, and database technology — a layering of up to 100 maps pinpointing waterways, septic systems, roads, wetlands and wells. A GIS integrates, stores, edits, analyzes, shares and displays geographic information for informed decision making.

I'm not aware of any systems that have a 100 layer limitation.

Monroe Patch

The Boston Biz Journal did a map of the wealthiest ZIP Codes in Massachusetts. (I don't live in any of them, but bike and run in many of them!) The data is from Esri; the map Google. I'm confident Esri is working to better integrate its data business with ArcGIS Online to enable just such maps.

BBJ

by Adena Schutzberg on 01/03 at 06:01 AM | Comments | Bookmark and Share

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Here in New England, there was a daiy count after a freak October snow storm of how many people were still without power. The last folks to get the lights on were in Connecticut. And, that event was after the August topical storm Irene beat up the same area. The governor convened a panel Nov 30 to learn how the local communities and power company could work together better in the future. At the heart of the discussions: GIS, lack of data sharing, and communication issues. The article is another reminder that it's people, not tech, that make cooperation possible.

- CT News Junkie

In Montclair, NJ, the issue is debris pickup for the October storm. One councilman was frustrated by a map.

On Thursday, the Department of Community Services provided a Montclair street map which shows the areas where post-October 29 storm debris has been collected as of November 28.

You can download the map by going here.

But at least one Township Councilor, Cary Africk, expressed dismay over the publishing of a map showing where the collection of debris has already happened.

"If a homeowner wants to tell if his street has been cleared, couldn't he just look out the window?" Africk asked. "Wouldn't a homeowner, staring at huge piles of debris in front of his house, want to know WHEN his street is going to be cleared?

The complexity of pickup (the amount, the full size trees that need to be cut with power tools by city workers, etc.) make predictions impossible. Officials do promise that all debris will be collected. Perhaps in this instance, no map would have been better than any map?

- Montclair Patch

The Easton, CT Town Clerk is wary of a group with a grant to put the town's information online for free.

But Town Clerk Derek Buckley disputes this. In a letter to [First Selectman] Herrmann on the application [ for a $6 million grant with the Greater Bridgeport Regional Council to cover the cost of upgrading GIS systems and making it available online for six towns, including Easton], Buckley says that if the system were to be available to the public, for free, it could cost the town thousands of dollars. “Easton derives revenue of about $13,000 annually from sales of copies of maps and land records. Work is in progress to more than double that soon. That would be lost if the GIS makes them available for free,” Buckley wrote.

The town had already collected $50,000 for a GIS upgrade that if used would not put the data online.

- The Daily Easton

by Adena Schutzberg on 12/06 at 05:11 AM | Comments | Bookmark and Share

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

The BBC has rolled out the first edition of its crowdsourced 2G/3G map. There were 44,000+ people who downloaded the app that collected data for the map. The Register does some analysis and suggests for the most part the map matches those from carriers, but is "optimistic" in some areas.

- The Register

Continue reading...

by Adena Schutzberg on 08/24 at 03:41 AM | Comments | Bookmark and Share

Monday, August 08, 2011

Palm Beach County Florida is all set for the new school year with a GIS for parents of school age children.

One of the tools available at the district’s back to school page, allows parents to “find my school. The district partnered with the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s Office to create the school finder tool, said Donna Goldstein, the district’s GIS coordinator. Parents can type in their address and it shows what schools at the elementary, middle and high school level they are zoned to attend.

The tool will also show the attendance boundaries and the “two mile walk zone” for each school. Only students living outside the two mile walk zone are eligible for school bus transportation and those living within two miles of the school must either walk or be driven to school by a parent.

- Palm Beach Post Blog

Scofield leaders went to Washington, D.C. last week to present the school’s STEM work in water quality at a congressional hearing. ...The grant money—$330,000 through an Innovations in Education grant and a $160,000 Catalyst Initiative grant [from HP]—has allowed the school to purchase laptops, scientific calculators and cutting-edge geographic information systems (GIS) to collect data about the water surrounding the school and integrate their findings across the curriculum.

Scofield is Stamford, CT's magenet school.

- Stamford Patch

Proof of this [that Girl Scouts do more that have camp fires and sell cookies] was evidenced at a recent Huntley [Illinois] Village Board meeting when Girl Scout Troop 828 presented the village with a map of the Huntley Cemetery, detailing the final resting places of every veteran interred there. The map also detailed in which war each veteran served and their dates of service. Veterans are buried in 146 of the 225 grave sites at the cemetery.

Good stuff. I wonder if technology was used? The article does not say. If it were Boy Scouts do you think it'd say? Another article (Patch) confirms there is a spreadsheet of the data. Do Girl Scouts do mapping, surveying and GIS? It seems the Boy Scouts get more press on their work and Eagle Scout projects. This was, by the way, a Bronze Award project for the girls involved. And, no, I don't know what that is...

- Currier News

by Adena Schutzberg on 08/08 at 03:56 AM | Comments | Bookmark and Share

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