Sundosoft Brings GIS to Korea and other International GIS News

The Korea Times has a feature on , Yoon Jay-joon (Jay Yoon), CEO of Sundosoft, a large GIS player in the country. One of the graphics is of a box of ArcGIS 9. I guess 10 is not yet out there.

- Korea Times

Panasonic's new GPS enabled cameras may not work quite right in China. How and exactly why is not clear, but apparently geotagging is illegal in that country.

- GPS Tracklog

Mackenzie District Council in New Zealand is fight against bad GIS data.

"During the last revaluation, it was discovered the information we sent to our valuers was incorrect. This was due to multiple users creating different copies of the data, manipulating the information and treating it as correct," Mr Morris said.

"If council chose to do nothing, the GIS information will get progressively worse.

But the local government does not want to put a dedicated outside person in charge of cleaning up the data. Instead, it's looking into a shared position.

- Stuff.co.nz

The Doolin Coast Guard team in Co Clare Ireland will be the only such unit in the country with a GIS. It'll be run on tablets to increase efficiency in response and planning.

The system also contains up to date information on the locations of caves, popular surfing spots and other areas where the team might be requested to respond to an incident.

It will also aid in incident planning as it contains information such as radio reception blackspots, access routes and helicopter landing sites.

- Clare Herald

Boston Residents Claim Hydrants and other Crowdsourcing GIS News

Boston's latest Code for America rollout is a map where residents can claim and name a local hydrant to shovel after snow storms.

- Boston.com

Esri's Ryan Lanclos writes about its new ArcGIS Add-in for Ushahidi.

This add-in allows you to connect to a Ushahidi instance with the API enabled, convert text between languages, and download the Ushahidi data into a geodatabase. This opens up the feed of data being captured in Ushahidi to the rich spatial and temporal analysis tools within ArcGIS allowing users to empower action and inform decision makers using a sound scientific approach.

- Ushahidi Blog

The Guardian is looking for input to update its map of the "still active" Occupy protests around the world.

- The Guardian

Sacramento Green Map and other Government GIS News

...a new website that showcases Sacramento County’s green strategies, achievements and helpful information. The website – Green Sacramento County – features an interactive map to pinpoint green activity and provides constituents with green news, tips and resources.

You can choose different base maps including Google and Esri streets.

- Sacremento Press

The board [Coweta County, GA] approved an agreement with TomTom North America for GIS data. The county has agreed to provide the GIS data to the GPS and mapping companies for free in order to help speed the updates reflecting the new names of Walt Sanders Memorial Drive (International Park) and Walt Sanders Memorial Court (Enterprise Court).

- Times Herald

In 2011, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) launched the National Broadband Map (NBM), a tool local governments can use to determine the level broadband access in their communities. Join [National League of Cities] NLC and NTIA on January 25 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time for a webinar, entitled The National Broadband Map: An Economic Development Tool for Cities which will show how cities can use this tool and provide feedback so it can be further enhanced to suit their needs.

- NLC.org

[Ottawa/Carleton] OC Transpo [Ontario, CA] should open its bus-location data to outside programmers the same day it launches its own application to tell riders when their buses are due, says Councillor Stephen Blais, and he intends to present a motion to the city's transit commission at its next meeting on Thursday to force the company to do it.

- Ottawa Citizen

Comparing Maps of Obesity and Car Travel and other Health GIS News

Here, we examine visually, through a series of maps, the association between obesity, diabetes, and sedentary transportation.

The maps are striking, but Anne Price and Ariel Godwin conclude:

... the relationship between sedentary travel and health outcomes can be misleading when additional contributing factors are not taken into account. While it is not our intent to claim a direct causal link between transportation modes and obesity rates, it is hard to deny the existence of some geographic patterns.

- Planetizen

Health Canada is drafting national guidelines for electricity-generating wind turbines that will establish a recommended minimum safe distance between the structures and homes. ...The Health Canada guidelines will deal with noise and shadow flicker, and will account for the power of the turbine, the size of the blade and local geography, [Dr. Moira] McKinnon [Saskatchewan's chief medical health office] said.

No doubt they'll need ot use GIS, once they figure out the details to manage noise and other impacts.

- The Phoenix Star

The [second edition of the online] British Columbia Atlas of Wellness shows that northerners are more likely to smoke, eat unhealthy food and die sooner than their counterparts in Vancouver and Victoria.

- Times Colonist

Earlier this week, the Missouri Hospital Association launched www.MissouriHealthMatters.com. I recommend checking it out. The site contains quality of care and patient satisfaction data filtered through GIS technology with hospital specific information in a dashboard format. My thanks to David Dillon, MHA's VP of media relations, for giving me the heads-up on the website. I can attest to David's observation that the reports contain the same data as reported to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, "however the interface is much more user-friendly and locally-focused."

It uses ArcGIS Explorer Onilne, which took a while to load on my machine.

- Columbia Tribune

A RESEARCH OBSERVATORY based at NUI Maynooth [Kildare, Ireland] have unveiled a new online mapping tool that aims to show exactly how some parts of Ireland are covered by hospitals or schools.

The accessibility map, produced by the All-Island Research Observatory, highlights areas based on their proximity to facilities like hospitals, primary schools and secondary schools.

The map helps show diparities in services.

- The Journal.IE

Finland May Consolidate 336 Cities to About 70 and other International GIS News

Finland

The publication late last week by the news magazine Suomen Kuvalehti of a map proposing that the number of municipalities in Finland should be reduced from 336 to about 70 has led to a flurry of explanations, e-mails, and stonewalling.
      The map is based on a plan being drawn up by a group of civil servants set up by Minister for Public Administration and Local Government Henna Virkkunen (Nat. Coalition Party). The plan was originally to have been made public in February.

Got to ask my exactly two Finnish friends about that!

- Helsingin Sonamat

Oman

The Ministry of Education (MoE) [Oman] will launch a school web mapping project under the auspices of H E Dr Madeeha bint Ahmed bin Nassir al Shibaniyah, Minister of Education on Wednesday.

During the inauguration ceremony, a film about the project and an exhibition explaining its application will be showcased. The project is one of the important programmes to be implemented by the ministry. It aims at building a digital geographic database of all educational institutions and linking it to the ministry's web portal.

I suspect many would be jealous of how much PR is being done before the project begins.

- Zawya

Belize

TBSL, Esri's distrbutor and Esri itself hosted the second Belize GIS Conference in January.

- 7 News Belize