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

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

NEH Grant to UCLA for Digital Humanities and other Education GIS News

UCLA landed three grants totaling $435,000, including $137,000 for a five-week seminar for college teachers on “the life, work and cultural milieu of Oscar Wilde” and $248,000 for a digital project that will investigate how recent mapping technologies such as GIS can be deployed in humanities research and teaching.

- LA Times Blog

Higher and further education schools in the UK and Ireland can continue to take advantage of the Chest agreement, a dicount program for software from Aug 1, 2011 until July 31, 2014. " It provides among other things, "Around 95% discount off of commercial prices for Esri ArcGIS software."\

- Eduserv via @michael_d_gould

International GIS Tidbits - 5/13/11

New Zealand

Christchurch is using mobile LiDAR to map the current state of the city and will compare it to imagery from before this year's earthquakes as it begins the rebuilding process.

- 3News

China

From an article that focuses on domestic development of GIS technology over imports, comes this statistic:

In domestic market, the total market share of ArcGIS, MapGIS and SupGIS is less than 5 percent.

I'm not clear on what constitutes the other 95% of the market.

- China Economic Net

Cambodia

How do protect  animals by keeping their habitat intact in Cambodia? Use GIS. Suwanna Gauntlett explains.

But mostly, how we stop economic land concessions that are legal is personal interaction, between me and government officials. For all the economic land concessions that have valid permits or are going to have valid permits, I personally interact with the government. I act a little bit like a lawyer. I go on the ground to document GIS [Geographic Information System] points, do GIS mapping, take aerial photographs, and then build the case as to why that economic land concession should not be implemented in that specific location. I then correspond directly with the ministerial level, the Council of Ministers, and sometimes the Prime Minister himself, and follow up with meetings and [additional] correspondence. Sometimes, if it is really necessary, I call upon an inter-ministerial steering committee, that was formed upon our request—I bring them to the site, I brief them and they then go back to central government and represent the case.

- MongoBay

Ireland

Esri Ireland has 27 job openings expected to be filled in the next 18 months. The Irish Times profiled the company.

- Inside Ireland

Esri Ireland Addresses Open Source

Here's the key bit from the blog post:

So is there a strategy for GIS in Local Authorities that adopts Open Standards, offers the advantages of Open Source and above all delivers on the Open Government agenda that is emerging as a mantra of our politicians? Well yes, I believe there is and it’s a hybrid model.

The article is unsigned, but the head of marketing let us know of the post. She shared it was penned by CTO Eamonn Doyle.

Worth noting: Esri Ireland uses the free, hosted version of Wordpress, an open source blogging platform.