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The Telegraph shares a map and evaluation of French wine over the past three decades. Mayfair-based Berry Bros and Rudd, wine merchant to the Queen, provides the data that include quailty ratings and suggestions as to what to do with each vitage (drink, lay down, etc.). It's a very elegant display of information.
Bhutan will have satellite images of development facilities in each distric by year's end thanks to a three year project of its National Environment Commission (NEC). The Thailand minister of science and technology, Dr Khunying Kalaya Sophonpanich, visited in September 2009 to begin a technology relationship with Bhutan. The Thai government is providing US 9M for this project; it's not clear what the source of the imagery will be.
Serbia's Minister of Environment, Mining and Spatial Planning Oliver Dulic will attend the presentation of a project to form a single geospatial data system. The project is a joint effort of the country and France worth €16 million.
- EMG
India's Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) is mapping its assets. i suspect the company, rather than the press, know what's going on.
The network, called Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reference Programme (RAPDRP), involves putting its entire electricity distribution network on a Global Informatics System (GIS) — a derivative of the GPS — on a single screen.
Australia and New Zealand
VANZI, the Virtual Australia & New Zealand Initiative, has been summoned into existence by the Co-Operative Research Centre for Spatial Information, the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing, the Australian Logistics Council, the Municipal Association of Victoria and National ICT Australia (NICTA).
The new company's mission is to work with owners of spatial data to devise a way they can all share it more effectively and widely online.
It sounds a lot like Virtual USA based on Virtual Alabama. But it's not a fully governmental effort and its a bit crowdsourcy:
VANZI envisages individuals will create data about their own properties and Haines believes Apps will emerge to help individuals do so. He also hopes that over time a 3D model of every building in Australia and New Zealand will reach a database somewhere.
But VANZI won't host that database or provide an online service to access 3D models. Instead, the organisation is working on legal and technology frameworks to allow the sharing of 3D data and foresees a role for itself analogous to the bodies that facilitate transactions between banks so that creators of 3D data can share it among trusted and authorised partners.
The vision is to be tested late in 2012 in the Australian Captial Territory (ACT) before trying to roll it out futher.
Africa
Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) organizes "community mapping" projects in central Africa's Congo Basin. The goal is to mark land ownership for semi-nomadic peoples so governments won't give the land away to natural resource companies.
RFUK's "Mapping for Rights" program trains forest people to map their land using GPS devices, marking the areas they use for activities such as hunting and fishing -- as well as their sacred sites -- and the routes they use to access these vital areas.
The GPS information is used to create a definitive map of the land used by these semi-nomadic communities, which can be used to challenge decisions that see them excluded from areas of forest.
France
The Guaridan reports the French are going open data - at least a bit.
The open data movement has hit France with a bang and Data-Publica is a fantastic data-driven resource to all things French. Its data journalism section recently posted this: a guide to every French publicly-owned building.
Google is guilty of abusing its dominant position with Google Maps per a court in France. It was ordered to pay €500,000 in damages and interest to the plaintiff and a €15,000 euro fine against Bottin Cartographes. The company, until it was put out of business, offered online maps.
February 1 is the cut-off for companies with onine mapping websites to have a license from the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping. Google has applied for one, but does not yet have approval. That suggests its ok to keep running as is, but can't launch anything "new."
After Google launched its Ocean extension for Google Earth back in 2009, oddly well laid-out features on the floor of the Atlantic had been speculated by some to be evidence of the existence of Atlantis, the legendary ancient civilization said to have vanished into the sea thousands of years ago. Those theories have been sunk, though, with NOAA's sobering clarification on exactly what those features are: errors in sonar rendering caused by assembling multiple data sets together, which is exactly what Google Earth does to create a global picture of Earth's oceans. It's a fairly common problem — students at UC San Diego have spent the last three years removing those types of errors from the data by hand, and as of last week, "Atlantis" has been once again wiped off the map, so to speak.
In Korea, Google's December enhancements to Maps, including showing the insides of some 1000 stores in Seoul, has meant competitors had to scramble. They are adding more routing options, more data, easier to use icons on mobiles to try to compete.
A plane will be scanning the island to build a three-dimensional map that will allow the planning authority to monitor environmental changes over the years.
The photographic map will carry information such as on air and water quality and noise levels. All data will be available online for free, explained Saviour Formosa, who is heading an EU-funded environment project being carried out by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.
I guess it's LiDAR + other sensors?
The Philippine government has made geo-hazard maps, which outline areas prone to natural disasters, publicly available in a bid to reduce vulnerability at community level.
They are jpegs.
February 1 is the cut-off for companies with onine mapping websites to have a license from the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping. Google has applied for one, but does not yet have approval. That suggests its ok to keep running as is, but can't launch anything "new."
Google is guilty of abusing its dominant position with Google Maps per a court in France. It was ordered to pay €500,000 in damages and interest to the plaintiff and a €15,000 euro fine against Bottin Cartographes. The company, until it was put out of business, offered online maps.
