New “Easy to Follow” Google Maps Dev Tools and other Google Geo News

Google appears to be fighting back [fight OSM, others]. On Tuesday [today] it will announce two new sites aimed at encouraging developers of all skill levels to use its maps for location services and mobile applications. One of the sites has easy-to-follow directions, while the other is a gallery of things people have built with Google Maps.

I don't find the "easy to follow directions" just yet.

- NY Times

Released today [March 14], the newest version of Google Earth for Android and iOS adds a long-awaited feature that should make the mobile mapping experience more like that on the desktop: KML file support.

KML, or Keynote Markup Language, is a file format used to display geographic data in the Google Earth browser. The format can be used by anyone to create and distribute custom map overlays on the Web.

It's pretty sad that the news detailed on the Google Lat Long Blog got so muddled in the Cnet's coverage above. KML is Keyhole Markup Language; it's an open format (sorry encoding standard) now managed by OGC.

- C|net

U.S. Urban Tree Cover Down and other Remote Sensing News

Results indicate that tree cover in urban areas of the United States is declining at a rate of about four million trees per year, according to a U.S. Forest Service study of 20 U.S. cities published in Urban Forestry & Urban Greening.

Forest researchers David Nowak and Eric Greenfield of the U.S. Forest Service's Northern Research Station used satellite imagery to find that tree cover is decreasing at a rate of about 0.27 percent of land area per year in U.S. cities, which is equivalent to about 0.9 percent of existing urban tree cover being lost annually.

- Environmental Protection

Conservationists are using UAVs to gather data to protect land, plants and animals.

Using seed funding from the National Geographic Society, The Orangutan Conservancy, and the Denver Zoo, Lian Pin Koh, an ecologist at the ETH Zürich, and Serge Wich, a biologist at the University of Zürich and PanEco, have developed a conservation drone equipped with cameras, sensors and GPS. So far they have used the remote-controlled aircraft to map deforestation, count orangutans and other endangered species, and get a bird's eye view of hard-to-access forest areas in North Sumatra, Indonesia.

- MongoBay

Scientists from the University of Maryland and Beijing Normal University are partnering to track and predict the impact of climate change internationally. ...

At the University of Maryland today, officials from both institutions and representatives from the Chinese government officially launched the new Joint Center on Global Change and Earth System Science, which will conduct the research.

The key tool? A remote sensing database.

Creation of an international remote sensing database will be one of the new center's first projects, and the interdisciplinary work will take place in both countries. In addition to monitoring agriculture, it will also track land use and land cover.

- News Medical

The Department of Homeland Security plans to award up to $50 million in contracts for aerial remote sensing services to support incident management.

- GovConWire

Columbia County, GA Launches CitySourced and other Government GIS News

Columbia County, GA is using CitySourced's Citizen Reporter. After looking at the directions for download for the five different platforms, I wonder if it's time for HTML5, even if it must run on more than one browser.

- ABC 6

In Rancho Cucamongo, CA there's an iOS ony solution (Android coming): RC2GO "features directories of dining and shopping options within the city. Users can determine, for example, how many Thai food restaurants are in the city or the location of the nearest coffee shop." And, you can report potholes and graffitti, too.

The app was a joint project between the city and CyberTech, an information technology company with offices in Redlands. The city wanted to create an app that was useful and one that would make it easier to communicate with City Hall.

[Title]Embracing Google Earth

[Teaser] Five years ago, Google Earth worried government officials. But agencies have since realized that the benefits of high-resolution, up-to-date imagery of our Earth outweigh the risks.

That's how Jessica Mulholland, associate editor of GOVERNING, and associate editor of both Government Technology and Public CIO magazines, describes the use of platform in local and state government. 

- Governing

The New York State Liquor Authority launched its map that shows every current and pending liquor license in the state andany disciplinary actions taken by the agency against the licensee. The data used to require a FOIA request. (APB coverage). Tech: Fountains Spatial, ArcGIS Flex, Bing, Google StreetView. This is an interface I'd have my students explore! Did not work well in Safari.

- Times Union

Oregon is filtering data from Data.gov to its own state portal.

Locating data from the state and Data.gov portals can be cumbersome due to the abundance of data available, [Deputy State CIO Sean] McSpaden said. “What we’ve done initially is establish the connection. Over time, our plan is to work with Socrata on filtering so that only Oregon-specific [federal] data is present or accessible on our site,” he said.

To differentiate between what’s Oregon data and what’s federal data, McSpaden said Socrata is using icons on Data.Oregon.gov to indicate who owns what. 

- GovTech

Paper Maps are Hard to Use and other Education GIS News

At Holt Elementary in Durham, NC, the local GIS users are teaching about GIS via Google Earth. I'm not sure how I feel about this exercise:

To illustrate the difference that GIS technology makes, [GIS analyst from the GIS division of the city’s Technology Solutions Department, Robert] Cushman asked the students to locate their homes or school on paper maps within 30 seconds. They hunched over the maps, furiously searching for familiar street names or landmarks. At the end of the 30 seconds, just one student said he’d located his home.

“Now we don’t use maps like this anymore – very rarely,” Cushman said. “The maps we work with are made to be easy to use” – like traffic maps on morning TV newscasts and those used by vehicle navigation systems. 

- Herald Sun

Engineering researchers at the University of Arkansas are developing an emergency communications network that will maintain operation during natural disasters and provide critical warnings and geographic information to people affected by the disasters. The researchers are honing and testing the system now and expect to deploy a pilot network at the end of 2012.

Geo challenges include how to arrange the "mesh" network that enables the network and running GIS on low power devices. The work is funded by an NSF grant.

- press release

- project page

Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the University of Massachusetts, Boston (UMB) have created a detailed map (and accompanying study) of where terrorism attacks have occurred since 1970. 

...while certain areas (those surrounding Manhattan and Los Angeles, for example) have endured as terror 'hot spots' throughout the study, others have come and go. In the 2000s, for example, there has been a higher-than-average rate of attacks in Maricopa County, AZ, Phoenix's county. King County, WA, on the other hand, was a terror hot spot in the 1970s and 1980s, but has been largely quiet since.

- HuffPo

- press release

Pretty Imagery in Google Earth and other Google Maps/Earth News

Google Earth 6.2 had a "prettier" version of its imagery. No, it's not new data just a new smoothing algorithm.

Today, we’re introducing a new way of rendering imagery that smooths out this quilt of images. The end result is a beautiful new Earth-viewing experience that preserves the unique textures of the world’s most defining geographic landscapes—without the quilt effect. This change is being made on both mobile and desktop versions of Google Earth. While this change will appear on all versions of Google Earth, the 6.2 release provides the best viewing experience for this new data.

- i Programmer

- Google Blog

The update of Google Maps on the Web now offers better bike route information via detailed rendering.

Since no bike path is the same, many users have requested an easier way to differentiate the different types of bike routes that are available. Starting today, a new legend feature can help you understand what the different colors on the bike maps symbolize.

- Google Lat Long Blog

The Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Research Centre of Feng Chia University in Taiwan, has successfully completed Taiwan’s first municipal works cloud-based map platform, which will allow city government officials and policy makers to have a clear picture of the city’s major construction projects.

It's built on Google Earth Enterprise and is expected to be made public (no date yet).

- FutureGov Asia