Pakistan Mapping Bill Proposed and other International GIS News

Pakistan

The Survey of Pakistan is worried about amatuers not only mapping the country, but also mapping sites harmful to national security. So, it's time for a new law to allow enforcement.

With the objective of regulating and implementing surveying and mapping standards in the country, to obviate potential security risk to sensitive information, to prevent damage to affixed survey makers, to avoid duplication of effort in mapping and to transform SoP into a national mapping agency, a draft land surveying and mapping bill has been prepared by the SoP.

The salient features of the Bill are as follows: (i) to transform SoP into national mapping agency ie an authority regulating surveying and mapping activities in the country; (ii) to make it compulsory for all firms involved in surveying and mapping activities to get themselves registered with SoP; (iii) to make it obligatory to all firms involved in surveying and mapping activities to adopt surveying and mapping standards framed by the national mapping agency ie SoP; (iv) to stop unqualified firms to take part in surveying and mapping activities that can pose a security risk to the State; (v) to protect established and affixed survey makers at various locations throughout the country from damage by assigning their responsibility to local district management; (vii) to avoid duplication of efforts in the field of mapping, especially in the public sector, thereby economising on public exchequer; and (viii) to assess the mapping requirements of public and private sector on a yearly basis, thereby lending technical support to federal and provincial development plan and activities.

Part of the logic for doing so relates to how other countries have addressed the issue.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has suggested to the government to frame a law aimed at stopping unlawful activities related to mapping firms, given that several western countries, including Australia, China, India, Turkey, USA and UK, have enacted supportive laws, official sources told Business Recorder.

- Business Recorder (Pakistan)

India

Dehli Police now has a link off its home page (Know Your Police Stateion) of its police stations. It can help residents navigate to the station and find the one covering a certain issue. The department built it in partnership with Microsoft and it uses Silverlight.

- ZeeNews

Nigeria

The Kwara [state in Nigeria] government has concluded arrangements to launch the state Geographic Information System (GIS) in the first quarter of 2012, Alhaji Usman Hamza, the Senior Special Assistant on Information Technology, said.

The state already has a land information system and plans an emegency response system for the future.

- All Africa

Singapore

The Singapore Land Authority (SLA) yesterday announced a new competition that it hopes will spur application developers to create new uses for electronic maps.

The inaugural OneMap Challenge offers top prizes of 20,000 Singapore dollars (US$15,556) cash each in the two categories of desktop and mobile applications, and a total of more than 70,000 Singapore dollars in cash and prizes.

- Jakarta Globe

Microsoft Receives Patent for “Safe” Walking Directions

The patent, Pedestrian route production, has this abstract:

As a pedestrian travels, various difficulties can be encountered, such as traveling through an unsafe neighborhood or being in an open area that is subject to harsh temperatures. A route can be developed for a person taking into account factors that specifically affect a pedestrian. Moreover, the route can alter as a situation of a user changes; for instance, if a user wants to add a stop along a route.

Windows Phone 7 User Sues Microsoft for Tracking Location without Permission

The proposed class action, filed in a Seattle federal court yesterday, argues Microsoft intentionally designed the camera software on Windows Phone 7 to ignore default "don't track me" settings. The suit cites Microsoft letters to Congress claiming it does not track without consent.

- Reuters via @jeffharrison

Groupon Responds to Congress and other LBS News

Groupon general counsel David Schellhase said the company is developing technology that will track customers' location, even if they don't have a Groupon app open on their phones, according to an August 10 letter to the co-chairmen of the House Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus: Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, and Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.

Why are is the company building that technology? Because its what customers want. Further, says the company, it will require explicit "opt-in" which please Rep Markey.

- Reuters

Foursquare now lets you check in to events - games, concerts, movies... I for one am finding checking in way off the radar of late. Oh, and presdient Obama is now on Foursquare (another indication it's "out"?)

- GigaOm

So, now that checking in is out (at least in my book) the Bing Team has an app for setting up a meetup: "We're in." It allows you to make the invitation to a group, then track everyone via status updates as they head to it (or bail out). For now it's a Windows Phone app and website, but the plan is to make it avaiable on other platforms. 

- Washington Post, Bing Blog

BMI and Food Access in Japan and other Health GIS News

Research reported in the International Journal of Health Geographics 2011, 10:43 explored the relationship between access to food outlets (convenience stores, grocery stores, and fast food) and BMI in elder Japanese citizens.

Results: In contrast to previous reports, we found that better access to supermarkets was related to higher BMI. Better access to fast food outlets or convenience stores was also associated with higher BMI, but only among those living alone.

The logistic regression analysis, using categorized BMI, showed that the access to supermarkets was only related to being overweight or obese, but not related to being underweight.

Conclusions: Our findings provide mixed support for the types of food environment measures previously used in western settings. Importantly, our results suggest the need to develop culture-specific approaches to characterizing neighborhood contexts when hypotheses are extrapolated across national borders.

- 7th Space

Is this health related? The paper is titled "Web GIS in practice X: a Microsoft Kinect natural user interface for Google Earth navigation" and was published in the Intl Journal of Health Geographics. It details different ways to link a Kinect to drive software included Google Earth. That's not news nor exactly medically related. What is interesting in the paper (open access, pdf) is how this sort of interface may be useful in medical situations - especially those that allow the surgeon to control a medical device without touching button/touchscreen or keyboard.

- 7th Space

In connection with Cord Blood Awareness month, Parent's Guide to Cord Blood Foundation, the leading online resource educating parents about their cord blood storage options, has announced the first in a series of new tools and resources being made available to parents on its revised website: the nation's first searchable map of cord blood donation sites throughout the U.S.

- press release