Namibia Municipal GIS and other International GIS News

Namibia

Ephraim Katjatjena, the spokesperson of the Omururu Municipality, said the town recently launched its Geographical Information System (GIS) in conjunction with the Polytechnic of Namibia and the Tavastia Vocational Training College in Finland.  This places Omaruru in a leading role with regard to GIS, along with towns such as Windhoek, Rundu, Walvis Bay and Otjiwarongo.  

- New Era

Pakistan

Prime Minister of Pakistan Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has approved Pakistan Space Policy and it is likely to be presented in National Assembly for its consideration and approval soon, Chairman, Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO), Major General Ahmed Bilal informed business community on Thursday [Feb 9].

Space work has been slow going during the past 40 years, but some success with satellite imagery for agriculture is helping move initiatives forward.

- Business Recorder

Tunisia

At the first ever Geospatial Conference in Tunisia (GCT), held from February 9^th to 10^th, the consensus was loud and clear: Tunisia must revamp its cartography with the latest geospatial innovations if it wants to develop efficient industries and infrastructure projects across the country.

- Tunisia Live

Fiji

The Secretariat of the Pacific community (SPC) is working with the Fiji Department of Forestry to build capacity in using very high resolution satellite images to map land and forest cover in Fiji.

- Solomon Times

The Phillippines

The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) today unveiled a new website - with maps!

Another important feature of the new website is the Mobile Mapping Service, a facility for viewing the locations of health facilities and provides a visualization of various corporate data using maps. Office Locations shows the locations of PhilHealth’s Regional and Branch offices. Once the link is clicked, the Google map of the Philippines will be displayed. Overlaid on the Google map are the locations of the Regional and Branch Offices shown using the PhilHealth logo as the symbol.

Under the Health Facilities Locations, the Google map will show by default all health facilities that are already mapped. This facility will enable the site visitor to see the location of a specific health facility on the Google map and its photograph. At the same time, the PhilHealth GIS Application System (PhilGIS) can show statistical data on accreditation, claims, collections, and membership data in map forms or statistical maps. These maps are shown by regions and by provinces. (PhilHealth)

- Phillippine Information Agency

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

Five Month Full Time GIS Certificate and other Education GIS News

The Salmon Arm Campus of Okanagan College (British Columbia) is offering the five-month, full-time certificate program in Vernon for the first time starting in January. The requirements are high school graduation or equivalent, or mature student status, and basic computer skills. The school has found significant demand for its other GIS programs which produce candidates ready for the job market. The program website also refers to the certificate as an ArcInfo Certificate.

- BC Local News

Esri has changed the name of the next Education User Conference to the 2012 Esri Education GIS Conference.

via @michael_d_gould

Maui officials adding to the state's list of enterprise software solutions for its students. First Esri, now Google.

Maui Economic Development Board’s Women in Technology (WIT) just negotiated another major software coup for the state’s K-12 schools.

Similar to its unprecedented agreement with ESRI that made the latest Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software available to every public, private and charter school in the state, WIT negotiated a deal with Google to bring its celebrated Sketchup Pro application to local classrooms.

- Maui Now

Lahore [Pakistan] - Government College University, Lahore (GCU) Department of Geography and University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS) in collaboration with Penn State University, US conducted a five-day training workshop on “The Application of GIS and GPS Technologies in Public Health Significance”.

- Pakistan Today

Pakistan Provence to get GIS for Monitoring and other International GIS News

The Pakistani provence of Sindh will soon have a GIS. The project has come to fore after efforts to create one began two years ago.

It was said that GIS is the most advance monitoring system in the world and will be very helpful for the poor people of the province. “The whole province can be monitored from its capital,” it was stated at the meeting.

It's not clear exactly how the monitoring notes above will be done.

- Pakistan Today

Finland’s defence forces have admitted having a secret list of all the places around the country where there could still be munitions left over from the Second World War.

There is no plan to make the information public; the plan is to slowly, discretely remove the ordnance.

- Ice News

Plutonium believed to have been released from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant after the March 11 earthquake has been detected outside the power plant site for the first time, it has been learned.

One of the spots found contaminated with the hazardous substance is 45 kilometers from the plant.

The good news? All the areas in which the plutonium was found are off limits or in the expanded evacuation zone.

- Daily Yomiuri

In Maharashtra state, India, there are two new additions to the census on poverty and caste data collection:

In a first, it will register exodus to and from the state, which political parties peg at 17-20% of the total population, and the growth of single women.]

- DNA India

CT School Partners with Chinese School to Study Water Quality and other Education GIS News

Scofield Middle School and a few students and teachers from its sister school , the Middle School Attached to Shandong University, shared a STEM lesson in Stamford this week lookng at the school’s water testing project which uses GIS.

GIS software is similar to Google Earth in that it can display maps, terrain and imagery. According to Hare, however, GIS trumps Google Earth in its ability to display images and incorporate data, such as pH levels of water or quality of plant life. Scofield students and teachers use this technology to research water traits in Bendels Pond and in the Long Island Sound to learn about water pollution and factors that influence it.

- Stamford Patch

The White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities launched a new Web site today [Monday Sept 19] that maps every historically black college in the United States. Users can click on a college and see how many degrees it awards each year and how many it needs to award to contribute toward President Obama’s goal of making the country No. 1 in degrees conferred by 2020. 

- Chronicle of Higher Ed

Men's Health ranked the most educated cities in the U.S. Madison, WI was number one. Boston got a B at 21st place. And, no I have no idea why Men's Health would do that other than to sell magazines....but below the scores (A, B, C, etc.) was this:

Understand Your Planet

It's a small world, but maybe not small enough: Only 20 percent of high school seniors have a solid grasp of global geography, according to a new Department of Education report. "If people were more geographically literate, they would better understand political issues," says William Gaudelli, Ed.D., an associate professor of social studies and education at Columbia University. Ask your rep in Congress to back a bill called the Teaching Geography Is Fundamental Act to help fund geography training for schoolteachers.

Nope, I don't know to what report the author points, but it's nice MH likes geography.

- Men's Health

The University of Peshawar (UoP) has launched a new four-year programme of Geomatic (GIS and Remote Sensing) at the Institute of Geography, Urban and Regional Planning in order to prepare students in the filed of Geoinformatics besides providing a stimulating and quality atmosphere to bring positive changes in their approaches.

There's is also a two year masters degree.

- Pakistan Observer