Emergency Management GIS Certificate and other Education GIS News

 What's wrong with the geospatial workforce? Victor Valley College (California) adjunct professor Fon Allan Duke  knows:

There’s not a good enough pool of trained individuals to step up and work in these catastrophic events. And the problem you have in industry is either you have people with master’s degrees that are overqualified doing work that they don’t really want to do and you’re overpaying for it, or you have people that have been trained on the job who don’t really understand all the specifics and so you get poor product.

He was quoted as the school launches a new certificate program, moving on from courses focused on geo use in agriculture:

VVC’s new GIS for Emergency Response and Management certificate aims to equip community college students with skills needed to develop GIS tools for governments or private companies. 

There are still openings for the new program which begins the week of Feb 13.

- Victorville Daily Press

The Univeristy of Minnesota has some great, inexpensive courses in LiDAR coming up. Some are full already.

- Montevideo American News

Huntington High (WV) teachers and students attended the White House Science Fair to show off their geospatailly themed project.

Their project involved gathering data about how cloud cover affected the temperature of different surfaces such as pavement and grass, and it captured the attention of NASA. The students were asked last week if they wanted to attend the science fair, hosted by President Barack Obama. They jumped at the chance, and the school system worked hard to make it happen, Sharpe said.

The school is part of the GLOBE program.

- Herald Dispatch

Open Data on Malta Coming and other International GIS News

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?

- Time of Malta

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.

- IRIN Asia

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."

- China Daily

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.

- GPS Biz News

Update: USGS CLICK (LiDAR Forum) Shuts Down Oct 1

Today, word there is funding until year's end:

We are pleased to announce that we have secured funding to keep CLICK up and running until January 1, 2012. At that point in time we hope to have an approved comprehensive plan to maintain and improve upon this kind of lidar coordination, information and data provision as a fully operational program.

We thank you all for your concern and support, and hope we can keep providing these services well into the future.

Sincerely,
The CLICK team 

- USGS CLICK Forum

--- original post 9/28/11 ---

the USGS Center for LIDAR Information Coordination and Knowledge (CLICK). Our goal is to help facilitate understanding, coordination, data access, communication and knowledge concerning lidar data for scientific needs. We hope you can use the tools we have provided to the fullest to help create information out of lidar data. We encourage you to register to keep abreast of new information posted here! Registering will allow you to post topics and replies, as well as subscribe to a forum to get emailed updates.

 

On October 1st 2011, CLICK will be ceasing all of our operations except for off-line archiving of lidar point cloud data provided to us. All other functions of CLICK- the bulletin board, data viewer and download, links to other web sites and presentations, and our Twitter feed will be shut down. There will be limited access to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) email for the time being. We are doing this in order to guarantee that in our limited funding environment all lidar point cloud data that we have been entrusted with does not disappear, but is at least kept on life support until hopefully a new lidar program can take over what we started five years ago.

 

It has been a great ride getting this project up and running. What started out as a way for scientists to get 3-D information into their research exploded into something much more over the years. Ironically, much more than anyone (other than us at CLICK) expected. I hope we were able to provide a mechanism to get many of you connected and educated, and provide a way for people to get lidar data that made a difference for something other than the original collected intent. We aren't sure what our future holds, but we know that lidar technology in all its forms has enough momentum that it will succeed even without CLICK's help.

 

We wanted to give you a few days notice, just in case anyone wanted to grab any data and/or information from the site before we are forced to shut it off. Who knows, this may not be good-bye but see you soon. I hope it is just see you soon. Either way, it has been fun.

 

All the best,

 

The staff of CLICK 

 

DeLorme, Merrick, Home Use License, Mobile Development (#esriuc)

I took a walk through the exhibit hall to find the answer to one question and of course got "grabbed" to get updates on several fronts.

DeLorme is reorganizing as many know (APB coverage) and Mike Gerling (once of Tele Atlas/TomTom) who is now on the board explained, explain the current vision. While DeLorme has a great base in consumer products the idea now is to look more toward complete solutions for business and consumers. For example, last year the company offered the SPOT locator, which allowed those in the wilds to send a "help" message via satellite. But it was only one way...so authorities had to answer and often found (after much effort) a not so life threatening emergency.

The new solution, the DeLorme inReach (press release) slated for this fall, is a two way communicator build to work with the Iridium constellation. So now recreational hikers and weekend worriers can track their adventures and ensure simple chats with loved ones and have real time communications if there is indeed an emergency. For business workers, say lone workers in the wilds, the solution means an extra layer of safety. I like that the device is really simple - it has basically a GPS and the chip for the Iridium network - there's no screen. Why? So you can use it with your own personal or corporate cell phone (via Bluetooth) or with a ruggedized data collection device (with buttons for those use gloves). The devices is in the hundreds of dollars with data plans from about $10 making it reasonable for consumers and business users.

Merrick continues to be LiDAR central. New federal regulation require airports to have obstruction mapping completed by 2015 and the technology is far faster and more accurate that having suveyors walk the large areas that need to be covered. Further, the 3D models LiDAR enables are more meaningful than a single point identifying, say, a tree. More and more jurisdictions are including LiDAR with their aerial imagery capture and it's likely LiDAR will be on a several year cycle especially in high growth areas.

I wanted to get some more information about the new home use license program which went live yesterday, once Jack Dangermond announced it. I found a page where those with codes from employers can sign up, and this page seems to be for those without such a code. I met with the marketing manager for the program and hope to get more information on the license.

I ran into my former Esri-Boston colleague Mansour Raad, one of the lead folks involved in development platforms. While he's very excited about what can be done with Flex, he's also excited about what's possible with node.js and Javascript. He did confirm what I'd heard elsewhere regarding mobile development in general: that  in time HTML5 will be the way to go for mobile devices. He did note that Esri has some work to do to remove some of its existing dependancies and rejig its interfaces, but that the future looks bright for mobile. And, he made clear, such APIs are no longer optional; mobile developer tools and apps are a must have for all the mobile platforms.

Remote Sensing Tidbits - 5/2/11

Researchers created 3-D maps of prime spider habitats in a German national park using LiDAR, a remote-sensing system mounted on helicopters. The system uses lasers to characterize broad swaths of land in relatively little time, as opposed to doing surveys on foot that could take months.

- Wired Science Blog

Thanks to high-resolution images, Duke University and Meredith College geoscientists were able to add 657 new barrier islands to the total count, adding 30 percent more to the known list. There are now 2,149 discovered islands in total.

Among the tools used: Google Earth and actually visitation!

- Time

Nearly four months after the amended Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification was introduced by the Union Government, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is set to map the city’s shoreline and water bodies with the help of satellite imaging.

The BMC will soon initiate the process of mapping ecologically sensitive spots including, mangroves, beaches, koliwadas, etc and prepare new maps for these areas which are protected under the CRZ notification.

- India Express