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IJHG December edition available online
The following articles are now available on the International Journal of Health Geographics’ website. These can be accessed for free and include articles submitted to the Journal from 23 November to 23 December 2009.
Review
Hair mercury levels in Amazonian populations: spatial distribution and trends. Flavia L. Barbieri and Jacques Gardon.
Methodology
An integrated framework for the geographic surveillance of chronic disease. Nikolaos Yiannakoulias, Lawrence W. Svenson and Donald P. Schopflocher.
Usefulness of commercially available GPS data-loggers for tracking human movement and exposure to dengue virus. Gonzalo M. Vazquez-Prokopec, Steven T. Stoddard, Valerie Paz-Soldan, Amy C. Morrison, John P. Elder, Tadeusz J. Kochel, Thomas W. Scott and Uriel Kitron.
Research
Temporal and spatial stability of Anopheles gambiae larval habitat distribution in western Kenya highlands. Li Li, Ling Bian, Laith Yakob, Guofa Zhou and Guiyun Yan.
Risk factors for human infection with West Nile Virus in Connecticut: a multi-year analysis. Ann Liu, Vivian Lee, Deron Galusha, Martin D. Slade, Maria Diuk-Wasser, Theodore Andreadis, Matthew Scotch and Peter M. Rabinowitz.
Spatial clusters of violent deaths in a newly urbanized region of Brazil: highlighting the social disparities. Ruth Minamisava, Simonne S. Nouer, Otaliba L. de Morais Neto, Lícia Kamila Melo and Ana Lucia SS Andrade.
A trend analysis and sub-regional distribution in number of people living with HIV and dying with TB in Africa, 1991 to 2006. Olalekan A. Uthman, Ismail Yahaya, Khalid Ashfaq and Mubashir B. Uthman.
http://www.ij-healthgeogr[...]
Consultation on access to Ordnance Survey data released
In response to the Governments proposal to make more data freely available, the Department for Communities and Local Government has published a public consultation in relation to Ordnance Survey and proposals to allow greater access to a range of Ordnance Survey data from next year.
The document gives a number of options that might be considered and makes for some quite interesting reading.
Main datasets that seem to feature in the various options include:
Raster
OS Street View
1:25 000 Scale Colour Raster
1:50 000 Scale Colour Raster already available in OpenSpace
1:50 000 Scale Gazetteer
MiniScale (a 1:1 000 000 scale raster product)
Vector
Code-Point
Boundary-Line
Meridian 2
Strategi - 1:250 000 scale
So, some of the above data will be free. Lets read through the document and wait and see what happens. Should keep us going over the Christmas break at least.
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Places and Community site launched
Spotted on the Area Profiles website, there is a neat site that has just been launched by Communities and Local Government (CLG). The site looks at various elements of what makes a community or defines a place. You can search by region and then drill down into the region to look at the spatial patterns.
All very interesting and the site is well put together and shows a continuing effort by the UK government towards putting more public data online in user friendly formats
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MapServer 5.6.0 Released
The MapServer Team is pleased to announce the release of version 5.6.0. This new release contains a few new features and performance enhancements. Here is a quick summary:
New features in 5.6:
- MS RFC 51: XML Mapfile schema and XSLT
- MS RFC 52: One-pass query processing, making WFS queries on database backends much much faster
- MS RFC 55: Improve control of output resolution, allows printing maps at printer resolution using a mapfile defined for screen resolution
- MS RFC 57: Labeling enhancements: ability to repeat labels along a line/multiline
Other notable enhancements include:
- Security fixes (also backported to 5.4):
- Improved security relative to untrusted directories and mapfiles (RFC 56)
- Fixed several security issues found in an audit of the CGI application (#2939, #2941, #2942, #2943, #2944)
- Improved security relative to untrusted directories and mapfiles (RFC 56)
- Performance optimizations:
- Load all GDAL image bands in one pass for faster processing (r9260)
- Optimized access to very large shapefiles (#2930)
- Load all GDAL image bands in one pass for faster processing (r9260)
- Several enhancements/fixes to OGC Web Services specs support
- Several enhancements/fixes to all flavors of MapScript
As usual there an a large number of additional small enhancements and bug fixes. For a complete list see the HISTORY.TXT file
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RGS AC 2010 - Call for Papers
A reminder that members of the RGS are invited to put forward calls for papers or to answer existing calls via the RGS website. The 2010 RGS event is due to take place in September 2010.
More information can be found on the RGS website
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Second workshop on geographic information usability – March 2010
As with the 2009 workshop, this one day workshop aims to bring together people researching usability of data/information across different disciplines, including Human Factors, HCI, Computer Science, Geographic Information Science.
The objective will be to share case studies on theory and/or application of methods for investigating usability of data or information, in particular geographic data/ information.
We hope the workshop will:
* Identify theoretical frameworks and methodologies, through a range of case studies, for applying usability evaluation to data or information.
* Help to build further an interdisciplinary network of research contacts in this field
* Form the basis for a publication
If you would like to participate…
Please send a short position paper (around 1000 words), based on a case study where you have addressed issues of usability of geographic information, to the contact details below by 29th January 2010.
A workshop agenda and venue details will be sent once we have all position papers.
Support for reasonable travel and accommodation costs may be provided – if you may need assistance please contact me (details below).
jenny.harding@ordnancesurvey.co.uk
Phone: +44 (0)23 8079 2052
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ArcGIS 9.3.1 Service Pack 1 Issue With Microsoft SQL Server And Raster Catalogs
From the Mandown Blog, ArcGIS 9.3.1 Service Pack 1 seems to be causing problems for Microsoft SQL and Raster Catalogs.
ESRI are working on a solution to this issue, but it might be worth reading through their forums before spending time trying to fix something that cannot be fixed.
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Research Fellow in Remote Sensing
This 12 month Research Fellow appointment is based in the School of Environment and Life Sciences and is available from 1 February 2010 or as soon as possible thereafter. The aim of the project is to test a new multispectral full-waveform laser scanner for characterizing the three dimensional structure of forest and woodland canopies. The project will be based in the School's Centre for Environmental Systems Research, under the supervision of Professor Mark Danson and will involve with research partners from University College London and Halo Photonics Ltd. The key scientific concepts explored will be the measurement, analysis and modelling of full-waveform two-wavelength data from vegetation targets. A prototype instrument will be constructed by Halo Photonics and tested under laboratory conditions. A computer simulation model, developed by UCL, will be used to interpret the data and develop new vegetation canopy measurement methods.
The post is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) grant awarded under their Technology Proof of Concept scheme. The project builds on a five year programme of work to develop the application of terrestrial laser scanners for measuring the three-dimensional structure of forest and woodland canopies. The project is set in the wider context of Salford's research on the application of ground, airborne and satellite remote sensing for monitoring changes in terrestrial vegetation and the links to carbon dynamics and climate change. The remote sensing group currently comprises four academic staff and five PhD researchers, lead by Professor Mark Danson, working on a range terrestrial and atmospheric measurement and modelling problems.
Closing date: 30/12/2009
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GIS Graduate at British Waterways
An exciting opportunity has arisen for an enthusiastic Graduate GIS specialist in the GIS team at British Waterways. The successful person will have the skills and experience to help drive our work forward.
The main purpose of the role is to support the provision of services and solutions for Geographic Information within the South East & London area while also contributing to the overall management of GI within BW. Ensure data is maintained to provide ability to access up-to-date, accurate and relevant information that can support decision making and extend efficiencies across the business unit/department.
Location: London (Paddington) or Milton Keynes
Closing date: Monday 18th January 2010
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CSIRO - 5 geospatial software engineer posts
Spotted on the http://blog.geoserver.org, CSIRO (Australia’s national science agency) is now hiring five geospatial software developers “to join an established team within CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering (CESRE). As part of the Australian Spatial Research Data Commons (ASRDC) Project, this team is responsible for investigating and implementing open source and open standards based software for geospatial information exchange using Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services.
Applications close on 10 January 2010. These are fixed-term positions of approximately 18 months (term end 30 June, 2011).
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ONS Census Outputs and Geography Consultations
Have your say on 2011 Census outputs - define your requirements now. Following the success of the 2011 census output consultation events in October, ONS's online consultation goes live today. The purpose is to allow users of census data to define their requirements for the main set of statistical outputs for the 2011 Census. In order to assist users in defining their requirements, and for ONS to evaluate them, a series of documents have been produced and are available for download.
This consultation will be open to all census users and will be the primary route by which user requirements will be defined and met. (Please note, it is essential that large organisations co-ordinate their responses and that a joint submission is returned to ONS in such instances.) submissions will need to be returned by the 26 March 2010.
ONS will use your requirements to produce a second set of specifications for further consultation in Autumn 2010. Following this an agreed set of specifications for the main outputs from the 2011 Census will be issued in Winter 2010.
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Research Fellow: Geographical Information Systems
A Research Fellow in GIS Analysis is sought for the Cities Institute – a London-based, world leading centre for research into cities and urban environments (www.citiesinstitute.org). The postholder will join an inter-disciplinary team undertaking a range of national and international research projects on urban economic, environmental, social and cultural themes. A good first degree and Masters level training in GIS or related social/environmental science are required and completion of doctoral research is preferred. The post will be expected to demonstrate potential for publication and generating research ideas and research proposals, as well as team working and the provision of GIS technical expertise. Informal enquiries about the post can be made to cities@londonmet.ac.uk.
Salary: £25,695-£38,469 per annum inclusive
Closing date for applications: 4 January 2010
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NCEO Climate Modeller
The National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO) is seeking a data assimilation specialist to join the Ocean Modelling and Forecasting Group at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.
You will investigate the potential of satellite ocean colour assimilation to improve the representation of the carbon cycle component of the climate system in models used by the UK Met Office and to improve forecasts of air-sea CO2 fluxes on seasonal to inter-annual time scales. This work presents an important opportunity to strengthen established links between NERC and the Met Office by contributing to the development of these models and their assimilation schemes. Close collaboration with Met Office modelers will be essential.
You will have a PhD in the physical sciences and practical experience with numerical models, ideally involving the use of 3-D circulation models and analysis of their results. Good programming skills are required, preferably in C and/or Fortran in a UNIX/LINUX environment. You will also have good verbal and written communication skills and a clear potential for developing your own research publications. Knowledge of marine ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles would be an advantage.
This post will be offered as a fixed-term (three-year) appointment on NERC terms and conditions and the salary is in the range of £26,180 to £29,410 per annum.
The closing date for completed application forms is 11 January 2010. Please quote reference number NOCS 108/09 on all correspondence.
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Free book - A Practicle Guide to Geostatistical Modelling
A free pdf version of A Practicle Guide to Geostatistical Modelling is available to download. Geostatistical mapping can be defined as analytical production of maps by using field observations, auxiliary information and a computer program that generates predictions. The purpose of this guide is to assist you in producing quality maps by using fully-operational open source software packages: R+gstat/geoR and SAGA GIS. Materials presented in this book have been used for the five-day advanced training course "GEOSTAT: spatio-temporal data analysis with R+SAGA+Google Earth" that is periodically organized by the author and collaborators. This is an open access publication!
Cant say fairer than that. It looks good and a chapter listing can be found below. You can even add comments that might feed back into the publication. A hard copy of the book can be purchased for a small fee which covers printing and shipping.
Chapters
* Cover
* Introduction
* Regression-kriging
* Software (R+GIS+GE)
* Auxiliary data sources
* First steps (meuse)
* Heavy metal concentrations (NGS)
* Soil Organic Carbon (WISE_SOC)
* Geomorphological units (fishcamp)
* Stream networks (baranjahill)
* Land surface temperature (HRtemp)
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Secrets & Lies - do maps always tell the truth?
Location:Aberystwyth
6 Wednesday 1.15 p.m.
Lunchtime Presentation
'Secrets & Lies - do maps always tell the truth?' - Huw Thomas
The Head of the Library's Non-text Materials Section provides a glimpse into the Library's collection of over one million maps and shows that things may not always be what they seem.
Free admission by ticket
Tickets available from the Library Shop or online
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Research Assistant - Dundee
Research Assistant
Environmental Justice and Climate Change
School of Social and Environmental Sciences (Geography)
College of Arts and Social Sciences
Job Reference: ASS/3063
Closing Date: 18 Dec 2009
Date Entered: 1 Dec 2009
£25,623pa
The purpose of this post is to work on a Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) funded project entitled The Invisible Hazard: pluvial flooding in urban areas. The principal duty will be conducting and analysing in-depth interviews with a variety of professionals with a stake in the management of pluvial flooding. The post also requires the quantitative analysis of the socio-economic profiles of flood-risk and non-flood risk areas.
The successful candidate will have a good degree in a social or environmental science or civil engineering and experience of policy-related research or similar. Good organisational skills are essential, as is a willingness to acquire knowledge of population data sources and GIS analysis.
The post is based on the main University campus near Dundee city centre, although travel around the UK will be required including some overnight stays.
The post is full-time, with a preferred start date of 1 February 2010 or as soon as possible thereafter.
The post is tenable for 12 months. Remuneration is £25,623 per annum plus employer superannuation contribution (national spinal point 25).
Informal enquiries should be directed to Dr Donald Houston; email address , tel: 01382 384643. In your application please include a letter of no more than two pages explaining how you meet the requirements of the post along with a supporting CV and the Candidate Information Form.
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Lecturer – Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing
With the current fixation of LBS and the expanding mobile technology market the following post may be of interest.
Lecturer – Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing
Glasgow Caledonian University
Department/Division: School of Engineering and Computing
Grade: 7
Salary Scale: £37,650 - £43,622 Pro Rata Per Annum (Point 38 - 43)*
Contract: 28 Hours per week (0.8 fte) Fixed term for 11 months
Closing Date: 16 December 2009
Ref: HR1070
Computing and Creative Technology (CCT) is an interdisciplinary Division within the School of Engineering & Computing at Glasgow Caledonian University. CCT is a multidisciplinary centre for learning and knowledge creation particularly in the area of digital product design and development. We believe in an integrated approach to creative production, incorporating human behaviour, aesthetic, technological, market and manufacturing knowledge which is reflected in our research focus - Design and Experience.
The successful candidate will deliver learning and teaching material in the area of Mobile & Ubiquitous Computing (MUC) and will participate in new and continuing research in this field as an integral part of the Mobile & Ubiquitous Computing Research Group (MUCom: http://www.mucom.mobi). As the candidate is expected to support established research activity it is desirable that they have a demonstrable research focus in one or more of the following areas: Context-Awareness for Mobile Computing, Gestural and Sensor-based Interaction, Mobile Human-Computer Interaction, Context-Driven Mobile Information Access and Mobile Information Retrieval. Strong technical skills in the development of research prototypes for MUC (preferably using J2ME and C++) are also required. The candidate must possess a Higher Degree and an Honours Degree in Computing or related discipline. The candidate should be able to demonstrate excellent communication skills (both written and verbal).
Informal enquiries: Professor Caroline Parker email: c.g.parker@gcal.ac.uk
Please note, all completed applications MUST be submitted to recruitment@gcal.ac.uk. Applications sent to any other address may not be considered. CV's may be included with a completed application form where appropriate.
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Postcode datasets to be free?
About 2 weeks ago the Government announced its plans to make a number of key datasets freely available to the public. Now another dataset seems to have been added to the list, postcodes.
There was some mention of postcode data in the original release but as this was related to data held by the OS, this was most probably going to be postcode area boundary data. Involving the Royal Mail directly suggests that greater access may be offered. As yet, nothing has been confirmed.
We will try to keep you informed on the free data movement on the run up to April when the data is to start to become available.
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Digimap's 10th Birthday
That's right, the Digimap service will be 10 years old in January. To mark this occasion EDINA is holding a celebratory event to mark the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Digimap service on the 20th January 2010. All Digimap site reps and support staff are invited to join us in Edinburgh to mark the occasion.
During the day, there will be a number of speakers and demonstrations to showcase the Digimap service past, present and future. A keynote presentation will be given by Vanessa Lawrence Director General of the OS and in the evening there will be a drinks reception followed by dinner with guest speaker, Mike Parker (television presenter and author of 'Map Addict').
The daytime event will be free of charge with lunch and refreshments provided. Tickets for the evening event (including drinks reception) will be available for £24 (or £30 including wine).
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Met Office to release global-average temperature data
You may have noticed the storm that is brewing over climate science and accusations that results were manipulated to show climate change. This is strongly refuted by the scientific community in the UK and in order to provide more transparency, the Met Office plans to release global-average temperature data records.
This data is a subset of the full HadCRUT record of global temperatures, which is one of the global temperature records that have underpinned IPCC assessment reports and numerous scientific studies. The data subset will consist of a network of individual stations that has been designated by the World Meteorological Organisation for use in climate monitoring. The subset of stations is evenly distributed across the globe and provides a fair representation of changes in mean temperature on a global scale over land.
This subset is not a new global temperature record and it does not replace the HadCRUT, NASA GISS and NCDC global temperature records, all of which have been fully peer reviewed. We are confident this subset will show that global average land temperatures have risen over the last 150 years.
This subset release will continue the policy of putting as much of the station temperature record as possible into the public domain.
The Met Office also intend that as soon as possible we will also publish the specific computer code that aggregates the individual station temperatures into the global land temperature record.
As soon as they have all permissions in place, they will release the remaining station records - around 5000 in total - that make up the full land temperature record. They are dependent on international approvals to enable this final step and cannot guarantee that we will get permission from all data owners.
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FOSS4G 2009 - Videos online
If you were unable to attend the FOSS4G conference then you may be interested to know that the presentations and videos are now available online.
Presentations, workshops and tutorials and videos are linked from abstract descriptions to make it easier to decide what you want to watch.
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Grad Teaching Assistantship - Salford Uni
Applications are invited for the Graduate Teaching Assistantships at the University of Salford, starting in October 2010.
Graduate Teaching Assistantships offer a valuable opportunity for postgraduate researchers to study for a PhD while teaching in subjects broadly related to their PhD research.
Graduate Teaching Assistants work with academic staff in a range of teaching, learning and assessment activities to support undergraduate student learning for 180 hours per academic year.
The scholarships are worth £13,290 per year (2009-2010 levels) over three years and, within this School, are available to UK/EU students only.
Within the School of Environment & Life Sciences, scientists with interests in areas such as biology, biochemistry, environmental health, urban studies, wildlife conservation, cancer studies and infectious diseases both study and teach their own subjects and also work at the boundaries between the different topics.
In 2010 a graduate teaching assistantship will be available in the following area:
* Environmental Systems & Wildlife: Climate & Environmental change: mountain glaciers, lakes and rivers
* Environmental Systems & Wildlife: Wildlife ecology & behavior
* Housing, Urban Environments & Regeneration: Sustainable transport, regeneration and housing
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MapGuide 2.1.0 released
OSGeo are pleased to announce that the MapGuide Open Source project team has released MapGuide Open Source 2.1.0.
* Release Notes
* Documentation
* Downloads
Along with the many bug fixes, this release has
* many improvements in performance, scalability and stability;
* an improved error reporting system;
* raster re-projection;
* and CS-Map as the coordinate system library.
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INSPIRE data specifications for Annex II & III
Call for Expression of Interest for participation in development of INSPIRE data specifications for Annex II & III Data Themes launched.
The Call is addressed to the INSPIRE Spatial Data Interest Communities (SDICs) and Legally Mandated Organisations (LMOs). The Commission is seeking voluntary contributions of SDICs and LMOs, asking them to propose experts (domain experts, Facilitators, Editors) for the Thematic Working Groups (TWGs) and reference materials to be taken into consideration for the data specifications.
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RGS-IBG 2010 - First Call for Papers
Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual International Conference
Date: 1-3 September 2010
Location: Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and Imperial College, London
First Call for Papers
Members of the geographical and related communities are invited to propose sessions or submit papers to open sessions for the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2010. This three day event attracts more than 1200 participants from around the world presenting research papers spanning the breadth of the discipline. This year's conference theme is //Confronting the Challenges of the Post-Crisis Global Economy and Environment;// Chair of conference Professor Neil Wrigley, University of Southampton
You are invited to propose sessions with papers, or individual papers for open sessions. Sessions will be advertised on the Conference website.
Sessions will be 1 hour 40 minutes in length but the format is flexible; contributed papers, poster sessions, panel discussions, practitioner forums, or other innovative sessions or formats are encouraged. Most sessions will contain five x 20 minute papers (with time included in each for questions) or four x 20 minute papers with discussion / questions at the end. All sessions will be reviewed and approved by the Conference Planning Committee after 22 February.
Key dates:
1 December - Call for papers website to go live
22 February - deadline for complete session and abstract submissions by Research Group / Independent session organisers to the Society
29 March - deadline for submission of abstracts to open sessions (to the RGS-IBG)
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Wearable Personal Sensing Workshop
Wearable Personal Sensing Workshop - 26 January 2010 (Tuesday), University of Nottingham
Venue: B18, Amenities Building, Jubilee Campus, University of Nottingham
Schedule
09:00 - 09:30 - Registrations, Tea & Coffee
09:30 - 09:40 - Workshop Introduction - Suchith Anand (CGS, University of Nottingham)
09:40 - 10:15 – Key Note presentation - Evtim Peytchev (Nottingham Trent University)
10:15 - 10:45 - Wearable personal sensing social network application for mood sensing - Mood Twitter - Duncan Rowland (Computer Science, University of Nottingham)
10:45- 11:00 - Tea& Coffee
11:00- 11:30 - Location Based Visualization -James Goulding (CGS, University of Nottingham)
11:30- 12:00 - SPACER Project - Gobe Hobona (CGS, University of Nottingham)
12:00 - 12:30 - Breakout groups and demos of projects
12:30 - 12:45 - Discussions ,Future collaboration and close of Workshop
12:45 – 13:30 - Lunch and networking (Nottingham Geospatial Building)
If you are interested in running software demos or giving a short presentation, please email suchith.anand@nottingham.ac.uk by 10 December 2009.
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Faculty position at Grant MacEwan University
Full-Time Faculty Position in Earth & Atmospheric Sciences - Geographic Information Systems & Remote Sensing
The Department of Physical Sciences at Grant MacEwan University (Canada) invites applications for a full-time faculty position in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences with a specialization in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing, which will commence July 1, 2010. The candidate must have a Ph.D. (or solid indication of imminent completion), and demonstrate excellence or clear promise of excellence in both teaching and research. Applicants must be familiar with ArcGIS software and its applications as well as a range of different remote sensing satellite and air-photo methodologies and techniques. Candidates must also be prepared to develop and teach introductory and senior level lecture and laboratory courses in GIS and remote sensing, as well as other Earth and Atmospheric Sciences courses. Consideration will be given to candidates with expertise in Earth Science applications of Geographic Information Systems and remote sensing.
Applicants should submit a covering letter with current curriculum vitae, a teaching statement and student evaluations, a statement of research interests, samples of research productivity (including copies of recent publications), and graduate transcripts. Candidates should also arrange for three letters of reference to be sent under separate cover to our Human Resources Department.
All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be given priority.
Salary Range: Commensurate with education and experience.
Closing Date: January 22, 2010
Quote Competition No: 09.11.284
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Research Assistant - University of Aberdeen
Living North Sea Project
University of Aberdeen - School of Geosciences
The University of Aberdeen seeks a Research Assistant to assist with this project. This position requires an enthusiastic and creative individual with a good theoretical and practical background in GIS and computer science with special skills in (a) the design and creation of websites, (b) the use and development of online mapping and GIS applications (including geodatabases), and spatial data handling. The job requires good computing skills that may include scripting and programming, as well as a general working knowledge of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The individual must be prepared to be devoted to the work involved. The individual must also be able and willing to travel to meetings in the UK and Europe, as well as to be able to write detailed and professional reports, and to make presentations on the project at partnership meetings, seminars, workshops and conferences. Good timekeeping and organisational management skills are required. Finally, the individual must be able to work with others in a group.
You may also be asked to be involved in other associated work relating to the UG and PG Applied Geospatial Technology (AGT) and Marine and Coastal Resource Management (MCRM) degree programmes. Disclosure Scotland is also a requirement.
As this post is funded from the EU Commission it is available for a period of 34 months.
Salary will be at the appropriate point on the Grade 5 scale (£24,877 - £26,391 per annum) with placement according to qualifications and experience.
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IJHG November edition available online
The following articles are now available on the International Journal of Health Geographics’ website. These can be accessed for free and include articles submitted to the Journal from 28 October to 24 November 2009.
Editorial
Web GIS in practice VII: stereoscopic 3-D solutions for online maps and virtual globes. Maged N. Kamel Boulos and Larry R. Robinson.
Methodology
A scan statistic for continuous data based on the normal probability model. Martin Kulldorff, Lan Huang and Kevin Konty.
Local indicators of geocoding accuracy (LIGA): theory and application. Geoffrey M. Jacquez and Robert Rommel.
Research
A trend analysis and sub-regional distribution in number of people living with HIV and dying with tuberculosis in Africa, 1991 to 2006. Olalekan A. Uthman, Ismail Yahaya, Khalid Ashfaq and Mubashir MB Uthman.
Temporal and spatial distribution of human cryptosporidiosis in the west of Ireland 2004-2007. Mary Callaghan, Martin Cormican, Martina Prendergast, Heidi Pelly, Richard Cloughley, Belinda Hanahoe and Diarmuid O'Donovan.
Residential traffic exposure and children's emergency department presentation for asthma: a spatial study. Gavin Pereira, A JBM De Vos and Angus Cook.
Comparing objective measures of environmental supports for pedestrian travel in adults. Elizabeth Shay, Daniel A. Rodriguez, Gihyoug Cho, Kelly J. Clifton and Kelly R. Evenson.
Pan-European Chikungunya surveillance: designing risk stratified surveillance zones. Natasha Tilston, Chris Skelly and Phil Weinstein.
http://www.ij-healthgeogr[...]
Icebergs marching North
An interesting aside from the usual news theme, Australian scientist have been posting regular updates on a group of icebergs that are currently floating northwards between Macquarie Island and New Zealand. The maps have been produced from MODIS images.
I suppose these may become a menace to shipping but also posse some interesting and topical questions about why there seem to be so many bergs making it so far North this winter? I am sure the scientist tracking them will provide some possible explanations for this.
The maps seem to be regularly updated so if you are interested, it is worth checking back every so often.
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Maps and Society Lecture - 3rd Dec 2010
Lectures in the history of cartography convened by Catherine Delano Smith (Institute of Historical Research), Tony Campbell (formerly Map Library, British Library), and Alessandro Scafi (Warburg Institute). Meetings are held on selected Thursdays at The Warburg Institute, University of London, Woburn Square, London WC1H OAB at 5.00 pm.
December 3. Dr Carla Lois (Universidad de Buenos Aires; Universidad Nacional de La Plata). 'Toponymic Landscapes: Ways of Seeing Patagonia in Early Argentinean Maps'.
Admission is free. Meetings are followed by refreshments. All are most welcome. Enquiries: +44(0) 20 8346 5112 (Dr Delano Smith) or < info@tonycampbell.info >.
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UCL - PhD in Lidar measurements of vegetation
A PhD studentship is available in the Department of Geography, UCL to design a ground-based multi-spectral lidar instrument for measuring the detailed structure of forests and other vegetation canopies. The PhD is in collaboration with Prof. J.P. Muller, Department of Space and Climate Physics, UCL and Dr. M. Foster, Lidar Technologies Limited, the latter being CASE partners.
Supervisor and Awarding Academic Department:
Professor P. Lewis, Department of Geography, UCL.
Expected start date for the project:
11 January 2010
Deadline to submit PhD application to Department of Geography:
18 December 2009
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Earth Observation Scientist at Plymouth Marine Lab
Plymouth Marine Laboratories require an enthusiastic and highly motivated Earth observation scientist to join our busy team. You will initially undertake Earth observation research for quantification of ocean biogeochemistry and carbon fluxes, with the areas of: inherent optical property model development; phytoplankton functional type and primary production algorithm development; biogeochemical time series analysis and ocean provinces. You will also research bio-physical interactions and air-sea CO2 fluxes, particularly algorithm development for investigating surface ocean CO2 variability, through combined use of in situ and satellite observations.
Salary range £27,109 - £33,740 p.a.
The application deadline is 1200hrs on 22 December 2009 and the proposed interview date is 28 January 2010 for a start as soon as possible.
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2nd OSGeo UK event - June 2010
The Centre for Geospatial Science of University of Nottingham, Open Source Geospatial Foundation (UK Chapter) and ICA Working Group on Open Source Geospatial Technologies are organizing the Second Open Source GIS UK Conference on 21-22nd June, 2010 at the University of Nottingham.
The conference has very much an international focus and holistic outlook bringing together speakers and delegates from government, academic, industry, software developers, open source communities, geospatial researchers etc. High profile speakers from all over the world will be giving presentations and hands on workshops for the conference.
The key aims of this conference are:
1. to hear presentations from government, academic, industry and policy makers on open source geospatial technologies
2. to provide platform to network and develop ideas for future collaborative work in open source GIS
3. to understand current developments in open source GIS
4. to act as a focus for open source GIS research and development
The workshops that proved so popular last year will also be back next year.
IMPORTANT DATES:
o Abstracts Submission deadline: 30 January 2009
o Notification of acceptance: 15th February 2009
o Final papers delivered by: 15 March 2009
o Notification of acceptance: 30th March 2009
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AGI Scotland presentations now online
If you didn't manage to make it to the recent AGI Scotland event you can now access the presentations on line. To do this you need to be a member of the AGI. If there is something that looks particularly interesting but you are not a member, you can try email info@agi.org.uk and pleading your case for her to email you the presentations.
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Ordnance Survey - making public data public
Well, some of it at least. The Government announced yesterday that they would be making certain OS datasets freely available to the public. This is great news for those that have been calling for data to be made public, namely Ed Parsons and the team behind www.freeourdata.org.uk. Initially, they aim to open up 1100 datasets and hope that almost 2000 datasets will eventually be available.
So what does this mean, well the full press release, which is linked at the bottom of this page, uses less than clear language. Fortunately, Ed Parsons has created a very good summary of it using easier to understand language.
Officially, Gordon Brown and Prof. Shadbolt will be looking how best to make data relating to electoral and local authority boundaries, postcode areas and mid scale mapping information available. I dont see them releasing much more than the polygons relating to postcode regions, EH, AB, BD for example and perhaps areas such as EH1, EH2 and so on. The reason for this is that the address point dataset is owned by the Royal Mail.
What does it mean for the academic sector? Well, not much really. All this data, and much much more, is freely available at the point of use through EDINA Digimap.
Overall, this is a really positive step by the UK government. Making certain datasets available to the public is very useful. There are a number of Core Datasets that many feel should be free and would encourage economic growth in the UK. This was summarised very well by Bob Barr at the AGI GeoCommunity 2009 event
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Introduction to Open Source Geospatial Software
An opportunity to learn about the leading edge free and open-source technologies for desktop and web-based mapping and data analysis.
There's a lot of free and open-source geospatial software out there, doing all sorts of things from the server room, to the desktop, to the web. This course will show you how all these components connect together and will let you decide what you need for your geospatial requirements. Bring your own data (or use our supplied datasets) and get mapping!
Topics covered will include: an introduction to spatial data and open standards for spatial data; spatial databases and file formats; building maps with QuantumGIS desktop GIS software; spatial statistics and programming in R; creating maps for the web and implementing a spatial data infrastructure.
This two-day masterclass will take the form of alternating lectures and tutorials, giving you a chance to experiment with techniques from the lectures with assistance from the speakers. Some experience in GIS or computer programming may be useful, but the course should be comprehensible to anyone with basic computer literacy skills.
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Dependency map
Picked up from SlashGeo, this is a nice little dependency map for open source geo-packages. Why is this useful? Well for a start it is always nice to see how things link together but if you want to get into developing the dependency map is a useful reference point that could save you time and effort.
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GISRUK 2010 - Call for Papers
The Call for Papers is open and will close at the end of November 2009. You will need to set up a free account on EasyChair to be able to submit. The closing date for submissions is Friday 27th November 2009.
The template for abstracts, with the required formatting and additional submission information is available in the following formats:
* Microsoft Word .doc
* PDF
These are the preferred submission formats. We can also accept submissions in HTML but this is discouraged. We cannot accept submissions in .docx, .odf, .rtf or other formats.
Overview
Traditionally, GISRUK has provided a platform for early career researchers as well as those with a significant track record of achievement in the area. As such, the conference provides a welcome blend of innovative thinking and mature reflection. GISRUK is the premier academic GIS conference in the UK and we are keen to maintain its outstanding record of achievement in developing GIS in the UK and beyond. We welcome papers equally from established GIS researchers, in academia or industry. If you supervise research by PhD students or researchers please persuade them to contribute; if you are a postgraduate in a field relating to GIS you are most welcome to present at GISRUK.
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Geomob London - Thursday night
Time: November 19, 2009 from 6pm to 9pm
Location: University College London
Organized By: Christopher Osborne
Event Description:
After what seems like a very long break from usual #geomob meetups, we are back on November 19th. Kindly sponsored by Skyhook Wireless and University College London.
Presentations
The Mapstraction Library - Ed Freyfogle chief Nestofari from www.nestoria.co.uk
"Long time readers will recall that we sponsored the original development of Mapstraction over three years ago. We and many other websites have been reaping the benefits ever since. Recently a new version of Mapstraction (mxn v2) was developed to be faster, lighter, cleaner, and more easily extendable. We made the switch a few months ago with great results. I’ll be discussing the details of why to use Mapstraction generally and the benefits of v2 specifically. Many thanks to all the developers who have contributed over the years. Every Nestoria user benefits. "
Skyhook Wireless - a location-system that delivers the same level of location quality whether indoors or outdoors, in the country or downtown.
Why I Track My Location and You Should Too - John McKerrell of www.mapme.at fame
"I've been tracking my location for over two years, I'll be sharing some of the insights I've found from looking at my history."
Show and Tell Session:
New CloudMade APIs
Walking, Thinking, Talking, Locating, Sharing, Being (my connected holiday) - Chris Thorpe from Jaggeree
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gvSIG Desktop 1.9 released
A new stable version of gvSIG Desktop has been released: gvSIG Desktop 1.9.
This new version has many new features which are listed next.
* Symbology:
o Density point legend.
o Symbol editor.
o Graduated symbol legend.
o Proportional symbol legend.
o Quantity category legend.
o Symbology levels.
o Load/Save SLD legend.
o Expressions legend.
o Basic default symbols.
o Two differents measure systems for symbols and labels (in the paper / in the world).
* Labelling:
o Creation of individualized annotations.
o Overlaps labeling control.
o Priority position labeling.
o Range scale visualization of labeling.
o Orientation of labeling.
o Different location options for labeling.
o More kind of measure units for labeling.
* Raster and remote sensing:
o Clipping of bands and data
o Export layers
o Save from view to raster file
o Color table and gradient edition
o No data values management
o Pixel process (filters)
o Color interpretation management
o Overview creation
o Enhanced radiometric
o Histogram
o Geolocation
o Raster reprojection
o Georeferencing
o Automatic vectorization
o Region of Interest (ROI) definition
* Internationalitation:
o New languages: English (USA), Portuguesebrazilian, Turkish, Russian, Greek, Swahili, Serbian.
o Translation management extension integrated.
* Editing:
o Matrix.
o Scale.
o Explode.
o New snappings.
o Polygon cutting.
o Polygon autocompletation
o Polygon joining.
o Previous editing selection.
* Geoprocessing:
o Geoprocessing tools can now work with line layers besides with polygon layers.
* Tables:
o New wizard for joining tables.
* Layout:
o Add grid to the view into Layout.
* Project:
o Wizard for recovering layers which path has changed.
o Online help.
* Interface:
o Possibility of hiding toolbars.
o New icons.
* CRS:
o CRS management extension JCRS v.2 integrated.
* Other:
o Improvementes in the reading of format DWG 2004
o Improvements of the hyperlink operations.
o Record the symbology legend path.
o Add "GeoServeisPort" server in the Nomenclator.
o Independent units for distances and Areas.
o Open layer properties by double clicking.
Also the following tools of the extension made by the Consejería de Medio Ambiente of the Junta de Castilla y León have been added:
* Selection tools:
o Selection by polyline
o Selection by circle
o Selection by buffer
o Select all
* Information tools:
o Fast information tool (informs about a geometry when the mouse stays on it)
o Multicoordinates tool: allows to visualize the view coordinates simultaneously in geographic and UTM coordinates, even for a different Zone from the one selected for the current view.
* Hyperlink:
o Improvement of the current hyperlink.
o Link different actions to the same layer
o Link properly several actions within one view.
o Add raster or vector layers in one view.
o Link to PDF files
o Link to HTML files
o Add new hyperlink actions with the help of plugins
* Data transformation tools:
o Export of tables subsets to DBF and Excel format.
o Add geographical information to the layer (for instance, add the Area,
o Perimeter, etc. fields to a table in a faster way).
o Import tables fields.
o Interactively transform points to lines or polygons, and lines to polygons.
* Open/save projects:
o Automatic backup of the .GVP when the project is saved.
* Other:
o Print view using a template.
o Select the order for loading several layers (for example, it allows specifying the loading of shapes on top of the the raster data by defect).
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Mapping History, People and Ideas
Mapping History, People and Ideas: Geospatial Modelling in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
This one day workshop will highlight cutting edge approaches to geospatial modelling that are currently being used by researchers in the arts and humanities. It will be relevant to those interested in visualising and interpreting data, describing ongoing work in both Cambridge and beyond. The aim is to show early career researchers the potential of a geospatial approach, displaying, modelling and interpreting information which varies through space and time.
Speakers include:
Craig Alexander (Archaeology, Cambridge)
Bob Haining (Geography, Cambridge)
Kenneth L Kvamme (University of Arkansas)
Corinne Roughley (Archaeology, Cambridge)
Leigh Shaw-Taylor (History, Cambridge)
Tony Wilkinson (Archaeology, Durham)
Date: 2nd December 2009
Location: Cambridge
Cost: £5 (including lunch)
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MapFish enters OSGeo incubation period
Both MapFish and GeoServer projects have been accepted yesterday to the OSGEO (Open Source Geospatial foundation) incubation process.
This process helps ensure that any OSGeo accredited software is fit for purpose and will persist in the GIS arena for the foreseeable future. So the challenge for MapFish will be defining the exact content of MapFish, deciding about the license model and the copyright assignment. Perhaps the biggest challenge will be to explain exactly what MapFish is and how it canh benefit organisations that choose to impliment it.
Good luck MapFish, we will be monitoring your progress through the incubation.
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Census data workshop: changing geography masterclass
Researchers across the social sciences are frequently encountered with the problem of having to match datasets with different geographical references. Examples include data from different periods of time (e.g. successive censuses) or which have been recorded using different systems of geographical areas (e.g. primary care trusts and postcode sectors). This is intended to be a hands-on practical masterclass in which delegates can bring their own data and discuss specific research problems with the ESRC Census Programme team. Following a series of overview presentations, case studies presented by delegates will be discussed by the panel and a hands-on workshop session will follow.Only those working or studying in a UK academic institution are eligible to attend.
Delegates should provide a brief outline of their own research project, explaining the geographical matching challenges faced and indicating whether some of their data could be made available for the discussion and workshop session. Delegates will get a chance to have a twenty-minute one-to-one session with a member of the team if they book in advance.
Delegates should be familiar with the datasets to be matched and ideally will have already attended a basic census mapping or GIS course. They should be registered with Census.ac.uk, including the digital boundary data and postcode datasets: Census.ac.uk/registration
* Time: 10.30-16.00 (registration and refreshments at 10.00)
* Date: Wednesday, 3 February 2010
* Place: Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute (S3RI), Building 39, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1BJ
The workshop is free to attend and includes lunch and refreshments. However travel and accommodation costs will need to be met by the participants.
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Oxford Seminars in Cartography series
The first of the Oxford Seminars in Cartography is to be held on Tuesday 24 November 2009.
The Map of the Kingdom: The Italian Geological Survey, 1860-2000 by Pietro Corsi (Professor of the History of Science in the University of Oxford).
The seminar runs from 5.00pm to 6.30pm at the University of Oxford Centre for the Environment, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY.
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Cambridge Seminar in the History of Cartography
The next Cambridge Seminar in the History of Cartography will be held in the Harrods Room, Emmanuel College, Cambridge CB2 3AP on Tuesday 24 November at 5.30pm.
The speaker is Frances Willmoth (Jesus College, Cambridge), on Fen Maps and Moore's Mapp.
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Map Art Exhibition
The Map Is Not the Territory Revisited
7–28 November
This group exhibition at the gallery is the latest in an occasional series of exhibitions of artists using maps and map-making strategies.
Works by artists including: Chris Kenny, Michael Druks, Georgia Russell, Jason Wallis-Johnson, Grayson Perry, Rolf Brandt, Cornelia Parker, Terry Ryan, Abigail Reynolds, Jonathan Callan, Deirdre Jackson, Alberto Duman, Vito Drago, Margaret Proudfoot, Richard Wentworth, Jugoslav Vlahovic, Paul Tecklenberg and Satomi Matoba.
Private View Friday 13 November 6 to 8:30 pm
The exhibition also hosts the book launch of The Map As Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography by Katharine Harmon (Princeton Architectural Press).
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Environmental Informatics Liaison Officer - CEH
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), Wallingford
An exciting opportunity has arisen for an Informatics Liaison Officer (ILO) based at Wallingford, to play a key role in the management and integration of data collections across CEH in collaboration with the ILO network across the organisation. This will help CEH to deliver national capability in the environmental sciences in order to underpin the NERC research themes and to meet the challenges set out in the current CEH Science Strategy, Integrated Science for our Changing World.
You will support and advise developing science information management plans incorporating CEH data policies, for all science projects. You will develop solutions to integrate spatial and time series datasets into EIDC systems and science projects. You will recognise potential scientific opportunities arising from data integration and dissemination. You will identify information management requirements within science projects and develop solutions. You will provide support and training for science staff on EIDC policies, procedures and systems, as required. You will prioritise freshwater data needing rescue and enable long-term safe archiving for important datasets. You will link with other Informatics Liaison Officers and the EIDC team to coordinate informatics activities across CEH.
You will be required to have attained a qualification in environmental science / informatics, or similar subject, ideally at PhD level. Candidates with degree or Masters level qualifications must be able to demonstrate equivalent significant exposure to a variety of informatics management techniques.
You should have in-depth knowledge of managing a range of varied data in a scientific environment which can be backed-up with a portfolio of projects and outputs. Ideally, you will have strong numerical and analytical skills, likely to have been developed in an academic or engineering environment, and knowledge of one or more of the following: RDBMS/SQL, computer programming, web-site/-services development, metadata standards. An interest in, and knowledge of, hydrology or the freshwater environment would be beneficial, as would experience of spatial data management using a GIS.
You should have strong interpersonal and communication (written and oral) skills. You will be an excellent team member, and able to adapt to rapidly changing technologies.
The salary for this post is £26,180 progressing to £29,410 per annum. In addition NERC offers a public sector pension scheme, 30 days' annual leave and 10½ days' public and privilege holiday per annum. We offer a flexible and supportive working environment and will encourage your continuing professional development as part of our career support.
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RICS Geomatics Evening Lecture Series 2009-10 - Autumn/Winter sessions
Thurs Nov 12th , 17.30 for 18.00 – Marine survey – Glyn Hunt, Fugro - marine surveying.
Location - RICS 12 Great George St, Parliament Square, SW1P 3AD
Synopsis: The talk will concentrate on the various hardware, skills and problems faced offshore by Positioning Surveyors on rig moves, i.e. moving oil / gas rigs to new locations. This work requires knowledge of offshore drilling, Seamanship, Charting, Electrical Engineering, Client / Project Management, Geodesy, Computing, historical (legacy) methods, as well as the most cutting edge DGPS techniques possible for sometimes cm-accuracies. Thrown into this is the requirement to understand and often use a host of various survey / navigation instruments, ranging from the Sextant to Gyrocompasses, plus work under often extreme weather conditions. All this is from the viewpoint of a person who still admits to constantly learning new things with each trip, and views life offshore from the perspective of someone who has enjoyed the freedoms offered by regular Monday - Friday onshore work for over a decade.
Dec 10th – Christmas lecture – Geomatics – who did they think we were? Prof Mike Cooper
Jan 28th 2010 – UK geo forum annual lecture – Vanessa Lawrence OS GB
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World GIS Day - 18th November
World GIS Day is nearly upon us. This year it will fall on the 18th November. To find out what is happening in your area, or to find out how you could set up and event, check out the website below.
So for we have events at:
University of Chester, Chester
West Sussex County Council
AGI Northern Group - Leeds
University of Worcester, Worcester
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Post-doctorate Researcher in satellite remote sensing/time series analysis
The post is based in the Bristol Glaciology Centre working on a European Union project, ice2sea, (www.ice2sea.eu) which aims to explore present-day and future contributions to sea level from glaciers and ice sheets. This is a collaborative project involving ~ 25 partners internationally. The aim of this post is to produce a time series of mass trends for Antarctica and Greenland from a range of satellite observations combined with climate and statistical modelling.
You should have experience in the analysis of 4-D data, preferably from Earth Observation data sets. A background in glaciology and/or climatology would be advantageous but not essential. Initially, funding will be for a period of up to three years with salary in the range £29,704 - £33,432 depending on experience.
If successful, you may be appointed either on a fixed term or a permanent contract depending on the extent of your previous relevant research experience, in line with the University's fixed term contract agreement. Interviews are likely to be held in the week commencing 7th December, and the expected start date is 1st February 2010.
Grade: Level a in Pathway 2
Salary: £29,704 - £33,432
Contact for informal enquiries:
Prof J Bamber j.bamber@bristol.ac.uk Tel. 0117 331 4129
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4 Lectureships at Plymouth University
Four Lectureships (two Human Geography, two Physical Geography) are currently being advertised at the University of Plymouth. Applicants with suitable experience and a track record of research in GIS with either a human or physical leaning. The closing data for applications is Thursday 12 November 2009. Further details and how to apply can be found at:
http://www.plymouth.ac.uk[...]
http://www.plymouth.ac.uk[...]
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Google in-car navigation
Google have announced the next step for Google Maps for mobile: Google Maps Navigation (Beta) for Android 2.0 devices.
This new feature comes with everything you'd expect to find in a GPS navigation system, like 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting. But unlike most navigation systems, Google Maps Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of your phone's Internet connection.
Here are seven features that are possible because Google Maps Navigation is connected to the Internet:
- The most recent map and business data
- Search in plain English
- Search by voice
- Traffic view
- Search along route
- Satellite view
- Street View
But, the service is only available on the Android platform which accounts for a small fraction of the market at present. In addition, the service is only available for the US at the moment so don't get too excited if you are in Europe.
This story really links to one from earlier this month:
http://www.gogeo.ac.uk/go[...]
We will have to wit and see what impact this has on the rest of the in-car navigation systems market and we will also have to see how well the google routing works. (Permalink) | Bookmark
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GIS in the Humanities Workshop
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and other spatial technologies such as GPS and virtual globes are becoming increasingly used within disciplines such as history, archaeology, literary studies, religious studies and classics. This free workshop, sponsored by Spatial Literacy in Teaching (SPLINT) and the History Subject Centre, will provide a basic introduction to GIS as an approach to humanities research and as a technology. The key aims are:
* Establish how the use of spatial technologies is important to the humanities;
* Identify current barriers to entry that prevent or limit their use;
* Work towards an agenda for improving training and education in spatial technologies at all levels from undergraduates to senior academics.
The workshop is aimed at a broad audience including post-graduate or masters students, members of academic staff, and holders of major grants and those intending to apply for them. Professionals in other relevant sectors interested in finding out about GIS applications are also welcome. We also particularly welcome participation from people who teach GIS or who teach in humanities disciplines and would like to include spatial technologies in their curriculum.
Timetable: The workshop will take place on 16th December 2009 at the University of Leicester. It will be split into two separate but overlapping sessions. Participants are welcome to attend either or both of the sessions. Lunch and refreshments are included.
10:00-12:45 Morning: An introduction to GIS in the humanities. The morning will introduce the fundamentals of humanities GIS explaining what it is, why it is useful including case-study applications. The session assumes no prior knowledge.
14:00-16:30 Afternoon: Removing the barriers. The afternoon will use roundtable discussions to explore how spatial skills in the humanities can be improved. It will look at barriers to entry and how they can be overcome.
Applying: Places are limited and the deadline for registration is 3rd December 2009.
Costs: The workshop is free of charge though there will be a charge of £20 (to cover catering and materials) in the case of cancellations after 9.00 am 3rd December 2009.
Travel Support: Some funding is available to support delegates’ travel expenses. Please contact Janet Carter, SPLINT Administrator (jc115@le.ac.uk) for further details before the registration deadline.
Further information: contact Ian Gregory (I.Gregory@lancaster.ac.uk) or Janet Carter, SPLINT Administrator (jc115@le.ac.uk).
What can you offer us? We are keen to find out more about how you think the use of GIS and spatial technologies can be improved within the humanities. To help us with this please fill in our online questionnaire at: http://www.hgis.org.uk/splint. We will share the results at the workshop.
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Audio Geo-tagging
Just a short presentation of an audio geo-tagging system that was presented at FOSS4G 2009 in Sydney.
The system has been developed by Landcare Research New Zealand and allows users to record interview sessions where a white board is used to annotate a map. Once the session has been saved, you can select the elements you digitized during the interview and the audio will jump to that part of the interview. Very neat.
Contact details for Chris McDowell can be found here:
http://bit.ly/3unBWJ
Video of the demo is available through the link below.
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RGS-IBG SESSION: Governance and the Geoweb
A call for abstracts for a session(s) on Governance and the Geoweb at the forthcoming Royal Geographic Society Annual International Conference in London UK at the beginning of September 2010
LOCATION AND DATES:
Royal Geographic Society Annual International Conference
September 1-3, 2010, London, UK.
SPONSOR:
GIScience Research Group (GIScRG)
DESCRIPTION:
The increasing challenges from crises such as climate change in addition to expectations from the public about modes of engagement mean that traditional methods of public participation are being challenged. eGovernment systems, such as authoritative Web mapping sites, which were heralded as the solution to this challenge, predominantly offer one-way communication from government to the public and do not include effective means to collect citizen feedback nor engage citizens in two-way dialogue. New mechanisms, like the Geospatial Web (or Geoweb), have the potential to address these challenges and present a unique opportunity for both local and central governments.
This session will examine the participatory governance potential of the Geoweb and, in particular, its capacity to enable a two-way dialogue between government officials and the public. From a practical perspective, we will explore how different levels of governments can use the Geoweb as a platform that could build upon current PPGIS/PGIS practices and broaden public engagement. From a theoretical standpoint, we propose to address the scientific, technical, and participatory issues that challenge the accomplishment of this vision.
In this session we encourage the submission of original papers dealing with either the theoretical and/or practical aspects of this emerging research area. The session seeks to attract researchers from all areas of GIScience and wider geography who are concerned with public participation and governance.
Please e-mail the abstract and key words with your expression of intent to Hanif Rahemtulla by 5th February 2010. Please make sure that your abstract conforms to the RGS guidelines in relation to title, word limit and key words, as specified at http://www.rgs.org/AC2010.
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gvSIG Mini released
gvSIG announced the release of a mobile application this week. gvSIG Mini is a brand-new open-source project (GNU/GPL) aimed at cellular phones. gvSIG Mini is a a free viewer of free access maps based on tile services, with WMS client, address searching, POIs, routing and more features. gvSIG Mini is not an official gvSIG project, but it joins gvSIG family through non-official gvSIG downloads.
The main features of the application seem to be:
* Map viewer for: OpenStreetMap, Yahoo Maps, Bing Maps, …
* Satellite images and standard maps
* Free to use (GPL)
* Address search
* Low bandwidth usage
* Fast
* Maps downloader
* Offline usage
* GPS Usage
* Points Of Interest
* Route finder
* Versions for: Android phones, Standard Java mobile phones (JavaME), Blackberry
* Tileset generator. Phone Cache is a tile generator for gvSIG Mini
The ability to cache tiles and serve them when you are offline is great and will be especially useful if you know you are heading out to an area with little or know connectivity. I am not sure if there is a cache management tool, but this would be a useful addition so users could ensure they have the coverage they know they are going to need in the field. It would also be useful to see gvSIG Mini support the iPhone in the future.
Check gvSIG Mini out here: https://confluence.prodev[...]
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Map of 4C climate change released
Spotted on The Guardian Website is a map of the likely effect of a 4C temperature rise. The map, produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre, is based on temperatures between 2060 and 2100 if current rates of climate change are not slowed. It shows that the rise will not be spread evenly across the globe, with temperature rises much larger than 4C in high latitudes such as the Arctic. Because the sea warms more slowly, average land temperature will increase by 5.5C, which scientists said would shrink agricultural yields for all major cereal crops on all major regions of production.
The map is certainly interesting in the way that it represents the data with increases in temperature being shown by isotherms over the oceans and as a colour gradient over the land. In addition, areas at particular risk from climate change are highlighted with coloured rings which you can click to find out more. Overall, the map is a bit busy but there is a lot of information on it.
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IJHG October edition available online
The following articles are now available on the International Journal of Health Geographics’ website. These can be accessed for free and include articles submitted to the Journal from 23 September to 23 October 2009.
Editorial
Web GIS in practice VII: stereoscopic 3-D solutions for online maps and virtual globes. Maged N. Kamel Boulos and Larry Robinson.
Methodology
A scan statistic for continuous data based on the normal probability model. Martin Kulldorff, Lan Huang and Kevin Konty.
Research
Socioeconomic indicators of heat-related health risk supplemented with remotely sensed data. Daniel P. Johnson, Jeffrey S. Wilson and George C. Luber.
Geographical variations in the correlates of blood donor turnout rates: an investigation of Canadian metropolitan areas. Pj Saberton, Antonio Paez, K. Bruce Newbold and Nancy M. Heddle.
Comparison of tests for spatial heterogeneity on data with global clustering patterns and outliers. Monica C. Jackson, Lan Huang, Jun Luo, Mark Hachey and Eric Feuer.
Evaluating geographic imputation approaches for zip code level data: an application to a study of pediatric diabetes. James D. Hibbert, Angela D. Liese, Andrew Lawson, Dwayne E. Porter, Robin C Puett, Debra Standiford, Lenna Liu and Dana Dabelea.
Spatial trends of breast and prostate cancers in the United States between 2000 and 2005. Rakesh Mandal, Sophie St-Hilaire, John G Kie and DeWayne Derryberry.
http://www.ij-healthgeogr[...]
PhD Studentship in real-time congestion-aware fleet optimisation
CENTRE FOR TRANSPORT STUDIES
IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON
PhD Studentship in real-time congestion-aware fleet optimisation
Applications are invited for a PhD studentship working in the area of fleet optimisation. This studentship is a collaborative venture between the Centre for Transport Studies and Trakm8 Holdings Plc, under the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's CASE award scheme, administered by the Location and Timing Knowlege Transfer Network.
The aim of the project is to develop a near-real-time optimisation framework for calculating the most efficient deployment of a fleet of delivery vehicles taking into account current and predicted traffic conditions. The solution is to be developed for a fleet of delivery vehicles performing multi-drop and pick up operations at scheduled times from a number of locations, where both the pick-up/drop-off schedule and the road conditions continuously evolve. The project is expected to make use of publicly available road traffic data sources from the Highways Agency and the local authorities. It is expected that the student will work closely with Trakm8 to develop a sound understanding of the real-world problem requirement and constraints, including spending periods working at the offices of Trakm8.
Funding is available for UK and EU fee status applicants. For UK applicants, the studentship offers a stipend of approximately £15k per annum and covers fees at the UK/EU student rate. EU applicants are eligible for funding if they have spent a minimum of three years continuously studying or working in the UK immediately before taking up the award. Other EU and overseas candidates are not eligible.
The Centre for Transport Studies comprises eight academic staff and a vibrant community of over 60 doctoral students and post doctoral researchers undertaking research across a broad range of topics including transport demand modelling, transport policy and regulation, transport operations, transport and the environment, transport safety, intelligent transport systems, railway operations and management, air transport operations and control, and maritime logistics. Further information can be found on the Centre's website at www.imperial.ac.uk/cts.
Applicants for the studentship should have or expect to obtain a first or upper second class honours degree or equivalent, in a relevant aspect of mathematics, statistics, engineering, computing, economics other strongly quantitative discipline. A Master's degree in a relevant subject would be advantageous but is not essential.
Applicants should send an up to date curriculum vitae, full contact details (including email addresses) of 2 referees (at least one of whom must be an academic) and a one page personal statement, to:
Professor John Polak
Centre for Transport Studies
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Imperial College London
London SW7 2AZ
E: j.polak@imperial.ac.uk
F: +44(0)20-7594-6102
Informal enquiries may be made to Professor Polak by email.
Closing date: 30 November 2009
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GIS Developer - Knowledge Transfer Partnership Associate
Trackyou based in Wrexham and Glynwyr University, based in Wrexham, are seeking to employ a software Programmer to develop its existing messaging, satellite navigation terminal & services. This will include developing new firmware for 3 new devices and the integration of these devises within the existing application.
It is an opportunity to gain real work experience within a SME and deliver a 2 year business-critical development project. Trackyou is a telemetry service provider, providing asset tracking and fleet management services to organisations throughout the UK and Europe . Established in 2001 Trackyou is a innovator of telemetry technology, developing new and exciting products for a the UK market.
The benefits of taking part in a KTP programme include:
* Technical and Management training
* Personal Associate Training Budget
* The opportunity to register for a postgraduate degree.
Applicants are expected to have:
Technical Competences:
* Minimum 2:1 in a computing-related discipline with significant software and programming content.
* Strong C/C++
* Experience of TCP sockets
* Experience of GIS technologies
* Knowledge of in byte-level programming (data sent and received to the unit is sent in binary format)
* Excellent organisational skills and attention to detail
* Ability to communicate effectively at all levels
* Ability to research, analyse and interrogate information sources.
* Ability to work successfully in a project team
* Ability to work effectively to tight deadlines without close supervision
* Ability to act on own initiative
* Commercial awareness
Desirable attributes
* Commercial experience in the IT industry with programming background
* Some experience of MySQL
You will be based at Trackyou Ltd, working on the KTP project but also as part of the company, on a full time basis, working 9.00am-5.30pm, Monday to Friday.
Application forms and further details are available on our website http://www.glyndwr.ac.uk or via jobs@glyndwr.ac.uk. If you do not have internet access, please contact the Human Resources Department on 01978 293921 during office hours.
CVs will not be accepted unless accompanied by an application form.
Closing date for applications is 30th October 2009.
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Lecturer and SL/Reader in Geographical Information Systems
Two posts are required in Geographical Information Systems from 1 Feb 2010 or as soon as possible thereafter. Our preference is to appoint in any area of human geography or physical geography where research specialisms intersect with one or more of our world class research clusters: Globalization & World Cities; Identity, Community, Society; Alpine & Polar Research; and Aquatic & Ecosystems Science. In addition to enhancing research and consultancy, the post-holders will be expected to contribute to undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and develop new modules as required.
Curriculum Vitae will only be accepted if accompanied by a completed University application form.
Informal Discussions
For informal discussions, please contact Prof Phil Hubbard (Head of Department) by email or on 01509 222747
You can write with informal enquiries to: Department of Geography, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU
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Where 2.0 Online conference, Autumn 2009
Spotted on Ed Parsons blog, O'Riley are running another Where 2.0 conference this autumn. The conference will be held online to allow anyone to join in from the comfort of their own desk without the additional cost of traveling to the event itself. The conference will be held on the 3rd of December and runs from 0900-1230 US Pacific Standard time which i think is 8 hours behind GMT, but with daylight saving this will mean that the event will run at 1700 in the UK.
From the site website:
The mobile phone is fast becoming the primary I/O device for geodata. Since the last Where 2.0 Conference in May 2009, the iPhone has continued to define the state of the art for location enabled sensors. By creating a widespread platform that allows for third-party development and geolocation, iPhones are advancing the whole industry. What game-changing applications are now under construction? The combination of camera, GPS, accelerometer, and compass on a single device now allows us to layer information on top of the world. How are we perceiving and consuming new information? How can the layers be edited to push the envelope further?
The Where 2.0 Online Conference explores:
- The Sensors in Your iPhone
- Augmented Reality
- Location Sensors
- Working with Audio Input
- Recognizing the World with Computer Vision
- The iPhone in Motion
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125th anniversary of the Prime Meridian
This week marks the 125th anniversary of the prime meridian located at Greenwich. Fixing the prime meridian was essential as it helped travelers navigate and set a global time reference frame. Before its inception countries, and sometimes even towns, set their own time which made traveling very difficult Fixing this time frame was essential as rail and sea passages became more frequent and regularly crossed international borders.
So why Greenwich, well the majority of sea navigation charts already used Greenwich as the prime meridian so it seemed to make sense. You can find out more about the history of the Prime Meridian through the link below or by visiting the Museum at Greenwich itself where you can straddle the Prime Meridian.
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UK version of Data.Gov on the cards?
The free our data campaign has been on the go in the UK for some time now and there have been murmurs in the past about a UK equivalent to the US site www.data.gov The UK version would be www.data.gov.uk
Well, today on the BBC website is an interesting article on the subject. The two people behind it are Sir Tim Berners Lee, founder of the web, and Professor Nigel Shadbolt at the University of Southampton so there is certainly some weight behind the idea.
The site is supposed to go live in December and they suggest that the land registry and Ordnance Survey data should be freely available. Well, i think making the OS data freely available would be a big ask and unlikely in the near future, but there are certainly a large number of other datasets that could and should be made available to the public.
We will try to keep you informed of any developments in this story.
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Fully funded PhD studentship at University College London in GPS/GNSS
GPS/GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) is a rapidly developing scientific, engineering and business field (GNSS industry turnover was $20B in 2007 and is forecast to rise to $330B by 2020).
This project is an opportunity to study for a PhD in the GPS/GNSS field at a world renowned institution (UCL is currently ranked 4th in the world and is the home to 20 Nobel prize winners).GPS/GNSS technology relies fundamentally upon timing the transmission and
reception of microwave signals. These signals are generated using ultra-stable atomic clocks, which operate in both terrestrial and space environments. Understanding and modelling the behavior of these clocks is a critical component in improving the accuracy and reliability of the navigation/positioning systems.
New GNSS constellations are being developed by Europe (Galileo) and China (COMPASS), and other countries (Japan and India) are developing space-based augmentation systems to monitor real-time performance. This area of science and technology is in a rapid growth phase and highly trained people (to PhD level) are in great demand.
The aim of the studentship is to carry out a systematic study of the evolution of satellite clock performance and stability of time frame realisation considering both the American (GPS) and Russian (GLONASS) systems, and to develop enhanced clock prediction methods by using a more rigorous model of (a) special and general relativistic effects (utilising precise satellite to receiver recession speeds and a complete description of the gravitational potential variations using the GRACE gravity field to degree and order 90 as well as planetary ephemerides), and (b) thermal loading on the satellite bus using UCL’s established radiation pressure modelling tools. The studentship forms part of the iNsight (Innovative Navigation using new GNSS SIGnals with Hybridised Technologies) project, an EPSRC funded multi-university and industrial partner project exploiting the availability of new satellite signals for positioning, navigation and other GPS-type applications.
Requirements: you must have a either an upper 2nd or 1st class degree in an appropriate science/technology subject (e.g. mathematics, physics, electrical/electronic engineering). Completing a PhD requires determination and hard work, as well as passion and intelligence.
Eligibility: this opportunity is open to any EU citizen, the studentship is not open to non-EU citizens
Stipend: £15,400 per year tax free, for 3.5 years, full UCL fees paid.
Primary supervisor: Prof Marek Ziebart; Secondary supervisor: Dr Paul Groves
How to apply: Send a CV and covering letter (explaining why you want to take up the studentship) to Marek Ziebart (marek@cege.ucl.ac.uk) by e-mail
Closing date: November 30th 2009
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Online crime mapping tool for England and Wales
A neat little online mapping tool has been launched to show crime statistics for England and Wales. This allows the users to select a region on the map or through the gazetteer, then to interrogate the statistics further by drilling down in types of crime.
All very easy and quite informative. The site seems a bit flaky at the moment but hopefully this will sort itself out and the site will become quicker (it is painfully slow at the moment).
Another issue I have is the colour scheme used in the maps. They use 5 shades of blue which can be hard to interpret if you end up with only 3 crime level zones being displayed. An alternative would have been to use 2 colours, each with 2 shades and a neutral colour for the average value. This would have made things much clearer.
Finally, the gazetteer search seemed a bit odd. My search for Skipton moved me to Stroud. (Note - this worked the second time and may have been a one off glitch)
OK, so there are a few aspects that i think could be improved but the site is very useful and informative. Lets hope the speed improves so it becomes usable.
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ESRI webinar - Unlocking the Full Potential of OS Data
Join ESRI (UK) and Ordnance Survey on Wednesday 4 November 2009, to discuss how you and your organisation can unlock the full potential of Ordnance Survey data to deliver real value to your business.
During this online seminar you will get a unique insight into the key features and benefits of Ordnance Survey MasterMap data and discover how ProductivitySuite provides a faster, more consistent approach to managing your data.
Simon Weaver, Product Manager at ESRI (UK), will give you a preview of the latest release of ProductivitySuite demonstrating key new enhancements that significantly increase performance and flexibility, including full integration with the ArcGIS Model Builder and ArcToolbox. He will introduce you to some of the new features of ProductivitySuite 2.0, such as ITN Change-only update and loading data direct to a File-based Geodatabase, providing a flexible storage alternative with higher capacity than has been available before without a relational database.
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Research posts at CGS Nottingham
Applications are invited for the above posts based in the Centre for Geospatial Science, which is due to move to the new Nottingham Geospatial Building on Jubilee Campus in October 2009. The successful candidates will work in the field of geoinformatics and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), working on an EU funded project GIS4EU. This project aims to improve the sharing of data through the application of interoperability standards according to the EU INSPIRE directive. The Nottingham input to the programme is to focus on the current state-of-the-art and the requirements collection, specification of the data models and harmonisation processes, operational validation techniques and process evaluation. Please visit http://www.gis4eu.eu for more details about the project.
Candidates should have a good first degree in an engineering or scientific discipline, a proven track record in writing and publishing reports or research papers, and excellent verbal and written communication skills with relevant IT skills. They should be able to work collaboratively in a multidisciplinary team and work to deadlines. Experience of using GIS is desirable.
Salary, depending on qualifications and experience, will be within the range:
* Research Associate scale: £24,152 - £26,391 per annum (salary can progress to £29,704 per annum, subject to performance).
* Research Fellow scale: £27,183 - £29,704 per annum.
These posts are available from 1 November 2009 and will be offered on a fixed-term contract for a period of six months.
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New journal - Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology
Elsevier has released another peer reviewed journal with the title Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology. The first edition was printed in September 2009 and the journal aims to be the primary resource for academics researching the spread of disease through spatial analysis in GIS.
This is what Elsevier say:
"Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Epidemiology is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that provides a home for high quality work which straddles the areas of GIS, epidemiology, exposure science, and spatial statistics. The journal focuses on answering epidemiological questions where spatial and spatio-temporal approaches are appropriate. The methods should help to advance our understanding of infectious and non-infectious diseases in humans. The journal will also consider applications where health care provision is the focus. Coverage of veterinary topics will be included, and those with direct human health implications are especially welcome . The journal places special emphasis on spatio-temporal aspects of emerging diseases (e.g., avian flu, SARS), development of spatial statistical and computational methods, and novel applications of geospatial technology (e.g., GPS, GIS) for shedding insights on exposure and disease processes."
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OSGeo virtual machine in a web browser
Some pretty exciting news from the latest OSGeo press release, they have just made their virtual machine available through a browser. This is a major achievement toward making it easy for people to try Geospatial Open Source Software.
Why is this so good then? Well, if you are looking for open source GIS tools then the OSGeo accredited products are always a good place to start, but the virtual machine allows you to test drive the software before installing it. This should save you some time and help you choose the right software. It is also very useful if you do not have admin rights on your machine as you can process on the virtual machine.
I have had a quick test and the speed of use was clearly restricted by your internet connection but it is no slower than using a remote desktop to get to your work computer from home. I think it is a great thing. Try it yourself.
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Developers asked to advise GLA on how best to free data
In a distinctly North American move, the Greater London Authority (GLA) has asked for developers to advise them on how best to proceed with freeing their data in order to make it easily accessible and useable by the wider community.
This forward thinking move mirrors steps taken by cities such as San Francisco where the cities data is easy to access and use. The hope is that developers would then take the data and use it for the greater good of the city by creating interesting and informative mashups. It is certainly a commenndable idea but without appropriate advice and direction at the planning stage, much could go wrong.
So, if you are a code developer who has long since yearned for access to better data, get yourself along to London's Living Room in City Hall on Saturday October 24th at 10am. Further details available by following the link below.
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Digimap launch new service - Roam
Edina's Digimap team are pleased to announce the release of their new mapping service Roam. Roam is set to replace the existing Classic service which has been in place for a number of years. While innovative at its time of release, Classic is starting to look a bit tired and technology has moved on quite a lot. Roam takes advantage of the newest technology and users should find the service faster, easier to use and just, well, better. Features include slippy maps, printing in landscape and portrait at A3 and A4 paper size, additional datasets and a search by grid reference function.
Roam is currently running as a beta. There are a few advantages to releasing it as a beta, but the main one is that we have developed what we think is a great mapping service but would welcome feedback on how to improve it. Because the service is still in its beta stage, changes and tweaks can be made so it is definitely worth letting us know if there is something missing from the service.
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2009 US Census Tiger/Line shapefiles released.
The 2009 edition of the US census boundaries have just been released and are available for download in shapefile format. The data includes:
* Extracts containing geographic and cartographic information from the Census Bureau's MAF/TIGER® (Master Address File/Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing) database.
* The files provide the digital map base for a Geographic Information System or mapping software. The files do not contain any mapping software.
* They include spatial data for geographic features such as roads, railroads, rivers, and lakes, as well as legal and statistical geographic areas.
* The geographic entity codes needed to link the Census Bureau's demographic data to the geography are included in the files. The TIGER/Line Shapefiles do not contain any demographic data; it must be downloaded separately.
* Metadata in Extensible Markup Language (XML) format is included with each compressed file.
A useful resource for anyone involved in socio-economic studies in the USA.
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Google move away from TeleAtlas dependency
Google has moved to use its own maps for its Google Maps service in North America thus removing its dependency on TeleAtlas (owned by TomTom). This has triggered a fair amount of discussion in blog land and an excellent summary of this is provided by Peter Batty on the GeoThought Blog .
So why is this interesting to our community? Well, a move away from a major 3rd party data provider in N. America might well be mirrored by a similar move in Europe. Certainly, the move has filled in many of the annoying blanks in the previous datasets that google used.
Further, Peter also suggests that the move could be stage one of a bigger plan to allow for better routing on mobile devices. With google being in control of their own data the could make it available to this rapidly expanding sector. So there could be the option to access routing info in the Google APIs to build better routing apps for mobile devices in the future.
So overall, an interesting move and we will have to wait and see what happens in Europe as a result.
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Augmented Reality mashup event in London
Spotted on the ever useful Ed Parsons blog, there is an interesting event on augmented reality mashups. This fits perfectly with the recent developments in mobile technology. In particular, the iPhone and the Android platform. Spatially enabled users will be the norm in the next couple of years and this sector is bound to grow despite the current economic gloom.
So, if you want to find out what is happening or get a feel for what is possible with augmented reality in the mobile world, get yourself over to the British Computer Society on the 22nd October for 1800. The cost of the event is 35 pounds but for this you get pizza and beer.
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OS showcase most detailed 3D product yet
The Ordnance Survey showcased their output from their latest data collection exercise. The result is an ultra fine detail 3D scene for Bournemouth sea front. The data used to generate this detailed representation is based on laser ranging. Data was collected from both airplanes and ground based vehicles. The resulting DTM then had recent aerial images draped over it to make the scene more life like.
I think it looks great, but there is no plan to roll this out as a public service for another 5 years. Data collection and processing at quite laborious when the detail being collected is so fine. I am sure this dataset will open many interesting research doors for the academic community.
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Maps made for the colour blind
Interpreting maps can sometimes be a tricky process. Imagine how difficult this would be if you were colour blind. It may be impossible to differentiate between certain features that use similar styles but different colours.
This problem has been identified in the past but the new Ordnance Survey product, VectorMap Local will allow the GIS community to develop maps that are specifically aimed at users with colour blindness. VectorMap Local was previewed at the recent AGI GeoCommunity conference and is derived from OS Landplan data and has been generalised to view between scales of 1:3000 to 1:20,000. Users can customise the rendering of the map by modifying the GML. This should allow the common OS data to be displayed in many new and interesting ways.
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UCL - Post-Excavation and GIS Specialist
The appointment will be on UCL Grade 7. The starting salary will be £32,485 per annum, inclusive of London Allowance.
The Noviodunum Archaeological Project (NAP) is looking for a post-excavation and computing specialist to complete data entry to the Integrated Archaeological Database and check the current data. They will also be required to complete the construction of NAP's GIS (using ArcGIS) for the analysis of the field-walking data and produce site and survey plans for the final report and create metadata to prepare NAP materials for archiving with the ADS. The post is funded from November 2009 until the end of February 2010.
Candidates should hold a PhD and have relevant archaeological experience.
If you are unable to apply on-line please contact Louisa Goldsmith at l.goldsmith@ucl.ac.uk or telephone 0207 679 7503
Closing Date: 20th October 2009
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New OSGeo mailing list on graphics created
From Mateusz Loskot's blog , Robert Szczepanek has created a new public mailing list that has been added to the OSGeo mailing lists.
The new list focuses reusable graphical elements for OSGeo projects and follows on from Robert's working group on graphical elements.
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2 PhD posts at Loughborough
The Department of Geography currently has two PhD studentships available to cover fees and a stipend of c.£13300 per year.
The department currently has three members of staff in the Centre for Alpine and Polar Research who are able to supervise glacial PhD projects. Dr Richard Hodgkins is a glacial hydrologist working in Svalbard, Greenland and Iceland. Dr Jeff Evans is a marine sedimentologist and geophysicist. Dr David Graham is a glacial geomorphologist and sedimentologist working in Svalbard, Iceland and Sweden.
Some indicative PhD projects are listed on our website http://www.lboro.ac.uk/de[...] but we are happy to supervise projects based on students' own ideas.
The studentships are available to start on 1 December (or as soon as possible thereafter), so please register your interest as soon as possible by contacting one of us.
Dr David Graham (D.J.Graham@lboro.ac.uk)
Dr Jeff Evans (J.Evans2@lboro.ac.uk)
Dr Richard Hodgkins (R.Hodgkins@lboro.ac.uk)
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Edinburgh GeoSciences talks - Autumn 2009
Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh run a number of seminar sessions including the Hutton Club, which looks at all aspects of physical geography, and the Edinburgh Earth Observation (EEO) series which is run in conjunction with the AGI.
Both have packed schedules for Autumn 2009 and operate on alternate Fridays to prevent any clashes that would prevent you attending. Generally it is 4pm on Friday with a post talk beer at a local pub.
Hutton Club
30th October 2009 - Dr. Simon Mudd
TBC
13th November 2009 - Dr. Hugh Sinclair
'Did Plio-Pleistocene climate change drive increases in erosion and sedimentation across Europe?'
20th November 2009 - Dr. Nick Kamenos
TBC
11th December 2009 - Dr. Jason Barnes
'The geomorphic response to active folding of the Siwalik Hills, northwest India'
EEO
Friday 9th October 2009, 4pm
Iain Woodhouse
Title: Time to get REDDy : the experiences of the REDD Horizon Project
Friday 16th October 2009, 4pm
Jo Walsh - Edina
Title: The Long Road to Open Geodata
Friday 6th November 2009, 4pm
Prof. Peter Atkinson
Title: Look-up Based Approaches to Downscaling Remotely Sensed Imagery
Friday 27th November 2009, 4pm
Robin McLaren
Title: The Role of Urban Sensing in Managing Megacities
19th February 2010, 4pm
Prof. Richard Lucas
Title: Advances in active remote sensing of regional ecosystems in Queensland, Australia
Friday 5th March 2010, 4pm
Dr. Chris Dunn
Title: Exploring participatory approaches to GIS
Friday 19th March 2010, 4pm
Prof. David Martin
Title: Modelling Populations in GIS: Rethinking Representation and Analysis
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Belgium review security and satellite images
Spotted on Ogle Earth the Belgium government are to assess the threat of high resolution satellite and aerial imagery to their countries national security. A number of countries have already had sensitive sites removed or altered in Google Earth.
The recent upgrade from satellite to aerial images seems to have triggered this latest response. The problem with the Belgium case is that the images are now in the Public domain. Other countries such as the USA and Holland managed to get Google to edit the images prior to their release. So it looks like Belgium has been somewhat slow off the mark, or missed the boat completely. Add to this the possibility of there being no law that allows the government to censor aerial images before they are released to the public and they might have a bit more of a problem on their hands.
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Cartographica 44:3, 2009 Just released!
Cartographica Volume 44, Number 3 /2009 is now available
This issue contains:
* Introduction: Cognitive Issues in Geographic Information Visualization - Sara Irina Fabrikant, Amy Lobben
* Applications of Signal Detection Theory to Geographic Information Science - Amy L. Griffin, Scott Bell
*fMRI and Human Subjects Research in Cartography - Amy Lobben, Megan Lawrence, Judy M. Olson
* Naïve Cartography: How Intuitions about Display Configuration Can Hurt Performance - Mary Hegarty, Harvey S. Smallman, Andrew T. Stull, et al.
* Navigation Tasks with Small-Display Maps: The Sum of the Parts Does Not Equal the Whole - Julie A. Dillemuth
* Issues of Change Detection in Animated Choropleth Maps - Kirk Goldsberry, Sarah Battersby
* Colour-Enhanced Star Plot Glyphs: Can Salient Shape Characteristics Be Overcome? - Alexander Klippel, Frank Hardisty, Rui Li, et al
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No ArcGIS VBA support in version 9.5
ArcGIS 9.4 will be the last release to support VBA. This is in line with the move made by Microsoft to end support for VBA in an attempt to move users to the .NET platform, see HERE for details.
There is a lot of discussion about this move, if you want to read more about then have a look at James Fee Blog. Jame's sticks up for VBA but points out that ESRI seem to be releasing ArcGIS versions at the rate of 1 every 18-24 months. So, expect 9.4 in summer 2010 and 9.5 late 2011 or early 2012. This timescale should give users and organisations plenty of time to migrate to the .NET platform where they can continue to use VB.net.
Lets just hope that ESRI spends the next 18 months beefing up their Python API.
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UN Chief deems IT vital in Climate Change action
UN Chief Ban Ki-moon has stated that IT has a vital role to play in tackling climate change. The statement was made during his opening address at the ITU Telecom World Fair.
While GIS is not explicitly mentioned it would be reasonable to assume that GIS will have a pivotal role in many systems that aim to look at the issue of climate change. The ability to rationalise data and relationships spatially will help to unravel some of the unknowns. Further, GIS is well placed to disseminating data and information to the wider community, helped in no small part by the Google Earth phenomena.
So, it seems that Ban Ki-moon is setting out a challenge for all strands of IT, including the GIS community.
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Cambridge Seminars in the History of Cartography 2009-2010
The full programme for the Cambridge Seminars in the History of Cartography 2009-2010 has just been released. These seminars will be held at 5.30pm in Emmanuel College, St Andrew's Street, Cambridge, England CB2 3AP, in either the Harrods Room or the Gardner Room.
Tuesday 24 November 2009
Frances Willmoth (Jesus College)
'Fens Maps and Moore's Mapp'
VENUE: Harrods Room, Emmanuel College
Tuesday 23 February 2010
Lawrence Worms (Ash Rare Books)
'Seller, Pepys and the Seventeenth-Century London Map Trade'
VENUE: Harrods Room, Emmanuel College
Tuesday 4 May 2010
Rachel Hewitt (Queen Mary, University of London)
'Map of a Nation: The Early Ordnance Survey and the Politics of British
Landscape'
VENUE: Gardner Room, Emmanuel College
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Country Maps - a different perspective
The University of Sheffield has released a series of maps depicting some well know countries but with the area distributed according to the population density. So, the country outline becomes warped but it is interesting to look at the new shapes produced by dominant population centres.
The research has been produced by Prof. Danny Dorling and Ben Hennig. More information can be found on worldmapper.
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AGI Environmental SIG Annual Conference
The AGI Environmental SIG annual conference is taking place on Tuesday 13th October 2009.
The call for papers is now closed and the programme will be announced shortly. In the meantime why not register to attend the conference and be in with a chance of being invited to visit to the BGS' 3D visualisation suite.
For more information on the Environmental SIG please go to the SIG's web pages on the AGI website.
Programme
0930 Registration, coffee and exhibition
1000 Welcome/Introduction
1015 Geography: The key to effective flood management - Keith Wishart, ESRI (UK)
1045 Meeting European Public Sector Information Environmental Reporting Requirements - Bob Chell, 1Spatial
1115 Coffee and exhibition
1145 Geospatial Geoenvironmental Data Visualisation: Google Earth and Beyond - Roger Chandler, Keynetix Ltd
1215 Break out session
1235 Lunch and exhibition
1400 Mapping our Environment: UKMap - Alun Jones, The GeoInformation Group
1430 Keynote presentation - Ian Jackson, BGS
1515 Panel discussion and feedback from break out sessions
1545 Closing remarks
1600 Close
Registration
AGI Member: £50.00+VAT = £57.50
Non Member: £130.00+VAT = £149.50
Student: £15+VAT = £17.25
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ISARA 9th International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources & Environmental Sciences
The Ninth International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences will be hosted by the University of Leicester, UK July 20 - 23 2010 on behalf of the International Spatial Accuracy Research Association (ISARA).
The International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences is held every two years and is concerned with all aspects of spatial accuracy in natural resources and environmental sciences. Following on from successful meetings held in Lisbon (2006) and Shanghai (2008), the symposium returns to Europe and comes to the UK for the first time, to be held at the University of Leicester in the heart of England.
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ONS - Ageing in the UK
If you have seen the BBC website today then you might have seen the link to the map of Britain's ageing population. If you are interested then the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has just released a nice web mapping tool that allows users to visualise population data. This is the source of the BBC map.
Have a play and see how the area that you live in fits with the National averages.
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GIS helps explain the rapid spread of HIV in East Africa
Seen on the All Points Blog a good read for anyone interested in Health GIS, scientists at the University of Florida reckon they can explain the explosion of HIV in East Africa in the 1970's
Occurrences and the spread of the virus had remained fairly steady during the 1950-60's in West Africa but as the virus moved East, its spread increased exponentially. The reason suggested for this is that settlements in West Africa are relatively isolated and this helped contain the virus. However, as it spread East the settlements became better connected and the people tended to move about much more. This allowed the birus to spread much faster than it had done in West Africa, leading to the epidemic that we saw in the 1970's and 1980's.
The key fact in this study was the way the virus rapidly mutated which allowed researchers to track the routes that spread the disease. This shows the importance of GIS in determining how diseases apread and to predict where they might spread. Other recent examples of how GIS has helped monitor pandemic virus's is the recent Swine flu outbreak. The East African HIV article is worth a read if you are interested in that side of GIS.
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Marine Mapping Scientist - Joint Nature Conservation Committee
Post title: Marine Mapping Scientist
Ref No: 2009/39
Grade: H
Salary: £25,000
Type of appointment: Permanent
Location: Peterborough
Team: Marine Ecosystems - Mapping & Impacts
Closing date: 13/10/09 (The anticipated interview date is 26/10/09)
Full post details and application form are attached. CVs without a completed application form will not be considered. For more information about the JNCC recruitment process, please visit www.jncc.gov.uk/jobs.
Post summary:
The Marine Mapping Scientist will be part of the Mapping and Impacts section of the Marine Ecosystems Team. The post-holder will give significant support to a new Defra-funded partnership between JNCC and Natural England, which is developing a full programme of biodiversity monitoring and surveillance in England (inshore waters to 12nm) and offshore waters (beyond 12nm). Marine habitat mapping data will be an essential component in developing this
programme; the post-holder will support the programme through continued effort to improve the quality and coverage of the UK’s marine habitat mapping resource. The MESH project took significant steps in this direction, and the post-holder will continue with elements of this work. Additionally, the post- holder will maintain and promote products of the MESH project, and improve JNCC’s capacity for managing and disseminating habitat mapping data collected for the OSPAR Commission.
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ANZMapS - 38th Annual Conference
Australian and New Zealand Map Society (ANZMapS)
38th Annual Conference.
"Mapping Climate: an Environment for Change"
State Library of South Australia
Adelaide
7-9 April 2010
Invitation to Participate and a Call for Papers
The conference committee invites proposals for papers on any aspect concerning maps or mapping, and which address issues relating to climate, either historical or contemporary.
Proposals should include a short abstract, affiliation details, brief biography, the type of presentation facility/ technology you require, and your contact details. Each presenter will be allotted approximately 30 minutes.
Please submit proposals for papers by 25 October 2009 to gregwood@webone.com.au
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AGI GeoCommunity 2009 - mini review
The 20th annual AGI conference took place in Stratford-Upon-Avon this week. With a strap line of “Realising the importance of place”, the event attracted over 620 delegates, more than last year. The conference kicked off with plenary talks from Peter Batty and Andrew Turner who discussed the rapid evolution of GIS and the emergence of the so called Neo-Geo.
There were 6 parallel sessions with 8 talks in each day. The hardest thing for many was deciding what talks you most wanted to see. The next challenge was working out the best way to get from, or to, the main ballroom if you were in one of the smaller suits. You could not see all the talks that you wanted to, but I am assured that both the presentations and the videocasts of the talks will be made available in the next week or so.
Highlights for me were:
- Dr Bob Barr’s talk on “What are core references in Geography” which got many of the big names nodding their heads in agreement. He passionately championed the need for the UK to recognise a number of datasets as “Core References” and then make these datasets freely accessible to users. These datasets included:
- Geodetic framework
- Geographic names
- Addresses
- streets
- Land and property ownership
- Administrative boundaries
- census data
It did not include Topographic mapping as this was seen to be a subjective dataset and not definitive. - Geodetic framework
- Muki Haklay who delved into the licensing issues of geographic data and our national mapping agency. His thoughts on this were that we in the UK were in a fairly good position and were lucky to have the OS but there was room to tweak the current license agreements which were not designed to work with our digital data. He did not see any advantage in making all the OS data free as this would leave us in a bit of a mess and would not ensure that datasets were updated and maintained in the best way
- Dr Keith Wishart – Inspire on a shoestring. Keith talked about how to work towards seeing Inspire as an opportunity rather than a pain in the neck. He used several examples that showed how you could make a business case for GIS solutions and that, in general, this would have an Return on Investment of around 1:4. Essentially, for every pound you spend on a GIS solution is will save you 4.
OK, so that is business and not academic related but it showed how to use Inspire to your advantage and that GIS solutions should be couched in terms of what they can save you as well as just what they can do. - Rob Cooper of the BBC showed what their R&D department had been playing with. They showed some neat web based applications based around Microsoft silverlight. These allowed users to zoom seamlessly around an OS 1:10000 map smoothly. Working with the OS, they had developed a neat function that allowed the text labels on the map to remain readable as the map was rotated.
- The heavyweight clash of the event was Ed Parsons of Google and Peter ter Haar of the OS doing back to back presentations. Ed gave an insightful review of copyright and the use of data with the odd dig going in below the radar (see geocommunity blogs). Peter responded by outlining the new business strategy of the OS and how it plans to support and develop the GI world over the next few years. Obviously these two will not see eye to eye on everything, but there were some points that they seemed to agree on.
The soap box events were generally well received. The highlight of the session was Ian Painter's (Snowflake) rant about the differences between Neo-geographers and
Beyond that, the organisation was superb and the party was fun. The event highlighted the strength of the Geo-community in the UK and shows that GIS will have to continue to evolve in order to support business and research. If you missed this year’s event, get your name down for 2010. (Permalink) | Bookmark
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GIS research assistant at MMU
MMU (Manchester Metropolitan university) is urgently seeking a one-year full-time GIS research assistant for a CO-REACH project based in Manchester. The role will primarily to collect, process, analyse and model the migration and immigration related data across UK and the EU, and also to conduct a comparative study in migration, immigration and social integration across the EU and China.
A degree or sufficient working experience in GIS or a related subject (e.g. geography, sociology) is essential for the post. Some experience with ArcGIS or MapInfo and VBA or VB.NET programming is required. If candidates have knowledge and experience of working on migration, social integration, spatial interaction modelling, spatial statistics and geo-simulation will be an advantage. If this post is interesting to you and would like to apply, please do not hesitate to contact j.cheng@mmu.ac.uk for further details.
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Latest article from the IJHG
The International Journal of Health Geographics (IJHG) just published this article, which is available to read on the IJHG website.
Methodology
Using hospitalization for ambulatory care sensitive conditions to measure access to primary health care: an application of spatial structural equation modeling. Md Monir Hossain and James N. Laditka.
http://www.ij-healthgeogr[...]
RSGS Winter talks announced
The Royal Scottish Geographical Society has just announced its programme of talks for 2009-10. The theme for the season is "Inspiring People" and there are some well known faces such as Stephen Venables and Dr Paul Cox as well as some less well known speakers.
The talks are spread out at venues around Scotland, not just restricted to the major cities, but including some smaller venues like Peebles and Dumfries. This approach aims to broaden the reach of the society and bring geography to the people. The series programme can be found on the RSGS website by following the link below.
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AGI GeoCommunity 2009
The AGI GeoCommunity 2009 conference kicks of this evening in Stratford-upon-Avon with its icebreaker event. I wont be making it to that, but should, with a strong following wind, make it to the main event on Wednesday and Thursday.
This years event looks like being a good one and there are a host of big names due to present such as Andrew Turner, CTO, Fortius and Peter Batty, Founder, Spatial Networking.
Keynote presentations will be made by:
* Richard Waite, ESRI (UK)
* Vanessa Lawrence, Ordnance Survey
* Jon Winslow, Pitney Bowes Business Insight
If you are there then we might see you. Go-Geo! will be presenting at the "SoapBox" session. If you cannot attend, then follow the action here:
http://www.geocommunityli[...]
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Free country boundary shapefiles
From SlashGeo:
Global Administrative Areas is offering free shapefiles containing boundaries of countries and all levels of administrative subdivisions, for free and in a multitude of formats. The data quality is excellent and a worthwhile download if seeking shape file data.
GADM is a spatial database of the location of the world's administrative areas (or administrative boundaries) for use in GIS and similar software. Administrative areas in this database are countries and lower level subdivisions such as provinces, departments, bibhag, bundeslander, daerah istimewa, fivondronana, krong, landsvæðun, opština, sous-préfectures, counties, and thana. GADM describes where these administrative areas are (the "spatial features"), and for each area it provides some attributes, foremost being the name and variant names.
May prove a useful source for general background maps or for basic spatial analysis, and of course it is free.
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GIS Analyst - University of Greenwich
As part of a multi-institution research project (Channel Habitat Atlas for Marine Resources Management) funded by the European Union a Technician/Analyst is needed to implement and run GIS associated with the programme.
You will need to be able to use ArcGIS, carry out spatial analysis of data and program interfaces between different GIS systems. Experience in cartography and the production of maps for hard copy output will also be an advantage.
The nature of the work means that the ability to communicate in English and French is desirable.
A 2:1 in BSc (Hons) GIS or an appropriate discipline is desirable.
This post is fixed term contract to 31 March 2012.
Salary £20834 - £23449 per annum
We aim to be an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all sections of the community.
To obtain further particulars and an application form visit our website www.gre.ac.uk, email: jobs@gre.ac.uk or write to the Personnel Office, University of Greenwich, Avery Hill Road, London, SE9 2UG quoting the job reference.
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3 vacancies at Centre for Spatial Analysis and Policy, University of Leeds
The School of Geography, sixth in the 2008 RAE ranking, would welcome applications from individuals of (or with potential of) international standing who will complement and strengthen existing expertise in any of the following areas: demography and population geography; regional science and spatial economics; quantitative social policy (including health, deprivation, education and crime); geocomputation.
You will be developing or will already have an impressive track record of achievement within the broad area of spatial analysis and policy and be prepared to conduct innovative research of international significance through funded research projects, produce high quality publications, supervise postgraduate research students and teach students at all levels.
Lecturer - University Grade 8 (£36,532 - £43,622 p.a.)
Senior Lecturer - University Grade 9 (£44,930 - £52,086 p.a.)
Reader - University Grade 9 (£44,930 - £56,916 p.a.)
Informal enquiries to Professor John Stillwell, School of Geography tel +44 (0)113 343 3315, email j.c.h.stillwell@leeds.ac.uk or Professor Adrian Bailey, Head of School, tel +44 (0)113 343 3322, email a.j.bailey@leeds.ac.uk .
To apply on line please visit http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ and click on ‘jobs'. Alternatively application packs are available from Hazel Blackburn, HR Administrator, School of Geography, email geojobs@leeds.ac.uk, tel +44 (0)113 343 3311.
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OS Air Photo Mosaics website
All 221 OS published air photo mosaics coveringScotland (all of these at 1:10,560 scale) as original zoomable images, and as two sets of geo-referenced overlays, one with an historical 1930s mapping backdrop, and the other with a backdrop of Google/Microsoft modern mapping and air photography.
The geo-referenced Google overlays have been created using the free and open-source MapTiler software (http://www.maptiler.org/ ), also
demonstrated at the MCG meeting.
The new website just focuses on Ordnance Survey published air photo mosaics, and in no way substitutes for the far more extensive air photographic holdings at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and TARA, with a growing number available too through their website ( http://tara.rcahms.gov.uk/ )
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Workshop at 5th IEEE International Conference on e-Science
Workshop at 5th IEEE International Conference on e-Science
Oxford, UK, 9-11 December 2009
Geospatial computing for the arts, humanities and cultural heritage
http://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/[...]
References to time and location pervade the human record, both past and present: an oft-quoted statistic is that some 80% of all online information is in some way georeferenced. It is unsurprising therefore that as researchers in the arts, humanities and cultural heritage become more fully engaged with e-infrastructures, their disciplines’ engagement with, and use of, spatial and temporal data gives rise to new and interesting research questions in this area.
How, for example, can heterogeneous academic data resources which fall into the 80% of georeferenced information – including, for example, historical texts, archaeological databases or museum collections - be linked and cross-queried without dictating the research process or methods used? How can geo-temporal data be visualized, both geographically and non-geographically? What is the role of ‘virtual globes’ such as Google Earth as platforms for the expression of such data? What can digital tools and methods in geospatial computing contribute to the use and understanding of space and time in the practice-led arts, creative industries and galleries (e.g. for documenting performances or visitor pathways)? How can issues of scale that are common to both time and space be usefully explored in the arts, humanities and cultural heritage sectors?
This workshop seeks contributions from which might further these, and similar, questions. Contributors might (not exhaustively) include:
* Academics in the arts, humanities or cultural heritage who are making use of spatial and/or temporal data in their research
* Researchers with relevant interests in HCI or related disciplines
* Researchers, curators, practitioners etc. from outside the academic
sector (e.g. museums and galleries)
* Developers or information scientists working on geospatial or temporal tools or applications
Short contributions (up to four pages, including images, references and notes), in IEEE format (see http://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/[...]) are invited.
Deadlines are:
* September 25th: Submission of first drafts
* October 2nd: Notification of acceptance and reviewers' comments
* October 14th: Final submission of camera-ready papers
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Boris wades into Tube Map row
Boris Johnson, the current Mayor of London, has said he is "furious" that the Thames has been removed from the re-designed Tube Map.
Transport For London (TFL) said that the Thames would be returned to the map in December when the map is next updated. This was in response to over-whelming public backlash at its removal. But TFL said that the recent changes, which also included the removal of fare zones, was in response to customer feed back. Well, they cant have it both ways can they.
I still see the removal of the fare zones as a bigger concern. This information is useful and pertinent to traveling on the tube. You look at the map, work out where you are going and which zone your destination is in, then buy the correct ticket for the journey. You cannot do this with the latest map. The river is fairly irrelevant for tube travel, rather it just adds an obvious surface reference point which helps users visualise the schematic map. I would put both back on as i thought the map was pretty clear in the first place.
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London Tube Map revised
Possibly of the most iconic and easily recognisable maps in the world, the London Tube map has been updated by Transport for London.
Their aim was to make the map clearer and reduce the clutter around the centre of the map. The most obvious change to the map is the removal of the river Thames. Another change, and possibly more significant, is the removal of the fare zones. This might be fine for locals that know where the boundary for Zone 1 and Zone 2 are but tourists will perhaps be left to muddle through.
Time will tell how i suppose. More information on Ed Parsons blog and the BBC website
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The growth of Global Broadband
The BBC has a nice map this week that shows the spread of broadband around the world. The map has a slider that allows the user to look at the temporal changes in broadband uptake. This is an easy to use and understand map that is clear and simple. Just the way it should be.
(Permalink) | Bookmark
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Research Associate - Agent Based Modelling of land use change
The following position is available at The University of Edinburgh:
Job title: Postdoctoral Research Associate
School/Support Department: School of Geosciences
Unit: Centre for Environmental Change and Sustainability (CECS)
Line manager: Prof. Mark Rounsevell
Job Purpose
Undertake research in line with the research strategy of CECS and the School of Geosciences.
Deadline: 30 September 2009
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Engaging Developers with Open Source Projects Workshop
Follow the event via a Live Blog on the day.
Why should software developers who create local customisations of open source software take the further step of submitting their changes back to the main project? While it takes more effort initially, having these changes integrated in the project becomes efficient in the long run: local modifications need not be re-applied at every upgrade, and the project takes over their maintenance. Also, by building up a record of useful contributions, one can gain influence in shaping the project's future.
This OSS Watch workshop will present this argument in greater detail, explaining how developers engaged in customisations of open source software should make these contributions. Some examples of projects that benefited from this type of engagement of their developers with open source software will be presented by people directly involved in these processes.
The event is free, and open to all.
Programme:
* 09.30 Registration
* 10.30 Welcome
* 10.40 Presentation: Scott Wilson (Wookie; University of Bolton) will give an overview of why and how one would contribute back to an open source project.
* 11.25 Break
* 11.45 Presentation: Dr. Ian Boston (Apache Software Foundation, CARET; University of Cambridge) will speak about how projects engage with contributors, addressing this from the point of view both of contributors and of the projects.
* 12.30 Lunch
* 13.30 Presentation/Demo: The Line of Code That Could (Mark Johnson, Taunton's College; biography and abstract)
* 14.15 Break
* 14.35 Plenary session
* 15.20 Conclusions
* 15.50 Close
Attendees are invited afterwards to an informal gathering at a pub with members of OSS Watch.
Follow the event via a Live Blog on the day.
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Research Assistant - GIS
UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND
School of Health, Nursing and Midwifery – Paisley Campus
Research Assistant
Geographical Information Systems
Fixed Term-2 years
£26,391 pa
The University of The West of Scotland are seeking a highly motivated individual with expertise in developing GIS applications and software tools. You should have an honours degree in Geographical Information Systems, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent, and must have experience of programming in ArcGIS using at least one of the following: C++, Java, .net, Visual Basic, Python.
You will contribute to research in two major European studies (GENESIS and MACC) concerned with effects of air pollution on human health and will be responsible for developing and commissioning GIS-based software and tools to model human exposure to air pollution as a basis for health risk assessment and epidemiological studies.
The post is full-time and available for two years in the first instance. The opportunity to undertake a PhD as part of this work is available for suitably qualified candidates.
Recruitment packs are available from the Department of Human Resources, Tel: 0141 848 3692 (24 hour answering service) or by e-mail from carol.mcilwham@uws.ac.uk quoting Ref. 09/102.
Closing date: 25th September 2009
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Free webinar - Microsoft BING maps with ArcGIS
Join ESRI (UK) on Thursday 17 September 2009 at 10:00-11:00am to discover how Bing Maps and ArcGIS integrate to provide a comprehensive solution that enables organisations to better view, analyse, understand, interpret, and visualise geographic data.
This Free Webinar will look at the key features of Bing Maps and discuss how it can be used with ESRI services and tools to improve business processes, unlock data and create better citizen and customer connections.
All you have to do to join in is to register on the ESRI website through the link below.
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RICS Geomatics Evening Lecture Series 2009-10
RICS Geomatics will be continuing its series of evening lectures again this session 2009-10.
After two years outside of their traditional home, this years evening lectures return to RICS HQ, Parliament Square. RICS GGS has undergone an extensive refurbishment and I would encourage all members and attendees to have a look around at the new facilties.
The first two or three lectures will be held in the Brussels Room on the ground floor, the main lecture hall should be available in due course. Although the Brussels Room is large, I would advise members and attendees to arrive a little early for all lectures as space may be at a premium.
Schedule
- Oct 8th – Michael Barrett award 2009 – Charlie Beeden ex-land registry - boundaries
- Oct 29th – laser scanning - tbc - Newcastle
- Nov 12th – marine survey – Glyn Hunt - Fugro - marine surveying
- Dec 10th – xmas lecture – Geomatics – who did they think we were? Prof Mike Cooper
- Jan 28th 2010 – UK geo forum annual lecture – Vanessa Lawrence OS GB
- Feb - Geodesy
- March - marine survey
All lecture timings are 17.30 for 18.00 unless otherwise stated. All lectures will be held at RICS GGS SW1P 3AD unless otherwise stated. All lectures are free and open to all. Students are especially welcome. (Permalink) | Bookmark
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Clark Labs announce IDRISI Taiga book release: Remote Sensing with IDRISI Taiga: A Beginner's Guide
Clark Labs is pleased to announce that its Hong Kong Reseller, GeoCarto International, has recently published a new introductory text for IDRISI users on remote sensing. This text is ideal for students and professionals seeking a hands-on and guided exploration of the fundamental issues in remote sensing and image processing. It is now available from GeoCarto and will soon be available from Clark Labs.
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Seazone' marine mapping being used to uncover past
The New Forest National Park Authority is using SeaZone's detailed marine mapping to undertake an archaeological assessment of its coastline in response to changing sea levels. Part of the English Heritage's nationwide programme of Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Surveys, the study will help with the development of long term coastal management plans by identifying archaeological and historic sites, and protecting them where possible or making provision for their recording where this may not be possible. There is a need to protect archaeological sites and artefacts from rising sea level and flooding as well as increasing pressures from industrial, residential and leisure developments.
Using SeaZone HydroSpatial together with additional historic records such as aerial photographs many dating back over 90 years, the study aims to identify and record previously undiscovered archaeological sites and artefacts along the 86 kilometres of New Forest and National Park coastline. Supplied as a multi layered theme the digital data is easily used in the Authority?s Geographical Information System (GIS).
Full article available via link below.
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Journal of Maps Google Maps Mashup Competition
At the Journal of Maps we have recently moved over to having a Google Maps map on the main page showing the location of maps we have published in the journal. Its not exciting or pretty, but does the job. However we thought it about time we ran a competition to develop the best Google Maps mashup.
The rules are simple: use the JoM GeoRSS feed (http://journalofmaps.com/[...]) and Google Maps APIs to do something interesting, useful, unique. The map can be designed to load in to the current space on the main page OR load in to a separate window.
Every *legitimate* entry to the competition will get a printed copy of our 2008 Best Map (http://www.journalofmaps.[...]). For the winner there is £200 payable via PayPal.
The contest runs from now until 11:59pm on Thursday, 31 December 2009. Entry is straightforward: just email googlemap@journalofmaps.com giving a grief description of the project and a link to the code or project home page.
Dr Mike J Smith
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Maps (www.journalofmaps.com)
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Cloud Computing - a review of costs
OK, so this is slightly off the normal thread of news, but this article spotted on Planet Geospatial is quite interesting. It describes the use of cloud computing for normal computer users and specifically what the cost implications of cloud computing might be.
Overall the author sees cloud computing as an excellent way to process very large data sets, but for most it should be seen as a cheap, off site back up facility and that the low cost of computer hard-wear means that it is more cost effective to manage your processing locally.
I have skipped much of the detail but the article is worth the two minute read.
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Maps and the news
Maps are being increasingly used by newspapers and news websites. But the maps that they show are very different to those that you might produce for publication in an academic paper or to support a report. Obviously the target audiences are different and this will affect the design criteria but have you ever wondered what these design criteria might be?
If you have, then there is an interesting article on an online journalism blog which takes you through the various different uses of spatial data.
Credit to Planet Geospatial for linking to this article.
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OSM get Isle of Man data
Open Street Map have been given a 2007 data set of the Isle of Man. This includes 1:25000 raster maps and some detailed aerial images. This should allow the army of contributors to generate some good data for the island. Overall this seems to be a very positive and forward looking step that the Isle of Man council has taken.
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H1N1 analysis in the USA
An interesting article about spatial and temporal analysis of the H1N1 virus and how it spread in the USA. This paper seeks to determine emergency nature of the case by excessive human cases by spatial and temporal distribution in the U.S.
By analysing the spread of the virus from April through to June 12th, when H1N1 was declared Level 6 pandemic flu by the WHO, the researchers were able to look at the prospective clusters and the actual clustering. There are some interesting differences in the two outputs.
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GIS on a USB stick Version 2
ArcheoGeek has just announced the release of Portable GIS MkII. This is the result of over 6 months of planning and development.
The new version comes with a self-contained installer and requires 1.3GB of space to install in.
For more information follow the link below.
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ArcGIS Model Builder
Spotted on the GIS and Science a good video tutorial on how to get the most out of ArcGIS Model builder application.
Model builder allows users to thread together processing tasks so that jobs may be automated, without the hassle of having to learn ArcObjects. The tutorial is just over an hour long but has lots of interesting information on Geo-processing.
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17th Century Maps found buried in Oxbridge Library
Two 17th Century atlases have been uncovered in the archives of an Oxford Library. The maps are by the Portuguese Cartographer Joao Teixeira.
The Description of the maritime ports of the Kingdom of Portugal dates from 1648 and there are only 5 other known copies. The other atlas is unnamed but appears to looks to be Plans of the cities and fortresses of the conquest of Oriental India. of which there are thought to be only 4 other copies.
More details can be found in the article below.
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IJHG August edition available online
The following articles are now available on the International Journal of Health Geographics’ website. These can be accessed for free and include articles submitted to the Journal from 25 July to 23 August 2009.
Methodology
Using hospitalization for ambulatory care sensitive conditions to measure access to primary health care: an application of spatial structural equation modeling. Md Monir Hossain and James N. Laditka.
Research
An agent-based approach for modeling dynamics of contagious disease spread. Liliana Perez and Suzana Dragicevic.
http://www.ij-healthgeogr[...]
AGU-FM09 Session G02 - GRACE, GOCE and Beyond
We would like to draw your attention to the session G02: Satellite Gravity Missions: GRACE, GOCE and Beyond (*abstract submission deadline: 3 September, 2009).
We intend this session to be a lively forum for a discussion of application of mass flux measurements from these satellite missions; what they are telling us today; and how we might proceed in the future.
A session description is included below for your convenience:
The geodetic community is in a unique situation, with several dedicated gravity field missions in operation simultaneously. The status of the GOCE and GRACE missions will be provided. This session solicits papers that describe innovative new applications of data collected by these missions. Papers that describe science insights from new signals uncovered in the data, or new techniques of signal extraction are encouraged. Topics of interest also include simultaneous exploitation of GRACE and GOCE data; exploitation of 3d satellite gravity gradient data; combinations of satellite and in-situ data; methods of extending the mass-flux data records beyond the mission lifetimes; and potential directions to ensure the continuity of these measurements into the future.
Deadline - 3rd September
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Open Geospatial Consortium Learning Resources
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) offers a set of public
resources for learning about, developing and implementing
interoperable geospatial capabilities. The OGCNetwork "Learn"
page ( http://www.ogcnetwork.net[...] ) offers links to
* Courses, journals, and professional papers
* Articles
* Compliance testing information
* Conference presentations by OGC staff and members
* Discussion forums
* Document motions from OGC meetings
* Email discussion lists
* Links to videos
* OGC policy guidance on Lat/Lon axis order
* OGC standards document catalog
* OGC Interoperability Days event information
* Tutorials on developing implementations of OGC standards.
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South Korean Satellite destroyed
From Spatial Sustain :
South Korea's hopes of entering the space race took another blow when thier latest satellite failed to depoly correctly and burned up in the atmosphere. The launch went well and the Russian rocket performed as expected. However, it is thought that one of the satellite covers didnt come off and this is the reason for the failure.
This is the latest set back, the launch had been delayed last week due to software issues with the rocket.
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All EO-1 Satellite Data now in public domain
Seen on SlashGeo :
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration EO-1 satellite was launched on November 21, 2000 as part of a one-year technology validation/demonstration mission. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) instrument on EO-1 was used to validate and demonstrate technology for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM). The original EO-1 Mission was successfully completed in November 2001. As the end of the Mission approached, the remote sensing research and scientific communities expressed high interest in continued acquisition of image data from EO-1. Based on this user interest and willingness to assist in funding continued operations, an agreement was reached between NASA and the United States Geological Survey to allow continuation of the EO-1 Program as an Extended Mission.
The EO-1 Extended Mission is chartered to collect and distribute ALI multispectral and Hyperion hyperspectral products in response to Data Acquisition Requests (DARs). Under the Extended Mission provisions, image data acquired by EO-1 are archived and distributed by the USGS Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) and placed in the public domain.
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Free Google Maps e-learning module
From GeoChalkBoard:
Google maps are allowing users to download one of their e-learning modules "Google Maps for your Apps" for free until the end of September.
Google Maps for your Apps:
This course is designed to enable you to take advantage of Google Maps for your website. You will learn how to create maps, add map controls for user interactions (zooming, and panning), programmatically alter the map extent, add points of interest to the map, add custom icons, geocode addresses on the fly, read addresses from a database or XML file, and display aerial photography.
Google maps are releasing 4 new learning modules on the 1st November.
- Introduction to the Google Maps API
- Advanced Google Maps API Programming
- Building Rich Google Maps Interfaces with Dojo
- Debugging Google Maps Applications with Firefox and Firebug.
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Dublin Core -2009 Registration Now Open
International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications:
"Semantic Interoperability of Linked Data"
12-16 October 2009, Seoul, Korea
Registration for DC-2009 is now open. You can access directly the registration form by visiting http://www.dc2009.kr
DC-2009 will focus on linked data and the enabling of the Semantic Web. Conference participants will explore the conceptual and practical issues in breaking the constraints of data silos and connecting pieces of data, information, and knowledge. Metadata is a key to these processes supporting publishing and interlinking structured data on the Semantic Web. There is a growing interest in the metadata community in connecting existing and future data contained in silos within and across organizations in a meaningful way that supports extraction and correlation of the data. The linking of data from disparate data silos presents technical and social challenges that will be explored at DC-2009 through full papers, project reports, posters, special sessions and workshops.
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Research Fellowships in Historical Cartography
The J.B. Harley Research Fellowships in the History of Cartography
The Harley Fellowships - the only one of their kind in Europe - provide support of up to four weeks (normally at GBP 400 per week) for those, from any discipline, doing the equivalent of post-graduate level work in the historical map collections of the United Kingdom. Web site: http://www.maphistory.inf[...]
Harley-Delmas Fellowships
For the period 2007-2011, in addition to the normal J. B. Harley Fellowships there are also Harley-Delmas Fellowships funded by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. Successful applicants researching the history of cartography during the European Renaissance to the Enlightenment c.1400-c.1800 will be eligible for a Harley-Delmas Fellowship. All applicants, however, should apply for a J. B. Harley Fellowship. Eligibility for a Harley-Delmas award will be decided by the Selection Committee of the Trustees.
The closing date for applications is 1st NOVEMBER. The Fellowship website includes an Application page that should provide all the necessary information as well as answering many frequently asked questions
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Deprecation plans for ArcGIS 9.3.1 and ArcGIS 9.4
The deprecation plans for ArcGIS 9.3.1 and ArcGIS 9.4 have now been released. Deprecation is the term used to describe the standards and specifications of the new software.
It is always interesting to see what is being added to software for a new release, but it is also worth reading the documentation carefully before installing the software to see what is being taken out.
Go-Geo! reported earlier in the summer that VB6 would not be supported by ArcGIS 9.4. This is inline with Microsofts move to end their support of VB6, moving users to the .net platform.
Mandown Blog reports a few more of the changes from the recently released documents. Certainly worth a read.
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GeoTools 2.5.7 released
From the new look GeoTools web site:
GeoTools are pleased to announce the release of GeoTools 2.5.7, which is now available for download. While there are a number of new features included in this release, such as ArcSDE versioning and non-spatial table support and improvements to the performance and stability of filters and the next-generation JDBC datastores, there is more exciting news for this release. At least, it is for me.
This release marks LISAsoft's first official foray into the release processes of GeoTools. Assisted by veteran release managers Jody Garnett and Justin Deoliveira, and some very clear and well documented build processes, I only ran into a few troubles. For those of you that are familiar with the release process of these projects, you'll know where those troubles live; the cite testing for GeoServer. But patience prevailed and the release was put out late last week.
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Better Mapping 2009
Following the success of previous Better Mapping events, the Association for Geographic Information (AGI) and The British Cartographic Society (BCS) are to run another four events in October 2009.
The events are to be held in the following places:
- 26th October: Bristol - Armada House Conference & Events
- 27th October: Glasgow - Centre for Contemporary Arts
- 28th October: Birmingham - Holiday Inn Birmingham City Centre
- 29th October: London - School of Economic Science
There will be a mix of academic and non academic speakers including; Dr Ken Field of Kingston, Susie Jones of RSMS, Giles Darkes ex-Oxford Brookes now a cartographic consultant.
Cost:
£75 AGI/BCS Members
£150 Non-members
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Mapping software for Mac OS X
Read on Oliver's blog, Mapdiva, LLC announces the first release of Ortelius map illustration software for Mac OS X. Ortelius is a powerful vector-based program allowing you to easily create floor plans, landscape plans, scaled drawings, and a wide variety of high quality custom maps. Designed for ease-of-use, it allows you to draw directly with features such as roads, rivers, coastlines, buildings, symbols, and contours.
Features of Ortelius Standard Edition
* hundreds of styles and symbols
* WYSIWYG drawing and editing
* dozens of fully editable map templates
* smooth vector graphics
* automatic junctions
* direct intelligent labelling
* scalable maps and plans
* 20+ special drawing tools
No information about the format the package will import/export data in at the moment but hopefully it will be flexible enough and not limited to a proprietary data format.
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Reasearch positions - Sikkim, Himalaya
Several long-term research positions are available as part of a Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India, funded project on “Technological Innovations and Ecological Research for the Sustainable Use of Bioresources in Sikkim”. The project is jointly implemented by the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) (Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, http://www.ncbs.res.in), Bangalore, and the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) (http://www.atree.org), Bangalore.
The areas of research encompass both basic and applied ecology and include the mapping and monitoring of faunal and floral biodiversity, field and laboratory measurements of biodiversity and ecosystem services (carbon, hydrology, pollination, bio-resources) and their response to climate change, and work on sustainable use of bio-resources by local communities.
Candidates with backgrounds in life sciences, botany, zoology, geo-sciences, ecology, environmental science, social sciences and remote sensing/GIS and with demonstrated field experience and interest in working in Sikkim and the Northeastern India will be considered. Depending on the position, laboratory work in Bangalore will be combined with field measurements and observations in Sikkim. The GIS/RS position will be based in Bangalore. Short-listed candidates will be interviewed by project Scientists in Bangalore or Sikkim.
Interested candidates should send their CV and statement of interest by email to: sikkimdbt@ncbs.res.in. Applications will be reviewed until suitable candidates are found.
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OSM editing software review
Spotted this on Mapperz Blog. A nice little review of editing tools available for editing Open Street Map data. The article picks one stand alone editor and one online live edit tool. The number of contributors to the OSM project continues to grow but there is an increasing need for OSM data to be validated and updated by the community. Only by doing this will the data quality increase and the dataset will continue to be useful.
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Swiss ask Google to remove Streetview service
Seen on Slashdot, Switzerland has asked Google to disable their Streetview service in Switzerland. The Swiss office for Data Protection made the request to Google as they feel that Google has not met the conditions they set for collecting and publishing the photographs. Specifically, this relates to the blurring of faces and number plates of cars. Google said they would make any face or number plate anonymous and that they would publish a schedule of where they intended to capture data so as to forewarn the public of their activities.
However, it would seem that the Swiss officials are not satisfied that this has happened. Therefore the Swiss office for Data Protection are asking for the images to be removed immediately. We will have to see what happens, will they be able to resolve the situation or will Switzerland not be in Google Streetview?
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Augmented reality GIS
Picked up on the Anything Geospatial blog, a very interesting video of the use of augmented reality in GIS.
The video shows an American Police helicopter and scanner with various GIS displays being used to supplement the live images being captured. Nice features include the ability to use a gazetteer to select an address, which the camera then locates and zooms to. Also, when tracking an object, stolen cars for example, the GIS can be used to show a list of streets that the target is approaching. This could be useful when directing ground crews towards a target, although there seems to be no reason that the ground crews could not be fed the same images from the helicopter.
Exciting stuff, and certainly worth a look.
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Black Counrty shown on OS maps
The BBC is running an article that the Black Country has been shown on an OS map for the first time. Sheet No. 139 shows the name "Black Country" while the sheet has been renamed "Birmingham and Wolverhampton including the Black Country".
The OS said that it "did not normally show places that were not geographically defined" but that they were responding to the feelings of the residents of the region.
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Journal of Maps - August issue
The Journal of Maps is pleased to announce the publication of the August 2009 issue.
The table of contents is copied below and is available at:
http://www.journalofmaps.[...]
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ESRI Technical Event with Eduserv – 15 September 2009
ESRI Technical Event with Eduserv – 15 September 2009
Following the success of the ESRI Technical Event held at the University of Leeds in 2008, Eduserv and ESRI have arranged a second meeting, to be held at the University of Birmingham on September 15th. The meeting is intended to bring together people from universities who are either using ArcGIS or other ESRI software or providing and supporting ESRI software in their institutions.
In addition to an overview of the new facilities in the latest release of
ArcGIS, 9.3.1, other topics include a visit to Birmingham University's 3-D Visualisation Suite, a discussion of how to get usage data out of the ArcGIS license management system and an introduction to ArcGIS in virtualised or server environments. There is also provision for networking with colleagues from other institutions and to meet staff from ESRI UK.
This is a completely free event which includes lunch.
Date: Tuesday 15 September 2009 (10:00am tea / coffee for a 10:30am start)
Registration Page: www.myesriuk.com (go to CHEST Seminar / ESRI Technical Event on 15th September)
Location: University of Birmingham (specific room details and map will beprovided after registering)
Schedule:
10:00 Tea/coffee
10:30 ESRI introduction by Angela Baker (ESRI UK)
10:50 Virtualisation vs. ArcGIS Server by Peter Halls (University of York)
and Alison Rumble (ESRI UK)
11:20 User Experience Talk
12:00 Lunch with time for networking as well as guided tours of the
Virtualisation Suite at University of Birmingham
2:00 Interoperable Landmap and EDINA Data and services by Kamie Kitmitto (University of Manchester)
2:30 New features of 9.3.1 and extensions – demonstration by Alison Rumble (ESRI UK)
3:00 Tea/coffee break
3:30 Licensing Talk by Anna Clough (Leeds University) and Peter Halls (University of York). Topics include: how to find out how many users you really have and who those users are (flex logfile analysis); non-dongled support; use outside of the British isles; licence servers.
4:00 Question and Answer Period
4:30 Tea / Coffee - home time!
For full details of the Chest Agreement for ESRI please visit:
www.eduserv.org.uk/ESRI
Please register at your earliest and pass this email on to any colleagues who may be interested in attending.
If you have any questions, please contact Eduserv Help at help@eduserv.org.uk
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GIS - niche or mainstream?
Through the Computer World Blog, there is a very interesting article discussing the future of GIS and the importance of it as a mainstream application with the head of ESRI, Jack Dangermond.
This isnt an ESRI plug, Dangermond is certainly a key player in pushing and defining GIS in all areas. His views are usually pretty neutral and certainly worth a read.
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PhD Positions in Earth Observation/Remote Sensing
The University of Tromsø, Norway, has 3-5 vacant research fellow positions in earth observation/remote sensing for applicants who would like to complete a PhD degree. The positions are organized under the Department of Physics and Technology, and the research fellows will be enrolled in the Barents Remote Sensing School (BARESS), which is a research school in earth observation at the University of Tromsø.
The desired research area is earth observation/remote sensing, specifically using SAR (synthetic aperture radar) and PolSAR (polarimetric SAR) data, addressing research problems like:
* change detection,
* marine target detection (ships, icebergs, oil spill),
* sea surface dynamics studies (wind, waves, currents),
* land cover classification (vegetation, forest, sea ice, glaciers),
* physical and/or statistical modelling,
* methodology for data analysis and multi-sensor data fusion.
Applicants should describe their interests and relate their background with respect to the above mentioned research topics.
More details on how to apply are found at:
https://secure.jobbnorge.[...]
For further information, please contact: Professor Torbjørn Eltoft at torbjorn.eltoft@uit.no or Associate Professor Camilla Brekke at camilla.brekke@uit.no
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Drones set to collect radar data
Spotted on GIS Lounge, the USAF have been taking high resolution radar images across known active fault zones in the Western United States. The aim is to create a temporal dataset that can be used for interferometry. This technique can be used to detected change in surfaces, and through the use of feature tracking, estimate velocities. This study is concentrating on change.
So why is this so significant? Well, the interesting part is that the sensor is mounted under the aircraft in a USAF drone. The plane then flies on autopilot over the same area, to within 15 ft (5m) of the previous flight path. The long term aim is to be able to set the drone off on its own to acquire images significantly reducing the cost of image acquisition. This could result in other projects using the technology to gather high resolution data at regular time intervals for monitoring surfaces, vegetation and change.
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LBS & TeleCartography - Registration deadline
The registrations for 6th International Symposium on LBS &
TeleCartography, CGS, University of Nottingham (2nd Sept - 4th Sept
2009) will close on 20th August 2009.
The symposium will bring togetherexperts from around the world to present the latest research results and developments with focus on Location Based Services in the fields of Cartography, Geoinformation, Computer Sciences, Telecommunication, Geodesy, and Geomedia Techniques. Details at http://www.lbs2009.org/
The conference provisional agenda is at
http://cgs.nottingham.ac.[...]
The HORIZON Doctoral Colloquium is scheduled on 1st September 2009 (Tuesday) before the conference. To register for the conference visit
http://cgs.nottingham.ac.[...]
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BBC Map of the week - Crime
The BBC has been running a map of the week over the past few months. These have generally been pretty interesting. This week’s subject is crime and the study area is Oxford. The maps have separated crime into sectors, violent, anti-social and so on. You can then look at the reported crime across the Oxford area. It is clear that certain crimes are concentrated in certain areas, no surprise there then.
What is of particular interest is the map that shows all crime through time. What the researchers have done is taken a years worth of reported crime and mapped it against the time and day it took place. So the user gets to see that certain areas have more crime on certain days or at specific times of the day. With the background mapping, it is clear that a significant amount of crime is associated with pubs and drinkers in the City centre on Friday and Saturday nights. Again, this is no surprise but rather than using conjecture, this kind of analysis shows the patterns clearly and can help reveal other hot spots that are not so obvious.
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UK Contribution to ICA Map Exhibition deadline approaching.
A final reminder that any entries for the UK contribution to the Map Exhibition at the ICA conference in Chile in November must be with me by Monday 17th for consideration.
For more information and invitation, see www.cartography.org.uk/news.asp
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Accuracy 2010 - Ninth International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment
International Spatial Accuracy Research Association (ISARA)
Ninth International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences
July 20-23, 2010
Leicester, UK
TOPICS: All topics concerned with spatial accuracy and uncertainty in a natural resources and environmental sciences context are appropriate, for example:
* Semantic uncertainty and vagueness
* Modelling uncertainty using geostatistics
* Propagation of uncertainty in GIS
* Visualizing spatial uncertainty
* Uncertainty in Remote Sensing
* Spatio-temporal uncertainty
* Accuracy and uncertainty of DEMs
* Modelling scale in environmental systems
* Positional uncertainty
PUBLICATION: Symposium proceedings, an edited book planned as part of Springer's Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography series and possibly an international journal.
MODES OF PARTICIPATION: Oral papers and posters. Pre-conference workshop proposals also welcome.
DEADLINES:
* Abstract submission: 28.09.09 * Abstract acceptance notification: 1.11.09
* Workshop proposals: 19.10.09
* Workshop acceptance notification: 1.11.09
Nick Tate and Pete Fisher (co-Chairs)
Giles Foody and Pete Atkinson (Programme Committee co-Chairs)
Contact: accuracy2010@le.ac.uk
****************************************
Download a pdf of the full call for papers at: http://www.le.ac.uk/gg/ac[...]
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Junior Research Fellowships at Imperial College London
Centre for Transport Studies
Imperial College London has created a significant number of new Junior Research Fellowships, to enable outstanding young researchers to establish academic careers. The Fellowships are
for 3 years and are intended to enable the successful applicant to focus full time on developing an independent research identity but with encouragement and support from a senior academic mentor. Applicants may be from the UK or abroad and will be normally
expected to have up to 4 years post-doctoral experience at the time of application.
Proposals will be judged primarily on the basis of their scientific merit, track record and potential for development of an independent research programme. Applicants will need to identify an Imperial College academic staff member to act as their sponsor and to provide relevant facilities and mentorship for the tenure of the Fellowship.
This is a tremendous opportunity for a talented young researcher to establish an academic career at Imperial.
The Centre for Transport Studies is keen to encourage suitable applicants with interests in any of our areas of research activity, which include:
* Travel demand modelling
* Transport network operations
* Transport and the environment
* Intelligent transport systems
* Transport economics, policy and regulation
* Transport risk, safety and security
* Railway operations and management
* Engineering geomatics
* Air transport and air traffic management
* Freight transport and logistics
* Port and maritime operations
We are also happy to hear from potential applicants with complimentary disciplinary or research interests that could contribute to our multi-disciplinary research activities.
Further information about the Junior Fellowship Scheme can be found at www.imperial.ac.uk/jrf and further information about the Centre for Transport Studies can be found at ww.imperial.ac.uk/cts
Potential applicants wishing to discuss this opportunity informally are welcome to contact Prof. John Polak (j.polak@IMPERIAL.AC.UK) by email.
The deadline for applications is 30 October 2009.
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Free licensing to DataScene
CyberWit, Inc. is providing free licensing to DataScene, a data graphing, animation, and analysis software package. This may be of interest and benefit to many of you. Here are some highlights of DataScene:
* Plotting 39 types of graphs with brilliant quality (http://www.cyber-wit.com/[...]).
* Powerful data analysis capabilities (http://www.cyber-wit.com/[...]).
* Creating graph animation for presentations, classes, and web pages (http://www.cyber-
wit.com/DataScene_Animation.html).
* Monitoring and charting real-time data (http://www.cyber-wit.com/[...]).
* Super clean and configurable user interface (http://www.cyber-wit.com/[...]).
* Easy to learn in 5 minutes with a friendly Wizard.
* Free Community licensing (http://www.cyber-wit.com/[...]).
I haven't been all the way through the licence agreement yet, but the example graphics look pretty good so it may be worth downloading the trial version first, running with that for a month and then considering taking up this community version.
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Geospatial computing for the arts, humanities and cultural heritage - Call for papers
The first call for papers for the Workshop at 5th IEEE International Conference on e-Science focusing on Geospatial computing for the arts, humanities and cultural heritage has been made. This event is due to be held in Oxford, UK, 9-11 December 2009.
Details from the press release can be found below:
References to time and location pervade the human record, both past and present: an oft-quoted statistic is that some 80% of all online information is in some way georeferenced. It is unsurprising therefore that as researchers in the arts, humanities and cultural heritage become more fully engaged with e-infrastructures, their disciplines’ engagement with, and use of, spatial and temporal data gives rise to new and interesting research questions in this area.
How, for example, can heterogeneous academic data resources which fall into the 80% of georeferenced information – including, for example, historical texts, archaeological databases or museum collections - be linked and cross-queried without dictating the research process or methods used? How can geo-temporal data be visualized, both geographically and non-geographically? What is the role of ‘virtual globes’ such as Google Earth as platforms for the expression of such data? What can digital tools and methods in geospatial computing contribute to the use and understanding of space and time in the practice-led arts, creative industries and galleries (e.g. for documenting performances or visitor pathways)? How can issues of scale that are common to both time and space be usefully explored in the arts, humanities and cultural heritage sectors?
This workshop seeks contributions from which might further these, and similar, questions. Contributors might (not exhaustively) include:
* Academics in the arts, humanities or cultural heritage who are making use of spatial and/or temporal data in their research
* Researchers with relevant interests in HCI or related disciplines
* Researchers, curators, practitioners etc. from outside the academic sector (e.g. museums and galleries)
* Developers or information scientists working on geospatial or temporal tools or applications
Short contributions (up to four pages, including images, references and notes), in IEEE format (see http://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/[...]) are invited.
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Preserving Geospatial Data
The Digital Preservation Coalition announce an important addition to its series of Technology Watch Reports:
Preserving Geospatial Data by Guy McGarva of the University of Edinburgh, with contributions from Steve Morris (NCSU) and Greg Janée (UCSB). http://www.dpconline.org/[...]
'Increasingly large amounts of geospatial data are being created and
collected.' Explained Guy McGarva, principal author. 'Much of this data
has long term value but its preservation is a complex problem caused not least by the variety of formats. It is very important that people understand the approaches and actions that need to be considered when preserving geospatial data with the aim of ensuring future access.'
The report is designed for repository managers and archivists who may be expected to preserve and manage geospatial data but don't have a background in geospatial sciences. The report provides an advanced introduction to the often daunting world of geospatial data management and it supports efforts to ensure that these valuable and complex data sets can be secured for future generations.
Key recommendations of the report pertain to formats, metadata and the systems used to manage geospatial data. They also underline the need for careful rights management when preserving commercially sensitive third party data.
This report is the seventh in the series - previous reports have
included hot topics such as the preservation of PDF files, the Jpeg 2000 standard, Preservation metadata, large scale storage, institutional repositories and the Open Archival Information System. Future reports Including File Format Selection and Web Archiving are in development.
Commenting on this latest addition, William Kilbride - Executive
Director of the DPC - said, 'Geo-spatial technologies are set to become one of transformative technologies of the next decade. The growing prevalence of location-aware services already points to this. But time and space go together. This report sets a premium on long term access to spatial data, and it provides practical recommendations as to how to secure that long-term.'
'The Geodata Team within Edina have a well deserved reputation for
supporting researchers and teachers.' He added. 'Services like Digimap have set a benchmark for access to complex spatial data. It is really pleasing to see that experience and expertise also looks to the long term.'
Well done Guy, an important and interesting contribution. Guy works for Edina and is developing ShareGeo, which is a data repository that aims to promote the sharing of data.
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AGU Session on Open Source Remote Sensing
There is a session on Open Source Remote Sensing applications at the American Geophysical Union meeting December 14-18, 2009 in San Francisco. This session could be quite interesting as there is a strong open source GIS community but the open source remote sensing applications seem less prominent.
The deadline for submission is the 3rd of September. I will keep an eye out for information about webcastings of the event as this session will be interesting but i for one will not be able to attend the event. Full details below:
Session IN18: Open Source Remote Sensing Software and Applications for Earth and Environmental Science
Please note: abstracts are due online on September 3, 2009.
Abstract Submissions:
http://www.agu.org/meetin[...]
Link to AGU Session:
http://www.agu.org/meetin[...]
Abstract:
Satellite and airborne remote sensing imagery is integral to geospatial research in earth and environmental sciences. The synoptic bird’s eye view helps us see relationships among landscape elements in their spatial context, the continuum of nature and human infrastructure. There are increasing amounts of satellite and aerial remote sensing imagery of the earth available for free and low cost (e.g., Landsat; USGS and USDA aerial photography), via convenient online data portals and virtual earths. However, for some user communities, licensing costs for commercial image processing and analysis software may present barriers to scientific use of free remote sensing imagery. The goal of this session is to present examples of application and development of free and open source remote sensing and image processing software for use in the earth and environmental sciences. Of particular interest are abstract submissions highlighting open source software applied to the following: high resolution imagery (0.5-5 m pixels) for detailed landscape mapping, LIDAR, plugin image processing algorithms for virtual earths, operational web-based remote sensing, and web processing services (WPS).
Conveners:
Drew Pilant, US Environmental Protection Agency; Peter Fox, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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OS 1:250 000 and MiniScale on ShareGeo
EDINA's data sharing repository, ShareGeo is pleased to announce that the Ordnance Survey datasets 1:250 000 scale map and MiniScale products are now available for download through their service.
These datasets will be available in Digimap at some point in the near future but you can download them now through ShareGeo. All you have to do is to visit ShareGeo
1:250 000
1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster map base combines roads, railways and other key features to make this the ideal cartographic backdrop. This small-scale product gives an excellent overview of the country. The files in this dataset cover Scotland and northern England.
MIniScale
Ordnance Survey’s MiniScale is a small-scale product designed for use within desktop graphic applications, providing geographic context for the whole of Great Britain. MiniScale shows the major boundaries, lines of communication, settlements and physical features of Great Britain. This is just the TIFF raster version of the dataset. Other versions will be available from Digimap shortly. It can also be used within a geographical information system (GIS). MiniScale is aimed at any customer that requires a high-quality, visually appealing map for their documents and publications, whether a magazine, brochure or web pages.
At present the MiniScale data is only available as a GeoTiff download. If you need the vector data then it can be supplied but this may take a few days.
ShareGeo
ShareGeo is a data sharing repository. You can upload data allowing others to discover and use it. If your data is derived from OS base maps do not worry. ShareGeo sits behind a UK Federation login so all users that can access it are entitled to use OS data in the same way as they use data from DigiMap.
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Kingston GIS summer school 2009
Monday August 24th - Friday August 28th.
Programme
Workshop 1: GIS concepts and fundamentals
Workshop 2: Geographical data analysis and modelling
Workshop 3: GIS and the third dimension
Workshop 4: Map design and geovisualisation
Workshop 5: Integrating GIS with emerging technologies
Registration
Per day without accommodation - £225+VAT
4 workshop days without accommodation - £800+VAT (saving of £100+VAT)
5 workshop days without accommodation - £975+VAT (saving of £150+VAT)
Time is running out to register for all or part of this summer school that Kingston run in conjunction with the AGI.
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Cranfield GIS MSc - Infoterra bursary
Infoterra, a leading provider of geo-information products and services, is offering a £6000 bursary to a suitably qualified student registering for the full-time MSc Geographical Information Management at Cranfield University in October 2009. Consideration for the award of the bursary will be by submission of a CV and a statement of how the applicant sees their career developing in the future, and is at the discretion of Infoterra Ltd. Deadline for submissions is 31 August 2009.
For more information visit: www.cranfield.ac.uk/sas/gim?id=gg
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Submitt your map to the International Map Exhibition - ICC 2009, Santiago, Chile
The International Cartographic Association (ICA) meets for its 24^th International Cartographic Conference in Chile in November 2009. As part of that conference there will be an exhibition of cartographic products from around the world. For the UK contribution to that exhibition we are inviting you to submit examples of any cartographic products prepared or published by you in the last two years. Please provide two copies of each item wherever possible; one copy will be displayed in the International Map Exhibition in Chile. The other copy will be exhibited at a future BCS event and will be added to the BCS collection held in the National Library of Scotland.
All types of cartographic product will be considered. The exhibition will include regional and national atlases, electronic atlases, topographical and hydrographical maps, satellite images, urban maps, relief maps, maps of mountains, tourism, national parks, geological maps, globes, educational and multi-media material.
Entries are invited in 4 categories: printed maps; atlases; globes; and electronic media. There is a separate entry form for each category, an *electronic copy* of which must be filled in for each item to be submitted. Copies of these forms are available from the BCS website: www.cartography.org.uk/news.asp <http://www.cartography.or[...] Forms should be sent as an e-mail attachment to:- david.forrest@ges.gla.ac.uk
Two copies of each Map, etc., should be sent to me at the address below to arrive no later than 14^th August 2009. Please enclose a printed copy of the form(s) with each product. If the number of submissions exceeds our allocated display space the UKCC will select the most representative entries from those submitted.
If you have any questions regarding any aspects of this invitation please contact David Forrest by e-mail or on 0141 330 5401
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Adding Google maps to website
A nice little guide to adding Google maps to a website has been written by google. There are two guides, a quick and easy version:http://maps.google.com/he[...]
and a longer advance version:
http://maps.google.com/he[...]
Google maps are a quick way to provide some spatial elements to your website.
Spotted on the Map room blog
http://www.mcwetboy.net/m[...]
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Journal of Maps now a member of CrossRef
The Journal of Maps is now a member of CrossRef (http://www.crossref.org), which acts as the official DOI registration agency for scholarly publications. DOIs (http://en.wikipedia.org/w[...]) are fundamental to the persistence of access to web based scholarly content, as well as aiding data discovery. It is good practise for authors to include the DOI in citations.
The Journal of Maps has now created DOIs for all published articles and these can be fully accessed using the DOI Resolver (http://dx.doi.org/). For example:
http://dx.doi.org/10.4113[...]
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Newcastle Uni - GIS Teaching Support Officer
The University of Newcastle is looking for a GIS Teaching Support Officer. Based in the School of Civil Engineering & Geosciences, you will assist in the delivery of GIS teaching to undergraduate and postgraduate students and support the development and delivery of CPD courses to a wide audience from industry, local government and academia. You will be able to demonstrate a confidence and ease in representing the School and University in a professional manner and be self-motivated and pro-active in the development of new opportunities.
The School delivers a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses across the Geomatics discipline. Knowledge of programming, web development and databases would be an asset. Given the cross cutting nature of Geomatics teaching in the school, any experience of other Geomatics disciplines; Remote Sensing, Geodesy and Land Surveying would be advantageous.
You should have a Bachelor’s degree in a Geomatics or related discipline and be able to demonstrate a good understanding of both the practical usage of GIS software and the underlying theory. Ideally, you will have very strong skills in the ESRI suite of GIS and have a Master’s level qualification in a related discipline. You must be confident in the delivery of presentations to a professional audience and have very good oral and written communication skills.
Salary: Up to £28,839, rising to £35,469
REF - D552A
Closing date: 13 August 2009
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INSPIRE website has new look
The INSPIRE team is pleased to announce the release of the new INSPIRE website, which can be accessed at:
http://inspire.jrc.ec.eur[...]
The new INSPIRE site has been designed with a fresh new look and has been updated with the most recent information.
Cartography - an introduction released by British Cartographic Society
Prepared on behalf of The British Cartographic Society by Giles Darkes, Cartographic Consultant, and Mary Spence MBE, one of the UK’s leading cartographic practitioners, this booklet has been published by BCS in support of its Better Mapping Campaign. Its aim is to give basic information on what works well in map design and to get the world thinking about maps and their messages.
This comprehensive little A6 booklet (64pp) covers the fundamentals of mapping such as:
•why good cartography is important
•map functions and map types
•how maps are made
•feature selection and generalisation
•symbolisation of areas, lines, points
•data quality and map quality
•the basic principles of map design
•colour and text on maps
•page layout and marginalia
•tips on how to make better maps
Available for £4.99 plus postage and packing
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OS maps available for iPhone
Good news for iPhone users wanting to make the most of their mobile technology, OS maps are now available for the iPhone through routebuddy.
Priced at £19.99 each, over 400 Ordnance Survey Explorer® 1:25,000 maps are now available from RouteBuddy’s online map store providing complete coverage of the UK.
Edited - 31 July 2009. Following this announcement, Ed Parsons has downloaded and tested the service. He makes a number of useful comments commending the developers at routebudy for their efforts solving a frustrating streaming Vs downloading issue, but highlighting the inequality of cost. This digital version is licenced to the user and costs 3 times as much as the paper copy.
When i first read the article i thought £19.99 was a bargain for a national dataset as i couldnt imagine a single tile costiing so much! Seems it does. I totally agree with Ed's comment that if this is a digital product, users should be able to select any size or shape of area they like and be charged by the sq metre. Flexibility = solution?
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PostGIS 1.4.0 released
The PostGIS development team has released version 1.4.0 of the spatial data extension for PostgreSQL.
This new version of PostGIS includes substantial performance
enhancements, more detailed reference documentation, new output
formats (GeoJSON) and an improved internal testing system. PostGIS 1.4 also supports the recent PostgreSQL 8.4 release.
Compatibility:
- The versions below are the *minimum* requirements for PostGIS 1.4
- PostgreSQL 8.2 and higher on all platforms
- GEOS 3.0 and higher only
- PROJ4 4.5 and higher only
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Met Office free videoconference for schools/colleges
The Met Office have just announced a series of free videoconference sessions for schools and colleges in England. The conferences are available during November, January and February of the new 2009/2010 academic year. The Met Office videoconferences have proved extremely popular in the past, so early booking is advised to avoid disappointment. Please visit the Met Office web site for more details and to reserve a session.
Met Office Videoconferences : http://www.metoffice.gov.[...]
The Met Office will be using the JANET Videoconferencing Service (JVCS) to manage the conferences, and any school or college must first be registered with JVCS in order to take part.
JVCS Booking Service : http://www.jvcs.ja.net/booking
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FOSS4G 2009 Early bird registration deadline approaching
Early Bird registration for the FOSS4G 2009 Conference (20-23 October
2009 at Sydney, Australia) closes in less than two weeks.
There is a fantastic line up of Keynotes, Presentations, Workshops and
Tutorials at FOSS4G 2009. There is also the Climate Change Integration
Plugfest (CCIP) for demonstration of standards based interoperability
between Open Source and Proprietary geospatial applications based on a
Climate Change Scenario.
There is also an academic track http://2009.foss4g.org/re[...]
and ICA Working Group on Open Source Geospatial Technologies is pleased
to be involved in the organisation of the academic track for FOSS4G
2009. Many thanks to excellent work by Thierry for organising this
track.
Please
register at http://2009.foss4g.org/in[...]
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IJHG July edition available online
The following articles are now available on the International Journal of Health Geographics’ website. These can be accessed for free and include articles submitted to the Journal from 25 June to 24 July 2009.
Editorial
Musings on privacy issues in health research involving disaggregate geographic data about individuals. Maged N. Kamel Boulos, Andrew J. Curtis and Philip AbdelMalik.
Methodology
Combining Google Earth and GIS mapping technologies in a dengue surveillance system for developing countries. Aileen Y. Chang, Maria E. Parrales, Javier Jimenez, Magdalena E. Sobieszczyk, Scott M. Hammer, David J. Copenhaver and Rajan P. Kulkarni
Evaluation of sliding baseline methods for spatial estimation for cluster detection in the biosurveillance system. Jian Xing, Howard Burkom, Linda Moniz, James Edgerton, Michael Leuze and Jerome Tokars.
Geographic disparities in colorectal cancer survival. Kevin A. Henry, Xiaoling Niu and Francis P. Boscoe.
Research
Ecology and geography of avian influenza (HPAI H5N1) transmission in the Middle East and northeastern Africa. Richard A. J. Williams and A. Peterson.
Hantavirus reservoir Oligoryzomys longicaudatus spatial distribution sensitivity to climate change scenarios in Argentine Patagonia. Anibal E. Carbajo, Carolina Vera and Paula L. M. Gonzalez.
Spatio-temporal cluster analysis of county-based human West Nile virus incidence in the continental United States. Ramanathan Sugumaran, Scott R. Larson and John P. DeGroote.
An updated atlas of human helminth infections: the example of East Africa. Simon Brooker, Narcis B. Kabatereine, Jennifer L. Smith, Denise Mupfasoni, Mariam T. Mwanje, Onésime Ndayishimiye, Nicholas J. S. Lwambo, Deborah Mbotha, Peris Karanja, Charles Mwandawiro, Eric Muchiri, Archie C. A. Clements, Donald A. P. Bundy and Robert W. Snow.
Evaluation of the performance of tests for spatial randomness on prostate cancer data. Virginia L. Hinrichsen, Ann C. Klassen, Changhong Song and Martin Kulldorff.
Geographical clustering of lung cancer in the province of Lecce, Italy: 1992-2001. Massimo Bilancia and Alessandro Fedespina.
Optimum land cover products for use in a Glossina-morsitans habitat model of Kenya. Mark H. DeVisser and Joseph P. Messina.
Spatial analysis of plague in California: Niche modeling predictions of the current distribution and potential response to climate change. Ashley C. Holt, Daniel J. Salkeld, Curtis L. Fritz, James R. Tucker and Peng Gong.
Estimation of undernutrition and mean calorie intake in Africa: methodology, findings and implications. Cornelia F. A. van Wesenbeeck, Michiel A. Keyzer and Maarten Nubé.
http://www.ij-healthgeogr[...]
Journal of Maps indexed in ISI web of Knowledge
The Journalof Maps has now been fully indexed by Thomson-Reuters within ISI Web of Knowledge. If you are an author of a paper in the Journal of Maps and
use ResearcherID (www.researcherid.com) to list your publications, then
you will now be able to link directly to them. As a result of citation listing, all citations to JoM papers are now counted and the journal will shortly receive an Impact Factor for 2007 and 2008. For interest, our highest cited paper to date is:
Stokes, C.R. (2006) Geomorphological Map of Ribbed Moraines on the Dubawnt Lake Palaeo-Ice Stream Bed: A Signature of Ice Stream Shut-down?, v2006, Journal of Maps, 1-9
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LBS & TeleCartography Student Bursaries
There are 10 bursaries (each worth GBP 120) for
Masters or PhD students wishing to attend the 6th International
Symposium on LBS & TeleCartography at CGS, University of Nottingham (2nd
Sept - 4th Sept 2009) to help cover their registration fees for LBS 2009
conference. These bursaries are sponsored by University of Nottingham's
Horizon Digital Economy Research Hub Centre and Horizon Doctoral
Training Centre. It will be helpful if you could bring this to the
attention of your PhD/MSc students.
LBS 2009 will bring together experts from around the world to present
the latest research results and developments with focus on Location
Based Services in the fields of Cartography, Geoinformation, Computer
Sciences, Telecommunication, Geodesy, and Geomedia Techniques.
Keynote speakers include:
- Professor William Cartwright (RMIT, Australia)
- Professor Derek McAuley (Director of Horizon, University of
Nottingham) - Professor Georg Gartner (Vienna University of Technology, Austria)
More details of the conference at http://www.lbs2009.org/
If you are a MSc/PhD student and wish to apply for the Horizon Bursary
to attend LBS 2009 please email your short 1 page CV to
Suchith.Anand@nottingham.ac.uk before 30 July 2009. (Permalink) | Bookmark
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GEMINI 2 Published
GEMINI 2 guidelines have been published, these superseded the original GEMINI guidelines that were published in 2004. This version seeks to address the recommendations of the INSPIRE metadata directive, creating metadata that is standardised across the EU.
A pdf copy of the GEMINI 2 document can be found by following the link below.
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GeoNetwork opensource version 2.4.0 released
GeoNetwork opensource, the standards based, Free and Open Source catalog application to manage spatially referenced resources through the web, has just announced the release of version 2.4.0.
Jeroen Ticheler writes:
"We're proud to announce the release of GeoNetwork opensource 2.4.0. This is a major release for the project.
GeoNetwork opensource ( http://geonetwork-opensou[...] ) is a standards based geospatial catalog application that helps people and organizations to organize and publish their geospatial data through the web. It is currently used in numerous Spatial Data Infrastructure initiatives across the world.
Important improvements have been made to ease of use, advanced metadata editing, performance and interoperability making it one of the most advanced, if not the most advanced geospatial metadata catalog available on the market today.
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Kingston GIS Summer School: 24th - 28th August 2009
The aim of this course is to explore the principles and characteristics of geographical data and to introduce a range of spatial analysis techniques using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). GIS has matured as a discipline and an approach to handling spatial information. More decision makers and operational staff in a wide range of public and private sector organisations are using GIS. People without a background in geographical data and GIS are called upon to understand, interpret and present the results of applying spatial analytic techniques.
This course offers an opportunity for researchers and professionals to gain skills in GIS to achieve high quality outcomes from the analysis of geographical data.
The course will comprise a series of 1-day technical workshops each of which can be studied independently but which also form a coherent 5-day course covering major aspects of the subject. Lectures and practical exercises will use the state-of-the-art facilities at Kingston University London and be delivered by Kingston's world-renowned GIS staff.
Registration and more information available at the AGI website via the url link below.
Registration
Per day without accommodation - £300+VAT
4 workshop days without accommodation - £1100+VAT (saving of £100+VAT)
5 workshop days without accommodation - £1300+VAT (saving of £200+VAT)
Venue
Kingston University
Penrhyn Road
Kingston upon Thames
Surrey
KT1 2EE
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Met Office Weather Mashup
This has been out for about a week but was initially getting hammered so hard that i thought i would wait to post it here. The Met Office has made a rather nice mashup for their weather maps. Seems obvious dosent it, the weather being made up from a number of different datasets pulled from a number of sources. So a mashup might have been inevitable.
I suppose the main differnce here is that the site is useable and useful. You can easily view the weather for the UK, zoom to the area you are interested in and start playing with the different layers. Lots of functions to play with, personally i just like having isobars available in my weather forecasts so will probably use the site quite a bit.
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Mapnik 0.6.1 Released.
Mapnik team is delighted to announce 0.6.1 release of Mapnik. There are lots of bug fixes along with new features. More details can be found here:
http://trac.mapnik.org/mi[...]
Mapnik is a OpenSource C++/Python toolkit for developing mapping applications. At the core is a C++ shared library providing algorithms/patterns for spatial data access and visualization.
High-level Python bindings (boost.python) facilitate rapid application development targeting Zope3, Django, and other frameworks. It can comfortably be used for both desktop and web development.
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OSGIS UK Webcasts now available
Webcasts of the presentations at the First Open Source GIS UK Conference are now available. The event was held at Centre for Geospatial Science at http://www.opensourcegis.[...] and the presentations from Stream 1 are available for the benefit of the
wider GIS community.
The key aims of OSGIS conference series is to:
* act as a focus for open source GIS research
* to provide platform to network and develop ideas for future
collaborative work in open source GIS
* to hear presentations from government, academic, industry and
policy makers on open source geospatial technologies
* to understand current developments in open source GIS
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DigitalGlobe to launch WorldView-2 satellite
Longmont-based DigitalGlobe is set to launch its next-generation satellite on the 6th October 2009. The satellite will be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The launch of WorldView-2, a high-resolution 8-band multi-spectral satellite, should nearly double DigitalGlobe’s collection capabilities, allow for same-day revisits to a specific geographic area and have a more robust color palette.
It is unclear when the first images will be available from WorldView-2 but we will keep you posted when samples are released.
DigitalGlobe currently has two satellites in orbit; QuickBird and WorldView-1. QuickBird and WorldView-1 are expected to reach their end-of-lives in 2010 and 2018, respectively. The launch of WorldView-2 should help secure DigitalGlobes position as a market leader in satelitte imager for the next few years.
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Open Street Map - health check from SOTM
The State of The Map conference was held las week in Amsterdam and many of the usual suspects have blogged their thoughts on the event, such as Ed Parsons and SlashGeo.
Overall the event appears to have been a success. One article that may be worth reading over your coffee at some point is Stefan Knecht's review of OpenStreetMap - "You shall not remitt OpenStreetMap"
This looks at the accuracy and reliability of spatial data held in OpenStreetMap, concluding that the data of inner cities is generally very good and reliable but this reliability decreases markedly towards the fringes of urban areas. The article seeks to address the issue of OpenStreetMap Vs OS data and clarify some misinterpretations of previous comments made about the commercial usability of OSM data.
It is an interesting read and not worth describing further here. Follow the link at the bottom of this item to read the full article on the United Maps blog, it is quite long but very interesting.
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Mapping software and systems in health and academic research
Venue: Royal Geographical Society, central London
Wednesday 4 November 2009
http://idrn.org/events/up[...]
We are delighted to announce our next workshop, taking place in central London, on Wed 4 November 2009. This event will highlight the uses of mapping software, web-based platforms and geographical information systems, in relation to all forms of research. The main talks are themed around infectious disease, including the mapping of the current 'swine flu' pandemic, and we invite attendance and abstracts from individuals who are involved in other forms of health or academic activity.
There will also be an extended interactive lunchtime session, that includes viewing of posters, electronic 'poster presentations' that can give demos of the researchers work, plus also computer terminals set up with Google Maps/Earth, and other software and platforms etc for delegates to have a go themselves and/or watch demonstrations of what can be done.
We have an exciting line-up of invited speakers, including -
- Mikaela Keller, Harvard Medical School, USA - Mapping the influenza AH1N1 outbreak
- Russell Stothard, Natural History Museum - Use of GIS / GPS in
schistosomiasis research - David Aanensen, Imperial College London -
www.spatialepidemiology.net - tools for mapping infectious disease
epidemiology - Mat Fisher, Imperial College London - Using Google Earth to identify populations and invasions in emerging fungal infections
- Marianne Sinka & Will Temperley, University of Oxford - Mapping the geographical distribution of the Anopheles vectors.
The cost is only £67.78 per delegate. We are keen to get an audience
comprising of beginners and experts, from a range of disciplines and
backgrounds, so please do see our event webpage for more information, abstract submission, the programme and flyer, and online registration -
http://idrn.org/events/up[...] (Permalink) | Bookmark
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Lecturer in Geographical Information Systems
The Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences (at Manchester Metropolitan University) is one of the largest of its kind in the country, with over 800 students, and highly commended research in the most recent RAE exercise. You will contribute to our longstanding successful undergraduate and postgraduate programmes including involvement in the internationally recognised UNIGIS provision, and your research and enterprise interests should complement those of other staff in the Department. An interest or experience in any of the following would be of particular interest:
+ 3D GIS and Geovisualisation
+ Critical GIS/Qualitative GIS
+ Environmental Modelling
+ Participatory (and Web) GIS
+ Project Management and Organisational Issues
Possessing a PhD (or equivalent) and relevant experience, your excellent track record in research, will be demonstrated by publications and ideally external funding.
For an informal discussion please contact Professor Phil Wheater (Tel 0161 247 1589, p.wheater@mmu.ac.uk).
Further details (including job specification and application form) can be downloaded from the following website:
https://www.jobs.mmu.ac.u[...]
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ASPRS Webinar Workshop Series
Have you wanted to attend an ASPRS conference workshop but didn’t have the time to spend away from the office? Are your travel funds limited? No problem. Here’s why.
ASPRS Workshops are now at your fingertips — introducing the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) Webinar Workshop Series.
Now you can take popular ASPRS Workshops from your home or office through the new ASPRS Webinar Workshop Series. Just sign up and log in on the Webinar date. You will be able to interact with others attending the Webinar and ask questions, just as if you were attending the Workshop at one of our conferences. The only thing you’ll miss is the coffee break! The workbook for the Workshop will be shipped to you in advance.
Attendees consistently rate ASPRS Workshops as 4s and 5s (with 5 being Strongly Agree) for the usefulness of the content, quality and effectiveness of the instructor(s), and whether or not the workshop would be recommended to others.
Continuing Education Units (CEUs) are available for ASPRS Webinar Workshops. And ASPRS Workshops are affordable.
First Workshop in the ASPRS Webinar Series:
Preparation for ASPRS Certification offered in four 2-hour segments on August 19 and 20th (You must attend all four segments to qualify for CEUs)
Wednesday, August 19th – 10:00 am - 12:00 noon and 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm Central Time
Thursday, August 20th – 10:00 am - 12:00 noon and 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm Central Time
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PhD - Mapping and modeling of glaciers and icecaps
Applications are invited for a PhD research position within the framework of the project ice2sea (www.ice2sea.eu) for mapping and modelling of glaciers and icecaps using satellite remote sensing and advanced GIS techniques. Besides the mapping of glacierized, mainly Arctic regions that are not yet covered in the World Glacier Inventory or the GLIMS glacier database, a special focus is on the application of (mass balance) models to assess future changes in glacier area and volume for given climate change scenarios on a regional scale.
The successful applicant has completed a Masters or Diploma degree in geosciences or an equivalent field and has a strong background in multispectral remote sensing, glaciology and applied geo-informatics. Experiences in numerical modeling and interpretation of climate data (e.g. from RCMs) are a clear benefit. Good written and spoken English is also required. The candidate is expected to work in a large international team and combine the data sets derived from remote sensing (glacier outlines, DEM) with novel approaches of distributed modeling. In addition to the project-related research, the candidate will acquire scientific, project management, and didactic competences within the framework of the Zurich Graduate School in Geography.
The PhD is funded by the 7th Framework Programm of the European Union (FP7) for a period of three years and will be performed at the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) in cooperation with the glaciology group at GEUS in Copenhagen (Denmark). The salary is according to the rules of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Review of applications will beginn at 2 Aug 2009 and submissions are accepted until the position is filled. The work can start at 1 Sep 2009 or upon agreement. Please send a letter of interest, a CV with a description of your relevant university courses, a one-page summary of your diploma/master thesis, a copy of your degree, and full contact details for two references and the applicant (all in one PDF) to: frank.paul@geo.uzh.ch.
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British Cartographic Society - Map Curators Group
09 September 2009 - 12 September 2009: Edinburgh
The Map Curators’ Group of the British Cartographic Society is pleased to invite map curators, map librarians, archivists and all those charged with the care of maps to its 2009 Workshop at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, in September.
This year’s theme is:
"From Paper to Screen: Putting Maps on the Web" and we have three days of interesting and useful talks and demonstrations, visits, and other cartographical delights planned for you.
Further details of the event can be found on the Go-Geo! Conference/Events Section here:
http://www.gogeo.ac.uk/cg[...]
Or by downloading the pdf flyer from the link below.
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Journal of Maps special issue: Geomorphological Mapping for a Sustainable Development
The Journal of Maps is pleased to announce the publication of a special issue titled "Geomorphological Mapping for a Sustainable Development". The selected contributions are gathered from work presented at the International Meeting on "Environmental Analysis and Geomorphological Mapping for a Sustainable Development", held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on February 26th, 2008 with sponsorship by the IAG (International Association of Geomorphologists) and the AIGEO (Italian Association of Physical Geography and Geomorphology)
The table of contents is copied below and is available at:
http://www.journalofmaps.[...]
Table of Contents
Dramis, F. (2009) Editorial: Geomorphological Mapping for a Sustainable Development. pp53-55.
Coltorti M., Pieruccini, P., Berakhi, O., Dramis, F. and Asrat, A. (2009) The Geomorphological Map of Mt. Amba Aradam Southern Slope (Tigray, Ethiopia). pp56-65.
DeOliveira, F. A. and Vieira, C. V. (2009) Semi-detailed Geomorphological Map of Northeastern Santa Catarina State, Brazil - the Garuva Sheet. pp66-74.
Sandric, I. and Chitu, Z. (2009) Landslide inventory for the administrative area of Breaza, Curvature Subcarpathians, Romania. pp 75-86.
Leoni, G., Barchiesi, F., Catallo, F., Dramis, F., Fubelli, G., Lucifora, S., Mattei, M., Pezzo, G. and Puglisi, C. (2009) GIS Methodology to Assess Landslide Susceptibility: Application to a River Catchment of Central Italy. pp87-93.
Robustelli, G., Luca, F., Corbi, F., Fubelli, G., Scarciglia, F. and Dramis, F. (2009) Geomorphological Map of the Ionian Area between the Trionto and Colognati River Catchments (Calabria, Italy). pp94-102.
Latocha, A. (2009) The Geomorphological Map as a Tool for Assessing Human Impact on Landforms. pp103-107.
Grecu, F. (2009) Geomorphologic Map of the Prahova Subcarpathians (Romania). pp108-116.
Frattaruolo, F., Pennetta, L. and Piccarreta, M. (2009) Desertification Vulnerability Map of Tavoliere, Apulia (Southern Italy). pp117-125.
Dr Mike J Smith
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Maps (www.journalofmaps.com)
School of Geography, Geology and the Environment
Centre for Earth and Environmental Science Research
Lecturer in Geographic Information Science - UCL
The UCL Department of Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering is
making a number of strategic academic appointments in September 2009.
As part of this initiative we are seeking a creative, dynamic and inspiring
Lecturer who can contribute to our research and teaching in geographic
information science.
The successful appointee will have a strong research interest in areas
such as fundamental data structures and representations in GIS,
multi-dimensional and dynamic GIS, or spatial temporal analysis and be
able to demonstrate a focus on application areas that fit well to the
department’s research in areas such as remote sensing, navigation,
transport, disaster management and environmental engineering.
More details can be found at
http://www.cege.ucl.ac.uk[...]
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GISRUK conference in 2010- call for papers.
The Programme Committee for the GIS Research UK (GISRUK) conference in 2010 are pleased to open the call for papers.
This year the conference is being hosted at University College London (UCL), from Wednesday 14 to Friday 16 April 2010. We look forward to welcoming you to London for what we expect to be a very stimulating conference, covering areas of core geographic information science research as well as applications domains such as crime and health and technological developments in LBS and the geoweb.
UCL’s research mission as a global university is based around a series of Grand Challenges that affect us all, and these will be accommodated in GISRUK 2010. We are also, of course, a university based in London and so want to represent the challenges of a global city and the diversity of GI research problems the city poses.
Our overarching theme this year will therefore be “Global Challenges”. As is usual with GISRUK we welcome papers across the range of contemporary GIS research but we will particularly welcome papers in the following themes:
- Crime and Place
- Environmental Change
- Migration and Identity
- Intelligent Transport
- Public Health and Epidemiology
- Simulation and Modelling
- London as a global city
- The geoweb and neo-geography
- Open GIS and Volunteered Geographic Information
More details of the call for papers, abstract format, and the submission URL can all be found on the conference website:
http://gisruk2010.spatial[...]
The closing date for abstracts is Friday 27th November 2009. (Permalink) | Bookmark
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gvSIG Conference - Valencia 2-4th Dec 2009
The 5th Edition of the gvSIG Conference [1], organized by the Regional Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport (CIT), will be held from December 2nd until December 4th at the Feria Valencia Convention and Exhibition Center, and will once again host the eclipseDay.
In these difficult times when collaboration is most important, we cope with the adversities together with the aim of coming out strengthened by them. We continue moving ahead together. This is part of the gvSIG project and through this approach we keep on growing. This is our slogan for the fifth edition of the gvSIG Conference: We keep growing.
The call for papers for the Fifth Edition of the gvSIG conference is now open. As of today communication proposals can be sent to the email address: contacto-jornadas-gvsig@gva.es; they will be evaluated by the scientific committee as to their inclusion in the conference program. There are two types of communication: paper or poster. Information regarding to regulations on communication presentations can be found in the report?s section [2]. Abstracts will be accepted until September 21st .
Organizations interested in collaborating in the event can find information in the section: How to collaborate? [3]
[1] http://jornadas.gvsig.org[...]
[2] http://jornadas.gvsig.org[...]
[3] http://jornadas.gvsig.org[...]
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Most complete topographic map of Earth released
On 29 June 2009, NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and industry (METI) released the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) to the worldwide public. The GDEM was created by processing and stereo-correlating the 1.3 million-scene ASTER archive of optical images, covering Earth's land surface between 83 degrees North and 83 degrees South latitudes. The GDEM is produced with 30-metre postings, and is formatted as 23,000 one-by-one- degree tiles. In this colourised version, low elevations are purple, medium elevations are greens and yellows, and high elevations are orange, red and white.
The GDEM is available for download from NASA's EOS data archive at
https://wist.echo.nasa.go[...]
More information about ASTER data is available on the NASA website at
http://www.nasa.gov/topic[...]
UK-Ireland OGC Forum Meeting
OGC’s President and CEO, Mark Reichardt, will be in the UK on 17 July 2009 at University College London (Gower St) for an OGC Board Meeting and has requested a meeting with UK-Ireland OGC members and others interested in the OGC activities. This is also seen as a good opportunity to get an up-date on OGC activities, its globalisation plans and the workings of the new OGC Spatial Law and Policy Committee. New officers will also be appointed at the meeting.
Those wishing to attend please register on this page.
http://portal.opengeospat[...]
This event is free and lunch will be provided. Attendance will be
limited due to room size and so registrations will be taken on a first
come basis.
MEETING AGENDA
10:30 – 11:00 Coffee
11:00 – 11:10
Introduction and background to the meeting (Mike Jackson)
11:10 – 11:30
Current status and activities of OGC (Mark Reichardt)
11:30 – 11:50
OGCs Spatial Law & Policy Council (Kevin Promfret)
11:50 – 12:10
OGC globalisation plans and national Fora (David Schell)
12:10 – 13:10
Meet the OGC Executive & Tabled discussion (10 minutes to present, 10 discussion)
(i) AGILE-EuroSDR-OGC PTB IE
(European Persistent Geospatial Test-Bed for Research and Teching Interoperability Experiment)
(Chris Higgins and Mike Jackson)
(ii) Operation of the IP-Pool – how to engage a wider range of participants
(Mark Reichardt)
(iii) Any other topic requested
13:10 – 14:00 Lunch and informal discussion
14:00 – 15:00
The way forward for the UK&Ireland Forum
Structures, roles, activities (Mike Jackson and Athina Trakas)
15:00 – 15:30
Election of new officials & remarks
15:30 – 16:00
Coffee and informal discussions
Go to website
Cartographica (Volume 44) just released
Volume 44, Number 2 /2009 of Cartographica, The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization (University of Toronto Press), is now available at http://utpjournals.metapr[...]
This issue contains:
Playing the Feminine Card: Women of the Early Modern Map Trade. Christine M. Petto.
A “Living” Atlas for Geospatial Storytelling: The Cybercartographic Atlas of Indigenous Perspectives and Knowledge of the Great Lakes Region. Sébastien Caquard, Stephanie Pyne, Heather Igloliorte, et al.
Palimpsest. Gunnar Olsson.
A Cartometric Analysis of the Terrain Models of Joachim Eugen Müller (1752–1833) Using Non-contact 3D Digitizing and Visualization Techniques. Alastair William Pearson, Martin Schaefer and Bernhard Jenny.
Technical Notes and Ephemera. Roger Wheate.
2008 RGS/IBG Annual International Conference. Chris Perkins and Martin Dodge
UK Society of Cartographers’ Forty-Fourth Annual Summer School 2008. Roger Wheate.
Reviews of Books and Atlases.
Go to website
OS receives a visit from Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England
Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, visited Ordnance Survey’s head office in Southampton on Thursday 18 June to find out about the new OS business strategy and the vital role geographic information plays in Great Britain and the world today.
Mr King was particularly impressed with the innovative work taking place with regards to digital mapping and the contribution this could make to the mapping of regional economies.
More information about his visit can be found on the OS website via link below.
Go to website
June edition of IJHG available online
The following articles are now available on the International Journal of Health Geographics’ website. These can be accessed for free and include articles submitted to the Journal from 25 May to 24 June 2009.
Methodology
A spatial evaluation of socio demographics surrounding National Priorities List sites in Florida using a distance-based approach. Greg Kearney and Gebre-Egziabher Kiros.
Risk of cancer in the vicinity of municipal solid waste incinerators: importance of using a flexible modelling strategy. Sarah Goria, Côme Daniau, Perrine de Crouy-Chanel, Pascal Empereur-Bissonnet, Pascal Fabre, Marc Colonna, Cedric Duboudin, Jean-François Viel and Sylvia Richardson.
Research
Exploring spatial patterns and hotspots of diarrhea in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Nakarin Chaikaew, Nitin K. Tripathi and Marc Souris.
Geostatistical evaluation of integrated marsh management impact on mosquito vectors using before-after-control-impact (BACI) design. Ilia Rochlin, Tom Iwanejko, Mary E. Dempsey and Dominick V. Ninivaggi.
Identification of malaria hot spots for focused intervention in tribal state of India: a GIS based approach. Aruna Srivastava, BN Nagpal, PL Joshi, JC Paliwal and A.P. Dash.
The complexities of measuring access to parks and physical activity sites in New York City: a quantitative and qualitative approach. Andrew R Maroko, Juliana A Maantay, Nancy L Sohler, Kristen L Grady and Peter S. Arno.
The 2005 census and mapping of slums in Bangladesh: design, select results and application. Gustavo Angeles, Peter Lance, Janine Barden-O'Fallon, Nazrul Islam, Aqm Mahbub and Nurul Islam Nazem.
http://www.ij-healthgeogr[...]
6th International Symposium on LBS & TeleCartography _registration now open
Registration for the 6th International Symposium on LBS & TeleCartography (2nd-4th Sep 2009) at Centre for Geospatial Science, University of Nottingham is now open.
Registration details at http://www.lbs2009.org/
The next LBS conference is planned to be held in China and then in USA. This is the first time the conference is being held in UK and all UK universities, industry and government organisations are welcome to actively participate in LBS 2009.
The Early Bird registration for LBS 2009 ends 30th July 2009.
Please note that the deadline for abstract submission for 6th International Symposium on LBS & TeleCartography is 30 June 2009.
There are 20 student bursaries (each worth £ 120) for high quality MSc/PhD students submitting papers to LBS 2009 to help cover their registration fees for LBS 2009 conference.
These bursaries are sponsored by University of Nottingham Horizon Digital Economy Research Hub and Horizon Doctoral Training Centre.
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Open Layers 2.8 released
Spotted on the James Fee blog (http://www.spatiallyadjus[...]) The release of Open Layers 2.8 adds a number of important features. Some of the
highlights include:
* Support for multi-layer vector feature selection
* Support for drawing text on vector layers
* Several new controls
* 5 new layer types, including OSM, ArcXML, and more.
* The long-awaited WFS protocol support, and related improvements
For information on possible changes that will need to be made between
this version of OpenLayers and previous versions, please look at the
release notes.
Go to website
Open Source GIS UK conference - Report
Well, yesterday was the first Open Source GIS UK conference. Hosted by the Centre for Geospatial Science at the University of Nottingham, the conference seemed to be a success. The conference started with a talk from Tyler Mitchell, executive Director of OSGeo, who reinforced the value of open source software. Stressing that the use of open source software required users and companies to invest and commit to using open source. The investment may not be in the form of a license fee, rather the time and cost of training users to use the software. Open source software is well supported and has a community spirit that allows users to ask for and receive help, getting responses faster than many proprietary software packages help desks. He talked about the incubation period that software must pass through before being recognised as an OSGeo accredited package. This incubation should give users that reassurance that the software they choose to use will be reliable, supported and will continue to develop in the future.
Other speakers included Prof. William Cartwright, President of the International Cartographic Association and Prof. Georg Gartner of The University of Technology, Vienna. There was certainly an international feel to this UK event and the quality of the presentations was high, with interesting tools and research being presented.
The afternoon sessions were split between presentations and workshops on topics such as MapWindow, gvSIG, perl and data management tools. The event ended with the AGM of OSGeo UK.
So, overall it was a great event. The organisation team at Nottingham, led by Suchith Anand did a great job and their efforts were appreciated by all. We look forward to attending the next Open Source GIS UK event, wherever that might be. We will keep you posted.
Picture courtesy of Mateusz Loskot.
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Extended abstract deadline LBS & Telecart 30th June
Please note that the deadline for extended abstract submission for 6th International Symposium on LBS & TeleCartography is 30 June 2009.
The University of Nottingham is hosting the 6th International Symposium on LBS & TeleCartography in cooperation with the ICA Commissions on Maps and the Internet & Ubiquitous Mapping, the IAG WG 4.1.2 on Indoor Navigation Systems, the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing WG II/5 on Communication and Visualization of Spatial Data and the ICA Working Group on Open Source Geospatial Technologies.
Contributions from the fields of Cartography, Geoinformation, Computer Science, Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing, Telecommunication, Geodesy, Geomedia Techniques, etc. should address, but are not limited to current topics of:
- Location Based Services
- Wayfinding and Navigation
- Smart Environments and Active Landmarks
- Pervasive Technologies for LBS
- Cartographic Theories and Techniques
- TeleCartography (Map based LBS)
- Mobile and Ubiquitous Mapping
- 3D-Mapping, Virtual and Augmented Reality
- Location Based Media Technologies
- Personalization & Adaptive Methods
- Positioning Methods
- Modelling of Spatial Environments for LBS
- Location Based Sensor Networks
- Location Based Collaboration
Extended Abstracts (max 1500 words) can be submitted to present visionary ideas, work in progress and preliminary research results. Please submit extended abstracts to Suchith.Anand@nottingham.ac.uk with subject title LBS 2009 before 30 June 2009. (Permalink) | Bookmark
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SRTM data added to ShareGeo
Digital Elevation models and other interesting datasets derived from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission project (SRTM) have just been uploaded to the Data repository ShareGeo. A number of datasets have been uploaded including:
- 90m posting DEM
- Slope map
- Relief Shaded DEM
- 50m contour map
The data has been mosaiced together, cleaned and all null data holes have been patched. The data can therefore be considered to be a value added product and many organisations offer such products at a small cost. This data is available free of charge. All you need to do to download it, is to log into DigiMap http://edina.ac.uk/digimap/
What is ShareGeo?
ShareGeo is a JISC funded project that aims to encourage UK academics to share geographic data. You can upload the data to the service and then other users can discover it, download it and use it for their own research. It is a simple concept and seems to be working. To find out more about ShareGeo or for a complete list of the data available in ShareGeo follow the link to the website. (Permalink) | Bookmark
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New version of GeoKettle released
The latest version of GeoKettle has been released. GeoKettle is a "spatially-enabled" version of Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle). Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle) is a powerful, metadata-driven ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) tool dedicated to the integration of different data sources for building data warehouses. It is part of the open source BI (Business Intelligence) software suite designed by Pentaho.
This special distribution of Kettle includes extensions which enable the use of geospatial (GIS) data. Like Kettle, GeoKettle is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) license.
GeoKettle is a realization of the GeoSOA research group (headed by Prof. Thierry Badard, http://geosoa.scg.ulaval.ca) of the Department of geomatics sciences at Laval University, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.
For more information on GeoKettle and what it might be used for, please visit the website where you will find a short demonstration video.
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FOSS4G Registration and Abstract Voting Now Open
Registration is now open for FOSS4G. You are also invited to vote for abstracts that you would like to hear presented at the conference. I think there are about 170 submitted abstracts and only 94 presentation slots. To register or to vote for an abstract look at the following page:
http://2009.foss4g.org/pr[...]
So far the confirmed keynote speakers include:
- Warwick Watkins
- Raj Singh (OGC)
- Paul Ramsey
- Raul Vera (Google)
Other important dates for your diaries include:
- Academic track and presentation abstract due - Monday 08 June 2009
- Academic track full paper due - Monday 29 June 2009
- Notification of paper acceptance - Monday 20 July 2009
- Final academic track paper due - Friday 31 July 2009
- FOSS4G 2009 Conference - Tuesday 20 October 2009
More information on the confirmed presenters and tutorials that will be on offer at the event can be found by following the link at the bottom of this item. (Permalink) | Bookmark
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Research Assistant in Geospatial Semantics - Centre for Geospatial Science, University of Nottingham
The Centre for Geospatial Science at The University of Nottingham are seeking are seeking a Research Assistant to work on the EuroGEOSS project. This EU FP7 funded project will develop methods for making existing earth observation systems interoperable, focussing on the three strategic areas of drought, forestry and biodiversity. The project will particularly focus on interoperability among advanced scientific models that use multi-scale resources, expressing scientific models as workflows and using natural language to interface with models. More information is available at http://www.eurogeoss.eu/ and http://www.nottingham.ac.[...]
The Research Assistant will be undertaking research in the area of natural language discovery. The goal of this work is to investigate methods to express geographic objectives or questions in natural language and from these expressions to discover and execute relevant resources (in the form of web services), thus removing from users the burden of understanding the meaning and structure of underlying resources. The work will build on previous research in the Centre for Geospatial Science into the use of Natural Semantic Metalanguage for the expression of geographic semantics. The work will involve research that may contribute to a PhD, and the applicant may choose to work towards a PhD concurrently (provided they meet the requirements).
Applicants should be enthusiastic, motivated, able to solve problems and take their own initiative. The research requires a background in the geographical or spatial sciences, but also an understanding of computer science. Computer programming experience is desirable. Knowledge of geospatial semantics and or linguistics would be an advantage. A good undergraduate degree in geography, geographic information science or an associated field is essential, and additional qualifications would be an advantage.
This post is full-time, fixed term until 31 April 2012. Starting salary £24,152. Interested applicants should email a comprehensive CV and cover letter to Kristin.stock@nottingham.ac.uk by 24 July 2009.
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Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Human displacement
SlashGeo featured a report on the Effects of Climate Change on Human Displacement and Migration. This article is hosted on the Spatial Sustain website and was produced by CARE, CIESIN, UNHCR, United Nations University and the World Bank. The report focuses on a number of regions around the world where climate change is expected to, or already has, effected how people live. In some cases communities have been forced to migrate to better land that can sustain them.
There are some good maps that use a variety of data sources to help readers visualise the scale of the problem communities are likely to face. You can download a copy of the report from the Spatial Sustain website http://vector1media.com/s[...]
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COMPASS 09 Dublin 25th June
The Conference consists of an applications strand covering information sharing and reporting, aldn and asset management, data analysis and modelling in planning and in environment management. This is also a technology strand, exhibits with the Ordnance Survey and selected vendors - each providing clinics and advice. Details of the day are summarised below. More information can be found on the Compass 09 web page
APPLICATIONS STRAND
Information sharing and reporting solutions in Planning
Watermaps – the River Basin Management Plans mapping system - Tony McNally, NS2 Project.
The Local Authority Self Service Pre-Planning System and associated planning management tools - Rick Love, Mayo County Council.
BiodiversityIreland species mapping systems & its uses in planning - Liam Lysaght – National Biodiversity Data Centre.
PRISM.ie marine forecasting system – integrated modelling & Web mapping – Brendan Dollard. Enterprise Ireland. Brendan will also talk about support from EI for the development of new products or services.
Land Asset Survey & Information Systems
Land & Asset Survey Solutions – Case studies from transport, planning, industry & ecology. Gearóid Ó Riain, Compass Informatics.
The Green Belt Forestry Survey & Mapping System - Real return on investment – John O’Reilly, Green Belt Limited.
Advances in asset inventory – integrating spatial video and LIDAR. Compass Informatics.
Data analysis and modelling in Neighbourhood & Regional Planning
Local services accessibility modelling for better local planning – Ciarán Staunton, Claire McIntyre, Fingal County Council.
Journey time modelling for the Dublin area – Peter Cranny, Dublin Transportation Office.
Data analysis and modelling in Environmental Regulation & Management
The Compass hydrology GIS toolkit & its applications in fisheries, water quality, and hydrometrics. Seth Girvin, Compass Informatics.
Assimilative Capacity Modelling for Wastewater Discharge Licensing – the EPA Web-ACM System – Gavin Smith, EPA.
Spatial Data Analysis for National Flood Estimation & Preliminary Flood Risk Assessment – John Martin, Office of Public Works.
Unregulated Landfill & Extractive Facilities Risk Assessment – the EPA Landfill WebGIS – Fiona O’Rourke, EPA.
TECHNOLOGY STRAND
Cadcorp – Integrated Desktop & Web GIS
ERDAS Imagery & Data Delivery Solutions
Behind the scenes of ESRI ArcGIS Server
Open Source Software Options for INSPIRE
GPS Solutions for Mobile GIS
http://www.compass.ie/com[...]
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Free Landmap Heights and Flights 2 Workshop
This July, the Landmap Service http://landmap.mimas.ac.uk will be running a free 1-day workshop called 'Heights and Flights 2' http://landmap.mimas.ac.u[...] focusing on using LiDAR, Building Heights, Colour Infrared and Aerial Photography data (all freely available via the Service).
The Landmap Team will provide information on how authorised users can access the data archive and learning materials. They will also preview the new data download interface which will involve an interactive practical session.
Speakers from Bluesky http://www.bluesky-world.com/ and the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) UCL will also be available on the day and will be providing presentations on Colour Infrared data, the use of LiDAR after a flood event and the creation of 3D city models as part of the Virtual London Project.
Where, When and Who?
- Where is it taking place? Oxford University Computing Service, Isis Suite
- When is it? Wednesday, 8 July 2009 (10:00-16:30)
- Who is the course for? UK research community
- Who is running the course? Landmap Team, Mimas
Programme of Events
http://landmap.mimas.ac.u[...]
How to Book
Booking is required for this FREE course. If you'd like to attend, please see http://landmap.mimas.ac.u[...] .
Further Information
The Landmap Service is JISC funded and provides UK academic institutions with a high-quality spatial data download service, enhanced and supported by a range of learning materials.
Please contact "mailto:spatial@mimas.ac.uk" spatial@mimas.ac.uk with any questions or comments about the Heights and Flights workshop. (Permalink) | Bookmark
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Defra UK Location Project launched
The UK Location Programme, led by Defra, has been established to implement both the UK Government's Location Strategy, and the EU INSPIRE Directive. The Programme’s objective is to deliver a significant change in the management of geographic or spatial data. to introduce new, innovative, and joined up service for government, business and citizens that are compatible with other countries across the European Union.
At present, the project is in its conceptual design phase which has three major components:
- Blueprint – defines the conceptual design of the UK Location Information Infrastructure in terms of the business and business operating model – how it will create and deliver value, or the ‘what’
- Roadmap – defines how the UK Location Information Infrastructure will be delivered – the ‘how, when, where and by whom’
- Benefits Model – provides a model for linking the delivery of the physical infrastructure to derived benefits and outcomes – improved service delivery, doing more with less and the creating new, innovative services.
Updates on the progress of the UK Location Project will be posted on Go-Geo! and further information about the project can be found on the DEFRA website.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/l[...] (Permalink) | Bookmark
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Data Visulisation day at City Uni London
City University, London are running a data visulisation day on the 7th July 2009. This one day masterclass in data visualization draws attention to developing techniques and best practice and helps you produce, interpret and use graphics more effectively.
The day will consist of three sections :
- Context - established best practice for designing effective graphics
- Examples - effective visualization solutions and how to produce them
- Application - visualization in action / workshop / discussion
Each of the short example presentations will draw upon the guidance provided during the Context section and show how this can be applied through a common problem oriented and solution focused structure involving :
- Problem Statement and Data Description
- Presentation of Solution
- Evaluation of Solution
- Description of "How can I do it?"
It will be beneficial to those who are analysing and presenting data in a range of public and private sector organizations by providing access to cutting edge visualization methods and examples of current best practice in a range of application areas.
Cost £175 (Permalink) | Bookmark
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GISCIENCE CONFERENCE BACK IN EUROPE!
14 September 2010 - 17 September 2010: Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland will be the host city of the sixth GIScience,
continuing a highly successful series of conferences that commenced in 2000, and which regularly attracts over 200 international researchers.
More details here:
http://www.gogeo.ac.uk/cg[...]
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Research Vacancies now available at CASA - UCL
A number of vacancies at UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) have just been advertised. These include research associates and funded PhD positions. Brief descriptions for each position are listed below. Further information on each of the posts, including full job description and person specification, is available in PDF format and can be found on the CAS website. The deadline for all positions is Tuesday 7th July 2009.
Ref CASA/09/06/SCALE1
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE: SCALE PROJECT
This post is based in CASA and focuses on land use transportation models. Programming expertise is required.
Ref CASA/09/06/SCALE2
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE: SCALE PROJECT
This post is based in UCL Centre for Transport Studies and focuses on dynamic spatial interaction and transport flow models. Programming expertise is required.
Ref CASA/09/06/SCALE3
PhD STUDENTSHIP: SCALE PROJECT
A 3-year fully funded EPSRC PhD studentship on network science in transport is available commencing 1st September 2009.
Ref CASA/09/06/TOTEM1
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE: TOTeM Project
Candidates should have a background in computer science, human-computer interaction, interaction design or similar disciplines. Experience in RFID technologies, social computing, user experience, and knowledge of serverside and clientside programming is advantageous.
Ref CASA/09/06/TOTEM2
RESEARCH TECHNICIAN: TOTeM Project
Candidates should have a background in computer science, human-computer interaction, interaction design or similar disciplines. Experience in RFID technologies, social computing, user experience, and knowledge of serverside and clientside programming is advantageous.
Ref CASA/09/06/JISC
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE: National e-Infrastructure for Social Simulation Project
The successful candidate will primarily be involved with programming the various technologies to achieve the aims of the project and therefore substantial knowledge and programming experience is required.
Ref CASA/09/06/GLA
GLA ECONOMICS RESEARCH FELLOW IN URBAN SYSTEMS
We are seeking a person to further develop our work in GIS and databases for land use-transport modelling which currently is focussed on an integrated assessment of climate change for Greater London and the Thames Gateway as part of the Tyndall Centre’s Cities Theme.
How to Apply
To be considered for these positions, please submit the following documents by the closing date which is Tuesday 7th July 2009 for all positions:
* a letter of application outlining your suitability to this post and your reasons for applying.
* a CV listing education history (institution name, start and end dates of courses, qualification gained), details of membership of any professional organisations, details of current or most recent employer (name and address of current organisation, job title, salary and duties), details of previous employment and how your knowledge, skills, and abilities meet the job requirements, plus the names and addresses of two referees one of whom should be your most recent employer.
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UK ESNC Competition Ideas Workshop
01 July 2009 - 01 July 2009: Nottinghan
GRACE (GNSS Research and Applications Centre of Excellence) http://www.grace.ac.uk of University of Nottingham is holding a workshop for organisations and individuals planning to submit an entry into the 2009 European Satellite Navigation Competition.
Details below:
ESNC (European Satellite Navigation Competition) Ideas Workshop - University of Nottingham 1st July 2009
Location: Exchange Building, Jubilee Campus, University of Nottingham
Entry into the competition closes on the 31st of July.
More info here:
http://www.gogeo.ac.uk/cg[...]
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Mapping hidden Antarctic Mountains
A multi-national research programme has revealed the topographic landforms that lie beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The research involves both the British Antarctic Survey and The University of Edinburgh. The area surveyed is the Gamburtsev Range, named after the Russian seismologist that first discovered the covered mountains in 1957-58. However, this early study did not reveal the true size and extent of the buried mountains.
Using a variety of geophysical techniques including Ground penetrating radar and Seismic, the teams have generated the most detailed representation of the mountains to date. This shows that they are characterised by valleys around 700m deep and in places the mountain tops lie just 500m beneath the modern day ice surface.
More information can be found on this study can be found here:
http://www.nature.com/new[...]
Imagine if they were able to put together a nice looking topographic map to represent sections of the mountains. You could start planning walks in a terrain no one has ever seen!
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Free Webinar - Getting Started with ArcGIS 9.3
Following the recent launch of ArcGIS 9.3.1, ESRI (UK) are running a free webinar. This is scheduled to take place online at 10am on June 11th when Charles Kennelly, Chief Technology Officer at ESRI (UK) will discuss the new capabilities, performance improvements and enhancements in the latest release of ArcGIS.
Featuring a live demo of ArcGIS 9.3.1, you will get a preview of the new tools and resources available with the latest release of ArcGIS. We will show you how 9.3.1 improves the performance of dynamic map publishing and increases the sharing of geographic information throughout your organisation.
This webinar will highlight the faster dynamic map services, new tools to author and publish optimised map services, and a new developer API - the ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight.
Not sure how relevant the presentation will be for experienced ArcGIS users but it is free and could be a useful intro to the new function in ArcGIS 9.3.1
To register go to the following site
http://www.esriuk.com/arc[...]
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NextMap Britain 2 released by Inermap Technologies
Many organisations throughout Great Britain have used Intermap’s original NEXTMap Britain dataset with great success: the program has enabled a number of projects requiring accurate yet cost-effective data that provides wide-area coverage.
NEXTMap Britain was developed with data acquired with Intermap’s proprietary interferometric synthetic aperture radar (IFSAR) technology. The dataset’s digital elevation models have a vertical accuracy of 1.0m RMSE, except in southeast England where it is 0.7m RMSE.
However, Intermap recognises that some applications, such as those in urban or flood-prone areas, require datasets with even higher degrees of precision, while continuing to need coverage on a regional or national scale.
To meet that need, Intermap has developed NEXTMap Britain 2, an enhancement to the original dataset that fuses the IFSAR-acquired data with other high-resolution elevation data to increase the accuracy of NEXTMap Britain. The updated data covers about 60,000 square kilometres, primarily in England and Wales. The nominal vertical accuracy of the NEXTMap Britain 2 dataset, in areas of new coverage, is estimated to be between 25 and 40cm RMSE.
More information on cost and licenses is available from the Intermap website
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UKMap released by GeoInformation Group
The GeoInformation® Group today announces a ground breaking and innovative new mapping programme. UKMap® is the UK™s first commercially funded, large-scale topographic mapping and address database created completely independently of the Ordnance Survey.
UKMap is made up of the Topo product suite, comprising of 8 map layers, and the Thematic product suite, a 1:5,000 scale map layer with annotations for use on the web. The 8 topo layers are:
* Base
* Overlay
* Points
* Addresses
* Height
* Points of interest
* Ortho
* Terrain
The UKMap will be available to download through the web in September and license agreements are said to be flexible. Enquires should be made to the GeoInformation group. The first release will cover London but there are plans to produce similar datasets for other major population centres in the UK including the West Midlands and Manchester-Liverpool conurbations.
So, UKMap looks to be a great product that is similar but different to OS Mastermap. Trial datasets are available at the moment on the GeoInformation Group website.
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OS Open Spaces developer evening – 11th June
Ordnance Survey has recently released a new and enhanced version of OS OpenSpace; their API that gives you access to their best mapping world - for free. This year sees the addition of postcode look-ups and boundary data and the removal of many of the restrictions that put some users off creating an Ordnance Survey map mash up.
The Developer Evening will be on 11 June at the Rejuvenation Centre, London, from 5pm. There will be lots of discussion with other developers, the chance to get hands on and opportunities to find out more over a drink or two. The event is completely free and some food will be provided.
Bring your projects, work and ideas. Get feedback from the OS OpenSpace developers and engage with them on anything mash up related. Topics that will be covered are the OS OpenSpace Foundation, Thematic mapping and adding content to your OS OpenSpace mash up. There will also be the opportunity to discuss topics of your choice and find out what the removal of restrictions means to you as a developer.
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GIS and Remote Sensing Catalogue 2009-06-01
Wiley have just released their latest catalogue of GIS and Remote Sensing publications. This comprehensive list provides short summaries of each title that Wiley publish and is a useful resource in its own right.
Wiley have also put together a short taster of the book which can be found here, this requires flash:
http://eu.wiley.com/Wiley[...]
Print copies of the catalogue can be requested by emailing Wiley ls@wiley.com.
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OS not being privatised?
Found on the Ed Parsons blog (http://www.edparsons.com/)
The OS held a big business strategy launch event yesterday. This event outlined the OS objectives for this year, the direction they were pushing the business in and offered a questions and answers session.
On hand to answer the questions were Ordnance Survey's Non-Executive Chairman, Sir Rob Margetts CBE, Director General and Chief Executive, Vanessa Lawrence CB, and Ordnance Survey Minister, Iain Wright.
A short film has been posted on the OS website which summarises the event. While this is mainly a promotional thing for the OS, it did cover one interesting question from the floor:
"What intentions are there to privatise the OS?"
Iain Wright MP answered this stressing "it was in nobody’s interest to privatise the OS" adding later that he had "no plans to [privitise] do so"
So, that seems fairly plain language.
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OGRS2009 Registration now open
Registration for the First international Open source Geospatial Research Symposium (OGRS2009) is now open. The pre-program is also now available on the OGRS2009 website.
(OGRS2009) will be in Nantes, France 8-10 July, 2009 and fees are expected to be around 50€, a unique price for one, two or three days. This includes an access badge to attend all presentations including labs, a conference bag, proceedings, coffee breaks and lunch for each day.
For the social event, on Thursday, 9th, at 6 pm, a visit to “Machines de l’Ile de Nantes” and a gala dinner have been proposed. Each attendee is invited to participate in this social event, but priority will be given, on a first come first served basis, to those attending for all 3 days.
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LizardTech Releases Free GeoViewer 3.0
GeoViewer is LizardTech's free, standalone application for viewing geospatial imagery and vector overlays. GeoViewer enables you to combine, view and export visual layers from varied sources, such as local repositories, Express Server catalogs, and WMS and JPIP servers.
GeoViewer supports a wide range of input formats and exports to GeoTIFF, PNG and JPEG. It's the most efficient means of viewing MrSID and JPEG 2000 images.
GeoViewer replaces GeoExpress which was not free. LizardTech seems to have responded to calls from the user community for a free standalone viewer for MrSID and JPEG 2000 imagery.
More information and the download for the software can be found on the LizardTech website
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May Edition of IJHG available online
The following articles are now available on the International Journal of Health Geographics’ website. These can be accessed for free and include articles submitted to the Journal between 25 April 2009 and 24 May 2009.
Research
Identification of malaria hot spots for focused intervention in tribal state of India: a GIS-based approach. Aruna Srivastava, B. N. Nagpal, P. L. Joshi, J. C. Paliwal and A. P. Dash.
Identifying candidate sites for crop biofortification in Latin America: case studies in Colombia, Nicaragua and Bolivia. Emmanuel Zapata-Caldas, Glenn Hyman, Helena Pachon, Fredy ALEXANDER Monserrate and Liliana VESGA Varela.
Spatial analysis of MODIS aerosol optical depth, PM2.5, and chronic coronary heart disease. Zhiyong Hu.
Spatiotemporal analysis of air pollution and asthma patient visits in Taipei, Taiwan. Ta-Chien Chan, Mei-Lien Chen, I-Feng Lin, Cheng-Hua Lee, Po-Huang Chiang, Da-Wei Wang and Jen-Hsiang Chuang.
Traffic exposure associated with allergic asthma and allergic rhinitis in adults: a cross-sectional study in southern Sweden. Anna Lindgren, Emilie Stroh, Ulf Nihlen, Peter Montnemery, Anna Axmon and Kristina Jakobsson.
Methodology
The importance of accurate road data for spatial applications in public health: customizing a road network. Brian G Frizzelle, Kelly R. Evenson, Daniel A. Rodriguez and Barbara A. Laraia
A graph-theory method for pattern identification in geographical epidemiology - a preliminary application to deprivation and mortality. Ravi Maheswaran, Cheryl Craigs, Simon Read, Peter A. Bath and Peter Willett.
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Flickr release shapefiles of geo-tagged photos
Flickr have almost 90 million geotagged photos. For every geotagged photo, flickr store up to six “Where on Earth (WOE) IDs. These are unique numeric IDs that relate to where the photo was taken. The WOE’s are arranged in a hierarchy from neighbourhood up to continent.
Today Flickr released some 150,000 WOE IDs with shape data via the Flickr API. There really is way to much information to go into here and it is better to read the release on the flickr pages.
What you will get a shape that represent where photos where taken that were assigned a particular WOE. So, say you choose a WOE of "London", the shapefile will represent the geographical spread of photos that are assigned to the WOE for London, presumabley defined partially from the tags and x-referrecnded with the geotag.
Perhaps the really interesting data that is not included is the actual geopositions of each photo. The density of data collected by the flick community allows you to produce semi-inteligable maps. Some research has already taken place looking at the spatial distribution of geotagged images in flickr such as that of David J. Crandall http://www.cs.cornell.edu[...]
Flickr API
http://code.flickr.com/bl[...]
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New Google Maps Data API
Google has released its new Google Maps Data API which allows the user more flexability and options in the way that geodata is stored, accessed, indexed and rendered in Google Maps. This new API has been released to address the increasing demands on the google map service as users continue to develop new ways of representing their data in interactive forms.
Google provides the following description of the new API:
“The Google Maps Data API is built on the following principles:
• Storage should scale simply with usage. You shouldn't have to worry about maintaining a data store to build a cool Google Maps mashup. Focus on building the client, and we'll provide hosting and bandwidth for free.
• Geodata should be accessible across platforms and devices. With many client libraries and clients, accessing stored geodata should be possible from anywhere, whether it's on the web, a mobile phone, a 3D application, or even a command line.
• Realtime geodata requires realtime indexing. For a lot of geographic content, freshness is important. Geodata from the Google Maps Data API can be instantly indexed and made searchable in Google Maps.
• Rendering geodata is better and faster with the right tools. Through JavaScript, Flash, 3D, static images and more, we'll continue to provide better ways to render your content to meet platform and latency demands.
It looks like the use of the new API will be similar to the Google Maps API, free for personal and not-for-profit organisations, but they will charge for commercial organisations to use it.
Downsides? Well google will retain some rights over any data that they host. They can choose to use your data and would not need to inform you if they were to do so. If you are concerned about this then you could host the data on a third party service such as Amazon S3 but this would have some implications for the speed of data delivery
So, a green light for the academic sector and it looks like there will be a further raft of interesting Google Maps coming over the horizon as developers get to grips with the new API. We will try to point users to some good examples as and when they appear. If you come across any then send Go-Geo! a link and we will review it on the site. Send links to:http://www.gogeo.ac.uk/cg[...]
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Maps and Society Lectures 2009-10
Lectures in the history of cartography convened by Catherine Delano Smith (Institute of Historical Research), Tony Campbell (formerly Map Library, British Library), and Alessandro Scafi (Warburg Institute). Meetings are held on selected Thursdays at The Warburg Institute, University of London,Woburn Square, London WC1H OAB at 5.00 pm. Admission is free.
Meetings are followed by refreshments. All are most welcome. Enquiries: +44 (0) 20 8346 5112 (Dr Delano Smith) or
2009
November 5. Professor Richard Talbert (Department of Classics, University of North Carolina). 'The Artemidorus Papyrus and Its (ancient ?) map of ... where... ?'.
December 3. Dr Carla Lois (Universidad de Buenos Aires; Universidad de La Plata). 'Toponymic Landscapes: Ways of Seeing Patagonia in Early Argentinean Maps'.
2010
January 21. Alexander Johnson (Department of History, University of Exeter). 'Board of Trade and Its Cartographic Agenda in British North America, 1748-1782'.
MEETING SPONSORED BY THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY
February 25. Captain Michael Barritt, RN (Vice-President, Hakluyt Society). ‘"Practical Men of Science": Operational Surveys in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and the Emergence of RN Hydrographic Specialisation'.
March 18. Dr Alexander Kent (Department of Geography, University of Canterbury). 'Landscape or Blandscape? Exploring Cartographic Style in European Topographic Maps of the 20th Century'.
April 15. Dr Adam Mosley (Department of History and Classics, University of Swansea). 'Cosmography and Cartography: Their Relationship Revisited'.
April 29. Dr Chet Van Duzer (Independent Scholar). 'Settling Disputes through Cartography in Fourteenth-Century Palma de Mallorca: The Map of the Siquia Aqueduct'.
May 27. Dr Sandra Sáenz-López Perez (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Madrid). 'European Encounters with ‘the Other’ in Sixteenth-Century Cartography'.
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OSGeo AGM – 22nd June 2009
The OSGeo (UK) AGM will follow immediately after the First Open Source GIS UK Conference http://www.opensourcegis.[...]
Date: 22nd June 2009 (Monday)
Venue: A48, Sir Clive Granger Building, University of Nottingham
Time : 17:00-18:00
All are welcome. If you are attending please let me or Joanne Cook (
j.cook@oxfordarch.co.uk ) know.
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International Summer School in Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
The University of Malta in collaboration with University College London (UCL) is proud to announce this year’s International Summer School in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which will run on the last week of July.
The Summer School will provide participants with the opportunity to run a GIS project through the learning process of ‘building blocks’- from data collection and integration of base mapping to analysis and queries. Participants will learn the concepts of Geographic Information, Spatial Analysis and Map Visualisation. This makes the content appropriate for both novice and/or regular GIS users.
The Summer School will run for a period of 1 week in Malta, and will focus on application of GIS in transport planning and health planning, using low cost GIS package (Manifold GIS) and also open geodata (OpenStreetMap data) in addition to commercial and governmental data sources.
The participants will be engaged in lectures and practical sessions for 6 hours a day for 5 days at the main University Campus in Msida. By the end of the Summer School participants will be able to apply GIS in their field of expertise using the skills acquired during the projects.
For the course brochure and registration visit the website http://www.fis.com.mt/gis.
Registration deadline is the 10th June 2009.
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Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Geodesy/Navigation
The UCL Department of Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering is making a number of strategic academic appointments in September 2009. As part of this exciting development, we are investing in our highly successful Geodesy/Navigation team and are looking for a creative, dynamic and inspiring Lecturer/Senior Lecturer who can contribute to our driving force in this domain. The post holder will work alongside Professors Marek Ziebart and Paul Cross, joining an established and well funded research group. The group currently specialises in GPS/GNSS data modelling, as well as research into the science underpinning the development of such systems (orbital dynamics, clock behaviour, signal modelling, time and space reference frames). Models and datasets developed by the group are used as national and international standards. Routinely working with NASA, the European Space Agency, the Ordnance Survey and numerous academic and industrial partners we are pushing the frontiers of scientific, intellectual and practical knowledge in this rapidly developing field and we expect this appointment to help us push these boundaries even further This opportunity is the chance to develop a career in the area at one of the world’s best universities (UCL is currently ranked #7 in the world). Challenge us to invite you to have this opportunity!
Based on academic attainment the appointment will be in one of the following three bands: UCL Grade 7, £32,458 - £35,469 per annum (lecturer A); UCL Grade 8, £36,532 - £43,622 per annum (lecturer B); UCL Grade 9, £47,666 - £52,086 (senior lecturer) per annum. All salaries have additional London weighting of £2,781
Further details and how to apply can be found (www.cege.ucl.ac.uk/jobs )
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On yer Bike Google
Google streetview have coverage for 25 UK cities and towns, but the next stage of their UK image acquisition is slightly different. Instead of the google car there is a google bike, or rather tricycle.
The aim of this is to acquire images in places that are not accessible to a normal car such as tourist attractions and pedestrian areas (where cycling is allowed). So, this should increase the spatial coverage of the street view and provide some interesting resources for tourist attractions around the country.
The mapping is being caried out in association with Visit Britain.
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AGI Education Lecture - 21 May
Book now for the free evening AGI Education Lecture - 21 May
This year's free evening AGI Education Lecture is being hosted by CASA, UCL, London.
The lecture "Spatial Surveillence: We Know Where You (and things) Are" will be presented by Professor A Stewart Fotheringham, Director, National Centre for Geocomputation National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Programme
Registration 1800
Start 1830
Refreshments 1945
Address
Lecture Theatre 2
Cruciform Building
UCL
Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT
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Maps and Surveys 2009
SATURDAY 20 JUNE 2009
Following on the success of its Seminars in 2007 and 2008, the Defence Surveyors Association is arranging another, similar, seminar on historical military and hydrographic surveying, mapping and charting to be held at the Royal School of Military Survey, Hermitage, Newbury on Saturday the 20th June 2009. The seminar will run from 1025 to 1700hrs during which seven 35-minute presentations will be given. The cost of attendance is £15, to include tea and coffee breaks and a finger-buffet lunch.
More details and full list of speakers can be found on the DSA website.
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QGIS Release 1.0.2 (stable) and QGIS 1.1.0 'Pan' (unstable)
Quantum GIS has released two versions of QGIS, 1.0.2 (stable) and 1.1.0 (unstable). The simultaneous release of two versions aims to satisfy two users strands. Those that want a longterm stable GIS platform should use version 1.0.2. Each minor release in the stable series contains only bug fixes and no new features.
Users who are keen to try the latest functionality added to QGIS should use version 1.1.0. Code releases will reflect development of new tools. QGIS will not support these releases over the longterm but is envisaged that users following the development release strand will regularly update their software to take advantage of new functions.
A new user guide is also available to support version 1.1. For more details visit the QGIS site
http://www.qgis.org/
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ISPRS Working Group - invitation to participate
You are invited to participate in the ISPRS Working Group V/2 entitled Cultural heritage data acquisition and processing within the period until 2012. The goal of the WG is to coordinate research development, technological innovation and integration and best practice protocols across the full range of close range measurement techniques applicable to cultural heritage.
The WG will perform the following activities:
* development and promotion of measurement techniques, from close-range through to satellite, and spatial information systems applicable to cultural heritage
* integration of measurement techniques supporting the documentation, monitoring and presentational requirements of the archaeology, architecture, conservation and archiving communities
* development and dissemination of best practice protocols to aid appropriate application across related cultural heritage fields
* development and promotion of low cost, rapid, innovative, automated, commercial and open source approaches
* development and promotion of UAV platforms applicable to cultural heritage
* close co operation with related disciplines, national / international groups (e.g. CIPA) and other ISPRS working and regional groups
By becoming a member you will have the possibility to take part in the work of the WG at a level which best fits your own interests such as:
* submitting papers to workshops and conferences,
* providing data sets,
* taking part in workshops and conferences,
* keeping informed about the activities of the WG.
If interested in participating I would kindly ask you to go to their home page http://www.commission5.is[...]
and fill out the registration form under Become a member, providing us with some basic information.
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GPS Accuracy could decrease in 2010
Recent murmurings in the US suggest that the accuracy of GPS could be degraded from 2010. This story was posted on Slashdot and centres around the comments of Mike Craymer, a Geodesist working at Natural Resources Canada. The fears stem from the delay in updates to the US NAVSTAR GPS System.
In April 2009, the US Government released a report expressing concern about the Air Force’s maintenance and modernisation of the GPS system. Some of the 32 satellites have been operating for almost 20 years and the possibility of hardware failures increases with the time in orbit. The main problem seems to be the delays in launching new GPS III satellites; the next scheduled launch is in November 2009, over a year late.
Calculations using reliability curves show that the probability of continuing to keep 24 satellites in orbit (the magic number as far as global coverage is concerned) drops below 95% in 2010. This figure continues to drop, 80% by 2012 and 10% by 2017. But these figures reflect a worse case scenario if the GPS III satellites are not launched.
So, what does this mean for us? Well, if you have a GPS receiver that only tracks NAVSTAR GPS satellites then you might experience reduced accuracy beyond 2010. But if they loose a couple of satelites then you would be unlucky if you noticed a significant reduction on accuracy, but it might happen. However, if your receivers are able to use the Russian GLONASS and the European GALILEO systems then you should see little change in accuracy.
What it does show is that we have become increasingly reliant on GPS in our day to day lives. Any news of a reduction in accuracy causes waves. The most worried communities are likely to be in the US, especially the US military who run and maintain the NAVSTAR system and who maintain the right to restrict access to the signal to give them a tactical advantage in battle. It seems inconceivable that they will allow the quality of service to be compromised in the future as they rely on GPS. But, releasing figures like this might be used to stir up the bean counters.
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Google Street View problems
Google have been pushing forward in offering geographic data online but their StreetView application which gives users a 360 degree view of streets in major cities has met with a fair amount of problems. Most of this seems to centre around invasions of privacy and inappropriate images appearing in the service.
Google has a policy of blurring the faces of people caught in shots and replacing images that are deemed inappropriate. Some towns in the UK blocked the Google car, but Greece has just stopped Google acquiring any more images until there is a review on how their data will be used and the rights of people in the images. More bad news for Google, they are going to have to re-shoot most of Japan as users have complained that the camera was set too high on the Google car. Lowering the camera by 40cm should improve the users experience of StreetView.
StreetView is an interesting application and represents a considerable investment by Google, both in terms of time and money. Hopefully they will overcome these difficulties and continue to expand the service.
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