State and Local Government - All Points Blog

Students Prep for Dam Failure and other Education GIS Tidbits

Adena Schutzberg — Thu, 24 May 2012 03:55:04 -0500

Students from Indian Hills Community College [Iowa] Geo-spatial Technology class worked with the Army Corps of Engineers at Red Rock. The group made six maps utilizing data from the Corps of Engineers, Mahaska County GIS Coordinator Brian Knudtson, along with data from the Iowa Geological Survey of the Iowa Dept of Natural Resources. The purpose of the maps was to help better...

Singapore Land Authority’s OneMap Offers Gov and NGOs Crowdsourcing Tools

Adena Schutzberg — Thu, 24 May 2012 03:45:27 -0500

In the U.S. we are still waiting to see how we might use Geoplatform.gov, but in Singapore the Land Authority (SLA) not only has its own OneMap, but now it has beta tools for government departments and non-governmental organizations to collect data via crowdsourcing via that map. One of the first users is a cat-focused organization which uses the map to have people map stray cats to...

URISA’s Best Web GIS and other Open Source GIS News

Adena Schutzberg — Wed, 23 May 2012 03:00:52 -0500

A City of Cornwall employee has been recognized for his efforts in creating a unique on-line mapping site for the City. GIS Applications Specialist Denis Lalonde of the City of Cornwall (Ontario, CA) received the gold medal prize in the Best Web GIS category of the Best Geographic Information System Challenge Awards from the Ontario URISA chapter.. The awards are organized by the...

Google Renames Google Earth Engine, Offers Free License to Non-Profits

Adena Schutzberg — Wed, 23 May 2012 03:00:00 -0500

We learned of the name change to Google Maps Engine at the Location Intelligence Conference, but I guess it was not the right venue to announce free licenses for non-profits. We didn’t think “Earth Builder” reflected the true capabilities of the product or vision that we have for easily accessible geospatial data. So, today we're renaming Google Earth Builder to be...

Presentations Can Make Great Sessions, But so Can Good Questions! #LI12

Adena Schutzberg — Tue, 22 May 2012 10:42:37 -0500

I've been moderating sessions today at the Location Intelligence Conference. I'm very pleased all my speakers have stayed within their time; it makes my life so much easier. It also means we have time for a good number of questions. The session on Embedded Geospatial Capabilities in Enterprise Computing and BI Solutions included presentations on how the FCC implemented its...

GITA Cancels Oil and Gas Conference; Board Examining Future of Organization

Adena Schutzberg — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:30:35 -0500

The GITA website explains that its Oil and Gas Pipeline Conference, set for Oct 22-24 in Houston, has been cancelled. This would have been the 21st iteration of the event. The website text goes on to note the status of the organization is unclear: The GITA Board of Directors is meeting in the near future to discuss what the future holds for the association. More information...

Iran to Sue Google over Naming of Water Body on Google Maps

Adena Schutzberg — Thu, 17 May 2012 03:34:59 -0500

The concern is that the search company dropped the name Persian Gulf from the latest iteration of the online mapping system, Google Maps. Threats of legal action and serious damages have been made by Iranian officials if the name is not added back to the map. While Iranians prefer the term Persain Gulf, much of the region prefers Arabian Gulf. Currently, the water body remains...

Michigan’s Center for Geospatial Medicine Gets Diabetes Grant and other Health GIS News

Adena Schutzberg — Wed, 16 May 2012 03:00:31 -0500

The University of Michigan's Center for Geospatial Medicine will use a $9.8 million federal grant to study Type 2 diabetes in four under-served counties in North Carolina, Mississippi and West Virginia. It focuses on those enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. "This will allow researchers to visualize complex relationships among the...

Free Software for Polling Location Maps and other Government GIS News

Adena Schutzberg — Tue, 15 May 2012 02:30:48 -0500

This is interesting: the map of polling places in Hammond, Indiana is (1) made by the Hammond Sanitary District GIS Department and (2) built on free software (Google Maps), something worthy of note in the local paper. - The Times of Northwest Indiana

U.S. House of Representatives Votes to Kill American Community Survey

Adena Schutzberg — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:14:12 -0500

Last night the U.S. House passed an amendment to the 2013 Dept of Commerce funding bill that would eliminate the Census' American Community Survey, ACS. We know of ACS as the replacement for the long form; it's survey sent to a limited number of households not every ten years, but annually, to get a picture of U.S. communities for government funding and other purposes. Those...

Invasive Species Mapping and other Crowdsourcing GIS News

Adena Schutzberg — Wed, 09 May 2012 05:06:07 -0500

Locals in and around Saugerties, NY will add to iMapInvasives, New York’s online invasive species database, via a mapping party on May 8. The event starts at the Town of Saugerties Library for an orientation and brief training. Next the volunteers will carpool to the Esopus Creek Conservancy’s Esopus Bend Preserve (EBP) to walk the woodland trails and map invasive species and...

Latest CRS Report: More Work on Geospatial Data Management Needed

Adena Schutzberg — Tue, 08 May 2012 05:12:26 -0500

The report by Peter Folger, Congressional Research Service Specialist in Energy and Natural Resources Policy, is titled Issues and Challenges for Federal Geospatial Information and dated April 27, 2012. (full report in PDF, via FAS since these reports are not automagically public...see APB coverage) I found the takeaway, with help from HST (cited below), to be: In 2004, GAO...

Wednesday is National Bike to School Day

Adena Schutzberg — Tue, 08 May 2012 03:51:32 -0500

The National Center for Safe Routes to School and the League of American Bicyclists are behind the first-ever National Bike to School Day on May 9, 2012. There have been local and regional efforts in the past to celebrate a day of young people pedaling to school, but this is the first nationwide event. It's a spin off of Walk to School Day (that was every day of my K-12...

Crime Around You (UK only): Fearsquare.com

Adena Schutzberg — Mon, 07 May 2012 05:18:27 -0500

Fearsquare takes your recent FourSquare check-ins and cross-references these with the UK Police Crime Statistics database. Showing you street level crime for each individual check-in. Or in detail: The FearSquare application takes a list of your ten most recent FourSquare check-ins and cross-references these with the UK Police Crime Statistics database. In this way,...

EPA GIO Jerry Johnson to Become Department of Interior GIO in May

Adena Schutzberg — Thu, 03 May 2012 04:41:49 -0500

Per the NGAC coverage in the Boundary Solutions Inc. Newsletter: Instead the meeting was run by Vice Chair, Jerry Johnson, recently EPA GIO [Geogrpahic Information Officer], who in May is to become Department of the Interior Secretariat GIO. Why the move? To more directly manage GEOPLATFORM.GOV now that its General Partner is no longer GSA but FGDC. Karen Siderelis was the...

Washington State Ag Maps and other Government GIS News

Adena Schutzberg — Wed, 02 May 2012 03:00:39 -0500

Now the Washington State Department of Agriculture offers tools on its website that make crop location information more accessible to farmers, agencies, ag groups and the public. Perry Beale, senior crop mapping specialist, is the main developer of the WSDA's website tool. "You can use the map to get a visual picture and download the data behind the map such as the...

Orange County CA Puts out RFI for Cloud-based GIS

Adena Schutzberg — Wed, 02 May 2012 03:00:29 -0500

Orange County, CA released the Request for Information on April 13. Questions were due by April 23 and final responses are due May 7. GovWin notes: The county believes that the cloud would increase the level of customer care in its GIS by creating easy public access to basic information related to the planning and decision-making process. The GIS is used for permitting,...

Texas Fire Risk App and other Government GIS News

Adena Schutzberg — Tue, 01 May 2012 04:09:26 -0500

The Texas Forest Service and Texas A&M University have unveiled a new Web application that will forewarn residents when conditions are ripe for wildfire. The free application — dubbed TxWRAP — is designed to help homeowners and communities determine wildfire risk so they can act before a wildfire strikes. IT's Esri, Bing and DTS Agile based. The public viewer uses the term map...

Chicago Shows Off its Open Data Platform

Adena Schutzberg — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:04:25 -0500

While the April 26 webinar was hosted by Socrata, very few details were giving about its offerings. Instead, the session titled "Chicago's Smarter City Transformation" focused on what the city did with the platform. It built an open data portal. Join Brett Goldstein, Chicago’s Chief Data Officer, and Danielle DuMerer, Open Data Project Manager did most of the talking. Goldstein...

New Flex Map of San Diego Airport and other Esri News

Adena Schutzberg — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 04:45:14 -0500

The new map is based on the Flex API and avaialble here. It uses a Bing basemap but I was unable to access it due to a huge splashscreen which I could not dismiss. This happens on my laptop now and again... (Safari, MacOS X if you are wondering...and no I don't want to change my resolution.) - Aviation News The Flex Viewer is also in use in Nashua, NH where it's showing off the...

Santa Monica Wins Again and other Government GIS News

Adena Schutzberg — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 04:03:51 -0500

For the 13th consecutive year, Santa Monica [CA] has won awards from the Public Technology Institute (PTI) for using cutting edge technology to address local issues. The beachside city won two first-place Technology Solutions Awards -- one for a mobile website that helps motiorists find available parking spaces, the other for an initiatve that informs residents about major...

US Topo Update and other Government GIS News

Adena Schutzberg — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 03:52:33 -0500

The work of actually mapping the state [of Alaska] will conclude this year, and after quality checks are conducted, the final product could be in production by 2013. In addition to the remapping effort, the USGS is completing a project to release every map they have ever made in the same Geo PDF Format. DeMulder says this feature has quickly become very popular with the...

DC GreenMap and other Government GIS News

Adena Schutzberg — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 03:00:24 -0500

GreenUp DC is part of the city’s overall effort to get citizens to become active participants in Mayor Vincent Gray’s sustainability initiatives, and to track performance of various environmental programs, according to the District Department of the Environment (DDOE). Esri built it. - GCN Suffield, CT has a new online map powered by ArcGIS Online. While the parcels in the...

Geocoder.ca Sued by Canada Post

Adena Schutzberg — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:05:24 -0500

The suit was made public back in March but seems to have just hit the media today. The story, as told on the geocoder.ca website: Since 2004 we have crowdsourced* the generation of the "Canadian Postal Code Geocoded Database." When you make a query to geocoder containing for example this information "1435 Prince of Wales, Ottawa, ON K2C 1N5", we then extract the postal code...

Students Build City Basemap and other Government GIS News

Adena Schutzberg — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 03:00:45 -0500

A pair of California State University Stanislaus students are conducting the mapping project for the city as interns, using equipment on loan to Newman from Stanislaus County. There is no word if they or the school is getting paid. - WestSideConnect.com Allen County will abolish most fees previously charged for county maps and will join 85 other counties participating...

King County GIS ROI Study

Adena Schutzberg — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:02:06 -0500

In March 2012 a return-on-investment (ROI) report issued by Professor Richard Zerbe and Associates showed that use of the King County Geographic Information System has resulted in at least $775 million in net benefits to the county over the eighteen-year period from 1992 to 2010. You can read the docs: KCGIS ROI Report Executive Summary (65kb PDF) KCGIS ROI Report,...

Leeds Solar Powered Maps and other Government GIS News

Adena Schutzberg — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 03:52:01 -0500

Leeds will have a total of 25 solar powered, backlit static maps by May, with 10 more planned for 2013 installation. The goal: make it easier for people to find their way at night. - BBC Communia has a two part interview with Esri director of policy, Governor Jim Geringer discussing his his perspective on the future of geospatial. Part I, Part 2 - Communia Chris Olsen...

Geospatial Technologies Help Relocate Slum Dwellers and other International GIS News

Adena Schutzberg — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 04:26:35 -0500

The plan is to relocate the slum-dwellers of Sangli, a city and district in Maharashtra state in India. At first, that idea was not popular with residents. But use of imagery from Google Earth to map the boundaries of the settlements and their distance to schools and hospitals is helping ease the transition. “Through these images, the slum dwellers could see how their slums are...

1940s Census Data Go Live Today

Adena Schutzberg — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 03:00:18 -0500

Unlike the last time a new set of census data was released, this set will be online. The last set released ten years ago (the 1930 census) was on film. You can find out what's available and how to access it here. - Al.com

LA Mayoral Candidate Offers Fire Response Map and other Government GIS News

Adena Schutzberg — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 05:20:07 -0500

Austin Beutner is running for Mayor of Los Angeles Mayor. He's been critical of the Fire Dept's response rates and now offers the LAFD Response Times Map (Google Map Mashup). You can read his plan to fix the issue at the Huffington Post. - Hollywood Patch The Bermuda Mapping Project commissioned by Ministry of Environment, Planning and Infrastructure Strategy means an update to...