GIS Lounge

Spatial Unmapped

Caitlin Dempsey — Thu, 10 May 2012 11:43:20 PDT

Geographic maps aren’t the only means by which to communicate spatial information. These alternatives to communicating geographic information revise space so that a singular focal point emerges, unfettered by the standard depiction of spatial entities. The Quasi-Map Styles I like to refer to as quasi-maps are data visualizations that evoke geographic patterns but don’t adhere [...]

Geospatial Redux: Envisat End of Mission Declared, GIS for Geocaching, Tunneling the Earth

Caitlin Dempsey — Wed, 09 May 2012 10:10:45 PDT

With communication broken with the earth monitoring satellite since April 8, 2012, the European Space Agency (ESA) has declared an end of mission for Envisat. The ten year old satellite has delivered over a thousand terabytes of data, doubling its expected lifespan of five years. The lowering of its orbit back in October of 2010 had been expected [...]

Introducing the Quantum GIS Ecosystem

Anita Graser — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:49:50 PDT

Anita Graser provides an introduction to the desktop, web, and mobile capabilities of the open source GIS software, QGIS in this guest article. A GIS specialist with the Austrian Institute of Technology, Anita Graser also writes about open source GIS topics on her blog, “Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings”. The Quantum GIS [...]

GIS Skills Survey

Caitlin Dempsey — Mon, 07 May 2012 09:37:53 PDT

What GIS skills are essential for today’s GIS professional? What technical skills are required? Should GIS professionals learn to work with open source GIS? What soft skills are necessary? What are some unexpected skills that a GIS professional should acquire? Provide your tip here about a critical GIS skills. Please provide information about the GIS [...]

GeoBriefs: Using Geographic Tools to Hunt Kony, Google Maps Game Released, SketchUp Sold to Trimble, 3D Photo Tours

Caitlin Dempsey — Wed, 02 May 2012 10:07:07 PDT

The Geographic Travels blog explores how geographic analysis using ”pattern of life” and “socio-cultural analysis” are being used to search for warlord Joseph Kony. Announced back in January, the Google game Cubed which is based on Google Maps is finally here. The game, developed by the Google Maps team, uses WebGL to provide 3D graphics without the need [...]

How To Make Area Cartogram Maps in ArcGIS

Caitlin Dempsey — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:28:46 PDT

If you have data with disparate values between areas, making an area cartogram is an effective way to map out those values. Unfortunately, making area cartogram maps within ArcGIS can’t been done natively so external scripts and programs are needed. In this article, I review one ToolBox that is available from Esri’s Arcscript’s site called [...]

Interactive Maps of Billionaires

Caitlin Dempsey — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 10:46:21 PDT

Shown here are three interactive maps created using Google Fusion Tables. The first map shows a gradient map of the world’s billionaires based on residency and aggregated by country. The second map shows a heat map of the world’s billionaire’s based on their place of residence (aggregated by location). The third map shows the individual [...]

Geography of Billionaires: Mapping Nationalities and Residency

Caitlin Dempsey — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:17:32 PDT

Forbes recently released an updated list of the world’s billionaires. The listing contains the ranking for 1,226 individuals and families who’s net worth as of March of 2012 was 1 billion USD or more. Since the listings contained both a country of citizenship and residence, this allows for a peek at the geography of billionaires. [...]

Geography of Billionaires: Total Counts of the World’s Billionaires by Country for Residency and Citizenship, and by City

Caitlin Dempsey — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:17:00 PDT

Listed below are the tables covering the statistics used in the Geography of Billionaires: Mapping Nationalities and Residency. All data has been tabulated from Forbes’ The World’s Billionaires List, March 2012. Visualization of this data can viewed on the page containing interactive maps of billionaires created using Google Fusion Tables showing aggregate data of billionaire residency by country, [...]

Area Cartogram Maps Explored

Caitlin Dempsey — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:52:39 PDT

Area cartograms are maps of non-absolute space where the areal extent is in proportion to some measured value. Cartograms retain a partially accurate relative location and relative space, but the actual area of the individual polygons features are overrepresented or underrepresented based on the assigned values. Area cartograms are useful for visualizing relativity based on [...]