GIS Lounge

Heat Maps in GIS

Caitlin Dempsey — Sun, 20 May 2012 15:35:33 PDT

Heat maps, from a geographic perspective, is a method of showing the geographic clustering of a phenomenon. Also known as hot spot mapping, heat maps show locations of higher densities of geographic entities. The ‘heat’ in the term refers to the concentration of the geographic entity within any given spot, not to be confused with [...]

The Politics of Google’s Mapping

Caitlin Dempsey — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:30:53 PDT

Being one of the world’s leading online web mapping service means also trying to walk the impossible tightrope between the political bickering of countries. More than a few times has Google found itself in the middle of a maelstrom involving the geopolitical delineations and labels shown in Google Maps and Google Earth. Google has now [...]

Making Maps with Google Fusion Tables

Caitlin Dempsey — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:08:21 PDT

Google Fusion Tables makes it very easy to create your own maps. The Google Fusion Tables tour is a great place to start to learn how to get started and to see examples from sites that use Fusion Tables. Google has a list of tutorials available for Fusion Tables. While Google Fusion Tables will map [...]

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 [...]