GIS Lounge

TileMill: Open Source Mapping Now for Windows

Caitlin Dempsey — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:26:31 PST

TileMill is built on open source libraries (Mapnik, node.js, backbone.js,express and CodeMirror) and uses CSS styling with its map styling language Carto to render beautiful online maps. For an idea of what you can do with TileMill, the Chicago Tribune demonstrated some of its capabilities in its Making Maps series using PostGIS, Mapnik, TileMill, and Google Maps. Demos of TileMill in action [...]

2012 Super Bowl Mashup Map and Imagery

Caitlin Dempsey — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:35:16 PST

Esri has rolled out another social media map with its 2012 Super Bowl Mashup Map which pits football against politics. Enter your ZIP code, which team you want to with the 2012 Super Bowl, and your favorite potential presidential candidate to watch the big game with and hit the “vote” button. The resulting side by side maps [...]

Google Maps Loses Unfair Competition Lawsuit in France

Caitlin Dempsey — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:55:05 PST

A French court has determined that Google has abused its position with its Google Maps application by engaging in unfair competition practices. The lawsuit was brought in 2010 by French company, Bottin Cartographes, which lodged a complaint against Google France claiming that by providing free mapping services to some companies, it was undercutting competition. Bottin Cartographes [...]

GIS 101: Learn About GIS

Caitlin Dempsey — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 08:37:44 PST

GIS is a multi-faceted discipline built that incorporates a variety of technologies and concepts. To really understand the capabilities of GIS, it is important to learn cartography, spatial and statistical analysis, database management, and programming. Looking to get started in GIS? This GIS 101 page is the launch page for accessing information about GIS on this [...]

Analysis Finds Three Times More Farmers’ Markets in Areas with the Lowest Obesity Rates

Gretchen Peterson — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:33:47 PST

An independent analysis conducted by mapping analytics firm PetersonGIS shows that locations with the highest obesity rates contain the fewest farmers’ markets. To produce the analysis, March 2011 data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on market locations throughout the United States were mapped and correlated with county-aggregated obesity statistics* from the Center for Disease Control [...]

Where to Look for Historical Maps

Harold Hunt — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 12:41:39 PST

The use of extracting data from old paper maps is growing in popularity as a method to understanding historical geography. David Ramsey popularized the method of georectifying historical maps and draping those maps over a DEM to create a 3D view. Pastmapper is a project that digitizes historical maps in order to recreate the state [...]

New Plant Hardiness Zone Map

Caitlin Dempsey — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:33:06 PST

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has released a new Plant Hardiness Zone Map (PHZM). The map is the first updated in over twenty years and incorporates greater accuracy and detail since the last map from 1990. The new map was developed by the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Oregon State University’s (OSU) PRISM Climate Group and is available [...]

Geomagnetic Storm to Hit Earth

Caitlin Dempsey — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:01:41 PST

A strong geomagnetic storm is set to hit the earth today. This storm is the strongest one in seven years but is expected to only have a minor effect on the disruption of satellites, power networks, and navigation systems. The geomagnetic storm is cause by a coronal mass ejection (CME) which happens when a cloud of magnetised [...]

WorldMap: An Open Source Software Platform

Caitlin Dempsey — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:24:45 PST

Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis recently released WorldMap, an open source mapping application designed to make it easier for researchers to upload large GIS datasets and to create online maps using thousands of geographic layers available to them from the Worldmap Library. WorldMap is built using open source software (access the WorldMap source code via github.com) and is hosted on Amazon’s EC2 cloud [...]

GPS Tracking Needs a Warrant

Caitlin Dempsey — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:16:30 PST

The Supreme Court ruled today that law enforcement agencies need to obtain a warrant before using GPS tracking on a person’s vehicle. The ruling for United States v. Jones came from an appeal by the Justice Department of a lower court’s ruling that GPS tracking required a warrant. Antoine Jones was a Washington D.C. nightclub owner whose [...]