Category: Thoughts

Play this below to set the mood:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu4Hnbor9rI&w=560&h=315]

That Was Then

Way back in 2005, at the ESRI International User Conference, there was a .NET SIG that essentially started something great. In that room there were some great folks (Scott Morehouse, Art Haddad, Brian Golden, Rob Elkins, Jithen Singh, Brian Flood, Dave Bouwman, and others) who talked about where we should take the developer community at ESRI. In my opinion the biggest thing to come out of that meeting was what became the Developer Summit.

I’m sure most ESRI developers feel the same as I do in saying that the DevSummit is probably the biggest thing to come out of ESRI in the last 10 years. It has grown to be probably the must attend event for many ESRI users. At at the DevSummit, the .NET SIG (as well as the other ones) became sort of a place to reconnect. It didn’t matter if you were web or desktop development, used Desktop or Server or worked in C# or VB.net; you could talk about what the .NET community was doing at ESRI and how ESRI could continue improving it.

A Brave New World?

Well looking at the 2010 ESRI Developer Summit Agenda I can see the SIGs have been dropped. I asked a couple contacts at ESRI if this was just an oversight on the website and they confirmed that the SIGs are no longer part of the program. I guess the idea is that you’d rather “Meet the Teams” to talk about what you are doing directly with them. Of course most folks probably won’t bother because they’ll be meeting the teams at the ESRI Islands and talking with them all week.

What I think I’ll miss is the strategic talk about how ESRI can improve their developer community. I thought this feedback was valuable to ESRI, but I guess these days it is better captured through contact us forms than face to face discussion. Part of what makes the Developer Summit so great is that it isn’t like any other ESRI event and I’m afraid that this is just the start of it losing its “woodstock” feel. Of course maybe change is inevitable but I can’t help but note it sucks.

Like most people (I assume), I was doing a little GIS project SuperBowl morning. Needing some data, the first place I thought of going what the new [Data.gov] site to download some data. After doing a quick and simple search, I got the dataset I wanted ready to download. But as with every government data repository before it, it is broken. Posted datasets download links are many times 404:

It just isn’t the download, but the metadata as well. I know, some datasets still work and who knows, maybe this one will again one day. But for [Data.gov] to be valuable it needs to ping the data sources to let the users know that they are down (and for web services what percentage they are down). Also it wouldn’t hurt to let the owner of the data know that their datasets are no longer linked correctly in the Data.gov website. Otherwise we’ll just get link rot and that can kill a project.

If projects are going to be built on data discovered with Data.gov, much more has to be done to ensure that this data is available consistently, not when people get around to updating broken links. If things don’t change it is another waste of taxpayer money and we’d just have been better off sticking with the previous government data boondoggle.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ytCEuuW2_A&w=560&h=315]

One of the biggest issues with the U.S. Census and probably the one that wastes the most money is trying to count those who are hard to count. My personal fix would be to use sampling to solve the problem, but for now the task of the Census takers is to try and count everyone. My attention was brought to a project called “Census Hard to Count 2010” which maps the “hard to count” population nationwide (based on the Census Bureau’s analysis) to help local and national organizations target their outreach efforts for the 2010 Census and customize messages to communities at risk of being undercounted.

It features interactive maps at the state, metro, county, and tract level, along with detailed statistics for each area. You can search in various ways, and also add overlays showing Congressional districts, ZIP Codes, tract-level maps of 2000 Census mail return rates, and recent foreclosure risk. There’s a FAQ that goes into details about the data and their methodology.

Clearly larger states have a bigger problem with hard to count populations but Alaska, Hawaii and New Mexico probably point out that there are socioeconomic factors as well. Using the demographic layers available in the web app shows that this problem is very difficult to pinpoint and my hat is off to those trying to crack it.

The UI from the Census Hard to Count 2010 Application

Good news from the gdal-announce email list:

The GDAL/OGR Project is pleased to announce the release of GDAL/OGR 1.7.0.

Yep, you can stop there and get your GDAL/OGR on. Or maybe you want to know what is new, copied directly from Frank’s email:

• New Raster Drivers: BAG, EPSILON, Northwood/VerticalMapper, R, Rasterlite, SAGA GIS Binary, SRP (USRP/ASRP), EarthWatch .TIL, WKT Raster
• GDAL PCIDSK driver using the new PCIDSK SDK by default
• New Vector drivers : DXF, GeoRSS, GTM, PCIDSK and VFK
• New utilities: gdaldem, gdalbuildvrt now compiled by default
• Add support for Python 3.X. Compatibility with Python 2.X preserved
• Remove old-generation Python bindings.
• Significantly improved raster drivers: GeoRaster, GeoTIFF, HFA, JPEG2000 JasPer, JPEG2000 Kakadu, NITF
• Significantly improved vector drivers: CSV, KML, SQLite/SpataiLite, VRT

I did a little highlighting up there to list what I think is noteworthy at least for me. You can either build it yourself or keep an eye out for an update of FWTools.

One thing that has become crystal clear is the preferred method of having a mapping application on the iPhone and by extension the new iPad is to create a native iPhone/iPad app. That said, the noise sometimes causes people to miss some great web mapping app (as native web apps). I’ve looked into using SVG and even OpenLayers in the past for mapping in the iPhone, but who is rolling their own web apps out there to accomplish what until 2 years ago required a browser on a laptop or desktop? I know there will most likely be a session at the ESRI DevSummit using OpenLayers, but is there a framework people are working with?

Can anyone find me some mobile web mapping applications to love?

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRt2jX1kaYo&w=560&h=315]

Despite some speed humps, many cities and governments are going full speed ahead with opening their data. One of the biggest is the City of Vancouver’s Open Data Catalogue (note the copy and paste spelling of catalog, those wacky Canadians). Well they’ve launched a new update that simplifies the process of navigating the data. Every time I stop by I see more and more data available in more formats. I think the city should be commended for their embracing open data sharing with citizens.

The other open data update is the data.gov.uk website. The search is less than useful as you can’t perform advanced searches. Sean Gorman did a quick look and didn’t find any specific geo datasets, but I’m sure we’ll start seeing them. One thing that didn’t surprise me was the presence of SPARQL. Why data.gov.uk would put such an annoying query language front and center is beyond me. But with Sir Tim Berners-Lee as and advisor I can only imagine that he pushed hard for its placement. (note I’m not a big fan of RDF so take that as you will). Still it is good to see the UK start working hard at sharing public data with everyone.

I wasn’t in Britain for the announcement of data.gov.uk, but I can only imagine it went something like this….

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0tgW_vJ05U&w=560&h=315]

One big change from the 2009 ESRI DevSummit is that users will now vote on which presentations they wish to see at the 2010 DevSummit. Go here to pick which ones you think would be valuable to the community. Normally I wouldn’t promote a talk myself (and I’m not giving one this year), but I think “Ruby-fu: Using ArcGIS Server with Rails” by Dave Bouwman is something people should be voting for. Ruby is here to stay and there are many of us working on projects that use Rails at the backend. ESRI of course already has a wonderful API to use with Rails so there is no excuse not to look at a quicker, more robust framework.

Oh, Ruby!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlKMbezXtZE&w=560&h=315]

So yea I’m a little late with this as I’ve been really busy this week. Still I wanted to get out the word (assuming that you pay zero attention elsewhere) that Safe has released FME 2010. Now I’ve got no scientific data to back this up, but I’ve imagined that they were done with FME 2010 for a couple weeks now, but had to wait until the new year arrived before they could release it officially. I of course can understand given they probably had everything printed up beforehand and who wants to be they guy telling the accountants that they have to reprint all their material because they wanted to release in 2009.

Or maybe not…

OK so some really great things in 2010 that I’m looking forward to using in production is the improved metadata support and of course the engine that drives WeoGeo, FME Server. Oh Canada!

We hope you enjoy the beer, oh, like I mean the ETL, eh.

USGS Shake Map for Haiti

Update Monday Jan 18th: Another update in an attempt to keep the links valid.

Update Friday Jan 15th: The team has gone back and updated some of the mapping links so check them out at the bottom of this post. Dead links have been removed and new ones added. Keep in mind much of this is fluid so sorry if the links don’t work when you try them out.

On Tuesday, January 12 a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck about 10 miles southwest of the capital of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The earthquake was the worst in the region in more than 200 years. With many poor residents living in tin-roof shacks that sit precariously on steep ravines and with much of the construction in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere in the country of questionable quality, the expectation was that the quake caused major damage to buildings and significant loss of life, according to The New York Times.

Many companies are using this disaster to showcase their products and I think we need to try and share this open data outside of these silos. Content below is organized by section:

• Quick facts about Haiti
• Haiti – Related Links
  • US Government
  • Non-Profit, Non-Governmental Organizations
  • New Media – Social Networking Sites
• GIS – Data – Maps – Geospatial Information – GeoRSS
• GIS Volunteers & Humanitarian Volunteer Sites

Quick facts about Haiti

On Tuesday, January 12 a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck about 10 miles southwest of the capital of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The earthquake was the worst in the region in more than 200 years. With many poor residents living in tin-roof shacks that sit precariously on steep ravines and with much of the construction in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere in the country of questionable quality, the expectation was that the quake caused major damage to buildings and significant loss of life, according to The New York Times.

Quick facts about Haiti http://www.latimes.com Population: 9, 035,536 Languages: French and Creole Economy: Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with 80% of the population living under the poverty line and 54% in abject poverty. Capital: Port-au-Prince Size: Slightly smaller than Maryland Life expectancy at birth: 60.78 years Median age: 20.2 years Location: Caribbean, western one-third of the island of Hispaniola, between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, west of the Dominican Republic

Haiti – Related Links US Government

U.S. Department of State @dipnote http://twitter.com/dipnote http://www.state.gov/ U.S. Department of State Facebook http://www.facebook.com/usdos http://feeds.feedburner.com/dipnote State Department Ops Center 1-888-407-4747 For Americans seeking information about family members in #Haiti

Non-Profit, Non-Governmental Organizations

American Red Cross @RedCross http://www.redcross.org American Red Cross Facebook http://www.facebook.com/redcross American Red Cross Other Text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to @RedCross relief efforts in #Haiti. Learn more: http://bit.ly/6KiRtE

Mercy Corps http://www.mercycorps.org/ Mercy Corps @mercycorps http://www.twitter.com/mercycorps Mercy Corps Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mercy-Corps/7263476274 Mercy Corps Other Mercy Corps Create A Personal Fundraising Page on mercycorps.org http://www.mercycorps.org/fundraising source=9840

CARE http://care.org CARE Twitter @CARE http://twitter.com/CARE CARE Blog http://we.care.org/

Partners In Health http://www.pih.org Partners In Health Twitter @PIH_org

ONE http://www.one.org ONE Twitter @onecampaign http://twitter.com/onecampaign ONE Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ONE ONE Blog http://www.one.org/blog/ ONE RSS http://feeds2.feedburner.com/TheONEBlog

United States Fund for UNICEF http://www.unicefusa.org/ United States Fund for UNICEF Twitter @unicefusa http://www.twitter.com/unicefusa United States Fund for UNICEF Facebook http://www.facebook.com/UNICEF-USA

New Media – Social Networking

_ _ Twitter & Twitter Lists

NPR News http://www.npr.org/ @nprnews http://twitter.com/nprnews/haiti-earthquake

Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com @latimes/haiti-quake

New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/ @nytimes/haiti-earthquake

CNN http://www.cnn.com @CNN/haiti

Wyclef Jean http://wyclefjean.wordpress.com/ @wyclef http://www.facebook.com/Wyclef

Troy Livesay Location Port Au Prince, Haiti @troylivesay http://www.livesayhaiti.blogspot.com/

GIS – Maps – Geospatial Information – GeoRSS

Maps

ReliefWeb http://www.reliefweb.int Haiti: Earthquakes – Jan 2010 http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/dbc.nsf/doc108 OpenForm&emid=EQ-2010-000009-HTI&rc=2 RSS: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/ReliefwebUpdates @reliefweb

MapAction Haiti Map Catalogue http://mapaction.org/ @mapaction

ESRI Flex Map Viewer Shows Haiti Earthquake Locations http://bit.ly/6jpgcX zoom to Haiti and select the georss earthquake feed @esri

ITHACA – Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action Maps Archive http://www.ithaca.polito.it/maps.php Damage assessment maps based on satellite image visual interpretation. ITHACA is a non-profit association which is located in the Politecnico of Torino campus that partners with the UN World Food Programme (WFP).

United Nations Spatial Data Infrastructure (UNSDI) http://geomatics.nlr.nl/unsdi/srv/en/main.home extended=on&remote=off&attrset=geo&any=haiti&hitsPerPage=10 (Search: Haiti) geonetwork@unsdi.nl @UN & @Refugees

GeoNetwork opensource: FAO, WFP,& UNEP (Maps, Metadata, some Data) http://vam.wfp.org/geonetwork http://vam.wfp.org/geonetwork/srv/en/main.home (Where : Haiti) GeoNetwork opensource provides Internet access to interactive maps, satellite imagery and related spatial databases. It s purpose is to improve access to and integrated use of spatial data and information. GeoNetwork opensource allows to easily share spatial data among different users

USGS Estimated Population Exposed to Earthquake Shaking http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/pager/events/us/2010rja6/index.html @USGS

Centro del Agua del Tr pico H medo para Am rica Latina y El Caribe (CATHALAC) http://bit.ly/4FMDFs @CATHALAC

GIS Data

China Earthquake Geospatial Research Portal Haiti Earthquake Data http://cegrp.cga.harvard.edu/content/haiti-earthquake-data RSS: http://gist.fas.harvard.edu/CEGRP/ q=feed/new_posts

ArcGIS Online http://www.arcgisonline.com/home/group.html owner=esri_event&title=Haiti%20Earthquake ArcGIS Online is a data discovery, sharing, and use platform for all ArcGIS Users. There are many free data sets there including global ones. @ESRI & @ESRI_France & @GISPublicSafety &@esriportugal

OpenStreetMap Extracts for Haiti Files are generated every 5 minutes. Available formats: OpenStreetMap source files, Garmin GMAPSUPP.IMG files, and ESRI shapefiles http://labs.geofabrik.de/haiti/ @openstreetmap

USGS Latest Earthquakes: Feeds & Data http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/catalogs/ http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2010/us2010rja6/ http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/pager/events/us/2010rja6/exposure.xml @USGS & @USGSNews

NGA GEOnet Names Server (GNS) http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/index.html

The USNG National Implementation Center (TUNIC) at Delta State University Haiti Maps and Data http://mississippi.deltastate.edu/index.php id=482&type=1 Delta State University, Cleveland, MS http://mississippi.deltastate.edu/ USNG grid datasets are produced by Delta State’s Center for Interdisciplinary Geospatial Information Technologies in partnership with the US Geological Survey with a focus upon the application of USNG in emergency and disaster management. @deltastate

GIS Resources

ESRI Disaster Response and Assistance http://www.esri.com/services/disaster-response/earthquakes/index.html @ESRI

Google Earth Data

Google Embedded KML Viewer http://www.gmodules.com/ig/creator synd=open&url=http://code.google.com/apis/kml/embed/embedkmlgadget.xml

Google LatLon Blog http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/01/haiti-imagery-layer-now-available.html @googlemaps

Google Earth Outreach http://earth.google.com/outreach/index.html @earthoutreach

Google Earth Library Haiti Earthquake Maps and Data http://www.gelib.com/haiti-earthquake.htm

Imagery

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Haiti Earthquake Crisis Relief Public Site https://www.geoint-online.net/community/HaitiCrisisResponse/default.aspx The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is supporting the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Southern Command and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with analysis, unclassified commercial satellite imagery and geospatial intelligence products of the Haitian areas devastated by the recent earthquake.

DigitalGlobe http://browse.digitalglobe.com/imagefinder/showBrowseMetadata buffer=1.0&catalogId=10300100035AF200&imageHeight=natres&imageWidth=natres http://browse.digitalglobe.com/imagefinder/showBrowseMetadata buffer=1.0&catalogId=1030010003D32000&imageHeight=natres&imageWidth=natres The crisis event service has been activated in response to a 7.0 earthquake centered approximately 10 miles SW of Port-au-Prince. These are links to a series of WV02 collects from January 7 over Port-au-Prince. @DigitalGlobe

GeoEye http://www.geoeye.com/CorpSite/gallery/detail.aspx iid=287&gid=20 @GeoEye

Additional Resources

Google Voice http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake & http://bit.ly/7hJLL5 Free calling to Haiti through Google Voice for the next two weeks. To place a call using Google Voice, use the Click2Call button on the website, the Google Voice mobile app, or dial your own Google Voice number and press 2 to place an outbound call. If you don’t have a Google Voice account, you can request an invitation at www.google.com/voice @googlevoice

ArcGIS 9.4 is now going to be ArcGIS 10. Jack announced this in a podcast today. I didn’t hear much new than we’ve hard before about 9.4 so it appears it is a name change right now. I’m wondering if there isn’t more out there we don’t know about yet that will make it into the ArcGIS 10 release, but Jack says the name change is the smallest thing about this ArcGIS 10 release. I guess we’ll learn at the FedUC and the Business Partner/DevSummit and it is still scheduled to release before the User Conference.

ArcGIS 10 in ‘10