Governing: Maps That Can Fight a Housing Crisis. “This is the second installment in a two-part series describing how a constantly evolving mapping technology called geographic information systems (GIS) can be used to improve the two pillars of U.S. urban land use: housing and transportation.”
United Arab Emirates: EAD undertakes hydrogeological mapping project to prepare digital maps, utilising geographical information systems. “The Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD), in cooperation with the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, is conducting a hydrogeological mapping project for the UAE, a unique project at the level of the Arabian Gulf region. The project aims to collect, classify, and analyse all available data on ground and surface water, which has been collected from well drilling, research, and reports. This information will be converted into digital data that can be utilised in preparing high-quality, accurate digital maps using Geographical Information Systems (GIS).”
StateTech Magazine: GIS in State and Local Government: How Geographic Information Systems Aid Agencies. “A recent report from the National States Geographic Information Council revealed that states are making progress on developing their geospatial data capabilities, even though the creation of a National Spatial Data Infrastructure to share geospatial data between states is still out of reach.”
WWLP: State unveils new online interactive mapping tool. “MassMapper, a new online interactive mapping tool that provides multiple types of geological information in Massachusetts, is now available. Developed by the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security’s (EOTSS) Bureau of Geographic Information Systems (MassGIS), the website will allow anyone looking for information, especially those in the land survey, engineering, and real estate industries, to better interact with the state. MassMapper will offer uses like site design, land inventory, and public policy planning.”
Esri: Esri Offers Free Online Course That Teaches Cutting-Edge Imagery Capabilities. “Beginning August 11, Esri, the world leader in location intelligence technology, is offering a free six-week online course to explore imagery and remotely sensed data using Esri’s ArcGIS software. Focused on capturing, processing, visualizing, analyzing, and sharing imagery data—gaining insight from the pixels—the course is open to anyone.”
Penn State News: GIS technology helps map out how America’s mafia networks were ‘connected’. “At its height in the mid-20th century, American organized crime groups, often called the mafia, grossed approximately $40 billion each year, typically raising that money through illegal or untaxed activities, such as extortion and gambling. A team of researchers used geographic information systems — a collection of tools for geographic mapping and analysis of the Earth and society — and data from a government database on mafia ties during the 1960s, to examine how these networks were built, maintained and grown.”
South Florida Times: Women Data Scientists Created GPS-Driven App to Help Kenya Keep Covid-19 Numbers Low. “Women in GIS Kenya (WiGISKe), a geospatial technology non-profit, partnered with the country’s Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology to create an online database and the tools to keep it updated. It tracks the number of cases, recoveries and confirmed deaths across the sub-Saharan nation, plus a tally of testing. Using cellphone GPS data based on people’s physical locations, the website creates maps that show emerging and current disease hotspots. ”
9News: You can use Colorado’s new search tool to see the oil and gas flowlines under your neighborhood. “What’s underground in Colorado is now being revealed through a searchable oil and gas map online. The location of oil and gas lines underground is being added to a geographic information systems (GIS) database maintained by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. That means the public can search for the pipes that connect oil and gas wells.”
Tennessee State Library and Archives: Mapping the Destruction of Tennessee’s African American Neighborhoods. (This link leads to a Facebook post.) “The ‘Mapping the Destruction of Tennessee’s African American Neighborhoods’ story map project details the often destructive impact of urban renewal and interstate projects of the mid-20th century on Tennessee’s African American communities. The project combines GIS software and primary sources to create an interactive exhibit whereby users can visualize the direct effects of these public works projects in cities across Tennessee.”
Geo Awesomeness: CARTO boosts public geospatial data with Google BigQuery. “When location intelligence platform CARTO built its Data Observatory, the chief idea was to create an up-to-date index of location data. The recently released Data Observatory 2.0 takes that vision forward to provide Data Scientists with a scalable platform full of rich data in the format they really need it in! CARTO is now hosting geospatial datasets on Google Cloud’s BigQuery public datasets program.” You can learn more about CARTO via this article from TechCrunch.
University of Colorado Boulder: GeoLibrary Connects Colorado Through GIS Data. “This fall, the University Libraries have officially launched a new collection of geographic information system (GIS) data highlighting the natural and cultural features of Colorado. The Colorado GeoLibrary, the Libraries’ new site for accessing and discovering geospatial data the state, is a data set goldmine, fit for your GIS and mapping project needs.”
Opensource: 5 open source tools for building a map app in a snap. “All the attention geographical information systems (GIS) have gotten in recent years may make you think they are something new. In fact, geospatial data helped play a major role more than 160 years ago in identifying the source of the deadly London cholera outbreak of 1854. Dr. John Snow, a local physician, suspected that contaminated drinking water was the source of the disease. During the investigation, he plotted a density map of cholera cases and interviewed residents in the affected neighborhood to learned about their water use habits. His analysis showed a high number of incidents near a communal water pump. In this article, I’ll introduce five modern open source mapping tools, and then help you get started building your first GIS app.”
Library of Congress: Introducing Library of Congress Story Maps!. “Story Maps, created within a Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based software platform created by Esri, combine text, images, multimedia, and interactive maps to create engaging online narrative experiences. Under a program spearheaded by the Geography and Map Division, collection specialists from across the Library have produced Story Maps with content from the hidden and not-so-hidden collections of the library. We are pleased to showcase the first three published Story Maps from this program, with many more to come!”
Library of Congress: Digital Scholarship Resource Guide: Tools for Spatial Analysis (part 5 of 7). “In what has been often termed the ‘spatial turn,’ quantitative humanities and social sciences have come to emphasize place and space in their analyses. The mass amounts of geographical and temporal data available has lent itself to new ways of imagining and visualizing global networks. Increasingly sophisticated maps and timelines are increasingly simple to make and use. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is the field of techniques and scholarship that combines tabular data with geographical features to query, map, and visualize information. GIS technologies developed in the natural sciences to track things like weather, traffic, and disease patterns, but have moved into the humanities, enabling the spatial mapping of literature and history.”
FutureScot: ScotLIS takes shape. “There’s a myriad of property data out there, from house price information to property title details. Wouldn’t it be useful if all that information was available in one place? That’s why, at Registers of Scotland (RoS) we’re developing ScotLIS. ScotLIS is an innovative, map-based land and information service that will facilitate easy access to a wide range of data relating to land and property in Scotland.”
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