Category: GIS

‘Geospatial Data Is Stuck in the Year 1955’

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

James Killick’s blog, Map Happenings, looks very much like one worth following. Killick’s been around the block more than a few times, working at Mapquest, Esri and most recently at Apple’s Maps division. He’s seen things, in other words. In his latest post, he decries the geospatial industry’s lack of common data standards, which he compares to the shipping industry before container ships.

The lack of common, broadly adopted geospatial data exchange standards is crippling the geospatial industry. It’s a bit like going to an EV charger with your shiny new electric vehicle and discovering you can’t charge it because your car has a different connector to the one used by the EV charger. The electricity is there and ready to be sucked up and used, but, sorry—your vehicle can’t consume it unless you miraculously come up with a magical adaptor that allows the energy to flow.

James produces a couple of counterexamples—standards for transit data and indoor mapping developed by Google and Apple, respectively—and points to Esri as a possible force for data standardization.

Previously: Immersive View and the Death of Consumer Maps.

Eduard, a New Mac-only Relief Shading App

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Eduard app logoLaunching at NACIS, which is next week, but available on the Mac App Store now, Eduard is a Mac-only application that generates relief maps by “[using] machine learning to match the aesthetics and details of relief shadings created by Swiss cartographers.” (The name is a pretty obvious reference to Eduard Imhof.) The app allows you to adjust direction of illumination, aerial perspective and detail, and works with digital elevation models and a number of file formats. The launch price is US$69.99 (C$99.99) until the 23rd, after which I presume the price will go up.

The Map Lady and the Catholic Church

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Earlier this year, the New Yorker published a profile of Molly Burhans. Burhans is the founder of GoodLands, a Catholic organization focusing on mobilizing the land and resources of the Church to address climate change and other environmental issues. Burhans, whose background is in GIS, began by wanting to analyse the Church’s property holdings; she soon found out that the Church’s own record-keeping was somewhere between out of date and nonexistent—and certainly not digital.

In the Office of the Secretariat of State that day, Burhans met with two priests. She showed them the prototype map that she had been working on, and explained what she was looking for. “I asked them where their maps were kept,” she said. The priests pointed to the frescoes on the walls. “Then I asked if I could speak to someone in their cartography department.” The priests said they didn’t have one.

Burhans, who became known as the Map Lady at the Vatican, was asked if she’d be willing to create a cartography institute at the Vatican; plans to develop one have been waylaid by the COVID-19 pandemic (Burhans came down with a significant case herself.) Fascinating piece depicting the gap between modern data and an ancient institution, and the notion of using data as a force for progress. Thanks to John Greenhough for sending me a copy of this article; apologies for taking months to post about it.

Another profile of Burhans.

Geography Awareness Week, GIS Day, and the 2020 U.S. Census

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

In raising-public-awareness news, the third week of November is Geography Awareness Week, and since 1999 the Wednesday of that week is GIS Day.

For this year’s GIS Day, the Library of Congress is holding a virtual event focusing on the 2020 Census, featuring a keynote by Census Bureau geography chief Deirdre Bishop as well as three technical papers. The program will be (or was, depending on when you read this) streamed on the Library of Congress’s website and on their YouTube channel on Wednesday, 17 November 2021 at 1 p.m. EST, and will be available for later viewing.

Thirty Day Map Challenge

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Thirty Day Map Challenge is taking place right now on Twitter: see the #30DayMapChallenge hashtag. For the second year in a row, mapmakers are challenged to make a map based on the day’s theme. (Today’s, for example, was to map with a new tool.) It’s open to everyone; for more information and resources see the challenge’s GitHub page. Here’s the page for the 2020 challenge, which saw 7,000 maps from 1,000 contributors.

The Geospatial Revolution Project: Mapping the Pandemic

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

A decade after the Geospatial Revolution Project, which explored the use and impact of digital mapping technologies, released its fourth and (apparently) final episode, there’s a new episode focusing on how digital mapping tools were conscripted into the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic. The Project has posted a version of the episode including a live panel discussion afterward on Facebook Live.

Previously: The Geospatial Revolution Project; The Geospatial Revolution Project, Episode Two; The Geospatial Revolution Project, Episode Three; The Geospatial Revolution Project, Episode Four; Maps and the Geospatial Revolution.

More on the Western U.S. Wildfires

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
NASA Earth Observatory

NASA Earth Observatory has had several stories on the western U.S. wildfires, gathered here. This story summarizes the situation; satellite images of the smoke generated by the fires can be seen here, here and here.

Marena Brinkhurst of Mapbox has a comprehensive list of open data sources relating to the wildfires, smoke, and air quality.

Mark Altaweel at GIS Lounge looks at how GIS is being used to map wildfires, smoke and air pollution.

Previously: California Wildfires, 2020 Edition.

Explore Zealandia

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
GNS Science
GNS Science

Zealandia (Te Riu-a-Māui) is the name given to a proposed, and largely submerged eighth continent, of which New Zealand (Aotearoa) is the largest above-water remnant. Explore Zealandia is geoscience company GNS Science’s web portal to their maps of this largely submerged continent, including bathymetry, tectonics, and other data; the data is also available for download. [WAML]

A U.S. Army Film from 1971: ‘Mapping a Better Tomorrow’

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

“Mapping a Better Tomorrow” is a 30-minute film produced in 1971 to explain the work of the U.S. Army Topographic Command (TOPOCOM). After explaining maps from first principles, it covers the state of the art in terms of cartography, computer mapping, photogrammetry and surveying circa 1971, including the production of topographic maps, maps of the Moon and maps of, erm, southeast Asia. Since U.S. government publications are public domain, it’s available in several locations, including the Internet Archive (above), DailyMotion and Vimeo.

TOPOCOM itself had a short history. Created in 1968 (PDF) as the successor to the U.S. Army Map Service, it lasted less than four years before being merged into the Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) in 1972. Which in turn was merged into the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) in 1996. Which in turn was renamed the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in 2003.

Behind the Scenes at the JHU Coronavirus Dashboard

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
JHU coronavirus dashboard screenshot
JHU CSSE (screenshot)

ArcGIS-based dashboards tracking the spread of the novel coronavirus are now reasonably common, but the first was produced by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering. As Nature Index reports in this behind-the-scenes look at the JHU coronavirus dashboard, the decision to launch was spur of the moment, but now the dashboard and its underlying data get more than a billion hits every single day, and it is now managed by a team that numbers nearly two dozen. [GIS Lounge]

Brewer Wins Miller Medal

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

O. M. Miller MedalBelatedly noted, thanks to a story in Penn State News last month: Cynthia Brewer was awarded the American Geographical Society’s O. M. Miller Cartographic Medal at the AGS’s symposium last fall. Brewer, a geography professor at Penn State since 1994, is the author of Designing Better Maps: A Guide for GIS Users (previously) and the creator of the ColorBrewer colour design tool for cartographers. The Miller medal is no minor award: this is only the eighth time it’s been awarded since it was created in 1968; past recipients have included Waldo Tobler, Arthur Robinson, Mark Monmonier and, in 2017, John Hanke and Brian McClendon (basically, the team behind Google Maps). Brewer is the first woman to receive the award.