Surveying, Mapping and GIS

As a fun item, Aram Bartholl of http://www.datenform.de/ has posted a video on YouTube.com, showing a real-life Google Maps pushpin:

After a great meeting this afternoon, I am looking to rehash some of my previous MetaCarta work. Looks like some of the previous kinks that I was running into with using a SOAP call to the HeadNode service originally developed on MetaCarta 3.0.1 have been worked out in newer versions (we are currently standing up two boxes with 3.7), and further, it may be a good opportunity to look at the JSON API that MetaCarta has developed.

I am also anxiously awaiting some of the document focus and other enhancements that MetaCarta has coming down the pike later this year. Other things I'd like to look at are streamlined, enhanced and more-focused document crawling.

We currently have several positions open in SynTechGp:

The National Geodetic Survey, in keeping with quite a few innovations and revelations to coincide with their 100th anniversary, has unveiled a copy of their 10-year plan, and are soliciting comment:

During the last year, NGS has spent considerable effort refining its mission, vision and strategy for the future. The result of this effort is the NGS 10 year plan. Because any plans for the future will affect the NGS stakeholders and the general public, NGS is releasing this plan in draft form for a public comment period lasting until March 31, 2007. NGS is interested in hearing all feedback on the proposed plan over the next few weeks. NGS will also discuss and take comments on the 10 year plan at the ACSM conference in St. Louis. This will take place during the first half (8:30 a.m. - Noon) of the "National Geodetic Survey and Partners" meeting on Sunday, March 11.

Please note that this document is in draft form. At this time NGS is seeking comments on the content of the plan. Once those comments have been received and incorporated into the plan the document will undergo a professional editorial review to address administrative (spelling, punctuation, etc.)
issues. Following the public comment period, NGS will consolidate all feedback and issue a final copy of the 10 year plan some time in April 2007.

Click here to download the draft of the NGS 10 year plan.
Click here to go to the comment template for providing feedback on the plan.Comments will be mailed to the NGS 10 year plan working group.

"...the gravimetric geoid used in defining the NSRS should have an absolute accuracy less than 1 centimeter anyplace at any time."

"NGS will publish all coordinates of defining points of the NSRS with an epoch tag and will furthermore publish velocities relative to that epoch-tagged set of coordinates."

"NGS will therefore publish all coordinates and velocities of NSRS defining points in both the most recent official U.S. Datums and the most recent realization of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF). Furthermore, NGS will provide simple transformation tools between all historic and current datums and reference frames used by NGS, in 4 dimensions if possible."

and...

"NGS will validate local capacity for accurate positioning through direct interaction with a county geospatial representative and evaluation of that county’s access to the NSRS."

Thanks to John Halleck for pointing some of these out, to pique everyone's interest. Some very lofty goals indeed...

It is my position that the W3C should extricate itself from further direct work on SOAP, WDSL, or any other WS-* specifications and redirect its resources into evangelizing and standardizing identifiers, formats, and protocols that exemplify Web architectural principles. This includes educating enterprise application architects how to design "applications" that are "native" web applications.

It appeared that there are also a few drawing a line between "World Wide" and "Enterprise"... Or suggesting that W3C should abandon aspects of their pursuits and leave it up to industry.

Certainly the geospatial community will need to sit up and take note of where this leads... Having written my own WFS and WMS services and clients from scratch, though I am still no Web Services guru, I still had to wonder about the wisdom of the approaches being used in the whole paradigm. Are the current OGC standards really in line technologically with the vision that was originally expressed by Tim Berners-Lee? I think not. Are they compatible with some of the security and other needs of the community? I think not. Not the end of the world, but certainly much iterative refinement to get us where we ultimately need to be.

Stefan Tilkov at InfoQ provides a good roundup of many of the position papers. Will we see some simplification and resolution to the ever-emergent convoluted forest of Web Services and Standards?

I just came across a spanish-language blog, called TopoNorte - the author features a wide variety of great geospatial and surveying content. Some items I thought were particularly great:
Cadastral mapping of Spain, using Google Maps: http://www.goolzoom.com/


And here, a publication on geodesy and UTM grids by Professor Ignacio Alonso Fernández-Coppel at the University of Valladolid:

http://www.elagrimensor.com.ar/elearning/lecturas/Las%20coordenadas%20geograficas.pdf

Came across this vintage Surveying-themed Valentine's card...

Just got this photo emailed to me from friends at PSLS:



Here I am at the 2007 Pennsylvania Surveyor's Conference with Patrick Lee, who was there as a re-enactor performing biographical sketches told as Daniel Boone.

It was a thoroughly wonderful evening - Mr. Lee is a talented and enjoyable speaker. He has also graciously sent me several leads for researching one of my early Searcy ancestors, who was an associate of Daniel Boone's.

Thanks to Gene Kooper for this great illustration of a theodolite from J. Johnson's 1886 text, "Theory and Practice of Surveying".

Today the U.S. Geological Survey published vacancy announcements for the Geospatial Liaisons for Washington, Oregon, and several other states.
Information on the announcements is below. These jobs are open to all qualified applicants and are not restricted to current USGS or Federal government employees. Questions on the application process can be answered by Nina Fralick (nfralick@usgs.gov).

Here's the information and links to the announcements:

Applicants qualified for either the Physical Scientist or
Cartographer series are being sought for the following locations. These
positions are open simultaneously with equivalent ones in Maine, Georgia, West
Virginia, and Nebraska, and all announcements are accessible at the OARS website
(http://www.usgs.gov/ohr/oars/) and
on USAJobs ( http://www.usajobs.gov/).

• 1 vacancy in Anchorage, AK
• 1 vacancy in San Diego, CA or Pasadena, CA
• 1 vacancy in Seattle, WA or Tacoma, WA
• 1 vacancy in Portland, OR
  
  
• Physical Scientist - Merit Promotion -
  Announcement WR-2007-0224
  https://jobs1.quickhire.com/scripts/usgs.exe/runjobinfo?aOrg=1&aJob=11045&Username=~BROWSE~&ORGIMG=usgs.gif
  


• Cartographer - Merit Promotion - Announcement
  WR-2007-0227
  https://jobs1.quickhire.com/scripts/usgs.exe/runjobinfo?aOrg=1&aJob=11051&Username=~BROWSE~&ORGIMG=usgs.gif
  


• Physical Scientist - DEU - Open to Public - Announcement
  WR-2007-0223
  https://jobs1.quickhire.com/scripts/usgs.exe/runjobinfo?aOrg=1&aJob=11044&Username=~BROWSE~&ORGIMG=usgs.gif
  


• Cartographer - DEU - Open to Public - Announcement
  WR-2007-0226
  https://jobs1.quickhire.com/scripts/usgs.exe/runjobinfo?aOrg=1&aJob=11050&Username=~BROWSE~&ORGIMG=usgs.gif
  
  Pay Plan, Series, and Grade: GS-1370-12/13
  Open Date: 01/30/2007 Close Date: 02/20/2007
  Contact: Nina Fralick
  (nfralick@usgs.gov)

I am actually not afraid to admit I am one who likes Microsoft products, a .NET developer, a Microsoft Registered Partner, a user of MS Office, Project, SQL Server, Exchange and so much more - and one who generally likes their vision and model... but sometimes it seems a juggernaut run amok.

BUT... while I'm on the topic of ranting, yesterday I went out to pick up another laptop, and was amazed to find that all of the local retailers only carry boxes with Vista (and generally some flavor of Vista Home to boot) - and no XP on any of the boxes in stock.

I was one of the Vista beta users, and readily admit I did not have any serious problems with it, but nonetheless am not yet ready to be flung headlong into adopting the new technology for any production machines. And further, I don't want to be bothered with half-crippled "Home" versions of much of anything.

I was happy with the model of shipping machines with XP along with a Vista upgrade certificate, but was surprised to see that this seems to have come to an abrupt end.

The other concurrent Microsoft marketing annoyance I have is that IE 7 is being pushed... hard. It comes up in my Updates list pretty regularly - and this is another key piece of infrastructure that I am just not ready to migrate on.

Don't get me wrong - I am generally on the leading side of the curve when it comes to adopting new technologies, but slooow it down, Microsoft. Given the track record of previous Windows and IE versions, we need time.

Thanks to a heads-up from the Very Spatial folks, I was turned on to WikiSky - this is a compilation of data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and a number of other catalogs and efforts, into a Google Maps type interface, where users can pan, zoom, and select objects, to get detailed reports.

For example, a user can type in a Messier Catalog number (M45 in this example) and be whisked right to the area of interest on the sky map. Objects in the catalog are hyperlinked, and clicking on them (ηTau/Alcyone in the Taurus constellation below) pulls up a detailed report, complete with great photos, analyses, and hyperlinks to a wide variety of rich sources specific to the objects of interest:

In the Amazon Mechanical Turk effort to analyze imagery for potential clues in the disappearance of Jim Gray, I thus far managed to log 185 units of 5 images each, the count was well over 4000 when I started, and the last one I completed said 1 remaining. It was plainly evident that I had a great deal of company throughout this effort.

Certainly there were several instances of images where boats, along with their associated wakes, could be seen in the images, however a great many were difficult to read, with a great deal of reflectance, cloud cover, and so on.

It will be interesting to see what the next steps are - whether more data or additional passes will be offered up through Mechanical Turk, and if any of what participants identified will ultimately be able to correlated to other activity in the vicinity, or indeed provide clues to Gray's location.

UPDATE: Some additional images from a NASA aircraft have been posted to Mechanical Turk - see the following link: http://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=J0XZ58STDWJZ5QY4F9M0

I have also located a blog site operated by the folks who have been organizing this effort: http://openphi.net/tenacious/
- They have posted quite a few updates and insights into the nature of the imagery and ongoing effort

I was delinquent in posting this pic from the 2007 ESRI FedUC...



A group of colleagues from the USEPA contracting world - From left to right: Myself, Jessica Zichichi (Innovate!), Jack Dangermond, Claudia Benesch (CSC - Agency Central Support) and Catherine Harness (CSC - GeoData Gateway Lead)

This was the reception at the Organization of American States - and yes, that is a map on my necktie...

The MAPPS lawsuit, to clarify provisions of the Brooks act, as they pertain to geospatial, mapping and surveying activities has been postponed from this Friday to 2/9, per Adena Shutzberg at Directions Magazine - it will be interesting to see how this all pans out.