Surveying, Mapping and GIS

EPA ARRA Mapper

2010-12-02T21:20:00.001-05:00

Since joining EPA I've been engaged in a wide variety of projects and efforts - one which we are currently getting out the door is an upgraded mapper for EPA projects funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), otherwise known as Stimulus or the Recovery Act.

The major categories of projects receiving EPA funding via ARRA include Superfund Hazardous Waste Cleanup, Leaking Underground Storage Tanks, Clean Water State Revolving Fund (typically wastewater treatment), Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (potable water), National Clean Diesel Campaign, and Brownfields.

The idea was to provide more granular data across the various programs where EPA has been getting ARRA funding to projects.

The mapper reports on a quarterly basis, in concert with the ARRA reporting requirements, and was built on the ESRI Flex API. As a quick overview, it shows statewide figures, as choropleth map, with summary tables:

Visitors can click on the menu to view awards by program category, or to view all awards, for example:

The pushpins indicating awards can then be selected, and info boxes will pop up with the details. In the example below, we asked the mapper to show "Chelsea, MA" and turned on Clean Diesel awards, and clicking on the map pin, we get the goods, two awards for Chelsea (note, spelling of "Collabrative" comes directly from the database):

This application should improve transparency, with the direct intent of showing tangible benefit to users in showing what's going on right at the community level. As for lessons learned, the technology was far less of a challenge than the learning curve of how government works, and navigating my way through various EPA offices and stakeholders and gaining their acceptance and participation. My many thanks to all those who helped out.

FEA, CPIC, LoB, and Strategic Alignment...

2010-11-14T08:59:00.001-05:00

Since joining a federal agency and becoming a national program manager of a federal IT investment, I have been navigating various things like Capital Planning and Investment Control (CPIC), Line of Business (LoB) initiatives, Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA), and other pieces – there is certainly no shortage of process and documentation required throughout the lifecycle as systems are planned, designed, built, maintained and decommissioned. However, for all of its compliance documentation, metrics and matrices, I still think there are a number of core disconnects.

CPIC and LoB initiatives should inform on investments, and align investments. One area where I see inadequate trackability is in mission support. Each and every IT investment should be able to map to a matrix of mission drivers – such as Agency Strategic Plan elements, such as stated priorities and core initiatives within the agency, such as specific laws and mandates which the Agency is charged with carrying out. In turn, these mappings can be aggregated and examined for alignment. If for example, if the mission objective is to assess the impact of a specific activity on a population, then there is now opportunity to understand how many IT investments relate to that assessment, and one can then get any potentially disparate and disconnected activities aligned and harmonized, to leverage each, take advantage of opportunities to share things like data, models and infrastructure instead of having stovepiped activities where each party reinvents the wheel independently of the next.

Additionally, functional components should be mapped to as well. For example, data requirements, modeling requirements, geodata hosting and web services needs, and so on. These can help to inform on infrastructure investments – for example, being able to build a robust, shared, scalable environment with load balancing and fault tolerance instead of having a series of fragile, disconnected stovepipes with no scalability or fault tolerance. It can help toward paradigm shifts like leveraging cloud capacity and other types of things which can provide cost savings – which can then hopefully be driven toward innovation and new development, rather than more stovepipes and reinventing of the wheel.

As I have a background which straddles many disciplines, when I hear “Enterprise Architecture” it conceptually still goes back to old-school, bricks-and-mortar architecture, where a building is built from a blueprint.

Consider the enterprise as a house. You have several different rooms in it, serving different functions, yet for it to function effectively as a house, the work of the architect is to draft up the elements that bring it all together into a functional, cohesive whole. That means, the structural members to support the second floor as it is placed on the first floor, that means the stairs and corridors needed to connect the rooms, that means the placement of the rooms, to give them doors and windows to daylight where needed, the arrangement of them relative to each other and to the corridors and stairs, to ensure good flows where needed, the wiring to provide light, power and communications, the plumbing to bring water to and from where it’s needed, the HVAC systems to regulate heat and cold, and so on.

Yet, for all the talk in IT EA communities, most organizations largely still function as a series of disconnected, disjointed rooms. The EA effort should serve as the master blueprint. It needs to be informed by those who need each room, but in turn also needs to inform on how everything connects and how things flow from one room to the next, and where the wiring and plumbing is, and how to connect things and create meaningful flows, relationships and functionalities. For the developer, Enterprise Architecture should inform Solution Architecture, and where gaps are identified, that should in turn go back and inform Enterprise Architecture. The loops need to be closed. All of these things, FEA, CPIC, LoB and others, need to move beyond paperwork and compliance exercises, to becoming more robustly informed and cohesive, serving as the master blueprints and roadmaps.

In terms of metrics to gauge success, the best metrics would be those which demonstrate that alignment on mission, function and coordination have been achieved.

MyPropertyInfo

2010-09-10T10:54:00.000-04:00

As I have been ramping up on EPA's Facility Registry System over the last couple of months since coming on board with EPA, I have also had the opportunity to work on a number of other projects - one recent one that's rolled out is MyPropertyInfo.

The most truly fun thing about working in EPA's Office of Environmental Information is that they are involved in a lot of collaborative, cross-cutting efforts, so I get exposed to a lot of different things across the agency. As an example of this, in working with EPA's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) officer Larry Gottesman and FOIA staff, they were pursuing an idea of greater accessibility toward reducing FOIA requests, such as in the case of common requests for data which actually is already being published by EPA, but which may be scattered across separate locations in the agency.

One example of this is MyPropertyInfo - http://epa.gov/myproperty/

Here, we sought to address frequently-asked questions about properties. This type of basic background and screening is highly useful and important to bankers, realtors, prospective buyers, developers and others who deal in real estate and properties - yet, to gather all of the relevant information about a property, one might have to visit multiple sites across EPA, or to submit a FOIA request and wait to have EPA gather the data from those disparate sources. So what we did in the case of MyPropertyInfo is quickly roll out a tool that basically just gathers that existing content in one place, and additionally provide it in printer-friendly form.

Thought it was essentially just screen-scraping (as we do not directly control some of the source reporting systems), it was nonetheless a quick and effective way of getting questions answered. Moving foward, it again demonstrates also that using approaches that can provide easily integratable content like web services in addition to traditional HTML reports, content can be even more elegantly repurposed and reused in a variety of effective ways to answer business questions - with web services associated with the reporting engines, the widgets and iPhone apps for these types of applications will virtually build themselves. For example, real estate sites like Zillow.com would also be able to dynamically pull environmental profile information about properties of interest to prospective buyers - hopefully a vision for the future at EPA.

Here is some additional perspective on MyPropertyInfo as posted to EPA's Greenversations blog by the FOIA office's Wendy Schumacher: http://blog.epa.gov/blog/2010/08/30/my-property-info/

Traffic Congrestion, LBS and ITS

2010-08-14T12:33:00.002-04:00

For something along a different theme, given my extremely late (1:30AM) arrival back in Pennsylvania last night, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and Congestion Management.

Previously, I had been involved in a few projects involving Intelligent Transportation Systems - and yet, it still amazes me how far behind we are in terms of even basic approaches. Last night, I was stuck in traffic due to an unfortunate accident ahead on the roadway. My immediate observations: A state trooper was sitting on the side of the road, with his mandate to alert drivers and monitor the end of the queue for problems. However, where he was situated, as so often happens, was past the last exit available where motorists could get off the interstate and find an alternative.

Had he been situated ahead of that last exit, I and so many other motorists with onboard GPS could quite easily have hit our "DETOUR" buttons and navigated around the congestion rather than end up in the midst of it. But instead, we end up stuck, and the congestion and queue only grows and grows. Poor congestion management.

Secondly, a police cruiser sitting on the side of the road certainly alerts drivers of something. However, it doesn't give any specificity whatsoever. Perhaps, it was just that the trooper stopped a speeder, et cetera. Often they are sitting well behind the congestion queue, and sometimes it's not immediately evident that there is congestion ahead. Opportunity for informing motorists is lost, and the situation is not mitigated and managed as well as it could be.

It would seem to me that there are any number of relatively simple ways to address and mitigate congestion as a result of an accident or other similar traffic event - we certainly have ample technologies available. For example, a portable variable message board that could rapidly be deployed by troopers (as in the photo), or other alerts. There are numerous Variable Message Sign (VMS) boards along interstate corridors, yet amazingly, to this day, they still are largely uncoordinated, where messaging is not propagated along the corridor across district or state boundaries. Highway officials still seem to not recognize that roadways are functionally networks, that internal administrative boundaries are not appropriate barriers as far as motorists are concerned.

It would also seem that protocols like CAP messaging, GeoRSS and others could and should be leveraged, and combined with very simple, wireless digital broadcast technologies, aligned to highway advisory radio beacon broadcasts, to provide simple, low-cost means of transmitting location-based information to in-dash receivers, GPS units and so on. Certainly some such systems exist, however via subscription, or at additional cost to the price of the receivers, and so on - however, perhaps a better business model for such as broadcast system could operate via public-private partnerships, where operators of hotels, restaurants and amenities could fund the system by providing basic information about available attractions and amenities when there are no highway incidents. A perfect case for Location-based service (LBS) technologies. This does not have to be a costly, complicated thing. We already have all of the ingredients and have had them for several years.

Locational Data Policy and Tools

2010-08-07T11:22:00.002-04:00

As I've posted previously, one of the newest hats I now wear is that I'm now the national program manager for EPA's Facility Registry System (FRS), where I am collecting and managing locational data for 2.9 million unique sites and facilities across states, tribes, and territories - I'm certainly excited about being able to contribute some good ideas toward enhancing its' capabilities, holdings, and collaborating and integrating with others across government.

A large part of this is data aggregated from other sources, such as data collected and maintained by state and tribal partners, EPA program offices and others, and then shared out via such means as EPA's Exchange Network. Historically, FRS has done what it can to improve data quality on the back end, by providing a locational record which aggregates up from the disparate underlying records, with layers of standardization, validation, verification and correction algorithms, as well as working with a national network of data stewards. This has iteratively resulted in vast improvements to the data, correcting common issues such as reversed latitude and longitude values, omitted signs in longitudes, partial or erroneous address fields and so on.

However, it still remains that there remain some issues with the data, with the weakness being in how data is collected, imposing limits on what kinds of backend correction can be performed. In most cases, data is captured via basic text fields. The further upstream that the data can be vetted and validated, the better, in particular, right at the point of capture, for example instances where facility operators themselves enter the data.

So, here is the notion - a toolbox of plug-and-play web services and reusable code to replace the basic free-text field, which allows real-time parsing and verification of data being entered. Part of that may involve using licensed commercial APIs to help with address verification and disambiguation, for example, the Bing Maps capability to deal with an incomplete address or one with a typo, such as "1200 Contitutoin, Wash DC" the web services would try to match these and return "Did you mean 1200 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC?"

Between suggesting an alternative which attempts to correct partial and/or incorrect addresses, and providing an aerial photo as a visual cue for verification, it improves the likeihood that the user is going to doublecheck their entry and either accept the suggested alternative or type in a corrected address, along with having the visual verification in the aerial photo. Notionally, if the aerial photo view shows a big open field where there should be a large plastics plant, they would stop and wonder, and perhaps doublecheck the address they had entered.

That's certainly a good first step, and is something I'm currently looking to promote on the short term. In talking to some of my EPA stakeholders, they are very interested in this, and I will look at developing some easy-to-integrate code for them to use.

But, to think more long-range, let's take that further - from the large universe of facilities that I deal with, not all things populating "address" fields are conventional street addresses. For example, remote mining activities in western states might instead be represented on the PLSS system, such as "Sec 17, Twp 6W Range 11N", or rural areas might simply use "Mile 7.5 on FM 1325 S of Anytown" or "PR 155 13.5km west of Anytown".

Again, perhaps there are ways to improve this, a longer-term discussion, but certainly the ingredients exist. A first step might be to look at developing guidance on consistent ways to have folks enter this type of data, for example "Sec 17, Twp 6W Range 11N" versus S17-T6W-R11N, along with developing parsers that can understand and standardize the possible permutations that might be entered, including entry of section and meridian info, e.g. NW1/4 SW1/4 SE1/4 SEC 22 T2S R3E MDM for an entry that includes drilldown into quarter sections to identify a 10-acre parcel, also referencing the Mount Diablo Meridian.

Currently, there isn't any truly standardized way of entering and managing these, but perhaps there is a role in the surveying community toward standardized nomenclature to assist in database searching and indexing. Coincident with this is potential collaborative development of ways to approach parsing and interpreting nonstandardized entries, along with leveraging existing PLSS data and geocoders built toward translating these into locational extents, such as a bounding box, along with provisioning it with appropriate record-level metadata describing elements such as method of derivation and accuracy estimate.

In concert with this, obviously, should be an effort toward providing linkages to actual field survey polygonal data, as appropriate if it's a parcel-oriented effort (for example, for superfund site cleanup and brownfields), and where such data is available.

Similarly, one could collaboratively develop guidance and parsers for dealing with the route-oriented elements, for example "Mile 7.5 on FM 1325 S of Anytown" or "PR 155 13.5km west of Anytown" toward standardizing these types of fields as well - for example, whether or not to disambiguate or expand FM as "Farm to Market Route", what order to place elements consistently.

And then, one would want to leverage routing software to measure the distance along the given route from the given POI, toward providing a roughly-geocoded locational value to get in the ballpark. And again, one would want a web service that does this to return any appropriate metadata on source, error and so on.

PLSS locations, mileage-along-a-route locations, and things like this are just a sampling of the universe of possibilities. And as I point out, there are bits and pieces of tools that can do some of these things, but they are currently scattered and uncoordinated, and community-oriented, collaborative efforts can help to pull some of these together.

Atop these, as mentioned above one could also provide additional pieces, such as tools for visual verification, at the most basic level, or, if collection mandates permit, tools to allow the user to drop a pushpin on an aerial photo feature, drag a bounding box, or digitize a rough boundary - (and most ultimately of course, a means of entering and/or uploading survey data for field-located monumentation points, boundary topology, and record description data).

From a federal perspective, EPA is certainly not the only agency that needs some of these types of tools, and EPA is certainly not the only agency that needs internal policy and/or best practices guidance on how to deal with how these types of values are best represented in databases. It would make sense, from an Enterprise Architecture perspective, for the federal community to collaborate, along with state, tribal and local governments. Similarly, I would think that there are a lot of non-profits, academia and private sector entities that have a big stake in locational data improvement that could benefit from improved data that would be facilitated by such tools, along with benefitting from such tools for data collection themselves.

For my part, I will try to do what I can toward leading the charge on these, and to leverage any existing efforts already out there. Additionally, given the capabilities that FRS has, I am looking to continue to integrate across internal stakeholders as well as external agencies toward being able to aggregate, link and reshare, with a process where data is iteratively improved and upgraded collectively.

I'd certainly be interested in getting thoughts, ideas and perspectives from others on this.

Federal Geospatial Platform

2010-06-25T13:31:00.002-04:00

"In 2010 and 2011, Federal data managers for geospatial data will move to a portfolio management approach, creating a Geospatial Platform to support Geospatial One-Stop, place-based initiatives, and other potential future programs. This transformation will be facilitated by improving the governance framework to address the requirements of State, local and tribal agencies, Administration policy, and agency mission objectives. Investments will be prioritized based on business needs. The Geospatial Platform will explore opportunities for increased collaboration with Data.gov, with an emphasis on reuse of architectural standards and technology, ultimately increasing access to geospatial data."

- President’s Budget, Fiscal Year 2011

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to attend one day of the multi-day National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC) meeting in Shepherdstown, WV - Though I had attended a few of their meetings previously, the thing that I was most interested in for this particular meeting is discussion of the emergent Geospatial Platform. As the NGAC is a FACA committee, non-member involvement and participation is limited, though was able to get to get a sense of things... The intent has a lot of potentialities, such as being able to provide more robust visualization and geospatial tool capabilities such as geocoding services, to augment ongoing Data.Gov efforts, as well as support ongoing FGDC initiatives.

The sense I got is that thre are many pieces still undefined, many things not yet prioritized, and so on, and discussion of options and alternatives was a big focus of the discussion that I sat in on - and one big challenge yet ahead is refinement of governance structure - as to how its' strategic vision and board of directors would be structured and at what level of government, where its' managing partner and operational/tactical component would reside. These things are being discussed in iterative fashion, as they develop their roadmap.

Some interesting thoughts and ideas, not new, but again being raised - of the need for a strategic ownership stake in geospatial data at the White House level, e.g. a Federal GIO to reside within OMB, who would have the authority and teeth to centrally direct and manage geospatial policy in executive agencies at the federal level. Another question, at the operations level, of commoditized geospatial technology platforms which could be shared across all federal agencies - a federal geocoding service, for example, or a geospatial data services hosting platform where individual stewards in agencies which might not have their own robust geospatial infrastructure could upload data and register it, apply symbologies, et cetera to be served as fed-wide robust, shared OGC web services, and so on.

What shape this will take is yet to be determined, and it sounds like the plan is to firm up the roadmap internally within the NGAC and then circulate it more broadly when v3 of the Roadmap is completed.

More about the Geospatial Platform:

Geospatial Platform: http://www.geoplatform.gov/
GeoPlatform - More Information: http://www.geoplatform.gov/more_geoplatform.html
BP Oil Spill Visualization (using NOAA's ERMA platform) on GeoPlatform.Gov: http://www.geoplatform.gov/gulfresponse/index.html

Other coverage, items and discussion:

Think Globally, Code Locally

2010-05-23T10:35:00.000-04:00

One of those key philosophical notions that circulates among many stewardship and advocacy groups is to think globally, act locally - The same notion can be applied in best practices in solutions architecture, requirements development, and coding principles, where it applies to so many things - in terms of true enterprise architecture and integration approaches, in terms of data stewardship, and for public sector agencies, in terms of transparency and open government.

Each and every day, folks craft queries for accessing complex data, they write business logic for analysis and so on - and more often than not, they then wrap it up with a nice glossy user interface. MVC and many other best practices applied, check... But here is where another key opportunity to really open things up is lost.

Let's take the example of state or federal agencies - many of them are doing great things, in terms of publishing datasets (Open Government Intitiative, Data.gov, Geospatial One-Stop, State Cartographers' Offices and Clearinghouses, and so on). They are doing great things in terms of reporting tools, web queries and lookups, and mapping and visualization tools. But... As wonderful as all of these efforts are, imagine how powerful it would be if these could be linked and integrated, from agency to agency? Imagine, for example, applications pulling in data from NOAA, NASA, EPA and other agencies? Imagine state environmental agencies pulling in information from federal environmental agencies - the power of open government and transparency begins to multiply and become more and more powerful by orders of magnitude.

So what are we talking about? Web services and APIs. Not even anything complex, it could be as simple as REST and JSON, as in the space of public-facing applications, for a vast majority of data-centric or analytical applications, we are generally talking about read-only, non-transactional, nonsensitive data. Why web services or APIs? Isn't something like publishing datasets to Data.gov enough? Publishing datasets to someplace like Data.gov is fine - but consider this - if someone downloads your data and integrates it into their own standalone application, what control do you then have over it? Precious little. When you refresh your database afterward and post a new dataset, is there any assurance that they will come back and get a fresh copy and keep up to date, or do you begin to incur a liability of your data being out of sync as it is represented in someone else's public-facing application? Absolutely.

If, on the other hand, you post an easy-to-integrate RESTful service or API, you make it far easier to have your data current.

Criticisms? Yes, there are many, but we can look at those as well - some might push back and say, "is there sufficient bandwidth and infrastructure for hosting those web services?" The mere fact of web services in and of themselves generally incur no more new bandwidth or infrastructure demand than the public-facing web applications that you are already building. So if that's really a concern, then maybe you shouldn't be building ANY applications. The argument is generally a red herring.

Security concerns? Same deal - you are already exposing the data and business logic via your web applications - if you think the web service poses new security concerns, then perhaps you haven't adequately thought through your EXISTING security. So another red herring.

"They will come and take all our data!" - Again, why would they, if they know they can grab it dynamically and that you will be assured of their reliance on them by continually posting data refreshes?

What about poorly-behaved queries against your web service that might bring your database to its' knees? Same thing - those are things that really should be handled in the logic for your existing application. Better yet, think ahead a bit more and provide options - query filters, such as by a data attribute or domain, bounding boxes for geodata, and so on.

So - in conclusion, this type of thinking can up developers' approaches to how they deal with security, queries and filters, and so on, and generally tighten things up - but in the meantime, also provide a tremendous opportunity for data sharing and integration, whether within an agency, company or office, fostering collaboration across departments and programs, or outside of one's own organization, fostering collaboration across agencies and levels of government, across industry, academia and so on.

An individual organization can try all they like to anticipate all of the public's thoughts, needs, interests, they can try to walk in their stakeholders' footsteps - but ultimately, one can never fully anticipate all possibilities, and there are a lot of bright people out there with many untapped ideas - so why not open it up and facilitate that larger collective brainstorm of ideas by providing services ready to integrate? Let's take things like the Open Government Initiative and other good things ongoing in government and elsewhere to the next level - dynamic, services and resources oriented architecture...

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency...

2010-04-05T17:52:00.002-04:00

My big news to report: After 6 years at Synergist Technology Group, Inc., I am changing directions. I have accepted a position at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Information. I will be starting at USEPA the week of April 26th, 2010.

I greatly enjoyed the work I was doing at Synergist, having been involved in everything from business development to writing code and everything in between, supporting geospatial, mapping and integration efforts to support diverse business areas from environmental protection to emergency response to transportation to military and intelligence applications. I enjoyed the diversity.

I have worked in private sector, consulting for over 20 years, but all throughout this, have always been solutions-focused, and have always had a keen interest in supporting the core mission of the agencies that I worked with - though, the downside of private sector consulting is always in the vagaries of its' occasionally fragmentary nature, with competetive bidding and teaming arrangements often dynamic and changing.

So, coming into Federal service brings a whole gamut of new things. In some ways, I will get to dig deep into some of my core passions of environmental protection, geospatial technology and integration - and I look forward to this. However, it will surely bring many other challenges along with it - but I am up for any challenge.

My new role will, among other things, involve support to EPA's Facility Registry System (FRS), which is a repository for facilities data for 2.5 million unique facilities regulated under a variety of environmental laws and statutes. Herein, I see opportunity for further geo-enablement of Agency business processes, along with continued integration potential, to put hooks and eyes into a variety of other processes for ever-improving analytical, reporting and querying capabilities, cross-media, cross-agency, cross-domain, cross-dimension, as well as facilitating further partnership-building, between local, state, and federal government, tribes, academia, industry and the public, and supporting data publishing, OGI and transparency initiatives.

I anticipate I will also be pulled into a variety of other geospatial efforts across EPA as well... In many ways, I will essentially continue to do many of the things I already did - only, from the other side of the fence. In terms of physical logistics, I have already essentially been commuting to Washington DC for 6 years - though, now having a permanent duty station there, I can now consider getting a place to stay, as opposed to living out of hotels and bouncing between various locales as I have been.

So - mixed emotions - I will certainly miss working with Synergist, but likewise, there is a great team at EPA, and I am sure I will have a great time there.

ESRI and Volunteered Geographic Information

2010-02-20T10:36:00.006-05:00

Once again, I greatly enjoyed this year's ESRI Federal User Conference - I was able to make it to several sessions Thursday and Friday... Perhaps will post more on this, as time permits.

As he has done before, Jack Dangermond solicited feedback and questions in his FedUC wrapup following Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board chairman Earl E. Devaney's excellent talk - I was happy to pitch in and asked him my own question about ESRI's vision for volunteered geographic information / crowdsourcing / participatory GIS...

This got Jack Dangermond excited, it seems he has been thinking about the concept, though even with his response, we need to get beyond the initial technical hurdles - and in talking to some other ESRI folks during and after the conference, I am happy to hear that some other ESRI staffers are thinking about this as well.

The thing is this: It's not really about ESRI tools importing OpenStreetMap, GeoRSS or Twitter feeds, and so on. Mere import and merge with your own data is really just a tiny part of it.

The true power of VGI is in its dynamic nature - for example, in the case of Haiti response, there were dozens of volunteers all providing concurrent updates, imports and edits to OpenStreetMap, as well as hundreds consuming the map data. The state of the map changed, sometimes radically, from hour to hour, and often even from minute to minute. As one example, an individual on the ground in Haiti sent an SMS message to Ushahidi with GPS coordinates for two locales where supplies could be airdropped or landed via improvised helicopter landing zone. The maps were blank in those two areas. Yet, within minutes, I and other OSM mappers pulled up the declassified DMA maps, DigitalGlobe and other imagery that had been donated by various providers, and sketched in the roads, trails, streams, buildings and other culture and planimetrics for those communities in need.

Leveraging those dynamic updates is one key piece to making the most of VGI. That means, going beyond import, to being able to consume and integrate the data on the fly.

The second piece is that VGI is not a one-way street. To use Haiti again as an example, dozens of disparate agencies are all using OpenStreetMap - several are in turn actively contributing back as well. Each is then building up on the work of the others, and the efforts of each resource leverages successive investments of the prior effort. This is particularly useful for resource-constrained organizations and volunteer efforts. As an example of this, as a member of Engineers Without Borders, I have been trying to promote adoption of OpenStreetMap for mapping efforts - e.g. one effort providing potable water can then dovetail into another organization's efforts to do health assessments, and so on.

As to cultural and organizational resistance to crowdsourcing, accuracy and reliability - that can be handled via record-level metadata. The double-edged sword of OpenStreetMap is in its use of key/value pairs for attribute data, as opposed to rigidly structured tables and columns, which on one hand can lead to folksonomies with inconsistent tagging, but on the other hand can handle rapid, flexible, ad-hoc changes to accomodate new needs, as well as allow complex representations via a collection of tags - which in turn can then also be cross-walked to other agencies' data models for interaction and ETL. While OpenStreetMap, on its' face, leaves much up to the individual contributors, best practices can and should be implemented. All edits are tracked in OpenStreetMap, which provides some basic metadata as to who and when, however more robust means of reverting adverse changes would be useful. Similarly, best practices are generally communicated via wiki, such as adding tags for source (e.g. digitized from DigitalGlobe imagery, with date). One of my comments in my followup to Jack Dangermond was that some of the governance/user guidance can be put directly into the tools, such as via JOSM, Merkaartor or Potlatch presets and templates.

Some may push back and suggest that shared community platforms like OpenStreetMap lack accuracy or reliability. The beauty of it is that if you don't like it, you can fix it.

And another goal... Dynamic integration of community platforms like OpenStreetMap beyond just base mapping and visualization, to be incorporated into modeling and analysis, via crosswalks and semantic interoperability.

I am happy to see this is something of interest to Jack Dangermond and ESRI, and hope that the bidirectionality and dynamic nature of VGI are fully embraced down the road.

Synergy: The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Live Blogging from FedUC, Day 1 (er... not really)

2010-02-17T18:51:00.010-05:00

This will be as close as I get to live blogging from the ESRI Federal User Conference, Day 1.

Problem is, I missed it.

Unfortunately, as my day went, I was tied up in a meeting in Baltimore and didn't get back to DC until the tail end of the reception.

So that should make this the shortest wrapup of FedUC Day 1.

I heard there was some tasty sushi at the reception, but by the time I arrived, it was already gone... However, having not had anything to eat since morning, I did inhale a handful of various hors d'ouvres and a Heineken...

To catch up, I did monitor a few assorted tidbits via Twitter throughout the day- some of these struck me:

Buzzword: VGI. Volunteered Geographic Information. a/k/a crowdsourcing. All pointing to the OpenStreetMap paradigm- Given the phenomenal success of OpenStreetMap in supporting base mapping for humanitarian efforts in Haiti, along with the fluid and adaptable nature of its key/value pair model, which was utilized for tagging crisis-related features, such as landslides, collapsed buildings, road obstacles, refugee camps and so on - how can one NOT talk about OpenStreetMap? Great to hear about OpenStreetMap being used in ArcGIS. But... the pundit in me asks, how transparent is this? Is it "importing OSM data"? That's great for many applications. But what of emergency response applications? Given the dynamic nature of OpenStreetMap, "import" might not cut it. How about direct, native OSM support? That I need to investigate further. But then, comes the other, far more important piece of VGI - the participatory piece? Can/will ArcGIS 10 support direct editing of OSM? And outside of OSM, how much robust ArcGIS 10 capability for participatory GIS exists right out of the box?
Offshoot: Citizen-centric science. I understand Audubon demonstrated eBird - interesting - a year ago, I contributed a proof-of-concept to the eBio conference in London, demonstrating harnessing social media such as Twitter to allow citizen science participation to allow folks to record observations of various species in the wild, toward such ends as assessing biodiversity, invasive species, and so on. I tied this in with web services such as GBIF's lookup services to, for example, translate between common names and scientific name, and so on. This, in turn, tied in to other sources such as Flickr, and combined, wherever possible, with available geographic information, for providing feeds and display in, for example Bing Maps or other platforms. Great to see this coming along... I'd be interested in looking at the Audubon effort more closely, along with further exploring the model for vetting and validating inputs.
The Cloud... Evidently a big focus on cloud hosting, the new partnership between ESRI and Amazon, and "rent ArcGIS Server by the hour". I think this is an interesting model and have been harping on this for years. Geodata services hosting at this point is nothing esoteric, and could/should essentially be commoditized *cough* GeoServer *cough*. But... where the less-well-charted and more-interesting territory still lies is not in just serving up data. ArcGIS Server is frankly often too much tool to waste on just serving up map layers and tiles. Where I see the opportunity for ArcGIS server is in true ANALYSIS, MODELING and so on. Web-based geoanalytical services and geoprocessing services. We need a good model, and some good strategic thinking in the community of how the long-range picture of all of that will look.
ArcGIS for iPhone... That was another feature of ArcGIS 10 noted by some who attended the Plenary... Sounds great, but... I want to know more about how it operates, and more importantly, how customizable, configurable, how many features and functionalities it supports. Hopefully someone can shed some light there...

Even for showing up at the last minute, I briefly ran into @jfrancica, @donatsafe, @MikeHardy and @sturich from Pen Bay Media and got to say hi to them, as well as various other friends - I know there are plenty more friends, tweeple and geobloggers in town this week - I also did see @pbissett and @cageyjames from afar - on locating the @weogeo booth, it still had a few people milling about, so I unfortunately didn't get to chat...

More to follow... Tomorrow, my luck should be better, and I plan to be able to stay for the whole day - and for #geoglobaldomination afterward. Hopefully others will be posting their recaps, observations and scuttlebutt as well... At this point, the handful of hors d'oevres and beer in my otherwise empty tummy are looking for company.

ESRI Federal User Conference 2010

2010-02-15T09:15:00.004-05:00

I am looking forward to spending this week in Washington DC, despite any further threats of snow (1"-3" expected tonight)... Living in Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1 to 3 inches of snow is no big thing. But the 30+ that hit the Washington area last week are astounding. Hopefully, much of the prior accumulation is now under control.

Despite the snow, I laugh in the face of the snow and am still anticipating a decent turnout at the 2010 ESRI Federal User Conference (FedUC). At present, it sounds like a lot of my own federal colleagues are still planning on attending, as are various friends, geobloggers, geotweeple and so on... It has rapidly become the east-coast version of the San Diego ESRI International User Conference, with solid attendance not just by feds, but by a wide variety of others as well. The agenda, again a mix of technical GIS topics and where GIS is being used in a wide variety of business domains, along with a collection of special interest group meetings. I will generally be following an environmental science track, along with a few excursions into other areas.

It is being held once again at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC, February 17-19th, although I will be arriving today, for various meetings around Washington today and tomorrow, and a few throughout the FedUC as well. Free for feds to attend, relatively cheap for others...

I hope to be able to post here and there from the FedUC, depending on connectivity and power availability (my workhorse laptop no longer holds a charge as it used to) - as well as the periodic blips from Twitter...

And if you are in the DC area, but are NOT attending the ESRI Federal User Conference, then here's a definite to keep an eye out for: #geoglobaldomination - essentially, just an ad-hoc, twitter-organized, vendor-neutral, platform-agnostic gathering of geospatial folks getting together over a few beers to discuss esoterics and idiosyncrasies of the geospatial business...

It will be fun!

Pennsylvania Geospatial Coordination Council

2010-01-18T21:09:00.006-05:00

Last week, I attended a discussion session sponsored by the Pennsylvania Mapping and GIS Consortium (PaMAGIC) and facilitated by John Palatiello, regarding standing up a Geospatial Coordination Council as a formal governmental advisory body for Pennsylvania. This is not a new concept, it is something that PaMAGIC has been pursuing for several years, it has been discussed several times prior at the PA GIS Conference, and has been introduced in the legislature several times, in various incarnations. It was last introduced in 2007-2008 by Representative Russ Fairchild as House Bill 1304.

The discussion session was held at the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors' office just outside Harrisburg, and roughly 60 people attended in person and by phone - an excellent cross section of state government, county and local government, private sector, utilities and others. I did not, however, see any representation by the Pennsylvania Society of Land Surveyors or Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers. Similarly, I do not see a spot designated on the proposed Council for these organizations.

I have posted two documents - one is a summary of the meeting, the second is the newest version of the proposed bill - the GIS community is invited to provide comment, by the end of this week, to PaMAGIC President Glenn McNichol, gmcnichol -at- dvrpc.org.

What does give me more optimism in this iteration is that there appears to be additional championing of this cause coming from the Governor's office. It is anticipated that Rep. Fairchild will be introducing the bill again, and I am hoping that the geospatial community will be able to rally around the effort, hopefully PaMAGIC will spearhead a good communications campaign with John Palatiello's help.

Mapping for Haiti Earthquake Response

2010-01-18T16:30:00.006-05:00

For the last few days I have been working on efforts to help Haiti earthquake response - part of this is mapping Haiti via OpenStreetMap. Currently, useful maps of Haiti are few and far between, in some case there are detailed maps for parts of the country and cities like Jacmel, but which are print maps (no digital edition exists), in many cases many decades old and outdated, in other instances the only maps which exist are small-scale, with limited detail. Commercial map platforms like Bing Maps, Google Maps and Yahoo vary greatly in their detail as well, and update cycles are slow - however, here, OpenStreetMap has been able to rapidly respond and provide very speedy and robust updates, to include capturing data about collapsed buildings, and so on.

Mikel Maron captures the speed and effectiveness of OpenStreetMap with these two screenshots of Port-Au-Prince, just before the earthquake and just after:

before:

after:

I would encourage any others who have time to contribute to get involved in this effort as well - editing can be done directly in OpenStreetMap via the 'edit' tab, which opens a web-based tool called Potlatch - or, a number of other tools are available as well. (You will need to register an account in order to edit - feel free to connect with me there as well - http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Dave%20Smith). The OpenStreetMap WikiProject Haiti page provides a lot of good information and frequent updates. A number of data sources have been assembled, together with fresh post-earthquake imagery generously donated by companies like DigitalGlobe.

For folks who are interested in more robust tools, I primarily use Merkaartor which runs best on Windows platforms - others favor JOSM which is Java-based and runs on any platform supporting Java.

With either of these, you should be able to use the download function to navigate to an area of Haiti (select a relatively small area) and then download the OSM data

Some have wrestled with getting the various available imagery and map services to work properly in JOSM and Merkaartor - they are both a bit clunky about accessing WMS servers - I can offer some of my tips gleaned from a little debugging using Fiddler2: For Merkaartor, use Tools -> WMS Servers Editor and create a new entry with the following URL: http://maps.geography.uc.edu/cgi-bin/mapserv?map=/home/cgn/public_html/maps/mapfiles/haiti.map&version=1.1.0&SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetMap? and show capabilities to access the DigitalGlobe CrisisEvent imagery (DG_crisis_event_service), select EPSG:4326 (only option available) and image/png and you should be able to go from there. If there is no image layer showing, go to Layers -> Add new image layer, and then right-click on the newly added image layer and select your newly-added WMS server for DigitalGlobe.

Digitization tasks are fairly intuitive - tools allow you to draw points, lines and polygons, as well as to create relations which allow multiple entities to be grouped together - however the absolute key to success is in proper use of tags to provide attribute values for any entities being created. These are generally intuitive as well, e.g. tag of highway, value of residential to turn a generic line into a residential road. It also helps to look at tagging of existing features, and to familiarize yourself with the features list - the OpenStreetMap wiki is searchable and quite useful. Finally, as terms of using the DigitalGlobe imagery, any data entered using their imagery should also be tagged with source=digitalglobe.

One of the other projects I have been working on is development of a set of tags that would be useful for emergency responders, relief and aid efforts - for this, I have started a wiki page http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php?title=Humanitarian_OSM_Tags- any comments and thoughts can be added to the wiki page.

--- Update: Jan 20 ---

To update, I wanted to also include reference to the video tutorial that Kate Chapman put together on mapping for Haiti, to help demystify the tools:

Thanks to Kate and all the other great folks contributing to the Haiti mapping efforts...

The "Antiquated" County Surveyor?

2010-01-07T16:51:00.010-05:00

In Pennsylvania, the position of County Surveyor was abolished decades ago. Elsewhere, some states do still have County Surveyors - yet where still in use, it has in some instances become politicized, or may have duties which are either murky, inconsistent from one place to another, or even a position without any duties. Many consider the position "antiquated".

I, however, think that perhaps the notion of County Surveyor needs to be revisited. Not just in a traditional sense of basic survey support functions, such as are performed by County Engineers, but also toward sound boundary data stewardship.

For example, many of my colleagues have struggled with finding accurate information about municipal boundaries, corners, information on annexations, and so on. These need sound stewardship. Here in Pennsylvania I have heard plenty of stories about vital records associated with municipal boundaries getting lost, falling into disrepair, and so on - without any sound stewardship or curation. I have heard plenty of stories about disputes and nebulous municipal boundary locations, with disparities into hundreds of feet, which in turn can impact property owners and a whole host of administrative bodies, with regard to taxation, school districts and so on.

Further, with the emergence of GIS for tax assessment, there is also a role for county surveyors - in collaboratively developing a robust cadastral framework together with the county tax assessor, county GIS department, municipal counterparts, private sector surveyors and engineers, and so on.

Here, the County Surveyor could be responsible for reviewing submitted plans, for working with other local surveyors toward getting surveyed parcels, subdivisions, rights-of-ways and so on tied to a consistent system of monumentation, via GPS and other means, and so on, tying deeds and land records data to GIS data - toward iteratively refining the cadastre toward providing ever-increasing degrees of accuracy and reliability. Similarly, the County Surveyor could work with his counterparts in adjoining counties collaboratively toward building and bolstering regional, and ultimately statewide partnerships such as PAMAP here in Pennsylvania, which was a collaborative effort toward leveraging investments for obtaining aerial imagery - similar approaches can be taken toward gathering a host of other core datasets and mapping, such as LIDAR data, hydrology, roads, utilities, buildings and structures, and so on.

This model exists in various forms, to varying degrees, in various locales - however generally in far more of a disconnected and ad-hoc fashion, with varying degrees of "antiquated" holdovers in culture, and varying degrees of forward-looking approach, such as those I advocate here. As to whether it should be an elected, appointed or other position - that's, however another matter which I don't particularly care to get into today.

I for one think it's worth looking at again...

(Photo: Benjamin W. Harrison, County Surveyor of Hamilton County, Ohio 1892-1902)

OpenStreetMap

2009-11-27T22:20:00.007-05:00

Recently one of my little side pursuits has been playing with OpenStreetMap. I had tinkered with it a little bit some time ago, and decided to revisit it.

For those who have not yet looked at OpenStreetMap, it is an open mapping framework, which utilizes public domain and crowdsourced data: http://www.openstreetmap.org/

Currently, there are a number of excellent tools available for working with OSM, such as the Potlatch web editing environment (within OSM, click on the 'edit' tab and away you go - it provides basic tools for adding points of interest, moving and deleting items, and adding attributes to existing points...

For a quick start, help information is available via a wiki here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Main_Page

With regard to other tools for editing OSM, I've been using Merkaartor in a Windows environment - http://www.merkaartor.org/ - several other users use a Java tool, JOSM - http://josm.openstreetmap.de/ - they both appear to have comparable feature sets.

Potlatch also provides some basic aerial photos, however Merkaartor and JOSM also allow users to work with WMS services, ESRI shapefiles and other sources of data toward fast digitization and capture of data.

On committing editing changes, new tiles are rendered rather quickly, allowing OSM to allow rapid development of base maps. Many people are also using GPS for track logs, which can then be uploaded to OSM as GPX to facilitate capture of trails and unmapped streets.

In many places, OSM is being used to create maps where there previously were none, such as in developing countries - this might serve efforts such as Engineers Without Borders - and I plan to revisit some of the GIS data I've collected up for places like Cameroon and Rwanda on behalf of EWB and look at getting it posted to OSM where appropriate.

Locally, I have been playing with the mapping for my own town - I found that it essentially just had some older TIGER data and Points of Interest (POIs) from USGS Geonames (GNIS). The road network came up jagged and inaccurate, many features missing, outdated and so on. Here's where local knowledge and feet on the ground comes into play in crowdsourcing.

I essentially started out with something that looks like this:

And have quickly been going to something that looks like this:
Here, I've been using orthophoto WMS services and other datasets for correcting streets and railroads, digitizing streams, putting in building footprints, parks, trails and amenities, and in just a short time am rapidly going to a useful and reasonably attractive map (note that this is still in progress). Further, the data can also be reused in a variety of ways, such as in Open Source routing services, using custom styling and symbology and so on.

I would highly encourage others to take a look and play with it: http://www.openstreetmap.org/ - however, with the caveat that it can be addicting...

Building a Headless Linux GeoServer Box

2009-08-30T08:40:00.022-04:00

I recently inherited some older machines and, to support some ongoing in-house experimentation I've been involved in, set them up as quick-and-dirty servers to help serve up geospatial data services - the approach I took was to build what are essentially minimal machines running linux in command-line mode, and then load GeoServer on them to serve the data - As I haven't blogged in a while, a friend suggested that posting a quick description of the mechanics of this might be a good thing to share for folks who haven't dipped their toes into Linux much.

As a disclaimer, I do not claim to profess guruhood when it comes to Linux or the other packages, this is not necessarily warranted to be a "hardened-and-tweaked" system for production, it's just some very quick and dirty steps toward standing up a headless Linux-based GeoServer instance. Note that this uses the default Jetty install - some folks prefer to run it under Tomcat, which is a different path.

So, I started out with the "minimal install CD" for Ubuntu 9.04, available here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD

Select a package appropriate for the CPU you are using - in my case, I chose Ubuntu 9.04 for 32-bit PC.

Burn the ISO and follow the prompts to install from the text-based installer as command-line interface (CLI). I essentially went with the defaults. You will want to have the machine connected to the internet so that it can identify and set up the network connection and grab any files needed during install.

Once you've installed a minimal version of Linux, you will be ready to configure and install the other goodies.

For remote administration, you may want to install OpenSSH- http://www.openssh.com/

The step for doing this is simple:

Log in to your Linux machine, and use the following command:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

This will download and install the OpenSSH package. For folks new to Linux, sudo tells it to use superuser privileges and permissions, and will ask for the root password used when you installed Linux. apt-get install uses the Advanced Package Tool to search for, retrieve and install software packages for Linux - this makes installation of much standard software in Linux easy.

For remote administration, you'll want to know how to reach your machine on the network - you can get the IP address by using the ifconfig command, which will give results something like this:

If you use Windows as a primary OS for your other work, you can then access the box from a Windows machine using an SSH client. I usually use PuTTY: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

From there, you can install PuTTY on your windows machine and then access the Linux box via command-line interface remotely for administration.

Plug in the IP address you got above:

and voila - you should be presented with a login screen for your linux box:

Tools like PuTTY are a great asset when it comes to administering boxes.

Side trip into remote administration aside, on to the REAL stuff: Installing GeoServer.

As a prerequisite, you will need to install the Java JDK - the GeoServer install page gives some recommendations, and here's how you would do it from the command line:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

Next, you will need to do some configuration of the JDK

Define the default Java to use:
sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun

And set the JAVA_HOME directory - this is doable in a number of ways, you may or may not want to define it in /etc/environment. I really like 'nano' as an editor for command-line Linux environments and it comes pre-installed in the minimal Ubuntu 9.04 version.

sudo nano /etc/environment

Again 'sudo' makes sure you have an appropriate privilege level to write the changes.

In nano, you can navigate around in the file using your arrow keys. Insert the following:

JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.14/

nano is intuitive and easy to use, following the commands along the bottom of the screen, e.g. ctrl-O to write changes, ctrl-X to exit.

Now on to the fun stuff - installing GeoServer.

GeoServer isn't available via apt - so you will need to download and unzip it to install it.

To be able to use ZIP archives, sudo apt-get install unzip will provide that capability. Next, you can download GeoServer.

Decide where you want to put it - some folks put it in /usr/local, or /usr/share, or if you are just experimenting, you could even leave it in your home directory - if putting it /usr/share in you would cd /usr/share

To download it, the download location given on the GeoServer page is http://downloads.sourceforge.net/geoserver/geoserver-1.7.6-bin.zip

Thus, to download it, use wget -

sudo wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/geoserver/geoserver-1.7.6-bin.zip

Then, unzip it

sudo unzip geoserver-1.7.6-bin.zip

and you should see the files extracting into a geoserver-1.7.6 folder.

Depending on where you put it and privileges held by the account you are using, you may also need to ensure you have ability to access and run GeoServer and that GeoServer can create any files it needs.

chown will change ownership, using -R makes it recursive through subfolders and files:

sudo chown -R geoserver_username geoserver-1.7.6 would change all files and directories to be owned by the user specified (geoserver_username as a placeholder).

You can list files using ls and navigate directories using cd.

You may or may not also then want to configure directories, such as defining the location of your GeoServer installation directory, e.g. GEOSERVER_HOME="/usr/share/geoserver-1.7.6" - again, you could do this using nano to edit /etc/environment - and there are also plenty of other ways to do this. You could also define other parts of GeoServer, such as GEOSERVER_DATA_DIR at this point as well - consult the GeoServer docs for details there... http://docs.geoserver.org/1.7.x/en/user/

Pretty much ready to run now... cd to the /bin directory under your geoserver install, e.g. cd /usr/share/geoserver-1.7.6/bin" and launch the startup script sh startup.sh and voila... You will see some program output scroll by,
ultimately resulting with an output line like

[main] INFO org.mortbay.log - Started SelectChannelConnector@0.0.0.0:8080 - this should tell you that the GeoServer Jetty container is up and listening for connections on 8080.

Now, open a browser, point it to your machine's IP address and enter it, pointing to port 8080 and the geoserver instance, e.g. http://192.168.2.125:8080/geoserver/ and after an initial "loading" screen you should get the GeoServer web interface:

And you are off to the races... Confirm that it works via the demos:

OpenLayers NYC Tiger map

Again, this is just meant to be a quick-and-dirty guide - enough to make even someone with minimal Linux experience armed and dangerous - and from here, there are many tweaks and customizations that can be made, such as optimizing performance, hardening and security and so on (there are plenty of discussions around the web and on listservs regarding this)- but I figured, I'd at least share this as a quick start for anyone looking to play with GeoServer in a minimal Linux environment...

National Environmental Information Exchange Network

2009-04-11T18:54:00.009-04:00

Here's another exiting bit of news - my firm is teamed with CGI Federal on USEPA's Software Engineering & Specialized Scientific Support (SES3) Contract, and we just got word that our team has won EPA's Central Data Exchange (CDX) task. This is very exciting news, CDX and the Exchange Network serve the community via facilitating exchange of a wide variety of environmental data between federal, state, tribal and other partnerships - it is a partnership that has proven itself to be tremendously effective and a great model for other types of data exchanges as well.

What I am particularly excited about is in leveraging the infrastructure that has already been built toward more robustly supporting geodata services, and ultimately toward enhanced reporting, metrics, analytical capabilities, and other capabilities to support feds, states, tribes and others in informed decisionmaking toward environmental policy and stewardship.

As such - we also anticipate we will be looking to grow as a company, and will be looking to hire additional technical gurus with capabilities in data exchange, data management and data flows, particularly if you have prior capabilities and knowledge of EPA's Exchange Network and CDX, and/or geospatial technology.

If you are interested, drop me a line at dsmith (at) synergist.tech.com

Microsoft Virtual Earth MVP

2009-04-11T17:58:00.005-04:00

The last several weeks have been quite hectic - busy on a number of fronts, which is a thankful thing, given the economy has slowed down a bit - but here is something quick that I wanted to share - I was awarded "Most Valuable Professional" (MVP) status by Microsoft for some of my ongoing work in Virtual Earth. Hierarchically, there isn't exactly a "VE MVP" program, but VE falls within Microsoft's broader Live Platform.

While I am quite thrilled and honored to be recognized by Microsoft, this is not to toot my own horn - but rather to get the word out to fellow geospatial developers that this is a great program, and to encourage them to look into it if they are doing integration work with VE. Only a week into it, I am finding that the program provides a tremendous amount of outreach, technical resources and other things, such as teleconferences, message boards, newsletters and other great technical information (awardees are required to sign and comply with an NDA) and best of all, a complimentary subscription to Microsoft's Developer Network (MSDN). There are also other great nontechnical benefits, such as $150 in credit at the Microsoft store and others which I am only just beginning to explore.

The way it works is that they receive nominations on a periodic basis - folks with talents in a given Microsoft technology can have friends nominate them - I would recommend putting together a portfolio of projects and related items, demonstrating innovation and engagement in the community, such as technical blog articles, engagement in online technical forums, any pro-bono work, and so on, and ask folks who are already MVPs to nominate you for your work. It's a great program, and a great idea from Microsoft toward promoting and evangelizing their platform that they are supporting their developer community so well.

With ESRI now partnering so tightly with Microsoft and supporting VE and Silverlight integration and other MS-oriented capabilities, this type of program is something that would be fabulous to see from them as well... (hint to Jack Dangermond...)

A Blast from the Past

2009-03-31T19:38:00.012-04:00

Some late night discussion with @GeoBabbler (Bill Dollins) and others last night led to this little flight of fancy... Bill was wondering if there were still any old copies of ArcView 1.0 around. Being a GIS geezer and a bit of a technology packrat, it turns out I still had a copy. Scary. As @FantomPlanet suggested, I reckon I have a bit of a Museum of GIS Antiquity going on - I believe I actually still have ancient copies of MapInfo, Atlas, GeoMedia, AutoCAD Map 1.0 and others floating around, plus quite a bit of hand-coded stuff from the days when COTS GIS was not even widely available.

Scarier yet, I still have copies of MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 around.

And... to top it off, I was actually able to lay my hands on them and try things out again.

Actually, what I did was stand up a VirtualBox instance and load up Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (ArcView 1 does not run on Win95 and up) and lo and behold, I then got ArcView 1.0 loaded up.

Prepare to enter the time machine and go back over 15 years into the past:

Above: Note the MDI interface

Above: Supplied "neweng.av" Tutorial data with choropleth mapping of New England...

Above: Version "1.0a"

Above: "maplewd.av" Tutorial data...

Supported data types: Arc/Info coverages, workspaces images (note .bil image supplied as part of the AV1.0 tutorial data), address coverage... Note also that shapefiles are NOT supported.

An interesting look at the past. A capable GIS viewing and querying tool, though no editing capability was supplied with 1.0. So... Why would one want to load up ArcView 1.0? You probably don't - probably best to live vicariously through my little adventure here. But... if you ever do, VirtualBox provides some dicey support for it (I did still get the divide By zero error initially, but eventually it started working) - and, you can actually still download a copy of 1.0 here: ftp://download1.geocomm.com/sd2/ARCVIEW10.ZIP and if you still have a copy of MS-DOS and Windows 3.1, you should be good to go.

Fun stuff! Brought back some memories...

[edit - removed the hyperlinks from the images (and thereby the preview snapshots, per comment below)... not sure why blogger wants to insert them by default anyways...]

ESRI Federal User Conference 2009 - Wednesday Highlights

2009-02-18T23:06:00.012-05:00

ESRI Federal User Conference Highlights

My recently-retired EPA friend and colleague Dave Wolf was the recipient of the "Making a Difference" award. Dave was involved in pioneering efforts in web mapping at EPA, with EnviroMapper and other efforts.

I unfortunately arrived a bit late, and missed the discussion of ArcGIS Explorer Build 900 - fortunately Jithen Singh has a good overview of it here: http://mandown.co.nz/esri/arcgis-explorer-build-900-showcased-at-the-esri-federal-user-conference-2009/

As I arrived, I noted that there was a big focus being put on integration between ArcGIS and remote sensing imagery capability, specifically with ENVI and IDL: http://www.ittvis.com/ProductServices/ENVI.aspx. Dan Zimble led into presentations showing some of this capability, particularly integration of IDL scripts with ModelBuilder

Other highlights and demos:

Time Layer Animation
Keyless License Manager capability
Microsoft Virtual Earth data as a subscription service
APIs: Demonstration of ArcGIS Server Flex API via Solar Boston map: http://gis.cityofboston.gov/solarboston/

In general, there seemed to be a big focus on themes mirroring very topical and current issues, particularly stimulus and infrastructure investment - in the case of Solar Boston, energy - another demonstrated "smart routing" for alternative-fuel vehicles, based on availability of CNG fuel.

Relating to water issues, another demonstration featuring the Flex API was for the Chesapeake Bay Program: http://wdcb10.esri.com/cbprl/

This showed use of federated assets, such as USGS stream gauges, USEPA STORET water quality data, and so on, and provides many tools for assessment, management and best practices for improving water quality for the Chesapeake Bay.

Colonel Alex Dornstauder of the US Army Corps of Engineers gave a good presentation on what USACE is doing relating to watersheds and water quality, using an approach of "3D decision space" and cross-agency "lenses". The approach utilized several different datasets and attributes with ModelBuilder to get a baseline assessment, which can then be utilized to in the target, with a collaborative vision to triage risk and prioritize investments to water quality.

(3d Decision Space image gleaned from a related presentation by Col. Dornstauder: http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/ieug08/papers/watershed_dornstauder.pdf)

The Colonel closed with an excellent quote from George Washington, "Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair"

There was also discussion and demos of

Situational Awareness tools built on the Flex API in the code gallery (http://resources.esri.com)
ArcGIS Mobile SDK, with a demonstration, showing field data collection, domains, subtypes, dropdown list support.
3D and network analysis - modeling of movement within a building in 3d (pedestrian egress via stairs, et cetera) - 3D proximity analysis
There was discussion of food safety, with a case study of the Hawaii Food Safety Center
Economic security and urban growth
Demonstration of ordinary least squares analysis vs. geographically weighted regression

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley gave an excellent discussion, hitting many excellent notes - with many things that resonated: "can you show me my house" - which he tied in well in how "show me my house" repeatedly resonated in context of geography with the many case studies he presented. Other highlights "Maryland is ESRI Customer #008" -
He discussed trying to remedy many of the issues facing Baltimore, "hopeless & vacant hearts" and how CityStat http://www.baltimorecity.gov/government/citistat/ and iMap http://maps.baltimorecity.gov/imap/ have provided far more performance-oriented approaches - he touched on how previously, information had been collected in such a way as to not make it to management in any meaningful way, with emphasis on measurement of inputs, but not of outputs and outcomes - and the new paradigm of viewing outcomes against the map, tells where challenges lie. These types of geospatial approaches allow relentless followup and assessment, and drive the effort to move the graphs in right direction, with improvements in city services, reductions in shootings and homicides, improved response times - cleaning out and boarding of vacant houses, mapping service problems and opportunities for daily review. "The map does not care if neighborhood is white/black, rich/poor, republican/democrat"

As Governor now, he has taken this mapping-oriented and performance-oriented approach to the next level on a statewide level, with StateStat http://www.statestat.maryland.gov/ and BayStat http://www.baystat.maryland.gov/, and GreenPrint, which provides an ecological assessment of every single parcel in Maryland, along with ecological measures being put in force: http://www.greenprint.maryland.gov/ - and tie-in of stakeholders at all levels - "if it's not about the relationship, it's not about anything".

Governor O'Malley left the audience with a Native American proverb, "how we treat one another is reflected in how we treat the earth"

I did visit the EXPO floor and looked at some of the maps - the floor was definitely quite crowded. By one account, there were 2800 registrants this year for the ESRI Federal User Conference.

Some of the ESRI schwag:

(I don't think the DevSummit attendees will be getting ESRI umbrellas to go with their weather...)

As posted previously, I will try to live tweet more coverage tomorrow, using hashtag #feduc

If you are also attending and want to meet up, by all means, drop a line - dsmith (at) synergist-tech.com - while I have a few meetings, both inside, during FedUC, and a few outside meetings in the DC area next week, I will generally try to make FedUC my base of operations and will blog wherever conditions permit (if conference WiFi is available and/or my AT&T 3G service cooperates).

Also, I will try to post updates from my phone and laptop via Twitter - http://twitter.com/DruidSmith using the hashtag #feduc - if others are attending, I'd suggest using #feduc as well, tools such as TweetGrid will be helpful for tracking twitter traffic in realtime - here's a sample 1x1 TweetGrid already set up for tracking #feduc: http://tweetgrid.com/grid?l=0&q1=%23feduc

ESRI Federal User Conference

2009-02-13T20:09:00.006-05:00

I'm planning on attending at least part of the ESRI Federal User Conference next week - it's always good to get together with others working in the Federal community, to cross-pollinate ideas, talk, and see all the great things going on...

The details, from: http://www.esri.com/events/feduc/

GIS: The Geographic Approach for the Nation
Explore what geographic information system (GIS) technology can do for your agency at the largest geospatial conference dedicated to federal government. Whatever your GIS experience, the FedUC will give you the knowledge and resources you need to apply geography to problem solving, decision making, and accomplishing your missions.
Join other leaders, decision makers, and GIS professionals February 18–20, 2009, in Washington, D.C.
February 18–20, 2009
Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Washington, D.C.
Agenda-at-a-Glance
2009 Agenda [PDF]

Wednesday, February 18

9:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m. Plenary Session

2:30 p.m. Keynote Speaker

3:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m. GIS Solutions EXPO and Map Gallery Reception

Thursday, February 19

8:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Concepts of GIS Sessions

Paper Sessions

Technical Workshops

8:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Map Gallery

8:30 a.m.–6:00 p.m. Hands-On Learning Center

10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. GIS Solutions EXPO

4:00 p.m.–5:30 p.m. Industry Focus Session

5:30 p.m.–8:30 p.m. Thursday Night Social

Friday, February 20

8:30 a.m.–noon Paper Sessions

Technical Workshops

Industry Focus Sessions

9:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m. User Group Meetings

Noon–2:00 p.m. Closing Session

Who Should Attend and Why

Take the Geographic Approach

The FedUC is the ultimate resource when it comes to using geospatial technology in government. The conference offers presentations from technical and industry experts, valuable insight from your colleagues, and the latest solutions that fit your agency. Professionals across organizations are invited to discover effective and efficient ways to meet goals, overcome challenges, and address issues.

What You'll Experience

Hear from Jack
Explore the future of GIS in government with ESRI president Jack Dangermond during the Plenary Session. Listen to him and a team of experts share what you can do with ArcGIS 9.3 in your organization. Plus, watch real-world demonstrations of ways government agencies are leveraging GIS.
Stay up-to-date
Learn about the newest ArcGIS tools and capabilities. Hear firsthand from ESRI staff, your peers, solution providers, and consultants as you attend paper sessions, technical workshops, and the GIS Solutions EXPO.
Network with your colleagues and ESRI staff
Build relationships with government and GIS professionals from both the public and private sectors as well as ESRI staff and business partners. Connect during sessions, exhibit times, and the evening reception.
Increase your knowledge of GIS
Discover more about how GIS works and what it can do for your team and agency. See ways GIS is being used—from data sharing to security to budget control. Attend presentations given by professionals from across the nation and learn about successful implementations, best practices, tips, and tricks.
Learn how to meet your agency’s needs
From compliance and accountability to visualizing patterns and trends, find out how taking the geographic approach improves your operations and decisions. Whether you work in federal, state, or local government, see how GIS can meet your organization’s unique needs.
Examine the most advanced technology
Experiment with state-of-the-art tools you can use right away. Learn about recent developments for geotechnologies in your fields, from hardware, software, and data solutions to innovative applications and services.
Get your questions answered
Pose your questions about GIS software, data, and implementation to ESRI staff members. Meet for a quick one-on-one discussion or set up a meeting to brainstorm and discuss project plans.

See geography in action.

If you are also attending and want to meet up, by all means, drop a line - dsmith (at) synergist-tech.com - while I have a few meetings, both inside, during FedUC, and a few outside meetings in the DC area next week, I will generally try to make FedUC my base of operations and will blog wherever conditions permit (if conference WiFi is available and/or my AT&T 3G service cooperates).

Also, I will try to post updates from my phone and laptop via Twitter - http://twitter.com/DruidSmith using the hashtag #feduc - if others are attending, I'd suggest using #feduc as well, tools such as TweetGrid will be helpful for tracking twitter traffic in realtime - here's a sample 1x1 TweetGrid already set up for tracking #feduc: http://tweetgrid.com/grid?l=0&q1=%23feduc

I am hoping to catch the Plenary, and am hoping to see what discussion ensues relating to the passage of the Stimulus bill, infrastructure investment and planning and National Spatial Data Infrastructure - I also hope to see old friends, and am looking forward to it...

NSDI for Democracy

2009-02-07T15:13:00.013-05:00

With news of Vivek Kundra joining the Obama administration to serve the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as their top IT visionary, it brings me great encouragement. Vivek Kundra has been serving as the District of Columbia’s Chief Technology Officer, and he recently created some excitement through his Apps for Democracy initiative, where he pursued development of an “Open Data Catalog” containing over 250 data assets of various flavors (e.g. XML, Text/CSV, KML, ATOM/GeoRSS and ESRI Shapefile formats), and then promoted a contest wrapped around the Open Data Catalog, for development of innovative mashup-oriented applications. In just a short amount of time, 47 excellent applications were submitted, dealing with a broad range of topics and providing many innovative solutions, a great success.

So what is OMB all about – and what might Kundra’s joining OMB mean?
From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_management_and_budget

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is a Cabinet-level office, and is the largest office within the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP). It is an important conduit by which the White House oversees the activities of federal agencies. OMB is tasked with giving expert advice to senior White House officials on a range of topics relating to federal policy, management, legislative, regulatory, and budgetary issues. The bulk of OMB's 500 employees are charged with monitoring the adherence of their assigned federal programs to presidential policies. OMB performs its coordination role by gathering, filtering, and promulgating the President's annual budget request, by issuing bulletins, memoranda and circulars dictating agency management practices, by overseeing the "President's Management Agenda", and by reviewing agency regulations.

Executive oversight of federal agencies – via expert advice on federal policy, management, legislative, regulatory, and budgetary issues, to be implemented and monitored for adherence via the President’s Management Agenda. That’s quite powerful. And under the Bush administration, OMB has already begun engaging in some basic monitoring activities relating to geospatial technology and investments, under the Geospatial Line of Business (GeoLoB).

So where do we go from here? And what does Kundra’s selection mean in this mix? Only Kundra really has the answer to this, at present - however I do believe that we can make some informed guesses as to what may be on his mind, based on his past track record and accomplishments. District of Columbia’s Open Data Catalog? Think in terms of doing this across all of Federal government. Strengthen and bolster the existing OMB A-16 mandate, and drive publishing of open data. That certainly forms some excellent pieces of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure.

Foster partnership-building and collaboration, ala the Apps for Democracy effort. Perhaps, on a cross-government level, we should also be looking at approaches such as Forge.mil, where agencies can collaborate and share GOTS technology investments, and work together to enhance and expand technology and capability, as opposed to continually reinventing the wheel.

Other things for Kundra to look at? Alignment of efforts across government. Currently USGS and EPA collaborate on efforts to build and densify hydrology data, as the National Hydrology Dataset (NHD), and are working with states to get this to a 1:4,800 level. Meanwhile, FEMA is developing DFIRMs for flood mapping, based on county and other types of data for stream centerlines. How do we align such things as linear referencing between USGS stream gauges and FEMA for looking at flooding issues? Coordinate between NOAA and NWS for realtime storm tracking, and have models available, using all best-possible data, toward stream flood prediction? What if a truck tumbles off of a bridge and ends up in a river, releasing hazardous waste into the river – is the information flow adequate to deal with hazardous waste cleanup even where that river crosses the border into the next state downstream? Pieces and parts of these types of things are starting to happen, but where they do, it is typically only in an ad-hoc, reactive fashion, with very limited coordination or common framework. Where does one thing end and the next begin? What are the gaps? Overlaps?

Or, consider a military convoy, heading across multiple states to an exercise. Due to an emergency bridge closure, they are diverted off of the main highway and onto local roads. They may be carrying sensitive and/or high value goods, such as weapons systems. Who knows? Who SHOULD know? Perhaps local bridge weight restrictions restrict their travel even further. How do we handle this in any coordinated fashion? Who’s doing what, and who’s able to supply what data to smoothly deal with these types of situations? Federal government places some mandates on states to collect roadway data, but again, is there any mechanism for establishing data capture, transparent access and flow? What’s covered, and what isn’t? State-to-state, if there is a serious roadway closure issue just inside one state’s border, will the adjacent state know this and be able to notify motorists via VMS boards and other means?

Although there are a few exceptions here and there, more often than not, the answer to these types of questions and scenarios is “no/had no idea/what am I supposed to do about it” accompanied by shrugs. Streams do not care about political boundaries, they only understand watersheds. Roads are networks. Cars and trucks do not just reach the Edge of the Knowne Worlde and drift off into space when they cross the state line. Information access and flows must be able to bridge these gaps.

It’s pretty much a given that 90% of most business processes in Federal government touch on or deal with location in some form or fashion. Where are assets, where are people, who’s being served, and so on. Through implementation of best practices and through making data access and exchange more timely, transparent, and complete, through better alignment of technology investments and reduction of gaps and overlaps, these *shrug* moments start to vanish, and the *AHA* moments start to happen. I am hoping that Mr. Kundra is thinking the same way. If what lies ahead of us is anything like his efforts to date, we indeed have a bright future ahead of us.

The Need for Integrated Physical and Information Infrastructure

2009-02-01T23:09:00.011-05:00

As pressures of economics and tightening budgets, increasing population and infrastructure demands, and limited resources continue to confront states, municipalities, and the nation as a whole, some harsh realities begin to emerge, of how much we can actually, pragmatically accomplish.

As just one example of this, studies of number of vehicle lane miles traveled, compared to number of vehicle lane miles constructed and maintained shows a clear divergence, and sends the message that demand by far has been outstripping supply:

One solution to this would be to just try and keep building roads everywhere – however this is a simplistic, and ultimately unsustainable solution. Certainly, we DO need to stabilize current infrastructure and address some critical physical issues of capacity bottlenecks, and in some instances we do need to improve circulation and flow in existing transportation networks. But we also need to change our thinking, in terms of how we assess, monitor and manage traffic and congestion.

Here, approaches such as use of Intelligent Transportation Systems can provide better visibility into traffic issues and offer solutions toward better management of the transportation network.

Via any number of technologies, such as embedded sensors, cameras, on-board systems and GPS, message boards and other forms of providing traffic advisory data, and hazards monitoring, traffic crises can be averted, congestion can be managed, and traffic rerouted to make optimal use of existing transportation networks. The use cases for embedded technology are numerous – while repairing or replacing our crumbling bridges, we can consider technologies to monitor bridge decks for icing conditions, and so on. We can utilize available traffic data along with spatial, temporal and predictive analysis, e.g. virtual origin-destination studies and other approaches to recognize patterns and trends, toward avoiding traffic jams or even conditions which may be prone to promoting accidents.

As another example, decades of poor, unsustainable planning, zoning, and land development practices have promoted suburban sprawl, pedestrian-unfriendly areas, dependence on cars for even the most mundane of errands, particularly as residential and commercial areas have become separated from each other in artificial models. In some areas, this has been recognized, as we see a return in some locales to “town center” concepts, where residents can find amenities within walking distance. Here again, proper tools and geospatial data are required by planners to correct these planning paradigms on a macro scale to recognize these bedroom community relationships, as well as on a micro scale, for example to best maximize pedestrian travel and optimize these local networks.

Additionally, we need to continue to promote mass transit options, aligned to serve core needs – commuters, shopping, and similar needs, based on observation of current traffic flows. If mass transit becomes enough of a convenience factor, it will continue to be utilized. Similarly, other mass-transit-related infrastructure needs to be examined. Here, spatial and temporal analysis of the network can reap great benefit toward maximizing mass transit networks and flows, their alignment to need (supply and demand for transit) and their efficiency.

These types of solutions are in need all around us - for example, as a regular visitor to the Washington, DC area, I often use their otherwise-excellent WMATA Metro system – however many demand issues and patterns rapidly become evident to even the casual eye– in out-lying areas served by the Metro, most of the parking lots and garages fill immediately in the AM and become deserted after work hours – a sign that commuters from outlying areas. To anyone arriving at, say, 10AM, there’s a good likelihood that some of these parking facilities will be long filled, forcing potential users to travel further before being able to avail themselves of mass transit. Here again, in even just expanding parking capacity, exists opportunity lost to get traffic off of the streets.

Even these types of things relating to commuting via Metro can also tie into Intelligent Transportation Systems, by providing parking advisories (e.g. saving commuters the grief of trying to find a space in a particular lot when parking may already be full) or by advising pedestrians right at street-level when the next train is arriving or of capacity issues (particularly when it may actually be worthwhile to just walk a few blocks to a different station); or by allowing better means of assessing travel options via web and/or location-aware mobile devices. Here, geospatial approaches can even allow users to get custom travel directions and planning via walking, mass transit, or for handicapped persons, routing via ADA curb cuts, avoidance of stairs, steep inclines, and other useful information toward ensuring safe and reasonable travel, even delivered directly to their phone or other mobile devices.

With HR1 and discussion of massive infrastructure investments on the horizon, we strongly need to consider an integrated strategy and investment for integrated data and analysis, to include remote sensing, geospatial, temporal and others - to go hand-in-hand with hard, bricks-and-mortar infrastructure investments – such that we may better manage the assets. And yes, this could be done independently in dozens of disparate efforts, but would be best leveraged through discourse and technical coordination and information sharing on a broader scale to leverage planning capabilities, modeling, and much more; again, it points up the need for a national vision and strategy for spatial data infrastructure.

If we are going to do this at all, we need to get it right.

While efforts remain local, we need a paradigm shift on many levels- to think beyond our traditional project-by-project approach, and think on a bigger level, to integrate IT into our planning process, as well as integrating it directly into our bricks-and-mortar infrastructure investments, and to better coordinate and leverage investments and efforts to provide this long-term benefit.

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Landscape of National GIS...

2009-02-01T00:43:00.009-05:00

In considering the current state of geospatial data in the nation, it runs the gamut. A substantial amount of data is collected and developed at the local level. Some is collected and developed at the state and federal level, some by tribes, some by academia, some by non-profits, and some by private sector. Some of this data is generated on a regular basis, as part of an established program; some is purely on an ad-hoc basis. Some is mandated, such as some of the data collected on environmental data through the National Environmental Information Exchange Network, some is collected, purely incidental to other activities.

Some datasets exist on a national basis, some do not. And all throughout, there are myriad overlapping use cases, which may additionally place differing requirements on datasets. For example, in some cases, a roadway GIS dataset may be geared to roadway maintenance needs; in others, toward network and traffic analysis. In some cases, the requirements, dataset characteristics and attributes can converge and be accommodated in a single dataset. In others, they may not be able to converge, but the needed datasets can be developed by means of value-added attributes or joins. In some cases, derivative data is required. In many cases, there is tremendous need for consistency and authoritative datasets.

The landscape that quickly begins to emerge is one which is a patchwork, full of seams, overlaps, disjoints, gaps and disconnects- but- also one which holds much potential for leveraging disparate investments, and providing economies of scale, along with increasing richness of data, increased update frequency, increased accuracy and completeness.

How can these gaps and disjoints be bridged? Through a framework, forum and national dialogue, bringing together stakeholders at all levels – federal, state, local, tribal, academia, non-profit, and industry; through partnerships; through collaboration - organizations like NSGIC, like Federal and other agency GIS workgroups, like CUAHSI and many others. This is what holds a National Spatial Data Infrastructure together and brings success.

The first step is in considering the concept.

Act Locally, Think Globally.

Stimulus and Infrastructure Planning

2009-01-31T10:32:00.008-05:00

With considerable debate and controversy, HR 1, the Stimulus bill has passed in the House of Representatives and has moved on to the Senate for additional debate and deliberation.

Current Bill Status

The full HR 1 text and various summaries are posted below:

(note: these may change as HR 1 works its way through the Senate)

Additional Supporting Documentation:

There are also a few additional sites discussing the Stimulus, such as the GOP-driven http://readthestimulus.org/ which nonetheless provide useful resources.

Within the Stimulus bill, there are a number of investments proposed, e.g. transportation funding, mass transit, broadband infrastructure and much more.

Question is, how do we intend to properly assess, triage and plan how and where best, geographically, to make these investments to provide maximal benefit without spatial data on a national level? How can these investments be expended without an adequately informed decisionmaking process?

This need points toward NSDI, the National Map and the related pieces that serve it, and a core need for geospatial data and analysis, which should be an integral part of any of these planning and investment processes, as well as embedding geo-enabled technologies within the investments themselves.

Investment in infrastructure without also investing in the underlying planning process and supporting data and decisionmaking tools represents tremendous opportunity lost, in terms of making adequately informed decisions, leveraging efforts, and properly targeting infrastructure improvements to where they provide the greatest good to the American people as a whole.

National Spatial Data Infrastructure 2.0

2009-01-28T15:02:00.005-05:00

Recently there has been a great deal of discussion about "NSDI 2.0" - and yet it seems there is much confusion about what it is or isn't - and what we should do, or whether we should bother discussing it at all.

History
To step backward in time, it primarily deals with National Spatial Data Infrastructure from a federal perspective, as enacted through the Office of Management and Budget Circular A-16.

This document was originally issued in 1990, followed by Presidential Executive Order 12906, and then subsequently updated in 2002 (which incorporated EO 12906).

OMB Circular A-16 (as revised 2002)

In its present form, the NSDI (if you were to consider it NSDI 1.0) consists of:

Defined data themes (geodetic control, orthoimagery, elevation, transportation, hydrography, governmental units, and cadastral information)
Metadata (FGDC Metadata Format)
The National Spatial Data Clearinghouse (Geospatial One-Stop)
Standards (developed only when no existing voluntary standards exist, in accordance with OMB Circular A-119)
Partnerships

Within the NSDI, oversight is provided by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC)

Additionally, A-16 pursues the following:

Privacy and Security of raw and processed citizens' personal data and accuracy of statistical data
Access to these data, subject to OMB Circular A-130
Protection of proprietary interests to these data
Interoperability between various federal agencies' information systems within these data

The NSDI supports the advancement for a Global Spatial Data Infrastructure that coincides with National Security interests. Any Federal system that develops international data in accordance with these systems must follow international voluntary standards as outlined by Circular A-119.

The Current Situation

With the FGDC and OMB mandate, this prior effort more than anything, establishes a framework. This framework, in turn, is something that individual agencies and data stewards can build to. Similarly, the recent Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Geospatial Line of Business (GeoLoB) and other initiatives, such as the Federal CIO Council's Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) Geospatial Profile 1.1 provide guidance toward harmonizing investment, technology and architecture. Further, the recently-formed National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC) has been formed under the Federal Advisory Committee Act to provide advice, from a community cross-section, to FGDC.

Here nonetheless remains the challenge of populating this framework. Many diverse efforts are ongoing, which align with these efforts, such as Imagery For The Nation, such as EPA's Exchange Network, however some of these efforts still lack adequate resources for completion, may have issues with stovepipes, lack of interoperability, lack of access, and so on.

The drivers for completing this work are manifold - such as providing adequate tools for planning, to better allow informed decision-making for such things as roadways and transportation, for analysis of demographics toward broadband investments, for homeland security, for planning improvements to municipal sewers, for protecting natural and archaeological heritage and biodiversity, and so on. As such, with discussion of massive stimulus and the H.R. 1 bill geared toward many of these things, it is imperative that decisions and investments be made in an informed fashion.

Currently multiple documents of relevance and proposals toward populating this framework and advancing the various initiatives are currently circulating within the GIS community:

NGAC Transition Recommendations, October 16, 2008

Additional NGAC Documentation, October 15-16, 2008

A Proposal for National Economic Recovery, published by ESRI and Booz-Allen-Hamilton

NSDI 2.0: Powering our National Economy, Renewing our Infrastructure, Protecting our Environment, published by a coalition of government and industry partners

A Proposal for Reinvigorating the American Economy Through Investment in the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), published by Autodesk, Microsoft, Oracle, Google and Intergraph

All of these speak to the need for populating the NSDI framework. The questions and differences only remain in approaches. Many elements are crucial to success, such as:

Satisfying clear mandates, requirements and drivers for geospatial data
Delivering data in an accessible, vendor-neutral, platform-agnostic and interoperable fashion
Leveraging and dovetailing into existing initiatives and investments
Partnerships: Federal/State/Local/Tribal/Academia/NGO/Industry
And many more... These need to be considered carefully.

The hope is that the community can have an open, informed discussion of these elements and proposals, along with all of the key context, history and background. And hopefully adequate open forums will become available for doing so.

EPA Environmental Information Symposium

2008-12-29T16:33:00.008-05:00

Earlier in the month, I attended the EPA's Environmental Information Symposium - While I didn't post any updates here during the conference, I will now take the opportunity to carry over some of the more fun posts that I made to the Ning site that was set up for the Symposium:
Wordle: Web 2.0 Themes for the EPA Environmental Information Symposium

"Liberate The Data"

A Web 2.0 Success Story: Apps for Democracy

I touched on this during my presentation:

“Smarter, Better, Faster, Cheaper: Pick 4” – Vivek Kundra, District of Columbia CTO

The District of Columbia published an Open Data Catalog: GeoRSS, XML, KML and other data types

They then posted a contest and allowed the public to build applications, built on their Open Data Catalog

RESULT: In 30 days: 47 new applications for the web, facebook and mobile clients, over $2,000,000 in development at a cost of $50,000 = over 4000% ROI

http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/

The Web is the Platform

As a potential future paradigm, web-enabled connectivity binds together disparate resources, across EPA program offices, regions, labs, both horizontally and vertically, by transparently supporting access to data, analysis and resources:

For external stakeholders, those EPA resources then similarly become transparent, as part of the "EPA cloud" on the web, whereby the public, whether academia, industry, state or other government alike can access available resources toward supporting their own business requirements, whether watershed stewardship groups, regulated reporting industry, ecology research in academia or others:

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T10:12:00.003-05:00

An Apropos Christmas for Surveying and Mapping...

A great picture, posted by Mike Berry to the rpls.com message board...

Conjunction of December 2008

2008-12-02T22:20:00.004-05:00

We had overcast skies and not much of a good view last night, but tonight, I was greeted with a much better view of the conjunction of the Moon, Jupiter and Venus:

A lovely sight...

Magnetic Declination

2008-12-01T17:14:00.005-05:00

For folks working with historic deeds and bearing references, there are a number of tools available -

NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) has an online calculator for magnetic declinations, 1900 to the present: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomagmodels/Declination.jsp
NGDC's online tool to compute the seven individual IGRF magnetic field components: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomagmodels/IGRFWMM.jsp
NGDC's online calculator for historic declinations, back to 1750: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomagmodels/struts/historicPoint

Additionally, there is a freeware tool available from Resurgent Software, which will compute historic declinations to 1600: http://www.resurgentsoftware.com/geomag.html

Further online tools and resources for geomagnetism and computation:

EDIT: And an additonal one suggested by Chuck Conley from Canada's Geological Survey

http://geomag.nrcan.gc.ca/apps/mdcal_e.php

Environmental Information Symposium 2008

2008-12-01T15:58:00.012-05:00

I will be flying out to Phoenix, Arizona December 9th-12th, to attend the US Environmental Protection Agency's annual Environmental Information Symposium... This year, I will be participating on a panel, to discuss collaborative geospatial tools, web services and data publishing, integration and visualization frameworks for environmental science, such as Microsoft Virtual Earth and Google Earth. I am definitely looking forward to sparking some discussion and engaging more people who collect, manage, consume or make decisions based on environmental data... My particular interest at this point is not just in publishing data via open, standards-based (not just OGC, but REST, JSON and others), accessible, dynamic data resources, but also in modeling and analysis, and beginning to look at workflows toward solving a wide variety of environmental problems.

Last year, I got to have a lot of fun developing a turbo Virtual Earth integration in 36 hours, for the Puget Sound Information Challenge. To blow my own horn, my application was recognized by EPA's CIO as one of the most interesting contributions made to the effort. Needless to say, I am really looking forward to attending again this year.

The event will be held at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort in Phoenix,

Can't attend in person? Live streaming will be available as well.

(and thanks to Sean Gillies...)

Penn State Geography - Interdisciplinary Conference

2008-11-10T14:02:00.007-05:00

From my colleagues at the Penn State Department of Geography:

Please share with colleagues or students who might be interested. Note that the conference is open to undergraduate as well as graduate students, and Sunday's session (sponsored by our SWIG -- Supporting Women in Geography--chapter) will focus on professional development/networking; former AAG President Jan Monk will be the keynote speaker.

The CFP is available as a PDF document at http://www.geog.psu.edu/noboundaries/noBoundaries2009_CFP_Poster_final.pdf

Additional information, including updates as available, can be found at http://www.geog.psu.edu/noboundaries

***********************************************

The graduate students of the Penn State DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY invite graduate & undergraduate students to present their research at our annual interdisciplinary conference, which takes place on Penn State's University Park campus Saturday, February 28-Sunday, March 1, 2009.

We welcome submissions on subjects including:

Politics, economics, and international development; Ecology and environmental sciences; History, culture, and society; Gender, race, class, and sexuality; Urban & rural policy and planning; Hazards, vulnerability, and global change; GIS, spatial analysis, and geovisualization.

What unites us (and hopefully you) is an attention to space and place, scale, and connections between the human and physical realms. If your research intersects with any of the above, please join us! (more

information: www.geog.psu.edu/noboundaries)

PAPER SESSIONS

Paper sessions will be organized along common themes with 20 minute timeslots (15 minute presentations followed by a 5 minutes of Q and A).

If you would like to present your research, send a title and abstract (250 words or less) to noboundaries@psu.edu.

POSTER SESSIONS

Graduate and undergraduate students are invited to present posters. Send a title and abstract (250 words or less) to noboundaries@psu.edu.

SPECIAL SESSION: BALANCING ON THE ACADEMIC LADDER—SUPPORTING WOMEN IN

GEOGRAPHY AND BEYOND

Creating supportive spaces for a diversity of women within academia is an ongoing process that involves personal and political action at a variety of scales. This year’s special session of the no)BOUNDARIES conference looks to acknowledge the successes as well as the challenges faced by those striving to create a more supportive academic environment for all women.

We are soliciting papers for panel sessions on the themes of:

- Life in the Department: Departmental Climate; Mentoring; Access to Information; Student Organizations (e.g. Supporting Women in Geography)

- Life Beyond the Department: Publishing; Work/Life Balance; Career Track; Outreach; Networking

These are merely suggested topics; we welcome any and all contributions.

Balancing on the Academic Ladder will consist of workshops as well as panel sessions to encourage the generation and exchange of creative ideas and strategies. Send paper abstracts to noboundaries@psu.edu.

Submission deadline for abstracts is February 1, 2009

Red States, Blue States...

2008-11-06T23:27:00.007-05:00

Mark Newman, of the University of Michigan Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, has once again developed some interesting visualizations of the latest election outcome. He examined the traditional red-state/blue-state view:

and then went on to a cartogram of the same, based on population:

However, this only accounts for popular vote. Newman also, interestingly, shows us a cartogram of vote by electoral college, where for example we can note Wyoming as doubling in size.

The next set of visualizations deals with county-level views, to drill down to the next level below states - here the urban/rural divide can be noted, as well as some other geographic trends.

Newman also provides further nuance, with a series of maps and cartograms showing a linear graduated color scheme, based on percentages of voters voting either Republican or Democrat:

And then, a population-based cartogram of the same:

Newman provides considerable additional insight and several more maps and visualizations at his website: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/.

UPDATE: Per Andy Anderson on the NEARC-L listserve (Northeast Arc Users Group),

The Gastner-Newman cartogram software has been implemented as an ArcScript by ESRI's Tom Gross: http://arcscripts.esri.com/details.asp?dbid=15638

2008-11-03T17:42:00.005-05:00

What's on my mind?

From Wordle, populated with my Blog's atom feed, capturing the most recent blog entries. Wordle analyzes the content and assembles a collage of words, with emphasis placed on words not in common usage, according to how often these words are used... Geospatial... Mapping... Integration... Technology... A few little trends that I didn't expect, but all in all, good stuff.

'Twas the Eve before Election Day...

2008-11-03T12:59:00.002-05:00

As we come up on this eve before Election day, I will pass along this humorous, yet true item from my friend Gene Kooper, Executive Director of the Professional Land Surveyors of Colorado.

The below topo map fragment is from the Georgetown, CO 7 1/2 minute quad topo. In case you think it's bogus, the NGS Data Sheet is included. Regardless of your political views, please exercise your right to vote.

Whether you believe the brass cap is just a "pimple on a Grand Ol' Mountain" or a "Proud Shining Beacon of Democracy" atop a minor hill in the shadow of the Continental Divide, it doesn't matter!

In the end, we are all Americans.

GET OUT AND VOTE TOMORROW!!

1 National Geodetic Survey, Retrieval Date = NOVEMBER 3, 2008
KK2035 ***********************************************************************
KK2035 DESIGNATION - DEMOCRAT
KK2035 PID - KK2035
KK2035 STATE/COUNTY- CO/CLEAR CREEK
KK2035 USGS QUAD - GEORGETOWN (1974)
KK2035
KK2035 *CURRENT SURVEY CONTROL
KK2035 ___________________________________________________________________
KK2035* NAD 83(1992)- 39 42 51.68709(N) 105 44 07.70429(W) ADJUSTED
KK2035* NAVD 88 - 3781. (meters) 12405. (feet) VERTCON
KK2035 ___________________________________________________________________
KK2035 LAPLACE CORR- -11.78 (seconds) DEFLEC99
KK2035 GEOID HEIGHT- -12.45 (meters) GEOID03
KK2035
KK2035 HORZ ORDER - THIRD
KK2035
KK2035.The horizontal coordinates were established by classical geodetic methods
KK2035.and adjusted by the National Geodetic Survey in January 1993.
KK2035
KK2035.The NAVD 88 height was computed by applying the VERTCON shift value to
KK2035.the NGVD 29 height (displayed under SUPERSEDED SURVEY CONTROL.)
KK2035
KK2035.The Laplace correction was computed from DEFLEC99 derived deflections.
KK2035
KK2035.The geoid height was determined by GEOID03.
KK2035
KK2035; North East Units Scale Factor Converg.
KK2035;SPC CO C - 513,640.813 894,210.473 MT 0.99999314 -0 08 54.6
KK2035;SPC CO C - 1,685,169.90 2,933,755.53 sFT 0.99999314 -0 08 54.6
KK2035;UTM 13 - 4,396,313.019 436,959.085 MT 0.99964893 -0 28 11.8
KK2035
KK2035! - Elev Factor x Scale Factor = Combined Factor
KK2035!SPC CO C - 0.99940919 x 0.99999314 = 0.99940233
KK2035!UTM 13 - 0.99940919 x 0.99964893 = 0.99905833
KK2035
KK2035: Primary Azimuth Mark Grid Az
KK2035:SPC CO C - GRINDAL 152 24 17.9
KK2035:UTM 13 - GRINDAL 152 43 35.1
KK2035
KK2035|---------------------------------------------------------------------|
KK2035| PID Reference Object Distance Geod. Az |
KK2035| dddmmss.s |
KK2035| KK2034 GRINDAL APPROX. 8.1 KM 1521523.3 |
KK2035|---------------------------------------------------------------------|
KK2035
KK2035 SUPERSEDED SURVEY CONTROL
KK2035
KK2035 NAD 83(1986)- 39 42 51.68858(N) 105 44 07.70290(W) AD( ) 3
KK2035 NAD 27 - 39 42 51.73222(N) 105 44 05.69354(W) AD( ) 3
KK2035 NGVD 29 (07/19/86) 3779. (m) 12398. (f) VERT ANG
KK2035
KK2035.Superseded values are not recommended for survey control.
KK2035.NGS no longer adjusts projects to the NAD 27 or NGVD 29 datums.
KK2035.See file dsdata.txt to determine how the superseded data were derived.
KK2035
KK2035_U.S. NATIONAL GRID SPATIAL ADDRESS: 13SDD3695996313(NAD 83)
KK2035
KK2035 HISTORY - Date Condition Report By
KK2035 HISTORY - 1903 MONUMENTED USGS
KK2035 HISTORY - 1956 GOOD USGS
KK2035
KK2035 STATION DESCRIPTION
KK2035
KK2035'DESCRIBED BY US GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 1956 (EEM)
KK2035'RECOVERED AS DESCRIBED.
KK2035'
KK2035'STATION LOCATED 2 MI. W. OF GEORGETOWN, ON REPUBLICAN MOUNTAIN.
KK2035'
KK2035'POINT IS BEST REACHED BY FOLLOWING TRAIL UP FIRST PROMINENT GULCH N.
KK2035'OF GEORGETOWN, JUST AT THE CITY LIMITS. FOLLOW THIS TO SUMMIT OF
KK2035'MOUNTAIN, THENCE S. ALONG RIDGE TO HIGHEST POINT.
KK2035'
KK2035'STATION MARK--STANDARD BRONZE TRIANGULATION TABLET CEMENTED IN SOLID
KK2035'ROCK NEARLY AT HIGHEST POINT OF MOUNTAIN, STAMPED ---DEMOCRAT
KK2035'1903-1956---.
KK2035'
KK2035'REFERENCE MARK NO. 1--STANDARD USBR (1936) BENCH MARK TABLET CEMENTED
KK2035'IN SOLID ROCK, 5.07 FT. DISTANT FROM STATION MARK,
KK2035'S 36 DEG 40 MIN W

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T10:45:00.002-04:00

Happy Halloween!

Mapping Integration with BusinessObjects

2008-10-10T11:08:00.024-04:00

I got to spend a little time in the last week or two examining integration of web mapping with BusinessObjects XI R2 Web Intelligence, for a little turbo proof-of-concept application - I hadn't seen many folks talking about integrating web mapping and BO, so I figured I would share my own experiences. Though I'm certainly no BusinessObjects guru, I was able to successfully do some basic integration, with the help of the BusinessObjects "Masher" application available on their "Labs" site: http://labs.businessobjects.com/mashup/default.asp.

What BusinessObjects presents via the Masher is a dynamically-named div tag, which is accessible via container in JavaScript, which is where your rendered DHTML content needs to be targeted. They also then present three basic functions for housing and executing all user-developed JavaScript, init(), mash() and dispose() - the intent of which is self-evident. They also provide some JavaScript objects, pivot and parameters - pivot contains the BO report table contents, and parameters contains values that can be preset and/or passed when initializing or formatting the template.

So, essentially just a matter of figuring out what's available to latch on to and use - and how to leverage what BO provides to permit building the application. For this proof-of-concept, there had been some discussion and interest in Google Maps from the customer, so - for the sake of simplicity, I chose to just stick with Google Maps. In reality, I'd be fairly confident in suggesting that virtually any web mapping framework that supports DHTML and JavaScript should be usable with this same approach, e.g. OpenLayers, Microsoft Virtual Earth, or others.

So, ultimately - the results:

"Turn table into..." (the intent being as simple as "click a button to turn this table or graph into a map")

Being a table, the application has to be able to understand and use designations in the underlying table, from it's "geography" dimension such as "AZ" to latch on to the appropriate mapping geographies. So... Turn map into...

Here, I have my newly published template showing up among the choices as "Google Maps Equal Interval Polygonal Choropleth Map", and click on "OK" - Et voila!

For this quick-and-dirty proof of concept, I just wrote some JavaScript that examines the array of pivot data and the range of values, and then just does some quick calculations to create a lookup table and legend. One trick was to dynamically rewrite BO's generic container div tag to embed two new div elements inside of it, one which I use to hold the map, and a second, which I use to hold my legend - other elements as well as a hidden control panel could be embedded here also.

For generating the classification and legend, a similar type of logic and approach could of course also be applied to a variety of classification schemes such as standard deviations, natural breaks, and so on. I then examine the pivot table to see what geographies are represented, display them on the map rendered with their appropriate hex color values matching their respective measures from the lookup table and add a Google Maps openWindowHtml popup for the click event handler for each location. Within the pivot object, labels are also provided - and given a table with multiple columns of measures, these could either be managed with code to run analysis on both, just thematically map the first, and display the remainder in the popup, and so on - a variety of possibilities for the adventurous coder.

Want to change the number of classification breaks? Didn't like the color scheme?

Within the template, there is opportunity to define parameters - here I set it up to allow me to change the number of classification breaks, starting color, ending color, and so on. And the BO folks nicely even include a color picker. So, for example, I can then retrieve parameters.startColor as a hex value, split it into RGB values and compute even jumps for my color ramp to parameters.endColor, based on the parameters.numBreaks value that the user specifies.

Like so... (deliberately odd colors selected to show the difference...)

Additionally, mash() fires every time the underlying table's filters or results are changed, which is nice, as the map updates accordingly.

Some additional development insights - I decided to keep a lot of my functions in an external .js library - one issue I encountered is that, given everything was encapsulated in the three BO Masher functions init(), mash() and dispose(), whenever I needed to create and use global variables, I needed to do so explicitly, e.g. window.myVarName. Additionally, I noted that BusinessObjects XI R2 uses the dojo JavaScript library... so for fans of dojo, that also provides a great deal of functionality and capability to leverage. As with anything, potential collision with other pieces of code or cross-browser compatibility issues are also a question, but through judicious naming conventions and error handling, these can generally be addressed.

So, while perhaps my turbo solution may not the most elegant, it's nonetheless illustrative that web mapping integration into a BO platform is definitely doable and definitely functional, in this case developed in just a few days' time with a little quick hackery, even for someone who may have web mapping expertise but little prior integration or development experience with a platform like BusinessObjects (such as myself in this instance) - hopefully this will be an encouragement to others who are looking to merge BI tools with geospatial technology, and likewise, hopefully the BI folks will continue to increasingly see the value of geospatial visualization in addition to their charts, graphs and dashboards. I have already seen some very interesting visual geographic trends popping out of the data, which is definitely not anywhere near as evident in some of the more standard BI views. Other possibilities include drilldown, however I found that the masher does not handle hyperlinks embedded in tables well - but within BO, URL-driven access to reports to allow drilldown is definitely a possibility as well.

What the future of the BO Masher is in the future is uncertain, but the potential use case and benefit of such integration is substantial.

In the long run, there will definitely be an ever-emergent intersect between these technologies and tools. All in all, another fun little proof-of-concept. Next, I may want to take on BusinessObjects Xcelsius 2008 and Flex-based integration with web mapping frameworks - will remain to be seen, depending on how various other projects go over the next few months...

MetaCarta Public Sector User Group Meeting

2008-09-30T20:59:00.004-04:00

MetaCarta is holding a users group meeting next week, October 8th - from their site:

MetaCarta Public Sector User Group Meeting

How often can you hear key geospatial analysis findings from defense, intelligence, federal civilian, and industry analysts under one roof, in one day?

On Wednesday, October 8, 2008, MetaCarta invites you to join us for the 4th Annual MetaCarta Public Sector User Group Meeting as intelligence officers, industry analysts, and other senior executives share their geospatial technology experiences.

This is a perfect way to decompress from the Fiscal Year end, and come away with proven geospatial technology examples to employ within your own agency or organization.

Don't miss your chance to gain insight from industry experts including:

Jeff Vining, Research VP, Homeland Security and Law Enforcement, Gartner Research
Terry Busch, Senior Intelligence Officer, Defense Intelligence Agency
Dave Sonnen, Senior Consultant, Spatial Information Management, IDC Research
Dr. Jerry Johnston, Geospatial Information Officer, EPA / OEI

Collaborate with partners and colleagues to learn about best practices and take away critical knowledge about the latest uses and trends around geospatial intelligence, geosearch, and information retrieval. Hear about the “geoweb” and how MetaCarta exposes intelligence that would have been impossible to find any other way.

Highlights:

Share experiences and uses of MetaCarta technology
See the convergence of open source content and analysis
View in-depth customer presentations
See the updated 2008 / 2009 product roadmaps
Learn custom integration tips & tricks

http://www.metacarta.com/geo-overview.htm

Farm Bill Prevents Sharing of Geospatial Data?

2008-09-28T12:16:00.005-04:00

I just came across this bit of disturbing information - a colleague was seeking historic aerial photographs from USDA, and was greeted with the following response:

"Please refer to Title 1, Subtitle F, Section 1619 titled "Information Gathering" on pages 256-259. This will give you the precise language of the 2008 Farm Bill which prevents FSA from providing geospatial information."

The bill is available here: http://www.usda.gov/documents/Bill_6124.pdf

The pertinent language is below:

SEC. 1619. INFORMATION GATHERING.

(a) GEOSPATIAL SYSTEMS.—The Secretary shall ensure that all the geospatial data of the agencies of the Department of Agriculture are portable and standardized.

(b) LIMITATION ON DISCLOSURES.—

(1) DEFINITION OF AGRICULTURAL OPERATION.—In this subsection, the term ‘‘agricultural operation’’ includes the production and marketing of agricultural commodities and livestock.

(2) PROHIBITION.—Except as provided in paragraphs (3) and (4), the Secretary, any officer or employee of the Department of Agriculture, or any contractor or cooperator of the Department, shall not disclose—
(A) information provided by an agricultural producer or owner of agricultural land concerning the agricultural operation, farming or conservation practices, or the land itself, in order to participate in programs of the Department; or
(B) geospatial information otherwise maintained by the Secretary about agricultural land or operations for which information described in subparagraph (A) is provided.

(3) AUTHORIZED DISCLOSURES.—
(A) LIMITED RELEASE OF INFORMATION.—If the Secretary determines that the information described in paragraph (2) will not be subsequently disclosed except in accordance with paragraph (4), the Secretary may release or disclose the information to a person or Federal, State, local, or tribal agency working in cooperation with the Secretary in any Department program—
(i) when providing technical or financial assistance with respect to the agricultural operation, agricultural land, or farming or conservation practices; or
(ii) when responding to a disease or pest threat to agricultural operations, if the Secretary determines that a threat to agricultural operations exists and the disclosure of information to a person or cooperating government entity is necessary to assist the Secretary in responding to the disease or pest threat as authorized by law.

(4) EXCEPTIONS.—Nothing in this subsection affects—
(A) the disclosure of payment information (including payment information and the names and addresses of recipients of payments) under any Department program that is otherwise authorized by law;
(B) the disclosure of information described in paragraph (2) if the information has been transformed into a statistical or aggregate form without naming any—
(i) individual owner, operator, or producer; or
(ii) specific data gathering site; or
(C) the disclosure of information described in paragraph (2) pursuant to the consent of the agricultural producer or owner of agricultural land.

(5) CONDITION OF OTHER PROGRAMS.—The participation of the agricultural producer or owner of agricultural land in, or receipt of any benefit under, any program administered by the Secretary may not be conditioned on the consent of the agricultural producer or owner of agricultural land under paragraph (4)(C).

(6) WAIVER OF PRIVILEGE OR PROTECTION.—
The disclosure of information under paragraph (2) shall not constitute a waiver of any applicable privilege or protection under Federal law, including trade secret protection.

Pentagon 9/11 Memorial

2008-09-12T11:01:00.005-04:00

I was in Crystal City for some business yesterday, and afterward went over to the Pentagon.

Adjoining the dedication area, a sea of flags...

Each step in the wall, representing the age of one of the victims...

Each bench, representing one of those 184 who died here that day...

to the youngest of the young, a mere 3 years old...

The bell that tolled when the names were read out...

A flag draped where the plane impacted...

I prayed for all those who lost their lives on 9/11

I prayed for all those who have lost their lives since

I prayed for the surviving friends, family and colleagues

I prayed for our children, for our nation, and for our future

The Lost Maps of Nagaland

2008-09-10T18:58:00.006-04:00

The Times of India brings a story, speaking to the necessity of preserving maps and records dealing with boundaries - apparently the official maps depicting the boundary of the Indian state of Nagaland have gone completely missing.

Nagaland is a hill state in the foothills of the Himalayas, located in the far northeast of India, adjoining the Indian states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, and bordering Myanmar (formerly Burma) to the east.

From the article,

The government has lost all "original documents" — comprising details of boundaries — of Nagaland, in a glaring instance of callous handling of vital public documents.

The Union home ministry and the Assam government, which originally kept the records of Nagaland, do not even have the valid "map" of the state which ironically is in the throes of violence sparked by the demand to carve out Greater Nagaland by extending the existing boundaries of the state.

The matter came as a shock to home ministry officials when it was brought to light for the first time by Nagaland during its submission before the Local Commission on the Assam-Nagaland Border here last week.

In response to the commission's direction to submit before it the original documents of the state to settle boundary disputes, Nagaland said it was not in a position to give the written statement unless "its original documents which were purportedly lost by Assam" were returned.

At present, it looks like some of the details of the boundary will have to be recreated from surveys and whatever remaining documentation can be salvaged. The region has not been without its share of historic boundary disputes.

New iPhones are out...

2008-07-11T16:55:00.006-04:00

Was just a little over a year ago that I shrugged at the release of the iPhone... Finally, they are coming through with some of the things I suggested quite a while back, primarily

True GPS

3G data connection vs. EDGE

Almost as good as my AT&T Tilt now, but still doesn't run all of the mobile GIS apps I have.

A Compendium of State Land Surveying Practice Acts

2008-07-06T18:37:00.007-04:00

To follow on to my previous post, "Epic Battles: GIS versus Land Surveying?" I have compiled this list of Land Surveying Practice Acts. These are state laws, which govern the practice of land surveying within each jurisdiction, and which define what each jurisdiction views as work to be performed by licensed land surveyors.

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Delaware

Florida

Georgia

Hawaii

Idaho

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Maine

Maryland

Massachusetts

Michigan

Minnesota

Mississippi

Missouri

Montana

Nebraska

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Jersey

New Mexico

New York

North Carolina

North Dakota

Ohio

Oklahoma

Oregon

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Carolina

South Dakota

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

Vermont

Virginia

Washington

West Virginia

Wisconsin

Wyoming

Epic Battles: GIS vs. Surveying?

2008-07-05T11:15:00.011-04:00

Discussion revolving around a planned, but retracted article on GIS for Professional Surveyor Magazine has led to a lot of interesting discussion, but to me generally reveals a continuing underlying tension and misperceptions between the GIS and Surveying communities.

Adena Schutzberg / All Points Bulletin: Update: State Licensing Board "Censors" GIS Article
James Fee / Spatially Adjusted: "GIS Practitioners as Doing Work Surveyors Should Be Doing"

While these articles post updates and amendments, based on comments by Tom Gibson, Professional Surveyor's editor, which clarifies that the author decided to retract his article, the underlying question of GIS versus surveying and legal jurisdictions still remains.

Some of the comments are telling - with perceptions and suggestions that State Licensing Boards are somehow cracking down in draconian fashion, demanding censorship and attacking GIS practitioners. Tied into this, we had the MAPPS lawsuit (another issue which I believe will resurface at some point), overlap of surveying with photogrammetry, and other issues. Meanwhile, in the surveying community, we still hear "GIS = Get It Surveyed".

I have my own, perhaps unique perspectives and insights, being a GIS practitioner since the late 1980s, as well as a licensed Land Surveyor, and finally, also serving as chair to a State Licensing Board.

Note: Having said this, please note that my comments to follow are my own personal views, and are not to be taken as official statements or in any way representative of our State Licensing Board's views.

For most GIS practitioners, they readily defer to surveyors' knowledge and domain expertise on cadastral issues - matters of how property boundaries are properly dealt with, and so on - and similarly, most surveyors know their limitations when it comes to GIS. However, there still seems to be occasions which give rise to confusion and misperception.

One basic thing that we all need to come into reckoning with is that Surveying and GIS overlap, but that neither is wholly contained within the other, and that each has areas which may additionally be mutually exclusive from the other. Another part of this Venn diagram equation is Photogrammetry - another topic, which has come up often. I have best seen it illustrated as such:

One area of contention is that some states' Practice Acts are very broad in their definition of what constitutes land surveying - e.g. "measurement and determination of any feature on the earth's surface" - which might not be appropriate for the strictest of interpretations. Many everyday GIS efforts could constitute surveying practice under this definition - but is it appropriate?

If one considers typical State laws pertaining to licensure and practice of land surveying, one will see that the primary objective is in protecting the public, it has little to do with protecting the surveying profession.

So what is falls within the purview of licensing boards, and what falls within the definition of land surveying, toward preventing harm? That may vary somewhat from state to state.

But how might the public be harmed by GIS data, as opposed to proper land surveys? Here are some generalized versions of recent tales I've heard:

A county tax mapping office, where a GIS practitioner "helps" a realtor friend in a bind by preparing a property description based on lot lines in the GIS. Where did those lot lines come from? Combination of digitized paper maps, lines rubbersheeted to apparent fencelines on orthophotos, and so on. The harm? This description brings with it apparent legal connotation, as a representation of lines of ownership. The buyer may be getting a misrepresentation of what the lot's actual extent and location is.

A municipality orders a homeowner to demolish and remove a brand new addition, based on their perception that it is in violation of setback lines - based on the GIS.

These things can be only be remedied through a proper survey. One definite question that should be asked, is whether litigation or legal action might ever be a possibility. If it's anything relating to or impacting property ownership and use, such as property boundaries, rights-of-way, easements, or things of that nature, one would definitely want reliable, accurate survey data that can hold up in a court of law. Most county GIS systems will not pass this test.

Perhaps there a jurisdictional issue at stake, such as wetlands delineation (where US EPA, Army Corps of Engineers, State Environmental Protection Agencies or others may or may not have jurisdiction, based on whether or not the land in question is a wetlands or not). Given an instance where a wetland may have been filled, drained, or otherwise encroached upon, and where the original physical evidence of plants, hydric soils, and wetlands flags may no longer exist, a surveyor's location of and ties to the wetland biologists' flags is far more likely to hold up to scrutiny, be accurately retraceable in the field, and be defensible in court than GIS data from recreational-grade GPS receivers or other approaches that are occasionally seen in use.

Or a toxic waste spill - whether it impacted adjoining properties or not - and so on. The same circumstance may come into play with other jurisdictional issues, such as taxation and municipal jurisdiction, and other areas.

Is it a specific legal requirement that these types of data be collected by surveyors in these cases? To turn that question around, in these cases it's instead a matter of basic good practice and adequate protection from dispute and liability as to how the locational data is captured.

Not every GIS practitioner has to deal with these things - but some do very much need to be cognizant of it. And certainly GIS practitioners do need to be aware of state Land Surveying Practice Acts in any regard. Ambiguities will not be resolved overnight - certainly questions of "what DOES that cadastral GIS system really represent" will continue to come up again and again. And certainly many stewards of cadastral GIS are aware of this, and put as many protections in place as they are able to - such as disclaimers and metadata, but for most citizens and casual users of the data, the phrase "consult the metadata" will only lead to glazed eyes. And while GIS systems are fully able to accomodate survey-grade data, and while some nations have made great strides toward a coordinated cadastre, here in the United States, the approach has been far more piecemeal, with varying degrees of robustness in how cadastral data can be improved. I have suggested record-level metadata for parcel data and similar approaches to allow refinement, where good, vetted, survey-grade locational data can be utilized and held toward iterative acquisition of a uniformly high-quality database. The locational accuracy of each parcel and subdivision can then be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Additionally, database linkages to plats and other survey data can be put in place.

Certainly not easy questions to answer overnight - but also hopefully I can share more insight and reality than perceptions that "Surveyors are trying to take over GIS".

Update: To follow up, I've put together and posted a "Compendium of State Land Surveying Practice Acts" with links to a number of jurisdictions' laws relating to the practice of land surveying.

GeoServer

2008-06-21T11:16:00.005-04:00

The last few months have been hectic, with a lot of proposal writing and other things flying around - and as I continue to redefine and revisit and look toward new types of approaches and ways to tackle problems in architecting geospatial solutions, I have been making an effort to poke around and look at alternatives. Some of the major drivers for alternatives are licensing costs - Oracle is certainly not cheap - and the others are technical, finding fast and easy ways to publish and interact with geospatial data, provide interoperability and consume it in a wider variety of clients, e.g. OGC Web Map Service, KML, GeoRSS and the like...

So of late, I have been digging deeper with a stack consisting of PostGIS, GeoServer and GeoWebCache - and I must say I am impressed with what I'm seeing so far:

Here, hundreds of thousands of facilities points, being served up by PostGIS and GeoServer, and published as a tile layer in GeoWebCache. Firstly, the production ArcIMS/Oracle boxes I've been using would be struggling to render this much data quickly. Secondly, it would take a custom tile server or other middleware to get them into Virtual Earth - yet here I was able to get these results, start to finish, in less than an hour.

Same data in Google Earth as KML, again GeoServer provides some very interesting and compelling out-of-the-box functionality...

Again, the question I have been asking myself is in what the solution needs to look like - and here, we can have some hybridized approaches, depending on how static or dynamic the data is, and how much analysis we want to do, perhaps with products like GeoWebCache and GeoServer serving base data and tiles, and ArcGIS Server 9.3 providing modeling and analytical capabilities. This coming year will be interesting, to say the least...

EPA GIS Workgroup

2008-05-12T09:37:00.002-04:00

While everyone else is off to Where, et cetera - I'm going off to the EPA GIS Workgroup meeting in New York City...

Always great to see what's going on in terms of GIS and remote sensing for visualization, modeling and analysis in the realm of environmental protection - usually most EPA regions and program offices are represented, along with other organizations and agencies... Lots of geo friends in attendance.

Looking forward to it.

US Streets

2008-05-11T18:53:00.005-04:00

This is an interesting view of the United States:

- found on Ben Fry's website, http://benfry.com/allstreets/index.html

The author compiled all local roads, and visual patterns of density and human use rapidly emerge. Here, a mix of physical barriers (such as valleys within the Appalachians) can be seen along with major corridors of development. There are still some blocks within some states which are not fully populated (shown as generally-rectangular, lighter-density areas in some of the midwest states), Fry ascribes this to differences in how roads are characterized and classified.

Why I Haven't Moved To The Beltway...

2008-05-06T23:00:00.003-04:00

Given most of my work is in the DC Beltway, and I have a 4 hour + "commute" one way - some of my friends and colleagues keep asking why I don't move south.

Simple answer... quality of life. I wouldn't be able to afford the great house that I have, I wouldn't have the great natural setting nearby...

I walk just a few houses down to the end of my block, and from there, I'm in a park - I can take a lengthy hike in any number of directions, a different hike for every day of the week... and the scenery?

More "photos of the day" to come...

Thematic Mapping

2008-05-05T21:52:00.006-04:00

After just spending a chunk of time tonight reading article after article on his site, I have to give my kudos to Bjørn Sandvik, and his blog, Thematic Mapping -

There's just a ton of eminently cool and accessible stuff for visualization there...

The Marcellus Shale Formation and Pennsylvania's Natural Gas Boom

2008-05-05T10:19:00.011-04:00

The latest buzz here in Northeastern Pennsylvania here in the last few months revolves around revised estimates of natural gas potential residing in the Marcellus Formation, which is a deep layer of black shale running throughout southern New York State, across Pennsylvania and into Ohio and West Virginia.

Per Wikipedia, the Marcellus Formation is believed to contain as much as 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 10% of which may be recoverable using current technologies.

Notably here in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the Marcellus Formation is exceptionally thick, with some areas up to 350 feet thick - the map illustrates the extent of the Marcellus formation in grey, with isopach lines denoting layer thickness.

In terms of stratigraphy, the Marcellus Formation is part of the Hamilton Group, lying deep, however far deeper gas deposits are currently being developed elsewhere in the world.

While the economic boom is welcome - with one potential outcome being preservation of farmlands and forestlands in Northeastern Pennsylvania - in an area which has been struggling for some time, and while this deposit becomes a welcome find in an imminent energy crisis, the longer-term pros and cons are yet to be known - specifically, what are the potential environmental impacts, to aquifers, of hydrofracturing, impacts of surface activities - what needs to be done in terms of pipeline infrastructure, and so on...

Appalachian Electoral Dynamic?

2008-05-04T18:05:00.006-04:00

I just came across an interesting blog, which presents a different spin on election dynamics, in the aftermath of the primary we just had here in Pennsylvania -

Here, counties in blue represent larger wins for Hillary Clinton, whereas the green counties represent larger wins for Barack Obama... "Appalachia" is outlined in black.
During the 1992 presidential campaign, Democratic political consultant James Carville described Pennsylvania as "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in between." - Now here's yet another similar analogy... I'm just presenting it as a Pennsylvania voter, reserving my own mix of comments, whether bemused or amused - I'll leave folks to draw their own conclusions...

"The Electoral Map" - http://theelectoralmap.com/

[edit - interestingly, the delineation of "Appalachians" on the map appears to concur more with congressional boundaries which generally touch on the Appalachian range]

The Onion: County Surveyors

2008-05-02T18:05:00.003-04:00

Between spending a lot of time on the road and wearing my fingers to nubs writing proposals, I unfortunately haven't had much time to blog - but I did just come across this humorous bit:

I Won't Ever Let The Position Of County Surveyor Go To My Head

Aye, indeed... we surveyors are full of humility... Even though those who behold us are heard to utter such things as,

"There goes a man whose ability to record and maintain elevation benchmarks once a year rivals that of Atlas himself. That, son, is a man far better than I."

And, if you find yourself drained from your own bitter political battle for your own County Surveyor, think:

"Well, thank God we elected a county surveyor who is free from ego, modest to a fault, and is just generally the Joe DiMaggio of land-parcel mapping and plat checking."

Happy Earth Day...

2008-04-22T19:57:00.003-04:00

Raytheon Wins GPS Contract

2008-04-17T07:32:00.000-04:00

Via Washington Technology:

Raytheon locks onto Air Force GPS deal
Raytheon will help complete development of a new generation of Global
Positioning System receivers for the Air Force.

http://www.1105newsletters.com/t.do?id=1087772:163874

(posted via mobile)

Virtual Earth API Version 6.1

2008-04-12T21:02:00.005-04:00

For developers using Virtual Earth, the Virtual Earth API version 6.1 was released a few days ago:

Official SDK Documentation: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb429619.aspx

Other discussion:

Steve Lombardi's Blog (Microsoft) on 6.1 Enhancements: http://virtualearth.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!2BBC66E99FDCDB98!14129.entry
Chris Pendleton's Blog (Microsoft) on 6.1 Enhancements: http://blogs.msdn.com/virtualearth/archive/2008/04/11/new-virtual-earth-api-release-virtual-earth-6-1.aspx
Johannes Kebeck's Blog on 6.1 Enhancements: http://johanneskebeck.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!42E1F70205EC8A96!3858.entry

Overview of changes: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb412561.aspx

Virtual Earth Map Control SDK, version 6.1

What's New in the Map Control?

Welcome to version 6.1 of the Virtual Earth map control. This page explains the new features for version 6.0 and 6.1 on a high level. To see a detailed list of the objects, methods, and properties that have changed, see the Version Changelist.

Version 6.0 and 6.1 of the map control includes improvements in the following areas:

Enhanced accuracy
Additional functionality
Enhanced performance

Enhanced Accuracy

The Virtual Earth team is committed to constantly improving the accuracy of the map control. This release of the map control includes improvements in the following areas.

Enhanced Geocoding. The map control integrates multiple geocoders and datasets to provide the most relevant and accurate results. You can perform these searches using the VEMap.Find Method.

Rooftop Geocoding. Rooftop locations are the most precise geocoding results available in the United States today. Rooftop geocoding is now available through the map control VEMap.Find Method.

Consistent Pushpin Accuracy. When switching between aerial and birdseye views, pushpin accuracy is maintained, delivering a more seamless experience. Use the VEMap.SetShapesAccuracy Method to get the accuracy you desire.

Additional Functionality

This release of the map control includes additional functionality in the following areas.

Printing support. Use the VEMap.SetPrintOptions Method to enable printing support.

Reverse Geocoding. Reverse geocoding allows the user to find places based on a specific point on the map. Use the VEMap.FindLocations Method to accomplish this.

Traffic-based Routes. A new option allows the use of available traffic information in route calculations, enabling quicker routes and more accurate route times during heavy traffic periods. Use the VERouteOptions.UseTraffic Property to turn on this feature.

Birdseye Map Style with Labels. A road label overlay increases the usability of the Birdseye map style. This map style is called BirdseyeHybrid and is a new member of the VEMapStyle Enumeration.

Walking Directions. Provide users the option to walk to their destination by returning walking directions instead of driving directions. To return walking directions, set the VERouteOptions.RouteMode Property to VERouteMode.Walking.

Multipoint Routing. A new method takes multiple points for a route instead of just start and end points, allowing for more complex trip planning. Localized directions are also available in this version. Use the VEMap.GetDirections Method to get a multipoint route.

Bulk Addition of Shapes. A new method to add multiple pushpins in one call while maintaining high performance and avoiding performance slowdowns. Use the VEMap.AddShape Method to add multiple pushpins.

Improved Shape Control. You can now specify how a shape object appears relative to other shapes or tile objects, providing greater control in viewing data and objects. Use the VEShape Class to create shapes.

MapCruncher (Beta). MapCruncher Beta for Microsoft Virtual Earth makes it easy to publish maps overlaid in an application using the Virtual Earth map control. See the MapCruncher Web page for further information.

3D Altitude Settings. Altitudes for three-dimensional objects can now be specified in meters.

Updated interactive SDK. A new version of the Virtual Earth Interactive SDK is available, demonstrating the new functionality of the Virtual Earth Map Control. See the Virtual Earth Interactive SDK Web page for further information.

Enhanced Performance

There have been significant speed and accuracy improvements for pushpins and shapes, even in high numbers. Performance enhancements also include faster map panning.

Version Changelist is available here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb412440.aspx

2008 Pennsylvania GIS Conference

2008-04-10T16:29:00.003-04:00

The Sixteenth Annual Pennsylvania GIS Conference (2008) is coming up:
May 14-15, 2008, at the Radisson Penn Harris Hotel and Conference Center, Camp Hill, PA

http://cgis.hbg.psu.edu/conference/home.aspx?script=yes

"Sustaining and Leveraging Our Geospatial Investment"

The Pennsylvania GIS Conference will convene for the16th year on May 14-15, 2008 at the Radisson Penn Harris Hotel and Convention Center in Camp Hill, PA. This year’s theme is “Sustaining and Leveraging Our Geospatial Investment.” Geospatial technology moves ahead, offering us more and more methods and tools for geospatial analysis and information management. Our geospatial assets continue to grow as local governments and private industry invest in data, people, and services. And the Commonwealth continues to build the framework of a Spatial Data Infrastructure through programs like PAMAP. The 2008 PA GIS Conference will explore the challengesand benefits of these continuing trends. David Harding from NASA will offer the keynote speech this year. He will present a fascinating look into NASA’s innovative uses of LiDAR technology.

This year at the PA GIS Conference the PAMAP Program will present its first annual Innovative Application Award to the two GIS applications that make the most creative use of PAMAP orthoimagery and/or LiDAR data. The competition is open to any individual or organization– commercial or non-profit. Application submissions are due by March 29, 2008. Winners will be announced in mid-April and will be presented at the conference. Consider entering your PAMAP applications and becomethe first recipient of the PAMAP Innovative Application Award!

Also this year, Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC) will be conducting a map display gallery and competition in the main plenary hall. HACC’s Geospatial Programs Director and conference committee member, Nicole Ernst,will be organizing the event. Students and other GIS professionals are encouraged to make entries. Nicole is also reviving the Education Track at this year’s conference and will be showcasing a number of creative student GIS applications.

Discovery Channel Mapping...

2008-04-09T19:42:00.010-04:00

Here's a neat site - Discovery Channel's "Earth Live" features a 3D globe, which can be revolved by the user, with in layers relating to various stories, news items and features carried on the Discovery Channel - in some cases, the layers feature time-sequence animation (screen capture of polar ice cover layers below):

Though you can't zoom in or out, or add custom layers you can mix and match layers to create your own views... A neat little 3D globe.

http://dsc.discovery.com/guides/discovery-earth-live/discovery-earth-live.html?dcitc=w01-104-ae-0010

from slippy maps to spinny maps...

Additional Information on ST_Geometry Issues

2008-04-09T19:04:00.006-04:00

Some additional information received relative to ST_Geometry issues:

There is a second Software Alert you should be aware of as it may impact your Oracle customers using our 9.2 ST_Geometry spatial type with Oracle 10g R2. This may result in incorrect query results under certain conditions. Our HQ marketing group will also send a newsflash email to all the BPs with additional details.

Summary of the Problem
An Oracle RDBMS bug (Patch 6756089) has been encountered that can cause spatial selections to be wrong for feature classes using ST_Geometry (ESRI’s implementation of a SQL type for Spatial).
When a feature is inserted into a table that stores features using ST_Geometry, its envelope calculation can be truncated, leading to incorrect results with a spatial selection.

Who is affected?
This Oracle bug affects Oracle 10g users of ArcSDE 9.2 geodatabases using the spatial type (ST_GEOMETRY) to store their features and where the precision goes beyond the 5th decimal place. Again, this problem only affects users that work with geometry data that has an x,y decimal precision greater than 5 (e.g.; 11.1234567 will be truncated to 11.12345).

What is ESRI doing about it?
ESRI submitted a problem report to Oracle. Oracle has acknowledged, repaired, and patched the defect (Patch 6756089 and 6867052). Additionally, ESRI is building a utility to update the envelope and spatial index for each feature class once the Oracle patch has been installed.

Additional info on second reported ST_Geometry issue

There is a second Software Alert you should be aware of as it may impact your Oracle customers using our 9.2 ST_Geometry spatial type with Oracle 10g R2. This may result in incorrect query results under certain conditions. Please read the notice below and inform your customers as appropriate.

Software
Alert for Oracle 10g DBMS Patch 6756089 and 6867052

Communication to Our Users
April 3, 2008

Summary of the Problem
An Oracle RDBMS bug (Patch 6756089) has been encountered that can cause spatial selections to be wrong for feature classes using ST_Geometry (ESRI’s implementation of a SQL type for Spatial). When a feature is inserted into a table that stores features using ST_Geometry, its envelope calculation can be truncated, leading to incorrect results with a spatial selection.

Who is affected?
This Oracle bug affects Oracle 10g users of ArcSDE 9.2 geodatabases using the spatial type (ST_GEOMETRY) to store their features and where the precision goes beyond the 5th decimal place. Again, this problem only affects users that work with geometry data that has an x,y decimal precision greater than 5 (e.g.; 11.1234567 will be truncated to 11.12345).

What is ESRI doing about it?
ESRI submitted a problem report to Oracle. Oracle has acknowledged, repaired, and patched the defect (Patch 6756089 and 6867052). Additionally, ESRI is building a utility to update the envelope and spatial index for each feature class once the Oracle patch has been installed. We expect our utility to be available by the end of the week of March 31. It will be available as a download from the ArcSDE download page (the
same location as hot fixes and service packs).

Where and when can I get the patch from Oracle?
There are a number of platforms to patch. To date, Oracle has only provided patches for the Linux, Sun Solaris and Windows (32-bit) platforms for Oracle 10g. Please go
to Oracle’s MetaLink page (http://metalink.oracle.com/) to check patch availability and to download the patch when it becomes available for any given platform needed.

The patch description for Linux and Sun Solaris is:
Patch:
6756089
Description: USING A DBMS TYPE IN OCI AND FLOATS ARE BEING ROUNDED OFF
Product RDBMS Server
The patch description for Windows is as follows:
Patch: 6867052
Description: ORACLE 10.2.0.3 PATCH 19 BUG FOR MICROSOFT WINDOWS 32BIT

ESRI Products and Versions that are affected by this Oracle bug
Any ArcSDE client application (e.g., ArcGIS 9.2, ArcIMS 9.2) that uses ArcSDE 9.2 for Oracle 10g (and service packs) with the ST_Geometry spatial type

Additional Information
Q. How do I know if I have the problem?
A. If you are using ArcSDE 9.2 for Oracle 10g, storing features as the spatial type (ST_GEOMETRY), and have greater than 5 decimal places of precision, you should assume the problem exists, even if you have not seen incorrect spatial query results.

Q. When should I install the Oracle patch?
A. As soon as it becomes available for your platform. After installation of the Oracle patch, please be sure to download the utility provided by ESRI to fix the envelope and update your spatial index.

Q: I've noticed that Oracle has released the patch for version 10.2.0.3 on some platforms. What does that mean to our customers that have upgraded or are planning to upgrade to 10.2.0.4? Do they need to drop back a patch release in order to install this? Apply the patch again?
A: We do not know the answer to this yet. We’ll provide the answer in KB34527 when we know it.

Q. What do I do if Oracle has not released a patch for my environment?
A. Contact your Oracle account team, reference the Oracle Metalink and tell them
you need the patch.

Q: Is the utility to fix the envelopes and re-create the spatial index for each feature class available for download?
A: Not yet. We expect to put it up on the ArcSDE download page (where patches are downloaded) by the end of the week of March 31.

Q: Will we have documentation that explains this problem in more detail?
A: Yes, please see KB article 34527.

Q. Does this issue impact our customers that are using the SDO_Geometry type?
A. No. Oracle Spatial (SDO_GEOMETRY) does not store the envelope of the geometry as an attribute of the object.

Q. Is Oracle 9i affected?
A. No, this problem is in 10g only.

Related ongoing discussion in ESRI forums:

http://forums.esri.com/Thread.asp?c=158&f=2291&t=250200&mc=8

Software Alert for ArcGIS Server 9.2 with Oracle 10.2.0.4

2008-04-07T22:39:00.004-04:00

Just got this item...

Software Alert for ArcGIS Server 9.2 with Oracle
10.2.0.4

April 4, 2008

Introduction

Recently two ESRI customers have reported problems to ESRI Technical Support after upgrading to Oracle 10.2.0.4. The Oracle upgrade appears to be deleting some schema elements we require for the spatial type (ST_GEOMETRY). Uninstalling the upgrade to restore the prior version of Oracle does not work. ESRI is in contact with Oracle and we are working together to understand and quickly resolve the problem in this Oracle 10.2.0.4 patch upgrade.

ESRI is strongly recommending that all Oracle based customers do not upgrade to Oracle patch version 10.2.0.4 until ESRI has certified this Oracle patch release with ArcGIS Server 9.2. If you have already upgraded to Oracle 10.2.0.4 and have questions, please contact ESRI Technical Support or your local international distributor as soon as possible.

Summary of the Problem:

ArcSDE 9.2 instances create PUBLIC synonyms for the SDE ST_GEOMETRY and subtypes; along with several geometry, relation and assessor operators and functions. Upgrading to Oracle 10.2.0.4 causes ArcSDE 9.2 instances to fail during several operations including "create feature class" when the reference to ST_GEOMETRY now refers to MDSYS.ST_GEOMETRY (a.k.a. SDO_GEOMETRY).

Please note: At ESRI, we have not been able to successfully roll back from the Oracle 10.2.0.4 to the previous Oracle release.

Census 2007 TIGER/Line Data Now Available

2008-04-02T08:46:00.006-04:00

The US Census Bureau announced on March 31st that the 2007 TIGER/Line data is available for download as shapefiles. The main page with documentation and changes is located here: http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2007/tgrshp2007.html

The downloads can be found here: http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles/national-files, categorized by national datasets, states, and tribal datasets.

ESRI FedUC - Day 2 (sort-of...)

2008-02-21T21:01:00.004-05:00

I am just now making my way back on the Metro back from the reception at the National Geographic, tacking together some unfiltered notes from earlier in the day- my meeting was punctuated by outside meetings in Alexandria and Fairfax, so I managed to get in about 1.6 sessions, and got back just in time to find that the EPA Q&A session was shut out by the passionate Bern Szukalski.

Nonetheless, I attended the "What's New in ArcGIS Server 9.3" session this morning, hosted by Dave Wrazien.

Dave touched on a number of things slated for release, and which gave me some cause for interest, most notably the new APIs

Some bullet points and excerpts from my notes:

Effort is being made by the Server development team to reduce server roundtrips and traffic, via AJAX requests and the ASP.NET approach

A number of JavaScript enhancements have been made to improve the user experience, with an expanded JavaScript library, providing feedback and visual cues ala Flash and Silverlight, such as informative progress bars, pixel-zoom and fade-in zooms as the next zoom level loads.

In terms of OGC interop, AGS 9.3 features support for:

WMS and SLD: 1.0, 1.1, 1.1.1, 1.3 / ISO19128
WFS 1.1, GML 3.0, WFS-T 1.1
WCS 1.0, 1.1, 1.1.1

The REST and JavaScript APIs are probably the most exciting for me. Here, Dave highlighted integration opportunities for VE, Google, Yahoo and others, along with functionality for basic map display, navigation, querying, geocoding, and geoprocessing. Later on, there was mention that the JavaScript API makes use of the REST endpoints.

With respect to platform support, some of the highlights mentioned were

JDK 5.0
PostgreSQL/PostGIS
DB2 and Z/OS
SQL Server 2008 (to come in a service pack release)

In terms of usability, the aim in 9.3 is for fewer button clicks, enhancements to the web map viewer, streamlined processes and a simplified UI.

Improvements to Server Manager are likewise on the horizon for 9.3, with wizards to simplify:

Access Control
Cache Management

Along with a Mobile Management Console and a Web Map Migration Utility.

Cache Management makes some significant strides, allowing static datasets to be prerendered- and in the Mobile Management Console, improvements driven by user use cases allows opportunity for populating mobile devices with lower server and communications overhead. Additionally, while 9.2 only provided mobile developers with an SDK, 9.3 provides templates and other resources toward jumpstart.

More to follow…

A flying paleobeastie in the lobby of National Geographic...

ESRI FedUC Day 1

2008-02-20T20:18:00.006-05:00

You actually won't find a whole lot from me here on ESRI FedUC - today was mainly taken up by the Plenary session, and due to a number of meetings, I was bouncing in and out for a chunk of the day - but some of the highlights I picked up on:

A big emphasis was put on ArcGIS Explorer - speaking to notes, lightweight pushpin objects and other things which will enhance the geobrowser experience. Some good examples again highlighting custom tasks, however not a lot of detail on the plumbing and integration experience.

The other big highlight for me - ArcGIS Server previews - One very cool thing I noticed was the JavaScript API, where they did what appeared to be some very fast, painless and very nice integration with Virtual Earth, via JavaScript arcgisve_service calls. Definitely one feature I'd like to kick the tires on a bit.

The keynote was given via a prerecorded presentation from the Secretary of the Interior - this was followed by a few presentations and points from other areas within DOI - featuring NILS - the National Integrated Land System within GeoCommunicator: http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/more/nils.html

But for me, the meetings have thus far been the highlight of the day....

And now... the obligatory blurry camera phone of the backs of heads:

And next... the comments about "lame blogging" and "why couldn't James be there..."

Alabama HB 333, Special Interest To Undermine Surveying

2008-02-18T09:25:00.003-05:00

As I posted previously, Alabama House Bill 333 strives to allow unlicensed individuals to perform surveying in rural areas - however, quite often it's rural areas which have significant cadastral disputes, problems with records and field evidence, and so on - which all the more require professional expertise and judgement from a knowledgeable land surveyor.

To provide some additional background, the Press-Register in Alabama provides a few details on the dispute - evidently an unlicensed, retired individual with a background as a Process Engineer was seeking to offer surveying services, and was reprimanded by the Alabama licensure board. Claims have been raised that it's "impossible to get licensed" and "impossible to pay a reasonable amount" to have a surveyor retrace the boundary or help resolve disputes.

These are countered by this analysis by Greg Spies, in the following points sent out to ASPLS:

House Bill 333

1. This bill is a slap in the face of everyone who is licensed or in the process of obtaining their license;

2. Evidently this bill was introduced for the sole benefit of an individual who is not a member of the surveying profession in Alabama; this individual, a retired engineer, allegedly, has been reported to the BOL for surveying without a license;

3. HB 333 is a retaliatory bill and places the interests of one individual (who allegedly has been surveying without a license) over the interests of every surveyor in Alabama who followed the legal procedure as defined by the Code of Alabama (1975, as amended) when they obtained their license;

4. HB 333 will set the practice of surveying back 100 years or more; it eliminates professionalism in surveying;

5. HB 333 was drafted without any input or notice from the surveying profession;

6. No licensed surveyor in the State of Alabama supports this bill.

7. The concept of a less educated, less experienced person being allowed to "survey" as a "rural surveyor" is ludicrous, to wit:

a.) rural areas in Alabama comprise approximately 90% of the geographical area of the state;

b.) 90% + of our major interstate and state highways traverse rural areas;

c.) rural areas are mostly more difficult to survey than urbanized areas in that there are fewer recent recorded subdivisions in near vicinity;

d.) surveyors are required to retrace older township plats generated during the U.S. Public Land Survey- these plats are 150 - 200 years old; the physical evidence generated during the original surveys is either lost, obliterated or difficult to find (i.e., the monuments set the bearing trees called for, etc.);

e.) prior surveys (c. 1850-1950) in rural areas were generally poorly done by so-called "rural surveyors" (e.g., non-professional surveyors, engineers, land owners, farmers, etc.) who had little if no experience and education in the art & science of surveying which has caused innumerable problems that must be dealt with by the surveyor of today;

f.) if "rural surveyors" as defined by HB 333 are allowed to practice in Alabama an increase in boundary disputes and subsequent litigation will occur; most boundary disputes and litigation occurring today is because of under-educated and under-experienced "surveyors" having determined the location of a boundary by using poor methods and extremely poor professional judgment and protocol;

g.) Elevation certificates and land title surveys require a knowledgeable and experienced professional surveyor to gather the requisite data for FEMA and the Land Title professionals; These specialized types of surveys require a surveyor to be able to accurately determine difference in elevation relative to a particular datum and require a surveyor who is trained to evaluate the record evidence as it affects a property he is surveying; the "rural surveyor" would not have the skill, experience or knowledge to accomplish these complex types of surveys;

Some have said that it takes too long to find a surveyor in certain parts of Alabama; This is true and the profession needs to address this issue and provide assistance to those counties that have no resident licensed surveyors; We should identify these areas in the vicinity of our practice and periodically offer our services in those areas;

Some have said that the cost of surveying a cotton field or a pasture is too great compared to the value of the land;

It makes absolutely no sense, however, to lower the standards of the profession of surveying for the sake of expediency and expense. Surveyors generally are some of the lowest paid professionals who work within the State.

The surveying profession has steadily sought to raise the bar of the profession over the past 80 years; the legislature passed a bill that was signed into law by the governor in 1996 that requires a four year surveying degree and an additional four years of experience under a licensed surveyor for an individual to apply to take the test to obtain his license; This method of obtaining a license to survey in Alabama supercedes an apprenticeship method that required 8 years of experience under a licensed surveyor to take the test; the window to obtain a license by the former method closed Dec. 31st, 2007.

Interestingly HB 333 was filed just a few weeks after this window closed.

What we need is a bill to strengthen the penalties for someone who surveys without a license. We do not need this "dumb down bill" that would gut the existing laws on the books related to surveying;

Tell your legislators to stop HB 333 from seeing the light of day; this bill needs to be seen for what it is- a veiled attempt to assist a constituent who has broken the law.

Topcon and Sokkia: Engagement leads to Marriage

2008-02-17T14:05:00.005-05:00

Looks like the discussions that started last year between Topcon and Sokkia have led to Topcon acquiring 94% of Sokkia's outstanding stock - 32 million shares, for $194 million.

It will be interesting to see what this does moving forward, along with prior relationships on the GPS front between Sokkia and Novatel, which was purchased by Leica since.

Topcon's press release: http://www.topconpositioning.com/news-events/single/item/topcon-sokkia-combine-to-create-worlds-leading-survey-instruments-supplier/

Alabama HB 333

2008-02-12T20:02:00.000-05:00

The Alabama Legislature currently has a bill pending, HB 333, sponsored by Rep. Keahey, which essentially waters down Alabama's regulation for the practice of land surveying - an excerpt of the proposed bill is presented below:

Section 2. (a) The practice of rural land surveyor is limited to rural areas and municipalities with a population of less than 5,000.
(b) To qualify as a rural land surveyor one must meet one of the following requirements:
(1) Graduation from a four-year curriculum in civil engineering or forestry and successfully passing a written examination approved by the board relating to the laws, procedures, and practices of land surveying in Alabama.
(2) Graduation from an approved technical curriculum related to surveying or forestry; two years of supervised surveying experience; and successfully passing a written examination approved by the board relating to the laws, procedures, and practices of land surveying in Alabama.
(3) Eight or more years of field experience in land surveying and letters of recommendation from at least three individuals that will attest to satisfactory surveying work during these years.

Option 3 above bypasses the examination, it allows anyone to recommend the applicant, and thereby bypasses vetting of applicants. The traditional approach pursued, implemented and recommended by NCEES and most State Registration Boards has been to strive for a stable foundation which is not based on any single yardstick, but instead a combination of education, experience and examinations. Further, the case here in Pennsylvania has been to ensure that the applicant has some minimum amount of experience with boundary surveys, has been exposed to both field and office practices, and that experience gained has been progressive, and under the oversight of a licensed professional.

The full bill text is available here: AL HB333

This bill is inconsistent with all prior efforts toward regulation of the surveying profession in Alabama, is inconsistent with NCEES recommendations and their Model Law, and otherwise ill-advised in many ways.

Alabama residents are strongly urged to consider contacting their representatives and recommending opposition to this bill - call (334)242-7600 and ask to be put in touch with your representative.

ESRI FedUC - February 20-22 2008

2008-02-11T21:31:00.000-05:00

One event coming up that I do plan on attending - the 2008 ESRI Federal User Conference: http://www.esri.com/events/feduc/index.html

Looking forward to attending it again, a lot of my friends in the federal sector and federal contracting will be attending. I also like the size, kind of like a mini San Diego.

Haven't yet heard if anyone's organizing a geoblogger meetup in any formal fashion... but I did create a Facebook event for it - http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=8865086825

February 20-22, 2008
Washington DC Convention Center,
801 Mount Vernon Place NW
Washington, DC

A Composition on Surveying and Geodesy

2008-02-10T10:23:00.000-05:00

Poetic Verse on Surveying and Geodesy...

Survey the Whole, nor seek slight faults to find,
When Nature moves, and Rapture warms the Mind.
SCIENCE! thou Daughter of the Skies, 'tis thine
To make Perfection in her Beauties shine;
Thy darkest Clues endear the anxious Mind,
When Study labours thy great Worth to find:
In thy rich Stores our lab'ring Thoughts absorb,
Measure the Earth, and each celestial Orb.
Behold yon Gardens, Trees, and shady Bow'rs,
So often chequer'd with delightful Flow'rs;
Behold yon Buildings, high ascending Spires,
Yon Water, Castle, Mountains, stately Tow'rs,
Yon curing Brook, and cool expanding Shade,
Whose winding Course surrounds the fragrant Mead;
All their Dimensions we with Ease impart,
By GEODASIA, and the Rules of Art.

Thomas Sadler, 1771

The above is excerted from "To Arthur Burns, on his New Treatise, entitled, GEODASIA IMPROVED: A Poem", written by Thomas Sadler, Whitechurch, 1771.

Some background on Sadler from SurveyHistory.org, the Virtual Museum of Surveying:

Mr. Sadler was a devoted student of Burns', a leading surveyor of the day.

The poetic style, like much of the language of the time, was ornate. The Century Dictionary of 1889 describes "Geodasia": Formerly, the art of land surveying in general, but now restricted to that branch of applied mathematics, distinctively called Higher Geodesy which investigates the figures and areas of large portions of geographical positions and the azimuths of directions, the general figure of the earth, and the variations of gravity in different regions, by means of direct observation and measurement."

GIS = "Get It Surveyed"

2008-02-09T22:59:00.000-05:00

The maxim in the surveying community of "GIS = Get It Surveyed" is still alive and well, where cadastral GIS is concerned.

Some GIS horror stories du jour:

Community in New Hampshire that's assigning parcel IDs to gaps and overlaps found in their GIS system

A county in Oregon that took the above one step further, and actually decided to try and auction off those gap and overlap "parcels" (fortunately the county surveyor stepped in and advised them otherwise)
Central New York state - a county tax department assigned parcel status to a gore area and the county auctioned it off, created many problems.

A county in Virginia that was fighting to keep their GIS data over that of actual survey data in the case of a discrepancy, strictly because the assessed GIS acreage was more than the actual acreage owned, resulting in more income for the county

And the most ridiculous of the lot - a county in Texas, that when they couldn't locate the current owner of the parcel, rather than researching it and resolving it, they filled it in with a fictitious name - "Arnold Ziffel".

When it comes to cadastral GIS, I've said it before, and I'll say it again - land surveyors still are and will always continue to be the domain experts when it comes to resolving property line location, relationship to adjoiners and senior ownership, chain of title, relationship to found evidence in the field, and toward discrepancies, gaps and overlaps. Let's also throw understanding of rights-of-way, easements, road dockets, riparian rights, PLSS and the like, and how these likewise affect and impact ownership and taxation.

If you have discrepancies, data gaps, quality issues, other issues, I cannot stress it enough to county tax departments - work with the surveyors. Some counties are very good about this- others are downright frightening if not dangerous.

Oracle Spatial User Conference

2008-02-08T07:24:00.000-05:00

Oracle Spatial User Conference
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Washington State Trade & Convention Center
Seattle, Washington USA

The agenda touches on some of my own hotbutton issues - integrating Oracle Spatial with Virtual Earth, Business Intelligence and other areas...

http://gita.org/events/annual/31/Oracle.asp

Javad is back!

2008-02-04T23:11:00.001-05:00

A buzz is going around in the surveying community, JAVAD is back.

Dr. Javad Ashjaee, after a lengthy non-compete hiatus, has returned to the market with Javad GNSS, Inc. - Arguably a highly recognizable figure and driving force behind the GPS success of Trimble Navigation, his former ventures Ashtech and Javad Positioning Systems, which he sold to Topcon in 2000 - he now returns with a number of interesting offerings: The Triumph chip, a 216-channel receiver, said to be able to receive "all existing satellite signals as well as all those planned for the future. This includes all GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, WAAS, EGNOS, and Compass/Beidou signals"

Javad is also unveiling a number of other offerings, such as 4-receiver cluster units, the "Victor" handheld data collector, software suites, and many other innovations.

This is GPS on steroids...

To The Bard...

2008-01-25T23:00:00.000-05:00

A Bard's Epitaph

Is there a whim-inspired fool,
Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule,
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool,
Let him draw near;
And owre this grassy heap sing dool,
And drap a tear.

Is there a bard of rustic song,
Who, noteless, steals the crowds among,
That weekly this area throng,
O, pass not by!
But, with a frater-feeling strong,
Here, heave a sigh.

Is there a man, whose judgment clear
Can others teach the course to steer,
Yet runs, himself, life's mad career,
Wild as the wave,
Here pause-and, thro' the starting tear,
Survey this grave.

The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn the wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow,
And softer flame;
But thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stain'd his name!

Reader, attend! whether thy soul
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole,
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole,
In low pursuit:
Know, prudent, cautious, self-control
Is wisdom's root.

Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796)

Pennsylvania Surveyors Conference Wrapup

2008-01-24T07:48:00.000-05:00

Finally back home, after spending a week on the road for a few meetings around the country, including the NCEES Uniform Procedures and Legislative Guidelines committee meeting, to which I was recently appointed, to discuss the 5-year review of the NCEES Model Law and Rules and other associated charges, and a couple of days at the Pennsylvania Surveyors Conference.

Amazingly, during the course of one week, US Airways managed to lose one of my bags not once, but twice, on my way down to Florida and then on the way back. The bag did finally show up, but not after it took me a few trips to the store to restock on a few sundries, and not without finally arriving with a trashed wheel.

At any rate, it was a great trip, but I am happy to be home again.

The PSLS Conference was particularly enjoyable, I got to see a lot of old friends and colleagues from around the state, with a great turnout from our PSLS Pocono Chapter, as well as a few friends from the RPLS.COM message board, a few folks from PAMAGIC, and there were a bunch of great sessions to attend...

The sessions I attended:

Introduction to FEMA National Flood Insurance, presented by Wendy Lathrop PLS, CFM - this was a great session, giving an overview of the DFIRM flood maps and data, versus Q3, discussion of the zones and base flood elevations and processes for submitting map amendments, for working with instances of fill and development within a flood zone, and other associated issues - ~~will post more on FEMA, "Map Modernization" and the DFIRM process in the very near future, as it raises a huge, longstanding concern of mine regarding DFIRM data~~. Umm, on second thought, NO, I won't post more on my issues and concerns on DFIRMs and MapMod - at least until AFTER the upcoming RFP response...

Surveyors use floodplain maps to identify flood-prone areas of sites and to determine the extent of those hazards. We will look at how first Housing and
Urban Development (HUD) and later the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) began mapping flood hazard areas, how the process has changed over the years, and the surveyor’s role in updating and correcting those maps. Regulations and use of the appropriate forms provide practical background when serving our clients and protecting ourselves from liability
Records Research, presented by Lionel "Buck" Alexander PLS & Charles Colony PE PLS - this was a great session on cadastral research and locating legal records from a variety of sources, not just deed books, but registers of wills, orphans' court, road dockets, and many other sources.

This workshop will cover how a deed research is started and completed. It will look at indexing systems, reading and interpreting deeds for chain of title, and the use of plats and plans in deed research, wills, estates, and tax sales as related to deed research will be discussed.
Survey Measurement Analysis, presented by Chuck Ghilani, Ph.D. - this one featured analysis and propagation of error, and adjustment of error via least squares.

This workshop will present and demonstrate the basic statistical analysis necessary to perform least squares adjustments. It will describe methods for
analyzing and adjusting measurements to account for their errors. This workshop seeks to furnish theoretical understanding and demonstrate computer-aided application to common survey types including level networks, horizontal survey measurement networks, and GPS baseline networks.
Easements and Rights of Way, presented by Gary Kent - this session gave a great overview of some of the legal aspects of easements and rights-of-way, in how easements and rights-of-way can be formed either through written or unwritten means (such as by necessity), along with case law and other great info.

This workshop has the overall objective of helping surveyors more fully understand the types, elements and nature of easements, both written and
unwritten. Specific performance objectives include improving participants'
knowledge base such that after attending this workshop, they are able to: define what is an easement, outline the various types of easements, explain the difference between appurtenant easements and easements in gross, explain the difference between an easement and a license, identify the ways in which easements can be created and terminated, identify the types of unwritten easements and explain the nature of each type of unwritten easement.
Dendrology & Forest Ecology, presented by Tim Pierson Ph.D. & Ken Comstock PLS
This session provided a great overview of forestry - types of trees, mensuration and valuation of trees, forest growth and sustainability and history of Pennsylvania's forests and forest stewardship.

Tree identification and understanding of the uses and values of our timber heritage. Also, the study of forest growth and the relationship of trees to our environment, and to our work as surveyors.

Wednesday, February 18
9:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m.	Plenary Session
2:30 p.m.	Keynote Speaker
3:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m.	GIS Solutions EXPO and Map Gallery Reception
Thursday, February 19
8:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.	Concepts of GIS Sessions
	Paper Sessions
	Technical Workshops
8:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.	Map Gallery
8:30 a.m.–6:00 p.m.	Hands-On Learning Center
10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.	GIS Solutions EXPO
4:00 p.m.–5:30 p.m.	Industry Focus Session
5:30 p.m.–8:30 p.m.	Thursday Night Social
Friday, February 20
8:30 a.m.–noon	Paper Sessions
	Technical Workshops
	Industry Focus Sessions
9:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m.	User Group Meetings
Noon–2:00 p.m.	Closing Session