CartoDB launches tools for visualizing temporal data

CartoDB, a robust and easy to use web mapping application, today launched "torque" a new feature enabling visualization of temporal data sets. 

From the CartoDB team:

Torque is a library for CartoDB that allows you to create beautiful visualizations with temporal datasets by bundling HTML5 browser rendering technologies with an efficient data transfer format using the CartoDB API. You can see an example of Torque in action on the Guardian's Data Blog, and grab the open source code from here.

Be sure to check out the example based on location data recorded from Captain's logs from the British Royal Navy during the first World War.  Amazing stuff!

New green blog about our web participation paper

Check it out! our recent paper on the SNAMP website is featured in the green blog.

Land Change Science Position Open!

We are very excited to have open a new Cooperative Extension specialist position in Land Change Science. The successful Land Change CE specialist will have a PhD, and will develop a vibrant applied research program, primarily based in California. There are no formal teaching duties with this position, instead, the incumbant will have outreach and extension duties.

We are searching for someone who can help us understand, predict and plan for the complexities of land use change in California. This might be someone from geography, landscape ecology, sociology, or economics, for example, and might focus on planning, modeling or observations of land change, biophysical feedbacks from land change, or spatial analysis. But they must be an adept and capable communicator who can speak to diverse audiences, from landowners, to politicians, to farmers, to scientists, to planners, to citizens.

The Specialist would provide science-based solutions and bridge conflicting interests with knowledge, targeted research, and local education regarding the relationships between expanding population and climate change, and the remaining matrix of wild landscapes, urban areas, working landscapes and agriculture.

The Specialist would provide resources for county-based Cooperative Extension personnel, including learning from UCCE personnel about the needs of decision makers at the local level, and acting as a information and training resource for the use of new tools (GIS, remote sensing, smart phone applications, etc.) for land use analysis.

Please consider applying if this fits you! I will be happy to answer questions.

Pre-development Delta report from SFEI

The San Francisco Estuary Institute-Aquatic Science Center is pleased to announce the publication of its latest report, Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Historical Ecology Investigation: Exploring Pattern and Process. The report is the culmination of several years of research synthesizing thousands of pieces of historical evidence with contemporary scientific understanding. The report provides new information about how the Delta functioned to provide habitat for native species and includes dozens of rarely seen historical accounts, maps, and photographs. For more information, please see today's press release.

The report and Geographic Information System (GIS) data are available for download here. Printed copies of the report will be available in several weeks, at a cost of $75 each (plus tax/shipping).

Media Contacts:
Robin Grossinger, Senior Scientist, San Francisco Estuary Institute-Aquatic Science Center, (510) 746-7380 (office), 510 326 3732 (cell), or robin@sfei.org

Carl Wilcox, Policy Advisor to the Director for the Bay-Delta, California Department of Fish and Game, (707) 738-4134, or cwilcox@dfg.ca.gov

Welcome to Columbus, OH! GIScience in the heartland

Welcome to Ohio! When I arrived, Columbus was cloudy and warm, with the city in a buzz from a visit from President Obama.

GIScience 2012 was an amazing conference: small (~300 people) and focused, with a terrific program: 2 keynotes each morning, sessions through the day and a panel session of 6 speakers in the evenings. I went to sessions on spatial uncertainty, the geoweb (where Renee Sieber gave a terrific talk on the challenges of participation in webGIS (I learned a ton!)), and big data among others, and Thomas Blaschke and I organized a workshop on obia. The keynotes were especially satisfying: big picture, often provocative talks from gifted speakers. Helen Couclelis talked about her vision of GIScience as a meta science: an "information oriented, context sensitive, spatially referenced, method of representing the real world". I loved the discussion of intentionality and context in her talk, and overall it gave me so much to think about. Noel Cressie showed his group's work modeling uncertainty in a North American regional climate change model: summer is going to be hotter in the North American south, and winter is going to be warmer in the Canadian north, no matter how you slice it. Jack Dongarra gave a riveting talk on the future of supercomputing: he walked us through the building of a supercomputer from an individual core, and made clear the power, software and hardware requirements of these machines. Doug Richardson presented his high level perspective on GIS and health; he and the AAG have been working hard to make geoinformatics more evident in public health research through workshop, grants and tireless lobbying. Also a great treat was my visit with Desheng Liu, former lab member, who is now Associate Professor of Geography and Statistics at Ohio State University. We spent some time walking around the lovely campus and catching up. I also got to visit, very briefly, the Thurber House, home of one of my favs James Thurber, who went to OSU and lived in Columbus. Great stuff! As for our workshop, here are the key items the participants were interested in (in order of popularity): terminology, the future of geobia, integration with GIS, semantics, accuracy, change, standards, learning from the past.

New study on diabetes risk and neighborhood walkability

The reading for this week's GIS class on vector analysis discussed network buffer measures of neighborhood walkability, and the class came up with numerous components of the built and social environment that the authors didn't include in their land-use based walkability measure that also likely influence people's walking behaviors (e.g. destinations to walk to, crime/safety, trees and greenness, sidewealk quality and ramps, traffic, disincentives from parking costs, etc.). It was a great discussion! I just came acrosos this write-up about a recent article in the journal Diabetes Care that finds a strong relationship between neighborhood walkability and diabetes risk, especially for low-income immigrants. The UC Library doesn't have online access to the most recent one month of articles for this journal, so I haven't been able to look at the full methodolgy for their walkabilty measure. But, I wanted to note it here and will follow-up later with details. Or, if anyone finds access to the full article, please let me know!

Cool cartography--Risk mapping at a broad view

I came across this short blurb by  on some tricks for catchy large-scale maps. The bullet-points include:

• Interesting Topic.  The subjects of these maps inherently represent risk, which we want to understand.
• Unexpected Scope.  A forest view of something that’s usually seen at the tree-level offers satisfying perspective.
• Big and Clear.  A single dataset is conceptually simple, and when large enough, it provides its own context-promoting conversation in the wild.
• Sharable.  A static image is portable and paste-able, easily nestling into articles, blogs, tweets, and PowerPoints.
• Attractive.  The currency of design buys a second or third look.

There is often a push to make large datasets available through interactive webGIS portals, but I think this makes a good case that there is still also a role for skilled cartography to present information in captivating ways. 

Below is an example of one of the author's (John Nelson) maps, and more can be found here. 

San Francisco Bay fog viewed from space

Here is a neat satellite image released by NASA Earth Observatory of fog rolling into the San Francisco Bay. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite acquired this image on August 16, 2012. For more information on the image and the story behind click here.

Credit: NASA Earth Observatory: Advanced Land Imager (ALI) August 16, 2012

One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago

Gabriel Ahlfeldt, from the London School of Economics, presents in a video in the link below on an interesting project that digitized Olcott's Blue Books, a unique dataset of historical land values, land uses, building heights, and other information in Chicago and its suburbs, published annually between 1900 and 1990. The digitized information from the Blue Books allows for detailed historical statistical and geospatial analyses. The visualization of the data is presented in the video using GIS software.

View the video on youtube by clicking here.

1906 Earthquake & Present Day Photo Mashup

Shawn Clover recently released part 2 of his “1906 + Today: The Earthquake Blend” series which is a mashup of 1906 earthquake aftermath photos in San Francisco with present day photos at the same location. The photos are blended creating a seamless image of the past superimposed on the present.

View part 1 of the series here from 2010 and part 2 of the series here from 2012.

Credit: shawnclover.com

Bing Maps completes Global Ortho project for US

The Bing Maps team has anounced the completion of the Global Ortho Project for the US.  The project provides 30cm resolution imagery for the entire US, all acquired within the last 2 years.  You can access all of the imagery now through Bing Maps, it is pretty amazing to see such detail for all of the far off places that typically don't get high resolution attention. 

Find out more about the project from the Bing Maps Blog, or view the data for yourself.

Tag clouds from Fall 2012 GIS class

In class today, I asked everyone to share what they thought of as the 2 big challenges facing the world, 2 possible GIS-related methods that could be used to examine the challenges, and 2 possible data products or output products that might be used in the process. Here are the results!

Challenges facing us in the 21st century:

biodiversity loss chronic disease climate change economic inequality energy environmental wealth equity fire ghg emissions human information transparency infrastructure land use oak conservation population growth public participation renewable energy science communication social transportation trust water availability

created at TagCrowd.com

Data used and products created:

air quality atmospheric biodiversity hotspots blogs cell phone participation census climate layers climate predictions dem ecosystem threats food environment forests gdp groundwater conductivity income land use lidar population population demography population density precipitation property boundaries remote sensing residences risk zones socio economic data species distributions storms streets surveys temperature threat map tweets unemployment data urban development vegetation water sources webgis wetlands youth mapping

created at TagCrowd.com

Cool stuff! On with GIS Fall 2012.

Fire Forecast

NPR recently created a neat interactive web map depicting locations of large active wildfires (updated every 30 min) and current wildfire danger forecasts (Low to Extreme) for areas in the lower 48 states (updated daily). Check out the map here and the accompany news story here. Map was created by Matt Stiles, Stephanie D'Otreppe and Brian Boyer.

Screenshot of NPR's Fire Forecast map

See the bigger picture. Make a better world.

Earlier this week we in ESPM heard a report from the folks in the SWIRL marketing team, who have been working to extract the essence of what we do in ESPM and in CNR. Their proposed tagline for us is: "See the bigger picture. Make a better world." Which aptly describes what we do in applied geospatial sciences. I kinda wish I'd thought it up myself. And since this summer marks the 40th anniversary of the Landsat program, I thought I'd use this post to talk about how our ability to observe the earth from space does indeed fit this new tagline.

July 23, 1972 ERTS Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS), later christened Landsat 1, was launched into a near-polar orbit. We had our first earth-watching, civilian science satellite. ERTS instruments recorded information in four spectral bands: red, green, and two infrared.

Remote sensing missions have continued through the decades that followed, making modern earth system science, landscape ecology, agriculture prediction, and many other fields possible. The Landsat missions continue with some blips: Landsat2 was launched in 1975, Landsat 3 in 1978; Landsat 4 in 1982 and Landsat 5 in 1984; in 1993 funds were found to keep Landsat 4 and 5 operational just before Landsat 6 failed upon launch in 1993 and ended up in the Indian Ocean. Landsat 5 only recently gave out after 27 year of imaging; Landsat 7, launched in 1999 continues its work as well.  The eighth satellite, dubbed the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), is scheduled for launch in 2013. It will be the next chapter for the longest-operating Earth-observing program in the world. More information here: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov.

Landsat 7 is entirely government owned and operated, and after launch, the USGS was charged with distributing the data at government (nonprofit) rates. Today, the USGS distributes Landsat data over the Internet for free, and usage has exploded. Back in the day, we had to pay for each scene individually. This tended to limit the ability to work at regional, let alone global scales.  The new model of data distribution has made a number of on-line resources and visuzalizations possible.  Additionally, there are currently a quarter of a million science citations that use Landsat imagery, focusing on agriculture, oceans, land change, urban and natural areas.

The first fully operational Landsat image taken on July 25, 1972, inaugurating a 40-year run when the first satellite was known as the Earth Resources Technology Satellite, or ERTS. Credit: NASA’s Earth Observatory

This image above was the first image from the Landsat program. It shows Dallas, TX. Check out those reservoirs!

Some nice write-ups about Landsat:

• NASA Earth Observatory Landsat Looks and Sees
• NASA Landsat: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/landsat/main/index.html
• USGS Landsat Missions: http://landsat.usgs.gov/
• Landsat Top 10: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/landsat/news/landsat-40th-top10.html

Landsat imagery:

• ESRI's Change Matters: http://www.esri.com/landsat-imagery/viewer.html
• ESRI's Landsat Services: http://www.esri.com/landsat-imagery/index.html
• USGS Landsat Data Download: http://landsat.usgs.gov/Landsat_Search_and_Download.php

Happy Fall Semester 2012!

California Climate Change Portal

Climate change is expected to have significant, widespread impacts on California's economy and environment. California's unique and valuable natural treasures - hundreds of miles of coastline, high value forestry and agriculture, snow-melt fed fresh water supply, vast snow and water fueled recreational opportunities, as well as other natural wonders - are especially at risk.

California is leading the way with prevention measures to reduce greenhouse gases, but no matter how quickly we cut our climate polluting emissions, climate impacts will still occur. Many impacts - increased fires, floods, severe storms and heat waves - are occurring already and will only become more frequent and more costly. There are many things we can do to protect against climate change impacts. Taking steps now to prepare for and adapt to climate change will protect public health and safety, our economy and our future.

The state of California has released the Climate Change Portal, where you will find resources you can use and actions you can take to address both climate change prevention and climate change adaptation. Cal-adapt is a big part of the portal.

Fall 2012 GIF Workshop Schedule

The Fall 2012 GIF workshop schedule is posted here: http://gif.berkeley.edu/support/workshops.html

These are excellent short-course format workshops on a range of geospatial topics: GIS, GPS, remote sensing and modeling. Check them out!

Drought imagery from MODIS

As the warm weather moves west this week we think about those battling the drought in the midwest and northern states. Here is a shot from July from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor, on the Terra satellite.  The map contrasts plant health in the United States between June 25 and July 10, 2012, against the average conditions between 2002 and 2012. Brown areas show where plant growth was less vigorous than normal; cream colors depict normal levels of growth; and green indicates abnormally lush vegetation. Data was not available in the gray areas due to snow or cloud cover. From NASA.

New open datasets for City of Oakland and Alameda County

Following on the footsteps of the county and city of San Francisco open data repository at data.sfgov.org, two new beta open data repositories have recently been released for the City of Oakland and Alameda County. This development coincides with the recent 2012 Code for Oakland hackathon last week. The hackathon aims to make government more transparent in the city and county through the use of technology with apps and the web to make public access to government data easier. The City of Oakland’s open data repository at data.openoakland.org includes data on crime reports for a variety of spatial scales, a variety of tabular and geographic data such as parcels, roads, trees, public infrastructure, and locations of new development to name a few. It is important to note that the Oakland open data repository is currently not officially run or maintained by the City of Oakland. It is currently maintained by members of the community and the OpenOakland Brigade. Alameda County’s open data repository at data.acgov.org includes data on Sherriff crime reports, restaurant health reports, solar generation data, and a variety of tabular and geographic data and public health department data. Data can be viewed on a browser as an interactive table or an interactive map or the data can be downloaded in a variety of formats. Both sites are still in their infancy so expect more datasets to come online soon. Also on the same note, the Urban Strategies Council recently released a new version of their InfoAlamedaCounty webGIS data visualization and map viewer - check it out.

 Screenshot of City of Oakland Open Data: data.openoakland.org

Screenshot of Alameda County Open Data: data.acgov.org

Crowdsourced neighborhood boundaries

Andy Woodruff and Tim Wallace from Bostonography discuss the first preliminary results of an experiment they set up with an interactive webGIS tool that allows people to draw polygons where they think each of Boston’s neighborhoods are located. About 300 maps of neighborhoods have been submitted so far and with the compiled data there are many areas of agreement and disagreement on where neighborhood boundaries may lay. Bostonography created maps showing a gradient of agreement for each neighborhood's boundary. This exercise is reminiscent to the work of Kevin Lynch and is an interesting experiment in trying to see if there is a consensus on where people think neighborhood boundaries are as opposed to how they are defined officially by the city. For the full blog post and maps on Bostonography click here. For an article in the Atlantic Cities that discusses the maps click here.

Strength or density of polygon line placement of crowdsourced neighborhood boundaries

New Trulia commute time maps

Trulia recently released a new commute time map that shows your estimated time of arrival in real time to all points in a region. The service uses OpenStreetMap data and General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) feeds to calculate travel time. Drive times are available nationwide with public transit travel time only available in select cities for now. Read the full story here or click here for the map.

Screenshot from Trulia commute map