mapping for a changing california
Welcome to the Kellylab blog! We post fun facts and things that catch our eye. Occasionally I wax lyrically about a topic of interest.
I am adding a new category for postings that are relevant to the Our Space project. Right now, we are particularly interested in any topics regarding mapping behavior and accessibility. Walk Score utilizes Google Maps to calculate a neighborhood walkability index. Such an index could also be used as a measure of access.
I found this presentation on the Google Maps API blog. Aside from the relevance of the content, I was really excited about this means to present powerpoints.
The USGS is pleased to announce that Landsat 5 resumed imaging on January 10, 2008. Landsat 5 imaging was suspended on October 6, 2007 due to a battery cell failure with one of its two working batteries. The Flight Operation Team determined that 1 of 22 cells failed in one of the batteries. This reduces the overall power available from the batteries and requires a new battery charging procedure to avoid overheating. In November 2005, Landsat 5 transitioned to operations using a fixed solar array due to a failed motor which reduces the efficiency of battery charging. This, combined with the reduced power available from the batteries, increases the complexity of maintaining a safe power balance while collecting imagery.Over the next few weeks, the team will continue to increase collection of imagery while closely monitoring power. Data collected will be available soon following analysis and calibration of the data.
Free Geography Tools is a great blog for finding exactly that, free widgets to enhance your geographic and mapping-related work. A couple of recent posts highlighted these tools: This post highlights a tool to edit .dbf files. While this post introduces a desktop utility to convert DMS to Decimal-Degrees. Another cool utility that Maggie recently introduced me too is the GeoPDF toolbar, which allows users to explore map layers within Adobe Reader. The format is very similar to that of ArcMap, allowing for searches by attributes and for layers to be turned on and off. An additional tool, Map2PDF, allows users to export GeoPDF from ArcMap. If you want to download the GeoPDF toolbar, I have attached a map as an example.
I just heard this story on The World on KQED: " Blogging the Violence in Kenya -- Post-election violence in Kenya is still going on, but it's hard to monitor. Now, some concerned bloggers are trying to help. They've set up a website where Kenyans can report on what they see in their own communities. The result is a real-time, web-based map that shows what's happening all across Kenya." See Ushahidi Here
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A recent article in the economist highlighted the potential of volunteer computing projects, such as SETI@home, to utilize the ram power and brain power of the masses. This excerpt highlights a particularly interesting project (Africa@home) to classify remotely sensed data. The article also introduces BOSSA, a software made at Berkeley to integrate the skills of many volunteers over the Internet. "Bossa nova To lower the barrier to entry for projects like this, Dr Anderson recently launched a new open-source platform called BOSSA (Berkeley Open System for Skill Aggregation), which aims to do for “distributed thinking” what BOINC has done for distributed computing. One of Dr Anderson's first customers for BOSSA is Peter Amoako-Yirenkyi of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, who is working with other African researchers and a research group called UNOSAT, which processes digital-satellite data for various United Nations agencies. The project, which is part of an initiative called Africa@home co-ordinated by the University of Geneva, will enlist volunteers to extract useful cartographic information—the positions of roads, villages, fields and so on—from satellite images of regions in Africa where maps either do not exist or are hopelessly out of date. This will help regional planning authorities, aid workers and scientists documenting the effects of climate change. Dr Amoako-Yirenkyi is excited by the prospects such projects open up for African researchers. “We can leapfrog expensive data centres, and plug directly into a global computer,” he says. Rather than fretting about a digital divide, researchers in developing countries stand to benefit from this digital multiplication effect."
This site is gorgeous. Suggested by Jeremy.
Following the lead of Ken-ichi's discussion, here is another example of WebGIS and disaster response. This one is for the floods in Washington. 
Google released a new function for collaborative mapping in Google Maps yesterday. When creating a map in My Maps, the user has the option to select "Collaborate." The user can then open the map up to the public or invite other user to participate in constructing and editing the map. This recent addition to Google Maps simplifies collaborative mapping and opens up new possibilities for Web GIS and participatory GIS. Additionally, Google Maps added a terrain view this week.