At WhereCamp5280 last week in Denver, we heard from Steve Coast about the latest developments in Open StreetMap. Of interest was this cool video that Steve shared (sorry about Peter Batty’s head in the way ;0), showing the progress of Open StreetMap over the years (think Crowd-sourced GIS). Recall, OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world – made by people like you! OpenStreetMap allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth. If your interested keep an eye open for news tips about an Open StreetMapping party taking place near you in the future! See http://www.openstreetmap.org/ or check out the Wiki at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Main_Page
Archives for August 20, 2009
Data Tip – USGS land/sea mask dataset
An excellent free, Global data resource… The land/sea mask has been improved and now includes ocean boundaries from the World Vector Shoreline (WVS) data set. The boundaries for U.S. Great Lakes and St. Lawrence seaway come from the Political/Ocean (ponet) layer of the Digital Chart of the World (DCW). The boundaries of inland water bodies come from the perennial water bodies and polygon features (double line rivers) of the Drainage Network (dnnet) layer of the DCW. The land/sea mask has been generalized during the process of rasterizing the vector data to 1-km grid cells. A 1-km cell is assigned to land or water based on the dominant area of a cell. World Vector Shoreline boundaries have precedence over DCW. Grab it at http://edc2.usgs.gov/1KM/land_sea_mask.php see also Global Land 1-KM AVHRR Project
Data tip – Datamap Intelligence housing market snapshots
An interesting data product for the real estate professional… Datamap Intelligence has created a unique application that creates customized comprehensive snapshots of the entire new housing market across the United States. The application is powered by an extensive dataset that tracks all new home sites of the top 200+ builders (updated bi-monthly). Detailed search options place the interactive map of choice at ones fingertips. Cutting-edge features provide powerful visual analysis benefits which affords businesses the ability to expand to uncharted sites and stay inform about prime developing areas pertaining to their line of business. See Datamap’s application at www.datamapi.com which would allow one to perform a query to obtain desired results. the company has also JUST rolled out a new resource via www.nsdmaps.com where users can sample data via free SHP file download.. indeed this is a way interesting data product!
Event of Interest – eCognition User Summit for Earth Science
eCognition is back! The company that brought you the original object based image analysis software is pleased to invite you to the annual eCognition User Summit being held November 2-5 in Munich, Germany at the world famous Deutsches Museum.
Reasons to attend
- Keynote from Prof Dr Gerd Binnig, Definiens founder and Nobel Laureate
- Be part of the most exciting product launch in Definiens’ history: eCognition 8
- Learn from eCognition user presentations held by experts from industry and academia
- Network with other Definiens experts and users and start a discussion
- Bring the latest tools and techniques back to your organization by participating in the hands-on training
