March 3, 2011 – Anything Geospatial

This via Adam R. Jonasson GIS Coordinator City of Grand Forks, ND details of a new web service and open data warehouse. This new map has many more layers, is cleaner, faster, and more up to date than our previous web map. Utilizing Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise and Websoft Developer’s Facilities Map, the new interactive map has the capability to share a much larger dataset as well as utilizing one standard and current dataset. All data on the web map is served up in Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise utilizing a Microsoft SQL Spatial Geodatabase. Websoft Developer’s Facilities Map is used to run all of the reporting and custom applications. More layers are in development, check back often for new data.

A new option on the GIS services web site is the Open Data Warehouse (ODW) This section of the web site is a place where you can access GIS data for your own use. Data is shared in several of the most common GIS and design formats as well as many of the layers being mashed-up with Google Maps (works great for mobile applications). Utilizing Safe Software’s FME Desktop, we are able to export out a large portion of our GIS database daily for your use. The warehouse is designed to be your one stop location for GIS data for the City of Grand Forks. See http://www.gfgis.com/data

I just love Spatial trivia and pretty much anything thats been put into a spatial context. It seems the BBC does as well as evident by their Dimensions Project. Dimensions is a clever mashup that takes news stories and current events, extracts the spatial component related to the item (like a physical shape, pattern, route or ??? and overlays the dimension on top of another place in the World even where you are. For example, ever wondered what the footprint from the 9/11 Twin Towers area of devastation would look like in relation to the downtown core of your city? Or, perhaps you’d be interested in seeing what an environmental disaster like the BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill would look like in relation to a coastline near you… Dimensions does this and much more. See BBC Dimensions at http://www.howbigreally.com (the image below from Dimensions shows the BP oil spill footprint laid over London)