If you've poked around my blog enough, you know that I'm a partner at Zekiah Technologies in La Plata, MD. We are currently looking for up to four .Net developers to support various projects. ESRI development experience is a plus. Depending on the project, you could find yourself working with ArcGIS Server, ArcIMS, ArcSDE, Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL. Some of the projects are supporting systems that have been in place for a while and require migration from older technologies. All will involve the development of new capability.

Once again, work location may vary depending upon the project but it will either be in Dahlgren, Norfolk or Reston in Virginia (especially Dahlgren). We are a consulting company that does development and implementation for our customers. For these positions, customer requirements specify US citizenship. Foreign travel may be required.

I chose to blog about this because I and all of my partners will be at the ESRI User Conference in San Diego and it seemed like it might be a convenient place to talk since so many people will be there. We will be staffing booth 612 so feel free to stop by if you're interested.

For those who read this and may be thinking this way: we are not at liberty to sub-contract any of these positions.

Feel free to contact me via e-mail if you have any questions: bill@zekiah.com

Ein Wiener muss laut heutigen Zeitungsberichten 113 Euro GIS – Gebühr für seinen Laptop zahlen, der nicht einmal eine TV – Karte hat.

Die Begründung der GIS lautete in diesem Fall: „dass mit Breitband-Internet übers Netz Radio- und TV-Programme empfangen werden können“. Dass er einen Laptop besitzt, bekamen GIS – Mitarbeiter bei einer Kontrolle mit.

Nun frage ich mich, wann es so weit sein wird, dass die GIS Handy -TV als neue Einnahmequelle entdeckt.

Ehrlich gesagt, finde ich es nicht sehr fair, wenn GIS für Computer mit Internetzugang Gebühren verlangt, nur weil man damit auch fernsehen kann. Was ist aber mit denen, die ihre Computer nicht als Fernseher verwenden.

Wie steht ihr zu den GIS Gebühren in Zusammenhang mit Computern / Laptops?

Wie steht ihr dazu? Was ist eure Meinung?

das wäre ja noch schöner...

ich bin auch so einer, der weder tv noch radio besitzt, und so ziemlich jede info aus dem netz ziehe, aber dass ich dafür auch noch Tv Gebühren zahlen soll???, soll sie mal kommen.

Lesetipp --> Kurier vom 23.07

NASCIO Geospatial Governance Brief

The National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO) released a brief titled “Governance of Geospatial Resources: “Where’s the Data? Show Me” - Maximizing the Investment in State Geospatial Resources.” This issue brief is part of NASCIO’s series on Enterprise Governance and deals with the growing demand for GIS in every aspect of government decision making. This issue brief is available at: www.nascio.org/publications. For full text of the press release, visit: http://www.nascio.org/newsroom/pressReleases/080723.cfm

Fifty States Initiative Coordination Criteria

The National States Geographic Information Council Blog comments on the nine coordination criteria developed by NSGIC as part of the Fifty States Initiative, to which this NASIO brief adds seven additional issues, including privacy and security issues at the state policy level. Visit: http://www.nsgic.org/blog/2008/07/nascio-looks-at-geospatial-data-issues.html

Profiles of Leading Geospatial Governance Models

As part of a NSDI 50 States Initiative CAP Grant effort in Wisconsin, we examined leading geospatial governance models in eight other states and published a series of geospaital governance profiles: Arkansas, Arizona, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, and Utah .

These state geospatial governance profiles also may be found in total on FGDC's website: http://www.fgdc.gov/grants/2006CAP/Category3/WI/

Comunque alla fine della mattinata ho ottenuto nella cartella cgi-bin
un mapserv_2 (perchè voglio tenere in parallelo anche il mapserv precompilato) che,
una volta corretti i template html e i file .map che sto provando (aggiungendo l'output agg), mi ha
gloriosamente mostrato l'antialiasing che volevo.

E devo dire che ne è valsa la pena.

Berupa pelatihan SIG, Global Positioning System (GPS), Survei Pemetaan, Penginderaan Jauh, Image Processing dan lainnya terkait dengan bidang kebumian.

Pelatihan GIS ini ada 2 kategori, yaitu tingkat dasar dan tingkat lanjut.

1. Pelatihan GIS Tingkat Dasar

Materi pelatihan meliputi :

- Teori GIS

- Teori dan konsep peta

- Input data (Digitasi on screen)

- Editing

- Penyajian peta (Layout/desain Peta)

2. Pelatihan GIS Tingkat Lanjut

Materi pelatihan berupa analisis spasial, analisis 3D dan analisis citra berupa :

- Query Data

- Metode skoring dan klasifikasi

- Overlay peta

- Buffering

- Pembuatan Peta 3D

- Pengambilan data dengan GPS dan pengolahan data GPS

3. Materi dan Biaya

Berikut ini daftar materi dan biaya pelatihan GIS dan Remote Sensing

I guess the statement in the zigGIS About box regarding 9.2 is no longer accurate. :D

I ran some preliminary tests on the editing capability and they seem to work fine. I was able to create a feature in ArcGIS, connect to my PostGIS database using gvSIG and see the feature. Just for grins, I then deleted the feature in gvSIG and refreshed my ArcMap display to see it disappear.

As you can see from the screen capture, I am using ArcEditor but that is because of other ArcGIS-related work that I do. zigGIS doesn't care about the license tier you use and will work just fine with ArcView.

ArcGIS Desktop 9.3 does have some improved mapping tools so those of you who have been using zigGIS as a lightweight means of access your PostGIS data from ArcMap can now look at what 9.3 has to offer.

Follow zigGIS on Twitter

To say that desk work is frustrating doesn't begin to convey today's small agonies. I'm attempting to georeference new and improved satellite photography for our mapping project. I am using a program called ArcGIS, and its offshoot known as ArcMap, to compare the old satellite imagery with the new. Unfortunately, the new images come to me as 1 kilometer squares with absolutely no reference points (aside from their topographic features). I have to place the new image over several older ones and then compare distinctive features to link the images up. Imagine trying to take two different tracings and line them up as closely as possible by stitching them together. It's a very time-intensive job, since you have to look for the smallest recognizable features to stitch in order to make an accurate map.

I spent 5 hours working on one quadrant (Mauna Loa's summit and the NOAA Weather Observatory on its flank). Guess what happened? Yes, the computer lost the data. 26 meticulously georeferenced points. 5 hours of beating the thing into submission, and all for naught. ARGH. I will conquer it tomorrow, I swear.

Here's a sample of the type of images I'm working with. The Big Island is 10,432 square kilometers. Each image I work with is one kilometer. You can see how this would take quite a while.

Since I haven't posted one of these before, this shows how much of the Big Island's surface area is covered by its various volcanoes. Mauna Loa is huge, and covers 51% of the island. Remember that Hualalai, Mauna Loa, and Kilauea are the only 3 active volcanoes. Hualalai has been dormant for some time, and doesn't have much eruptive capability left. Kilauea is always erupting (these days) and is the current star of the show. However, the amount of lava produced by Kilauea in one day was produced by Mauna Loa in 20 minutes in 1984. It's far and away the most potentially dangerous volcano in Hawai`i.

Thankfully, we're going on a field trip up Mauna Loa on Thursday. I am so excited to get out of the office it's almost silly. The week after this one I'll either be hacking through the low jungles of Mauna Loa's eastern flank doing a gravity survey, or up on Mauna Loa's summit doing more kinematic GPS. Down with office work!*

*Bear in mind that office work is also necessary for good science, and that the author of this post is just mildly stir-crazy.

Spatial database modeling...I'm sure there are user groups and sites devoted entirely to this topic (and if there are not then maybe this solves my questions in and of itself) yet there just does not seem to be enough people around who truly understand what goes on underneath the hood.  Now I'm not talking about understanding the bits and bytes or the 1's and 0's (that's for propeller-heads -- to steal a saying from a co-worker of mine) in the underlying technology but more about how to stitch together a solid spatial database model.  No shortage of information on how to do this for relational database modeling but the body of knowledge seems to be a wee bit thin from the spatial point of view.

Quickly, a little background, in my particular case the poison of choice for geographic information systems (and hence spatial databases) is ESRI so I'll be using geodatabase terminology throughout this post  Okay, enough background, oh, and I should warn you that I'm not going to get technical in this post, just want to frame out the situation so we can continue getting into some nuts and bolts discussions later.

First anecdolt of the new blog, had a meeting a couple years back where this self proclaimed database architect took me through painstaking detail on their plan for implementing a spatial database model.  The conversation (read: monolog) we one for a just under an hour where the architect spoke about update processes, frequency of updates and maintenance windows, extract/transform/load approaches, ..., ..., and and and, ..., ..., and so on.  All of that was pretty cool and fairly standard stuff, but then, sweet music to my ears, the architect said they were planning to use the capabilities of a geodatabase!  Sweet!  No longer did I need to bite the insides of my cheeks to stay awake, this was interesting stuff!  Then, out of nowhere flash, poof, the old adage of "waiting for the other shoe to fall" came to mind, didn't have to wait long for the shoe to show, the reason and only reason, get this, for using ESRI geodatabase capability was so that they could use feature datasets like a folder structure...a common temptation for people just cutting their teeth on geodatabases, but not the type of technical reasoning I would expect from an architect.

Another anecdolt, this one from last summer...In a meeting with some really (and I mean really) smart GIS professionals and some really good IT folks the conversation was about implementing ArcSDE on top of an existing relational data model so that there could possibly be better integration between ArcGIS and another pure relational database application.  Sounds like a good idea and absolutely it is a good idea.  But we've all been in those meetings where an idea gets nods around the table and that really should be the end of the conversation until everyone spends just a little more time thinking it all the way through??  Even if you haven't been in one of those meetings it was one of those meetings.  One of the IT folks wanted to start solutioning and did it from the point of view of "problem space" versus "option space", in other words, talking about how this couldn't work because of blah, blah, this, that, blah, blah, and then the kicker, the reason that sealed the deal, the reason was that the relational database model used by the pure relational application was not well thought out for use with GIS.  Uh oh, this can always pose a problem, until you realize that what they meant was that the relational database was normalized.  Wait now, on what planet is a normalized an evil thing?  One of the lectures I teach on spatial database modeling uses the tag line "flat: bad model for the earth, bad model for a database"...I'm definitely a proponent of normalized daabases, especially in the world of GIS.

These couple of anedolts show a couple of sides to spatial data modeling and serve as a starting point where we can dive into some ideas I've got on turning relational database models into useful geodatabases.  In upcoming posts I'll shed some light on what the learnings were from the anecdolts above as well as getting my geek on to uncover so really nifty neato tricks for automagically translating well formed database models (PPDM and PODS seem to make the most sense since I'm in the energy sector and a member of each organization) in ESRI geodatabase speak.

So this is how to download, import into Qgis and use the AVHRR Land Cover Data

Firstly go to http://glcf.umiacs.umd.edu/data/landcover/ for some info on the whole project, click on the Download via Search and Preview Tool (ESDI) if you want to browse the World and select the data you want OR head straight to the FTP server. Choose your area, projection and resolution (I'm using North America, LatLong and 1km), eventually you will be presented with a bunch of files from which we download the file ending asc.gz as Qgis can handle this not the bsq.gz. Extract the file after downloading and boot up Qgis. Now hit 'Add a Raster Layer' and select the .asc file you downloaded and extracted, the file will be pretty big (NA is 1.39 GB) so expect a wait. Now you will have a greyscale image of your region, the brightness depends on the land cover classification calculated by UMD. Here are the code values which can be found on their website.

Code Values for 1km and 8km data

To make the map in Qgis look at all interesting we need to apply a colormap algorithm. You can select your own by right clicking the file and selecting properties and changing the settings or go to properties select 'Load Style' and load the style I created which can be downloaded here (right click and 'Save target as'). Now you will have a wonderful map showing land use in your region, the area highlighted in white is what I am particuarly interested in and worked on for much of last week. The next step is to see if I can work out how to generate the code values easily and apply it to LandSat data, then compare to OSM.

Here are some image Qgis outputs for North America and San Francisco.

Fuih...Hari ini hari yang melelahkan namun cukup menyenangkan. Uh.. Plongnya stelah semua persyaratan dan laporan buat DTI dan DSDM kelar. Akhirnya.. Dengan berat hati kami mengembalikan nemtek PKL tersebut. Berharap suatu saat nanti bisa kembali lagi pake nemtek yang dengan logo yang sama namun dengan status yang berbeda yaitu menjadi staff disitu.. Amien lah..

Diakhiri dengan perpisahan yang mengharukan (lebai) dan akhirnya kita refresing deh.. Kayaknya udah keseringan refresing deh, nonton, makan2, jalan2, n trakhir dokumentasi alias poto2.. Mau tau buktinya.. (Diambil seminggu sebelum). Where is me?? Ijo..Ijo..

Ket : Poto 1 di BI n poto 2 makan di premium atrium plaza

Saya bersama timnas pun {tanpa indah karena ada acara} memutuskan untuk pergi ke MTA.. Dan putut ‘si raja minyak' (karena cowo sendiri) bersama ketiga dayang2nya yg cantiks2 yaitu saya, nia dan yola sambil mengipasi dan memayungi sang raja minyak yang sedang bertamasaya (Whats??Jadi dayangnya putut? Oh no..Hehe..Bcanda tut).

***Tidak slamanya pergi ke mall buang2 waktu dan ngabisin duit(mang iya si, baru ngerasain nyari duit itu susah BGT;)) ternyata ada pelajaran informal (cek ile bahasanya) yang didapat dan inspirasi buat TA juga loch***

Ini Buktinya :

Kluar parkiran, masuk ke dalam MTA saya pun terperanjat karena menemukan sesuatu yang sangat menarik hati yaitu sebuah computer namun berbentuk seperti ATM dimana di dalamnya terdapat sebuah aplikasi GIS (Geografic Information System) yang menyajikan informasi letak2 counter, toko2 yang ada di dalam MTA. Wooooww.. Ternyata GIS benar2 sedang digalakan.. Semakin lah saya tertarik dengan GIS... Sayang gak sempet saya poto dan blon sempet nguprek2 tuh aplikasi apakah web based atau aplikasi desktop sajah, dan dapat bekerja sejauh mana, yang lain udah pada meninggalkankuh... Hua.. Wait me..

---------------

Hayo tebak.. Apa tujuan kitah.. Tiada lain Ice Skating.. (Tiada lain kesannya uda sering padahal baru pertama kali..). Yuppi Gummi...ini pengalaman pertama kali saya maen ice skating loch.. Hanya bermodal nekad, penasaran dan sedikit keahlian bermain roller blade ketika smp maka saya pun ikutan. Karena lagi musin liburan tiket masuknya pun jadi Rp.38.000 untuk 2 jam, lebih dari itu nambah lagi per jamnya berapa ya lupa n Rp. 1000 beli koin buat locker.

Pertama takut.. Nginget2 teknik bermain roller blade tapi tetep ajah ga bisa terimplementasi dengan baik karena ya emang beda scara es gitu loch. Fufufu... Stelah 5 menit plus2.. (menit ke 15 juga termasuk ke 5 menit plus2 jg khan ;p) yah saya sudah cukup menguasai panggung bisa beradaptasi dengan es dan bisa berjalan dengan pinguin2 yang lain. Walaupun Cuma jalan.. Aga memberanikan sedikit ke tengah.. tetap berusaha.. Namun.. Gubrak.. Jatoh.. Auww..Atittt... Dingin...

*Lihat foto kedua: saya dan nia bahu membahu bangun, menyongsong masa depan(loch?!?!)*

Pantang menyerah dong, walaupun aral merintang saya bertekad "Harus bisa muter2, seenggaknya keahlian saya berada pada di level 3" dan karena ‘panas' ngeliat anak2 sd yang uda pada pinter2 maennya.

Hayo.. Mau tau level bermain ice skating ala saya... Let's see...

• Level 0 : Gak berani sama sekali hanya untuk menggeserkan sepatu, cuma tertegun ampe ngeces2 melihat pinguin2 lain yang muter2 bahkan dengan indahnya menari2 seperti ballerina, padahal dalem hati mupeng tapi apa kata rasa takut mengalahkan rasa akan tantangan.
• Level 1 : Jalan disamping sambil megangi ring sambil mikir "Nyoba ngelepas ring gak yah haduw tapi takut jatuh". Kelamaan istikharahnya ni...Hehe... Ngetawain klo ngeliat orang jatoh trs nanya ke orang tersebut sakit apa ga. Ya iyalah masa ya iya dong. Namanya jatoh ga ada yang ga sakit. Sama ajah kayak naek pasti ke atas khan gak mungkin ke bawah. Hehe...
• Level 2 : Uda berani tapi cuma berjalan kaki doang, kaki malah terasa berat alhasil ngerepotin orang minta dipegangin.
• Level 3 : Udah bisa jalan sedikit lebih bagus, kaki terasa lebih enteng, gak ngerepotin orang lain, tapi buat orang deg2an cos gak bisa ngontrol kaki mau kemana alhasil bisa2 nabrak orang (walopun gak). Tapi pada level ini pun saya diberikan teori baru oleh Putut yaitu "Disini bakal keliatan psikologis n kestabilan emosional lo Diana, ketika elo ngerasa ‘Ye..akhirnya gw bisa' dan ketika itu juga lo bakal jatoh".

Yup.. Betul banget teori lo tut.. Sama ajah kayak belajar, apapun itu, ketika kita ngerasa ‘bisa' lalu sifat sombong mengendalikan pikiran rasional, jadi bikin males karena berpikiran "Ah nyantai ajah gw khan udah bisa dan udah ngerti" n alhasil nilai ujiannya jadi jeblok. Lalu nyesel.. Nangis2 darah tuh nilai gak bakalan berubah.. Hehe.. Jadi intinya walaupun kita udah bisa harus diasah terus yaitu dibarengi dengan latihan.. latihan dan latihan.. (Cek ile kayak petuah ibu guru jaman SD) Dan klo kata Mujahid Rahimahullah "Orang yang malu dan sombong tidak akan mau mempelajari ilmu." Astagfirullah.. Karena penyakit sombong suka ga disadari apalagi buat kaum hawa nih coz saya baca “Sebaik-baik wanita adalah wanita anshar. Tidak ada rasa malu yang menghalangi mereka untuk memahami agama” (HR. Bukhari : 1/44)

Loch kok malah panjang ya.. Yo wes back to topic..

Dan akhirnya karena emosi saya yang tidak stabil alias labil (bener gak sih makna labil disini) maka saya pun jatuh 6 kali untuk permainan 2 jam.. Uhhhhh.. Atit pantatnya tapi malah makin penasaran n makin pengen bisa... Yah target completed lah.. Saya bisa berada di level 3, nia di level 2-3, yola di level 0-1 dan putut diatas level 3 lah...

Ya udah deh.. Stelah itu kita melanjutkan pergi ngejenguk temen(bowo) yang sakit demam berdarah di RSU UKI. Dilanjutkan dengan pencarian masjid untuk sholat maghrib dan wisata kuliner disekitar UKI and then go home...

Sekian berita dari saya dari TKP....

Come di consueto non sono stati forniti molti dettagli circa la nuova missione dei Carabinieri in Irak, rivelata dal settimanale Panorama nell'estate del 2007. Quel che è certo è che si tratta di una missione addestrativa messa a punto nell’ambito del programma della NATO di assistenza alle forze militari e di sicurezza irachene (NATO Training Mission – Iraq).
L’Italia ricopre un ruolo di primo piano nell’accademia istituita allo scopo nella località di Rustamyah, vicino Baghdad, dove operano una novantina di istruttori italiani ed il generale Paolo Bosotti (prima di lui, Alessandro Pompegnani) ha l’incarico di vice-comandante .
I Carabinieri selezioneranno e addestreranno in due anni 8 battaglioni, composto ognuno da 400 agenti iracheni, alle tecniche anti-sommossa, anti-guerriglia ed anti-terrorismo. Il personale iracheno a sua volta svolgerà compiti di istruttore per altre sei brigate (24 battaglioni) che rappresenteranno l’elite della Iraqi National Police.
In pratica si tratta di costituire reparti simili come struttura e formazione alle unità MSU (Multinational Specialized Unit) che l’Arma ha creato dieci anni or sono per l’impiego nei Balcani in ambito NATO e che hanno operato anche in Irak durante l’operazione Antica Babilonia.
Gli istruttori insediatisi a Camp Dublin, una base statunitense situata nei pressi dell’aeroporto di Baghdad, provengono quindi in gran parte dalla Seconda Brigata Mobile - la grande unità dei Carabinieri per le operazioni all’estero con comando a Livorno e composta dai reggimenti 13° e 7° di Laives (Bolzano) e Gorizia - e dal reggimento paracadutisti Tuscania, mentre per le specializzazioni più tecniche potrebbero essere impiegati anche istruttori del Gruppo Intervento Speciale (GIS).
Costi? Il decreto “Milleproroghe” del febbraio 2008 ha stanziato per l’anno in corso poco più di 8 milioni di euro. A marzo è iniziata la terza sessione di addestramento, agli ordini del colonnello Fabrizio Parrulli.

So "the degenerate line", or in more colloquial speak, "the point" of our articles and abstractions is to serve the GIS community with practical observations and insights on the practical usage of GIS in decision support.  We'll begin the series by showcasing a range of techniques for siting of linear assets such as roads, railways, and (our favorite) pipelines.

Unless you're a baby bird then regurgitation likely just doesn't do it for you, don't worry, it doesn't do it for us either, we'll give you some real content that goes beyond ctrl+c/ctrl+v from help docs.

The KML was developed by David Tryse who also was involved with the Edge of Existence collections (EDGE Mammals, EDGE Amphibians) highlighted earlier this year in an Outreach Case Study.

Find more information on disappearing forests on greenpeace.org

Download KML file

Via Google Earth Blog

Well, I have to put it out there: is this an original, the one and only PostGIS onesie? My son was born recently, and as he was sleeping quietly, I surfed to the PostGIS website. One look at that baby elephant icon, and another to our newborn, and I realized I had the perfect inspiration, so time to go make my own onesie, and start a FOSS GIS blog.

FYI, I'm working on a PostGIS/GeoServer/OpenLayers set of services for my day job, but this probably doesn't count as work.

I've just finished reading about half of Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship, edited by Anne Kelly Knowles. I'll briefly go through each one, and focus on the ones that particularly interested me.

"Creating a GIS for the History of China," by Peter K. Bol. Bol, chair of Harvard's Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, discusses his China Historical GIS project. The project attempts to create a basic framework and data source (both spatial and temporal) for geospatial analysis of Chinese history. On a theoretical note, Bol argues that in the case of China, historical GIS should utilize a greater reliance on point data in place of polygons for marking boundaries and territory, in order to better replicate the top-down administrative system of traditional Chinese cartography.

"Teaching With GIS," by the late Robert Churchill and Amy Hillier. Churchill gives a good overview of the value of GIS in a liberal arts education. I liked his point that one of the benefits of using historical GIS is that any in-depth use of the technology requires an equally in-depth understanding of the problem you're looking to address. Great point. Because so much of GIS is front-loaded, in that you spend a huge amount of effort in obtaining and managing the data, it requires you to really get your hands dirty in the sources themselves. Hillier gives a lot of great examples of students' work using historical GIS, mostly Philadelphia-based data. Some of them also included a great 1896 map by W.E.B. Du Bois detailing social class in the city. She also gives some useful tips for educators who want to incorporate GIS.

"Scaling the Dust Bowl," by Geoff Cunfer. I loved this chapter. Cunfer follows up his previous research in Knowles first book, Past Time, Past Place, by additional analysis of the Dust Bowl. In this chapter, he takes on the common perception of the dust bowl as championed by Donald Worster's Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930's. While some of Cunfer's analysis supports Worster, he takes issue with Worster's commonly-held assertion that the capitalistic over-development of lands for farming the major factor in the fabled 1930's dust storms. Cunfer first demonstrates through spatial analysis that, although plow-up during the 1920's did contribute to the Dust Bowl, it was in fact instances of drought that had a much more direct correlation.

He goes on to further his critique of the notion that the Dust Bowl was an extraordinary phenomena caused by human activity. By examining and mapping newspaper accounts of dust storms from the 19th century, along with storms after the 1930's, he finds that "dust storms are a normal part of southern plains ecology, occurring whenever there are extended dry periods." Although extensive plowing can enhance the problem, it was not "the sole and simple cause of the Dust Bowl." Cunfer's analysis succeeds on many different levels. First, I like the accessibility of it. There's always a temptation to include too much in the final products, to show off the fruits of your hours and hours of labor. Instead, his maps are clear, uncluttered, and persuasive.  Second, I like the way he blended traditionally quantitative analysis tools (GIS) with qualitative historical research (newspaper accounts). He does a good job of highlighting this tension, and aptly warns of its danger, while explaining simply how he accomplished it. Third, his work is a great example of the "right way" to use new technology to both challenge and supplement traditional historical arguments, and in doing so, present an original and different narrative.

"'A Map is Just a Bad Graph': Why Spatial Statistics are Important in Historical GIS," by Ian Gregory. This chapter was much more technical, and included scary words like "regression coefficients" and "heteroscedasticity." Although statistics in particular, and math in general, is low down on my list of skills, I got a fair amount out of the chapter. I liked his critique of the traditional thematic map, which usually displays one type of data, and with usually one variable involved. Statistical analysis can go beyond simple thematic maps and really open up the powerful underbelly of GIS.

There are several more chapters that I am looking forward to reading and reviewing in a later post.

Framework Free Viewer działa jedynie pod systemami Windows (niestety) i może być ściągnięty ze stron Framework Archaeology. Dodatkowo ściągnąć należy pakiety z danymi. Wszystko to zainstalować i... przeglądać.

Okno robocze Framework Free Viewer umożliwia pracę na warstwach, podobnie jak inne aplikacje GIS.

Tak wyglądają plany obiektów oglądane we Framework Free Viewer. Aplikacja ma interaktywny interfejs. Wskazanie kursorem obiektu powoduje wyświetlenie informacji o nim w osobnym oknie.

A tak wygląda okno informacji o obiekcie. Otwarta zakładka przeglądania zabytków ruchomych.

Odpowiednia zakładka umożliwia przeglądanie rysunków i zdjęć dokumentacyjnych. Można je oczywiście otwierać np. w zwykłej przegladarce systemowej.

Wszystkie dane pozyskane w trakcie badań portów lotniczych można też ściągnąć w popularnych formatach GIS, do przeglądania np. w programie Qgis, podkontrolą systemów innych niż Windows. Udostępnione są na zasadach licencji Creative Commons.

The method is very similar to before, except I'm now using both hue and saturation from the 742 false colour image instead of simply hue. The pretty flowchart for the process is shown below and for those you you who thought the last one was a mess wait 'til you see this one!

The method essentially works due to the different properties of hue and saturation. There is a great difference between the hue value for urban and rural areas, therefore hue is used to distinguish between rural and urban. Here is the hue component of the 742 image with a colour threshold to highlight urban areas (notice that that water is also heavily highlighted).Now we apply a colour threshold to the saturation layer and take advantage of the great difference in value for land and sea here. So now we have two layers one highlighting urban and sea and one highlighting urban and rural, we need to pick out the urban. This is done by using a clever layer mode algorithm in GIMP called 'darken only'. This compares the pixel value in the two layers (hue and saturation) and displays the lower value pixel, in this way water and rural areas are removed from the image. Result!

Here are the resulting finished images for London and New York.

You can compare the previous method and the new one here:

Old London
Old New York
New London
New New York

By the way if anyone is really interested in this stuff and would like more guidance or some high resolution images just get in touch.