The following video by Mike Byrne (FCC GIO via the 2011 FOSS4G Conf. in Denver – http://2011.foss4g.org/ ) and resources are very useful and prescient to a new, scaleable, resilient, and cost effective way of doing ‘geo’ business -
and lastly, to prove this is not a flash-in-the-pan geo revolution with a lifespan shorter than a Kardashian marriage, the Pew Jedi Knights have weighed in…
” They were the “riot commuters”, people who came from far and wide to take part in – or just watch – the disturbances across England. But did they really exist? How far did people actually travel?
Now we have the first answer: 2.2miles
According to analysis by the UK’s top transport data mapping company, ITO world – based on the Guardian’s database of riot-related court records – the average distance from home to where defendants were accused of a riot offence was just over two miles, or a half hour walk.
If the most likely road route was taken into account, that distance rose to 2.6 miles.
That varies between cities – in Manchester, the average from home to offence location was 2.8 miles. In Birmingham, the average was 2.9 miles and in Nottingham, 2.6.
In London, people were closer to home: 1.5 miles in Peckham and 2.2 miles in Brixton. But those accused of riot-related offences in suburban Ealing and Croydon were 2.7 miles and 2.3 miles.”
Via the National Science Foundation (@NSF), using advanced sensor technologies (i.e. mobile accelerometers,, GPS, WiFI, Bluetooth, etc.) to track first responders INSIDE of buildings during disasters – aka the ‘holy grail’ of HLS/EM GEOINT since 9/11 -
Compelling ISW (Institute for the Study of War) video of the integrated, multi-scale (i.e. micro<>meso<>macro) use of structured and unstructured geospatial and WWW data to analyze the labyrinthine cultural, military and social forces which defined the various stages of the Libyan uprising and NATO response -
UPDATE 20110614
Fareed Zakaria of CNN #GPS and #Google’s Eric Schmidt hold court at Direct Relief International in Santa Barbara and discuss #innovation -
Excellent presentation by Oculus & Azavea specialists on location-time analysis via CrisisMappers -
Historical Hypermedia: An alternative history of the Semantic Web and Web 2.0 and implications for e-research
Regents’ Lecturer: Charles van den Heuvel
Special Lecture
Wednesday, October 20, 2010, 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm
202 South Hall
According to the article on Hypermedia in Wikipedia, Ted Nelson coined the term in 1963 and published it in 1965. The definition in the article states that “hypermedia is used as a logical extension of the term hypertext in which graphics, audio, video, plain text and hyperlinks intertwine to create a generally non-linear medium of information” and the World Wide Web is presented as a classical example. But it can be argued that the characteristics of hypermedia and their use in global collaborations go back much further in time. At the beginning of the 20th century the Belgian pioneer of knowledge organization Paul Otlet (1868–1944) began exploring “substitutes for the book” and to find new technologies to order and to link fragments of texts, images, sound, etc., for scholarly collaborations on a global level. Otlet sketched and commissioned hundreds of drawings of what we would call nowadays interfaces to synthesize global knowledge. It will be argued that Paul Otlet’s views and visualizations on substitutes for the codex book, interfaces, infrastructures and protocols for collective annotating by scholars might be relevant for recent discussions on the provenance and evidence of information in Web 2.0 and Semantic Web solutions for e-research, in particular in the digital humanities.
————- Horizontal Across the Verticals – Enterprise Geospatial Technology Applied to the Emergency Management, Cultural Resources & Environmental Domains
Please join the RICS Southern California Chapter, Geospatial LA, RAND, the Getty Conservation Institute, and HIFLD members for a collaborative event focusing on the synergies (and cost savings in these lean times) of geospatial technologies used in:
1. Homeland Security & Emergency Management
2. Cultural Resources and Facilities
3. Environmental Considerations
Date: Friday, October 22, 2010
Time: 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Location: RAND Corporation 1700 Main Street Santa Monica, CA 90401
Please RSVP with our host, Mr. Adrian Overton – overton@rand.org / 310.393.0411 ext. 7138 – and note that there is no cost for this event.
Agenda:
Introductions by RICS, RAND, and Geospatial LA
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Dissemination of Research Products in the Application Marketplace: A proposal for turning knowledge into discoverable tools
Daniella Meeker – Associate Information Scientist. RAND Corporation
Bio – Daniella Meeker received her PhD in Computation and Neural Systems from California Institute of Technology in 2005. She completed a fellowship in Health Economics at RAND in 2009 and joined RAND’s staff as an Associate Information Scientist. Her current research includes health economics, machine learning, and social network analysis.
Project Overview – The results of research of the type conducted at RAND are typically disseminated through print media. However, many valuable research products can be developed as services and packaged as “apps” to enhance decision support, analytic methods, and data visualization. I will highlight some examples from GIS and other domains that are active areas of research at RAND. Finally, for discussion I will bring up some of the challenges of translational research and propose some protocols and practices to address some of these challenges.
Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities (MEGA) – Jordan: An Open Source GIS-based Archeological Site Inventory and Management System
David Myers – Project Specialist, Field Projects Department. Getty Conservation Institute
Bio – David Myers is a project specialist in the Getty Conservation Institute’s Field Projects department where he has worked since 2001. He now works on projects developing the Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities (MEGA) for Jordan and Iraq, preparing a site management and conservation plan for the Valley of the Queens on the West Bank of Luxor, Egypt, on research on applying consensus building and conflict resolution methods to cultural heritage place management, and on building capacity for conservation and management of rock art in the countries of the Southern African subcontinent. He received an M.S in historic preservation in 2000 and an advanced certificate in architectural conservation and site management in 2001, both from the University of Pennsylvania. From 1991 to 1995 he served as a legislative assistant to a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Project Overview – The emergence of new digital technologies and rapidly spreading internet access together present possibilities for widely accessible, Web-based national information systems for the inventory and management of heritage sites. The increasing development of Open Source software tools further provides that such systems may be purpose-built, adaptable and extensible to the needs of specific situations, and that once developed they can be available to heritage authorities, which are often poorly funded, without associated licensing or upgrade fees. Working collaboratively with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities (DoA), the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and World Monuments Fund (WMF) have developed MEGA-Jordan as a tool to inventory, monitor, and help conserve and manage the thousands of archaeological sites in Jordan. MEGA-Jordan allows DoA officials to address needs such as infrastructure and development control and the development of national and regional research strategies. MEGA-Jordan is Web-based, bilingual (Arabic-English), and was developed using state-of-the art and Open Source information technologies. It was designed to be modular and easily extensible, allowing it to evolve with the DoA’s changing institutional requirements and to be adapted by other countries. Work on an Iraq version of MEGA is slated to begin after the Jordanian system is fully deployed, which will include the system’s expansion to contain data for the protection of historic buildings. The GCI and WMF plan to subsequently make the system available for adaptation by other countries.
Building a Sustainable Enterprise GIS at the Port of Los Angeles
Daniel Elroi – President. NorthSouth GIS LLC
Bio – A GIS consultant with 20 years of GIS implementation and software development, Daniel has been consulting in GIS in the US since 1990. Daniel studied Geography, Cartography, and GIS at UCLA in the early days of commercial GIS, and began his career with one of the first ESRI sites, the City of Los Angeles. He then spent eight years honing his skills as a consultant and software developer in mining, local government, nuclear waste disposal, real estate, pipelines, and engineering, before setting his own course in business in 1998. Since then he has worked with over 100 clients, developing custom software applications and integrating GIS into various clients’ business processes.
Project Overview – The Port of Los Angeles – the largest container port in the US – hired NorthSouth GIS to develop an enterprise-wide GIS. The resulting server infrastructure, geodatabase design and content, and software applications are very solid and based on best-practices. However, it is the way in which the “soft” side of the implementation – people, group dynamics, training, user buy-in, and management participation – that make this implementation stand out and will ultimately determine the project’s long-term success and its sustainability. The presentation will focus on the means taken to accomplish the “soft” side of this successful implementation.
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Participatory Sensing and Named Data Networking
Jeff Burke – Director, Technology Research Initiatives. UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television & Area Lead, Participatory Sensing. NSF Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS)
Bio – Jeff Burke is Director of Technology Research Initiatives for the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television (TFT), Adjunct Assistant Professor, and Executive Director of REMAP, a joint research program of TFT and the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. REMAP’s core projects investigate the interrelationships among community, culture, and technology and how embedded and mobile computing can support community development and cultural expression. He also helped to form what is now the Participatory Sensing area at the National Science Foundation Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS).
Project Overview – This talk will briefly introduce Participatory Sensing and Named Data Networking, and discuss their intersection and relevance to the geospatial community. Participatory Sensing seeks to enable everyone to use their mobile phones, along with cloud-based computing resources, to safely collect, analyze and share data about things they care about most. Named Data Networking (NDN), also known as Content Centric Networking, replaces the so-called “thin waist” of the internet, the IP protocol, with a name-based protocol that enables communication to be routed based on content names rather than host addresses. It also provides intrinsic content caching and per-packet data signatures. NDN is the subject of a recent National Science Foundation “Future Internet Architecture” award to a group led by UCLA and PARC, in which Participatory Sensing is a driver application for the NDN architecture.
To allow for a collaborative, web 2.0, mobile-SMS emergency response and situational awareness capability, Nordic Geospatial has incorporated a cloud-based Ushahidi-Crowdmap page – let us know what you think…
