A new stream of the Open Street Map is emerging, OpenSeaMap. This gives access to free nautical map. This is not yet fully developed and it is mainly available in Germany. In period of crisis, it also includes link to the various port in Haiti. This new version of OpenStreetMap links directly to something like 600 marinas around the world and the o the Wiki-port-pilot-book “Skipper-Guide“.
OpenSeaMap
GeoREST 1.0.2 has just had its first major release, as presented by “Between the Poles”. GeoREST is an independent Open Source project licensed under LGPL, and it is and implementation of a REST framework for searching your geospatial data, like ArcGIS Server REST. An overview of GeoREST was presented at FOSS4G 2009 in Sydney.
Most exiting GeoREST does allow full editing capability; which is not yet available in ArcGIS Rest API. A nice example of GeoREST and its editing capabilities is available here: http://www.sl-king.com/georestsamples/example1/rview.html#
It allows RESTful feature-based access to spatial data sources, including full editing capabilities, through a MapGuide server or directly via FDO, giving access to a large number of vector geospatial formats.
Examples of data sources:
Example output formats:
N0. 10 has just announced a U-Turn in the freeing geospatial data in the UK. As announced by the guardian, the government has turn down the idea to release postcode data to community and non-profit web site.
In response to the No. 10 petition the government stated: Royal Mail invests significantly in collating and maintaining the Postcode Address File (PAF) and this cost is recovered through an independently regulated licensing arrangement. It would of course be very time-consuming and costly for anyone to try to replicate the list, so Royal Mail licenses PAF data, for a fee, allowing others to use it. Under Section 116 of the Postal Services Act 2000, Royal Mail must maintain the PAF and make it available to any person who wishes to use it on “such terms as are reasonable”.
The government decision in blocking the release the post code data will disappoint and send mix message just a day after the release of the data.gov.uk web site with thousands of dataset available for free, even for commercial use.
ESRI has just published a new released, the the 2010 Maspup Challenge is now openned. The closing date is March 5th, 2010.
To get started:
Cash Prizes
1st Place: $10,000
2nd Place: $5,000
3rd Place: $2,500
4th Place: $2,500
Good Luck!
With the release of Quantum GIS 1.4, it seems that this continuoouly evolving product could be playing a big role against the like of ArcView and certainly MapInfo.
Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS), licensed under the GNU General Public License, that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows. QGIS is Open Source software and its free of cost. It supports vector, raster, and database formats (including the most common ESRI ShapeFile and geotiff). QGIS supports a wide variety of plugins to do things like display tracks from your GPS, and much more. They can be easily managed through the Plugin Manager.
Q GIS is linked with the like of the OGR and the GDAL libary allowing to load a large number of GIS format. At a high level the Supported formats include:
The User interface has many tools availabl, making it very close to the GIS desktop product MapInfo:
It can also publish your map on the internet using the export to Mapfile capability (requires a webserver with UMN MapServer installed)
But, would you use this product in a commercial environment, Is there any support? the answer is yes. The QGIS project provides an alphabetical list of support contractors with their home page.
With a very active community, this is definitely a product to keep an eye on. You can doanload the product here.
This matches with a number of initiatives:
- London data store, released with several hundreds of GIS datasets available for free.
- British Geological Society 1.50K geology map, now available as a WMS
The AGI (Asociation for Geographic Information) will be producing its own response, but anumore can contribute to the consultation on their site. Note that Closing date for comments to the AGI is: Thursday 11th Feb, 2010.
The consulation is centered around 12 main questions,as summarised in the document’s annex:
List of consultation questions
Question 1: What are your views or comments on the policy drivers for this
consultation?
Question 2: What are your views on how the market for geographic
information has evolved recently and is likely to develop over the
next 5-10 years?
Question 3: What are your views on the appropriate pricing model for Ordnance
Survey products and services?
Question 4: What are your views and comments on public sector information
regulation and policy, and the concepts of public task and good
governance as they apply to Ordnance Survey?
Question 5: What are your views and comments on the products under
consideration for release for free re-use and the rationale for
their inclusion?
Question 6: How much do you think government should commit to funding the
free product set? How might this be achieved?
Question 7: What are your views on how free data from Ordnance Survey should be delivered?
Question 8: What are your views on the impact Ordnance Survey Free will have on the market?
Question 9: What are your comments on the proposal for a single National Address Register and suggestions for mechanisms to deliver it?
Question 10: What are your views on the options outlined in this consultation?
Question 11: For local authorities: What will be the balance of impact of these proposals on your costs and revenues?
Question 12: Will these proposals have any impact on race, gender or disability equalities?
Following the terrible earthquake in Haiti on January 12, the UK charity organsiation Mapaction is on its way to help.
MapAction
Four MapAction team members are on their way to Haiti in response to the devastating earthquake that struck the country last night. The team is flying out from the UK on an aid aircraft chartered by the UK Government. They are travelling with the UK’s urban search and rescue (USAR) specialists provided by regional fire services…. Read the full story here.
FME 2010 from safe has just been released and it is now available for download. The main highlights of this new release are:
According to Geo Informatics FME has now an improved support for 3D format; including support for new support for Autodesk Civil 3D and common statistics formats IBM PASW (SPSS), R Statistical Data and SAS (Statistical Analysis System). FME now support over 250 formats.
It also includes additional support for popular data sharing such as OpenGIS KML (Google Earth and Maps), Adobe PDF and XML (including OpenGIS GML and CityGML). The new release also introduces support for 1,850 additional coordinate systems, bringing the new supported total to over 5,300.
ArcGIS 10
The ArcGIS 9.4 release was renamed ArcGIS 10 in January. Listen to ESRI President Jack Dangermond explain why in a podcast.
ESRI has also made available a press release detailing the content of this release.
The ArcGIS 10 beta release is now available. ArcGIS 10 is expected to be available in the second quarter of 2010.
So what are some of the planned improvements for ArcGIS 10, geochalkboard is presenting further elements on the release of ArcGIS 10 and its BETA program. :
* Improved rendering engine for better performance when panning and zooming
* The geoprocessing wizard is back after a fashion
* ArcCatalog window is added in ArcMap
* Simplified Geocoding
* Improved map creation tools such as new tools for multiscale maps, support for multipage layouts, and dynamic text in layouts (basically they incorporated the DSMapbook routine we all use into the core product)
* Simplified editing including sketch based editing using palettes in both the desktop and web, easier access to common tools in ArcMap, ArcScene, & Globe
* Integration of time data and analysis including the ability to create and publish animation.
* Improve raster handling performance
* Ability to check out licenses for use in the field or temporary offices
* Enhanced interface using enhanced resolution icons and such. (Looks very much like the newest versions of AutoCAD to me)
NASA has just released a series of picture showing the extent of the cold snap in the northern hemisphere. The following image shows the winter temperatures and the Arctic Oscillation. This was temperature acquired on December 1st. Hopefully NASA will release a new series of picture for the cold snap in January!
Northern hemisphere cold snap
The following one was published few days ago and shows the UK under heavy snow. Snow blanketed Great Britain on January 7, 2010, as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite passed overhead and captured this image. Snow covers most of England, from the east to the west coast.
The UK under the snow
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