Fundrace: Tracking Who Gives How Much to Whom

Made available on the HUFFINGTON POST, a web site that lets you know what your neighbors gave to the candidates using a Google Map interface. I saw that someone in Poughkeepsie gave a big chunk of change to Mitt Romney in 2007 and then gave a comparable sum to Hillary Clinton in 2008. I wonder whom SHE will vote for in November?

Fundrace says: "Want to know if a celebrity is playing both sides of the fence?" Above shows Barbara Streisand, well-known Democrat and rich entertainer, with a symbol indicating she is half elephant and half donkey. Don't know why. Also note that she gave money in 2004 to my local Democratic Representative John Hall, also an entertainer, not as wealthy, but whom lives far far away from Babs who is in California. Seems that Barbara Streisand helped the Democrats take over the House!

Interactive Map of Area Hit By Tornado in Iowa

There's a very well done interactive map available through the DesMoines Register that follows on the May 25, 2008 tornado that tore through Parkensburg, IA. The map above shows tax parcels and level of damage by color code, locations of photographs and videos. There are some eery videos shot on bank surveillance cameras that show the tornado tearing the roof off of a house and blasting windows open on the bank. There is also cell phone video footage.

And when you click on a tax parcel for many of the areas, you can get a before photo and an after shot (circled in red). The before picture often looks like a photograph suitable for a real estate agent's sales catalogue. This site is a prime example of the power of maps and publicly-produced, spatially-related images and other content. If only a mashup like this was available for New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. If it was, I didn't hear about it.

Thanks, Sean Connin of NITLE.

LiDAR Imagery of Ireland's Seas

The Marine Institute and Geological Survey of Ireland makes available LiDAR survey results as part of the Irish National Seabed Survey. Data have been collected since 2006. The image above is from their Google Earth collection. Get the above KMZ of Mulroy Bay here as a small taste of the detail available with these bathymetric data.

From Very Spatial.

Google Earth for Ethnobotanists Workshop

I heard that the Annual Meeting for the Society for Economic Botany had a Google Earth workshop recently. The workshop was led by Dr. Kim Bridges of the Univ.of Hawaii and included "demonstrations and exercises start(ing) with the basic features of Google Earth and extend(ing) to a variety of tasks that are helpful to ethnobotanists." To find out more go to the meeting web page and scroll down to POST-MEETING EDUCATIONAL WORKSHOPS and then Google Earth for Ethnobotanists.

Here are Prof. Bridges' materials for the workshop. He includes how to use Google Earth in ethnobotany, making KMLs, using photos, using GPS points, lists of web resources, and many others useful examples.

Sanborn LiDAR Seminar Series in Albany, NY

Sanborn (the fire maps folks) is presenting a free LiDAR seminar on August 14, 2008 at the Albany Marriott - 189 Wolf Rd., Albany, NY 12205. The free seminar will run from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. and includes a continental breakfast. The seminar will feature a brief introduction into the basics of LiDAR, its latest technology developments, and a comprehensive overview on application trends. Sanborn will also be hosting a live software demo for customizable 3D and cross section viewing.

To register for the free seminar, please click here http://www.sanborn.com/LIDARSeminar2008/index.asp. For further information, contact Sanborn at 866-SANBORN.

New York Environmental Data and Mapping Gateway

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has long had an interactive web mapping site filled with environmental data. It looks like the NYSDEC is starting to put some of their data into KML format. Check out the NYSDEC's virtual globe data web site; they'll probably add to this list. From the email announcement: "We're particularly excited about broadening access to our geographic data through the use of file formats compatible with virtual globe software including Google Earth."

Dear New York Times, Please Mention GIS

A marvelously illuminating article appeared in the New York Times today about that fact that the five boroughs of New York City are actually, measurably 17 square miles smaller than the planners previously calculated. That's a lot of hectares! How did the current city planners find out that geographic information, you might ask? "Using aerial photographs and advanced technology, including software that that enabled geographers to compensate for inaccuracies created by the pitch and yaw of camera-equipped planes." Sounds like they used Google Earth. But we know that they couldn't have used Google Earth because Google Earth can be highly inaccurate precisely because of "pitch and yaw" thing.

Anyway, it's an article worth reading. Republican Mayor Mike Bloomberg kept a lot of GIS professionals in business for this project because of his "yen to precisely measure everything from poverty to traffic congestion." Really?

The New York Times historically skips over the fact that cool mapping application are done all on account of GIS. I'm happy the Times reports on geographical projects, but I always wish they'd just kind of mention how the maps got made.

Remember the Times article on human impacts on the oceans?

Or the Times article about wildfires and the cool computer modeling that can track those fires?

And when the NYCMap came out a couple of years ago, the Times actually used the acronym when referring to “Cogis (Computerized Geographic Information System),” but how the wonderful layers of New York City geographic data where assembled, analyzed, and obviously, according to this new article, mis-measured, remained a mystery. Here's my response to the Times' article (before I was blogging, now I rarely send in letters to the NY Times).

So it’s all the GIS consultant’s fault anyway. Maybe it’s best if the Times doesn’t refer to our profession by acronym after all.

Yes, You Can Make a Map on an Apple

From Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and Kevin Van Aelst.

Imagery Data Following the Sichuan Earthquake

A network link featuring data following the May 12, M7.9 earthquake in Sichuan, China has been made available. Currently, there are Formosat2 imagery taken May 14 and 15.

Here is the KML to the Sichuan layers.

Like the link for the Myanmar kml layer, update the KML to the Sichuan layer to find newly added features as they are made available.

This is also from the Google Lat Long Blog.

Data from Myanmar Showing Cyclone Nargis

From the Google Lat Long blog, there is a very detailed KML available for the areas devastated by the cyclone. The data available are extensive: flood analysis, storm tracking animations, pre- and post-cyclone imagery from a variety of sources. This is what I'm trying to show in the screen shot above.

Here is the KML for Myanmar.

This network link will contain updated data as they are made available, just refresh the link or restart Google Earth.

Eye-catching Cartography on U.S. Inflation at the New York Times

In "All of Inflation's Little Parts," the New York Times has done it again with a very appealing, interactive proportional map. Click on cell on the 'map' and not only do you zoom in, you get information about the other cells. From the page:

Each shape below represents how much the average American spends in different categories. Larger shapes make up a larger part of spending.

Thanks, Diana.