Which Map Would You Use?
Charlie Frye at the ESRI Mapping Center has an excellent post on trying to shoehorn- bootstrap? a map out of unfit data. You know the type, you've seen them in the shadows (some of us have worked in those shadows): "straight" water lines lurching from side to side, roads going across parcels and buildings, buildings over lot lines.
But something else caught my eye. At the end he presents a typical "no worries" CAD map of a water system and a designed water utility map. The efficiency and usability of the design just leaps out at you (brace yourself from traditional users who won't necessarily be in the frame of mind to "learn how to read it"). In any case, which one would you choose?
Old School
New School
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
On vacation with a Nuvi
Is there any better encapsulation of the GIS/GPS curriculum than a Nuvi (or whatever generic name vehicle GPS navigation units are called)- except for the surveying bit...
You've got basic low level GPS- all you need to know is that it won't work in a building. Sat acquisition is fast and seemingly accurate (see below).
You've got basic and advanced GIS- on the very basic side the 255 has water, terrain, political, POI and road data layers in an all on or off format. Also zoom & pan.
On the advanced side- you've got geocoding, which means you have a heavy reliance on good databases, which for the most part were reasonably good (and I think that will get better with the floor being the new 2008 Census tiger data). Also you have some sort of buffering program which takes the approximate GPS location and gets it onto the road that you're traveling on; unless that road doesn't exist in the database. Finally, there's the network analysis to determine your route- not a simple process.
The other interesting point is that in the retail world, you pay more for better accuracy and more data. You can pay as little as around $150 for the basics and over $500 for the full monty. Just like in the geospatial industry, more money gets better results (or the promise of better).
One might expect that as these devices become integrated into people's lives and they experience the joys and defeats of both GPS and spatial data, they will understand and be more willing to integrate the efficiencies represented by these simple units into other areas of their lives (personal and community). They will be receptive to the geospatial quality versus costs issue because they experienced it at Amazon. And they'll want that subdivision on the map. It will be up to GIS/GPS professionals to make the links clear.
On another note: these units all use similar algorithms to determine your route (with little imput on what choices are important to the user) and as far as I could tell, no ability to chose a different route, other than ignoring the recommended path and having the unit calculate an updated route. At some point, multiple PhDs will be written on an analysis of traffic patterns and road use as influenced by these units. That until now little used side road that is 15feet shorter than the "main" road is going to see a lot more traffic until people figure out it's slower because of unmapped double parking or stickball or speed bumps...
You've got basic low level GPS- all you need to know is that it won't work in a building. Sat acquisition is fast and seemingly accurate (see below).
You've got basic and advanced GIS- on the very basic side the 255 has water, terrain, political, POI and road data layers in an all on or off format. Also zoom & pan.
On the advanced side- you've got geocoding, which means you have a heavy reliance on good databases, which for the most part were reasonably good (and I think that will get better with the floor being the new 2008 Census tiger data). Also you have some sort of buffering program which takes the approximate GPS location and gets it onto the road that you're traveling on; unless that road doesn't exist in the database. Finally, there's the network analysis to determine your route- not a simple process.
The other interesting point is that in the retail world, you pay more for better accuracy and more data. You can pay as little as around $150 for the basics and over $500 for the full monty. Just like in the geospatial industry, more money gets better results (or the promise of better).
One might expect that as these devices become integrated into people's lives and they experience the joys and defeats of both GPS and spatial data, they will understand and be more willing to integrate the efficiencies represented by these simple units into other areas of their lives (personal and community). They will be receptive to the geospatial quality versus costs issue because they experienced it at Amazon. And they'll want that subdivision on the map. It will be up to GIS/GPS professionals to make the links clear.
On another note: these units all use similar algorithms to determine your route (with little imput on what choices are important to the user) and as far as I could tell, no ability to chose a different route, other than ignoring the recommended path and having the unit calculate an updated route. At some point, multiple PhDs will be written on an analysis of traffic patterns and road use as influenced by these units. That until now little used side road that is 15feet shorter than the "main" road is going to see a lot more traffic until people figure out it's slower because of unmapped double parking or stickball or speed bumps...
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Icy Thoughts
from all points blog comes a story about the power outage that has hit mostly southern New Hampshire after the ice storm (of the century?) last Friday.
Seems in Durham, they're having trouble figuring out who has power and who doesn't. And they're also trying to tell people what streets are being worked on or are on-deck (via the internet, which as we know, requires electricity, but I digress).
It raises a question or two.
If you worked for city or county government in this type of crisis, how would you use geospatial technology to map who had power and who didn't (in Durham, officials are driving streets at night to look for lights), where the trouble spots were, which streets emergency vehicles could drive down, where seniors or people with special needs lived, and the work plan (where crews were working or going to be)?
And most importantly, how would you get that information out and update it? (Update: this where Starbucks-GoogleMapping is useful; that is having your emergency response mapping on a server hosted out of town, so that when there's a power or other problem, you can go somewhere there's a wireless link, access the data & add new data using google maps. In addition to providing paper maps in the affected areas).
Durham is home to the University of New Hampshire (and the Thompson School, where I got my AAS). No question there are geospatially enabled students and equipment lying around. How would you mobilize them- could they be out in the neighborhoods locating this stuff in advance of the emergency and work crews to make the whole disaster recovery process more efficient?
Seems in Durham, they're having trouble figuring out who has power and who doesn't. And they're also trying to tell people what streets are being worked on or are on-deck (via the internet, which as we know, requires electricity, but I digress).
It raises a question or two.
If you worked for city or county government in this type of crisis, how would you use geospatial technology to map who had power and who didn't (in Durham, officials are driving streets at night to look for lights), where the trouble spots were, which streets emergency vehicles could drive down, where seniors or people with special needs lived, and the work plan (where crews were working or going to be)?
And most importantly, how would you get that information out and update it? (Update: this where Starbucks-GoogleMapping is useful; that is having your emergency response mapping on a server hosted out of town, so that when there's a power or other problem, you can go somewhere there's a wireless link, access the data & add new data using google maps. In addition to providing paper maps in the affected areas).
Durham is home to the University of New Hampshire (and the Thompson School, where I got my AAS). No question there are geospatially enabled students and equipment lying around. How would you mobilize them- could they be out in the neighborhoods locating this stuff in advance of the emergency and work crews to make the whole disaster recovery process more efficient?
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Rats!
NYC has a pretty cool webGIS rat map going on.
It's a map of everything rat from the health department in a very nicely done interface.
No word on whether they plan to add all of Wall Street as a critical area or not.
It's a map of everything rat from the health department in a very nicely done interface.
No word on whether they plan to add all of Wall Street as a critical area or not.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Vacancy clean-up
The following places had position announcements over the past year or so. I'm posting them because they may be places to contact if you are looking for internships or positions (and I'm cleaning my desk). You never know; I started one job a month after they had hired someone else (within that month, he had crashed a company truck which didn't improve his future prospects at the company).
District Technician Hancock SWCD, Findlay, Ohio
Field Mapping for Mosquito Range Heritage Initiative Fairplay, Colorado (mrhi.org)
GPS mapping USACOE Tuscarawas County Area (Ohio) (Stan Rosenblatt, Ranger)
District Technician Hancock SWCD, Findlay, Ohio
Field Mapping for Mosquito Range Heritage Initiative Fairplay, Colorado (mrhi.org)
GPS mapping USACOE Tuscarawas County Area (Ohio) (Stan Rosenblatt, Ranger)
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