New Geospatial Platform Website

"The federal governement and its geospatial partners today unveiled www.geoplateform.gov, a prototype website providing an inital view of the future of user-friendly, integrated, federal data collections on common geographic maps." (See press release by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (11/09/2011)).

This platform combines map-based data and tools with the latest Internet technologies to deliver geospatial information in a simple, understandable package.  Users can easily find federally-maintained geospatial data, services and application, as well as access data from Federal, State, Tribal, Regional and local government.

SABIN:School Attendance Boundary Information System

Monday, December 12, 2011

SABIN:School Attendance Boundary Information System

The College of William & Mary and the Minnesota Population Center have launched the new School Attendance Boundary Information System funded by the National Science Foundation to assemble, harmonize, and disseminate GIS data for grade-specific school attendance embedded with school districts throughout the United States. In addition to GIS data for school attendance boundaries, SABINS also provides:

• Census data tabulated for the school attendance boundaries
• Crosswalk tables that link school attendance boundaries to data from the U.S. Dept. of Education's Common core of Data.

Also the system allows:

• download Census data for multiple grade levels in one extract
• download GIS data fro multiple grade levels in one extract
• constrain or expand data searches by specifying any combination of topics or datasets.

Visit the website for more information: http://www.sabinsdata.org

Interactive Maps from USAID

USAID has recently developed a series of interesting interactive maps on the crisis in the Horn of Africa. See them at:
http://www.usaid.gov/fwd/crisis.html

Spatial Humanity Projects

utilize GIS technology to explain all sorts of research questions related to humanity subjects. A recent NY times article talks about the new field of spatial humanities and their spatial projects. Please click on the following projects for the details.

*The various digital mapmakers projects at UVA
*Animated Atlas of African History(for economic and demographic trends, violent conflicts, and changing the territory names from 1879 and 2002)at Brown.
*Plejades (historical geographic information about the Greek and Roman World)
*Maps on Globalization and trade at Princeton.
*Digital music project at Stanford (mapping musical notes in cognitive space).
*Maps about Vietnames sidewalk life at MIT.

The article also includes a step by step tutorials page on "how to use the new tools and resources for teaching and scholarly work"

Google Map Maker

"Google Map Maker" allows users to contribute their own spatial knowledge to their local maps. This Google's exciting tool has already been used among some of 183 countries around the world.

See more information on this through the Scout Report (2011-4-22)

HyperCities Egypt: New UCLA Project

that updates and archives tweets from protesters in Cairo since the outbreak of the pro-democracy demonstration starting on Jan. 25. 2011. It displays a new tweet every four seconds over a digital map of Egypt's capital--allowing users to explore the layers of city spaces in an interactive, hypermedia environment. This is a part of the UCLA Center for Digital Humanities program.

Visit http://egypt.hypercities.com .

Cyberinfrastructure Summer Institute in San Diego

GEON will hold a week-long Cyberinfrastructure Summer Institute for Geoscientists (CSIG) from August 9-13, 2010 at the University of California, San Diego. This year’s program featured two tracks:

1. Overview of the technologies utilized to develop earth science cyberinfrastructure.
2. Utilization of cyberinfrastructure-based data systems and tools can be used in geoscience education and research.

Forty-two participants took part in the 2009 CSIG representing academia, private industry, and several agencies. As in the past, students traveled from countries such as Mexico, Ireland, and New Zealand to attend.

Online applications are now being accepted. Application deadline is June 6, 2010.

Key Links:
Tentative Program Info
Application
Location & Lodging
Previous Years

About GEON: The goal in GEON is to develop a set of software services that can respond to a “natural” request from users. Integrating a variety of multi-dimensional data in response to such a request requires a common framework. GEON is developing the OpenEarth Framework (OEF) to facilitate such integration. More information here.

The CSIG is made possible through funding provided by the National Science Foundation.