GISCafe Voice Archive for the ‘climate change’ CategoryTechnology Shrinks GeographyWednesday, October 14th, 2015Author Robert D. Kaplan Author of “The Revenge of Geography” Senior Fellow, CNAS spoke recently on the topic of technology and geography. “Technology has not negated geography, but has shrunk geography,” stated Kaplan, “it has made it claustrophobic. The fights over packets of ground are more intense than before. Each part of world interlocks with the other.” He chose to talk about the Middle East, then about Asia Pacific, then Europe. Trimble Geospatial Announces New Solutions at INTERGEOThursday, October 8th, 2015Trimble Geospatial announced several new solutions at INTERGEO in Frankfurt, Germany this past month. Tim Lemmon, marketing director Geospatial Software for Trimble and Todd Steiner, marketing director for Imaging and UAS platform for Trimble. outlined what the new products and enhancements are for this release.  Survey Trimble R2 TSC3 Bridge Inspection New HP Z240 Tower and Z240 SFF Next Generation Small Form Factor Workstations AnnouncedThursday, October 1st, 2015Jeff Wood – vice president, WW Product Management, Workstation and Thin Client Business HP and Josh Peterson- director, WW Product Management, Workstation and Thin Client Business, HP met with the press in a virtual press briefing prior to the announcement of the new HP Z240 Tower and Z240 SFF Workstations with next generation Intel processors and HP Z Turbo Drive options, raising the bar for entry-level workstations, while providing the reliability of a workstation at the price point of a desktop PC.  HP Z240 SFF Workstation and HP Z240 Tower Workstation TopoView from the USGS is AvailableWednesday, August 19th, 2015TopoView provides one of the USGS’s most important and useful products, the topographic map, in a way that is easy to use, accessible and provides wonderful historical map data.
In 1879, the USGS began to map the Nation’s topography. Just like in a lot of modern mapping, this topographical mapping was done at different levels of detail, as needed to support various land use, exploration and other purposes. The collection of maps deepened and expanded as the years passed, with the USGS producing new map versions of each area. The most current maps are available from The National Map. For those users who need historical reference maps, TopoView shows the many and varied older maps of each area. TopoView also takes into account the fact that the names of some natural and cultural features have changed over time, and the ‘old’ names can be found on these historical topographic maps. According to USGS materials, this interface was created by the National Geologic Map Database project (NGMDB), in support of topographic mapping program managed by the National Geospatial Program (NGP). Geologic mapping and topographic mapping at the USGS have a long tradition together (see 1888 report). The NGMDB project is proud to assist the NGP in bringing these maps to the Web. TopoView is packed with new features as well as downloadable file formats such as jpeg, GeoTIFF, and KMZ. The maps shown through topoView are from the USGS’s Historical Topographic Map Collection (HTMC). The goal of this scanning, which started in 2011, is to provide a digital repository of USGS 1:250,000 scale and larger (more detailed) maps printed between 1884 (the inception of the topographic mapping program), and 2006. Currently, there are more than 178,000 maps in the HTMC. The NGP is accurately cataloging and creating metadata to accompany high-resolution, georeferenced digital files of each of these printed maps. At present, these maps are offered as GeoPDFs, through The National Map and the USGS Store. However, additional formats are now being offered for evaluation and use through topoView to include: A Look at Two Ultra-Rugged and Rugged Tablets and a Handheld DeviceThursday, August 13th, 2015Randy Denny, vice president of Sales for Xplore Technologies, talked recently at the Esri User Conference held in San Diego about the company’s big news: acquiring Motion Computing in April of 2015. Motion added to Xplore a broader portfolio of solutions in the “rugged category” of tablets.  Xplore Technologies recently acquired Motion Computng AccuWeather Addresses the Storms of our CenturyWednesday, August 5th, 2015“The business of weather is a storm of data driven change,” said Dr. Joel Myers, founder, president and chairman of AccuWeather in his keynote address entitled “Transformational Change Driven by Big Data” at the Esri User Conference 2015 held in San Diego. Myers added that, “We are reinventing ourselves over and over, to become the world’s most trusted source of weather information.”  AccuWeather Portal Weather information has definitely morphed over recent years, with maps that can be customized to the user’s requirements. With weather that has become increasingly unpredictable in the world, the challenge to provide up to the minute accurate coverage of weather patterns has also increased. Tile data from AccuWeather allows users to see an accurate representation of the weather and “manage their business processes via the weather,” said Myers. This certainly does seem to be the case for big weather events. Myers said that the key criteria for weather are the following: what was it and what will it be, how severe and how will it be presented, when will it happen? Where?
Weather today is the original Big Data, according to Myers, and has helped drive increases in data power. In the 1940s, thousands of pieces of data were collected and plotted onto maps called weather maps. They were analyzed by meteorologists to create forecasts, including how terrain, water and land boundaries impacted the movement of weather patterns. Weather forecasters were among the first to use big data collected in real time. In 1960 the first accurate weather prediction was made 24 hours ahead of the weather event. From the Exhibit Floor: Esri User Conference 2015Wednesday, July 29th, 2015A look at what is being demonstrated on the Exhibit Floor is a great way to see what is trending in the geospatial industry. Location, navigation, GIS positioning, sensors, geospatial intelligence, UAS, 3D, emergency response are just a few of the areas covered in the vast offerings seen throughout the week. Afternoon Plenary Session, Esri User Conference 2015: The Importance of LocationFriday, July 24th, 2015Decision making in GIS would not be possible without knowledge of location and with it, a sense of place and culture. The stories of the afternoon plenary session at Esri UC 2015 showcased real life examples of this reality, from fighting the Ebola epidemic to fighting crime in Baltimore. Airbus DS Communications Launches Text-to-9-1-1 Solution, Other Upgrades to VESTA® 9-1-1 SuiteThursday, July 16th, 2015Bob Freinberg, CEO of Airbus DS Communications, an entity of Airbus Defense and Space, talked with GISCafe Voice about the new VESTA Text-to-9-1-1 and upgrades for that company. From the Exhibit Floor at GEOINT Symposium 2015Wednesday, July 1st, 2015The exhibits at GEOINT Symposium 2015 this past week in Washington D.C. reflected the direction the government is heading with regard to new products, technologies and services.
The new government initiative of doing more with less has generated interest among a group of vendors in partnership with the Centralized Super Computer Facility (CSCF) program. Lockheed Martin, one of the vendors, has developed a Multilevel Secure ecosystem (MLS) using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5+ for both single system image and for a cluster configuration. The focus of this system is to use MLS to enable data fusion and/or consolidate hardware systems rather than promote duplication.
The companies partnering in this endeavor include Lockheed Martin (Multilevel Secure Ecosystem), Seagate (Multilevel Secure HPC Storage), Red Hat (Open source operating system), SGI (Secure high performance computing solutions), CRAY (multilevel security (MLS) capability), Bay Microsystems (global high-performance fabric extension), Mellanox ( 100 Gigabit per second scalable networking), 35ViON Years (MLS-Ecosystem for Mission Data), Altair (PBS Professional, – job scheduling and management) and new at the conference this year, Crunchy (open source Crunchy MLS PostgreSQL extends PostgreSQL with Multilevel Security support), and Splunk (universal machine data platform). |
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