Many changes have taken place in Online GIS and geospatial course offerings over the past year, since we first covered the topic on GISCafe. The range of topics has increased to include even courses for high schoolers, and the ever popular drone classes and Geodesign. The popularity of “Massive Open Online Courses” or MOOCs allows colleges and universities to teach thousands of students at one time, at their convenience, rather than at a prescribed day and time.
GISCafe Voice
Archive for the ‘OGC’ Category
GISCafe News from the Bentley Year In Infrastructure 2015 Conference in London
Friday, November 13th, 2015At the Bentley Year In Infrastructure 2015 Conference held in London a week ago, it was noted that GIS was an integrated part of Bentley’s offerings, particularly in the utilities and assets areas of the products offerings. Products are being rolled into CONNECT Editions, which will allow users to leverage cloud services through a common modeling environment platform. Other products such as Bentley’s OpenUtilities, leverage GIS and their ContextCapture is being used to obtain a high resolution and georeferenced model of cities and even countries.
SA Water, Adelaide, South Australia, BE Inspired 2015 Winner in Asset Performance Management
The First Nationwide 3D Model
Wednesday, November 4th, 2015This week in London at the Hilton Metropole The Bentley Year in Infrastructure 2015 Conference is being held. The latest product announcements from Bentley Systems were announced, as well as the 2015 Be Inspired Awards, awarded for excellence in various areas of Architecture, Engineering and Construction Excellence. Because GIS is an integral part of the work done in the areas of utilities and 3D cities, it is worth including some of the finalists’ work and some new products announcements in GISCafe Voice coverage. Winners are chosen from a group of finalists, who have submitted their projects for consideration.
After jurors have deliberated during the week to come up with the winners in each category, the Awards Dinner is the crowning event of the conference. In this blog we will look at the winner in the category “Innovation in Government,” as it was profound in its scope and ambitious undertaking using 3D Cities GIS technology.
Singapore Land Authority – Mapping Singapore in 3D (more…)
From the Exhibit Floor: Esri User Conference 2015
Wednesday, 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.
Airbus DS Communications Launches Text-to-9-1-1 Solution, Other Upgrades to VESTA® 9-1-1 Suite
Thursday, 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.
Northrup Grumman Hosts Panel Discussion on New Technologies
Tuesday, July 7th, 2015Partnerships, unmanned spacecraft, technologies and sensors were some of the topics covered in a panel discussion and press luncheon held at GEOINT Symposium 2015 in Washington D.C. recently, by Northrup Grumman.
An E-2C test aircraft assigned to Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 20 conducts an aerial refueling dry-plug engagement with an F/A-18.
From the Exhibit Floor at GEOINT Symposium 2015
Wednesday, 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).
GISCafe at GEOINT 2015
Monday, June 15th, 2015Next week GISCafe will be flying to GEOINT 2015 Symposium held June 22-25 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.
Stylin’ with Boundless OpenGeo Suite 4.6
Thursday, May 14th, 2015A provider of Spatial IT solutions, Boundless, has released the newest version of its enterprise geospatial software platform, OpenGeo Suite 4.6. This Suite powers web, mobile and desktop maps and applications across both large and small organizations and improves performance, reliability and styling.
GISCafe Voice spoke with Boundless’ chief marketing officer, Sean Brady, to find out more about the platform release:
GISCafe Voice: What would be an example of cost differential using OpenGeo Suite 4.6 rather than a proprietary geospatial solution?
Sean Brady: There are no traditional license costs associated with OpenGeo Suite, either client-side or server. As a result, as you scale deployments (across both IT environments as well as users) organizations incur no incremental costs other than underlying infrastructure costs. Proprietary geospatial solutions incur license costs on both a per-user basis as well as the number of cores used on the server side, so costs increase with scale.
GISCafe Voice: When you say “anyone” can build maps, etc. do you mean anyone with certain geospatial qualifications?
Sean Brady: This is the benefit of what we at Boundless call “Spatial IT”. It means Spatial no longer needs to require special qualifications, because IT professionals familiar with database technologies like PostgreSQL and web development languages like CSS can build and style maps. As an industry, if we want geospatial to grow in adoption by traditional market verticals, we have to make the technologies more accessible to the IT shops that are already in place without needing to hire scarce geospatial experts.
GISCafe Voice: Do organizations need IT/geospatial departments to get the suite implemented in their companies?
Sean Brady: Again, as an industry if we want geospatial to grow beyond specialized geospatial shops we have to make it accessible to other parts of the business. Organizations still need IT, Web, or application development expertise to leverage the power of OpenGeo Suite – but those are resources in much greater quantity and are already invested in as strategic efforts.
GISCafe Voice: Do you have examples of deployment cases?
Sean Brady: You can find cases on our website underneath our various product offerings. We have case studies posted about deployments at organizations like NOAA, TriMet, and Asheville, North Carolina.
GISCafe Voice: Are you moving into other market areas, if so, which ones?
Sean Brady: In the spirit of Spatial IT, we’re working to make our software accessible to multiple market areas. If you visit our website at http://boundlessgeo.com/resources/, you’ll note multiple market verticals we are currently targeting and working with.
GISCafe Voice: What do you think is the most profound offering of Suite 4.6 that differentiates it from competing Open Source geospatial software?
Sean Brady: In the open source community we like to think we’re not competing with other open source technologies. Rising water lifts all boats in our space, the more people that use open source geospatial technology the better we all do. It’s why we’re committed to OGC standards and interoperability – if you wish to use something different at a certain layer because you have different objectives, then please, go ahead. Where Boundless works to differentiate is by responding to what we perceive are gaps in what’s out there – our improved Composer offering in OpenGeo Suite 4.6 addresses market needs for web-based map design and styling tools using the simplified YSLD syntax.
New capabiities and enhancements in Version 4.6 include:
Enhanced OpenGeo Suite Composer, that allows anyone to build and style maps by making it easier to add data to GeoServer, style layers, and publish to the Web.
Data Links for Nepal Earthquake
Tuesday, April 28th, 2015Over the weekend, a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal near the city of Kathmandu, followed by aftershocks that also resulted in many deaths and structural damage. Simultaneously, climbers on Mount Everest’s base camp were buried in an avalanche, precipitated by the quake.
The following are some sites that provide some geospatial insight into the events. I’m leaving the links whole in most cases so that they are easy for people to access and will add others as I learn about them. If anyone has any other links that should be added to this list, please contact me at susan.smith@ibsystems.com.
Dharahara Tower, Kathmandu April 2014 before the earthquake, courtesy DigitalGlobe
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