Satellite Mapping could save Coral Reefs

This article from earthtimes.org discusses how satellite mapping could be used to prevent damage to coral reefs and increase awareness.

From the article: A marine ecologist says new satellite mapping should be introduced to help identify and halt the rapid decline of coral reefs. Phil Dustan has been investigating coral reefs for almost 40 years, since famous marine ecologist Jacques Cousteau warned him in 1974 that humans were destroying reefs.

Dr Dustan, now a University of Charleston biology professor, in the United States, believes that by using Landsat satellite mapping the declining reefs, hotspots can be identified and conservation measures put in place.

Click here to see full story. Image from EarthTimes.org

Crowd Sourced Maps

Can crowd sourcing ever take the place of traditional datasets and collection types?

Ask this question to a variety of different geospatially inclined people and I am certain you will get a wide variety of very passionate and yet different responses. For those who may not be familiar with the term crowd sourcing, it is the practice of utilizing amateurs or the public at large to aid in providing information or data which has become available with the increases in technology. Two examples that you may have seen are the open street map project and to some extent even Wikipedia, both locations where the general public is able to add content in an attempt to refine what already exists or expand upon it.

Even Google Maps is beginning to use crowd sourcing, it recently announced that the Google Map Maker will open its editing tools to everyone. One reason for this shift is to allow locals to add content which Google’s teams would have difficulty obtaining. A review process is in place to ensure that the added content is verified but essentially local individuals add content directly to the live maps.

Another good example of crowd sourcing is the urban forest map project which was utilized in San Francisco to map the location and get information about trees all around the city. The program has met with great success as the community heavily participated in providing a large amount of information. This has saved the city a large amount of money as this information is being collected by empowered citizens and traditional tree surveys have not needed to be conducted.

While these two examples are great uses of getting the public involved and providing content, there are several concerns and problems which immediately rise to the surface making this practice controversial. The three most common concerns are accuracy, updates or maintenance, and documentation or metadata.

As geospatial professionals we understand the critical importance of data accuracy. Hours upon hours can been spent in discussion about differences in accuracy and precision as they relate to different geographic datasets. Many wonder how high the accuracy of a data set which is being edited and created by an untrained member of the public can be. This can be argued from both points of view. Some argue that it is impossible for crowd sourced maps can be as accurate as professionals creating data. While others note that the accuracy greatly increases because local knowledge is able to correct mistakes and expand on information which cannot be known from traditional methods. This leads to one of the advantages of crowd sourcing in that you have access to an endless supply of local knowledge based peer reviewers who together are able to refine information and accuracy, while in traditional data collection practices constant revisions can be costly and impractical.

Like many discussions the reality is probably somewhere in the middle and dependent on what layer is being created and for what purpose. For some data such as utilities which require high accuracy levels as they relate to other projects and inaccuracies can cause many problems, traditional data collection methods should be used over crowd sourcing options. Other data sets which are intended for basic navigation or public knowledge and don’t require a high level accuracy, such as business or tree locations you would expect might have a better accuracy in crowd sourcing as local knowledge is able to offer information which be difficult for a data collector to know and increased peer review can refine.

The timeliness of data created from crowd sourcing can be difficult to distinguish, unless it is included in the original collection. However one important consideration of crowd sourcing to remember is that if the community is involved, it is likely that changes on a local level will be reported quickly by locals, where in the traditional data update process it would take time for changes to be reflected.

Metadata and other documentation can be among the most difficult parts to complete when using crowd sourcing as your public is made from a variety of professions and technical levels. While you are likely to have some experts editing data you are just as likely to have citizens contributing who do not have the same level of background or technical experience. With such a wide variety of potential editors, understanding who exactly is maintaining the data can be hard, where in a traditional data collection you know exactly who created the data, how the data was created, and any details which are relevant to the data.

All of these different factors need to be considered when determining whether utilizing crowd sourcing options are the best option or where traditional data collection remains superior. It does appear that at present both forms have many advantages and disadvantages. Determining when to use which is really dependent on the type of project or data that will be collected, edited, and maintained.

CFGIS Winter 2011 Newsletter is Here!!!

The Winter CFGIS Newsletter is available on the CFGIS main page. Click here to view!!!

Make sure not to miss any of the great articles, upcoming events, and other information.

The Green Thing - Are You Doing Your Part?

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
 
The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."
 
The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.
 
Back then, we returned milk bottles, soft drink bottles and beer bottles to the shop. The shop sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
 
We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.
 
Back then, we washed the baby's nappies because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in our day.
 
Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of Auckland Super City . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right. We didn't have the green thing back then.
 
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.
 
Back then, people took the train or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mums into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.
 
But isn't it sad that the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?
  
Remember: Don't make old people mad. We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to tick us off.

NORAD tracks Santa

The countdown to Santa's flight has begun and with the Christmas holiday just a few days away I wanted to make sure to pass along the NORAD Santa information which will be tracking Santa Claus as he delivers presents on Christmas Eve, for those of you with little ones make sure to show them, as an incentive for why they should get to bed on Christmas Eve.

http://www.noradsanta.org/en/index.html

In addition to the website resource for tracking Santa's progress. NORAD will also be placing Santa's path into an updating Google Earth file that can be added directly to the Google Earth to take advantage of the other features of the program.

The story behind how NORAD became the official Santa trackers is quite a good one, taken from the NORAD website is the explanation about how NORAD became the official tracker of Santa Claus:

For more than 50 years, NORAD and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) have tracked Santa’s flight.

The tradition began in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the telephone number. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief’s operations "hotline." The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born.

In 1958, the governments of Canada and the United States created a bi-national air defense command for North America called the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also known as NORAD, which then took on the tradition of tracking Santa.

Since that time, NORAD men, women, family and friends have selflessly volunteered their time to personally respond to phone calls and emails from children all around the world. In addition, we now track Santa using the Internet. Millions of people who want to know Santa’s whereabouts now visit the NORAD Tracks Santa website.

Finally, media from all over the world rely on NORAD as a trusted source to provide updates on Santa’s journey.

Now you know how the tradition got started, hopefully you enjoy this fun little twist on geospatial technology.

From all of us at CFGIS we hope you have a safe and happy holidays!!!

Geography of College Football

College football has been the center of discussion for many in the past few weeks and not just because of the wild finish of the season or the build up to the many great bowl games that will be starting soon. It has been geography which has taken center stage in many of the conversations.

This may not seem strange to those of use who follow the big rivalries of college football each year such as Michigan - Notre Dame, Florida - Florida State, or Texas - Oklahoma which pit close geographies against one another every year in the ultimate battle of bragging rights (Which I am happy to say belongs to FSU this year).

But back to the first question what has happened this year to put geography in the limelight?

Two words: Conference Realignment

Every year smaller schools compete hard for the opportunity to enter the larger conferences which can lead to better recognition, more recruitment, and in some cases an increase in annual money. Congratulations to the University of Central Florida for entering the Big East this year. What has made this year particularly of notice though is that many conferences are adding teams which are well outside of the traditional geographic area for that conference and many of these programs are well established.

This year we have already seen University of Missouri enter the SEC and Boise State enter the Big East. The ACC added both Pittsburgh and Syracuse to its new roster.

The breaking of these traditional geographies have many questioning the names of conferences and if those geographies truly matter any longer. It will take some time to see what if any change occur from these new additions.

Some others are worried about what these additions will do to those long standing rivalries which we have all come to know and love, others believe we will start to see new larger geographic rivalries start to build as teams travel greater distances to take on conference opponents.

Only time will tell if these new geographies will prove to build greater rivalries or push college football conferences too far.

In the meantime click here to view the common census sports package which allows users to choose an area and see the fan breakdown of that area. See if you can spot the lines of these great rivalries and where the borders really lie.

End of the 2011 Hurricane Season

The 2011 Hurricane season came to a close on November 30th. Being in Central Florida we are always aware of the dangers that hurricanes pose to our shorelines. While we in Central Florida were fortunate this year to not have any severe impacts however that does not meant that it was not an active season for storms.

This video from NOAA utilizes the GOES East Satellite to bring you the entire 2011 hurricane season in less than five minutes, allowing you to see many of the storms form and dissipate over the past few months.



From NOAA:

The 2011 Atlantic hurricane season officially ends on Nov. 30 and produced a total of 19 tropical storms of which seven became hurricanes, including three major hurricanes. This level of activity matched NOAA's predictions and continues the trend of active hurricane seasons that began in 1995.


Surprisingly, none of the first eight tropical storms reached hurricane status, a record since reliable reports started in 1851. Hurricane Irene's effects in the Caribbean and the United States led to 43 deaths and accounted for the bulk of this season's damage at $7.3 billion. Irene was the first landfalling hurricane in New Jersey in 108 years. Hurricane Katia had far-reaching effects causing severe weather in Northern Ireland and Scotland and power blackouts as far east as Saint Petersburg in Russia. Tropical Storm Lee caused major flooding in Pennsylvania, New York and into the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario. The strongest storm of the season was Ophelia, which reached category four strength in the Atlantic Ocean east of Bermuda.


An integral part of NOAA's ability to monitor and predict hurricane formation and movement is the data that is provided by the GOES satellite, with its visible imagery, infrared sensors, and sounding capabilities. This animations merges both the visible and infrared imagery taken by the GOES East (GOES-13) satellite every 30 minutes over the Northern Hemisphere from June 1 -- November 28, 2011.