Fighting fire with data: how mapping tech helped beat back the Rim Fire
by russell brandom

The past month's Rim Fire blazed through more than a quarter million acres of land in California, but the tensest moment came on August 27th, when the fire came close to threatening San Francisco's water supply. If the blaze had advanced any closer than it did, it would start dumping ash into reservoirs, spurring a potential public health crisis. Stopping the fire required the forestry equivalent of a goal line stand, dropping three DC-10s worth of retardant in an attempt to push back the blaze.

The planes were easy to assemble, but the larger problem was knowing where to drop the payload. According to Russ Johnson, disaster response chief for a mapping company called Esri, firefighters usually target fires as they cross ridges, allowing the retardant will flow downhill and cover more ground. But the threat to the water supply had forced their hand. The fire had to be stopped on a relatively flat plane, and even minor changes in slope would make an immense difference in the payload's effect on the fire. Suddenly, firefighters needed detailed meter-to-meter elevation data on a patch of land that no one had cared about just hours before. "You have very little room for error," Johnson says, "and the consequences can be really devastating." continued…

first published week of:   09/23/2013

Fire Hydrant App Improves Workflow in Philadelphia
by colin-wood

Philadelphia’s process for managing damaged fire hydrants was brought into the digital age late last year with a new reporting app. The city’s Fire Department now transfers data about the condition of hydrants from the new app through mobile data terminals (MDTs), cutting down on processing time and saving money.

The city previously spent $17,000 per year to print out manila survey cards used to notate the condition of the city’s 27,000 hydrants. The cards were given to the Water Department, which spent about a week to manually enter the information into a database. Thanks to the app, the extra data entry step has been eliminated, allowing the Water Department to schedule hydrant repairs sooner.

The hydrant application was conceived and developed through inter-departmental cooperation and a strong foundation in GIS. continued…

first published week of:   08/19/2013

Fiscal cliff averted, but pain still to come
by nick wakeman

Along with playing with the kids and relaxing over the holiday break, I kept an ear out for what was going on between Congress and the White House.

It was disgusting, to say the least. Very little was accomplished other than finding a compromise to the tax issue. But sequestration was kicked down the road for two months.

It is very unfortunate and disappointing that a more long-term solution couldn’t be hammered out.

Think about all the time, energy and angst that went into that two month delay. Congress could have done that a few months ago, when they passed a continuing resolution that extends funding until March.

With our luck, we’ll probably now have a triple cliff facing us – sequestration, the CR expires and the debt ceiling running out.

In a few days, the new Congress will be seated, and it’ll fall to them to figure something out.

Details Here

first published week of:   01/07/2013

France defangs its anti-piracy law, removes disconnection penalty
by cyrus farivar

After years of questionable effectiveness, France’s notorious three-strikes anti-piracy law—known by its French acronym, Hadopi—has had its most controversial provision removed.

On Tuesday, the French Ministry of Culture announced (Google Translate) that it would be canceling the most severe penalty in the entire scheme: disconnecting someone from the Internet. How many times was this penalty actually enforced over the years that Hadopi has been on the books? Exactly once.

In September 2012, a man in Eastern France was convicted of a third strike after downloading unauthorized copies of two Rihanna songs, even though his soon-to-be-ex-wife was the one who admitted in court that she had done it. Frustrated with the entire Hadopi system, the unnamed man from Eastern France voluntarily took his entire household offline. It took until last month for a single user to be fined €600 ($771) and kicked offline for 15 days (Google Translate)—the first time disconnection had been ordered after the many millions of warnings that Hadopi has sent French Internet users. Only a small handful of French users have even made it to strike three. continued…

first published week of:   07/15/2013

FTC wants to let Internet users see the data that the NSA can get
by casey johnston

In light of the quiet data transfers happening between technology companies and the government, the Federal Trade Commission is proposing an “industrywide initiative” that would give customers access to the information a company has on them, according to a report from the New York Times. The initiative, called “Reclaim Your Name,” would increase the transparency of what data is not only held by companies, but what is shared between them.

Several big companies including Apple, Microsoft, and Google adhere to record requests in compliance with the law, and Verizon was discovered handing over a swath of cellphone metadata to the agency as well. While the FTC doesn’t seek to stand between the NSA and those data morsels, it does seem to believe it's fair for customers to know what data companies hold on them (and thus what could be potentially handed over in the event of a government request).

Most businesses tend to hoard all the information they can. Julie Brill, a member of the FTC, pointed out that we “ask questions about intimate medical conditions on WebMD" and that "Google Maps, Twitter, and Foursquare know where we are. Uber, Capital BikeShare, and Metro’s trip planner know where we’re going and how we plan to get there." Not only is this data collected, but it is often shared with third-party advertisers (and often anonymized to limited effect). continued…

first published week of:   07/01/2013

GeoEye Analytics to win contract for human geography info system
by mark hoover

In an effort to better plan missions, the U.S. Special Operations Command is about to award a contract to GeoEye Analytics for a highly specialized Human Geography Information System.

Under the contract, GeoEye Analytics (now part of Digital Glove) will provide the Command with geospatially referenced socio-cultural data on a number of countries for which there is a critical need for it, but where such data does not yet exist.

This human geography information system will use satellite imagery and marry it with “human” data and other information on an area’s history, culture, education, economy, religion, weather and political landscapes, according to GCN. continued…

first published week of:   10/21/2013

Germany fines Google a paltry $189,000 over Street View Wi-Fi scanning
by cyrus farivar

After years of deliberation, a German provincial privacy regulator has fined Google €145,000 ($189,000)—nearly the legal maximum of €150,000—over its Wi-Fi scanning scandal.

On Monday, Hamburg's data protection commissioner, who led German and European data protection officials in investigating Google’s actions, said in a statement (PDF) that Google’s internal privacy mechanisms “failed seriously.”

But commissioner Johannes Caspar noted the frustratingly small ability of an agency like his to punish a company like Google. As the New York Times points out, while the fine is the largest ever issued in Europe concerning Google’s actions, it “amounts to 0.002 percent of Google’s $10.7 billion in 2012 net profit.” continued…

first published week of:   04/22/2013

GIS Director to present new, interactive map website
by  Dawn M. Kurry, Richmond County Daily Journal

The Richmond County Planning and Zoning GIS Department will soon be seeking input from anyone who uses the county’s online GIS system.

“Over the past several months, we have been upgrading the county’s GIS infrastructure (hardware, software, etc.),” said GIS Director James Armstrong. “This upgrade has also allowed work to begin on updating the county’s Internet GIS presence. Currently there are two Internet web formats available online. Both provide property information to the general public, but each has some limitations. A new site is being developed and tested that will replace both of the older sites and hopefully eliminate (or at least mitigate) some of the pesky limitation of the past.”  continued…

first published week of:   06/10/2013

Google handed over years of e-mails belonging to WikiLeaks chatroom admin
by cyrus farivar

Two Icelandic activists with previous connections to WikiLeaks announced Friday that earlier in the week they had received newly unsealed court orders provided by Google. Those orders described that Google searched and seized data from their Gmail accounts, likely as a result of a grand jury investigation into the rogue whistleblower group.

Google was forbidden under American law from disclosing these orders to the men until the court lifted that restriction in early May 2013. (A Google spokesperson referred Ars to its Transparency Report for an explanation of its policies.)

On June 21, 2013, well-known Irish-Icelandic developer Smári McCarthy published his recently un-sealed court order dating back to July 14, 2011. Google had sent him the order, which required that the search giant hand over McCarthy's Gmail account metadata, the night before. The government cited the Stored Communications Act (SCA), specifically a 2703(d) order, as grounds to provide this order.

Meanwhile, Herbert Snorrason, received both a D-order dated in May 2011 for the metadata and a search warrant (citing 2703(f) of the SCA) for “the contents of all e-mails associated with the account, including stored or preserved copies of e-mails sent to and from the account, draft e-mails, deleted e-mails…the source and destination addresses associated with each e-mail, the date and time at which each e-mail was sent, and the size and length of each e-mail.” continued…

first published week of:   06/24/2013

Google or Not, Cities Pin Hopes on Gigabit Networks
by colin wood

Google says super high-speed Internet is the future. But the company doesn’t have a crystal ball, nor are all of its projects successful. Part of Google’s business model includes taking risks -- some projects don't pan out or may eventually be discontinued, like the recently abandoned but popular RSS reader, Google Reader.

But Google isn’t hemming and hawing about gigabit Internet. Its message is clear. The cities that Google chose to be its first fiber cities will be at the forefront of the next generation of Web technology, said Google Communications Associate Jenna Wandres. “We really believe that this is an investment in the future of the Web,” she said.

And now it seems gigabit networks are becoming a trend.  continued…

first published week of:   06/17/2013