Follow
Blog: Chris Harlow on ITSearch The Harlow Report Archives
Curious about what’s happening with ArcGIS for Telecommunications?
Good! Because 2016 is going to be a big year for ArcGIS for Telecommunications. So far this year we’ve released 2 new solutions and updated 8 existing solutions. And we have much more in the works for the rest of the year.
Before we dive into the year so far and the future, let’s make sure everyone understands what ArcGIS for Telecommunications is. ArcGIS for Telecommunications is a collection of products that extent ArcGIS to provide additional wireline, cable, and wireless telecommunications specific capabilities. These products are typically ready-to-use maps and apps that can be rapidly implemented as is, can be used as a starting point for a custom application, or serve as a developer sample. All of the products included in ArcGIS for Telecommunications are available as free downloads and are fully supported by Esri as part of an organization’s Esri Maintenance Program. continued…
first published week of: 04/25/2016
The most eye-catching part of centuries-old maps are often not geographical; they’re supernatural. Tucked between bloated continents and far-flung islands, Medieval and Renaissance mapmakers sketched spirited drawings of mythical sea monsters. What was it that made the illustrated seas so terrifying?
It was part decoration, part a declaration of ignorance, as a new episode of PRI’s The World discusses.
“In the Medieval and Renaissance period in Europe, people didn’t really know what was out there,“ Dory Klein, an educator from the Boston Public Library’s maps division, tells the show. “So your corpus of knowledge came from folklore and the Bible. And so in that world, monsters could very well be real and they were just part of this supernatural landscape.3
Instead of letting the known world blur into blank space as cartographers reached the limits of contemporary geographical progress, they inserted scary monsters as visual signals both that they had no idea what was really out there, and yes, it might be kind of dangerous. continued…
first published week of: 04/18/2016
One of the most interesting, if unanticipated, side effects of modern copyright law is the practice by which cartographic companies will introduce a fake street—a road, lane, or throughway that does not, in fact, exist on the ground—into their maps. If that street later shows up on a rival company’s products, then they have all the proof they need for a case of copyright infringement. Known as trap streets, these imaginary roads exist purely as figments of an overactive legal imagination.
Trap streets are also compelling evidence that maps don’t always equal the territory. What if not just one random building or street, however, but an entire map is deliberately wrong? This is the strange fate of digital mapping products in China: there, every street, building, and freeway is just slightly off its mark, skewed for reasons of national and economic security.
The result is an almost ghostly slippage between digital maps and the landscapes they document. Lines of traffic snake through the centers of buildings; monuments migrate into the midst of rivers; one’s own position standing in a park or shopping mall appears to be nearly half a kilometer away, as if there is more than one version of you on the loose. Stranger yet, your morning running route didn’t quite go where you thought it did.
first published week of: 02/29/2016
Woolpert has been awarded a five-year contract to provide on-call geographic information system (GIS) services for San Francisco International Airport (SFO), it was announced today.
Woolpert Project Director Mark Ricketson said the work could involve GIS data collection, compliance with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) airport GIS standards and implementing strategic planning services. The project also includes GIS application development and integration with existing airport business systems, and updating data previously collected by Woolpert.
“A little over five years ago, we were awarded a full airport-wide data collection effort with airspace analysis at SFO,” Ricketson said. “Then about two-and-a-half years later, we updated the data to reflect the fairly significant improvements and changes to the airfield.”
The airport is in the midst of a $4.4 billion capital improvement plan, which includes a newly completed air traffic control tower, a new Terminal 1, a new 350-room hotel, and numerous cargo and service-related buildings.
Ricketson said SFO’s airfield, building facilities and supporting infrastructure will continue to change as new capital projects are constructed, and that the GIS contract will support the analysis of those changes and reflect updates to the airport.
“We enjoy working for such a world-class airport, which cares so much about technology and sustainability,” said Ricketson, adding that Woolpert works extensively in sustainable design under its architecture and engineering disciplines. “The staff makes SFO one of my favorite clients.”
SFO is the seventh largest airport in the country, per total passengers, according to the Airports Council International (ACI). The airport had more than 47 million passengers in 2014, its most recent report.
Woolpert is expected to begin the GIS project this month.
first published week of: 02/29/2016
The Wyoming Department of Transportation this month released a mobile application that allows drivers to view road and weather conditions for their current location.
The free app is available for both Android and iPhone users.
“It’s a good way to get more timely information,” said WYDOT public affairs specialist Dave Kingham.
The goal of the application is to get current road conditions to drivers in a convenient way, giving them more time to react to poor weather, road construction or a car crash.
“Having more reaction time just makes you a safer driver,” said Ali Ragan, project manager for WYDOT’s GIS/ITS program.
The app uses a phone’s GPS to provide location-based reports to drivers. It updates data from WYDOT’s servers every 15 minutes.
Users can view maps, camera images of roads and their current mile marker location with latitude and longitude coordinates. A hands-free, eyes-free setting allows the app to speak conditions so drivers will know what to expect on the road ahead. continued…
first published week of: 02/22/2016
Paper maps spatially explicit dataset of urban centers from 3700 BC to 2000
As the growth of cities worldwide transforms humans into an "urban species," many scholars question the sustainability of modern urbanization. But in reality there aren't much data on long-term historical urbanization trends and patterns.
A new Yale-led study offers fresh clarity on these historical trends, providing the first spatially explicit dataset of the location and size of urban settlements globally over the past 6,000 years.
By creating maps through digitizing, transcribing, and geocoding a deep trove of historical, archaeological, and census-based urban population data previously available only in tabular form, the authors make accessible information on urban centers from 3700 B.C. to A.D. 2000.
They also create a "reliability ranking" for each geocoded location to assess the geographic uncertainty of each data point.
Their findings are published in the journal Scientific Data.
To better understand urbanization today it is helpful to know what urbanization looked like through history. By understanding how cities have grown and changed over time, throughout history, it might tell us something useful about how they are changing today. Meredith Reba, a Research Associate at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES)
first published week of: 06/13/2016