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Boundless Desktop 1.1 Offers Groundbreaking New Features to Improve Accessibility of Desktop GIS
Boundless, a leader in open GIS, announced the next generation of its Desktop GIS software with the release of Boundless Desktop 1.1. The update includes increased support for PKI authentication, new options for styling, new image discovery and terrain analysis toolbars, and access to Mapbox basemaps. In a separate release today, Boundless also announced a strategic partnership with Mapbox, a leading real-time location and mapping platform for developers, to give customers access to high-quality Mapbox basemaps.
The release of Boundless Desktop 1.1 signifies the company’s ongoing commitment to creating the world’s premier open GIS ecosystem. Boundless aims to continually provide customers with improvements and updates that make open GIS a viable and preferred alternative to proprietary GIS software. “Boundless continues to evolve its ecosystem of open GIS software with each release,” said Anthony Calamito, VP of Product at Boundless. “Boundless Desktop 1.1 includes enhancements designed to make working with Desktop GIS easier for all. Access to premium basemaps, increased image capabilities and easy access to analysis tools were added in direct response to customer feedback. We encourage customers to submit their feedback to our Ideas Portal, so that we can continue to deliver software that meets the needs of our user base.” Boundless offers a complete open GIS solution through a unique combination of technology, products and experts, to give enterprises deeper intelligence and insights into their location-based data. The Boundless platform is built upon open source technology and open APIs that generate actionable location intelligence across third-party apps, content services and plugins for enterprise applications. Boundless Desktop 1.1 is available now. The software is free to download, and premium features are available through a subscription to Boundless Connect starting at just $4.99/month. For more information, email contact@boundlessgeo.com first published week of: 07/24/2017 One Map, BP's Key Digital Platform Aligns People, Process and Technology BP received the Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Petroleum Industry Award at the 2017 Esri International User Conference for demonstrating a consistent vision, technical leadership, business action and community outreach on a global stage.
"We are honored to present BP with a SAG Award to showcase their outstanding achievement with spatial technology," said Jack Dangermond, Esri founder and president. "The Special Achievement in GIS Award recognizes exemplary organizations implementing spatial analytics technology to change the world. Highlighting the good work of users like BP benefits the entire GIS community, and that's very valuable." Esri is the global leader in spatial analytics helping over 350,000 organizations improve their operational and business results. BP uses GIS technology for spatial thinking and application of geospatial workflows and technology in safely exploring and producing hydrocarbons. Since deploying the GIS technology, BP has seen significant improvements in sharing and integrating data between functions, consistency of data, more analytical capabilities and opportunities, enhanced subsurface workflows and exploration analytics and surveillance. “One Map is a key digital platform in BP’s Upstream segment” says Brian Boulmay, Global Geospatial Information Lead. “We have enabled a digital mapping capability that any staff can access anytime, anywhere. Also, we have delivered it in a way that users can leverage managed data and processes as well as add their own data and workflows seamlessly enabling all users to drive new insights and information from their data.” first published week of: 07/31/2017 The BCM47755 is designed to enhance LBS applications for mobile phones, tablets and fitness wearables. No longer will a high-end, expensive GNSS receiver be required to achieve centimeter accuracy now that Broadcom Limited has announced the launch of its new dual-frequency receiver with such accuracy designed for consumer location-based services (LBS) applications. Broadcom, a designer, developer and global supplier of a broad range of digital and analog semiconductor connectivity solutions, today announced the world’s first mass-market, dual-frequency GNSS receiver device, the BCM47755, designed to enhance LBS applications for mobile phones, tablets and fitness wearables. Equipped with the latest GNSS innovations, the device is capable of centimeter accuracy with minimal power consumption and footprint, enabling an entirely new suite of high-precision LBS applications including lane-level vehicle navigation and mobile augmented reality (AR). Until now, mobile location-based applications have been powered by single-frequency GNSS receivers operating under stringent battery power and footprint constraints, according to Broadcom. The expanded availability of L1/E1 and L5/E5 frequencies in satellite constellations enables the use of two frequencies to compute position much more accurately in both urban and open area environments. Read full story at Inside GNSS… first published week of: 09/25/2017 Users can develop custom mobile apps with native offline mapping, location data services, and the analytical power of location intelligence CARTO, the leader in Location Intelligence, today released their first open source software development kit for mobile following last year’s acquisition of mobile software company Nutiteq. CARTO Mobile SDK 4.0 makes location analytics, real time visualization, and offline services accessible for native mobile application developers. The SDK creates applications focused on fast online and offline services as well as location analytics. “One of the biggest obstacles for mobile application development has been the required online connection for location services and map rendering.” said Jaak Laineste, Head of Mobile at CARTO. “The open source CARTO Mobile SDK addresses this and extends offline capabilities.” The new release allows for uninterrupted mapping displays and services such as geocoding, routing, and searching even in offline environments. This is key for developing professional applications in industries such as agriculture, development, and humanitarian efforts in areas with limited cellular coverage. In addition to these offline features, the SDK allows for more support for spatial data types, 3D modeling, vector base maps, and the ability to easily render millions of features. The SDK can be used as standalone as well as integrated with CARTO’s open Location Intelligence platform. Data can be fully managed in the cloud, analyzed, and visualized using any of the platform’s tools. This allows for fast visual prototyping and deployment of application updates instantly from any web-based environment. first published week of: 05/15/2017 A cartogram set that visualizes the risks of climate change due to decreases of renewable groundwater resources. The degree of climate change hazard (a decrease in groundwater resources by more than 10 percent) is indicated by color. The cartograms distort regions by expanding areas with large populations in 2010 and high degrees of vulnerability.
Scientists have developed cartograms — maps that convey information by contorting areas — to visualize the risks of climate change in a novel way. Cartograms are maps that change the relative size of areas according to certain characteristics of the region. For example, a cartogram that distorts the shape of countries based on population would cartoonishly expand India’s borders (1.3 billion people) while significantly squishing Australia’s size (23.8 million people), even though in reality Australia’s area is more than twice as big as India. In a new study, a scientist developed cartograms that enlarge geographical places that host large populations and are particularly vulnerable to climate change hazards. The researcher also created cartograms that expand the shape of countries with higher greenhouse gas emissions and national wealth. Insights on climate change are often conveyed through thematic maps, where data on certain aspects of climate change is compared across different regions. For example, researchers have made maps that show how climate patterns have impacted or are expected to influence sea level rise, the changing seasons, and the economy. Conventional thematic maps rely on color codes to convey climate change risk, but cartograms use both color and distortion to represent complex data. By using distortion as a communication tool, cartograms can visualize more information and potentially elicit a greater emotional response from the viewer, according to the new study detailing the new maps that was recently accepted in Earth’s Future, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. Read full story at blogs.agu.org… first published week of: 12/11/2017 Frederick, Md., has made the process of getting geographic information system data about the city into a digital do-it-yourself service for consumers and government users. Officials launched MapFrederick.city
about a month ago. A finalist in this year’s Amazon Web Services’ City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge, the cloud-based website changed delivering GIS data to users from a manual process for city workers into self service. It used to take staff time to get data to people who wanted, for example, zoning data for a project, said Matthew Bowman, the city’s technology manager. “At that point, we'd do our usual deal, our usual export for citizens to a shapefile or feature class, depending on what they want, and provide it to them via an FTP site or whatever media they’d like.” Now, however, users can go to the site, where they’re greeted with a Google map and a black box that they can manipulate to adjust the size of the area they want to see. Read full story at GCN… first published week of: 07/24/2017Key features include:
Availability
Permanent URL BP Honored for Special Achievement in GIS at 2017 Esri International User Conference
by esri.com
Permanent URL Broadcom Releases Dual-Frequency GNSS Receiver with Centimeter Accuracy for Consumer LBS Applications
by stan goff
( Broadcom Ltd.)
Permanent URL CARTO Delivers Advanced Offline Maps with New Mobile SDK for Android & iOS
Permanent URL Cartogram Maps Provide New View of Climate Change Risk
by Olivia Trani
(Petra Döll)
Permanent URL City Turns Mapping Services Into Digital Do-It-Yourself
by Stephanie Kanowitz