Follow
Blog: Chris Harlow on ITSearch The Harlow Report Archives
The U.S. Air Force has launched an advanced new satellite to help upgrade the nation's Global Positioning System (GPS) constellation.
The GPS IIF-9 satellite blasted off atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Wednesday (March 25) at 2:36 p.m. EDT (1836 GMT).
"I'm elated with today's successful launch," Brig. Gen. Bill Cooley, director of the Global Positioning System Directorate at the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center, said in a statement. "The GPS constellation remains healthy, strong and robust, and in over 20 years since initial operational capability, GPS has never failed to deliver on its global positioning, navigation and timing commitments."
A United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket launches the U.S. Air Force's new GPS IIF-9 navigation satellite into orbit from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on March 25, 2015.
The IIF-9 spacecraft joins 30 other operational GPS satellites in Earth orbit. It should come into service about four to six weeks from now, Cooley said.
GPS satellites fly in medium-Earth orbit (MEO), at an altitude of about 12,550 miles (20,200 kilometers). The constellation consists of 24 "core" spacecraft, plus a number of on-orbit spares to ensure redundancy and continuity of coverage.
The satellites in the network range widely in age. GPS IIF-9, for example, will likely replace a spacecraft that launched in August 1993. That older satellite is one of three members of the "IIA" series that remain operational. continued…
first published week of: 03/30/2015
With the release of new US Topo maps for Illinois and South Dakota, the USGS has completed the second, three-year cycle of revising and updating electronic US Topo quadrangles. This means that since late 2009, the USGS has published nearly every map in the conterminous U.S., twice.
“The USGS and NGP are proud of our history and legacy of topographic mapping in the US,” said Mike Tischler, director of the USGS National Geospatial Program. “This latest cycle of US Topo production is a testament to the professionalism and capability of our staff and keeps that legacy alive. We've revised more than 110,000 maps in the last six years to include higher quality data across the country, and have been able to deliver those maps in an easy to use format to suit the diverse needs of our users. While reaching the end of the second-cycle is an important achievement, we look forward to the next cycle of US Topo production, and investigating emerging technologies to better serve the needs of the country.”
In the past 12 months, the production staff of the NGP has updated, revised and loaded 18,767 US Topo quads covering 18 states. That equates to the assembly, inspection and loading of nearly 75 maps per working day. Additionally, the staff created more than 635 new 1:24,000 scale maps for Alaska, as part of the Alaska Mapping Initiative. All of the new US Topo maps are digital and offered for free download, as the USGS no longer prints topographic maps using traditional printing technologies.
Other improvements to the state maps in the second-cycle include the inclusion of National Scenic Trails, “crowdsourced” trail data from the International Mountain Bike Association, increased parcel land data (PLSS), and most recently, trail data from the U.S. Forest Service.
The complete new map sets for Illinois and South Dakota join Maine, Alabama, Arizona, Nebraska, Nevada, Missouri, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Wyoming, and Florida as revised states for fiscal year 2015.
All of these new US Topo maps replace the first edition US Topo maps and are available for no-cost file download from The National Map, the USGS Map Locator & Downloader website , and several other USGS applications
first published week of: 11/23/2015
When USC Trojan football kicks off Saturday against Arkansas State, the players will be sporting a small but important piece of new equipment along with their helmets and mouthguards. A slender GPS device, tucked into a harness underneath their shoulder pads, will be tracking their every movement, providing data that will be used to fine-tune their next training session.
Those small changes could have potentially big ramifications for Trojan football. And it came about thanks to a collaboration between the USC Marshall School of Business and USC Athletics.
Julia Plotts, associate professor of clinical finance and business economics at USC Marshall, was leading a group of 50 undergraduate students to Sydney, Australia as part of the school’s Learning About International Commerce (LINC) program in 2009, when the group visited the headquarters of the Sydney Swans, an Australian Football League team.
“Sports are a national obsession in Australia and learning how the Swans approached injury prevention and performance monitoring made me realize how much we could learn from an information exchange in this area,” Plotts said. Among other high-tech tools, the Swans used GPS devices to track players on the field.
Back on campus, Plotts mentioned her observations to USC Marshall Dean James G. Ellis, a passionate Trojan football fan. Ellis promptly connected Plotts with Mark Jackson, then a senior associate director of USC Athletics.
“My eyes were opened about how advanced they were from a technological standpoint,” Jackson said. “As my role at USC grew to include oversight of performance, I wondered how we could take more of a comprehensive look at that.” continued…
first published week of: 09/07/2015
A scene allows you to visualize and analyze geographic information in an interactive 3D environment. Using ArcGIS Pro you can author and publish scenes. Scenes can also be authored and viewed using the scene viewer, a built-in ArcGIS Online application.
A scene may make an interesting addition to your Story Map, or it may even be essential to telling your story completely. Shown below is Mountains of Fire, a Story Map Journal that includes scenes.
Scenes can be added to your story map using the scene viewer, here’s how.
Using the scene viewer in Story Maps
Scenes can be viewed using the scene viewer in desktop web browsers that support WebGL. Note that scenes are not currently supported on mobile devices, and subsequently web scenes in story maps used on mobile devices are not supported. For more information see Scene viewer requirements.
When using the scene viewer, a complete set of tools is available to select basemaps, control the environment, toggle layers, search, and if logged in, edit and modify the scene. The scene viewer also includes UI options to navigate within your organization.
In the context of a story map these tools and UI elements are not needed, or desirable. They can be omitted by minimizing the scene viewer UI, a strongly recommended best practice whenever displaying scenes using the scene viewer in story maps. Using this technique you can add any web scene to a story map using the scene viewer URL. continued…
first published week of: 03/23/2015
A new partnership in Utah is looking to take geospatial understanding to the next level.
With new high-resolution imagery, the 14-entity Utah Mapping and Information Partnership -- which consists of state, regional and local government organizations -- plans to share its digital maps throughout government and with the public. Last year, the partnership was formed to use geospatial data to improve the flow of data and decision-making in the state, and to save government time and money.
"The Utah Mapping and Information Partnership represents proactive government," said Wade Kloos, GIS director for the Department of Natural Resources. Kloos added that the partnership is also working to focus the state's GIS solutions in important areas for Utah, such as air quality, transportation, threatened species, and water supply and resources, as well as public safety and economic development, and topics where these areas compete or intersect. continued…
first published week of: 02/23/2015
The W3C and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) announced today a new collaboration to improve interoperability and integration of spatial data on the Web. Spatial data —describing geographic locations on the earth and natural and constructed features— enriches location-based consumer services, online maps, journalism, scientific research, government administration, the Internet of Things, and many other applications. In the United States alone, geospatial data and services are estimated to generate $1.6 trillion annually.
"Location, as well as providing context to much of today's online information, is vital to the emerging field of connected devices," said Ed Parsons, Geospatial Technologist at Google. "Through this collaboration we hope to make the understanding of geospatial knowledge a fundamental component of the Web."
Spatial data is integral to many of our human endeavors and so there is a high value in making it easier to integrate that data into Web based datasets and services. For example, one can use a GIS system to find "the nearest restaurant" but today it is difficult to associate that restaurant with reviewer comments available on the Web in a scalable way. Likewise, concepts used widely on the Web such as "the United Kingdom" do not match the geographic concepts defined in a GIS system, meaning Web developers are missing out on valuable information available in GIS systems. Bridging GIS systems and the Web will create a network effect that enriches both worlds.
"Location plays a vital role for BBC Online, not least in our remit to provide timely information for Weather, Travel and Local News," said Chris Henden, Service Owner for Location Services at BBC Future Media. "It matters across the service, from maps showing places of note in World War One, to detailed context for breaking news. We source data from various third parties, then transform, curate, and make it available to our front-end services. There is a perceptible gap between the specialized world of geographic data, and that of the Web. Bridging that gap can take significant, repeated effort, and is not always successful or possible. Therefore this collaboration between the OGC and W3C is more than welcome."
More than 100 participants discussed these challenges at the March 2014 Workshop on Linking Geospatial Data, co-organized by OGC and W3C in partnership with the UK Government Linked Data Working Group, Google, and Ordnance Survey (the UK mapping agency). Stories ranging from management of data in response to the Fukushima nuclear plant accident to the use of spatial data to create new services from spatial and historical data in the Netherlands illustrated a diverse set of integration benefits and challenges.
first published week of: 01/12/2015