CENTER FOR GEOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS NEWSLETTER
June 2011
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HIGHLIGHTS
• ABCD-GIS Talk on Historical GIS in Makkah
• WorldMap Chosen for Kenya Portal
• Harvard Acquires Russian Mapping
• ESRI Street Data Available
• Conference on Health GIS
• GIS Job Openings
• NSF Funding to Develop GIS Road Map for Education
• National Academy Press Makes Books Free
• Open Source GIS for Mobile
• Crisis Mapping Videos
• NYC Solar Map
• Directory of Space Exploration
• World Bank Projects Map
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CGA NEWS
ABCD-GIS Talk: Historical GIS Projects for the Study of Makkah
Dr. Meraj Mirza of the Geography Department at Umm Al-Qura University in Saudi Arabia, will present a series of projects on the geospatial analysis of Makkah, past and present. He will also introduce the most extensive visual archive of Makkah that currently exists. CGA is co-sponsoring this talk with ABCD-GIS.
Place: CGIS South Building, Room S050
Date: Wednesday, July 20th, 2011
Time: 12:00-1:30pm
Note: Lunch will be provided
WorldMap Platform Chosen for Kenya Portal
A collaboration between the World Resources Institute in D.C. and Upande Ltd. in Nairobi has chosen the CGA-developed, Open Source, WorldMap platform for Virtual Kenya, a mapping portal they are developing. “Virtual Kenya is an online interactive platform, with related materials (in DVD) for those with no access to the Internet. It is designed to provide improved access to high quality spatial data and cutting-edge mapping technology to allow more Kenyans to use and interact with spatial data in their educational and professional pursuits.”
Details: http://www.ilri.org/ilrinews/index.php/archives/6291
Site: http://www.virtualkenya.org
Harvard Map Collection and CGA Acquire Collection of Russian Mapping
HMC and CGA have acquired a global collection of scanned Russian maps totaling over 30,000 sheets and 4 terabytes. The maps scale ranges from 1:50,000 to 1:500,000 with the majority at 1:200,000 scale. The time period spans the late 1940’s to the late 1980’s. Contact Ben Lewis for more information: blewis<at>cga.harvard.edu.
ESRI StreetMap and Basemap Layers AvailableThese layers are now available and include U.S. and Canadian detailed street and basemap data as well as U.S. Census data from the 2010 ESRI Data and Maps dataset. The data may be used for address matching, routing services, and street and basemap display. Also included are map service layers of worldwide streets and satellite imagery. Access is restricted to Harvard affiliates and is being provided by both the Harvard Map Collection and CGA.
Harvard Map Collection: http://bit.ly/jmdasi
CGA: http://bit.ly/jG2iXE
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CONFERENCES
FOSS4G Conference on Open Source Geospatial
FOSS4G is the global conference focused on Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial, organized by OSGeo. This year the conference will be held September 12th-16th in Denver.
Conference on Health GIS
The 4th International Conference on Health GIS will be held in New Delhi, India August 5-6. Major themes include: Health GIS Databases, Healthcare Planning and Management, Emerging Diseases - Spatial causes and preparedness, Waterborne Diseases, Vector-borne Diseases, Telemedicine, Healthcare Instruments and Technology, Information Technology for better Health Care.
http://www.e-geoinfo.net/healthgis2011/index.htm
The Society for Conservation GIS Conference (SCGIS)
The 2011 SCGIS conference will take place in Big Bear Lake California, and will focus on elements necessary to build strength and capacity in the world of conservation GIS.
http://www.scgis.org/Lev3Page.aspx?Page3ID=21
2011 ESRI International User Conference
The largest GIS conference on the planet happens July 11-15th in San Diego. http://www.esri.com/events/user-conference/index.html
Harvard people who want to attend this conference please email contact@help.cga.harvard.edu for a code to obtain complementary registration.
CGA Conference Reports
The latest conference reports / write-ups can be found under the “Summaries of Previous GIS Events” topic on our Public Events page:
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NEWS ON GIS RESEARCH AND SERVICES
Harvard Map Collection Provides Online Access to Index SheetsHMC is starting to scan index sheets from its collection and make them available online to aid researchers in finding the specific maps they need.
http://maps.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do
GIS Specialist Position (part time)
The Harvard Kennedy School of Government is looking to fill a part time GIS Specialist position. Duties will involve geocoding, map creation, and database enhancement for a research project on Guatemala. Required skills include: proficiency with ArcGIS software, data creation, editing, and map creation experience. Familiarity with Spanish is highly preferred. Pay starts at $20 / hour, and the position is for up to 15 hours a week. To apply, please send resume and cover letter to Rachel M. McCleary at: rachel_mccleary<at>harvard.edu.
GIS Analyst Position (part time, temporary)
The Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard is looking for a GIS Analyst. For description and contact information click here: http://bit.ly/iO4bB8
NSF Travel Grants for US Graduate Students to Attend the Symposium on Spatial and Temporal Databases (SSTD) Announcing NSF Student Travel Grants to encourage computer science students to participate in SSTD, a meeting on spatial computing. SSTD 2011 will be held on August 24-26, 2011 at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN. Details: http://sstd2011.cs.umn.edu/travelgrants.html
National Science Foundation Funds Experts to Develop Road Map to Implement 21st Century Geographic EducationThe National Geographic Society has received a two year, $2.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation entitled “Establishing a Road Map for Large-Scale Improvement of K-12 Education in the Geographical Sciences.
http://bit.ly/iglqWn
Open Source GIS App for Android
Powerful Open Source GIS applications are becoming available for mobile devices. An example is gvSIG Mini, a viewer for well known base maps such as OpenStreetMap and Bing, but also supporting WMS and WMS-C making it possible to easily integrate one’s own layers.
https://confluence.prodevelop.es/display/GVMN/Home
Crisis Mapping Videos on a Range of Topics
The video collection on CrisisMappers.net continues to grow with close to 100 now available: http://www.crisismappers.net/video
National Academy Press Makes Many Books FreeAs of June 2, 2011, all PDF versions of books published by the National Academies Press (NAP) will be downloadable free of charge to anyone. This includes the current catalog of more than 4,000 books plus future reports published by NAP.
NYC Solar Map
The NYC Solar Map estimates rooftop solar potential using a computer model that calculates the incoming direct and diffuse solar radiation for every square meter of the City of New York. Shading is generated from a digital surface model derived from lidar data (light detection and ranging), which captures the surface elevation of the ground, buildings and trees.
How Manhattan’s Grid Grew
A New York Times interactive view of the street plan that created Manhattan.
Application for Visualizing the Spatial/Temporal Aspects of Ancient Civilizations http://geodia.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/index.html
A Directory of Ways to Participate in Space Explorationhttp://spacehack.org
Map of World Bank Financed Projects to Reduce Poverty http://maps.worldbank.org
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Editor of this issue is Ben Lewis
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