CENTER FOR GEOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS NEWSLETTER
March 2008
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HIGHLIGHTS
- CGA Research Support
- Georeferencing Workshop March 21
- Africa Map
- Time Enabled KML Conversion Tool
- CGA on PBS – video clip
- The Tibetan Himalayan Digital Library Presentation
- GeoWeb 2008 Call for Abstracts
- Urban & Environmental Datakit
- World Geography Game
- Google Maplets
- More…
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CGA NEWS
CGA Research Support
In addition to CGA’s wide variety of services provided, we now offer University-wide assistance for research projects, seminar series and colloquia involving geographic analysis and mapping. Assistance will be granted via an application process, and may consist of any of the following: dedication of staff time, hiring of specialized staff, funding of postdoctoral fellowships, support for graduate students, funds for data acquisition, or whatever may be appropriate. More info at the link below, under the CGA Research Support Policies heading.
http://gis.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k235&pageid=icb.page22830
Georeferencing Workshop March 21
WORKSHOP UPDATE: Over 60 people are signed up for the upcoming georeferencing workshop – “Challenges of and solutions for assigning geographic location to digital information - a cross-disciplinary problem,”. Registration is open through Monday, March 17. Visit the link below for online registration.
http://gis.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k235&pageid=icb.page24711
POSTER SESSION: Eleven posters will be on display at the workshop showcasing completed or ongoing projects which involve georeferencing or spatial analysis, and more are welcomed. The submission deadline for posters is March 14th. See the flyer for more details:
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic35229.files/georef_poster_3_14_08.pdf
Africa Map
The Africa Map project addresses a basic problem for all scholarship on Africa that treats where things happen as necessary to understanding how and why they happen: finding places on a map. Numerous Harvard academic departments are collaborating with the CGA on this project, with the following goals: 1) Allow interaction with the best available public data for Africa, 2) See the whole of Africa yet also zoom in to particular places, 3) Accumulate both contemporary and historical data supplied by researchers and make it permanently accessible online, and 4) Work collaboratively across disciplines and organizations with spatial information about Africa in an online environment. More about the project:
http://africamap.harvard.edu
Time Enabled KML Conversion Tool
Time-Enabled KML Conversion Library (teKML) is a Java API and command line application for converting geodata vector files with time attributes into KML with time elements. When opened in Google Earth V4 or higher, files processed by teKML will automatically enable the Time Bar control, allowing visualization of geographic data as it happens over time. teKML accepts shapefiles and many other vector geographic data types. For more information and to download the tool:
http://gis.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k235&pageid=icb.page138037
CGA on PBS – video clip
The CGA developed materials to geographically represent the genetic history of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., for the PBS documentary “African American Lives 2” segment “The Past Is Another Country”. A portion of this program featured Ben Lewis of the CGA, discussing and demonstrating the mapping he created with Dr. Gates. The 3 minute video excerpt can be found on CGA’s project resume page (link below), under the first topic: Mapping Genetic History.
http://gis.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k235&pageid=icb.page138032
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HARVARD GIS COMMUNITY NEWS
The Tibetan Himalayan Digital Library Presentation
How does digital technology enable new practices and visions in the humanities? What would happen if universities and colleges took to heart distributed knowledge production and publication in this context? David Germano, Associate Professor at the University of Virginia will discuss these questions in a presentation titled “The Tibetan Himalayan Digital Library: Digital Humanities and New Approaches to Area Studies” on Thursday, March 13, 2008 4:00 pm in the Barker Center. Click the link below to see the flier.
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic35229.files/David_Germano_3_13_08.pdf.pdf
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CONFERENCES
GeoWeb 2008 Call for Abstracts
“Infrastructure: Local to Global” is the theme for this year’s GeoWeb conference. This year GeoWeb is conducting a student contest open to all full time students anywhere in the world. Contestants must submit a theoretical solution or piece of software that advances the use of Geography on the Web. The prize for the winning contestant is an all expenses paid trip to this year’s conference July 21 – 25 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Student contest:
http://geowebconference.org/students-academia/contest-information
GeoWeb home
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NEWS ON GIS RESEARCH AND SERVICES
Urban & Environmental Datakit
The Berkely/Penn Urban & Envrionmental Modeler’s Datakit contains more than 150 downloadable ArcMap-ready shapefiles and raster datasets for the 48 contiguous United States. The data is free to all users, and includes census, transportation, hydrographic, elevation, economic data and more.
http://www.dcrp.ced.berkeley.edu/research/footprint/
World Geography Game
Can you locate countries? Test your knowledge (and pan/zoom skills):
http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/worldmap/worldmap.html
Google Maplets
At Google Maps, anyone can make a customized map. Maplets are tools created by various users that perform things like distance and area calculations, elevation contour generation and much more, all on a Google Map. To see maplets, go to
http://maps.google.com/ click My Maps, and Browse the Directory.
Proximity matters with Google’s “Prediction Market”
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/03/etech-google-pr.html
Over 200 Archaeological Sites mapped in KML format
http://www.anst.uu.se/olofpede/Links.htm
Remote Sensing Quantifies amount of Iraqi Looted Treasure
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19726453.200-iraqs-legacy-of-looted-treasures-is-revealed.html
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Editor of this issue: Jeff Blossom
The CGA Newsletter is published monthly. View previously published issues.
For the latest information, please visit our website http://gis.harvard.edu
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