October 2006

CENTER FOR GEOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS NEWSLETTER 
October 2006 
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CGA NEWS

New GIS/RS Specialist 
CGA just added a new staff member - Dr. Yongping Zhao. He was hired to fill the vacancy left by Anders Hopperstead. Yongping comes to Harvard from the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, where he was a GIS Specialist for three years. Yongping has a B.S. in photogrammetry, a M.S. in remote sensing, and a Ph.D. in GIS. In the past 16 years, Yongping has led or participated in over a dozen GIS projects in environmental and socio-economic applications which were funded by Kuwait, UNDP, UNEP, NASA, FGDC, Canada or China. His expertise ranges from 3D & Virtual Reality GIS, digital photogrammetry, remote sensing, metadata and standardization, geospatial analysis, and environmental and socio-economic data modeling. He has published over 30 research papers in peer reviewed journals and proceedings. The addition of Yongping will strengthen CGA staff?s technical capacity, especially in the area of remote sensing research support.

New Contents on CGA Website 
Audio-visual presentations of the Technical Workshops at the 26th Annual ESRI International User Conference are now available online to users with a Harvard ID. There are over 200 presentations, each over an hour in length, covering most subjects of ESRI products as well GIS basic concepts and application examples. http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic34492.files/2006_ESRI_conference_movies/session-list.html

Back issues of CGA newsletters are now available on the website: http://www.gis.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k235&pageid=icb.page22830

If you find it hard to navigate the CGA website, please try the Site Map, a one-page index of where to find what information: http://www.gis.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k235&pageid=icb.page23201

Undergraduate Research Scholars Program 
The Center for Geographic Analysis as a member of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science is inviting applications for an undergraduate research scholarship. Selected recipients will work on GIS related projects with the CGA staff and sponsoring faculty members. For details please visit http://www.iq.harvard.edu/Funding/Undergrads/.

Remote Sensing Technology and Applications Workshop 
The Center for Geographic Analysis (www.gis.harvard.edu) jointly with the Harvard University Center for the Environment (environment.harvard.edu) and the Sigma Xi Harvard Chapter (www.sigmaxi.org) will host a Remote Sensing Technology and Applications Workshop, most likely in early December 2006. Detailed information will be distributed as a special issue of the newsletter soon.

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HARVARD GIS COMMUNITY NEWS

GIS and Public Health Seminar 
Chuck Croner from CDC will be giving a talk entitled “Exciting Dimensions of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Public Health: Contributions and Future Directions” on Thursday, October 26, 2006 from 12:30 - 1:30 P.M at Harvard School of Public Health, Kresge Building, Room 708. Details are at http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic34492.files/announcements/croner_session_description.pdf. Dr. Croner is the editor of the electronic newsletter “Public Health GIS News & Information” http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/about/otheract/gis/gis_publichealthinfo.htm

Workshop on Atlantic History 
The Geography of Atlantic History, 1500-1825 – A Workshop of the Atlantic History Seminar, Harvard University, November 4, 2006 http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~atlantic/geography.html

Share License Costs 
Do you need a license for GeoExpress from LizardTech which can compress images into MrSID or JPEG 2000 formats? CGA and the University Planning Office are looking for partners to share the cost of such licenses. Please email contact@cga.harvard.edu if you would like to participate. For more information on GeoExpress, visit http://www.lizardtech.com/products/geo/

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GIS INDUSTRY NEWS

Microsoft Virtual Earth has recently released user collection capabilities available from local.live.com. Users are able to generate personalized maps using basic collection, drawing and annotation tools. It is to encourage non-mapping users to contribute their local knowledge about the community and the world. Examples are at http://www.passthepoi.com. These collections can be shared to your friends or to the pubic. Microsoft has funds to support ideas on making this collection functional for teaching or research. The RFP may be out in a few weeks at http://dev.live.com/virtualearth.

Social Explorer (www.socialexplorer.com) provides web access to historical census data for the United States from 1940 to 2000 through the use of interactive maps and reports.

Community Walk is a website that allows people to create and share maps with Google Map: http://www.communitywalk.com

MetaCarta has some commercial tools and services for finding geographic information from traditional text documents, web pages, and other information sources, and map them: http://www.metacarta.com/

Conference Reminders 
The deadline for submitting an abstract to the 2007 ESRI International User Conference is October 20, 2006. http://www.esri.com/events/uc/papers/callforpapers.html

The deadline for submitting an abstract to the 2007 AAG Annual Meeting is November 9, 2006. http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/SF2007/call4papers.cfm

The International Cartographic Association (ICA) workshop on Geospatial Analysis and Modeling - Spatial Structure and Dynamics of Urban Environments, 12-13 July 2007, Athens, GA, USA http://www.ggy.uga.edu/people/faculty/xyao/Workshop2007/

For Your References 
This is an article summarizing web-based GIS technology status:
http://www.geoplace.com/uploads/OnlineExclusives/internetmapping.asp

This is a research article on accuracy of commercial geocoding: assessment and implications: http://www.epi-perspectives.com/content/3/1/8

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