In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Directions Mag offers a product overview of Maptitude 2012 by Caliper Corp., a product we never mentioned before.

From the article: "The U.S. version of Maptitude 2012 includes the October 2011 geographic data release from NAVTEQ. [...] The census geographic boundary files with Maptitude 2012 encompass variables from the 2010 Census and the 2009 American Community Survey to map demographic information from the state level down to the census tracts. [...]

Maptitude 2012 is designed to provide a user with the ability to quickly generate presentation quality maps at a very affordable price and includes a vast database with the product. As an experienced GIS software user, I was able to get up and running with the software very quickly and found the user interface to be very user-friendly and intuitive. Caliper’s website provides free video tutorials for prospective and existing customers to view and learn about the capabilities of the software. I like that Maptitude 2012 provides the ability to create maps with the Quick Start and Map Librarian menu. The layers are added and symbolized automatically, which saves plenty of time for a user to create presentation quality maps quickly. I was also impressed with the model estimation tool."

It was National Holiday yesterday where I live, so it explains sharing this weekend story on a Tuesday, discussed by Slashdot: How Satnav Maps Are Made.

Their summary: ""PC Pro has a feature revealing how the world's biggest satnav firms create their maps. Nokia's Navteq, for example, has a huge database of almost 24 million miles of road across the globe. For each mile of road there are multiple data points, and for each of those positions, more than 280 road attributes. The maps are generated from public data and driver feedback, not to mention its own fleet of cars with 360-degree cameras on the top.There's an IMU (inertial measurement unit) for monitoring the pitch of the road, and the very latest in 3D surface-scanning technology too. This light detection and ranging (LIDAR) detector captures 1.3 million three-dimensional data points every second, mapping the world around Navteq's field vehicles in true 3D. The feature also investigates whether commercial mapping firms will be replaced by open-source maps." That last line makes me think of the difference between conventionally published encyclopedias and Wikipedia; "replaced by" is an odd standard in a big marketplace of ideas."

The second session I attended at the Where 2.0 Conference after the Thursday morning Keynote addresses was a talk entitled “The Use of Light Detextion and Ranging (LIDAR) for Collecting Map Data”. The talk was given by Jeff Raimo and Jessica Borak of Navteq. Navteq is a provider of global navigation data.

The pair explained the three components that make up the mapping platform mounted on the Navteq vehicles. The first is a 360 degree mobile laser scanner. I recognized it as the kind of mobile laser scanner sold by Topcon. (Other surveying equipment vendors sell similar products, and my company has an instrument that uses a similar technology. However, our scanner is the more precise “non-mobile” type that is placed on a traditional surveying tripod and operated by qualified land surveying technicians.) The second component is high resolution panormaic cameras. The third component is positioning sensors, such as GPS, gyros, and IMUs.

Navteq has 19 of the mapping vehicles using the mapping platform I just described on the road currently. They will have 23 on the road by the end of the year. In three to four years they will have LIDAR mapping for all the major metro areas and major road corridor's in the United States.

This massive LIDAR data set will be made available to application developers through an API that has yet to be released. This will allow, in theory, GIS users to perform feature extraction from the data from the comfort of there own computer, via the API. Responses to my questions confirmed the mapping platform was using commercially available surveying equipment, and that high-quality RTK GPS or traditionally established surveying control was not being used to determine the position of the point clouds collected with the LIDAR mapping platform. As is typically the case, little discussion was given to the techniques used to process and clean the data, or to its overall quality and accuracy.

I believe land surveyors and other geospatial professionals should be aware of the impacts this mobile scanning technology will have, while data consumers need to get over the “wow factor” quickly and start asking tough questions about data quality so they can determine what these point clouds can actually be used for. There will be numerous applications, but the data won't be good enough for some things people will try to use it for.

The Sunburned Surveyor

 Here's Friday geonews in batch mode. Exceptionally, the last two weeks are covered.

From the Google front:

• Google now offers 'Follow Your World', an alert system to let you know when new imagery is available for your area of interest
• The official entry on this week's imagery update
• Google discontinues the real estate feature in Google Maps
• The California Bay Area is now in 3D and the GEB discusses the nice 3D models of Belgrade

From the open source / open data front:

• MapQuest is providing an update on their increasing use of OpenStreetMap data, 8 new countries is now using OSM data, MapQuest also continues to financially support OpenStreetMap. There's even a new MapQuest Directions API based on OSM.
• It seems SPRING GIS is now open source software (GPL) [post in Spanish]
• Fortius One announced their new tool called Acetate, "a brand-new custom styled map that is designed for visualizing data and reintroduces the idea of a multi-layered basemap". Here's their technical introduction to Acetate, and the software they've used is open source.
• The city of Paris now offers open data and Finland's Land Survey opened its data too
• Ushahidi will be using the open source GeoDict free form geocoder. GeoDict is described as "a simple Python library/tool for pulling location information from unstructured text"

From the ESRI front:

• The Geodatabase Toolset for ArcCatalog 10 is now available

From the Microsoft front:

• Microsoft released a new Bing Maps Drupal module

In the miscellaneous category:

• Here's an entry named playing with the HTML5 Geolocation API
• O'Reilly offers an article named Social data and geospatial mapping join the crisis response toolset, another one on Urban Mapping's Mapfluence and two articles on health and location: New geolocation app connects citizen first responders to heart attack victims and Healthier living through mobile location data
• Via TMR, MacWorld offers an article named Apps with Maps: 11 iPhone GPS apps compared
• The FGT blog mentions iCMTGIS, a free field GIS data acquisition tool for the iPad
• ESA's budget rises to $4 billion, with 14 nations boosting contributions. And the GALILEO program is on track. And guess what, a Wikileaks cable forced a GALILEO head to step down.
• TMR also mentions U.S. Defense Department testing may affect GPS signals in Southeastern U.S. until Feruary 22nd
• TMR also note that the book "Map Projections: A Working Manual" published in 1987 by John P. Snyder is now available online.
• NAVTEQ is still selling more and more data

In the maps category:

• Here's a discussion on a map of worldwide suicide statistics, let's hope you don't live in Mari El
• Here's a map of scientific collaboration

Here's the weekly batch of geonews, finally on a regular Friday.

On the ESRI front:

• Recently, ESRI open sourced the ESRI Geoportal Server. Some twitter users were quick to mention that you still need ArcGIS Server software to use the Geoportal Server. [UPDATE: see comments below, it seems such a license is not a requirement after all.] To me, that's still a nice step. Their definition of a geoportal: "A geoportal is a gateway to Web-based geospatial resources, enabling users to discover, view and access geospatial information and services made available by their providing organizations. Likewise, data providers can use the geoportal to make their geospatial resources discoverable, viewable, and accessible to others."
• The popular blog SpatiallyAdjusted shares some elements that could be improved about the ArcGIS 10 user interface

On the open source front:

• O'Reilly discusses a new open source software called WEAVE (Web-based Analysis and Visualization Environment), which obviously include a mapping component
• If you're into FDO, you'll be happy to learn of the new SequentialProcess for batch mode processing
• QGIS gets new label tools
• Remember Polymaps? The open source mapping framework Polymaps is now integrated into GeoCommons

In the miscellaneous category:

• REST and RESTful was widely discussed in the past few years in the geospatial community, including within ESRI, the open source and OGC rings. Thanks to this entry named Richardson Maturity Model: steps toward the glory of REST, I think I finally correctly understand what REST is about! ;-) (sorry I don't remember how I ended up on that article)
• TMR informs us MapQuest launched My Maps last June, with the same name of the similar feature provided on Google Maps, basically allowing you to save and share user-created maps
• SS shares a long perspective entry named What forces are at play in the evolution of geospatial industry sectors?
• NAVTEQ acquires the 3D modeling company named PixelActive
• APB informs us Yahoo has launched a new service called Local Offers: "that it said will give users information about local merchants along with coupons and information on deals at stores in their neighborhoods."
• Kurt shares interesting thoughts on GIS, followed by What is GIS? A workflow definition

In the maps category:

• Here's the evolution of active Facebook users by region
• A nice entry on The Human Development Index in Africa and Across the World
• SS shares an entry named Mapping Opportunity in America
• While I was aware of it, we mentioned mentioned it yet. The GEB discusses the USGS "Earth as Art" beautiful collection of Landsat imagery

As you know, with the website migration and my attendance at FOSS4G, there haven't been a 'Friday geonews' batch mode for a while. Well, there it is!

In the LBS category:

• A Slashdot discussion named "Burglary Ring Used Facebook Places To Find Targets"
• O'Reilly discusses local ads, check-ins and place pages
• There's a new Twitter's Tweet With Your Location feature
• If you wonder, RFID is still not secure: "New German Government ID Hacked By CCC"

In the GPS category: