In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

GIS technology is frequently used to examine spatial changes in social and economic development in a geographic region over time. Focusing on social sciences and humanities, the GIS Center, Academia Sinica, Taiwan is responsible for undertaking basic GIS-related research, building cross-domain integration with spatiotemporal data, and creating application environment for analysis and map metaphor.

Taiwan population statistics contains all the census statistics from Japanese colonial era to the present. However, the traditional digital data were only presented the information with tables or records and it is difficult for the government departments and the public to access the temporal and spatial distribution of demographic data across Taiwan’s districts.

To fulfill the needs of research applications, the GIS Center, Academia Sinica developed a GIS system statistical graphics which performs statistical data integration, map display, and management functions to conduct diverse scientific research such as Health Care and Environment Change, Socio-economic conditions, Historical Population, etc.

In addition to achieving seamless spatial data integration, the GIS platform helps update and manage the Taiwan's historically demographical data with the Socio-economic indicator data, allowing users to easily find the hidden information of spatial distribution. Furthermore, the portal website offers URL of map websites in Statistical GIS that enables users to easily utilize website functions to carry out GIS applications.

In the project, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 was used to build statistical data table and fill Metadata into the database. SuperGIS Server allows to publish common-used Taiwan map as map services, to integrate statistics, and to display the results on map website with layering tinting. The map website provides users with statistics querying and georeferencing functions to quickly receive needed historical data.

Serving as the powerful gateway, the GIS platform allows users to query Taiwan’s population research for academic research and general educational use. The GIS system also added interactive functions to enhance operational efficiency of the system and respond to the growing system demand. As a result, users are able to accurately identify relation between statistics data and spatial distribution through spatiotemporal visualization.

14 January 2013

The pycsw development team is happy to announce that pycsw 1.4.0 is now
certified OGC Compliant for OGC CSW 2.0.2 [1], and passes all 103 CITE
tests.

As well, pycsw is now an official OGC Reference Implementation. A
demonstration instance of the reference implementation is available at
http://demo.pycsw.org.

Standards are at the core of pycsw; acheiving OGC compliance and
reference implementation status is part of the project's ongoing
commitment to an open source, standards-based metadata and catalogue
component of spatial data infrastructures.

pycsw is an OGC Compliant CSW server implementation written in Python.
Please visit http://pycsw.org for more information.

[1] http://www.opengeospatial.org/resource/products/details/?pid=1104

The pycsw Development Team.

Bloggage update: As a fitting end to the Medieval Fenlands Mashup, UK Ordnance Survey will update their Parish shape files that had errors in  East Anglia. These were found by running Socium's Online Validation on  data downloaded for the purposes of mapping economic wealth in the region since Domesday 1067 survey. HC Darby and Julie Bowring data were simply added to the shapefiles by hand, so that a validation procedure seemed prudent. That is when we noted 25 spikes and kickbacks among 1900 poylgons, pretty good by digitizing standards at 1.3%. It was then a matter of alerting Ordnance Survey in one of their OpenData meet-ups, and presto! we looped the Volunteer Geographic Information loop by feeding back suggestions for the agency to correct. This is one of the benefits of the UK Government opening survey data to the public, who can help improve it in a new twist on crowd-sourcing.

PRESS RELEASE

Publishing Open Data using Open Standards

GeoCat - The Government Geographic Data Publishing Company introduces GeoCat Bridge™ v1.1 

Bennekom, 10 January 2012 - GeoCat Bridge™ is designed to publish geospatial data and metadata on the Internet with a click of a button. GeoCat Bridge is an Esri® ArcGIS® Desktop extension. Publishing is done through Open Standards on a proven Free and Open Software (FOSS) server platform. Numerous government agencies, universities and privately held companies are satisfied users of Bridge version 1.0

Open Data - Open Standards!

Using a high performance server solution with unparalleled support for OGC services, data providers can deliver Open Data through Open Standards. Publishing data through Open Standards is critical to make your work a success. It allows consumers to make optimal use of your data.

Bridge has been optimized to work with the GeoServer map server and the GeoNetwork opensource metadata catalog. This free and open source server platform publishes your data in the most common data formats. Your data can be combined with Open Street Map, Google Maps™, Bing® or other base maps. 

“GeoCat Bridge is the long awaited product that promises to fill the gap between our open - and closed source hybrid geospatial frameworks” according to Thijs van Menen from Rijkswaterstaat (Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, The Netherlands). “Specific knowledge on how to make services is no longer needed. Finally we can fulfill the needs of our staff by providing them with a tool to make services by themselves in an easy way”

Comply with the INSPIRE Directive

GeoCat Bridge makes it extremely easy to comply with the European INSPIRE directive. You can create INSPIRE View Services with related metadata that complies to INSPIRE or is based upon an even more specific country profile (check availability). 

”The combination of ArcGIS Desktop and publishing data to an open source server platform in accordance with INSPIRE regulations is exactly what our customers need” said Sjaak Dieleman of Nieuwland Geo-Informatie “It is one of the main reasons why we were asked to build the INSPIRE services for all 25 Regional Water Authorities and the Department of Cultural Heritage (RCE) in The Netherlands”

New in Version 1.1 - Exhaustive Symbology and PostGIS Support

With the introduction of Version 1.1 a lot of improvements were implemented that contribute to an even better end-result and user experience. An exhaustive list of complex symbols is supported allowing a one-on-one conversion from Desktop to Web Map. Publishing map legends, ArcGIS 10 support, GeoSticker support and ArcSDE layer support have been added or further improved. 

Another major step is the support for PostGIS. It is now possible to upload data directly into a PostGIS database and configure map services on GeoServer using that data store. This can dramatically boost your map server performance.

“GeoCat Bridge is a key part of our Neftex Earth Model publishing workflow, enabling us to easily replicate the geological symbols used to style our ArcGIS produced content” said Alex Rushfort of Neftex ”Now we can deliver Web Map Services to our international oil industry clients through GeoServer, retaining the familiar appearance of our desktop GIS data products”

You can do it!

No advanced skills required! As a Bridge user you can fully enjoy all of the relevant functionality GeoServer and GeoNetwork have to offer without the need to be a web mapping or metadata expert. Map services and metadata are automatically linked, complexity of map symbology is no longer an issue, preview images are automatically generated and much, much more. 

“We are very excited to offer the GeoCat Bridge plugin to users of the OpenGeo Suite” said Chris Holmes, OpenGeo President ” This will greatly improve workflows for our users of Esri Desktop software, and make it much simpler for everyone to put their maps onto the web"

Pricing & Availability - Try Now for Free

GeoCat Bridge is available worldwide for a retail price of €1200,-  for a single Standard license and €1500,- for the Premium version (Prices Excluding VAT). More details, also regarding other types of licenses and volume discounts, can be found on  http://www.geocat.net/bridge/order-now. 

During the month of January 2012 we offer you a one week FREE trial license to give you the possibility to experience all functionality first hand (http://www.geocat.net/bridge/try-now). In addition to the Bridge software GeoCat offers premium support contracts and services on GeoNetwork and the OpenGeo Suite to get you up and running quickly.

About GeoCat bv

GeoCat bv, The Government Geographic Data Publishing Company, was established in the Netherlands in 2007 and offers cutting-edge, customized software and services that make publishing geospatial data on the Internet easier and more efficient than ever. GeoCat offers consultancy and support for GeoNetwork and has a direct partnership with OpenGeo to deliver OpenGeo Suite Support and Services. GeoCat provides consulting services and products that contribute to the development of National Spatial Data Infrastructures for The Netherlands, Swiss, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Scotland, ESA and many others. GeoCat’s Jeroen Ticheler founded the GeoNetwork opensource metadata catalog project.

Copyright © 2012 GeoCat bv. All rights reserved. GeoCat Bridge is a trademark of GeoCat bv. Esri, ArcGIS Desktop, ArcSDE and GeoSticker are trademark or registered trademarks of Esri in the United States, the European Community, or certain other jurisdictions. Google Maps is a trademark of Google Inc in the United States and/or other countries. Bing is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

# # #

Press Information:

Harald Pouwel, GeoCat B.V.
Tel.: +31 (0)6 29 06 65 15
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.geocat.net

Bloggage update: online spatial data validation (OVS).

Having transposed historic economic geographic data on shape files from the UK Ordnance Survey in my Medieval Fenlands project a couple of years ago, I can now test through socium.co.uk:
1) how good are vector data in East Anglia, as part of coi.guv.uk data feedback?
2) how well did I transpose attributes from Darby's map plates into shape files?
 

Using sets of rules on shape files, OVS is as simple as 1-2-3: 1) upload, 2) select the rules to test vector data integrity, 3a) view the report for free on line, or 3b) download it for one credit to get another shape file with "data busts" as points with descriptive attributes.

Having been in the geodata business for decades, I cannot see how data validation can be made any easier, while maintaining - indeed increasing - data integrity. This OVS  highlights two of the "holy grails" in matters geospatial:
1) GIS depict complex data in a simple yet effective way, by placing them in their local context 
2) web services offer two more opportunities:
   a) to post geo-processes on-line that are easy to reach
   b) to offer a flexible pricing plan that helps one and all
 

Outage issues from service providers and differing strategies in response to that are the subject of this latest blogpost. A very brief overview on how to store, edit and protect your data online from my own experience, echoes slashgeo's poll on Google vs. Esri web pre-eminence - there likely will be a dichotomy of open and custom solutions.

Via OSGeo-Discuss, I learned about a few recent news from 52° North. A reminder, what it is: "The open source software initiative 52°North is an international network of partners from research, industry and public administration."

• The open source smartEditor Online metadata tool has been updated to version 1.1. Since we only mentioned smartEditor in a press release before, "smartEditor is a web based editor to easily create and update ISO19115/19119 metadata documents on geospatial data sets, services, series and applications and many more resources. This tool provides templates, validation with error highlighting and comprehensive user support through comprehensive help texts and integrated code lists."
• The Sensor Observation Service (SOS) tool, SOS being an OGC standard, has been updated to 3.2.0, including new features and bug fixes. In short, "the Sensor Observation Service aggregates readings from live, in-situ and remote sensors." We mentioned it several times in the past.

The pycsw team announces the release of pycsw 1.0.0. This is the first formal release (previous version 0.1.0), and adds numerous core features since 0.1.0 (see below).

pycsw is an OGC CSW server implementation written in Python. pycsw implements clause 10 (HTTP protocol binding (Catalogue Services for the Web, CSW)) of the OpenGIS Catalogue Service Implementation Specification, version 2.0.2.

pycsw allows for the publishing and discovery of geospatial metadata. Existing repositories of geospatial metadata can be exposed via OGC:CSW 2.0.2. pycsw is Open Source, released under an MIT license, and runs on all major platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X).

Source and binary downloads:

• The source code is available at: http://pycsw.org/download.html

Version 1.0.0 (2011-06-29):

• simplified setup and configuration
• support for INSPIRE Discovery Services
• support for CSW-T
• support for additional databases
• Ubuntu and openSUSE installer
• support GetCapabilities updateSequence parameter
• support for FGDC profile
• support for NASA DIF

Testers and developers are welcome.

The pycsw developer team.

http://pycsw.org/

Via the OSGEo-Discuss list I learned about the release of GeoNetwork opensource version 2.6.4: "This is a minor release that adds a number of improvements and fixes a large number of bugs." Follow the link to learn what's new and fixed.

Here's a reminder of what GeoNetwork opensource is, from its official site: "GeoNetwork is a catalog application to manage spatially referenced resources. It provides powerful metadata editing and search functions as well as an embedded interactive web map viewer. It is currently used in numerous Spatial Data Infrastructure initiatives across the world."

You can visit the GeoNetwork gallery to learn more about who's using it. We mentioned GeoNetwork several times in the past.

The pycsw team announces the release of pycsw 0.1.0. This is the first release of the project towards version 1.0.0.

pycsw is an OGC CSW server implementation written in Python. pycsw implements clause 10 (HTTP protocol binding (Catalogue Services for the Web, CSW)) of the OpenGIS Catalogue Service Implementation Specification, version 2.0.2.

pycsw allows for the publishing and discovery of geospatial metadata. Existing repositories of geospatial metadata can be exposed via OGC:CSW 2.0.2. pycsw is Open Source, released under an MIT license, and runs on all major platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X).

Full release news here and the pycsw.org website.