GIS.org.nz

As part of the GOVIS Geospatial miniConference, a maps mashup is being held the day before with data sets being provided by LINZ and others. More information will be made available on the barcamp page (for more on what a barcamp is - click here).

A challenge to innovate! A challenge to find open data! Create and present your mash-up with a few data sets provided for the BarCamp! Cool Prizes! Sponsored by Statistics New Zealand, The New Zealand Geospatial Office and the Spatial Sciences Institute. Entry is open to everybody who is enthusiastic about using New Zealand's core geospatial data in presenting current issues and analysis challenges! MashUp 2008 is an event which brings together New Zealand's leading technical experts, as well as budding enthusiasts, in combining information sources with mapping boundaries and data in innovative ways. Rules of the competition will be downloadable here as soon as possible.

I have been having an 'enlightening' discussion with the Electoral Commission recently when they released the maps of proposed electorate changes for the next two elections. After having a little look at the site, it struck me that the maps provided actually made it quite difficult to allow proper spatial analysis to occur as the proposed boundaries were not available for download and analysis.

There are broad level maps available, for example Rangitata, as well as a web mapping solution - although as I write this, it doesn't appear to be displaying the proposed boundaries to any significant level of detail.

Disappointed at the options of trying to compare the current and proposed electoral boundaries, I sent some feedback to the website asking if they would consider making the information available in a more suitable format.

Came across this article about the increasing adoption of GeoPDF for distributing maps amongst the US military and intelligence community. The map is store in a pdf, and the client installs an Adobe toolbar to provide more mapping functions within the Adobe Reader - the plugin is called GeoPDFToolbar. The software is produced by TerroGo Technologies.

The Intergovernmental Committee on Survey and Mapping have released a report covering these key tasks.

Task 1 - Conducting an audit of key agencies involved in emergency management and response to compile a nationally consistent Incident Management System (IMS) symbology resource catalogue.

Task 2 - Conducting an audit to define the major categories of symbols for all-hazards used or required by Emergency Managers and response personnel and develop documentation outlining which categories of symbols are relevant to different types of organisations and events, gaps in existing categories and priority areas for additional work.

The report is available from this page.

Tourism New Zealand and Google have recently announced the addition of a new layer to Google Earth. It can be found under Layers > Travel and Tourism > 100% Pure New Zealand. I hope that this is the start of a long term trend towards greater availability and publication of public geospatial data.

The key issue here is probably going to be the adoption of an OGC standard for publishing this information - hopefully Google will release KML to the OGC for this purpose. Organisations wishing to publish there geospatial data in either web-based 2D or virtual earth 3D applications should only have to publish the data in one format, rather than using a different format for each vendor.

I have personally being asking for the likes of bus routes to be made available in Google Earth as a means of starting organisations thinking about going down this path. I'm hopeful that this move by Tourism New Zealand will prompt greater consideration and action in this arena.

In an effort to ease the sharing of GIS references and publications, we have added some web-based bibliography software to the website. We are currently testing this through the addition of references obtained during the production of the GIS and Emergency Management Guidelines.

The key reason to take this approach is to move to a data format that is appropriate for storing bibliographic reference information. BibTeX is a long-standing and suitable format that can be used to store this information. The web-based library will act as the central repository, but it is easy to export some or all of the references in BibTeX format to install in bibliographic software that can be used on your computer.

The draft document can be downloaded here (pdf). This is version 1.07 dated 20070226.

I am pleased to be the conduit for the draft guidelines that have been developed over the past couple of years. They represent the sterling efforts of a few committed people who are passionate about the potential that lies within this area. I need to mention John Gibson from Greater Wellington Regional Council in this regard, because he has been the backbone and coordinator behind this effort.

Home page for the GIS for Emergency Management Guideline for GIS Users.

More to be added...

Hi all. It has been a while since I blogged or maintained the site. I've just upgraded to the latest version of Drupal, so you should notice a shiny new look. The next step is to provide a dedicated page for the EM Guidelines that are currently out for consultation.

I came across this one-stop geospatial portal in Scotland. I wish that someone in Central Government, probably the State Services Commission, would hurry up and start a similar project here.

Geographical Information is vital to the operation of many business and government processes. During the process of developing a GI Strategy for Scotland it became clear that an important requirement was the ability to forge links between GI initiatives, projects, implementations and research activity. An easily accessibly registry of existing projects was seen as a necessary first step in this process. This site allows the searching of a catalogue of initiatives based in Scotland and beyond and lets you record details of projects and initiatives your organisation is involved in.