free data resource

Hi everyone;

Just thought I'd pass along this nifty resource I found the other day:

www.naturalearthdata.com

It's a collection of public domain, global GIS data sets. The catalogue is pretty extensive and very current.

It's probably too coarse to be of much use to many of you for municipal level mapping, but may be of value if you're looking to make smaller-scale maps (e.g. reference maps to show where in the world you're located).

Hope to see you all tomorrow at the RGIS Strat Plan Workshop.

Take care,
greg

More on Open Data

Hi everyone;

Check out this post from Cybera, my neighbours in the Research Park - they're launching an online biogeoscience portal, and a campaign to open us access to water data.

here's the link!

Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority Releases Real Time Data

What is quite amazing about this example of publicly available data is the number of mobile applications that have been developed by the public.

http://blog.gisuser.com/?p=8142

City of Calgary Public Data Catalogue

FYI

http://calgaryonlinestore.com/publicdata.asp

Free CAD Editing Software

If any of you do not have CAD software and need to edit CAD files this free application might be for you:

http://giscadblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/free-cad-editing-in-draftsight-and.html

Online Community for GIS Users

For anyone interested in a spatial social networking site:

http://www.gisdomain.com/

GNSS 3D Mission Planning Tool

For anyone doing GPS field work a new free tool:

http://www.vector1media.com/vectorone/?p=6704

GIS / CAD Interoperability

Hello Everyone,

This might interest some of you:

http://giscadblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/arcgis-for-autocad-250-and-other-new.html

Cloud Computing

Since we've had dicussions on this topic at our last meeting this article may help some of you. Some GIS vendors are now offering "GIS in the Cloud".

http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/769253

Comparison of geographic information systems software

Some of you might find this interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_geographic_information_systems_software

Regional GIS in Oregon

Here's an example of an interesting Regional GIS in the US:

http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/winter0910articles/portland-oregon.html

A Nifty Metadata Tool from your friends at Miistakis!

Hi everyone;

As I mentioned at the last Technical Committee Meeting, I recently re-discovered a handy tool that Ken (Miistakis' GIS Programmer / all-around genius) developed a while ago, and I thought I would share it with you.

If you download GIS data from the internet, you will frequently see metadata published in html format (here's an example) that is not readable/importable to ESRI ArcCatalog. Your only option if you wish to attach this metadata to your downloaded spatial data is to either copy & paste data from the html file into your metadata editor, or to re-write the metadata from scratch. If you have never done either of these things, just trust me when I say that they're not very palatable options.

Lucky for us, Ken has created this tool for more or less automatically converting web-published html metadata files to ESRI-readable xml format.*

Here is a link to the Miistakis ftp site, from which you can download the tool:
ftp://goliath.rockies.ca/public/greg/RGISBlog

Please copy the zip file into a new folder, and follow the instructions that Ken has laid out in the handy "convert html files help.txt" documentation file.

I hope you all find this as useful as I have (especially those of you working on web-based resources for the RSDF). I'm sure Ken would appreciate feedback if you try the tool and have any questions or comments.

Have a good day,
greg

* The tool only works on html files created using "mp" - see Ken's help file for more details.

Open Access to Data

More news on Canadian data:

http://blog.gisuser.com/?p=7111

Stefan

Ottawa Opens Data

The City of Ottawa has joined others in making data available:

http://vector1media.com/spatialsustain/ottawa-opens-data-starting-with-geospatial.html

Stefan

OneGeology - Free World Geological Map Data

Some of you might find this souce of information useful:

http://www.onegeology.com/

Cheers,

Stefan

Plotter looking for loving and caring home

Miistakis has a HP DesignJet 2500 CP that we currently do not use enough to keep the ink lines from drying up. It works, as far as we know, but has been idle long enough that it will need a cleaning at the least.

Please email me: ken at rockies dot ca if you are interested.

Ken

Atals of the Biosphere - free data resource

Hi everyone;

I subscribe to a blog with weekly(ish) posts on the subject of free GIS data, and this week's post is about a new initiative by the University of Wisconsin called the Atlas of the Biosphere:
http://www.sage.wisc.edu/atlas/maps.php

The Atlas provides access to maps and associated data related two four main themes: human impacts, land use, ecosystems, and water resources. I encourage you to take a look and see what's available.

The data sets are global scale and hence may be too coarse for some finer-scale analysis or applications, but may be useful for providing a general overview, or for filling gaps where no finer-scale data exists. It's also a great example of a simple, well-designed web site that allows free access to data - something that many of us would likely be happier to see a lot more of.

A more detailed description of the Atlas of the Biosphere is available at the above mentioned blog:
http://free-gis-data.blogspot.com/2009/04/atlas-of-biosphere.html

Take care,
greg

Out with Hawth's Tools, in with GME

Hi everyone;

I don't know how many of you previously used the Hawth's Tools extension in ArcGIS - for those of you who haven't, it was (is) a free extension with all kinds of really valuable analysis, conversion, and data management tools.

Unfortunately, many of the modules in Hawth's Tools stopped working in newer versions of ArcGIS.

Luckily though, Hawthorne has developed a replacement for Hawth's Tools, called GME. It's still free, though there is an option to make a donation to support the Tool's continued development.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with this extension and its capabilities, but I think it might be of general use/interest to many of you.

Have a great Friday and weekend,
greg

Example of GIS Data Consolidation

The City of Houston recently began the move to a more centralized system. Read the details here:

http://www.govtech.com/736224

New Openess Directive

The US Government has released a Directive that relates to data access.

FYI

http://www.govtech.com/734482

Interoperability

This article may be of interest to some of you:

http://carboncloud.blogspot.com/2010/03/transparency-through-interoperability.html

APPLIED GIS-RS LISTSERVE

Good Morning everyone;

As mentioned at the last Technical Committee Meeting, I am passing on a link to the Applied GIS and Remote Sensing Listserve, that might be of general/practical interest to many of you. Here is the link:

http://www.matox.com/agisrs/Applied_GIS_RS_Member_Map.html

To join the listserve, follow the instructions in the left, under the heading "How to Join" (duh....). When you send your email to join, the instructions that come back to you will be in french (the listserve is hosted from Laval University in QC, PQ) - so you will either have to ask Patricia to translate for you ;-) or just intuit the procedure - it's basically the same as any other list I've ever joined (send email, receive verification, verify, ...).

The subject matter discussed ranges broadly, from non-software-specific technical questions (e.g. how do I build my own DEM?) to new or existing data sets to conference and publication info. I've included a sample posting below, just because I think it's really cool!

Have a great weekend,
greg

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This animation, made up of eight Envisat radar images, shows the 97-km long B-9B iceberg ramming into the Mertz Glacier Tongue in Eastern Antarctica in early February. The collision caused a chunk of the glacier’s tongue to snap off, giving birth to another iceberg nearly as large as B-9B.

More at:

http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEMUD27K56G_index_0.html

ESA

ESRI in the Cloud

This is interesting news. Those of you having an ELA agreement with ESRI could benefit from this:

http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2010/02/24/reflections-on-the-2010-esri-feduc/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spatiallyadjusted+%28James+Fee+GIS+Blog%29

Modified Stylesheet for ArcCatalog

I was asked about the style sheet used by the data framework and if it could be used within ArcCatalog.

You may download the stylesheet here.

In order to view within ArcCatalog you must first put unzip the stylesheet and put it in your ArcGIS stylesheet folder. This will vary by system, on mine it is:

C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Metadata\Stylesheets

If it is different for you, do a search on a file name of FGDC ESRI and it should show up and show you the folder you need.

Once the file is in place, open ArcCatalog. Once you are viewing a metadata file you may change the stylesheet from the default, to the new one, via the drop down to the left of your metadata editing tools.

Please note this stylesheet was not designed for this purpose and has extra code built into the stylesheet. It works fine in testing, but mileage may very depending on versions of ArcGIS and other system factors.

Ken

Web Editing (ESRI)

Some of you might find this worth reading...

http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/winter0910articles/web-editing.html

The Dapple Project

Some of you might find this free application useful:

http://dapple.geosoft.com/

Neptune Canada

This site has been in the news recently and provides access to all sorts of real-time data related to the oceans. Check out the map:

http://neptunecanada.ca/

A couple of handy links

Happy New Year, everyone!

I have a couple of things to bring to your attention:

1. The 3tab Metadata Editor has been modified to include all required fields from the CRP Metadata Standard. You can download the new-and-improved editor here:
   http://gis.cdatribe-nsn.gov/ThreeTabMetadataEditor/#DownLoad
   Also, a reminder that the newest ArcGIS, version 9.4, currently does not support the use of custom-built metadata editor templates like 3tab. Unless this (hopefully) oversight is rectified, this means that you will be unable to use 3tab if/when you upgrade to 9.4 - so if this is on your horizon, you might want to send a message to your ESRI rep and suggest that they allow for this capacity in the new ArcGIS.
2. At last meeting, I promised to post a link to this blog I subscribe to, which posts regularly on sources for free GIS and remote sensing data. Here is the blog:
   http://free-gis-data.blogspot.com/
   and here is the particular post I mentioned at our last meeting, related to global population density data:
   http://free-gis-data.blogspot.com/2009/04/global-gridded-population-maps-and-data.html
   Even if you don't find all of the information on this blog applicable to your everyday work, you might find it interesting (and encouraging) to learn about all of the free resources that are out there.

I hope to see you all tomorrow, and I trust you found some time for friends, family, and fun this holiday season.

Best,
greg