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| Wildfire Maps Support FEMA Relief Mission
| At least 1,500 homes were destroyed in the 2007 California wildfires, and more than 500,000 acres of land burned from Santa Barbara County to the U.S.-Mexico border. Maps of damaged structures, flood plains, and soil burn severity are among those USACE prepared to help FEMA aid those displaced by the catastrophe. | | | Katrina Spurs GIS-Based Preparedness for LSU
| | As students begin a new semester at Louisiana State Univerity, the school plots a new course to keep the college community safe during hurricanes, with the assistance of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. | | | GIS Works to Avoid Another Katrina
| | U.S. Army Corps of Engineers uses Bentley Systems ProjectWise to evaluate hurricane protection and flood damage reduction systems in New Orleans. | | | Automated Systems for Disaster Response: Three Case Studies
| | Utilities must be constantly prepared to respond quickly when a storm or other disastrous event causes widespread power outages. | | | Using Mobile Mapping to Manage Wildfires
| | The application of geospatial technologies to wildfire management is not a new phenomenon. As a 30-year veteran of public service land management, I've taken an active role in using the latest mobile GIS technology during and after firestorms. Most recently, I've put to use an important technological development that's one the best tools for fire management since the shovel: the handheld computer. | | | Hurricane Debris Modeling
| | On August 25, 2005, with barely two days' notice, Hurricane Katrina made its first assault on the United States, hitting South Florida as a Category One hurricane. Less than four days later, with 140 mile-per-hour (230 kilometer-per-hour) sustained winds, torrential rains, and a storm surge of 15 to 30 feet (5 to 9 meters), Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast as a strong Category Four hurricane. | | | Responding to the Perfect Storm
| | When it comes to perfect storms, Hurricane Katrina was an impeccable worst-case scenario. The strength, size, and track of the storm and the location of the affected areas made this natural disaster one of the most challenging with which to contend from an emergency management and response perspective. | | | Helping the Gulf Coast
| | As always, the geospatial community has stepped up to support a region in need. Specifically, my hat goes off to the folks in URISA's GISCorps. | |  MORE ARTICLES
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| Pennsylvania County Looks to geographIT for Road Atlas
| | Bucks County Pennsylvania has awarded geographIT a contract to implement a new enterprise road centerline data model for its county E-911 service. | | | ESRI (UK)'s CrimeAnalyst 1.6 Built around ArcGIS 9.3
| | ESRI's United Kingdom (UK) subsidiary has launched CrimeAnalyst version 1.6, GIS software for creating, analyzing, and publishing crime statistics in line with the UK government's recent crime mapping green paper requirements. | | | NGA Revamps Public Web Site, GEOINT Access
| | The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has redesigned its public Web site, providing easier navigation and updated content about the agency, its partners, ongoing activities, products, services, and the geospatial intelligence that it produces and acquires, according to the agency. | | | IEC Unveils its Latest SAASM GPS Reciever
| | L-3 Interstate Electronics Corp. (IEC) has unveiled its latest miniaturized GPS device, the TruTrak Evolution, which comprises a single board, L1/L2, 24-channel secure receiver. | | | RapidEye Constellation Ready for August 29 Launch
| | The five-satellite RapidEye constellation is ready for launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on August 29, according to RapidEye AG. | | | ITT Taps NOAA, Capitol Hill Vet for VP Slot
| | ITT Corp. has appointed Eric Webster, former director of the NOAA Office Legislative Affairs, as the company's vice president for government and industry partnerships. | | | PBS&J Names New President, COO, and CTO
| | PBS&J has made several changes to its senior management, including the appointment of current chairman Robert J. Paulsen as president of PBS&J, the primary subsidiary of parent company PBSJ Corp. | | | Davenport Group Consultant Appointed to NC GICC
| | Kelly Laughton, a Davenport Group consultant, has been appointed to serve on the North Carolina Geographic Information Coordinating Council (NC GICC). As a council member, Laughton will have the opportunity to help shape GIS-related policies and act as a private-sector representative. | | | City of Bowling Green Selects GEOMAP's SIGim
| | Bowling Green Municipal Utilities (BGMU), Kentucky, has chosen the SIGim solution from GEOMAP GIS America to integrate all of its infrastructure management activities. | | | MORE ARTICLES
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| Cognitive Radio Design for a Military Platform
| | Current radio frequency assignments — which are static, inflexible, and inefficient — have a detrimental effect on military communications. A potential solution, the cognitive radio, uses an onboard digital map system to select transmission frequencies and potentially shape the RF beam. | | | Sharing Spatial Data Across Borders
| | Open standards for sharing geospatial data are bringing the United States and Canada closer together in the task of securing each country's borders. | | | Get Ready, Get Set, Race!
| | Preplanning information about terrain is as important as real-time navigation for achieving peak performance in autonomous driving. Both preplanning and navigation — and key technologies to support them — helped the Carnegie Mellon Red Team successfully guide the robot vehicles Sandstorm and H1ghlander through the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge course. | | | USGIF Promotes Geospatial Intelligence Certificate Program
| | The United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) has recently released a proposed set of curriculum guidelines and accreditation standards for the development of a nationwide geospatial intelligence tradecraft. | | | Highway Patrol Implements Vehicle-Tagging Technology
| | The Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) has signed an agreement with StarChase LLC to become the second-beta test site for StarChase's patented vehicle-tagging and tracking-pursuit management system. | | | Simplifying Situational Awareness
| | In facing the daunting charters of their organizations, it's safe to say that homeland security authorities, maritime officers, intelligence analysts, and military commanders can never have enough information. | | | Simplifying Situational Awareness
| | In facing the daunting charters of their organizations, it's safe to say that homeland security authorities, maritime officers, intelligence analysts, and military commanders can never have enough information. | | | GEOINT Speakers Announced
| | The United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) today announced two high-ranking intelligence community professionals and two prominent military leaders have committed to speak at the GEOINT 2006 Symposium, to be held at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, from November 13-16. | | | Secure Tracking for Critical Applications
| | From the safety of workers to the protection of assets and the transportation of hazardous materials, GPS tracking has become an increasingly important safeguard against security threats. But users must be aware of the technology's vulnerabilities and of the tools needed to ensure protection. | | | MORE ARTICLES
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| Prioritizing Geologic Mapping with MCDA
| | When the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources sought a more methodical and transparent decision-making process to prioritize geologic mapping activities, it turned to multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). The approach provides methodology and techniques for weighting and scoring multiple criteria to reach a conclusion in complex decision problems. | | | Financing SDIs: Lessons Learned from the PAMAP Experience
| | The Pennsylvania Map, a designated pilot of the United States' National Map, provides an example to others exploring funding for spatial data infrastructures. | | |
Enhancing the Value of India's Demographic Data
| | The question posed by a commercial provider of integrated geospatial solutions for business applications was this: Will the calculated combination of georeferenced census datasets with satellite-gathered raster data increase the decision-making value of the census data? The answer was a resounding "yes," facilitating the generation of micro-level information from macro-level population data. | | | Determining Orthographic Accuracy
| | In 2002, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) partnered with Minnesota state agencies to develop an updated set of statewide digital orthophoto quadrangles (DOQs). Private companies and government agencies throughout the state had been using U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) DOQs from the early 1990s to create land-cover inventories, and demand for a more current dataset was high. | | | Private Sector Makes Census Bureau's TIGER Roar
| | An effort to update and improve the spatial accuracy of the U.S. Census Bureau's TIGER files with help from the private sector is making this resource an even more powerful force with which to be reckoned. | | | TLC's LIDAR Landbase
| | To resolve issues related to landbase inconsistencies, a consortium of stakeholders in the Tallahassee/Leon County GIS turned to LIDAR to update their topographic database, validating results and accuracies via GPS and conventional surveying. | | | MORE ARTICLES
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| Food Access and Community Health
| | When compared with other population groups in the United States, African-Americans are at the greatest risk for cancer. This study used GIS to map the accessibility of various food types in two small towns — the first step in investigating whether there is a causative relationship to the risk of cancer. Results from this study will be used to identify predominantly African-American communities in Alabama at increased risk linked to a lack of healthy food options. | | | GIS on the Front Lines in Fighting Disease
| | Epidemiology — tracking the spread of disease, in order to better control and prevent it — benefits greatly from the use of mapping tools. Public health departments worldwide are employing GIS, demographic information, and remote sensing data in their battles with bird flu, malaria, and cancer. | | | Keeping Watch Over the Cascades
| | The Cascade Range, which traverses Washington, Oregon, and California, comprises several links in the long chain of volcanoes encircling the Pacific Ocean — the "Ring of Fire." These volatile peaks formed where the boundaries of the Pacific plate grind against other tectonic plates, causing earthquakes and releasing magma from far below the surface | | | Tracking Cattle in the Heartland
| | To limit the risk of introducing such highly communicable diseases as mad cow and tuberculosis into the U.S. food supply, the state of Kansas has built a spatio-temporal tracking system that traces the movements of cattle as they pass through that state's highly traveled beef-industry crossroads. | | | Monitoring Mount St. Helens
| | Since September 2004, a new lava dome inside North America's most active volcano has grown as high as a 35-story building and as broad as 29 football fields; and scientists are using a cadre of geospatial technologies to monitor the volcano's deformation. | | | MORE ARTICLES
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| Curbing Water Pollution with Mobile GIS
| | In 1972, the United States declared war on water pollution with the passage of the Clean Water Act. As the primary water/wastewater utility for a city flanked by water on three sides, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) played an aggressive role in the battle to eradicate industrial contaminants that were fouling both San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. And in 2005, SFPUC deployed mobile GIS to take the water pollution fight directly to the public. | | | MORE ARTICLES
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