Here are some new enhancements from ArcGIS Online back in March 2013:
US Open Golf Course Mapping
Very nice Map from ESRI that depicts the individual holes at this weekend’s US Open Golf Championships.
US Open Golf Championship 2013
Shows the usefulness of ArcGIS Online for reaching a large group of users
ENVI LiDAR
Attended the USTRANSCOM Defense and Intelligence GIS User Group today out at Scott AFB. I saw some great demonstrations including the Excelis VIS demo of ENVI LiDAR. It looked like some great software. I think I will try out an evaluation copy.
Illinois Clearinghouse Offers LiDAR Data
Gene Roe of LiDAR News in his post today reports that: “The Illinois Natural Resources Geospatial Data Clearinghouse recently announced the availability of DTMs, DEMs and Digital Surface Models for select counties in the state of Illinois. These are based on classified LiDAR data and are available in ArcGrid format. The data was acquired between 2008 and 2012 as part of their height modernization program.
This is an excellent example of how LiDAR data is being made available to the public.”
Thanks for the post Gene
VerticalGeo Hosting the OpenStreetMap St Louis MeetUp
VerticalGeo will host the second meeting of the OpenStreetMap St Louis MeetUp Group on Wednesday, May 29 from 6-8pm at the O’Fallon Family SportsPark. You can find details on MeetUp here: Link.
All are welcome to attend, but please register on MeetUp.com.
Crowd Sourcing vs Crowd-Serfing
Derick Rethans, a fellow OpenStreetMap Advocate, has a great post on his wonderful website about the difference between Crowd Sourcing and Crowd Serfing. You can read it here.
His argument is that organizations like OpenStreetMap use Crowd Sourcing to rapidly gain an enormous amount of geospatial data that they then return back to the crowd for their use. This is true Crowd Sourcing. Organizations like Google Maps use Crowd Sourcing to also rapidly gain enormous amounts of geospatial data (particularly through the new Google Map Maker) and then never give the data back to the crowd. They use it for their own financial gain. This is Crowd Serfing, treating the crowd like they are second class citizens and not a valuable part of the output. Very interesting concept that I agree with. Great reading. Makes one wonder why anyone would help Google build their empire!
Dr Rick Marshall to speak on OpenStreetMap, Open Source Software, and Crowd-Sourcing at the St Louis Region ASPRS Meeting
VerticalGeo’s President, Dr. Rick Marshall, will be speaking on May 16 at the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) St Louis Region Technical Exchange Meeting. Rick will be delivering a presentation on OpenStreetMap, Open Source Software, and Crowd Sourcing. The meeting starts at 4:00, Rick’s presentation starts at 4:30, and the meeting runs until about 6:00. The ASPRS Technical Exchange Meeting will be held at the St Louis Engineers Club located at 4359 Lindell Blvd, St. Louis, MO. You can get more information at the ASPRS St Louis Region Website.
Laser Scanners Getting Smaller
Thanks to Gene Roe for his LiDAR News post on Lasers Getting Smaller. Hopefully, the cost reduction and smaller size of laser scanners will help the industry bring solutions to those who have not been able to use LiDAR data yet because of the high cost of collection and processing. Processing will still take an enormous amount of time, but at least the cost and size of the production equipment is coming down. Thanks for the great post Gene.
First Bike Ride of the Year
The weather was as good as it was going to get today, so I took my first outdoor bike ride of the year. It was a short one. Temp was 40 degrees, wind 25 miles per hour out of the south. The wind made heading south a lot of work, but the ride back north was very fast and refreshing. I hope to get a few more rides in before the official start of Spring in a little over a month. Here is the Google Map of today’s bike ride:
View Ofallon_Bike_20130218 in a larger map