deCarta Announces Support for Worldwide OpenStreetMap Content September 17, 2009
Posted by bahadirkhan in Duyuru (Announcements), English, Haber (News).Tags: High-level routing, Pedestrian navigation, Vehicle tracking, Worldwide OpenStreetMap
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deCarta, the leading supplier of software and services for the Location-Based Services (LBS) industry, today announced the launch of its beta program supporting OpenStreetMap (OSM) data.
The beta program makes the OSM content available for selected cities around the world. A product release that will support the complete coverage of OSM is scheduled for October 2009.
In keeping with the spirit of the OpenStreetMap community, OSM data in deCarta format will be free of charge. deCarta plans to make the product available for both server and client-side solutions to its customers .This includes self hosted solutions using deCarta’s Drill Down Server, deCarta’s Hosted Web Services, Personal Navigation Devices, and Mobile Phones. Developers will also be able to quickly prototype and demonstrate location-enabled applications using OSM content through deCarta’s Developer Zone available to developers at http://www.decarta.com.
The initial product release is aimed at developers who want to develop the following types of applications:
– Map display
– Vehicle tracking
– High-level routing
– Pedestrian navigation
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Mapping the world, one street at a time August 14, 2009
Posted by bahadirkhan in English, Haber (News).Tags: geographic information systems, Geospatial Technology, Mapping the world
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Between GPS devices on your car’s dashboard and digital maps of almost any locale in the world on your smartphone or laptop, it’s hard to get lost these days.
We may take these 21st-century services for granted. But someone still needs to do the actual legwork of mapping these places and making sure the information is accurate.
Meet the people at Tele Atlas, the company that provides so-called “base maps” to such high-profile clients as Google, MapQuest and RIM, the maker of the BlackBerry. Tele Atlas also provides digital-mapping services for its corporate owner, the portable-navigation company TomTom.
You can’t say the company isn’t ambitious.
“Our ultimate goal would be to map the entire world,” says Pat McDevitt, vice president of engineering at Tele Atlas, which is based in the Netherlands and has its U.S. headquarters in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
Base maps are the raw data — highways, streets, stop lights and exit signs — that navigation companies use as a starting point before adding their own applications.
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Arctic seabed mapping renewed July 31, 2009
Posted by bahadirkhan in English, Haber (News).Tags: Arctic seabed mapping
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Researchers for Canada and the United States are working together again this summer to map more of the Arctic seabed, gathering scientific data toward bolstering their own sovereignty claims.
The two countries are preparing for their second joint mapping expedition to map largely unknown parts of the Canada Basin, north of the Beaufort Sea. A similar mission took place last summer.
The 41-day mission will begin next week, with the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Healy and the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Louis St. Laurent meeting in the Beaufort Sea before heading as far north into the Canada Basin as the ice will allow.
“We have better maps of the moon than we do of our own ocean floor,” Capt. Steve Barnum of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told CBC News.
“This is an area, again, that has been very difficult to get to. It’s covered with ice, and the data we have is very sparse and in many cases very old.”
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More law-enforcement agencies use web-based crime-mapping system July 12, 2009
Posted by bahadirkhan in English, Haber (News).Tags: “timely and geographically relevant” data, crime-mapping service, CrimeReports, web-based crime-mapping system
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After inadvertently letting a burglar into his Arlington, Va., apartment building, Greg Whisenant decided to take action.
He founded a web-based crime-mapping service, which would have allowed police to flag his block as having been burglarized and alert others in the area.
More than 550 law enforcement agencies across the country including Iowa’s Urbandale Police Department use the Utah-based CrimeReports, a number that’s rapidly increasing.
Aimed at providing “timely and geographically relevant” data, community members can access the maps for free at the CrimeReports site and receive e-mail notifications when new information is added, something that’s usually done every 24 hours.
“If it happens on my street, you’ve got my attention,” said Whisenant, who is now the CEO of CrimeReports.com. “I can do specific things to protect myself, my family, and my property if something happens.”
Iowa City and UI police do not use CrimeReports or any other crime-mapping service. Instead, because of budget constraints, Iowa City police Chief Sam Hargadine said, his department uses a “labor-intensive” in-house mapping process for situations that warrant it.
One example is the “serial groper,” who struck more than 30 times in 2006 and 2007. Iowa City police mapped the locations where the man — or men — struck, and officials released the information to the media.
UI police said a crime-mapping service is a possibility, but it is at least one year away. (more…)
Forest Service uses GPS to map beetles July 6, 2009
Posted by bahadirkhan in English, Haber (News).Tags: Geographic Information System, Geospatial Technology, use GPS to help map
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Foresters tracking whitebark pine trees killed by beetles will start using GPS to map the damage.
U.S. Forest Service officials say they’re using $150,000 to start a GPS survey of beetle damage in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Foresters say the forest contains some 400,000 acres of whitebark pine, but the species is declining because of beetles and the blister rust fungus.
Pine mapping begins today with an aerial survey. Researchers will take photos and video, then use GPS to help map the pine population. Work should be completed by spring.
Foresters want to know where beetle damage is worst, and why some pockets of whitebark pine appear to be unaffected.
Determining the extent of damage is important because pine provides food for grizzly bears and other species and helps watersheds, said Liz Davy, timber and silviculture program manager for the Bridger-Teton.
“It’s a keystone species,” she said. “It’s very important in our ecosystem.”
Pilot Bruce Gordon will fly the plane while technicians sync video and still cameras with a GPS device to develop the map. Gordon said he’s seen dramatic changes to the forest from the infestation.
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Tele Atlas Uses Data From Drivers to Map Faster June 30, 2009
Posted by bahadirkhan in English, Haber (News).Tags: Geographic Information System, GPS devices, Tele Atlas, mapping database
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Dutch digital map maker Tele Atlas is creating new maps faster than ever by collecting data from motorists using GPS devices as they drive, which provides a rich set of information about roads.
Tele Atlas, which was acquired by the satellite navigation device maker Tom Tom in 2007, has been collecting GPS data points from Tom Tom users, recording information such as what roads they use, how fast they drive and even the road’s gradient, said Rik Temmink, vice president of global product management. It’s what Tele Atlas calls a “community” approach to map making.
“That’s radically changed the way we do maps,” Temmink said. “They [users] paint of a picture of what the roads look like.”
In the past, Tele Atlas sent out vehicles to physically drive the roads in order to create maps. Now, some of that work can be automated using specialized algorithms to sort through the GPS data and build maps.
Tele Atlas still has to send out teams to verify data, but it has made the process of creating high-quality maps much faster, Temmink said. Tele Atlas has used the community approach for updating maps in about 30 countries.
On Monday Tele Atlas released its latest edition of MultiNet, a mapping database. For the first time, it includes maps for more than 11,000 miles of roads in Romania.
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Tele Atlas HD Traffic Delivers New Standard in Real Time Traffic June 27, 2009
Posted by bahadirkhan in English, Haber (News).Tags: anonymous GPS measurements, Real Time Traffic, Tele Atlas HD Traffic
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With congested roadways and ever-increasing travel times, mapping application users are seeking ways to save time and money getting to their destinations. Digital maps and dynamic content provider Tele Atlas can now help them more clearly see what’s ahead with Tele Atlas HD Traffic, a robust solution for navigation and location based solutions designed to find the quickest routes to destinations using “live” road conditions.
Tele Atlas HD Traffic sets a new standard for traffic solutions, which typically rely on a single data source to judge traffic conditions. Tele Atlas HD Traffic contains up-to-the-minute information from multiple data sources, including anonymous GPS measurements from personal navigation devices and mobile phone signals, road sensors and journalistic data. Using proprietary and tested methods, Tele Atlas dynamically merges this information and makes it available in real time to customers in the personal navigation, cell phone, fleet management, government and in-vehicle markets. When HD Traffic is added to a navigation solution, end users can be automatically rerouted around jams and potentially save time and money, minimize environmental impact, and enjoy a significantly improved navigation experience.
“Market research shows that consumers want traffic information, but the industry has been challenged to deliver a useful solution because it requires access to detailed, live traffic data,” said Rik Temmink, Vice President of Global Product Management, Tele Atlas. “Our offering uses a proprietary data fusing method, whereby we efficiently process large data sets from multiple sources, and thus can instantly deliver far more comprehensive and accurate views of the traffic situation.”
Tele Atlas HD Traffic can be efficiently delivered to any connected, mobile device and features:
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Irrigation Mobile Survey System- Application of SuperGIS Mobile Engine June 6, 2009
Posted by bahadirkhan in Duyuru (Announcements), English, Haber (News).Tags: Chang Hua Irrigation Associations, Irrigation Mobile Survey System, SuperGIS Mobile Engine
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SuperGeo successfully develops ‘Irrigation Mobile Survey System’ for Chang Hua Irrigation Associations, Taiwan. The System is used to plan irrigation facilities, like canals and drainage channel, and to query and measure related facilities.Chang Hua Irrigation Associations utilize ‘Irrigation Mobile Survey System’ to plan irrigation facilities, such as irrigation canals and drainage channel, and to query, orient, and measure the relative facilities.
SuperGIS Mobile Engine is the core of Irrigation Mobile Survey System. With the various GIS components and the highly flexible development structures provided by SuperGIS Mobile Engine, developers can customize numerous buttons on toolbars, forms, etc., to meet users’ needs and to simplify the developing procedures. Moreover, since the association provides mobile devices for surveyors, each mobile device installing the system facilitates surveyors to do outdoor survey. SuperGIS Mobile Engine not only assists developers to establish the system effectively and flexibly, but also reduces the cost of development and extensive deploying the systems to mobile devices.
The friendly interface of Irrigation Mobile Survey System enables surveyors to complete the following tasks:
1. GIS basic manipulations, such as zoom in/out, panning, adding layers, etc.
2. Orientation Query, such as intersections, landmarks, cadastral, channels, etc.
3. Statistics analysis allows developers to measure irrigation area, cadastral area, channel length, and so on.
4. Data management assists users to query and maintain the data, such as irrigation facilities, works data, financial data, and also enables users to print statement and location map.
5. Camera function. With the activated GPS in PDA, as the user is taking pictures, the system can record the user’s coordinates and add a point feature on the map to create a corresponding image layer. Therefore, users can display the picture by hyperlink.
Cellphone Locator System Needs No Satellite May 31, 2009
Posted by bahadirkhan in English, Haber (News).Tags: Cellphone Locator System, GPS chips, Street View service, Wi-Fi access points
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Wanderers with phones and other devices that have GPS chips can figure out where they are using signals from satellites thousands of miles up, but those are easily blocked by walls or trees. The founders of Skyhook Wireless discovered some alternative navigational beacons: the signals coming from the Wi-Fi network in the coffee shop across the street, or the apartment upstairs.
Skyhook uses the chaotic patchwork of the world’s Wi-Fi networks, as well as cell towers, as the basis for a location lookup service that is built into every iPhone, making it easier to pull up a map or find Chinese food nearby.
The start-up was founded in 2003 by Ted Morgan and Michael Shean, who traveled frequently for work and noticed the proliferation of wireless signals each time they cracked open their laptops to check their e-mail.
“We were amazed by the sheer growth of Wi-Fi,” Mr. Morgan said in an interview in April at the company’s offices here. “We knew there had to be a new model for mapping location using those signals.”
Wi-Fi signals travel only a few hundred feet at most, so if you have a map of the Wi-Fi networks in a given area, you can use those signals to pinpoint a phone’s location.
Making that map is the tricky part. When Mr. Morgan and Mr. Shean decided to pursue their idea, they started building a database of Wi-Fi access points, along with cellphone towers, which have much more powerful signals.
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Dramatic New Maps Show the Geography of US Carbon Emissions May 28, 2009
Posted by bahadirkhan in English, Haber (News).Tags: Dramatic New Maps, geographic data and mapping, Geography of US Carbon Emissions
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The Center for Neighborhood Technology is releasing today a new series of GIS-based maps showing where carbon emissions from driving are the highest in the nation’s metro areas. The maps demonstrate vividly that, although emissions on a per-acre basis are greatest in highly urban areas, it is in the suburbs and outlying areas where we pollute the most on a per-household basis. This is because rates of driving are so much higher in spread-out suburbia than in places where homes, jobs, shops, and services are in more convenient proximity to each other.
The map on the left shows that the areas with the highest emissions, in red, are those that are most heavily populated. That much should not be surprising. But the map changes dramatically when carbon emissions are plotted on a per-household basis, as shown on the right. It is essentially a reversed image of the map on the left, showing that the most populated areas actually have the lowest pollution rates per household.
CNT is a longtime collaborator with NRDC and many other organizations, and their GIS work is superb. I have previously written about their excellent work on the geography of home affordability (for example, here and here) and have cited an early prototype of the CO2 mapping in a post about per-capita thinking in environmental impacts management.
Transportation accounts for 28 percent of all US greenhouse gases, according to CNT, and I believe it accounts for an even higher portion of carbon dioxide emissions specifically.
I would add that the emissions savings come not only from a greater array of transportation mode choices but also from the shorter driving distances that are taken in more accessible locations. And, in addition to cities, the traditional centers of well-established suburbs also can exhibit favorable per-household emissions profiles.
The carbon maps are part of CNT’s larger Housing +Transportation Affordability Index, which includes geographic data and mapping on housing costs, transportation costs, gasoline prices, and various customized variations thereof. You can currently access the CO2 maps for 55 US metropolitan regions, and zoom in on particular neighborhoods or local communities if you like. Later this year CNT expects to have 330 metro areas mapped on its site.
