News, events, and announcements for the UD GIS community, Summer 2013
News
- Please make sure to pay for your geospatial software. We pay annually to license this software. You can do so through the Request for Service – IT Software Licenses webform.
- You can now use ArcGIS on UD’s Mills community cluster! We are holding a Research Express webinar tomorrow, which will cover installation, and take you through a complete workflow: from ArcGIS Desktop Model Builder, to Python, to the ArcGIS Python Shell on Mills, and back to Desktop for visualization. Don’t worry if you aren’t able to make it tomorrow, we’ll have the archived webinar available for you to view at any time.
- Investigators from UD have been awarded a grant from NSF EPSCoR to establish a water resources network
- The UD GIS community hasn’t gotten together for a while, and I’ve received some notes from folks who would like to meet. If you’re interested in meeting up, please send me a note. We can have lunch or set up an informal meeting at someone’s office to catch up (I’ll volunteer the Smith conference room), whatever works!
- Kent County now has an online mapping site, including updated and some historical aerials, ownership, contours, classifying roads, streetlight/garbage districts, and more
- DelTech Georgetown has begun offering a GIS Certificate.
Recent UD GIS Blog posts
- I’ve posted a public branch of code from the Lima Bean project as a github repository. This would be useful to anyone who’s doing daily updates of a Google Fusion Table (which provides integrated map and charting capabilities) from a csv dump.
Software Updates
- ENVI 5.0.3 is now available on the UD GIS downloads page.
- IDL 8.2.3 is also now available on the UD GIS downloads page, and is available on the Mills cluster through vpkg_require idl/8.2 … it will shortly be substituted for the main valet idl package.
Data Updates
- Landsat 8 data is now available at no charge through GloVis, EarthExplorer, or via the LandsatLook Viewer.
- The Delaware DataMIL is now permanently retired. Please see DGS’ page for other options in order to obtain the data.
Events
- 7/31/13, 1:30-1:45p: Using ArcGIS on Mills, Research Express Webinar. Will be archived here.
- 8/7/13, 9a-12p: Delaware Geographic Data Committee Quarterly meeting, Kent County Administrative Building, Dover, DE. Draft agenda
- 9/16-9/17/13: Northeast Regional Energy GIS Conference, Cannonsburg, PA
Past Events and Webinars
- I would be very glad to chat with you about any of the topics above over phone, email, in person, or lunch 🙂
- I attended the 2013 Esri International User Conference and Education User Conference early in July. Some highlights (besides a moving conversation with will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas about the importance of GIS in teaching STEM (!)): ArcGIS 10.2 is coming soon, with such improvements as multithreading, workflow tools for complex geostatistical tasks (e.g., hotspot and multivariate segmentation), easier import and export of popular formas such as excel and JSON, and support for Hadoop; lots of improvements to ArcGIS Online (ArcGIS.com) including new “solutions” templates, analytical geoprocessing services; many powerful examples of ArcGIS Online for teaching, including resources; best practices in GIS Certificaiton; resources for facilities management; details on online serviecs including imagery … apparently data from online services can be pulled into Esri for Office and geoprocessing!; metadata best practices; remote sensing workflows for vegetation studies; lots of big data sessions … note: analysis involving time along with space is becoming more important in remote sensing and big data!. I also delivered two presentations: “Publishing Historical Maps to the Web on Mac and PC” and “Geoprocessing on a High Performance Cluster”.
- I attended 2 days of VISualize 2013, an event hosted by Exelis Visual Information Solutions (VIS) of ENVI and IDL, in June. The theme for this year was “Global Change and Environmental Monitoring”, which I know is very relevant to many of the research activities at UD. Topics covered included things like remote sensing of acquatic vegetation, tillage mapping, scoring of land conservation programs, a user-developed library for working with NetCDF, and deploying an inexpensive DIY infrared sensor via balloon.
- The DGDC Spring Quarterly meeting occurred in May, draft minutes available.
Other Opportunities
- 8/2/13: GISCorps, A volunteer is needed immediately for a web mapping/geocoding project with the 1947 Partition Archive Project http://www.1947partitionarchive.org/
- 9/30/13: Deadline for manuscript submission, special issue of the International Journal of Geo-Information, focused on Coastal GIS
Area/Forwarded Job Postings (if no link, email me mearns@udel.edu, and I’ll forward the email announcements)
- Airborne Sensor Operator, Keystone Aerial Surveys, Inc, Philadelphia, PA
- GIS Programmer, Langan Engineering and Environmental Services, Warrington, PA
- GIS Analyst, McCormick Taylor, Inc., Baltimore, MD
- Full-time, tenure-track Assistant Professor of GIScience, University at Buffalo (UB, SUNY)
- Part-time, Assistant Program Director for Certificate and Master’s in GIS, Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, MD
As always, please let me know if you have any questions or ideas that you’d like to discuss