News, events, and announcements for the UD GIS community, January 2012

Happy New Year!

News

  • A student created layer of Arts and History sites on campus has been added to the UD Map.  The layer was created as part of an undergraduate Art Conservation honors section, Care and Preservation of Cultural Property I
  • Esri Community Analyst and Business Analyst Online API have been added to our site license, thanks to more generous terms from Esri
  • Updates have been applied to all Geospatial software in the IT-CS&S Research Computing Lab (previously called the RDMS lab).  We have also added two packages:
    • the Geospatial Modeling Environment (GME) is the successor to Hawth’s Analysis Tools (HT).  HT, an extension for ArcGIS, came out many years ago but is still popular because of incompatibilities with newer versions of ArcGIS.  HT is designed to perform spatial analysis and functions that cannot be conveniently accomplished with out-of-the-box ArcGIS. Most of these analysis tools have been written within the context of the  ecological applications (movement analysis, resource selection, predator prey  interactions and trophic cascades) (NASA, source).  For information on animal movement/home range software, also see my blog post.
    • FWTools is a set of binaries and python scripts for leveraging the GDAL (raster), OGR (vector), PROJ (projection), and OGDI (TCP/IP geodata) projects
  • The “gis@ud” website has a new look, which conforms to UD web standards, and simplifies access to frequently requested information

 

Software Updates

  • IDL 8.1 is now available from gis@ud, and the central license server has been updated
  • ArcGIS SP3 Patch: this patch addresses file manager performance issues when using ArcGIS on a machine with limited internet connectivity on SP3 (is not the SP3 service pack, merely addresses a bug with SP3)

New and Updated Esri Virtual Campus Courses (contact gis-info@udel.edu for free access)

Other New Webinars

Events

Other Opportunities

  •  The 2012 Thacher Environmental Research Contest, sponsored by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, challenges high school students (grades 9-12) to conduct innovative research on our changing planet using the latest geospatial tools and data

Area/Forwarded Job Postings (if no link, email me mearns@udel.edu, and I’ll forward the email announcements)

Other Changes

  • Due to popular request, I’ve applied an update to the UD Map which shows the link to a building or lot in the info sidebar.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or ideas that you’d like to discuss