Day: July 13, 2010

Using the Newly-created ILE DBMS to Better Represent Temporal and Historical GIS Data

/ Matt Artz / 1 Comment

Transactions in GIS, Volume 14 Issue s1, Pages 39 – 58

Vitit Kantabutra, J. B. “Jack” Owens, Daniel P. Ames, Charles N. Burns, and Barbara Stephenson

“This article introduces a type of DBMS called the Intentionally-Linked Entities (ILE) DBMS for use as the basis for temporal and historical Geographical Information Systems. ILE represents each entity in a database only once, thereby mostly eliminating redundancy and fragmentation, two major problems in Relational and other database systems. These advantages of ILE are realized by using relationship objects and pointers to implement all of the relationships among data entities in a native fashion using dynamically-allocated linked data structures. ILE can be considered to be a modern and extended implementation of the E/R data model. ILE also facilitates storage of things that are more faithful to the historical records, such as gazetteer entries of places with imprecisely known or unknown locations. This is difficult in Relational database systems but is a routine task using ILE because ILE is implemented using modern memory allocation techniques. We use the China Historical GIS (CHGIS) and other databases to illustrate the advantages of ILE. This is accomplished by modeling these databases in ILE and comparing them to the existing Relational implementations.”

Abu Dhabi Systems and Information Centre Receives Making a Difference Award from Esri

/ Matt Artz / 1 Comment

Esri President Jack Dangermond Praises the Centre’s Innovative Work on E-government Programs

In Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), e-government is flourishing as a way to conduct business, with many online government services available via the Abu Dhabi Government portal. Government agencies also share data related to the emirate’s governmental and commercial projects and enterprises.

Geospatial data and geographic information system (GIS) technology play an important role in the success of e-government, which is why Esri presented its annual Making a Difference Award to the Abu Dhabi Systems and Information Centre (ADSIC). His Excellency Mohammed Ahmed Al Bowardi, secretary general of Abu Dhabi Executive Council, accepted the award from Esri president Jack Dangermond on behalf of the Abu Dhabi Government at the 2010 ESRI International User Conference, which is being held this week in San Diego, California. “Thank you, Jack, for recognizing the achievement of Abu Dhabi. We are honored with this award,” said Mr. Al Bowardi.

ADSIC administers the Abu Dhabi Spatial Data Infrastructure (AD-SDI), which facilitates geospatial data sharing among government agencies and other stakeholders. As part of Abu Dhabi’s visionary and ambitious e-government program, AD-SDI empowers government and society with convenient, open access to high-quality and up-to-date geographic information and spatially enabled e-government services.

Dangermond lauded the visionary thinking and spirit of collaboration in Abu Dhabi for this project.

 “In Abu Dhabi, we are seeing a marvelous spatial data infrastructure,” Dangermond said. “It’s certainly leading the world in implementing all kinds of geospatial information into an information system that supports open and integrated government. This just didn’t happen by chance. It took leadership, financial support, and collaboration.”

The AD-SDI initiative’s ultimate goal is to create a seamless network of interoperable geospatial portals that will provide easy access to all geospatial information in the emirates. Secure government and publicly accessible geoportals have been set up, and the information available is constantly being expanded and updated. Mr. Al Bowardi also thanked the members of the audience for sharing their GIS knowledge, which allowed Abu Dhabi to create and build a spatial data infrastructure that works so well. “We owe our achievement to you for opening a new world of creativity and achievement for mankind.”

He said that AD-SDI is designed much like the human body. “It needed cohesiveness, coordination, and complexity. The brain and body must react instantly,” he said. This is important, according to Mr. Al Bowardi, because the flow of geospatial information must be seamless for all facets of government—from routing ambulances to planning new, sustainable cities—to run smoothly. “Government must perform like a human body—a total system reacting with millions of sensors.”

Visit the Abu Dhabi Geospatial Portal, which includes a map viewer, to learn more about the public map services Abu Dhabi provides.

[Source: ESRI press release]

Biosurveillance and GIS: Application of Geospatial Information Science to Biological Defense

/ Matt Artz

Journal of Map & Geography Libraries, Volume 4, Issue 2 June 2008 , pages 224 – 239

Stephen P. Linger; Michael J. Brown; Gerald E. Streit; Matthew A. Nelson; and Michael D. Williams

“Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed geospatial applications to plan and train for response to terrorist attacks involving aerosolized biological agents and for rapid post-event analysis and impact assessment. The planning applications have been used to assist with the deployment of air samplers in U.S. cities across the country as part of BioWatch and other federal programs. Post-event analytical applications are used to help identify where and how much biological agent might have been released, and who may have been exposed to the bioagent. The applications integrate atmospheric dispersion and source inversion models within a geographic information systems framework. To provide both a full-featured interactive user environment and a rich extensible development framework, the mature capabilities of commercial geospatial technologies are employed. The biodefense applications and some of their unique features, such as sensor siting, source inversion models, and the diurnal population database, are described, along with reconstructed results from the application of these capabilities to an actual environmental background event.”

Estimating a Payment Vehicle for Financing Nourishment of Residential Beaches using a Spatial-Lag Hedonic Property Price Model

/ Matt Artz

Coastal Management, Volume 38, Issue 1 January 2010 , pages 65 – 75

O. Ashton Morgan and Stuart E. Hamilton

“Beach nourishment projects are common methods for coastal states to protect beaches and property from the natural erosive process. However, while the beneficiaries of beach nourishment tend to be local property owners and recreators, projects are typically funded at the state level. Based on the benefit principle, as local residents receive more of the erosion protection benefits of the nourishment projects, we estimate a value capture tax, designed to levy the financing burden in a manner that approximates the distribution of benefits. The benefits of nourishment projects to coastal property owners are estimated using the results from a spatial-lag hedonic model that controls for viewshed effects.”