Day: July 14, 2010

Toward an Integrated Framework for Geosensor Grid

/ Matt Artz / 1 Comment

International Journal of Digital Earth, Volume 3, Issue 2 June 2010 , pages 207 – 216

Zhou Huang; Yu Fang; and Mao Pan

“Grid computing is deemed as a good solution to the digital earth infrastructure. Various geographically dispersed geospatial resources can be connected and merged into a ‘supercomputer’ by using the grid-computing technology. On the other side, geosensor networks offer a new perspective for collecting physical data dynamically and modeling a real-time virtual world. Integrating geosensor networks and grid computing in geosensor grid can be compared to equipping the geospatial information grid with ‘eyes’ and ‘ears.’ Thus, real-time information in the physical world can be processed, correlated, and modeled to enable complex and advanced geospatial analyses on geosensor grid with capability of high-performance computation. There are several issues and challenges that need to be overcome before geosensor grid comes true. In this paper, we propose an integrated framework, comprising the geosensor network layer, the grid layer and the application layer, to address these design issues. Key technologies of the geosensor grid framework are discussed. And, a geosensor grid testbed is set up to illustrate the proposed framework and improve our geosensor grid design.”

Special Achievement in GIS Award Winners Honored at Esri International User Conference

/ Matt Artz

A Select Group of Organizations around the World Are Recognized by Esri President Jack Dangermond for Their Exceptional Applications of Geographic Technolo

More than 150 organizations were selected from approximately 300,000 to receive a Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award in a special ceremony today at the 30th Annual Esri International User Conference (Esri UC). The winning organizations received this honor for their vision, leadership, hard work, and innovative use of Esri’s geographic information system (GIS) technology.

“We created the Special Achievement in GIS Award to recognize our users’ extraordinary contributions to global society,” says Esri president Jack Dangermond. “Each year, I look forward to being part of this ceremony; it’s a tradition that has gained great meaning and importance for professionals in the GIS industry.”

GIS combines computer hardware; software; data; and, most importantly, people to collect, manage, and analyze geographic information. Virtually any information can be linked to a geographic location, helping people see that information as part of a complete picture. With GIS, users can view relationships, processes, patterns, and trends in the form of maps, globes, reports, and charts. Whether they are responding to a natural disaster, growing a business, or sharing information with the public, GIS helps them solve problems and make smart decisions. More than one million people worldwide rely on GIS to learn and plan geographically.

The SAG Award ceremony was held at the San Diego Convention Center and presided over by Dangermond. Thousands of SAG Award nominations are submitted by Esri staff every year, then personally reviewed and selected by Dangermond.

Organizations being honored at the Esri UC, the world’s largest GIS event, span countries and industries including agriculture, cartography, climate change, defense and intelligence, economic development, education, government, health and human services, telecommunications, and utilities. More information about the 2010 Special Achievement in GIS Award winners, including project information and photos, are available at www.esri.com/sag.

[Source: ESRI press release]

The Power of Business Analyst Online Now Available on the iPhone

/ Matt Artz

Free BAO for iOS App Provides On-the-Go Access to Demographic Reports and Maps

The new, free BAO for iOS app, available for download from the Apple app store, provides access to 2010 demographic and business data and analysis from Esri Business Analyst Online (BAO)

on the go.

BAO delivers powerful market analyses through a Web browser. Users generate on-demand reports and maps to get a detailed, comprehensive view of the demographic makeup of various populations and their lifestyles and buying behaviors. This revealing information allows users to find their best locations, customers, and products/services. With the BAO for iOS app, they can now get this valuable information through an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

The BAO for iOS app provides the demographic and market information needed to instantly evaluate an area on-site.

It helps answer three key questions about a location:

  • What types of people live there?
    Get a demographic and market snapshot of a location (e.g., population, age, income, education, homeownership, and consumer spending).
  • How do they differ from the people in another location?
    Compare the demographic and market data for two locations or one location versus the entire United States.
  • Is this a good location based on specified needs?
    Set the desired criteria and find out how the location measures up.

In addition, subscribers to the BAO Web application will soon be able to access the full set of BAO reports and maps through BAO for iOS. A subscription to BAO allows users to access even more data, such as market potential, retail marketplace, and consumer spending, along with more analysis functionality, such as the ability to customize drive times and rings and create color-coded maps.

For more information and to download the app, visit www.esri.com/baoforios.

[Source: ESRI press release]

Teradata and ESRI Offer Customers Advanced Geospatial Intelligence

/ Matt Artz

Brings Intuitive, Visual Means to Improve Decision-Making

Teradata Corporation and ESRI announced that their new relationship will enable customers to integrate business and geospatial data in a single database, perform advanced analytics and deliver geospatial intelligence to business users to improve decision-making.

“The unique combination of geospatial power from ESRI and the marketing-leading Teradata database engine offers customers a new, advanced ability to solve business problems,” said Randy Lea, vice president, Teradata product and service marketing.  “The new partnership makes it possible for customers to gain a business advantage by maximizing how they leverage geospatial and business information.”

For example, a retailer wants to target new high-value customers to increase sales in all of their 200 stores; however, each store has a diverse customer base. Using Teradata, the retailer can analyze all the shoppers in each of the 200 stores to identify their best customers based on shopping patterns and other transactional data.  This intelligence is valuable, but it is more powerful with the addition of the geographical-based data.

Working with ESRI, companies can add “drive-time” and “lifestyle” customer segments to the analysis. This resulting geospatial intelligence can then be used to support targeted marketing campaigns directed at profitable customers.

“The partnership between ESRI and Teradata combines sophisticated spatial analytics and visualization with high performance and event processing to deliver real-time spatial analytics,” said David Sonnen, senior analyst for Spatial Information, IDC.  “The new capabilities allow retail, telecommunication, utilities, transportation and government agencies to manage and analyze millions of records of data on a national scale at speeds that have not been achieved in the past.”

Teradata supports various geospatial types of data like points on a map, lines, and polygons.  It can perform over 60 geospatial analytic functions within its scaleable, high performance database.  It is enhanced by the ESRI industry-leading spatial data creation, visualization, advanced analytics, and spatial collaboration tools to provide Teradata customers with unprecedented capabilities to exploit the spatial data within their data warehouse.

“ESRI fills a critical role in the Teradata ecosystem in terms of spatial ETL, spatial content, advanced spatial analysis and, of course, visualization, mapping and spatial collaboration,” said Steve Benner, alliance manager,  ESRI.  “Our new relationship helps customers bridge the gap between the data warehouse and their Geographic Information System- a common customer request – to get more value from their investments in both systems.”

Geospatial Consulting Services

Claraview, a division of Teradata, and ESRI offer specialized professional services to help customers easily integrate and deploy the geospatial capability in their business intelligence environments.  Claraview has a proven set of Geospatial Business Intelligence Services to help businesses develop a long-term vision and deployment plan for their geospatial initiatives. Claraview brings together best practices in business intelligence and geospatial analytics, and aligns business and technology objectives to build a robust analytical capability.

“This new partnership provides our customers with a low risk and quicker implementation,” said Jeff Snow, managing partner, Claraview, a division of Teradata Corporation. “Claraview assists customers to maximize the Teradata data warehouse, ESRI capabilities and the business intelligence tools of the customer’s choice.”

About ESRI

Founded in 1969, ESRI (www.esri.com) is the world leader in the GIS software industry. ESRI offers innovative solutions that help users create, manage, analyze, and display information to make timely decisions and solve problems they encounter every day. ESRI’s comprehensive product line ranges from desktop GIS to GIS for the enterprise.

About Teradata

Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC) is the world’s largest company solely focused on raising intelligence and achieving enterprise agility through its database software, enterprise data warehousing, data warehouse appliances, consulting, and enterprise analytics.   Visit Teradata on the web at www.teradata.com.

Teradata is a trademark or registered trademark of Teradata Corporation in the United States and other countries.

[Source: Teradata Corporation press release]

Spatial Analysis of Biomass Supply: Economic and Environmental Impacts

/ Matt Artz / 1 Comment

ASA, CSSA, and SSSA International Annual Meetings
31 October – 03 November 2010
Long Beach, California USA

David Archer

“The EPIC simulation model is used with SSURGO soils, field location information, and a transportation cost model to analyze potential biomass supply for a West Central MN bioenergy plant. The simulation shows the relationship between biomass price, locations of where biomass production is profitable, and impacts on economic optimum cropping practices. Results show expansion of production away from the bioenergy plant as biomass price increases. Also, increasing biomass price tends to increase harvest intensity and change the optimum crop rotation near the bioenergy plant. These changes have important implications for the environmental impacts of biomass harvest, since changes in harvest intensity and crop rotation can have substantial effects of soil erosion, soil carbon, and nutrient and pesticide runoff and leaching.”

A Geographical Population Analysis of Dental Trauma in School-children Aged 12 and 15 in the City of Curitiba, Brazil

/ Matt Artz

BMC Health Services Research, 2010, 10:203doi

Max L Carvalho, Samuel J Moyses, Roberto E Bueno, Silvia Shimakura, and Simone T Moyses

“Background: The study presents a geographical analysis of dental trauma in a population of 12 and 15 year-old school-children, in the city of Curitiba, Brazil (n = 1581), using a database obtained in the period 2005-2006. The main focus is to analyze dental trauma using a geographic information system as a tool for integrating social, environmental and epidemiological data.

“Methods: Geostatistical analysis of the database and thematic maps were generated showing the distribution of dental trauma cases according to Curitiba’s Health Districts and other variables of interest. Dental trauma spatial variation was assessed using a generalized additive model in order to identify and control the individual risk-factors and thus determine whether spatial variation is constant or not throughout the Health Districts and the place of residence of individuals. In addition, an analysis was made of the coverage of dental trauma cases taking the spatial distribution of Curitiba’s primary healthcare centres.

“Results: The overall prevalence of dental trauma was 37.1%, with 53.1% in males and 46.7% in females. The spatial analysis confirms the hypothesis that there is significant variation in the occurrence of dental trauma, considering the place of residence in the population studied (Monte Carlo test, p=0,006). Furthermore, 28.7% of cases had no coverage by the primary healthcare centres.

“Conclusions: The effect of the place of residence was highly significant in relation to the response variable. The delimitation of areas, as a basis for case density, enables the qualification of geographical territories where actions can be planned based on priority criteria. Promotion, control and rehabilitation actions, applied in regions of higher prevalence of dental trauma, can be more effective and efficient, thus providing healthcare refinement.”

Powered by Standards – New Data Tools for the Climate Sciences

/ Matt Artz / 1 Comment

International Journal of Digital Earth, Volume 3, Issue S1 April 2010 , pages 85 – 102

Andrew Woolf

“The ultimate goal of much current research in earth science informatics is to enable more efficient discovery and use of environmental data. Large-scale efforts are underway at regional and global levels. For instance the European INSPIRE Directive (2007/2/EC) and international GEOSS initiative will both provide unprecedented catalogues of earth observation and environmental data, with links to online services providing direct access to digital data repositories. While the motivation for these emerging infrastructures is clear (e.g. understanding global change), it is less obvious how they might be implemented. Standards will play a major role and considerable effort is currently being devoted to their development by bodies like the International Organisation for Standardisation and the Open Geospatial Consortium. Internet search engines are amongst the most popular websites visited today. Using the metaphor of a web search portal, we review the potential of new geospatial standards to provide an advanced, user-friendly approach to discovery and use of climate-science data.”

Measuring Public Access to the Shoreline: The Boat-Based Offset Survey Method

/ Matt Artz

Coastal Management, Volume 38, Issue 4 July 2010 , pages 378 – 398

Robert Thompson and Tracy Dalton

“As cities redevelop underutilized waterfronts, opportunities exist to promote public access to the shoreline. However, planning for access is hampered by a lack of reliable data on how people utilize a specific shoreline. The boat-based offset transect survey (B-BOTS) method allows researchers to accurately record, map, and analyze shoreline access. This article discusses the use of B-BOTS along the northern part Narragansett Bay, RI. Using B-BOTS, on 52 randomly selected days over a two-season period, researchers developed a geodatabase that included the position of all shoreline users and the activity in which they were engaging. Using this geodatabase, the article demonstrates that the amount and type of shoreline use varied dramatically throughout the study area and varied in ways that would not have been predictable using conventional sources of data. The article also demonstrates that the availability of parking not only influenced the amount of shoreline use, but also the manner in which different user types distributed themselves along the shore. The article discusses the importance of such findings for developing plans for waterfront redevelopment and public access.”