Day: November 30, 2010

Moving National Mapping Organizations from Surviving to Thriving

/ Matt Artz

Spatial Roundtable Focuses on Sustaining Geographic Information with Fewer Resources

National mapping, charting, and data production organizations (NDPs) are turning to efficient solutions like geographic information systems (GIS) to continue providing authoritative data for citizens and organizations in a time of global economic cutbacks. The data is used for country-wide and transnational mapping activities that support economic activities, emergency response, security, and environmental monitoring. Faced with reduced resources and staff cuts, many NDPs are struggling to maintain the quality and accuracy of data necessary to support these activities. Mark Cygan, map, chart, and data production and spatial data infrastructure (SDI) industry manager for Esri, takes a closer look at this issue at the Spatial Roundtable blog.

“Doing more with less is a necessary way of doing business in today’s economic climate,” states Cygan. “Even though NDPs are seeing significant staff cuts and reduced budgets, they continue to demonstrate their strategic value in helping solve national issues and justifying funding.”

The value of authoritative data created by NDPs was officially recognized in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit—officially called the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development—Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Recently, organizations such as the Group on Earth Observations and the United Nations Economic and Social Council Statistics Division have also emphasized the importance of authoritative data in addressing global issues.

Cygan argues that supporting NDPs in their mission of providing data is critical and asks the community to come together and join the conversation about how NDPs can continue to be successful and thrive in the face of reduced resources at spatialroundtable.com.

[Source: Esri press release]

Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Change Detection using IKONOS Images: A Case Study of Zonguldak

/ Matt Artz

ISPRS Istanbul Workshop 2010 on Modeling of optical airborne and spaceborne Sensors, WG I/4, Oct. 11-13, IAPRS Vol. XXXVIII, part 1/W4

Alkan M., Oruç, M., Kayabaşı D., and Sefercik UG

“Nowadays, remotely sensed images are used for various purposes in different applications. One of them is the change detection using high resolution satellite imagery which is city areas. Urbanization rapid land use and land cover change has taken place in many cities of Turkey as well as in the world in the last 50 years. In this context, comparison of extraction results from these images and existing vector data is the most important issue. The goal here is to show the advantages and disadvantages of the two IKONOS images for creating road and building database and also updating to the database. In this study, high resolution IKONOS 2002 and IKONOS 2008 have been chosen for the test area of the Zonguldak city. Firstly, pan-sharpened IKONOS images have been produced by fusion of high resolution PAN and MS images using PCI Geomatica v9.1 software package. The parcel, building and road network objects from these datasets have been extracted automatically by initially dividing it into the segments and then, they have been classified by using the spectral, spatial and contextual information using eCognition v4.0.6 software package. On the other hand, these objects have been manually digitized from high resolution images using ArcGIS v9.3 software package. These vectors produced automatically and manually have been compared with the existing digital cadastral maps and reference vector maps of scale 1/5000 of test area. The success of object-oriented image analysis results was tested by GIS software; the results have been presented and commented. Therefore, making GIS-based analysis and comparisons with raster and vector data of the test area has crucial importance in terms of putting forth the recent situation.”

The Fiscal-geographic Nexus: An Overview of Fiscal Impact Assessment in Local Policy Development

/ Matt Artz / 1 Comment

Applied Geography, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 2 October 2010

R. David Lamie, Wallace Campbell, William Molnar

“Fiscal impact assessments exist to provide decision makers with the tools to make informed decisions regarding local government finances. Every type of change in a community will have a unique impact on the local economy. This impact cannot be evaluated without careful attention to the particular geographic setting of the study. Unfortunately, geography is currently underutilized in the practice of fiscal impact analysis. This paper argues that the increased application of geographic tools is a key to improving the accuracy of fiscal impact reports.”

Cost-effectiveness of Dryland Forest Restoration Evaluated by Spatial Analysis of Ecosystem Services

/ Matt Artz / 1 Comment

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Published online 24 November 2010

Jennifer C. Birch, Adrian C. Newton, Claudia Alvarez Aquino, Elena Cantarello, Cristian Echeverría, Thomas Kitzberger, Ignacio Schiappacasse, and Natalia Tejedor Garavito

“Although ecological restoration is widely used to combat environmental degradation, very few studies have evaluated the cost-effectiveness of this approach. We examine the potential impact of forest restoration on the value of multiple ecosystem services across four dryland areas in Latin America, by estimating the net value of ecosystem service benefits under different reforestation scenarios. The values of selected ecosystem services were mapped under each scenario, supported by the use of a spatially explicit model of forest dynamics. We explored the economic potential of a change in land use from livestock grazing to restored native forest using different discount rates and performed a cost–benefit analysis of three restoration scenarios. Results show that passive restoration is cost-effective for all study areas on the basis of the services analyzed, whereas the benefits from active restoration are generally outweighed by the relatively high costs involved. These findings were found to be relatively insensitive to discount rate but were sensitive to the market value of carbon. Substantial variation in values was recorded between study areas, demonstrating that ecosystem service values are strongly context specific. However, spatial analysis enabled localized areas of net benefits to be identified, indicating the value of this approach for identifying the relative costs and benefits of restoration interventions across a landscape. ”