Day: January 7, 2013

2013 URISA Exemplary Systems in Government (ESIG) Awards Program Announced

/ Matt Artz

URISAThe Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) is accepting applications for its Exemplary Systems in Government (ESIG) Awards through Monday, April 22, 2013. The awards recognize exceptional achievements in the application of geospatial information technology that have improved the delivery and quality of government services.

Applications may be submitted in two categories, Single Process and Enterprise Systems:

  • SINGLE PROCESS SYSTEMS – Systems in this category are outstanding and working examples of applying information system technology to automate a specific SINGLE process or operation involving one department or sub-unit of an agency. The system application results in extended and/or improved government services that are more efficient and/or save money.
  • ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS – Systems in this category are outstanding and working examples of using information systems technology in a multi-department environment as part of an integrated process. These systems exemplify effective use of technology yielding widespread improvements in the process(es) and/or service(s) involved and/or cost savings to the organization.

Applications must be submitted by April 22, 2013.  Winners in each category will be recognized during GIS-Pro 2013: URISA’s 51st Annual Conference, September 16-19, 2013 in Providence, Rhode Island.

For more information or to review past submissions from winning systems, visit http://www.urisa.org/esig or call (847) 824-6300.

[Source: URISA press release]

Maps of Fire Occurrence – Spatially Explicit Reconstruction of Recent Fire History using Satellite Remote Sensing

/ Matt Artz / 1 Comment

Journal of MapsJournal of Maps, Volume 8, Issue 4, December 2012

Magdalini Pleniou, Fotios Xystrakis, Panayotis Dimopoulos, and Nikos Koutsias

“Maps depicting the spatially explicit fire history of an area, including variables such as fire frequency and fire return interval, are important tools promoting the understanding of processes associated with wildfires (fire ignition and spread), the assessment of the impacts of wildland fires on landscape dynamics, and decisions on appropriate management practices. Remote sensing is a cost- and time-effective alternative to automatically assess a vast amount of spatial information and produce various thematic maps. The aim of this study was to reconstruct the recent fire history of Attica region (Greece), in a spatially explicit mode by means of remote sensing techniques using a series of Landsat images acquired from 1984 to 2011. The results show that the fire scar perimeters were captured with high accuracy. Regression modelling shows that the differences between the area burned estimated from satellite data and that recorded by the forest service can be explained (86.3% of the variance) by the number of satellite images used (standardized coefficient 0.752) followed by the date of the first image (standardized coefficient 0.705). The use of satellite data as the basic source of information alongside automated classification methods should be promoted for the creation of fire history maps. The latter is further supported when considering the long history of data capture from Landsat satellites, which provide a huge, global historical archive of repeat images of the Earth’s surface.”