Category: GIS

Thanks to GISMO member & project contributor John Emerson for bringing An Atlas of Radical Cartography to our attention. September

Dom Elefante and Eric Yadlovski of the New Jersey Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute (MERI) will present a functional overview of ERIS, a customized Emergency Response GIS Tool that integrates critical information from easily-queried, right-to-know databases, developed under a regional initiative to share GIS resources among local governments. ERIS data is displayed using available online mapping services and standalone laptops which have been provided to emergency town officials. It has been deployed on emergency vehicles and on Interactive Mapping Services (IMS) as well as a Google Earth-based application designed to be Web accessible.

http://meri.njmeadowlands.gov/GIS/eris.php

http://www.meadowlands.state.nj.us/municipal/gis.html

Thanks to Dom for agreeing to reprise this session, which MERI offered at GITA

Steve Romalewski (CUNY Mapping Service) Michael Ufer (dev408) and Herb Stratton’s (NYC Dept of Finance) presentation on “Handheld mapping and data connectivity for NYC Dept of Finance” is now available for download:

handheld_presentation_to_GISMO_11-14-07.pdf

And for fun, David LaShell presented ESRI’s very own robot, SARA. SARA was created for ESRI by Penobscot Bay Media. Their Robotic Solutions business unit focuses on developing cutting edge solutions at the crossroads of GIS and the very best of the robotics world.

Find out more about SARA at: http://sara.spatialrobotics.com/labels/ESRI.html

Ken Reid recommends two New Jersey GIS resources:

New Jersey Geospatial Forum (NJGF) and NJMunicipalGIS at yahoogroups as GIS resource for NJ. NJGF is an umbrella organization for NJ and NJMunicipalGIS has over 160 members.

https://njgin.state.nj.us/OIT_NJGF/njgf_organization.jsp

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/NJMunicipalGIS/?yguid=89749886

November 14 is GIS Day. GISMO will be holding its General Meeting on Nov 14 at the Fund for the City of New York.

Some other events of note:

The NYS Dept of Health & Mental Hygiene is offering a map gallery and workshop
125 Worth Street
(212) 788-2221

New Jersey Institute of Technology plans panel discussions and demos by faculty involved in teaching/research in “Information Technology and GIS” to promote interdisciplinary collaborations.

Visit http://www.gisday.com/ for more November 14 events .

The next GISMO General Meeting will be held on Wednesday, Sept 19, 2007 at the Fund for the City of New York, 121 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY. For details, please visit the GISMO website.

The 2007 North East Map Organization (NEMO) Map Design Awards have been annouced. The competition has been established both to honor mapmakers in the Northeast and to promote map making and best practices. Categories have been established to honor professional and amateur mapmakers and those in high school, undergraduate and graduate programs. Groups composed of up to four students may submit collaborative projects.

• Best Data Integration

For a research project I am working on, I am interested in what your favorite usability issues are regarding using online and mobile maps.

Some thoughts:

Everyone is using Google mashups to add maps to their websites. It looks the same, works the same, returns the same kind of data, etc. Is this a good thing?

You spend a lot of money on GIS software, you put a lot of thought into figuring out what data to use, what level of detail, etc, you take advantage of all the nifty little usability enhancements that ESRI put into the latest version, you you publish your map on your website. Are people using it as intended? Are people having trouble? What indicators are you using to find out?

How often does your in car GPS system get you where you want to go? Can you rely on it enough to keep your paper maps at home?

Can you provide examples of web-based maps that you find to be incredibly useful and usable?

Thanks.

I’ll keep you updated on what I find, but feel free to add your comments here.

Noreen