Vancouver Sun
Internet service will provide full aerial views
Marke Andrews, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, July 19, 2008

An overhead view of Port Alberni illustrates what can happen when government works with an Internet mapping service.

The right side of the image on this page depicts what Google Earth and Google Maps showed before entering into an agreement with the B.C. provincial government: Streets are identified, and you can make out green space and built-up sections, but the map is vague on details.

On the left side of the image is what you can see with the government’s help: A high-definition view in which houses and commercial buildings can be picked out and, zooming in, you can make out individual trees in all that green space.

On Friday, Agriculture and Lands Minister Stan Hagen announced GeoBC, a government organization, will provide 24/7 access to the province’s geographic database in partnership with Google. This information will be available online at geobc.gov.bc.ca and from Google Earth.

This makes B.C. the first government in Canada to supply Google with access to its information.

At the touch of a computer button, residents and tourists can check out an area before hitting the road, and industry executives and entrepreneurs can scout a location to see if it’s a viable place to set up shop.

A mining executive wanting to check out an area in northern B.C. can get aerial and 3-D images of the area, and also find information from GeoBC’s provincial geographic warehouse about such things as mineral potential, the existing road network and transmission lines, as well as existing constraints on land use, such as wildlife habitat, first nations treaty settlement issues, and the existence of trap lines.

"A question we get asked quite a bit is, ‘Where are the power lines?’ " said Mark Zacharias, acting assistant deputy minister for GeoBC. "If you’re going to have a development, you will need access to the grid, so this gives you that."

Zacharias said that by making this available on Google Earth, "not only will you be able to zoom in on an area and get a high-resolution view, you’ll also be able to download about 600 different themes from the provincial [geographic] data warehouse."

In a statement, Hagen said that this information "is essential for decision-makers, and we hope to see this information drive innovation and new business opportunities in B.C."

Zacharias said having this information on Google "will make it that much easier for citizens, business interests, environmental groups or anyone interested in coming here to be able to look at B.C., query what they want to look at and get the answer they want."

He also said that GeoBC hopes to have 200 of the themes posted by the fall, with the full 600 themes available in early 2009.

While Friday’s announcement is the first partnership between a Canadian government and Google, digital mapping expert Ron Lake expects more will follow.

"I think we’ll see something like this all over the world," said Lake, CEO and chairman of Galdos Systems Inc. and an organizer of next week’s GeoWeb conference, Monday to Friday at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue.

"With the introduction of high-resolution aerial photography, 3-D city models and ground-level photography, you can see things at a scale that matters for urban planning or urban development," said Lake.

mandrews@png.canwest.com

To see full article, Vancouver Sun

Geo Community
SpatialNews.com Press Release
July 14, 2008

ESRI Sponsoring GeoWeb 2008, Geospatial Information Conference

Redlands, CA — ESRI and ESRI Canada Limited will discuss and demonstrate how new technological advances make it easier to access geospatial information over the Internet during the GeoWeb 2008 conference being held in Vancouver, B.C., July 21–25, 2008. ESRI is a platinum sponsor of the conference.

The theme for GeoWeb 2008 is Infrastructure: Local to Global. Geographic information is now widely distributed on the Web and routinely integrated into thousands of applications and services including infrastructure support. Technology has evolved to a point where anyone can be a contributor to the GeoWeb and everyone can be a participant, from data access to infrastructure protection.

Alex Miller, president of ESRI Canada, will give a keynote address at GeoWeb 2008. Miller will cover pressing topics for GeoWeb and geographic information system (GIS) users including how to manage data sharing and workflows for enhanced communication and efficiency as well as improved decision making. In addition, ESRI and ESRI Canada will present three papers and lead two hands-on workshops. Presentation topics will include

• Leveraging Web services to access GIS resources in data, maps, and analysis
• Using JavaScript APIs to quickly and easily transform spatial mashups into advanced analysis applications
• Interoperability and the mass market initiatives (REST and JavaScript approaches) that use Web 2.0 patterns for extending the traditional interoperability paradigm
• Next-generation emergency response systems—The communication infrastructure, situational information, and directions to the emergency
• Best practices guide for intellectual property protection and licensing issues around the prudent use of geospatial data on the Web

"The widespread use of the GeoWeb is really just beginning," says Miller. "Technological advances in interoperability are opening up the use of geography for new applications including situational awareness and decision making. The GeoWeb and the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) are providing new opportunities to share geographic information across a spectrum of user communities."

Conference attendees can visit ESRI at booth #2 for more information on these topics and the latest geospatial technology capabilities. Also, interact with online demonstrations of the JavaScript APIs by visiting www.esri.com/serverdemos and learn about all the interoperability standards that ESRI supports at www.esri.com/standards. To register for GeoWeb 2008, visit www.geowebconference.org.

About ESRI
Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world’s mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.

Episode 147

May 11, 2008

Main Topic: Ron Lake and Bob Samborski on the Geowebconference

Cadalyst.com- view original

Conference hosts debut student contest.
Apr 14, 2008
By: Kenneth Wong

In Dallas, Texas, Bryan Chastain, a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas, is building a Web-based mapping application that lets high school football teams select neutral sites for playoff games. About 1,200 miles north, in Toronto, Ontario, Ryerson University student Eric Chang is working on a collaboration platform that lets people in different locations share the same GIS application. In June, Chastain and Chang’s programs, along with dozens of others, will be forwarded to a committee of GIS industry leaders as entries for a student contest at the GeoWeb 2008 Conference (July 21-25, Vancouver, BC, Canada). If they both make it to the conference, Chastain and Chang might actually meet, confirming the tagline for the conference: "Everything is connected."

Play Ball
Apparently, finding neutral ground for a football playoff takes quite a bit of wrangling. Chastain, who is as much a fan of the game as he is of geospatial technologies, explained, "Coaches from the competing teams would come together to pick a neutral site. Ideally, they won’t want the venue to be advantageous to one team or another. It should be the middle ground, roughly equal distance from both schools. It shouldn’t take too much driving time to get there for either side."

The size of the teams is also a consideration. Depending on the number of students enrolled in a semester year, a Texas school falls somewhere within the official 1A (smallest) to 6A (largest) rating system. A six-player team on the lower end of the scale, for example, would typically play in an 80 x 40 yard field; an 11-player team generally requires a 100 x 54 yard field.

"A 5A-rated team would need a standard playoff stadium, whereas a 1A team can just play in a high school stadium," Chastain observed.

Chastain estimates the total number of high school football teams in Texas to be 1,500. His database accounts for 1,517. TexasHSFootball.com, a free resource portal for fans of Texas high school football, reports, "On Friday nights during the football season, it is understood that as many as one in 15 Texas residents are attending, playing, coaching, or taking part in activities at a high school football game. In rural areas, this number is much greater."

Bryan Chastain, a contestant of GeoWeb 2008’s Student Contest, is working on a Web-based application powered by Google Maps to help Texas football coaches select the best playoff sites.

Chastain had previously developed a version of his application in ESRI’s ArcGIS. But he realized the football coaches will not likely have a GIS application installed on their desktops, nor would they know how to navigate the complicated interface.

He also discovered a flaw in his previous setup. "I used a straight line to calculate the travel time and distance between the school and the playoff field," he explained. "But in certain areas, especially rural areas, the roads aren’t straight."

So he went back to the drawing board. This time, using JAVA scripts and the KML markup language (used by Google Earth and Google Map), he developed a program that taps into Google Map’s open application programming interface (API). This way, his application can take advantage of Google Map’s existing geospatial data to compute the travel time and distance to the playoff venue.

"It’s has a Web interface, so anyone anywhere with a browser can get on it," he pointed out.

Chastain had since learned quite a bit about how football coaches think. "One of the items they consider when selecting a site, which I hadn’t thought of, is whether they’ve played on a particular field before," he revealed. "Players’ familiarity with the venue can give them advantage."

He’s now working on incorporating the newfound information into his application. For stadium locations, he used the data found at www.texasbob.com/football as the starting point. He geocoded — and corrected — the addresses listed as needed.

NetMeeting for GIS
Chang describes his program, currently named GeoLink, as a collaborative 3D GIS application. Simply put, he’s developing the geospatial equivalent of Microsoft NetMeeting.

"Just like in NetMeeting [where people share and work on Office applications remotely via the Web], globally dispersed team members will be able to share their 3D GIS environment [on GeoLink]," he explained.

As required by the contest, Chang uses open-source programming languages, including JAVA, JAVA 3D, Xj3D, Jgroup, and Jade.

"The first phase of the prototype is complete," Chang said. "We’re into the second phase, where we’re testing out [the application] to make sure that people can not only share the environment simultaneously but work in it collaboratively."

Eric Chang is developing a collaborative environment in which users can share a 3D GIS application, as they would with Office applications in Netmeeting.

Furthermore, Chang is introducing certain social networking dynamics found in sites like Facebook to GeoLink. "The main idea we borrowed from social networking sites is the way [the users] know what the others are doing," Chang said.

On Facebook a user can choose to enable a "newsfeed" option, which notifies him or her with the latest updates about what the people in his or her network are doing. For instance, when someone in the user’s network adds a new friend or posts a new photo, the user gets a notice about the activity. In Chang’s application, a similar feature informs team members of the decisions and operations made by the others that may have an impact on the project.

The theme of the GeoWeb conference this year is "Infrastructure: Local to Global." This is also the first time the organizers are hosting a student contest, which challenges participants to "materially advance the development of the GeoWeb with either a theoretical solution or a piece of software." All software must be open source and free of any royalties or "other encumbrances." Chastain and Chang have two more months to fine-tune their codes and put the finishing touches on their applications.

GeoWorld

Industry Outlook 2008 — Peering through the Looking Glass