Google Earth Engine API : An ambitious Project

A highly ambitious project by Google, Google Earth Engine, will be launch by  the end of 2011. This project is using high resolution images from more than 30 earth observing satellites such as Landsat, MODIS, IKONOS, QuicBird etc to build global archive of atmospheric corrected data sets. According to Earth Engine team, these archives will be"available online with tools for scientists, independent researchers, and nations to mine this massive warehouse of data to detect changes, map trends and quantify differences on the earth's surface" in a cloud computing platform. 


Currently, this project is in testing phase with limited  access to few groups of partner including CLASlite and IMAZON.  Let us wait and see how far they can go !!!

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Cloud-based GIS application : ESRI Community Analyst

Community Analyst includes demographic, health, economic, education, and business data variables to help users develop informed strategies for policy creation and critical resource allocation. Decisions such as matching health care clinics to areas with the greatest need or allocating infrastructure funding for maximum community impact can now be made and supported using customizable reports and maps more.

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Custom Google Maps Style

From last couple of days I was busy on Google custom styling like http://maps-api-tt.appspot.com/apilite/styled/styled.html .

Fortunately, I found a good tutorial to share to carry out such custom styling. Check it out @bestfromgoogle  

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875 Tornado hit USA in April 2011

The U.S. experienced unprecedented tornado activity throughout the month of April 2011. The NOAA Storm Prediction Center received 875 tornado reports during that month alone; 625 have been confirmed as tornadoes, so far. Many of these storms were concentrated during 7 different major outbreaks, mostly in the Southern U.S. The largest of these outbreaks occurred during April 27-28, leaving over 300 people dead as over 180 storms were reported from Texas to Virginia.

This animation shows the GOES-East infrared imagery from April 1-30, along with the locations of each tornado that formed during the time (symbolized as red dots). Though tornadoes cannot actually be seen by GOES, these satellites are instrumental in being able to detect the conditions associated with their formation. As the resolution of GOES has increased with each successive satellite series, so have the warning times for tornadoes. The future GOES-R satellite will provide even higher resolution and storm prediction capability, especially with the use of the Geostationary Lightning Mapper sensor. The actual tornado locations are acquired from the Storm Prediction Center, which uses both NEXRAD radar and ground reports to generate a detailed database of tornadoes in the U.S.

Source

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Choropleth mapping techniques for Web2.0

For my recent project, I have to display county wise time series data of disease pattern in web map for the conterminous United States for 20 years. In addition, I have to use Google maps as base layer and should overlay images on the top of it.  The concept sounds easy, and it was also similar with choropleth or thematic mapping. However, it should be in the Web 2.0.

I tried to figure out what are the possible ways to achieve this, I tried and few of them. Here I am going to share the pros and cons of these methods in a real quick and dirty style.

Choropleth with GFT

1) Google Fusion Tables

Pros:
Easy, No understanding of computer programming needed. Upload small or large data sets from spreadsheets or CSV files. Visualize your data on maps, timelines and charts. Pick who can access your data; hide parts of your data if needed. Merge data from multiple tables.

Cons:
Not much flexible and you can’t tweaks easily according to your needs. 

Choropleth with Cartographer.JS and Google API

2) Cartographer.js and Google API

Pros: It generates choropleth maps directly from database or other standard data handlers. Fast for small area mapping.

Cons:
Understanding of JavaScript is needed. It supports only US (County and State level data). I got performance is worst if we map entire 50 states. I recommend it to use to map few states only. Although cartographer.js's documentation claims browser friendly, it is horrible with IE, works so so with Firefox and chrome. 

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Raster Misalignment with Base Data in ArcMap10

In the early Friday morning of mid May, I got an email from one of my team member about raster misalignment problem in ArcGIS10. I also tried to overlay couples of previously working Tiff and Grid raster files in ArcMap9.3 and ArcMap10. The ArcMap9.3 overlay raster files perfectly aligned as we all desired, but ArcMap10 did not.

Unaligned

Aligned

From the ESRI website, I got to know that the issue of misalignment of Tiff in ArcMap10 is a bug in ArcGIS 10. The ESRI team announced two solutions to solve Tiff shift into wrong geographic locations:

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Good Book for GIS Beginners: Book I

Getting to know ArcGIS Desktop is one of the book kept in my collections ever. I started GIS from this book in 2009. It is easy, simple, and step by step tutorials with lots of real time beginner's project.

This book has very useful basics for using ArcGIS 10 , especially ArcMap 10 . It is primarily targeted for beginners with lots of hand on exercises, which are easy to follow with plenty of screen shots that made it easy to find the necessary buttons/menus/lists on my screen.

However, the major drawback of this book is the ArcGIS software comes with book has 180 days license.  

Most of the universities uses this book for GIS beginners. .In amazon.com this book is come up with special discount. Don't forget to catch the deal. I have lots of GIS books in my bookshelf,  I will write about them later. Hope this helps for you. Cheers !! Grab a coffee and enjoy your work..

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Malaria against malaria: Pre-existing malaria infection can prevent second infection

Today, Nature published a good research about malaria prevention using Malaria against Malaria.  The research was successfully accomplished in  rats. Here is the abstract from www.medicalxpress.com  " A team of researchers have found that pre-existing malaria prevents secondary infection by another Plasmodium strain, the parasite responsible for malaria, by restricting iron availability in the liver of the host. This discovery will be published this Sunday, May 15, in Nature Medicine and has important implications for the management and prevention of malaria, a condition which affects millions of individuals worldwide." more

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New way of Mapping : Crisis Mapping

The above video about the uses of cell phone for mapping to help disaster victims world wide. This method was initially built for Haiti earthquake disaster, then used by Japan, and currently this technology is using in Alabama. Today, there are hundreds of volunteers in more than 50 countries creating maps of crises around the world via their cell phones

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

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Nostalgic vibe at SDSU

Faculty listing, Department of Geography, SDSU

As a quixotic geographer exploring and trying new things in everyday in life really matters to me.  However, I would not forget our great people who spent their lifes in geography and inspire me to be a good geographer. I got a chance to know about the history of old geographers and their geography practice then in "Geographic Evolution of Thought". I used to get boared in my history class, but I very much enjoyed the class geographic evolution of thought by Dr. George White at South Dakota Sate University.  To memorize all great people who contributed in the geography department so far, I made a visual list of them.

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