Today, I was working on Shapefiles from Australia and Nepal for my biodiversity research. I found DIVA GIS is useful for the scientist and students who can't afford ESRI's ArcGIS suite. DIVA-GIS is particularly useful for mapping and analyzing biodiversity data, such as the distribution of species, or other 'point-distributions'. It reads and write standard data formats such as ESRI shapefiles, so interoperability is not a problem. DIVA-GIS runs on Windows and (with minor effort) on Mac OSX.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Google Earth Engine API : An ambitious Project
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 !!!
Thursday, July 7, 2011
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.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
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
Fortunately, I found a good tutorial to share to carry out such custom styling. Check it out @bestfromgoogle
Friday, June 3, 2011
875 Tornado hit USA in April 2011
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.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
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.
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.
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.
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 |
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 |
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.
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:
Monday, May 16, 2011
Good Book for GIS Beginners: Book I
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
Sunday, May 15, 2011
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
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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