Tag Archive for 'Geoinformation'

This was AGIT 2008

Published
by
joesonic
on July 4, 2008
in Event
. 0 Comments

Today the AGIT 2008 will end and in my opinion it was a great event.

Starting with the keynote from Mike Goodchild with the topic ASSERTION AND AUTHORITY: USER-GENERATED GEOGRAPHIC CONTENT. He talks about Web 2.0 mechanisms for compiling and distributing massive amounts of information volunteered by users and the role of Geographic Information in this context. He shows some differences between traditional approaches to generate geographic content form authoritative sources. The talk includes some examples for volunteered geographic information (VGI); the motivations that drive it, its accuracy, its value to science, its preservation, and a number of other issues. In his opinion (and also mine) VGI is likely to play an increasingly important role in spatial data infrastructure in the coming years. Form the content of the presentation most thinks are well known and is not new anymore but it is an experience to see such a keynote live.

There are several other great talks covering many different areas of Geoinformatics. For example there was a talk about the Geoportal of Rheinland-Pfalz from the WhereGroup using Open source Web-GIS solutions, or one talk about the use of GIS in the Austrian Federal Ministery of Interior (BMI). A. Zipf and P. Neis talk about OpenLS and OpenStreetMaps in OpenRouteService.org. In another Block he explains the processing of Digital Terrain Models (DTM) via Grid computing.

Of course the quality of the talks and presentation is very broad. They range from product presentations for different companies of the GI sector, which are more or less advertisements to sophisticated and high quality talks with academic background.

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.

GeoGames 2008

Published
by
joesonic
on June 24, 2008
in Event, Fun and GIS
. 0 Comments

Geogames is an event with the objective to apply Geoinformation playfully. The pupils should learn to use GIS to solve tasks of everyday’s life. Four different station with topics about Geography, GIS, etc. give an insight where these technologies are used. Students from the Carinthian University of Applied Sciences (CUAS) support pupils in their tasks and at each station.

The event is organized by the CUAS and the federal state government of Carinthia.

On the homepage the pupils will see their walking routes as GPS tracks.

When: 25.06.2008, 8:30 a.m

Where: FH Kärnten | Europastraße 4 | A-9524 Villach/St. Magdalen

Official Site: www.geogames.at

Announcement: http://www.fh-kaernten.at/cms/stg-geo/news_3212.htm

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.

Quaility and GeoWeb 2.0

Published
by
admin
on March 13, 2008
in GIS and Web
. 1 Comment

A very commonly question about Geoweb 2.o is about quality assurance. In the web 2.0 users are not only data consumers nearly everyone becomes a data producer. If we think about projects like Wikipedia which is typical Web 2.0 application this is an important topic and it is also important for the Geoweb (e.g. OpenStreetMap).

How can we guarantee that the data produced is accurate? Which mechanism will be used to ensure data quality?

According to Vinton Cerf the answer is quite simple:

It’s important to think also about other media as well, because the internet is working basically in the same way - it is no better no worse than other media in which information is conveyed. How do we guarantee that all information in the newspapers (TV, books, …) is correct? - The answer is: We don’t. What we do is that we look for indicators of acceptance. You maybe don’t look at every movie on the TV, you probably don’t read every newspaper. You ask your friends about their opinion. You look for social idications for approval, acceptance or accurency. This is also the way how it will work in the Web 2.0.

What is important in this space is branding.

(There is no absulute accurency - also not in Geoinformation)

But there are some technical opportunities to prevent imput of falsified or modified information (e.g., digital signitures).

[via geoweb conference 2007]

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.

User-friendly Desktop Internet GIS

Published
by
admin
on February 19, 2008
in GIS
. 0 Comments

I’m currently looking for some interesting open source or freeware GIS desktop software. To answer the question about an alternative for ArcGIS, Intergraph Geomedia or MapInfo I will introduce some alternative freeware GIS tools. The first application I found on the net is uDig.

What is uDig?

uDig is an GIS software program produced by a community led by Canadian-based company Refractions Research. It is based around the Eclipse platform and features full layered Open Source GIS. It is written in Java and released under GNU Lesser General Public License.

udig.png

Project Outline

The goal of uDig is to provide a complete Java solution for desktop GIS data access, editing, and viewing. uDig aims to be:

  • User friendly, providing a familiar graphical environment for GIS users;
  • Desktop located, running as a thick client, natively on Windows, Mac OS/X and Linux;
  • Internet oriented, consuming standard (WMS, WFS, WCS) and de facto (GeoRSS, KML, tiles) geospatial web services; and,
  • GIS ready, providing the framework on which complex analytical capabilities can be built, and gradually subsuming those capabilities into the main application.

[http://udig.refractions.net]

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.