TOP
STORIES
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Google Earth to blur key Indian sites amid security concerns
"We are pleased to have initiated dialogue with the Indian government, the discussions have been substantive and constructive, but...
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China launches fourth Beidou navigation satellite
According to a Chinese newspaper, an official said, “The Beidou satellite navigation experimental system is operating well and has played a...
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$975.0 million budget proposed for USGS in Fiscal Year 2008
“The proposed increases will strengthen USGS efforts in support of key Departmental and Presidential priorities such as the Healthy Lands...
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Satellite killing test by China against international convention: ISRO chief
"Nair, also Secretary in the Department of Space, said India has the capability to conduct such a test, but categorically added that it has no...
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US flood maps may have out-of-date data: Report
"The most immediate need is for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) flood mapping program. Those maps are used by...
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WORLD THIS WEEK
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Malaysia seeks help from Japanese experts for developing flood hazard mapping
He said in some developed countries, flood hazard maps were easily accessible to the public for public awareness and education...
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NID and Autodesk join hands to promote design education in India
Richard Jones, Vice President of Autodesk said that under the agreement students on all three campuses - Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Gandhinagar...
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UK's leading water suppliers to make use of OS MasterMap Address Layer 2
Places without an address can include locations as diverse as churches to public toilets. With the added knowledge provided by OS MasterMap...
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China to launch "Haiyang-1B" (Ocean 1B) in April
In another development China's State Council has endorsed plans to launch the second-generation of the country's oceanic survey satellites. The...
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MapInfo launches MarketBalance for enhanced B2B sales results in the communications industry
Companies have the ability to realign the sales force proactively to bring underperforming territory sales to an optimum level. “MarketBalance is a...
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EDITORIAL
The 3GSM World Congress kicks off today in Barcelona and among the exhibitors are some names the geospatial community is very familiar with. The dependence of all thing geospatial on Location results in GPS being part and parcel of our tool kit. SiRF and
u-blox are just two of the many GPS chip manufacturers who will be present. u-blox will unveil the u-blox 5 -a GPS and Galileo ready chip with a 50 channel engine and acquisition times of less than a second...wow. It promises to tell you exactly where you are even in the urban jungle or deep in the mall. Spatial data collection will never be the same again...
Loss to property and life in Indonesia due to the recent floods and the impending threat to health of its citizens... US flood maps may have out of date data...Mumbai Municipality in India has no maps (updated) for its disaster management cell... ! Is this global state of affairs due to the mapping projects churning out maps as glorified pictures with no specific focus on upgrading, applicability, practical usage or accuracy (of the required degree)? Many a times just after a major disaster the governing bodies (generally the Municipalities) make grand announcements of putting a disaster management plan in place. As the days go by the only thing happening is the procurement of expensive GIS software and the necessary hardware. It would be a worth while exercise to correlate number of GIS software licenses in various government bodies and the actual establishment of 'ready to use by citizens - geographic information services' especially the life saving kind. The success stories are off course few and one cant but help laud the work done by the U K's Ordinance Survey.
What decides a national security risk? The risk to the life of a high profile person or important monument? Or is it the loss of a certain facility that contributed or saved millions of man hours? The answer will vary depending on who is answering. For coastal cities where the lifelines are the bridges that join the city to main land, the risk of sabotage or destruction of these is very much a national security risk. Take for example the twin bridges that connect a metropolis like Mumbai with the main land – These two bridges alone are responsible for more than 100,000 humans commuting to the city every day. A disruption of this facility would mean a loss of at least 200,000 man hours which is the additional commuting time that would be required per day. So how big a national security risk does a high resolution satellite image shown here of these bridges pose? Google Earth has agreed to blur the imagery over key Indian sites! I look forward to your to views and comments on this decision.
Dr. Hrishikesh Samant
hrishikesh@gisdevelopment.net
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 ARTICLES OF THE WEEK
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 GIS Development – Recap
Sanjay Kumar
CEO, GIS Development
GIS Development - The Geospatial Communication Network, traces its origins to the quest of search for information about Geographical Information Systems...
 Geographic Information: Emerging Business Models
Professor Michael Blakemore
IDRA Ltd. and University of Durham, UK
I personally live in a nation with a hybrid attitude to the price of access to ‘public resources’. Currently, and it is importantly to say currently because...
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INTERVIEW
GIS for Growth
 Kapil Sibal
Minister of Science & Technology and Earth Sciences
Government of India
The present challenge with government is how to get the maps at that level and how to put them into public domain and user agencies to use maps and then to develop private public... |
CORPORATE
GeoEye makes final debt payment for the purchase of Space Imaging
While the two and one-half year facility did not have an amortization repayment schedule, it was structured to be repaid from excess cash flow...
Sierra Atlantic signed as INPHO’s distributor for India
“INPHO’s software system is designed for heavy-duty production, offering stunning throughput and unsurpassed quality. With INPHO’s solutions for...
USGS acquires high-resolution aerial imagery from AirPhotoUSA
“High-resolution imagery is a vital resource for agencies involved in domestic security and emergency response,” said Marc Tremblay, Vice...
Indonesian agency makes use of GIS to support rebuilding activities of humanitarian agencies
Not only does the metadata catalog provide guidance and accessibility to necessary datasets, but it also establishes confidence in the quality of the data...
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NEW PRODUCTS
ER Mapper to launch high-speed JPEG 2000 image compression application in March
Image Compressor provides color balancing, mosaicking, cropping, reprojection and many other features to compliment the image...
PLTS for ArcGIS—Mapping Agency Solution 9.2 now includes new data models and tools
By using Mapping Agency Solution, a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) product, participating NMCAs can easily access the same production...
Galileo-ready GPS chip featuring an acquisition performance of less than one second to be unveiled at 3GSM World Congress
A built-in power management unit features a DC/DC converter that optimizes power use across a single voltage source. The chip's ultra-low power needs ensure...
ProSDK and ProPacks 1.1 released by PCI Geomatics
Both Windows and Linux editions of the ProSDK and ProPacks are available, with detailed documentation included to support customers’...
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