In News 
OGCE to Advise North Rhine Westphalia Interoperability Project
The Open GIS Consortium's (OGC) European subsidiary, the Open GIS Consortium (Europe) Ltd. (OGCE) and the Landesvermessungsamt (Surveying and Mapping Agency) of the German State of North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) have agreed to collaborate on a Pilot Project that uses OpenGIS specification conformant commercial products. This will be the first Pilot Project for which OGCE has provided interoperability planning services. NRW is unique in Germany because data for land ownership is managed not at the state level, but by large cities and counties. The variety of software tools used across the state has provided extensive technological freedom, but has made data sharing difficult. The Pilot will involve common access and display of data from several internal GIS databases, including land ownership records, base map information from the Landesvermessungsamt itself and several other departments in the city government.
Visit : http://www.opengis.org/
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USGS to study subsurface geology of North Carolina coastal plains
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey are drilling a core hole at Kure Beach near the Ft. Fisher Historical Site that will be the first step in a statewide program to document and describe the subsurface geology of the North Carolina Coastal Plain. The goal of the drilling project is to develop a better understanding of the size and geographic extent of the water aquifers and the relationship between the aquifers, geology, and water quality in the state. The USGS research at Kure Beach involves drilling a 1,500-foot hole in the Earth, bringing up an intact core (underground sediment and rock) for analysis, and installing a deep probe in basement rocks in order to monitor seismic activity in the region. The drilling began this week and will continue until the end of July.
Visit : http://www.usgs.gov
MobileDispatch for Automated Vehicle Location
Motient Corporation has announced the signing of a reseller agreement with  Dynamic Mobile Data (DMD) of Somerset, NJ. DMD's flagship product is the MobileDispatch(TM) software suite, which recently added Automated Vehicle Location, a value added GPS service. The MobileDispatch software with Automated Vehicle Location is ideally suited for package delivery and field service applications. Field service is an area where Motient found early corporate users who could readily identify the cost savings in equipping their field personal with a quick and reliable way to communicate with their home offices or repair depots. Motient's largest corporate customers are field service or package tracking applications, including UPS and IBM. The MobileDispatch software, combined with Automated Vehicle Location, makes it possible for businesses with fleets to instantly retrieve vehicle locations and GPS codes sent wirelessly from the field to a central dispatch- mapping screen. The service provides on-demand tracking, or preset broadcasts of vehicle locations based on a company's needs.
Visit : http://www.dmdsys.com/ & http://www.motient.com/
ETL Brings Its Astus(R) Light Fleet Management System to the U.S.
ETL Electronique Ltd., a Canadian manufacturer of electronic protection products in the automobile after-sales market -- introduces its flagship Astus(R) light vehicle fleet management system to the U.S. market. As the industry's first and only alternative to heavy truck management systems, Astus(R) is specifically designed to serve the needs of small- to medium-sized businesses and providers of utility services who operate using a fleet of 4 to 50 light vehicles.
It provides fleet owners with a comprehensive, easy-to-use and economical fleet management system that enables them to increase productivity, reduce operating expenditures, keeps track of employee data.
Visit : http://www.astusfms.com/
New image of 'face on Mars'
Pasadena (California): Nearly 25 years after an orbiting spacecraft caught the red planet ``mugging'' for the camera, NASA released the highest-resolution image yet of the so-called ``face on Mars.'' The new picture, taken by the camera aboard the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft on April 8 and released on Thursday, shows the area in far sharper detail, but reduces any resemblance to a human-like extraterrestrial. Since the Viking 1 Orbiter first photographed the hill on Mars in July 1976, its facelike features have stirred the imagination of those who believe it was carved by an alien civilisation. The face even played a minor role in the movie ``Mission to Mars.'' National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists say the interplay of light and shadow gave the hill the brooding anthropomorphic features that stood out in the Viking pictures. Mr. Michael Malin, Principal Investigator of the Global Surveyor camera, said the new images showed the area to be nothing more than a hill.
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New ONGC chairman
New Delhi, Mr. Subir Raha has taken over as the Chairman-  cum-Managing Director of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). The earlier Chairman, Mr. B.C. Bora, retired on April 30 and the Additional Secretary, Petroleum Ministry, Mr. Naresh Narad, has been holding additional charge since then.
With 30 years experience in the oil industry, his last post was Director, Human Resource on the Board of Directors of the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), where he had been holding concurrent charge of business development, information systems and corporate communications since June 1998. During this period, he served as Chairman, Indian Oil, Panipat Power Consortium Limited (IPPCL) and the Indian Oil Petronas Limited (IPL). He was the founder- chairman of the managing committee of Kakinada Indian Oil LNG Consortium (KIOLC).
Cyclone may hit Kutch coast tonight
Gandhinagar, The severe cyclonic storm in the Arabian sea
may target Indian west coast. The Director of the Indian Meteorological Department, Ahmedabad, Mr. R. K. Kankane, said the cyclone's direction has slightly shifted and it is likely to hit the Kutch-Saurashtra coast between Veraval and Nalia on Saturday night.
The storm remained ``practically stationary'' during the last 24 hours about 500 km south south-west off the Veraval coast. Spread over some 300 km to 400 km with a circulating speed of 80 km to 100 km, the cyclone has virtually spared the south Gujarat regions and shifted towards Kutch-Saurashtra coast.  The State Government has shifted its attention from south to Kutch and the Saurashtra regions. In Kutch district, where the quake-hit live in the open or in tents, the State Government is keeping ready a large number of State transport buses to shift the people. Specially- trained rescue and relief teams had been deployed at Bhavnagar, Rajula, Mahuva, Kodinar, Porbandar, Dwarka, Veraval, Navlakhi and some other centres for emergency operations.
All the activities in the ports, including the central sector Kandla port, have been suspended and approaching ships have been advised to stay out of the range of the cyclonic storm. Danger signals have been hoisted in all the major and minor ports and the Gujarat Maritime Board had been asked to monitor the situation with the Indian Meteorological Department and the State control room.
Mr. Vala said that barring three boats with 15 fishermen, about 250 boats carrying around 1,600 fishermen had returned. Efforts were being made to contact the three boats.
Magnitude 8.1 earthquake predicted in Japan
Part of central Japan could suffer a magnitude 8.1 earthquake if a temblor occurs near the Itoi River-Shizuoka fault line, a government panel said in a reporton Friday. The quake, if it happens, would be between magnitude 7.8 and 8.1, a subcommittee of the Earthquake Research Committee said, adding that its intensity on the Japanese intensity scale would be a maximum 7 in Matsumoto, 6 in Hotaka and 5 in Azumi, all in Nagano Prefecture. The forecast supposes that the northern and central parts of the tectonic plate, stretching about 120 km, move simultaneously and that the focus of the quake is about 10 km below ground in the northern tip of the Gofukuji zone in Matsumoto.
The committee made its strength prediction by considering the movement of the fault line and the structure of the ground, saying this is the first such prediction in the world. The panel predicted the maximum value of acceleration, which measures the strength of a quake, could be up to 2,041 gals, exceeding the 818 gals in the Great Hanshin Earthquake and the 1,584 gals in the Tottori Prefecture earthquake. Both the Hanshin quake that devastated Kobe in January 1995 and left more than 6,400 dead and the Tottori quake in October, which injured about 50 people, were magnitude 7.3.
The panel had earlier said that areas around the fault line have a 14 percent likelihood of being hit by an magnitude 8 quake sometime in the next 30 years. The committee intends to draw a nationwide map of possible quakes with their estimated strengths by the end of fiscal 2004, after calculating the likelihood of their occurrence near 98 active zones and ocean trenches near Japan.
Source: The Japan Times. May 26, 2001
Mt. Everest's mountain of garbage
Ken Noguchi from Japan, leader of the Qomolangma Cleanup operation and Lee Song-bae from South Korea display garbage to photographers that has been cleared off Mt. Everest. The garbage, which was gathered from the site by climbers from all over Asia who are determined to clean up the area for visitors to the site and for future climbers, was displayed during a news conference in Kathmandu on Friday. Ken and his team brought back 1,600 kilograms of garbage from the Tibetan side of the mountain plan to take it back to Japan to show the public to help make people aware of the environment .
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/
Indonesia Urban Disaster Mitigation project
The Indonesia Urban Disaster Mitigation project (IUDMP) is in the process of implementing a risk assesment project. Six cities have been preliminarily identified for rapid risk assessment based on their level of seismic risk. The cities identified are: Bengkulu, Bandar Lampung, Cilegon, Sukabumi and Yogyakarta. Selection of cities for replication wil be based on cities' interest at the National Lessons Learned Workshop in Indonesia scheduled to be held at the end of August 2001. Results of the rapid risk assessment will include recommendations for more detailed work within the city for disaster preparedness and mitigation.
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