According to Robert David Steele, author of ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (AFCEA, 2000): "The current efforts of the Administration toward intelligence reform merit support from the Congress and the public. It is imperative, however, that the reform be substantive and that there be considerable changes in the leadership, strategy, and qualitative methods of intelligence and counterintelligence, or this reform effort will fail." "The National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) is a vital case in point. Today, as increasing numbers of U.S. ground forces are being channeled toward operations in Afghanistan where their lives will be a risk from both hostile combatants and treacherous terrain, NIMA has yet to produce adequate 1:50,000 combat charts that are essential to the successful navigation of terrain, coordination of firepower, and evacuation of wounded personnel." "The best maps in the world for Afghanistan are instantly and cheaply available from the Russian military through East View Cartographic, an established open source provider of proven reliability. The maps are so
extraordinary that they include just under 1,000 caves across Afghanistan, all carefully marked. While by no means comprehensive, these combat charts are superior to anything NIMA might be able to produce within the next year. The best NIMA has to offer right now is 1:100,00 maps not suitable for combined arms operations, and based on 1950's information." "NIMA says these Russian military maps are 'significantly flawed and inaccurate' not only with respect to labels, but also geospatially and geodesically. The former Russian manager responsible says that NIMA is wrong. He says that these Russian military maps, maps that could save American lives, are the best Russia has ever produced because they are not only based on aerial imagery instead of satellite imagery, but reflect extraordinary accuracy from ground control surveys conducted during the lengthy Russian occupation of Afghanistan."
Visit:
http://www.oss.net/
Top Stories
Bernie Moriarty as Surveyor of the Year
Prominent champion of the surveying industry, Bernie Moriarty, has been named Professional Surveyor of the Year 2001. The award recognises Bernie's leading role in the industry over many years and was presented by the NSW Divisions of the Institution of Surveyors Australia and the Association of Consulting Surveyors Australia on 3 November. Bernie is currently Director of Qasco and Vice Chair of the recently formed Australian Spatial Information Business Association (ASIBA). The award paid tribute to Bernie's vision for his profession, a strong desire for unity, a recognition for the role of surveyors in the sustainable development of society and a desire for expanding opportunities for work in a world market. Over the past 12 months, Bernie has been an active member of the Steering Committee for the Spatial Information Industry Action Agenda, attending numerous meetings of interested groups to report and obtain feedback. As Vice Chair of ASIBA, Bernie's ongoing role will be to ensure the recommendations made by the Steering Committee are acted on. Accepting the award, Bernie highlighted the importance to the mapping and surveying profession of a strong and healthy Commonwealth government sector via AUSLIG, which is a strong supporter of the private sector. He also acknowledged support for the spatial information industry by Senator Minchin, Minister for Industry, Science and Resource, who recently announced a package of initiatives designed to stimulate development of a viable private sector spatial information industry in Australia.
Visit:
http://www.auslig.gov.au/new.htm#surveyor
Maporama's maps guide Boulanger's customers
Boulanger, premier distributor of electric home appliances, and Maporama, European leader in online cartography and geocentric solutions, announce today the integration of a Maporama-powered store-locator into Boulanger's website, localising its 67 stores across France. On the homepage of the http://www.boulanger.fr/ website, Internet users may directly access a form where they key-in an address of their choice. In a single click, Maporama provides an overall map with all Boulanger points of sales highlighted on it to situate them according to the user-input address. An exhaustive listing of store addresses is also available. Each Boulanger store listed is accompanied with direct links to a detailed street-level map and to a door-to-door itinerary in order to guide Internet users from the input address to they store of their choice.
Visit:
http://www.boulanger.fr/ &
http://www.maporama.com/
Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management receives award
The Archaeological & Recreational Section of the Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management (SRM) was recently presented with an Award of Excellence at ESRI Canada's annual ESRI Regional User Conference in Victoria. Alex Miller, President of ESRI Canada, the leading geographic information systems (GIS) provider in Canada, presented the Award in recognition of the SRM's innovative approach to developing and implementing the Heritage Resource Inventory Application (HRIA). More than 100 GIS professionals were on hand for the presentation, which was one of the highlights of the conference. The HRIA is an application for the management of archaeological and other Heritage data using GIS and Oracle in an integrated environment. The HRIA was designed to replace an existing system and they chose a solution that provides a powerful, fully integrated, multi-user architecture leveraging the latest technology including ArcObjects, ArcSDE, and Oracle 8. The HRIA is an application for the management of archaeological and other Heritage data using GIS and Oracle in an integrated environment. The HRIA was designed to replace an existing system and they chose a solution that provides a powerful, fully integrated, multi-user architecture leveraging the latest technology including ArcObjects, ArcSDE, and Oracle 8.
Visit:
www.esricanada.com
GeoDecisions' Client Receives National Award
The Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (AMPO) recently presented the national award for outstanding achievement in metropolitan transportation planning to the Johnson City, Tenn., Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization (MTPO). The MTPO received the award at the annual AMPO conference in Atlanta, Ga., for their work on the Johnson City Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) project. Alan Bridwell, MTPO coordinator, attended the conference and accepted the award. GeoDecisions, a full-service software-independent geographic information system resource and technology company, has been the prime contractor for MTPO on the Johnson City ITS project since 1998. GeoDecisions operates as a division of Gannett Fleming, an international consulting engineering and construction management firm. The MTPO received the award for their development of several technology-based projects that were created or supported by GeoDecisions. The organization transferred all major products, maps, and plans to a digital format viewable in several different mediums, including a website. It also created a regional traffic management system that uses ITS. AMPO presented one national award this year for metropolitan planning organization areas with less than 200,000 people across the United States.
Visit:
www.gannettfleming.com
Preparations underway for ESRI's Eighth Annual GIS User Conference in Latin America
ESRI, the leading developer of geographic information system (GIS) software, is pleased to announce that the Eighth Annual ESRI/ERDAS Latin American User Conference will be held November 28-30, 2001, at the Hotel Quito in Quito, Ecuador. In addition to a visionary keynote address by ESRI President Jack Dangermond, the conference will feature a wide variety of activities including plenary sessions, software presentations, workshops, user presentations, and a poster exhibit. Product specialists will demonstrate ESRI's GIS software and the ERDAS remote sensing and geographic imaging software products. Of special interest is the number of GIS classes that will be taught prior to the conference, which will focus on ESRI's latest software release ArcGIS, geodatabase management, and ArcObjects programming with VBA. All classes will be taught in Spanish. Sponsors of the conference include software developers ESRI and ERDAS and distributors IDS-Ecuador and Prosis S.A.
Visit:
www.idsecuador.com &
www.esri.com
Telegeo'2002, Third international symposium-First call for Papers
Telegeo'2002-Third international symposium is to be held at Nice-Sophia Antipolis, Francefrom July, 3-5, 2002. This conference aims at bringing all people acrrying out research in novel systems in telegeoprocessing, cross-fertilisation betwen Geographic Information System (GIS) and Telecommunications. Telegeoprocessing can be defined as a new discipline based on real time spatial database updated regularly by means of telecommunications system in order to support online decision-making. The main objectives of this symposium are the definitions of theoretical and concepual fundementals of telegeoprocessing, the description of applictions and related common fundamentals problems occuring and to determine and propose research directions to improve the understanding and applications of Telegeoprocessing. An analysis of the paper from the two first TeleGeo Symposia shows the important uses of TeleGeoprocessing techniques and methods in the fields of Risk. This year, a special emphasis will be put on risk management and decision support. Papers on these two domains are especially welcome. Please, send full papers, limited to 12 pages for extended paper and 6 pages for shorts paper,
together with authors' names and adresses to the Program Comittee Chairman by january
31,2002 only by electronic submission to Dr Tullio J. TANZI. E-mail:
Tullio.Tanzi@cindy.cma.fr
Visit:
http://lisisun1.insa-lyon.fr/telegeo/telegeo2002
Asia News
Chinese Farmers Use Computers for Farming
BEIJING, November 12 -- Many Chinese farmers have begun growing crops in computer-controlled rooms instead of tilling fields with spades.
They apply fertilizer, water fields and treat insect pest with equipment controlled by computers in intelligent farm workshops. Their products, in high quality and great variety, are shipped to supermarkets and hotels and sold at a good price.
More than 150 agro-technological guiding systems have been set up in Yunnan, Anhui, Jilin and Hainan provinces to teach farmers how to cultivate grain crops, vegetables, fruit and aquatic products.
In the 20 demonstration zones built between 1998 and 2000, grain output was increased by 2 billion kg, saving 640 million yuan in production costs.
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the cities of Shanghai and Beijing are experimenting with the satellite positioning technology for accurate control of fertilizer application.
Source: Xinhua News Agency
