Geography Matters

Essential Information Organization Uses GIS to Monitor Bank Lending Trends

2008-05-07T23:11:00Z

Founded in 1982 by Ralph Nader, Essential Information is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization involved in a variety of projects to encourage citizens to become active and engaged in their communities.

The organization's GIS Action for Economic and Social Justice Project addresses a range of crucial and closely interwoven social and economic justice needs. The project focuses primarily on core social and economic concerns: workers earning less than a livable wage, affordable housing needs, regressive federal budget policies, housing discrimination and exclusionary housing policies, and access to financial services, especially for community reinvestment purposes, small business, and small farms.

Subprime lending, which has grabbed newspaper headlines for the past several months, has been a long time concern for the organization. Below is a map of Richmond, Virginia depicting the subprime lenders' market share of conventional refinancing loans in 2002 as viewed by census tract. The diagonal overlay highlights minority residential areas.

Courtesy of the Essential Information Web site http://www.public-gis.org/index.html

Mapquotes - Eleanor Roosevelt

2008-05-07T23:07:00Z

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home-so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: The neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

From Statements at Presentation of In Your Hands: A Guide for Community Action for the Tenth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1958)

Logo courtesy of the United Nations Human Rights Web site http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Pages/WelcomePage.aspx

The 60^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be celebrated on December 10, 2008.

Who Inspired GIS Day?

2008-05-06T19:09:00Z

Do you know where the inspiration for GIS Day came from? During a GIS Day kickoff celebration at the National Geographic Society in 1999, Jack Dangermond, ESRI president, said GIS Day was inspired by Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and environmentalist, as a way to inform the public about the emerging role and benefit of GIS. Read more.

Mark your calendar; the tenth annual GIS Day celebration will be held on Wednesday, November 19, 2008. Learn more about GIS Day.

ESRI Supports Conservation Efforts Throughout the World

2008-04-23T22:01:00Z

ESRI has participated for many years in a number of conservation initiatives including those projects sponsored by the UNEP-WCMC and the highly successful Conservation Geoportal.

The Conservation Geoportal is a collaborative effort by and for the conservation community to facilitate the discovery and publishing of GIS data and maps, to support conservation decisionmaking and education. It is primarily a data catalog, intended to provide a comprehensive listing of GIS datasets and map services relevant to biodiversity conservation. The Conservation Geoportal does not actually store maps and data, but rather the descriptions and links to those resources, known as metadata.

The Conservation Geoportal is designed to make it quick and easy for conservation practitioners to find, and if possible, preview and download GIS data and maps. Similarly, it is easy for conservation data publishers to post metadata describing the data and maps they want to share, how to access them, and under what terms. This is a free tool for all conservation practitioners and supporters to use and contribute content.

Image courtesy of the Conservation GeoPortal http://www.conservationmaps.org/index.jsp

Happy Earth Day 2008!

2008-04-22T16:38:00Z

As a follow-up to our first post titled "Celebrate Earth Day with GIS," check out the interesting things you can do with ArcGIS Explorer for Earth Day.

New GIS Day Promotional Video Now Available

2008-04-21T23:44:00Z

GIS technology, GIS users, and GIS Day. They all make a difference in our world. Join us as we visit GIS Day events hosted by Loma Linda University, the Libraries of the Claremont Colleges, and Stantec Consulting Inc. This video offers insight into the many benefits of hosting a GIS Day event, illustrates how different organizations are celebrating GIS Day, and provides ideas and encouragement to the GIS Day community. We hope this video inspires you to join the tenth annual GIS Day celebration, Wednesday, November 19, 2008. Watch the Video.

GLOBIO Maps the Footprint of the Human Impact on Our Planet

2008-04-11T17:22:00Z

The Global Methodology for Mapping Human Impacts on the Biosphere (GLOBIO) project was begun by a consortium in 2001 to develop a global-scale spatial model of the impacts of environmental change on biodiversity.

The consortium includes the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC), the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (MNP), and GRID-Arendal.

Their latest model, GLOBIO3, estimates the impacts on biodiversity through time of land use change, climate change, fragmentation, infrastructure, and nitrogen deposition.

Image courtesy of the GLOBIO Web site http://www.unep-wcmc.org/GLOBIO/

Celebrate Earth Day with GIS

2008-04-10T22:28:00Z

In less than two weeks thousands of people around the world will be promoting environmental awareness through Earth Day, April 22, 2008. Consider incorporating GIS into your celebration by organizing a joint Earth Day/GIS Day event.

Here are some resources to help you get started:

Activities

ArcLessons (select the physical/earth sciences category under the "lessons currently available" section)
Earth Day Photo Contest

Web Sites

Visit Earth 911, the nation's real-time recycling and local environmental information service
World Resources Institute's Earth Trends, a comprehensive online database that focuses on the environmental, social, and economic trends that shape our world.
Global Forest Watch
USGS Interactive Topographic Map
Earthguide
USDA Forest Service Maps and Brochures

Literature

Visit the GIS Day Web site to register your event.

What’s in a Name?

2008-04-04T17:04:00Z

Because of the need by Qatar's Centre for Geographic Information Systems (CGIS) to include precise geographic names and locations in its national GIS database, CGIS embarked on a comprehensive research program to determine exact placenames by tracing their origins through on-site visits, meetings with municipal officials, interviewing aging Bedouin herdsmen, and attending communal majlis. Due to foreign mis-pronunciation and phonetic misspelling, original placename errors became fact when recorded on early maps.

Findings by the research teams have been nothing short of amazing. For example, the country's major port city, Umm Said was originally known as "Mesaieed." Mesaieed is a derivative form of the word "massad," which refers to a soil type where the shrub known as "seid" grows. Seid once commonly grew in the area around Mesaieed. Over the years, the original name was unintentionally transformed into Umm Said, which means "Mother of Happy." An interesting folklore story grew around this.

Long ago, a slave and his master lived in what is now known as Mesaieed. Because the slave was habitually good-natured, saieed, which in Arabic means "happy" came to mind whenever the master saw him. Due to his circumstances, however, the master decided that a diminutive form of the word would be more appropriate for the slave and so named him, Mesaieed.

Due to the CGIS research, this error has been rectified and Mesaieed is again the official name of the port. Data collected for the Geographic Names Project is included in the national GIS database, which will help the country correct existing maps and other geographically referenced materials.

Courtesy of the CGIS Web site http://www.gisqatar.org.qa/

The Naming of Cats is a Difficult Matter

2008-03-25T22:07:00Z

– From Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot

In addition to cats, the process for selecting geographic placenames is too a difficult matter. In the suburban town of Temecula in Southern California, the city’s main sports park was recently renamed the Ronald Reagan Sports Park. Reagan had never visited Temecula, but made an obscure reference to it in a speech he delivered to the US Olympic Committee 25 years ago. "The folks in a rather small town, Temecula...got together and built themselves a sports park, held fund-raising barbecues and dinners. And those that didn't have money volunteered the time and energy." Aside from basking in the reflected glory of an ex-president, the name has little to do with the community.

A more serious debate continues to rage around the European country sometimes known as the Republic of Macedonia, which gained independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Greece, its neighbor to the south immediately objected to what it considered the appropriation of a Hellenic name, because a northern region in Greece is known as Greek Macedonia, the birthplace of both Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great. A temporary contrivance to allow the Macedonians a seat in the United Nations refers to the country as “Fyrom” derived from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

While the country exists constitutionally and has been recognized by much of the international community, it wants to join the European Union (EU), which requires a unanimous vote. Greece has already indicated that it will oppose the inclusion of the Republic of Macedonia in the EU under that name.

Names proposed and rejected by either Greece or Macedonia include Republic of Upper Macedonia, Independent Republic of Macedonia, New Republic of Macedonia, Democratic Republic of Macedonia, and Constitutional Republic of Macedonia.

To read the entire article, visit the BBC News site at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7278023.stm

Ancient Mapmaking — More Art than Accuracy

2008-03-21T18:20:00Z

Claudius Ptolemaeus or Ptolemy lived in Alexandria, Egypt from approximately 87 -150 AD. He was an astronomer, mathematician and geographer.

One of his major works was Geographia, a thesis totaling eight books. It attempted to map the known world giving coordinates of the major places in terms of latitude and longitude. Unfortunately, Ptolemy’s maps were incorrect in many places because of a lack of accurate data. For example, by extending the coast of China southward, his maps limited the awareness of the Pacific Ocean.

However, Ptolemy’s maps were used by travelers for hundreds of years and it is believed that Christopher Columbus sailed with them when he discovered America in 1492 in his mistaken belief that he had pioneered a new route to India.

Courtesy of the Wikipedia encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy

Citizen Science Makes its Mark on the Georeferenced Database

2008-03-18T18:44:00Z

On March 12, Professor Michael Goodchild was the featured speaker at the weekly Colloquium held on the ESRI campus. His topic, "Citizens as Sensors: Web 2.0 and the World of Volunteered Geography," discussed the growing phenomena of contributions to cooperative georeferenced databases by members of the community. Referenced was the wiki-genre site, Wikimapia. There, participants can post comments about georeferenced locations. Other sites mentioned were Flickr where users upload photos to lat/long locations and OpenStreetMap, an international effort to create a free source of map data through the efforts of volunteers.

Goodchild described the results of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) as "assertive" information as opposed to the "authoritative" information collected by government agencies and the various data collection efforts by private industry.

Goodchild also discussed the implied authority ascribed to some sites because computerization can imply authority per se. He cited georeferencing errors by Google Earth in the city of Santa Barbara and explained how subsequent use of those incorrect positions creates, in essence, a new datum or horizontal reference system that is substantially different from the current North American datum, but which is widely accepted because of the perceived authority of Google.

Asserting that citizen science has made a significant contribution to the knowledge-base of our world, Goodchild indicated that VGI can have a positive impact on the collection of geographic information, particularly at the local level.

Well known citizen science efforts include Frogwatch, a volunteer amphibian study sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation and the US Geological Survey; the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), a distributed computing project hosted by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley; and the many bird watching surveys that require volunteer participation.

Create Your Own GIS Day Web site

2008-03-14T20:54:00Z

You put a lot of time and effort into your GIS Day events, now share your success with others. Creating your very own GIS Day site is a great way to promote your organization and gain publicity for your event.

Web page templates are available for download from the GIS Day Web site. Send us a link to your site and we'll add it to the collection of GIS Day Web sites from around the world.

If you don't have time to create a GIS Day site, choose from one of our 5 new Web buttons to post on your Web site to display your participation in GIS Day 2008.

Updated GIS Day Logo

2008-03-12T15:23:00Z

As GIS Day celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, the GIS Day committee thought it would be a great time to make a small improvement to the GIS Day logo. Can you spot the difference?

The new logo focuses on the benefits and power of GIS technology by expressing the slogan "I Love GIS." Download the new logo for yourself by visiting the materials page on the GIS Day Web site.

Libraries Celebrate GIS Day

2008-02-11T21:31:00Z

February is Library Lovers' Month -- a month-long celebration of school, public, and private libraries. Libraries offer a variety of services to support the use of GIS, including acquiring data, collecting relevant books and journals, helping patrons locate and evaluate data, providing GIS instruction, and providing access to software.

Just as Library Lovers' Month recognizes the value of libraries, GIS Day is a celebration of the remarkable contribution GIS technology is making in our lives every day. When planning your next GIS Day event, consider collaborating with a local library to share GIS with others. Here are a few libraries that hosted GIS Day events last year:

For more information about GIS for libraries, please visit www.esri.com/libraries.