More transport visualizations

Iain Kirkpatrick produced a Wellington Public Transport geovisualization inspired by Richard Law's previous viz.  The geoviz uses GitHub.  Iain is also a PGDipGIS graduate.

New Zealand ESRI User Group Regional Meetings

Its the ESRI user group regional meeting season - if you're interested in attending any one of the local user group meetings - info is available here: http://www.gisuser.org.nz/events-amp-conferences/regional-meetings-amp-events/regional-meetings

Palmerston North is on this week (3 April) - I'll be making a guest appearance talking about the Geospatial Skills Shortage survey I ran in New Zealand a little while ago.  Wellington is up on the 11th of April and I'll be presenting on SET (a spatial econometric transport model developed with the ISCR).

40 Maps They Didn’t Teach You In School

Some nice cartographic topics (though some of the cartographic techniques could be better!).

http://www.boredpanda.com/fun-maps-they-didnt-teach-you-in-school/

Use of crowdsourcing to map Christchurch's flooding

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/photos-help-niwa-map-christchurch-flood-5870517

Niwa used publicly submitted photographs of the flood waters in Christchurch to map the extent of the recent flood.

Timelapse: Landsat imagery over time

Great website showing the changes in land use as captured by the LandSat satellites over time.  They've set up some great examples - but of New Zealand interest is the changing rural land uses to wine (try Marlborough) and the changing land use in the Canterbury plains (not sure if this is a seasonal issue or the wider availability of irrigation).

http://world.time.com/timelapse/

A little bit old but...

What are the implications of leaving a country off an international map for an international initiative?  In this instance the missing case of New Zealand on the Nuclear Security Summit.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/9869154/NZ-left-off-map-at-nuke-summit

Women in GIS

A new ESRI story map which shows the location of women working in and studying  GIS.  Very US centric at the moment but an interesting insight into the spatial distribution of GIS positions internationally as well as the distribution of women in GIS.

http://storymaps.esri.com/stories/2014/womeningis/

Google for the wrist...

What is this likely to mean for location based services?  Toy stores nearby is mentioned in the video - but if you account for the potential to do heart monitoring and pedometer or similar body monitoring, there's massive potential for LBS to be individually aware.  Yet another layer of info to mine from.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3027846/google-just-revealed-the-first-usable-smartwatch-interface

Map of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks

http://www.cfr.org/interactives/GH_Vaccine_Map/#map

An interactive map which visually plots global outbreaks of measles, mumps, whooping cough, polio, rubella, and other diseases that are easily preventable by inexpensive and effective vaccines.

Global Health Program at the Council for Foreign Relations

Actually...

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/

Parallel processing in python

https://medium.com/building-things-on-the-internet/40e9b2b36148

Info on parallel processing in Python - good potential for GIS users!

GED Seminar Series: Fan-deltas of the Western Coromandel Peninsula: an integrated study of fluvial dynamics, delta building and marine deposition

Thursday 20^th March, 4-5pm

Cotton Seminar Room 304, Kelburn Campus

Victoria University of Wellington

speaker:

     Dr Jon Tunnicliffe

      School of Environment, University of Auckland 

Residential development and recreational use along the western coast of the Coromandel Peninsula is largely concentrated upon six major coarse-grained fan-deltas. These landforms preserve a record of long-term adjustments amongst fluvial sedimentation from floods and debris flows, long-shore and cross-shore coastal processes, and sea-level fluctuations throughout the Holocene. We have employed a combination of geophysical sounding, sediment tracing, and sonic drilling to develop a chronology and stratigraphic record of adjustment and changes in river base-level over the last 10,000 years. The record is consistent with earlier studies of the Firth, most notably the chronology developed on the chenier plain of the western coast. The record clearly reveals the timing of major geomorphic events, including the onset of marine sedimentation following sea incursion of the Firth at roughly 6,500 years BP. The semi-enclosed Firth effectively provides a ‘sink’ term for a Holocene fluvial-coastal sediment budget, and a reasonable proxy for long-term sediment yield from these rivers.

In this talk, we consider the ‘sediment delivery problem’ – how to leverage long-term records of sedimentation such as this one to develop a sediment budget that takes explicit account of sediment storage, abrasion, and changes in system configuration, within the fluvial and coastal systems. Records such as these are important for calibrating our models of sediment delivery, and for providing guidance to managers and engineers who are working to minimize risk in these important and sensitive coastal environments.

Food maps of the world

Beautiful series of maps comprised of foods associated with that country. 

http://m.neatorama.com/2014/03/12/Food-Maps-of-the-World/#!zAVVi 

Introducing a Property Tax in Ireland - how the Irish Revenue are using GI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u09PnnEfRUA

The Irish Revenue are using Google and Street View to check whether homes are undervalued for a new Property Tax.  Property tax is just being introduced in Ireland and is currently self assessed (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_property_tax_(Ireland)).  Geographic Information is playing a key (if somewhat Big Brother role) in checking this self assessment.

Mapping Wellington Public Transport

Check out: https://vimeo.com/album/2763946

Richard Law, MGIS student, has created a neat visualization of Wellington's Public Transport network for different days.  Richard uses Google Transit Data Feed to nab the data and some code to automatically generate the different geovisualizations.  Keep an eye on his Vimeo channel to see updated geoviz.