This log carries on accumulations from previous years, accessible via 2000-2002 GIS log, and will help me centralize links relevant to the next phase of GIS development. Another body of materials is my collection of proposals, reports, RFCs and suchlike documenting the evolution of my GIS and digital library interests and schemes through Spring of 2002. A summary for ACS GIS Symposium, 28 February 2003 includes links to Digital South and NITLE/ACS Environmental Studies scheming.
21 May 2003
Online Remote Sensing Guide
from UIUC
24 May
I'm copying the tutorial stuff from Miley to acadproj/vol4, selectively so as to have the tutorials all in one place. There are problems here and there, there are more things copied than needed from the now-ancient riches of the old /gis/ folder, and some of the files that the text of tutorials point to may not have been copied over... so there's a lot to clean up, but it seemed important to get the process of rewriting tutorials started in my own space. The whole set of tutorials now seems to be assembled and working. They aren't too glorious, I'll have to say, but historically they're interesting.
I noticed that /VA_geotiffs/ wasn't on /Vol8/ so I'm moving them. I'll need to go through that sort of is-it-there exercise fairly systematically.
27 May
I need to figure out possible paths toward ArcSDE development. That seems to necessitate SQLServer, but I don't know just what I need to ask whom in re: the setup and maintenance of a server to work with for development purposes. There are issues both of distribution within 137.113 and to other ACS partners. CAN such a server be set up to be available only to certain domains? Or is it a firewall issue?
Some bits from ESRI's support site:Usually, the ArcSDE server runs on the same computer as the RDBMS from which it is storing and retrieving data. However, it is possible to run the ArcSDE server on one computer while running the associated Microsoft SQL Server instance on another computer. Due to the additional network traffic that will occur with such a configuration, ESRI does not recommend it. We have observed noticeable performance degradation using this configuration.
To think about the updating problem: Dave Harbor's Geology 260 and its tutorials; see also Intro to 3D
31 May
Environmental Spatial Analysis google search
CentroGeo in Mexico
5 June
Before replacing a pile of books Ron had checked out, I should record their basics so that I can retrieve them later:
TITLE Community participation and geographic information systems / edited by William J. Craig, Trevor M. Harris and Daniel Weiner. IMPRINT London ; New York : Taylor & Francis, 2002. CALL NO. G70.212 .C65 2002. TITLE Environmental modeling with GIS / [edited by] Michael F. Goodchild, Bradley O. Parks, Louis T. Steyaert. IMPRINT New York : Oxford University Press, 1993. CALL NO. TD153 .E58 1993. AUTHOR Peuquet, Donna J. TITLE Representations of space and time IMPRINT New York : Guilford Press, c2002. CALL NO. G71.5 .P48 2002. AUTHOR Harvey, David, 1935- TITLE Justice, nature, and the geography of difference IMPRINT Malden, Mass. : Blackwell Publishers, 1996. CALL NO. HM216 .H26 1996.Exploring gazetteers page
A GIS Based Small Area Population Forecasting Model (an example of a 'difference map', with VRML animation)
11 June
Programming ArcIMS ActiveX connector with ASP for different browsers/platforms
Rohit Patil et al.
Putting Richmond, Virginia on the Map with ArcIMS Applications (Raymond Freeland and Steve Waldron)
To effectively deliver GIS and City database information to browser-based users, the city of Richmond needed an Internet mapping application developed. The project utilizes ESRI’s ArcIMS and ArcSDE technology, GIS data and a live link to a data warehouse pulling data from multiple city legacy systems.Rapid Mapping Tool: an ArcMap Extension (Steve P. Linger et al.)
Cartographic production laboratories produce large volumes of maps for diverse customers. Turnaround time and consistency are key concerns. The Rapid Mapping Tool is an ArcMap based tool that enables rapid creation of maps to meet customer needs. This tool was constructed using VB/VBA, ArcObjects, and ArcGIS templates. The core capability of ArcMap is extended for custom map production by storing specifications associated with a map or template in a companion XML document. These specifications include settings and preferences used to create custom maps. The tool was developed as a component of an enterprise GIS, which enables spatial data management and delivery using ArcSDE, ArcIMS, Oracle, and a web-based request tracking system.
STARTING the HUNT Guide to Mostly On-Line and Mostly Free U.S. Geospatial and Attribute Data (U. Arkansas)
26 June
International Steering Committee for Global Mapping (downloaded to r:\global\vgfa\ some raster stuff in .bil format --UN the instrument, PW dmp45278 (from http://www.iscgm.org/cgi-bin/vmap01.cgi) and also got the viewer (GMView) to try it out... put it onto c:\ --but very cryptic error message...). Not clear where the metadata can be found...
2 July
I need to start to work on specifying a path for W&L's GIS development, at least in part because nobody else is thinking about that issue for the institution (though doubtless Dave and Chris have done so for Geology), and because I'm the most likely to experiment with various possibilities in the classroom. The elements I mean to investigate include
3 July
A scattering of books that ought to be integrated into how we think about the uses and possibilities of GIS, including
People and the environment : approaches for linking household and community surveys to remote sensing and GIS / edited by Jefferson Fox ... [et al.] Boston : Kluwer Academic Publishers, c2003. HD108.15 .P46 2003. Planning support systems : integrating geographic information systems, models, and visualization tools / Richard K. Brail and Richard E. Klosterman, editors. Redlands, Calif. : ESRI Press, c2001. HD108.15 .P574 2001. Environmental information management and analysis : ecosystem to global scales / edited by William K. Michener, James W. Brunt, and Susan G. Stafford. London ; Bristol, PA : Taylor & Francis, c1994. SCIENCE GE30 .E57 1994.
14 July
Just back from the ESRI User Conference, and with a lot of materials to summarize and use in developing some notion of the next steps for W&L, for ACS, and maybe for NITLE. This is largely a matter of reality bites: some of the things I had thought were on the horizon turn out to be, very simply, beyond our capabilities (ArcSDE is certainly in that category --and anything else that requires real database management), and therefore I must regretfully conclude that we and other liberal arts colleges have a reasonable prospect of using only a fraction of the power of ESRI's products. Consortia might be able to provide the requisite support, but I see no indication that they are ready or willing to develop the necessary external funding to establish or maintain the support staff positions.
The upshot: we can continue to provide desktop-level access to spatial data for presentation and basic analysis, but hosting Web services beyond the experimental level and developing spatial data servers for ourselves or for consortia just can't be done without support for professional-level RDB apps (SQL Server, Oracle, etc.).
The hopeful directions seem to be
Among the online resorces I learned about:
Support Center
ArcObjects Online
ArcScripts
Data Models (by industry)
ArcIMS demos
Geostatistical Analyst research papers
ArcSDE Developer Help (beyond us at present...)Microsoft Visio
MODIS, Global Land CoverSimulating the Interrupted Goode Homolosine Projection With ArcInfo
Among the things I need to do:
I contacted UNISYS to get the LZW GIF license... they're sending something, and eventually it'll get to ESRI and be added to our license.
17 July
I enrolled for Intro to ArcIMS to get Jit started on the product, and to avoid the pain of thrashing around in Skip's instructions. Cost $45, but I should be able to charge the kitty for it.
Also in the process of getting the Keycodes for our licenses straightened out with Jesse Gonzalez, preparatory to setting up an orderly ArcGIS operation.
Summary of my User Conference activities
21 July
The inovaGIS.org is a small community of people developing free software in Visual Basic, Delphi/Kylix and ASP for common, simple applications that use geographic information.
22 July
Wrestled with ArcINFO license, and the dongle is now on WL_26243_GIS1 in Dave Harbor's lab space. I'm not sure how to find it via the Desktop Administrator, so the complete link of making ArcINFO available via the network is still unrealized. But I did ascertain (via a Tech Support call, incident #313325 and talk with Jeremy) that each dongle needs its own machine, and that it doesn't much matter WHERE the machine is so long as it can be found via the network. There's also an issue with wanting to get off of .192 subnet, because of reorganization of the subnetting on a locality basis. The only issue is that the license server needs to be ON all the time --ims1 could as well be in my office, it seems.
23 July
I need to summarize the situation and possible trajectory of GIS development, for a meeting with Pat Harris and John Blackburn tomorrow. I'll cache that at GIS July 2003.
30 July
The perennial problem of finding the topographic quads one needs in VA: one part of the solution is the from VaTech (which tells me that those I need at the moment, for the Winchester area, are to be found in 39078 and 38078 38078H2 is Front Royal, H1 is Linden, etc.). See also Virginia GIS Data Files and Sources from UVa... but USGS National Map may be thre REAL winner.
24 October
safe.com has a variety of products and White Papers that need exploration...