The 10 year anniversary of the World Trade Centre attacks is just around the corner, and – in true spatial style – what better way to reflect upon the attacks that changed the world, than by examining ground zero through LiDAR surveys?
Asian Surveying and Mapping have a post that outlines the practical differences between aerial photography and satellite imagery. It’s a good primer on the subject, and can help you determine which of the two technologies is best suited to your application.
In a similar educational theme, GIS Lounge have a post that talks all about scale, an important characteristic of data that is oft-overlooked by the new wave of non-traditional spatial users.
Speaking of these new GIS Users, Map Brief has a post saying that the “golden age” of cartography has arrived, thanks to the prevalence of tools now available, and the influx of people using them.
Vector One – which makes a regular appearance in this column (is it even a column?) – has a post entitled ‘Old Data/New Data: When to collect geospatial data’ that weighs up whether a project should collect new spatial data vs using older, already available spatial data.
Cameron Shorter draws our attention to the recent establishment of the Open Technology Foundation, which will help in the uptake of open source software in the Australian and New Zealand governments. I think this is a particularly exciting time for open source, and this is another great example why.
In fact, Open Source Software in government is a big theme in the US, too, with the Government Open Source conference wrapping up recently. You can read all about it on O’Reilly Radar, which also talks about the changing attitudes toward OSS.
