GIS in Education

The Cental Mine Planning and Design Institute (CMPDI), an arm of the Coal India Limited, signed an MoU with the Survey of India for preparation of the large scale updated topographical maps of 28 major coalfields of the country, based on remote sensing technique.

The project, for which the Coal India Limited has funded Rs 117 crore, will be jointly implemented by CMPDI & Survey of India and will complete in five years. This is said to be a major task for the CMPDI to expedite coal exploration, mine planning, environmental management and infrastructure development in the coalfields area to match the coal-based energy demand of the country.

CMPDI CMD A.K. Singh said topographical maps will be prepared for about 26,000 sq km area on 1:5000 scale with 2 m contour interval in digital GIS formats. Large scale digital topographical maps will be useful for detail coal exploration, mine planning, infrastructure planning, railway siding for coal transportation, rehabilitation and resettlement and environmental management planning as well as integrated master planning of the coalfields.

Urban Mapping, the provider of location-rich content for interactive applications, announced advanced features for Routeserver, the company's standard-setting multi-modal routing engine that supports walk, drive, bus, train, subway and other modes of transportation. Developed with pedestrian navigation in mind, Routeserver can be ported to specific hardware and platforms, supporting true "on board" navigation. Additionally, the routing engine can be deployed for large-scale interactive publishers or as a hosted solution for rapid implementation.

The new enhancements to Routeserver enable a range of advanced capabilities such as dynamic re-routing incorporating real-time mass transit events, narrative customisation to support multi-lingual or editorial conventions and "cognitive transfers," a new option in route customisation that recognises varying perceptions of wait times.

With the combination of Routeserver and its URBANWARE Mass Transit database, which provides highly detailed data for over 100 pedestrian-specific attributes, Urban Mapping enables an advanced pedestrian navigation experience for over 70 systems in the United States, Canada and Europe.

WorldView-2, scheduled to launch on October 6th, 2009, will be the first 8-band multispectral commercial satellite available today! With a mission life of 7.25 years, and operating at an altitude of 770 km, the WorldView-2 system is expected to bring unsurpassed agility, capacity, accuracy and spectral diversity to commercial earth imaging.

Join this Free Webinar to hear Dr. Kumar Navulur, DigitalGlobe's Principle Scientist, as he discusses how the new spectral bands will improve remote sensing applications such as better feature identification and classification, improved bathymetry, better change detection and more.

In Free Webinar You Will:

* See how the four additional spectral bands (coastal blue, yellow edge, red edge, and near infrared 2) enable broader ranges of classifications, enhanced vegetation and coastal analysis, the extraction of more features and the identification and tracking of coastal changes and infractions.

* Discover how the new red edge (the first in the commercial industry) and yellow edge spectral bands deliver more granular field classifications, improve the understanding of vegetation analysis (health, age, type, species) and provide early warning capabilities to industries that interact with, and depend on, the environment such as pipeline monitoring, environmental mapping and precision agriculture applications.
* Learn how the new coastal blue spectral band will enhance bathymetry studies for sea floors, coastal plains and waterways, discriminate features of the shallow ocean floor more accurately and increase the scope of coastal remote sensing applications--improving the safety of marine navigation and providing much needed insight into the ever changing marine environment.
* Discover how the WorldView-2 based portals and navigation devices will see the world in the truest natural state--bringing better definition and clarity to the user's visual reality, and allow mapping experts to use those bands to pinpoint more points of interest and create more diverse, interesting navigation applications.

Who Should Attend?
Key decision makers within enterprise, oil and gas, telecom, portals, location based services and government agencies.

WorldView-2 Free Webinar Details
Date: Wednesday, July 29
Time: 11:00am or 7:00pm MDT
Duration: 45 Minutes
Presenters: Dr. Kumar Navulur, Principle Scientist, DigitalGlobe

Free registration here.

Dates for the 9th Annual Cityworks User Conference were announced today by Azteca Systems, Inc., the leading provider of GIS-centric management solutions. The event will be held Monday, May 17 – Wednesday, May 19, 2010 at the Dixie Conference Center in the beautiful city of St. George, Utah. Cityworks pre-conference training is available to new and existing users as well as specialized implementation training for Cityworks business partners on Friday, May 13 and Saturday, May 14 at the Hilton Garden Inn in St. George, Utah, adjacent to the Dixie Conference Center.

The 2010 User Conference features Cityworks technical and application sessions, user case studies, vendor presentations, an exhibit hall, and Cityworks Doctor’s Office, all in a casually comfortable environment. Pre-conference activities including hiking, biking, golfing, and others are scheduled for Sunday, May 15 – all designed to take advantage of the breathtaking surroundings. Conference check-in and a welcome reception follow on Sunday evening.

Surrounded by the scenic red-rock terrain of southwestern Utah, St. George offers breathtaking mountain scenery in a casual, rustic setting and a variety of outdoor activities with world-class golf courses, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, and other tourist attractions within short driving distances. With something for everyone, St. George is in close proximity to Las Vegas, Nevada – about an hour and forty-five minute drive northeast. Conference attendees can fly into Las Vegas and enjoy a stop at the world-renowned entertainment hotspot. Shuttles are available to and from Las Vegas and St. George a number of times daily at a low price, making it easy for travelers with or without a car to hop from city to city.

Over 400 people attended the 2008 Cityworks User Conference held in Snowbird, Utah. Attendance to the 2010 conference is open to all Cityworks customers and business partners and by invitation to potential customers and others. Additional details and registration information will be available online soon at www.cityworks.com. The conference website will be available in August and online registration will be available in November.

For more information, contact:
Lindsay Ferguson
Communications and Marketing
Azteca Systems, Inc.
801.523.2751
www.cityworks.com

The first temperature map of the planet's southern hemisphere at infrared wavelengths, charted with Venus Express's Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer, VIRTIS. The new map hints that our neighbouring world may once have been more Earth-like, with a plate tectonics system and an ocean of water. The map comprises over a thousand individual images, recorded between May 2006 and December 2007, from a distance of about 60 000 km. Because Venus is covered in clouds, normal cameras cannot see the surface, but Venus Express used a particular infrared wavelength that can see through them.

The new data are consistent with suspicions that the highland plateaus of Venus are ancient continents, once surrounded by ocean and produced by past volcanic activity. The map is centred at the South Pole. The measured temperatures range from 442°C (or 715K), red to 422°C (or 695K) blue; higher temperatures correspond to lower altitudes, while lower temperature correspond to higher altitudes. The temperature difference is key to understanding whether Venus is volcanically active today. However, a 'flux anomaly' may be related to temperature difference and to different surface emissivity.

Credits: ESA/VIRTIS/INAF-IASF/Obs. de Paris-LESIA

A GPS Locator application that would provide small and medium-sized businesses with real-time visibility into the location of the mobile workforce has been announced by AT&T and Xora Inc.

The new easy to deploy solution is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application designed to help AT&T business customers improve the productivity and accountability of field-based employees, as well as lower expenses related to overtime and fuel costs, said a press release.

The GPS Locator from is based on technology from Xora GPS Timetrack solution, and can be accessed from the same web-based portal as Xora GPS Timetrack and Xora GPS Timetrack In-Vehicle.

The application does not require any software to be loaded on the phone, providing quick and easy deployment. Field-based employees simply power on their mobile devices and office staff can see their locations using Xora's Web-based maps and reports.