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EIGS PERSPECTIVE
March
2009
Guiding the Way to Mississippi's Geospatial
Technology
One of the primary
focus areas for EIGS is outreach and awareness, that is, increasing the
awareness about geospatial technology and reaching out to decision makers
who can most benefit from the capabilities of Mississippi's industry
cluster. Much of our focus has been market oriented in order to identify
and enhance business opportunities for our members.
Part of the
EIGS strategy includes educating potential customers about the innovative
and cost effective solutions geospatial technologies can provide at all
levels of business and government. We are engaged in two-way communication
with decision makers in order to better understand the everyday challenges
they face and how geospatial technology can be used to address those
challenges. This includes decision makers in a variety of private
businesses as well as economic development organizations, and all levels
of government, but cities and counties in particular. And, of course, we
want to ensure that these decision makers know that geospatial solutions
are available right here from companies doing business in
Mississippi.
EIGS serves as a first point-of-contact for customers
looking for geospatial products – we are a resource and a referral service
for people and organizations seeking geospatial solutions, products, and
services. Whether we are attending a trade show, interacting face-to-face
with potential new customers, or featuring an advertisement in business
publications, we want to reach new markets for our members.
One of
our more successful efforts in this regard was a collaboration in 2006
with the Mississippi Business Journal (www.msbusiness.com) on the publication of “Mississippi's
Guide to Geospatial Technology” about the everyday uses of geospatial
technology in a number of business areas including infrastructure
management, homeland security, real estate, agriculture, utilities,
natural resource management, recreation, transportation, and public health
among others.
Once again, EIGS has engaged with the MS Business
Journal to provide an updated issue of this Guide. While the new Guide
will still be a magazine-style publication, it will feature updated
content including special feature articles by guest authors
including:
-
Agriculture by Patrick Jackson, InTime
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Local Government by F. Clarke Holmes, Central MS
Planning & Development District
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Emergency Response by Joel Lawhead, NVision
Solutions
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Transportation Planning by Ray Barksdale, MS
Department of Transportation
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Weather by Elizabeth Valenti, WorldWinds
-
Public Health by Dr. Fazlay Faruque, University of
MS Medical Center
-
Tourism by Deb Breazeale, MS Department of
Information Technology Services
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Doing Business in Mississippi by the MS Development
Authority
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Homeland Security by Katherine Mullins, MS Office of
Homeland Security and Gary Hennington, The Geospatial
Group
The Guide will be featured in the MS Business
Journal's upcoming March 16th issue. I encourage you to keep an eye out
for it. Or if you would like to order a free copy of the publication,
please send your name and mailing address to lstone@olemiss.edu. We are
excited about this joint effort with the MBJ as we continue to seek new
and innovative ways to promote Mississippi's geospatial technology
industry cluster.
DOING BUSINESS IN
MISSISSIPPI
MDA Launches New User-Friendly Website; Site Designed to
Assist with Economic Development Efforts
 At the 2009 MEDC Winter Conference, MDA Executive
Director Gray Swoope officially launched the new MDA website, designed to
assist with the recruitment and retention of businesses as well as other
community development efforts. Since the summer of 2008, the site has
sported a new home page; the supporting pages of the website have now
adopted the same look and feel of the home page. According to Swoope,
MDA's goal for the new website is that it be the top resource for economic
development information regarding the state of Mississippi.
MDA
staff members have worked diligently alongside The Ramey Agency to ensure
a content-rich, technologically-advanced product to assist anyone seeking
information about the state. While the new website is more user-friendly
and eye-pleasing, its content has also been updated and augmented. It will
continue to be updated on a regular basis, and new features such as video,
graphics and maps will be added as they become available.
The
website address is the same, so please visit www.mississippi.org to view the new site.
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IMAGE OF THE
MONTH
 Click for enlarged version
Raymond
James Stadium: Tampa, FL
This
(enlarged version) is a natural color, 60 centimeter (2 foot)
high-resolution QuickBird satellite image featuring Raymond James Stadium,
the site of Super Bowl XLIII.
Source: Digital Globe
ITEMS OF INTEREST
'DHS Earth'
Used for Infrastructure Protection
The
Homeland Security Department has developed DHS Earth, a geospatial mapping
and visualization application, to share data related infrastructure
protection and improve situational awareness, officials said.
Officials
said DHS Earth was built using a Google Earth application. The program is
part of DHS' suite of geospatial visualization and analysis tools named
the Integrated Common Analytical Viewer (iCAV). The iCAV is managed by
DHS' Office of Infrastructure Protection.
Michael
Clements, the branch chief of the Office of Infrastructure Protection's
Infrastructure Information Collection Division, said recently the
application can be used for operational planning and situational awareness
to support state and local intelligence fusion centers. He said some
examples of the tool's uses so far include plume modeling for a volcano
near Anchorage, Alaska, and mapping President Barack Obama's pre-inaugural
train ride to Washington.
DHS says
DHS Earth:
-
Allows
geospatial data to be exchanged in real time.
-
Gives
homeland security data a geospatial context.
-
Gives
capabilities for the integration of rapid standards-based
integration.
> For more information
Scientists
Predicted 2006-07 Outbreak of Deadly Virus
 An early
warning system, more than a decade in development, successfully predicted
the 2006-2007 outbreak of the deadly Rift Valley fever in northeast
Africa, according to a new study led by NASA scientists.
Caption: A risk-assessment map shows the areas of increased risk of
Rift Valley Fever (RVF) in eastern Africa from fall 2006 to spring 2007.
Pink areas depict increased risk of disease, while pale green areas
reflect normal risk. Yellow dots represent reported RVF cases in high-risk
areas, while blue dots represent occurrences in non-risk areas.
Credit: Assaf Anyamba and the NASA Earth
Observatory |
UPCOMING EVENTS
GITA Geospatial Infrastructure Solutions
Conference
April 19-22, 2009
Tampa, FL
2009 Annual PDD
Conference
April 28-May 1, 2009
Biloxi, MS
Coastal Development
Strategies Conference
May 12-13, 2009
Biloxi, MS
ESRI International Users
Conference
July 13-17, 2009
San Diego, CA
GeoWeb 2009
July 27-31,
2009
Vancouver, B.C., Canada
GITA 18th Annual GIS for Oil and
Gas
Sept. 13-17, 2009
Houston, TX
Oceans '09: MTS/IEEE
Biloxi
October 26-29. 2009
Biloxi, MS
LEGISLATIVE CORNER
 Legislation that provides tax breaks for
back-to-school shoppers and business owners advanced at the state Capitol
as a key deadline, money bills to clear the chambers in which they
originated, passed last week. In the House, lawmakers agreed to exempt
sales taxes on clothing during the last weekend in July. House Bill 348
now heads to the Senate for consideration, but its future is uncertain
since similar bills have died in past years. Surrounding states have
approved so-called "sales tax holidays," and some local business owners
said they're hopeful the legislation will pass. Millions of dollars in
bonds to help repair and renovate colleges and state-owned buildings were
also approved by Lawmakers. House Bill 1722 will likely be debated again
before heading to the Senate. The 2009 regular legislative session ends in
April.
TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES
Northwest Mississippi Community College, in
partnership with the GeoResources Institute (GRI) at Mississippi State
University, will be offering a series of ESRI GIS courses for Spring,
2009. Instructors are ESRI authorized.
The courses are free to
Mississippi government agency employees. Others may register for the cost
of course books ($175 for 2-day and $225 for 3-day courses).
Course
Schedule
ArcGIS Desktop III: GIS Workflows &
Analysis
March 11, 12
ArcGIS Desktop I: Getting Started
with GIS
May 19, 20
Building Geodatabases May
26-28
The Location of Classes will be The Batesville
Enterprise Center, 275 Nosef Drive, Batesville, Mississippi
38606.
To register, contact Joyce Brasell, at 662-578-7011 or
jbrasell@northwestms.edu.
> For further
information |
DID YOU KNOW?
Satellites Helped Rescue 283 People
Did you know NOAA satellites were key factors in the rescues of 283
people throughout the United States and its surrounding waters in 2008? In
each incident, NOAA satellites detected and located a distress signal from
an emergency beacon and relayed the information to first responders on the
ground. Alaska topped the list for the most saves in the United States,
with 49 lives rescued in 2008. Rounding out the top five states were: New
Jersey, with 18 rescued; Florida, with 15 rescued; Hawaii, with 14
rescued; and California, with 12 rescued.
> More information
SEEN AND
HEARD
“In this complex world of global warming, ecosystem degradation and
compromised public safety, all nations must work together to solve these
problems; and the most effective way to coordinate a response is via the
sharing of geospatial information.”
Dr. Robert Moses
Chair, Global Advisory Council
(GAC)
Dr. Moses is President and CEO of PCI
Geomatics and a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of
Directors of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The GAC is formally a
committee of the OGC board. It is comprised of OGC directors and select
leaders of the global geospatial community chosen to represent the
requirements of regions or communities currently underserved by the
Consortium's consensus process. Specifically, the GAC is intended to be a
forum for development of authentic outreach and participation strategies
to ensure the continued growth and development of the consortium process
and to support critical Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI)
initiatives around the world.
RESOURCE SPOTLIGHT
ESRI's Free
Online GIS Bibliography Offers a Rich Information Resource About
Geospatial Technology
Spatial News -
Geocomm.com
The ESRI GIS
Bibliography, available at no cost from the ESRI Education and Training
Web site, recently surpassed 75,000 entries, making it one of the world's
largest online repositories for information about geographic information
science (GIScience) and geographic information system (GIS)
technology.
“Thousands of students and hundreds of professors have
used the bibliography as one of their major starting points for GIS
research,” says Dr. Michael Gould, ESRI's director of higher education.
“Besides being an educational resource, the abstracts and other materials
point the way to finding other sources of information about or experts in
geospatial research and technology.” The ESRI GIS Bibliography at www.esri.com/training/library also serves as an excellent
resource for scholars, scientists, geographers, cartographers, and
professionals in a wide range of industries who want to learn about one or
more aspects of GIS technology or geographic information science in their
fields, Gould says. The bibliography references more than 1,000
sources—mostly journals, magazines, conference proceedings, and books.
Though mainly abstracts, the bibliography also includes some PDFs of
articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, and theses. A vast array
of fields and industries where the work involves geospatial technology and
GIScience are covered including marine sciences, health, the environment,
defense, land-use planning, surveying, petroleum, and forestry.
> More information
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
Digital atlas awarded grant
The Copenhagen Post - Copenhagen,
Denmark
The National Archive has received a 15 million kroner
grant from the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation to
create a digital atlas of Denmark, tracking data from the 1600s.
> More information
Iran: First domestic satellite
launched
ADN
Kronos International - Tehran, Iran
Iran recently launched its
first homemade research satellite, one of only eight countries in the
world to have done so, Iranian media reported. The satellite was carried
into orbit by the Iran-made satellite carrier Safir-2, state television
said.
> More information
First
nationwide remote sensing map on wetland
distribution
completed
People's Daily Online - Beijing, China
The first
nationwide remote sensing mapping of wetland distribution was completed
recently. The news came on Feb. 19 as research from the Institute of
Remote Sensing Applications under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)
and the State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science attached to Beijing
Normal University showed there were 308,000 square kilometers of wetlands
in China in 2000, 50,800 square kilometers less than that in 1990.
> More information
EIGS IN
THE NEWS
SP
students using latest technology to create helpful maps
The Panolian
South
Panola High School is among eight Mississippi schools selected to
participate in a program that pairs schools with university/community
college partners to design and complete a project using geospatial
information for high-tech mapping.
> More information
Diamond Data Systems, Prescient Technologies acquired by
Geocent
AllBusiness.com
Geocent, an information technology
business serving the energy, aerospace and defense sectors, has acquired
Diamond Data Systems and Prescient Technologies.
> More information
NVision Solutions Announces Commercial Release of
HazNet
GISuser.com
NVision Solutions Inc. is pleased to
announce the commercial release of its emergency management system,
HazNet, an all-hazards network powered by NVision's Real-time Emergency
Action Coordination Tool (REACT). HazNet has been operational since 2003
in St Tammany Parish, Louisiana.
> More information
Local
students get technology boost: Grant allows students to experience the
possibilities of emerging technology
Greene County Herald, February 19,
2009
Thanks to a partnership between the Greene County
Vocational-Technical School and Jones County Junior College, county
students are now receiving training in one of the
fastest growing
technology fields available. MARS (the Mississippi Area
Remapping
Strategies) is a geospatial high school outreach program
being administered to students in eight high schools across the state,
including Greene County. The program has been integrated into Marty
Herring's forestry program at the Vo-Tech, which according to JCJC's Dr.
Brian Mitchell, is a great fit. |
