On May 5, 2009, at the ETV Auditorium in Jackson, Mississippi, eight high school teams presented the final results from their MARS (Mississippi Area Remapping Strategies) community geospatial projects. Over 100 were in attendance and the event was streamed live for those unable to attend. Rick Crowsey of Crowsey, Inc., an EIGS member company, gave the keynote presentation focused on providing the students with an overview of the innovative uses of spatial information by the legal community. 
"This outstanding group of students have designed and completed high quality and valuable projects for their communities," stated Dr. Greg Easson, EIGS Executive Director. "We are definitely seeing the goals of the MARS program coming to fruition as the interest and excitement builds with this talented group of young people who will soon be the next generation of employees for Mississippi�s geospatial industry."
During the spring 2009 semester, the participating high schools worked with university and community college partners to design and complete a community-based geospatial information science and technology (GIS&T) project.
MARS 2009 included high schools from Batesville, Brandon, Byhalia, Decatur, Greenville, Kiln, Leakesville, and Woodville. Volunteering their time and expertise to guide the high school teams are members of the IHL Geospatial Education Council including Alcorn State University, East Central Community College, Jackson State University, Jones County Community College, MARIS, MS Delta Community College, Northwest Mississippi Community College, The University of Mississippi, the UM Medical Center, and the University of Southern Mississippi.
- Brandon High School and MARIS worked with the Rankin County Tax Assessor�s Office on the location, attribution, and analysis of the Brandon Business Corridor to aid with the 911 addressing system. By completion of the project, the students had GPS of over 285 businesses and input of general attributes of each into the associated database.
- Byhalia High School and The University of Mississippi worked with the City of Byhalia to locate and map all the fire hydrants in the city limits to provide information about fire protection coverage in the town. With guidance from the Desoto County GIS Department, the students were able to locate 130 hydrants, significantly more than the 57 previously identified by the city.
- Greene County Vocational Technical Center and Jones County Junior College worked with the MS Forestry Commission to identify and classify hazardous trees as well as cogongrass, an invasive species. By completion, the students had identified approximately 50 percent of the trees in the city limits providing the city with invaluable information about the degree of damage and risks posed to members of the community from hazard trees that need immediate attention.
- Greenville Technical Center and MS Delta Community College worked with the City of Greenville and the Fire Department on a two-phased project which involved spatial variability and labeling emergency exits on school grounds. In phase one, students addressed spatial recognition and soil variability. The second phase had the students identifying and labeling emergency exit at the Greenville Technical Center.
- Hancock County Vocational Center and the University of Southern Mississippi worked with the South Mississippi Planning & Development District to map billboards and cell phone towers for the Hancock County Tax Assessor�s Office. The students collected data on lease property to allow for more effective assessment of property taxes which will assist with recovery projects in Hancock County.
- Newton County Career & Technical Ctr. and East Central Community College worked with the Newton County Historical and Genealogical Society to map points of interest in Newton County from the Civil War. The students were able to provide the Newton County Chamber of Commerce with additional information such as camp sites and graveyards to be included in the Mississippi Civil War Tour.
- South Panola High School and Northwest MS Community College worked with the Delta Regional Medical Center to collect range address information within the city limits to collect critical information for E-911 maps. The students were able to assist emergency responders with the mapping of emergency facility locations, special needs patient locations, and locations of community shelters.
- Wilkinson County High School and Alcorn State University worked with the Wilkinson County Chancery Clerk to geocode important infrastructure facilities including fire hydrants in the City of Woodville. The students were able to complete a GIS database that can be used by the city for resource mobilization, and to address long-term needs and planning.
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Did you know that GPS gets used a lot in amateur astronomy? Now, you might not think that a technology that locates where you are on Earth has a lot to do with observing the rest of the universe, but it does: GPS satellites provide you with your exact position and the exact time - and this information can go a long way to figuring out where things are in the sky. Astronomers - or rather their computers - use GPS to help them know where to look. For more information,
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Map of the latest alerts on infectious disease around the world
SOURCE: http://healthmap.org
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GPS Gone to the Dogs
Guide dogs may be about to get their own satellite navigation system, invented by a mature student inventor to enable blind people to get to new places with their guide dog
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NOAA Becomes a Principal Member of Open Geospatial Consortium
"Within NOAA we have a lot of programs that deal with geospatial data," said Ken McDonald, data management architect in NOAA�s Satellite and Information Service. "Our intent is that they be interoperable," and a lot of agency programs have been using OGC specifications. "Seeing the success of OGC and the breadth of the interest across NOAA was the impetus for it."
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New Pollution Monitoring: Our Air is Dirtier Than We Thought
The idea of combining satellite data with ground data has been introduced to measure particulate pollution on the ground. In many areas, the equipment used to measure pollution at ground level is unavailable. However, it is possible to use satellites to track air pollution in those areas. According to Discover magazine, Sundar Christopher, a scientist at the University of Alabama, found that it was possible to measure particulate pollution remotely:
"'Remote sensing is the only viable way to monitor global particulate matter,' he says. Using NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites, he and his team examined 20 cities with populations greater than 10 million. In 15 of them, pollution levels were five to ten times higher than the World Health Organization's guidelines."
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ASPRS Past President Kass Green Keynoting ESRI Remote Sensing and GIS 2009
Kass Green, Past President of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, will keynote ESRI's Remote Sensing and GIS 2009 to be held Sunday, July 12, in conjunction with the ESRI International User Conference (ESRI UC) at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. The ESRI UC is the world's largest conference dedicated to geographic information system (GIS) technology.
For more information about Remote Sensing and GIS 2009 as well as the ESRI UC, visit www.esri.com/rsgis2009. Direct questions to Mark Cygan at 909-793-2853, extension 1-2333.
Reflections on MARS
April 23, 2009: �Technology is growing perhaps faster today than it ever has, and I for one am excited about pretty much every bit of it. This growth offers so many opportunities for us to change the way that we learn, work, play and live. Maybe one of the most exciting and coolest technologies to me is GPS and GIS. I have a handheld GPS that I sometimes use when I go out hunting or fishing. I have a TomTom that I use in the car when we go on long trips or to places that I�m not familiar with. Now I even have an iPhone that has GPS technology built right into it so that the apps I use know where I am without me having to input anything. Amazing, and sometimes a little scary! Needless to say when Joyce Brasell called me and asked if we at Byhalia High School would be interested in participating in Mississippi Area Remapping Strategies (MARS) which would introduce some of our students to this exciting field, I could barely wait until she was finished describing it before I said yes. I am so glad that my kids are getting to be involved in a project like this. Not only are they learning about a great new technology that some of them may even decide is a viable career option for them, but they are also getting to work on a project that they believe in and that they feel will make a difference. It�s amazing how hard students will work when motivated by those kinds of things!
March 24, 2009: �During the spring semester of 2009, a team of students from Byhalia High School received the opportunity to participate in the Mississippi Area Remapping Strategies (MARS) project. This project enabled these students to accomplish two major goals. Our first goal was to introduce students to GPS/GIS technology. It seems that this technology has exploded over the last several years and the students wanted to learn more about it. Our second goal was to use this technology and what was learned to do something that would benefit the community where Byhalia High School is located. There have been many benefits as a result of the MARS project done by the students at Byhalia High School this year. First of all, we believe the community has benefited because they now have an accurate count, location and condition assessment of the fire hydrants. Secondly, the students got the opportunity to be introduced to a new technology that many of them got very excited about. In fact, I was told by one member of the team that he now intends to make GPS/GIS his career. Finally, we had fun! We enjoyed the work so much that we do not intend for this project to be over just yet. Our next step will be to take this project and with the help of town officials to continue to improve upon it so that it might be even more useful for them. The possibilities are endless! Who knows where it may take us?"
Todd Sanderson, Instructional Coordinator for Byhalia High School and MARS Mentor
Mississippi Association for Spatial Technologies Announces New Board of Directors
The Mississippi Association for Spatial Technologies (MAST) is pleased to announce its incoming Board of Directors. The board, which serves a term of two years, is chosen at the annual meeting, and manages the affairs and business of MAST.
"We are really pleased with the experience and talent represented in the incoming MAST board," said Paul Barnes, President of MAST and GIS Manager for the Southern Mississippi Planning and Development District. "They are already providing excellent direction for the future growth of MAST and we look forward to increasing our promotional and outreach activities."
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Changzhou Meets Mississippi: Trade and Investment Opportunities Forum to be held in Jackson May 21
MDA, the U.S.
China Chamber of Commerce and the Changzhou Municipal Government will host Changzhou Meets Mississippi: Trade and Investment Opportunities Forum on Thursday, May 21, at the Jackson Convention Complex in downtown Jackson. The forum will bring together Mississippi business representatives and executives and political leaders from Changzhou, China to explore investment and trade opportunities in Mississippi and China.
Company representatives from Severstal, PSL North America and PACCAR will also be on hand to share beneficial information regarding foreign investment in Mississippi. Severstal CEO Jim Hrusovsky, PSL North America representative Brian Vail and Lex Lemmers with PACCAR will be speaking during a session titled Case Studies of Successful Foreign Investment in Mississippi.
Mississippi businesses interested in learning more about doing business in China are encouraged to attend this event. Chinese firms that will be in attendance represent billions of dollars in potential investment opportunities, and MDA urges its partners to share the forum information with their local businesses.
Diamond Data Systems Wins Support Contract for the Navy Warfare Development Command (NWDC)
Diamond Data Systems, LLC. (DDS) has won a contract to provide IT technical and system administration skills to augment the support of 300 users working on classified and unclassified systems for NWDC. The scope of the contract includes help desk support, to include customer service, system administration and maintenance services. DDS will assist users in the use and operation of the software on their platforms and troubleshoot any issues found. The company will assist in network migration planning and infrastructure build out for maintaining computer system operation during NWDC�s Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) transition to Norfolk, VA.
DigitalGlobe Set for $265 Million I.P.O.
DigitalGlobe is set to trade Thursday, May 14, 2009, on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DGI. The company plans to sell $14.7 million shares at $16 to $18 apiece, raising $250 million. The company originally filed to go public in April of last year. Now its offering may get a boost from the Obama administration's plans to use more commercial satellite imagery for intelligence gathering.
For more information, visit: http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/digitalglobe-eyes-265-million-ipo/ or
https://news.fidelity.com/news/news.jhtml?cat=Tech&articleid=200905120940STREETCMREALTIME_10499800&IMG=N
NVision Featured in NASA Publication
Congratulations to EIGS member company NVision Solutions for being featured in Technology Innovation, NASA's magazine for business and technology published by the Innovative Partnerships Program. Be sure to read "Innovative Research: NVision Adapts HazNet Emergency Management System for NASA Projects," by Kevin Schultz, lead proposal writer for NVision Solutions Inc.
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
Canadian Air Force to Map Afghanistan
GIS Development
The Canadian air force will digitally map southern Afghanistan and especially the province of Kandahar for NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and Afghan pilots and ground troops fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida.
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Africa: Farmers Get Geospatial Info On Their Phones
All Africa ICT - Africa
... just one of a set of pilot projects using mobile and geospatial technologies to improve communication of important information to farmers across Africa.
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China launches 6th remote-sensing satellite
China Daily - China
TAIYUAN -- China on Wednesday launched the sixth remote-sensing satellite from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north Shanxi Province.
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New centre to bridge gap between academia and industry
Computerworld New Zealand - Auckland,New Zealand
There is for example a Geospatial Research Centre that has developed an indoor helicopter, which can survey the interior of buildings and transmit data and ...
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2nd Annual Geospatial Intelligence Conference under the patronage ...
AME Info - United Arab Emirates
The region's first and only focused geospatial intelligence summit will be held in Dubai between 10th - 13th May 2009 with participation of global experts ...
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