You are here

Other

Future Trends in Geospatial Information Management: The Five to Ten Year Vision

submitted by Samuel Bendett

United Nations Initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management - April 24, 2012

A working group was established to assess the future trends in geospatial information management at the 1st meeting of the UN Committee on GGIM in Seoul, Korea. Chaired by Dr. Vanessa Lawrence, Director General and Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey, the working group has received written inputs from 29 persons or institutions. A summary of the future trends shall be presented during this forum in Amsterdam, followed by discussion among all the participants. Meanwhile, the process of soliciting views on future trends continue and the working group welcomes any additional inputs. A consolidated paper on the future trends shall be discussed in the 2nd Session of the Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management.

http://ggim.un.org/

Background paper:
Future trends in geospatial information management: the five to ten year vision (8 page .PDF file)

 

 

Country / Region Tags: 
General Topic Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Exxon's Big Bet on Shale Gas

Drill pipe ready for use on a rig at Exxon's Johnson Ranch site outside Fort Worth

by Brian O'Keefe - CNN - April 16, 2012

America's most profitable company now produces about as much natural gas as it does oil. CEO Rex Tillerson thinks the fracking party has just begun.

FORTUNE -- For Rex Tillerson fracking is more than a revolutionary approach to drilling oil and gas -- it's part of his personal history. Simply mention the word to the CEO of Exxon Mobil (XOM) and he starts reminiscing about his days as a young engineer.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Country / Region Tags: 
General Topic Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Stocks Follow Oil Lower on Reserve Talks

A man refuels his car as gas prices are reflected into the windows of the United Oil gas station in Los Angeles, California March 24, 2012.  REUTERS/Bret Hartman

Reuters - by Rodrigo Campos - March 28, 2012

(Reuters) - Oil prices fell on Wednesday as the U.S. and some European governments mulled the release of strategic oil reserves, while commodity-related shares weighed on global equities.

U.S. stocks closed weaker, though far from the day's lows, in the wake of economic data that was slightly below expectations.

France, the United States and Britain are in talks about the possible release of strategic oil stocks to help push fuel prices lower, French ministers said, only weeks ahead of the country's presidential election. Purchasing power is among voters' top concerns.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Country / Region Tags: 
General Topic Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Proceedings for the 2011 Community Health Resiliency Workshop are Now Available

       

 

Thank you for attending the 2011 Community Health Resiliency Workshop; your participation helped make this event a success!

Material from the workshop is now available for download in the attachment below, and at: http://www.communityhealthresilience.com/proceedings.html

Respectfully,

The Community Health Resilience Workshop Coordination Team

Country / Region Tags: 
General Topic Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Exercise 24: Using Social Media for Crisis Response

submitted by Samuel Bendett

      

worldfinancialreview.com - By George H. Bressler, Murray E. Jennex & Eric G. Frost

“Can populations self-organize a crisis response? This is a field report on the first two efforts in a continuing series of exercises termed Exercise 24 or X24. These exercises attempted to demonstrate that self-organizing groups can form and respond to a crisis using low-cost social media and other emerging web technologies.”

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Country / Region Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Predicting Locations of Emergency & Damage During Disaster Using VGI Data

submitted by Alister Wm Macintyre

                                                     (CLICK ON IMAGE BELOW - TO ENLARGE)

      

ushahidi.com - by Prateek Budhwar

The VGI data obtained from the Ushahidi-Haiti platform during the first 72 hours of Earthquake in Haiti can be used for predicting the locations of ‘Emergency and damaged areas’ using Ushahidi Reports in Port-au-Prince. Two rapid and very successful VGI deployments helped coordinate disaster response after a devastating magnitude 7 earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010.

OpenStreetMap (OSM) project volunteers working outside Haiti created a digital street map of Port-au-Prince and other places in Haiti very rapidly using fine-resolution imagery to trace vector maps of streets and other features.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Country / Region Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Mexico Quake Tweet Volume and Characteristics

submitted by Samuel Bendett

Sender: crisismappers
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:55:14 -0700
To: <crisismappers>
ReplyTo: crisismappers
Subject: [CrisisMappers] Mexico quake tweet volume and characteristics
Some relatively random data points...

We've saw about 10,000 English tweets in the first hour and 23,000 in the second. Third hour is down, will be about half the rate of the second hour if sustained.

Recurring themes include words like rattle, suffer, long slow roller, hard, saddened, worried, awful, hate, bad.

I'm seeing a fair bit of "help us report" tweets, which is coming from a tweet that said "earthquake preparedness helps us report none to minor damage and no victims so far," from Mexico City.

English-language tweets from Mexico are making up 8 percent of the total. 55 percent are from the U.S.

Spanish tweets - 488 in the first hour, 1,400 in the second and current rate will product about 1,000 in the third hour.

Most common words in the Spanish tweets are disfrutar and malo.

Spanish tweets are coming almost 50/50 from Mexico and the U.S.

Almost 75 percent of the Spanish tweets were from men, v. a close to 50/50 split for English.

Country / Region Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Startup Converts Plastic To Oil, And Finds A Niche

 submitted by Albert Gomez

      

Daniel Robison/WNED  After being delivered to JBI's Plastic2Oil facility, shredded plastic is melted down in a large tank before being vaporized and formed into fuel. John Bordynuik releases some of the substance to check for quality.

by Daniel Robison - npr.org - March 19, 2012

Only 7 percent of plastic waste in the United States is recycled each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. A startup company in Niagara Falls says it can increase that amount and reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil at the same time.

It all starts with a machine known as the Plastic-Eating Monster.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Country / Region Tags: 
General Topic Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Kony2012: The Rise of Online Campaigning

A social media campaign to shine a light on Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony has attracted ire of its own after critics attacked its methods. Is using Facebook and Twitter to promote change pointless, or the natural extension of our social media habit?

by Kate Dailey - BBC News - March 9, 2012

On Monday, the California-based nonprofit Invisible Children released an online 30-minute documentary about Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord Resistance Army (LRA). "We want to make him famous," they said. "Not to glorify him, but so that his crimes would not go unnoticed."

It worked.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Country / Region Tags: 
General Topic Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Emergency Management without Social Media…fail

      

tacmedia.wordpress.com - February 26, 2012

In the world of Twitter, Facebook , YouTube and everything else that demands instantaneous information sharing it is horrible to see an event occur and the only information that comes out is rumour, guesses and innuendo.

Today, I watched virtually as a passenger train derailment occurred in the region that I live in.  In fact, I was out with my family today and we weren’t to far from the location where the event occurred.

Like so many others, I learned about the event on Twitter and I stayed with the information all afternoon and into the evening.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Country / Region Tags: 
General Topic Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Pages

Subscribe to Other
howdy folks