SDI Snapshot - September 2017
Here’s a look at what’s happening in Canada and globally in the world of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). This post contains a collection of the latest and most significant SDI news, data, products, and events.
SDI News
ArcGIS Online basemap updates for Canada – August 2017 (Part 2)
In this second update for Canada in August, both the raster topographic and the imagery basemaps were updated with contributor content from across the country. The Canadian updates included new map content from British Columbia, Ontario, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Three contributors provided new imagery, including Toronto, ON, Kitchener, ON and parts of Thompson-Nicola, BC.
National Capital Commission (NCC) develops a bilingual Story Map
Canadian governments often need to publish story maps in more than one official language to effectively reach everyone in their intended audience. A bilingual Map Tour has been created by the NCC in Ottawa, which is available in both English and French. Here’s how to develop your own bilingual story map.
Partial solar eclipse visible across Canada and North America.
Astronomers across North America had been preparing for the long-awaited total solar eclipse. On August 21, the 115 kilometre-wide eclipse path approached land in Oregon. Over time, it moved eastward until it headed out onto the Atlantic Ocean. In Canada, the big winner was Victoria, BC where the eclipse had 91% coverage at its greatest point. On the other side of the country, St. John's, NL, had only 32% coverage.
SDI Data
NGA and partners complete global Digital Elevation Model (DEM) including Canadian Arctic
The U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has collaborated with various partner agencies and Esri to map the entire global Arctic region including Canada’s Arctic. The team produced the sixth batch of three-dimensional digital elevation models under the Arctic DEM Project. NGA said these models and this data provide greater context for the Arctic and will greatly assist a wide array of decision-making.
ReForest London: exciting use of GIS for community health and non-profits
The City of London, ON, is known as the Forest City, and yet its woodland cover – at just 8% – is far below the target of 30% natural cover recommended by Environment Canada for a healthy and sustainable ecosystem. With the aim to enhance the environmental and human health of the city, ReForest London has started incorporating GIS into its tree plantation project. Through the Esri Nonprofit Organization Program, the group received access to Esri ArcGIS Desktop.
Esri and Microsoft collaborate to create one-meter resolution land cover maps
Satellites, drones, and land vehicles (autos, trucks, tractors, etc.) will generate massive amounts of spatial data over the coming decade. A single autonomous car can generate the same amount of data as 3000 people surfing the Internet, while a small drone fleet could easily collect 150 terabytes of data per day. The data rate is going to explode on us in the next few years. Esri and Microsoft have teamed up to build new tools to process and analyze these huge data sets.
Esri World Imagery in OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap is a free, editable map built by volunteers largely from scratch and released with an open-content license. Esri has announced that they are making their global collection of satellite imagery available to the OSM community directly through the Esri World Imagery Service. This regularly updated resource provides one meter or better satellite and aerial photography in many parts of the world, and includes TerraColor, SPOT and NAIP imagery.
SDI Products
OGC rolls out new web 3D geospatial standard
A new 3D standard for web content has been approved by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) membership. The standard is focused on high-performance visualization and spatial analysis in either a services or disconnected environment. The standard is referred to as the OGC Indexed 3D Scene Layer (I3S) and the Scene Layer Package Format (SLPK) Specification.
Landsat satellite imagery browser developed by Esri Lab
The Esri Applications Prototype Lab has just completed development of an experimental viewer designed to sort, filter and extract individual Landsat scenes. The viewer is a web application developed using Esri's JavaScript API and a three.js - based external renderer. First, the user is prompted to sketch a bounding box representing the area of interest. The next step defines the imagery source and minimum selection criteria for the image scenes.
How do you create a modern data centre strategy?
How do you determine the right mix of infrastructure types (on-premises, colocation, public cloud, hybrid) for your workloads? What are the key factors driving those decisions? Here's what the data center and IT infrastructure experts say about creating a sustainable data centre strategy.