NRGS Geospatial Blog

If you live in the southeast, you should have noticed by now that it has been raining – a lot. Which for me isn’t that big of a deal.

Well – I had my first map delivery in the rain the other day and it turned into a big deal. They couldn’t get wet….and it was on a Sunday. So alot of stores that I could have went  to get a map tube were closed. I had had a fairly long conversation previous to this day with people about Map Tubes. You have them at art stores, you can order them online, some of the A&E blueprint firms here in town sell them (actually now that I think about it – they may not be in business anymore). If I bought one I really wanted a cool looking Indiana Jones Leather Map tube with an optional bull whip.

What to do?

I’ve had a love hate relationship with plumbing. I live in an old house and have had my fair share of plumbing problems. I have plumbed water lines, septic sewer lines, dug in poo, and stood in water because of plumbing. I’ve used pvc to keep water in….why not out. So for right at $15.00 dollars I have a map tube with a screw on lid.  I didn’t glue it – there are still come things I need to do like put foam in both end caps to keep the edges of my maps from getting folded. Other than that……not too shabby. The maps were delivered and never got wet.

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Randal Hale Cartography, Rambling Cartography, Rambling

So last Friday – I was scheduled to go to Kingsport, TN and give a NetGIS Presentation. It snowed….and now it’s back on for Friday Feb, 12, 2010. I’ll be rolling out on OSM demo and hopefully covering MapZen.

So please come on over. Any questions please contact David Light (dlight@eastman.com).

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Randal Hale Open Street Map NetGIS, Open Street Map

One of my volunteer projects is having a party – the Caribbean Sea. The Caribbean Student Environmental Alliance collaborates “with island agencies to teach children about their connection with nature and to empower them to be leaders in the protection and restoration of their local environment, particularly the coral reef.”

I got a call a few months back – they had collected GPS points and were placing them on a map – I helped out and stuck them on a map, made a quick database,  and turned them into a KML. They travel back and forth to the Caribbean and work with schools in and around the Chattanooga area.

Anyway – there’s a beach party and they need people there to help raise funds for some new computers and equipment. My plan is to go – but if you notice this is the same day as my Kingsport Trip.

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Randal Hale Uncategorized

Ladies and gentlemen there is a NetGIS meeting in Kingsport TN this Friday. Hopefully the new and improved website for those guys will be out.

I will be boring the attendees with an Open Streetmap Presentation. David will be rolling out the Arc Jr., the Eastman Chemical Mobile GIS Truck.

If you want to show up please email David Light (dlight@eastman.com), the NetGIS President.

Location

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Randal Hale Uncategorized

So I talked about the effort from OSM in Haiti.

When I worked on it the other night – and I should be working on it now – the goal of the volunteers is to capture as much info as possible on everything. Buildings were tagged as collapsed and refugee camps were polygoned off.

Here is the result so far.

It was also just reported that the national GIS director for Haiti, Gina Porcena Meneus,  died in the quake.

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Randal Hale Open Street Map Open Street Map

For those who haven’t seen it except on Television you can now view the the Geoeye imagery in Google Earth.

Click here for the KML

Click Here for More info

As more imagery is made available it will be updated – so save the KML.

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Randal Hale Google Google, imagery

You can now route yourself around the quake damage in Haiti using Open Street Map.

http://openls.geog.uni-heidelberg.de/osm-haiti/

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Randal Hale Open Street Map Open Street Map

The risk I run in working the way I do is that I become insulated.

I have spoken at length about Open Street Map. Tonight they are mapping Haiti and I am joining them online. Geoeye that I spoke about in the previosu blog post has now made their imagery available to everyone who wants/needs to use it. So I’m putting 16 years of remote sensing experience to work – and this time for something truly worthwhile. Hopefully everythin I do will be correct……

Link: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Haiti#Who.27s_Helping

Link: http://www.opengeodata.org/2010/01/14/haiti-openstreetmap-response/

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Randal Hale Open Street Map Open Street Map

So by now you’ve heard of the earthquake in Haiti. I know little of Haiti. I do remember several times in the past at church hearing tales of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Anyone that was around in the mid 80’s  got to see the “Boat People” from Haiti streaming into Miami. Since this blog is about all things Geospatial – or at least attempts to be a look at things in that arena I present Satellite Images of Haiti – Post and Pre Earthquake.

Pre Earthquake:

Post:

The Pre-Earthquake imagery comes from Digital Globe courtesy of Google Earth. The Post imagery is courtesy of Geoeye. The interesting thing is how available this data is – Google Earth and a Twitter update and here I sit. The word on several fronts is that Geoeye will have this imagery available in Google Earth shortly. If for no other reason than this is why Google Earth is revolutionary. An almost instant update – Imagery for the masses.  The dots you see in the street are people – the white dots appear to be either tents or bodies.

If you play with Google Earth and take a look at Port-Au-Prince you will see the extreme housing density of the city. It’s amazing. It’s scary. If 1/8 or the houses collapsed that I saw on Google Earth and I can easily understand the earlier reports that had 100,000 are dead/missing.

It also makes me wonder. If the infrastructure is as bad as has been hinted at – how relevant is GIS in this situation. You have nothing to start from – you won’t have time to do it right just because of the scale of destruction. Think about it – Where do you start with GIS to make a difference in a catastrophic situation? Something to think about.  Here’s some imagery – great – I don’t have electricity or a decent vector/building layer with which to work.

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Randal Hale Google, health Google, health

One of the fun things about owning your own business besides the taxes, never ending hours, and the constant drive to please the customers are the projects.

I’ve mentioned it before, but if you’re new here, I will work for free. Sometimes. The work has to intrigue me and add something to life in general. In between paying gigs it’s fun to put a massive amount of software to good use to people who many or many not have access to it. Plus it can be just plain old fun.

Anyway back in the fall of 2009 I receive a phone call from Berry College. Being on the board for GA URISA is great for networking. I had a North Georgia Meeting there last year and some of the staff had attended. Anyway,  Dr Chris Mowry called and had a problem with a project and needed help – could I send or help him find an intern. Berry College isn’t that far down the road and it’s actually a very nice drive. So about a week later there I sat on the campus of Berry College.

The project – Coyotes. For those of you who aren’t from here – we’ve got coyotes. Lots of Coyotes. They came into the area two different ways: people brought them here and migration – or I guess I should really call it a transition. I should really call it a biological term of some sort – but I’m not a biologist. The Coyotes fill a niche in the greater scheme of things since the wolves are no longer out and about. I don’ remember them being here in the 80’s and early 90’s. Now if you have a friend that hunts deer the story will at one point contain the phrase “I shot a coyote”.  I”ve seen them on the side of the road. I”ve seen them hit. I”ve heard them howling at night and last year I had one within a half mile of my house in downtown Chattanooga.

In 2006, Dr. Mowry caught and collared 8 coyotes. The plan was to go out and triangulate their position. You’ve  seen it – go out and hold up an antennae and  take a bearing and a GPS location.  Travel a bit and take another reading. From that you can triangulate the position….and I’ve incredibly oversimplified this since I’ve gotten the chance to do this once. So over three years worth of data collection you were able to generate this map:

They had collected the locations into a spreadsheet with  a lot of other information. The problem is what could you do with that pile of data. Here is what I did:

• First – clean up the spreadsheet.
• Second – fix the date field(s).
• Third – pull it all together.
• Finally – pull it into a geodatabase with subtypes and domains.

Then what? Here’s where the fun occurs. It was and continues to be my contention that this company’s strength lies in GIS. Give us a problem, describe it, and we’ll get the answer. That’s what we did and are still doing in this case. The ability to talk/reason through a problem is an art. The ability to translate from GIS to Biology is beyond art. I developed Home Ranges, I developed Core Areas.  We’re now in a search to find imagery and more data to adequately describe the landscape and start making some decisions on their environment.  Now – I wasn’t particularly happy with how I went through some of this. There was alot of back and forth on the abilities of ArcGIS and the general lack of information out on the Internet on developing some of this data. Plus a lot of contradictory information on what needed to be done.  Also – it really pointed out how powerful Python is to fixing problems and how much more I need to spend working with it. It really highlighted a segment of my past life with Open Source Software – people need to be more open. If you provide free software – make it truly free. Provide the source code.

Home Ranges are nothing more than a Minimum Convex Polygons. Core areas are a statistical (more or less) representation of the area the animal inhabits the big break seems to be at 50% and 95%. So it’s like a statistical “Hot Spot” analysis – and not the “Hot Spot” functionality you get with Spatial Analyst. That drove me to use a program call Animal Space Use. This highlighted the disconnect between the GIS community and everyone else. In order to get the output from Animal Space Use I used a process developed by the Georgia Coastal Ecosytem LTER. They had developed a process that involved Excel and VBA scripts from within ArcGIS.  People who aren’t GIS people develop answers to problems good or bad – work must continue. The answer works until the new version of ArcGIS comes out. Then a new answer gets rolled out and the vicious cycle continues. I really think that the bridge between Animal Space Use and  the solution from Georgia Coastal Ecosystem either lies in .net or python. Python would probably be more stable. I’m currently thinking about seeing how much of it I can replicate in python to see what could be accomplished. Setting this up as a model would make life much much better.

Oh yeah – the point of all this – Coyotes actually inhabit an important niche. At least I think. As long as I can continue to provide GIS support and not filter through Coyote scat I’ll be quite happy.

Anyway – the coyote fun Continues. Curious? Contact Dr. Mowry at cmowry@berry.edu .

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Randal Hale ArcGIS Desktop, Conservation, GA URISA, Python ArcGIS Desktop, Conservation, GA URISA, Python, Spatial Analysis

So I had one of those wonderfully reflective days in which you end up feeling old.

So back when I started my GIS career there was this wonderful software I discovered called ArcINFO. The agency I was working for  had just upgrade from ArcINFO 5 to 6 on the Sparc 2s and alot of people were confused. In general it seemed like most people were confused by arc because they had just started a wholesale abandonment of Intergraph. Arc didn’t make a lot of sense. Therefore I had to do the most horrible thing imaginable and read the manual.

The worst thing about Arc were the projections. I didn’t come from a GIS background….actually I don’t think most anyone did in 1994. No one could explain a projection to save their lives. All I was told was always use Tennessee Stateplane, Datum NAD27, Units Feet….and don’t forget to set the zone to 5301. So as life went on and at some point there was a switch to fips zones. For Tennessee this was 4100.  Yes – two different parameters for one projection. So for years I used 5301 until I ran afoul of the surveyors. They had finally warmed to the idea of ArcINFO and wanted some data. I scribbled on the tape (or maybe CD) the projection parameters of the project amd passed it to them. One day later they came back and complained mightily that the data didn’t match their data.  After another day of reprojecting and project data I realized the problem. I was using zones and they were using fips zones. They were flipping the two. My 5301 zone became their 5301 fips zone. They laughed – I felt stupid and I switched to fips zones.

Flash forward 14 years and here I sit.  Where do projections come from? Actually I was closer to the answer as a washed out geologist than I thought. Money makes the world go round…..actually Oil and Gas.  The OGP surveying and positioning committee are the gatekeepers of projections as of 2005. It was originally the European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG).  Now the cool thing is for those of us that now use multiple software packages to complete a project is that projections aren’t comparable. You’ll find if you do a little bit of digging is that to ESRI the Tennessee Stateplane NAD83 project is just that. If  you work with something else – like DNR Garmin or possibly fwtools you’ll find it to be EPSG::2274. It’s pretty easy in ArcGIS to screw up and pick Tennessee Stateplane NAD83…. You find the units to be in meters. I’ve done that more than once. Use the EPSG code and you have EPSG::32136. Give it a shot here – look up your projection.

So why have I taken up all this space talking about projections? It would be nice if ESRI would incorporate the EPSG codes. It might and I may just be missing it – but it would be nice to have that option when picking a projection – 2274 is a lot easier and clearer to write.  It cuts back on just one more issue. It forces us – the GIS people – to be just a little bit more specific in our work.

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Randal Hale ArcGIS Desktop, ESRI ArcGIS Desktop, ESRI

The biggest hurdle I’ve had since starting North River Geographic Systems has been advertising. I’ve tried traditional print media and that didn’t work. I tried mail outs and that didn’t work. I had thought about taking out an ad in the yellow pages….but realistically who looks in the yellow pages for GIS help. I joined three organizations devoted to helping businesses in town (Chattanooga) and have officially dropped  all of them as of this month. I’m all for helping out local organizations – but they weren’t worth the effort on a business level for me. They are great and do lots of good things – but consulting – especially GIS consulting is an odd animal.

Luckily the blog and the website have been a great outlet. Combined with Google Analytics and I at least have an idea what draws attention. Sorta. The Newsletters have been good but just a bit difficult to hack out once a month. I still have the problem that really any young company has – how do people know you’re around. That where the networking and getting to know your peers comes into play. GA Urisa has played the biggest part, TNGIC second, and then volunteer projects third. When I first started the business I couldn’t work for free, literally. When I started training I was training at a huge discount. No one signed up. When I did hold my first class I found out that people had no clue I was around – it was only through an alternate event (conference) they had heard about me. When you train for ESRI you find out quickly it a double edged sword. You get the Authorization from ESRI and that’s about it. You turn into a competitor and they don’t help you in the advertising realm. You’re on your own.

So anyway – I’ve made the jump into Facebook. Actually right here. So if you want you can become a fan of the company. I made the page a few months back and it wasn’t till lately I found I could integrate twitter feeds and blog posts back into the page. As a result I consider it to be a bit of an aggregator for information. Up until now I was hesitant to have a third site I needed to update. Given the popularity of Facebook  it make some sense to go ahead and set up a page. I’ll start shortly posting training schedules/meetings/whatever as they come up and I get more comfortable in doing so. Actually – I might even offer discounts in training for people that sign up over Facebook. Maybe – that’s still under consideration.

If you consider blogs too “90’s” – and only deal with facebook for most of your web interaction go ahead and “fan” the site and watch the information come rolling onto your page…or wall…or whatever you call it.

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Randal Hale Training Rambling, Training

The North Georgia URISA Subchapter will be having a meeting at the Continuing Education Center in Dahlonega, Georgia.We’ve had several meetings there and are going  back. A good time will be had by all.

The topic will be Using GIS Elevation Data to Evaluate Forest Water Quality the Speaker will be Charles Bailey from the Georgia Forestry Commission.

As always get registered at the GA URISA website to attend (the event will be set up shortly).

…and for fun here is the abstract:

The author is employed by the Georgia Forestry Commission, a state agency responsible for developing standards for maintaining forest water quality. Using existing elevation data as well as field collected data, two applications were developed to aid in determining applicable criteria for Best Management Practices (BMP’s) for maintaining forest water quality in Georgia.

The first application models the placement of diversion structures based on the cumulative slope of a linear feature representing a forest road, skid trail, or firebreak. The results of the model may be compared to actual placement in the field for evaluation purposes, or may be used for planning when estimating the cost of forest road or firebreak construction.

The second application uses interpolated elevation data to determine the extent of the Streamside Management Zone (SMZ) for a particular stream feature. Within the SMZ, which is a variable buffer feature based on the slope perpendicular to the stream course at any given point, additional management considerations are indicated. The use of station lines and linear densification is employed in the slope analysis to produce a polygonal feature representing the variable SMZ extent.

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Randal Hale Conservation, Forestry, GA URISA, education ArcGIS Desktop, Conservation, education, Forestry, GA URISA

Dangit. What a Year……….

So for those of you that have been keeping up here’s a little bit of the insanity of 2009 here at North River Geographic Systems, Inc.

• Dove in with both feet this year and went full time with the business. Up until late 2008 I was working for the federal government and was balancing work with…well – work. When I reached the tipping point I left in late 2008 and cranked NRGS up to 11 for 2009.
• Owning a small business has been an experience. With the switch to full time how would the business fare economically? I started the new year with one estimate in hand and one customer. By the end of the year I had essentially four full time clients and an increase in Business income of about 500%. Impressive – sort of. if I tossed out actual numbers it wouldn’t be that impressive. Except I grew in a recession.
• So now I’m balancing Home life with Work life. Unfortunately Home life lost out as I ended up divorced. Was the business at fault? Was it something inevitable? I could type for hours but I won’t. The problem with this is that I turned into a bit of an angry person this spring….and was a bit uglier than I needed to be to alot of people. So to anyone I was a stark raving jackass too – I apologize. Profusely.  Unfortunately, I learned my life at work and home doesn’t separate well anymore. I am the business and the business is me.  Luckily all the planning I did in setting up the business held true. I’ve just got to watch my personal barometer as I interact with people and customers.
• Work picked up enough to get a plotter. Up until this year I had been using friends and other businesses to make prints. That really had me at a disadvantage. So I invested some time and money and am leasing a Canon IPF750. So far the plotter has paid for itself which was the whole plan for the plotter.
• Jumped from North Georgia Sub Chapter Chair to education and Outreach for GA URISA.  While getting involved in a group doesn’t pay me anything, it does pay with networking, friends, and a chance to see how a whole group of professionals work and exist in the Geospatial world.
• Became 2nd View President of the Mid South ASPRS Chapter. I have known the President, Ms Amy Zeller, for more years than I will admit and she encouraged me to run. She’s smart and I’ve learned to follow advice from smart people – even if it runs against what I think I should do.
• Held my first and second ESRI Training Class. Overall I’m a bit torn about ESRI Training. The Authorized Trainer Program seems to be in flux but settling down. Overall it is unbelievably tough to set up classes and get all the dominoes to fall into place. Reviews of the first were positive – reviews of the second had me somewhere between terrible and beyond suck.  I’m taking the reviews from both and planning changes. One of my favorite comedians once said that you need to fail to know how to succeed. I’m taking all that and I believe training will be better and more fun this year.
• I spent waaay too much time worrying about the competition. In constantly looking at ways to succeed it seemed I was always looking at ways to one up the competition. The minute I stop worrying about the competition I succeed. So in 2010, If people want to work with me they can…if they don’t that’s fine. They won’t have as much fun – but hey. I’m good.
• To finish up everything, I sit with a pile of estimates that I have completed for 2010 and the chance that I will be picking up my largest job to date….and repeat customers. Gracious, very nice repeat customers.

On the Volunteer Front:

• Am working with the Cumberland Trail to get it GPS’d.
• Participated in several Open Street Map Events. If you haven’t tried it – Open Street Map is actually kinda relaxing. It’s fun.
• Working on a Coyote Location Project at Berry College, Georgia (more on that later)
• Working on locating a murder victim with a little bit of data, some clues, and my brain (more on this later). I dive into the world of Geographic Profiling.
• Got a chance to work with the Tennessee River Gorge. Only made one map but I did get to do alot of digging.
• Discovered The GIS Forum.

Got to meet the following GIS/Mapping user groups this last year:

• Alabama URISA
• Georgia URISA
• TNGIC
• NetGIS
• Geonet
• Cumberland County GIS Users Group
• URISA Intl.
• SAMSOG

Overall….2009 – it was the best of times and the worst of times. I survived a year that should have ended the business and possibly myself. I survived. I thrived. I’m in a good place now with the business. It moves, it grows. I’m not pushing it as hard or as much as the last three years. It’s dragging me.

Goodbye 2009. Hello 2010.

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Randal Hale ESRI, Open Street Map, Rambling, URISA, Uncategorized funny, GA URISA, Open Street Map, Rambling, Training, URISA

For those of you that don’t know – I’m involved heavily in Georgia URISA. I started out as the North Georgia Subchapter Chair (or ottoman if you will). So this year I decided to dive in a bit more and shoot for the Education and Outreach Chair.

I made it and I’m diving in with both feet. Georgia URISA hosts a student awards day- this year it should be on April 13, 2010. Last year, the turnout was light for the paper competition. I believe we had two entrants and two prizes were handed out. So I’m attempting to advertise this as much as possible. Here is a link to the Document.

So….if you’re in Georgia and you see this forward it out. The GA URISA website is currently in flux and this should be replicated there shortly.  Questions? Track me down or track someone down on the board and we’ll get you all the information you need.

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Randal Hale GA URISA, education education, GA URISA, URISA