Digital terrain models help create a picture - Part II

[ Update: see new arcgis.com interface for another view of this here & under Update 5 here ]

The previous post showed how digital terrain, surface (add buildings & vegetation) and elevation (detail topography) models highlight geomorphology (land features) and infrastructure (roads, canals etc.). That was in the Cambridgeshire area of the southern Fenlands of East Anglia, as a complement to sea level rise models from coastal inundation, as well as flood risk maps from rivers and from sea.

Digital terrain models help create a picture

[ Update: next post discusses same in the East Anglia coastal area of the Fenlands ]

The previous blog showed how to effectively portray coastal inundation, as it progresses inland from the encroachment of sea level rise. These were base on 30 m. resolution Digital Elevation Models (DEM) from OS OpenData as explained previously here.

Historic climate data revisited - 3 - circum-Arctic update

[Update: Part 4 provides a further update on platforms available to map polar data]

In my previous blog, how many layers can be combined in an arresting polar Arctic view. They show the almost zero overlap of historic and current weather and climatic data. They herald the importance of oceanic climate data going back before 1880, when any weather data get scarce.

Historic climate data revisited - 2 - circum-Arctic

[Update: more data for the Arctic were found here and here when writing a paper

Note: Part 3 adds World Port Index data compared to historic Gazetteer
Follow-on class materials the last two blogposts generated are posted here.
Go also to section 5: Arctic / Antarctica GIS application, of 1000 GIS applications ]

Following on the Antarctic blogpost, I took my lessons-learned to the antipodes for these reasons:

Historic climate data revisited - 1 - circum-Antarctic

[Update 2: this series has full CC BY-SA 3.0 class notes here
Update 1: please see a mirror project for the Arctic in Part 2.]

With ongoing debates whether Antarctic ice in increasing or not, and its effect on climate change, we must avail ourselves of as much data as we can. If historic climate data is at hand, not only do they get scarcer going farther back, but 1880 also marks a time prior to which their reliability falls off.

So having mapped climate data off tall ships captains logs from 1750 to 1850, I wondered how far south they sailed, and how much they augmented historic climate data around the Antarctic?

"Qui peut le plus, peut le moins" or "Horses for courses"

These quips mean that, while we may have great tools for complex workflows, such as Mapping Well Data I'll present as AAPG Visiting Geoscientist in Hungary next month, sometimes it's better to pare it down to its simplest form, such as for a friend "looking to map addresses to [a French geographic subdivision]".

Free tools & data to predict hurricanes

Four weeks ago I blogged here about the availability of open data, posting it on the open web and its potential social impact. Two weeks ago I blogged here too about tracking three hurricanes in the Caribbean via the brilliant but closed earth.nullschool.net. In between I compared & contrasted open & closed regimes on my Medium channel... and that 2½ yrs after a previous blog here on same!

Emergency response maps as easy as 1-2-3

Update 5: read here my  new occupation inspired by this 18 months later
Update 4: for a predictive app using Esri & Alexa, see this example in Maryland
Update 3: presented at European Petroleum GIS Conference in London, 2 Nov 2017
Update 2: Medium professional channel posting on Open Data issues raised here
Update 1: Youtube of  freely available data show flood spread from 27 to 30 August

Crowdsourcing for disaster response

Andrew's GIS Platforms reloaded

A GIS group discussion prompted me to update this list of selected desktop & web platforms by delivery and cost - note that it excludes commercially serviced FOSS, as well as web & mobile apps - and the usual caveats apply, see details on last page.

To teach or not to teach, that is the question

With apologies to The Bard, whilst the internet in general and YouTube in particular are great tools - I use them here and on YouTube myself - there is the danger of posting educational videos uncritically.

"Data and Maps: a simpler Workflow"

[Note: this complements Part III of A Day in the Life of...  ongoing blog post series here]

A day in the life of a petroleum professional - Part III - shorthand

[2018 Update -  presented at AAPG Visiting Geoscientist Program in Budapest in 2015 and Szeged in 2018 with open data for 2014 and 2018.

2016 Update - PUGonline Geospatial Workflow catalog summarised this as: Development & Planning > Mapping Well Data

2015 Update - A higher level article is published by PPDM Foundations in its Q4 2015 issue]

This is Part III of a "A day in the life of..." posts, to introduce basic petroleum data management for professionals who generate prospects. This is a yet even simpler workflow that helps rapid project start-ups for prospectors rather than data managers.

A day in the life of a petroleum professional - Part II - shorthand

[Update: posted here an even simpler workflow that reads government data direct from web]

This is Part II of a A day in the life of posts, to introduc Basic petroleum data manipulation for professionals who aren't data managers. This is however a much simpler workflow that lends itself more to rapid project start-ups for petroleum rather than data professionals.

Esri, Google and if the shoe fits...

[Update: a Google business partner's view of things, 3 mo. after the fracas]

[Here is a further update based on input from other people on what is surely a timely topic. Originally posted on LinkedIn Pulse as The (Geo) Internet of Things, it's posted there for a wider audience.]

A day in the life of a petro-data manager - Part I - Shorthand

[Update: a simpler workflow that uses  for-fee & for-free software is posted here]

After intoducing the process to extract, transform & load  (ETL) www.boem.gov well data into a www.ppdm.org database, here is the short version expanded over on my sister blog.

A day in the life of a petro-data manager - intro

[Update: Talend made the early version complex, so simpler one was posted later]

Have you ever been given plain text geodata and wondered how to database and map it? And has this happened to you lately with tens of thousands of lines of data? Well help is at hand! Here is an ETL  workflow (extract, transform, load) useful to any data manager in or out of petroleum using free tools:

Dynamic maps final (for now)

[Update1: longhand version posted on my map catalog blog
Update 2: companion Slideshare delves into technical issues]

This is the end installment of progressing from static to dynamic maps online. A few lessons learned along the way on posting a quarter million point dataset, which ballooned to almost half a million after links & joins...

Lessons from 'static to dynamic maps'

Last month related the stumbling blocks in posting too much data on arcgis.com - time animation pushed the limits of stock web service even when limits are set above 250K points - and other services don't offer animation as yet.

From static to dynamic maps, continued

Last month I reported on posting on arcgis.com some time-stamped, time-slider or time-aware maps - I showed my WhereIsAndrew map - I also mentioned how time-sliders are a great way to roll-up diverse datasets that are time dependent. CLIWOC Captain's ships logs was the other example cited, and I proceeded to post it as a service from ArcMap on arcgis.com.

From static to dynamic maps, my travel so far

I tell people "I know just enough java to be dangerous", and it has served my well in my prior attempts logged in my old web page. These were all Google Maps API v.2 I built about 5 years ago. This blog as well as my new map catalog showed how I built maps in QGIS then ArcGIS, and then posted them on giscloud.com and AWS via Mapcentia GeoCloud2. I recently posted maps on arcgis.com on desktop and smartphone, static results of 'traveling salesman' geoprocessing on the desktop or online.