GIS for oil spill modelling - Part II

This is a follow-up to Part I explaining oilspill modelling using NOAA Gnome modelling software and Kuwaiti ROPME data, all in the public domain. This has now been posted on ArcGIS Online as a time-aware file geodatabase map package. In this video using a dark grey basemap, the map package shows mock oil dispersal via advanced annotation, inversely proportional to time.

iPad maps

Here is a small selection of mapping tools available on the iPad. Some are from the Appstore, others simply from the web. These are screen shots that I took for those (thanks my readers for how-to tips).

Be your own weatherman

Dust storms are what you look out for in Kuwait. The banner map was a very simple way for me to create my own weather map:

1. where are the dust clouds?
2. what is the wind direction?
3. when will Kuwait get one?

Critical mass, satellite imagery and GIS

Satellite imagery has been around for almost as long as GIS, and the following may just make them so easy they finally gain momentum. The same way Jeeps and Suburbans had been around for a couple of generations, but only the last generation saw Ford legitimize SUVs with its Explorer.

Google Fusion Tables for Current Affairs

[Update: I noted on many of my Google Fusion Table posts that, while the data are still on Google Drive for you to view, GFT no longer offers a polygon or heatmap option, only geocoding by country centroid in its new version. Not sure why, but on this, this, this, and another  example posted as Iframes not Scripts preserved the old GFT maps.]

Wolfram Alpha is a search tool that does statistical as well as word searches. This is powerful indeed as it allows to query across diciplines, subjects and techniques. I live in Kuwait now, and the current events made me curious about the distribution of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Having already used Google Docs and Fusion Tables here and here, I performed the following:

IQPC show in Kuwait City

Attended this small and personable show and met some friends old and new - vendors were invited into the talks and plenty of time was left in between to meet&greet.

An excellent GIS repository

This summer I followed the ESRI User conference via twitter, which put me onto their excellent video resource page. That was great as it has not been easy, even after 25 years, to tell friends and family what I “spend just all hours of the day and days of the seasons and years”. That sound bite is from this video, which I found the best intro for “the rest of the world”.