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

Releasing data really works, Part VII

And now for something completely different - the original posts until Part VI are listed below - I ran across a nice map of Steve Feldman's: He also tried out free data and software to map UK flood maps, an up-scaled version not for professional re-use.

Releasing data really works, Part VI

Three months into posting data on my web service - Part V - I created a short list of free data for Great Britain on my Map Catalog called GB Freebie.

Global Sailings (1662 - 1856, English, Spanish, Dutch, French) revisited

[Update: climate data (wind speed & direction) have now been added in short & long posts]

I originally extracted CLIWOC (CLImatological database for the World's OCeans) ship captains' logs ships locations over a decade ago, to demonstrate the processing of 250K+ points in ArcGIS desktop using then new File Geodatabase. Five years later I posted this on my old website with instructions how to use it in  old ArcGIS Explorer and KML, and then I put a layer package on arcgis.com - both related historic details like de laPerouse's demise below, the importance of data standards and metadata, and the interst it generated elsewhere - more recently I posted a time-based variation of same, where using a time slider helps clarifiy complex data on desktop GIS.

Standards & Metadata, Part VIII

My previous post on this topic stated how careful documentation and appropriate metadata high-grades any information that is shared online by giving origin, context and other information. It helps build bridges and I quipped a well-known tear down this wall that also closed my second last post on free data and apps.

Releasing data really works, Part V

It took five days (after hours) to stand up, learn, tweak and display my East Anglia Fenlands project on Mapcentia's web service. It started with a GISuser group post on LinkedIn on Monday, I used my Amazon Web Service free EC2 trial and GeoCloud2 under beta, and by Friday I had it working and styled. No small thanks to Martin Hogh's original work and help, the result is a simple yet modern and pleasing web map.

RSPB2013 bird counts mapped

Releasing data really works, Continued

RSPB 2013 Big Garden Bird Watch released data by county, listing bird counts for each county in order of abundance. Why not then transpose these into one row of bird types (73) per recorded county (96, excl. N Ireland):

Mapping languages on the internet

[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.]

Let's explore global language distribution from World Mapper, then language usage on the internet as seen from Wikipedia. This was inspired by an article in The Economist as well as data I previously collected an posted on Google Drive to explore various topics on Google Fusion Tables.

Google Fusion Tables for new Google Maps?

[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 as evidenced below. Not sure why, but on this, this, this and another example posted as Iframes not Scripts preserved the old GFT maps.]

I posted on my old website a number of Google Maps in v.2 API that I have not converted to v.3. I also used Google Fusion Tables a number of times under the 'old look' - the 'new look' doesn't afford Heat Maps and polygon rendering as yet out-of-the-box - along comes a Google Fusion Tool that helps both on v.3 API and the new régime with very simple Google Fusion Table templates and new  rendering.

Blog readership Sept 2009 - 2012

Three years into moving to my blog page, here are a few stats on pageviews. Thanks to everyone especially @google, @slashgeo and @cageyjames for helping spread the word.

More maps R us

Continuing the ongoing (re)discovery of cool maps for the rest of us, here are two I found on Facebook from my friends Christophe Staff in Belgium and Aidos Malybayev in Kazakhstan.

Multi-modal maps R us, part II

Last week I reported Google Maps' released of multimodal transportation mapping in the greater London UK area (GLA). I mused that this rendition was more visually appealing that Transport for London's website. The 'granddaddy' for train and tube in London extended beyond GLA to be used from larger surrounding centres - I myself used it regularly from Cambridge an hour train to the north.

Multi-modal maps R us

Google multi-modal maps are so significant to greater London Area commuters that I cannot pass it up. Ed Parsons posted it on his blog and I immediately tried it: it's just the ticket (pun intended) living near Cambridge about an hour north of London and travelling around London only by public transit.

On-line spatial data validation, part II

[2013 update: Socium is now 1SpatialCloud]

Three weeks ago I introduced Socium's Online Validation Service (OVS). I showed the Ordnance Survey vector data QC, on the UK Parishes used as a geographic unit for the Medieval Fenlands project. Two weeks ago Socium kindly created a new rule, to post unexpected variations in adjacent feature attributes. In an essentially agricultural era, economic wealth of the Domesday period was quantified by Darby via the number of plough teams per parish. That is the attribute the rule was written for (it's hard-wired right now and Socium plans to add metadata pick lists in the future).

Cloud futures #2: on-line spatial data validation

[Update: follow ups for this project are Releasing Data Really Works Part I and Part IV]

Following vector maps on the web (cloud futures #1), here is a freemium online validation service (OVS) that helps us QC, quantify and clean up spatial data on the web. A speciality of 1Spatial is its spatial validation, an essential first step to setting up proper spatial data infrastructure. They spun off 1SpatialCloud to offer the same service online.

Guns & Roses, or: 3D GIS anyone?

[Update 2: layer package can now be found as Teapot Dome Six Pack on PUG Online
Update: RMOTC was sold off in 2015, their ftp site is now gone, ask for available copies]

The Guns part is the colorful history associated with the Teapot Dome. A remote Wyoming oilfield once a sleepy Naval Petroleum Reserve, the Teapot Dome Scandal was, however, the biggest to rock Washington DC until Watergate... or the oil industry until the Enron collapse! Read this introduction to a book excerpt: Marines Invade Wyoming - From the Halls of Motazuma to the Oil Fields of Teapot Dome, for cape-and-sword intrigue from ranchers and oil barons to US senators and the White House...

Be the weatherman for others

Last week I posted dust and wind data germane to Kuwait in my banner map. This week take the same layers and mash them up with another service: Here I took a service from ESRI(France) to post volunteer ride-sharers (covoiturage) to their SIG 2011, and added weather and urban data, just to show how easy it is to augment existing offerings.

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?

Another Take on Climate Change, Part III

[Update: Part IV, more on mapping earth gravity]

The time-space map I looked for in Part II is on esri.com... among many others for certes! Note on the map below that the oceanic trenches indeed lie slightly outboard of the Pacific plate boundaries: as suggested earlier the epicenters are at the prow of the major bend in said boundaries; the shift in landmass, however, renders that link even more graphical.