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.

A tale of two cities, or Bauhaus for maps

I attended two shows back-to-back in London yesterday. Esri(UK) Annual Conference was daytime at the QE2 Centre in Westminster a stone's throw from the Parliament. London Geomob was that evening in Shoreditch, the swanky London digital hub where Ordnance Survey just opened the Geovation Hub.

If the 20 min tube ride in between might have been through a wormhole, such was the contrast, both meetups strove to do the same thing, substituting maps for arts as the Bauhaus movement: "founded with the idea of creating a 'total' work of art in which all arts, including architecture, would eventually be brought together".

Your team is your friend

I am so proud of my teams at client sites and in our office! One team achieved in 6 months at one site what many thought would take years - to integrate surface and subsurface exploration and production infrastructure for an oilfield in 3D+time. Another team created just this week a real-time GIS data capture system that reduces to 4 steps what took 10 on paper - and of those only the first one is manual.

Web maps and Skype

Brisbane floods in eastern Australia affect areas I grew up in, and where friends still live. There are many map resources online through news media, for example Ushahidi community flood reporting map on ABC News, showing maps becoming mainstream.

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”.

Gathering clouds over the horizon, Part III

Eyjafjallajoekull volcanic ash blown southeastward caused air traffic disruption last week over the northern British Isles again. I post the North Atlantic section of NOAA's free web mapping services of global cloud and chemical composition:

2D or not 2D, part deux

There's a comprehesive move toward fairly generic realtime 3D, beyond the many, many traditional implementations. Satish Pai said at a Schlumberger Forum over five years ago that video gaming consoles would drive 3D visualisation in petroleum. Steve Ballmer recently asked at Microsoft's Global Energy Forum if X-Box might be the next console (below)? Google Earth uses movie industry techniques to speed up visualisation. And military techniques used in seismic visualisation were presented at FindingPetroleum's seminar Advances in Geophysics & Sub-surface Description this week.

A tale of two systems

The last picture in my previous post was in fact a teaser - the basic premise is that with the right technical tools and business plan, an entire system can be assembled today for the cost of just the software of yesterday. So basically a sports car can be had today, for what it cost to just get the chassis a few years ago. How then, you might ask?

Of GIS and automobiles

What mixed messages last week about what makes a succesful GIS division! On one hand CH2M Hill spun off Critigen, on the other Balfour Beatty plans to acquire Parsons Brinckerhoff. A few years ago Halliburton shed KBR, which in turn exited geospatial services. So is a spin-off due to its year-on-year growth, read: highest likelihood of surviving solo? Or is the parent shedding its best parts first, read: ripe for corporate takeover or management buyout?