My web presence

Monday, 30 August 2021

"Start me up" reloaded

[ Update: watch this creepy reprise by Rolling Stones & Boston Dynamics on the 40th anniversary of the Tattoo You album ]

The 25th anniversary of Win95 launch reminded me of the cringy launch party livestreamed where I was then in Calgary. What struck me was in Rolling Stones' lyrics including "you make grown men cry" in the launch party was clipped in later adverts... 

Tuesday, 10 August 2021

"With a little help from my friends", Part II

New how-to 

Part I showed how a map of DEFRA open data can help situational awareness for a West Midlands XR event. Having done a sea level rise and risk of flooding map for the Thames River valley near London last year, I redid one now with the lessons learned in the interval. The previous Sea Level Rise map from Open Data was rather onerous: I streamlined the process to simply load free & open data with only GIS styling; the resulting Build your own can be replicated on other GIS with listed data sources.

Wednesday, 28 July 2021

Unlocking Open Data from a legacy site

 In the process of looking at land cover per previous post, I found Natural England's Natural Capital Atlas - their story map encouraged me to enter EsriUK's latest competition - their Esri dataset is accompanied by ample documentation under data.gov. To save us reverting to ArcMap, let's use the provided layer files and a file geodatabase in three simple steps to map our own region on ArcGIS Pro.

Friday, 16 July 2021

Land cover to study East Anglia peatlands evolution

Community Engagement  1, ... 12, 13, 1415161718 & 19

[ Update 3: next installment integrates this + companion below in peatland assessment
Update 2: see next how to re-use, clip & correct Natural England's Natural Capital Atlas
Update 1: added Living Atlas, ESA & USGS land cover and Natural England peat lands ]

Having concluded a comprehensive synopsis on risk of flooding and sea level rise, an opportunity arose to look at land cover classification with the data below and two peat land experts who will help with this.

Sunday, 11 July 2021

What is your 'ikigai'?

 Ikigai (生き甲斐, "a reason for being") is a Japanese concept referring to having a direction or purpose in life, providing a sense of fulfillment and towards which they the person may take actions, giving them satisfaction and a sense of meaning. en.wikipedia.org

Monday, 21 June 2021

"With a little help from my friends"

[ Update:  Part II re-uses this and improves the manual for a London area action ]

Part of our mandate at cottenham.info is to raise awareness around climate change issues in East Anglia. A key part is to quantify risks around flooding from land during increasingly variable weather, as well as to predict what sea level rise would look like over time from melting polar ice caps. That combines respectively excellent ground work by DEFRA - see their Future Fens twitter feed - and modelling against topography by Ordnance Survey and DEFRA. And timing of sea level rises is an emotional issue: to balance the reality of the risk with questions around time scales (see comment), will help raise awareness without unduly raising alarm.

Wednesday, 2 June 2021

Cambridgeshire COVID Info Portal 1¼ years later

Almost 1½ years from the onset of COVID, here a video of the info portal created using ESRI dashboard, inspired from the Johns Hopkins University pioneering hit - same tech with more data and expertise - our own info portal is a handy  bit.ly/CamCOVIDinfo.

Sunday, 30 May 2021

Geo-reference an image

 This update to Challenger Expedition DIY Web Map is called an "inchworm" map, as monthly points appear to worm around the globe, with an inchworm's hump at times. This caught @miniboats eye on the approach to the expedition's 150th anniversary (see also a fascination Natural History Museum post here). 

Monday, 24 May 2021

East Anglia Flood Defences Final

Community Engagement  1, ... 12, 13, 14151617 & 18

[ Update: see post #19 on an opportunity to use land cover information to study peat lands

This extends the previous flood defences update into a 3D interactive map. It also explains the DEFRA flood defences data update, in order to map the infrastructure complete with various sea level rise elevations. [Story map full-page here.]

Sunday, 16 May 2021

East Anglia Flood Defences Update

Community Engagement  1, ... 12, 13, 1415, 16 & 17

[ Update: the next blogpost extends this into a 3d interactive map wrapping up this 2 years study ]

This closes the trio of updates on sea level rise timelines and infrastructure based on newly available climate change data, since this project started two years ago. 

Environment Agency's DEFRA not only manages a comprehensive Risk of Flooding for River and from Sea via ground observations and mapping, but it also manages all the infrastructure related to flood risks from the same. 

Let's extend our ongoing mapping effort here to include AIMS Spatial Flood Defences (inc. standardised attributes):