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.

“Au revoir” RMOTC dataset, part VII

“Lucky 7”, this is my closing post on the RMOTC series on subsurface 3D data, to explore reservoir depletion, pipeline routing and gridding/contouring. This also ends for now my tenure in Kuwait, where I prepared this dataset for a training tool. Follow me on LinkedIn to see where I'll go next...

Gridding and contouring (RMOTC dataset, part VI)

Free geosciences 3D data show GIS helping model reservoir depletion, and displaying it on the desktop and on-line. Then came pipeline routing and now to close the loop is gridding and contouring. Again, this is no replacement for geosciences packages, but rather a tool for triage:

• first stack as many data as needed (like basin hydrodynamics or land permitting) for play-fairway analyses
• then focus on targets with geoscience apps on specifics (like seismic and petrophysics) for prospects

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).

Happy Holiday Season

Just for fun - momentary suspension of disbelief required - NORAD Tracks Santa countdown starts now! And follow it on Google Earth.

For serious fun - travel to the other side of the globe - follow the centennial celebration of the British Services Antarctic Expedition. And do it on arcgis.com c/o Esri(UK).

How education has changed my life and what I did about it

I consider myself a citizen of the world, as shown in the map below. Born as my parents fled Hungary right after 1956 Uprising. Raised on the expat circuit of an oil company. Emigrated to north America as a student. Lived most of my adult life in north America. Recently repatriated to Europe, yet still work abroad. Education has been a constant thread in my life: first through graduate school, then running continuing education for a local  geological society, and now managing GIS in the resources sector worldwide.

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.

Openware inaugural newlsetter

Ask the GIS Expert column on page 14 in the inaugural newsletter of Openware (Esri distributor in Kuwait) echoes the current blog series: use what you already have on your Esri desktop.

Pipeline routing (RMOTC dataset, part V)

As promised last week here is the update to my second most popular Slideshare post: using ArcGIS Model Builder to plan a pipeline route as a function of topography, slope, land cover and cultural data (roads, rivers, wetlands etc.). As RMOTC is remote, see (pardon the pun) it is uninhabited and land cover is uniformly grass- or shrub-land, which has the same IGBP class of 5 (middle-of-the-road).

Simple reservoir depletion modelling, part IV

This last in a series shows how to further extend the reach of your GIS analysis across the corporation in full 3D via a free ArcGIS Explorer Desktop. Simply go Add Contents: ArcGIS layers, and to enhance performance go Base Map: Clear basemap. This is a large data set complete with local topography.