Hello, and welcome to GeoSpatial Stream. I’m your host, Todd Danielson, and today’s Lead Sponsor is Trimble Geospatial Division.
Today’s Top Story is Hurricane Season, which began on June 1st. To prepare for the coming storms, NASA is using its Historical Hurricane Tracks Web site to help predict where current or developing storms are likely to go. This figure shows the archived tracks for all tropical storms from 1848 to 2013. Over the long term there are definite patterns, but NASA warns that on a case-by-case basis, past storm behavior isn’t nearly as accurate as live predictions from NASA’s National Hurricane Center. Sometimes hurricanes match nicely to patterns, and sometimes they don’t. But with something as serious as hurricanes, all data are worth looking at, and history can be a good starting point. If you’d like to perform your own research, visit the Historical Hurricane Tracks Web site and see what you can discover.
That was today’s Top Story. I’ll be back with more news after this brief message.
According to a new report from PwC, global capital project and infrastructure spending is expected to grow to more than $9 trillion annually by 2015, up from $4 trillion in 2012. The report analyzes infrastructure spending across 49 of the world’s largest economies, which account for 90 percent of global output. Here are some clips from a video discussion of the report:
A Landsat 8 image from June 18 shows a plume of smoke rising from a large oil refinery in Baiji, Iraq, about 130 miles north of Baghdad. An attack on the refinery started late on June 17th by allies of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
And here are some clips from a video introducing smarter water management at the Dutch Water system:
In Industry Headlines, Eagle Mapping became the first commercial firm in North America to take delivery of the new Riegl LMS-Q1560 airborne laser-scanner system.
E-Capture R&D is introducing a new 3D-accurate measuring instrument embedded in a tablet for architecture and civil engineering.The EyesMap Tablet can measure coordinates, surfaces and volumes of objects up to a distance of 70 to 80 meters.
In support of President Obama’s Maker Faire and the national Day of Making, Esri created a pair of story maps to celebrate innovation in the United States. On June 18th, President Obama hosted the first ever White House Maker Faire and met with students, entrepreneurs and citizens who are using new tools and techniques to launch businesses; learn vital skills in science, technology, engineering, and math; and lead a grassroots renaissance in American manufacturing.
Blue Marble Geographics released its Global Mapper Software Development Kit version 15.2.
And URISA began its 2014 GIS Salary Survey. When finished, an Executive Summary will be available on the URISA web site for free, and a comprehensive analysis of results will be available for purchase. To participate in the survey, click on the Web site shown.
And now for today’s Final Thought: As mentioned earlier, hurricane season is upon us, and I’m hoping it will be a relatively calm one. I’m not too optimistic about that being the case, because if you’ve been watching these GeoSpatial Stream broadcasts, you’ll know they’ve been filled with climate-related catastrophes over the last several months. Regardless of the effects of climate change, the constant growth of human populations and infrastructure means that each year’s weather problems will grow worse in terms of overall destruction. So keep your eyes on the weather reports and take heed to any special warnings. Humans have gotten a lot better at modeling and mitigating severe weather, but we haven’t yet been able to control it. So be careful out there …
That’s it for this broadcast, I’m Todd Danielson, and this … was your GeoSpatial Stream.
