GEO: connexion articles from March 2005

GEO: connexion archives from March 2005

Looking back but planning ahead.(upfront)
March 1, 2005... It's invariably tempting to look back at past :up front columns to see how events have--or might have--shaped history, and while GEO:connexion is still a youthful three year-old, our first issue (Dec 2001/Jan 2002) pondered the possibilities of...

All the rave.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... Swedish Defence (Forsvaret) is increasing its trials of RaveGeo, the map compression and streaming software from Idevio (Goteborg, Sweden). The first stage of testing was carried out on worldwide databases; it yielded good results and now tests...

Cambridge on the register.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... Cambridge City Council (Cambridge, UK) has completed a project to register all its landholdings with Land Registry. In cooperation with Land Registry's Peterborough office, deeds and documents which took up 42 metres of shelving were reduced to...

Across the border.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions (Alabama, USA) has deployed a command and control system, based on its GeoMedia technology, to the Hungarian Border Guard. The system, entitled BOGCOS, was implemented to assist the Hungarian Border...

Mam-moth undertaking.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... Clark Labs (Massachusetts, USA) and the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) have entered into a cooperative agreement to construct risk maps for gypsy moth infestation in the USA. The gypsy moth was accidentally introduced...

Future-proof.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... The County of Stade (Germany) has placed an order with AED-SICAD Aktiengesellschaft (AED-SICAD, Munich, Germany) for Kommunal on ArcGIS to help build up its integrated regional information system (IRIS). Data and services will be distributed...

Top caps.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... CAPS Solutions (Newbury, UK) has received e-Gif accreditation from the e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) Accreditation Authority. The accreditation certifies that CAPS has the necessary technology and standards in place to deliver...

Down on the farm.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... Trimble (California, USA) has been approached by Poland's Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture (Warsaw, Poland) to supply 156 GeoExplorer series handheld GPS receivers. The government agency is responsible for the proper...

What lies beneath.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... Fugro Multi Client Services (FMCS. Oslo, Norway), in cooperation with TGS-NOPEC Geophysical has begun the acquisition of the Mid Norway Regional (MNR) 2D seismic survey (phase 1). The data is being processed by Geotrace and will be available in...

East meets west.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... NAVTEQ (Veldhoven, Netherlands) has completed its digital mapping of Poland and Slovenia. In Poland, field researchers have recorded a total of over 13,300 km of roads, including detailed information on the Warsaw area and about 9,000 km of the...

Unhealthy 'hotspots'.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... A map that highlights sexually transmitted disease (STD) 'hotspots' in London (UK) has been designed to help healthcare workers target the areas that need the most help in preventing and treating the diseases. Recently published figures show...

Surveying school.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... The training solutions provider PB Training & Development Solutions Ltd, in conjunction with Geolink Consulting Ltd, has won a tender to supply survey training to Land Registry (UK). The five-day training courses will provide Land Registry...

Picture perfect.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... Cadcorp (Stevenage, UK) and Ricoh Corporation (New Jersey, USA) have teamed up to develop a hardware and software solution for ground-based geo-imaging applications. The solution is based on Ricoh's new Pro G3 GPS-ready digital camera and...

Contours available online.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... Getmapping (Hartley Wintney, UK) has added countrywide digital contour mapping to its online offering of aerial photography. Ordnance Survey mapping and digital height data for the UK. The contour dataset is derived from the NEXTMap Britain...

Call for papers.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... The Association for Geographic Information (AGI) conference committee chair, Nick Chapallaz has made a call for papers for the AGI2005 conference, the annual AGI event, this year held 1-3 November 2005 in London. The deadline for submissions is...

Get in sync.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... Cambridge Positioning Systems Ltd (CPS. Cambridge, UK) has launched Enhanced Global Positioning System--E-GPS--a technology which harnesses its Matrix technology to improve satellite-based location performance indoors and in built up areas. The...

Tiny trackers.(GEO:news)
March 1, 2005... QinetiQ (Farnborough, UK) and GlobalPoint Technologies (Tyne & Wear, UK) have developed what they claim to be the "world's most compact global tracking device". Working in association with Durham University (UK) and the Centre of Excellence for...

Stunning!(CEO:news)
March 1, 2005... The results of Space Imaging's (Colorado, USA) annual top ten images of the year have been announced. Almost 1500 people voted for the ten images that they felt best met the criterion of the competition--that the images were 'stunning'. The...

An open door.(CEO:news)
March 1, 2005... The GNOSIS (Generalised Natural Sciences Online and Spatial Information System) consortium has chosen IONIC Software (Grace--Hollogne, Belgium) to build a geoportal that can be accessed by people across the world to help disseminate information...

Airport of the future.(CEO:news)
March 1, 2005... Sokkia (Kanagawa. Japan) has delivered a batch of reflectorless SET530Rs total stations to the constructors of the new Bangkok International Airport. The project encompasses approximately 32 square kilometres; the airport is scheduled to open...

Smart thinking from Tracalert.(CEO:news)
March 1, 2005... Getmapping aerial photography is helping to pinpoint the location of people in need of emergency help as part of Tracalert's (Middlesex, UK) mobile personal safety solution. Combining GPS positions with the imagery allows emergency response...

It's all downhill from here.(LBS News in Brief)
March 1, 2005... ESRI Italia, (Rome, Italy) distributor for ESRI in Italy, is supporting Bormio 2005, the Federation Internationale de Ski (FIS) Alpine World Ski Championships, which will be staged in the Bormio region of Italy this winter. This will be the...

I'm on the phone.(CEO:news)
March 1, 2005... The number of mobile subscribers in central and Eastern Europe (including central Asia) has exceeded 134 million (as of the end of June, 2004) according to a report published by Informa Telecoms and Media (London, UK). This figure represents an...

Clear roads for Hessen.(CEO:news)
March 1, 2005... A traffic management scheme for the region of Hessen in Germany has been set up with support from PTV AG (Karlsruhe, Germany). Under the pilot scheme 33 cars have been turned into 'traffic alert systems' which transmit current traffic...

Web mapping for the world.(CEO:news)
March 1, 2005... DM Solutions Group Inc. (Ottawa, Canada) and Orkney Inc. (Yokohama, Japan), a business solution provider, have announced a partnership to jointly deliver an internationalised version of DM Solutions' MapServer. The two companies have worked to...

SIA's strong sales.(CEO:news)
March 1, 2005... SIA Ltd (London, UK) has released its latest sales news. Southend LEA, Cheshire County Council and Lancashire LEA have all undertaken consultancy programmes including training and software installation. Its SMART application has been purchased...

David vs. Goliath.(CEO:news)
March 1, 2005... NAC Geographic Products Inc. (Toronto, Canada) has reported that Microsoft (California, USA) has filed a patent for "compact text encoding of latitude/longitude coordinates" which it believes to be an infringement of the Natural Area Coding...

Ordnance survey choose Intergraph.(CEO:news)
March 1, 2005... Ordnance Survey Great Britain (Southampton, UK) has purchased Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions (Alabama, USA) Z/I Imaging Digital Mapping Camera (DMC) system to complete conversion of its photogrammetric operations into a fully...

NavCom and Filanda agreement.(CEO:news)
March 1, 2005... NavCom Technology (California, USA) and Filanda (Quebec, Canada) have signed a new dealer contract, coupling NavCom Technology's VueStar aerial navigation solution with its SoftNav product line. SoftNav is used for aeronautical applications...

Radius Topology resellers.(CEO:news)
March 1, 2005... Laser-Scan (Cambridge, UK) has signed Aligned Assets (Old Woking, UK) as a Radius Topology reseller in the UK. Laser-Scan is working with geospatial companies to build a global reseller network for Radius Topology; during the last year...

Definiens imaging signs Canadian Defence R & D contract.(CEO:news)
March 1, 2005... Definiens Imaging (Munich, Germany), developer of satellite image classification technology, has signed a research and development agreement with Defence Research and Development Canada (Defence R & D Canada. Valcartier, Canada). As an agency...

PriceWatch*.(CEO:news)
March 1, 2005... PriceWatch* stock price change Autodesk 22.73 -1.46 Intergraph 23.12 +1.84 MapInfo 10.26 +1.19 Trimble Navigation 28.71 +4.8 * Share price (converted to euros) as at close...

NovAtel news.(CEO:news)
March 1, 2005... NovAtel Inc. (Alberta, Canada) has released news that in January 2005 its major shareholder. CMC Electronics Inc., sold approximately 3.2 million common shares of NovAtel through open market transactions. As a result, CMC Electronics' ownership...

Leica Geosystems.(RESULTS)
March 1, 2005... Leica Geosystems (Heerbrugg, Switzerland) has reported continued growth in its third quarter; revenues increased by 11.8 per cent with sales of almost [euro]126 million. The surveying and engineering division posted a 20 per cent rise in local...

MapInfo.(RESULTS)
March 1, 2005... First quarter results for MapInfo (New York, USA) show a net income [euro]0.9 million, almost double the income of the equivalent period in 2004. Revenue reached [euro]26.8 million, the highest quarterly revenue in MapInfo's history and...

Oce NV.(RESULTS)
March 1, 2005... Oce NV (Venlo, the Netherlands) has published its final results for 2004. Total revenues were at [euro]2,652.5 million. The company reported an operating income of [euro]110.4 million with a net income of [euro]78.1 million and basic earnings...

Call for papers for Kuwait conference.(CEO:middle east)
March 1, 2005... Dr Mohamad Al-Anezi, chairman of the higher organising committee for the first Kuwait Remote Sensing Conference and Exhibition has issued a call for papers. The event will be held in Kuwait from 26-28 September 2005. The conference chairman has...

Usaid project honoured.(CEO:middle east)
March 1, 2005... Last year at the 13th ESRI GIS conference USAID's West Bank and Gaza mission was honoured for developing a sophisticated internet-based GIS that manages humanitarian and development activities. The developer of the technology is Tayseer Edeas,...

Southern African reseller for Ermapper.(CEO:africa)
March 1, 2005... ER Mapper (Perth, Australia) has appointed a new master reseller. DataNet Solutions (Pty) Ltd. (Cape Town, South Africa), for the Southern African region. DataNet Solutions is a new company dedicated to the advancement of geospatial enterprise...

Cape town launches GIS project.(CEO:africa)
March 1, 2005... The city of Cape Town (South Africa) has announced that it is the first South African 'megacity' to initiate a GIS project for the storage and retrieval of its road and storm water plans, reports Paul Vecchiatto on the AllAfrica.com website....

Kalahari Desert.(CEO:africa)
March 1, 2005... This striking Landsat 7 image of the edge of the Kalahari Desert in Namibia shows sand dunes encroaching on once-fertile fields in the north. Healthy vegetation appears red in this image. Note the lone red dot in the centre--it is the result of...

Welcome Jeff!(GEO:people)
March 1, 2005... Jeff Thurston has been appointed as editor of GEO:connexion International magazine. Based in Berlin, Germany, Thurston is highly regarded throughout the international geospatial community, both as an author (his co-authored book 'Integrated...

New management at softelec.(GEO:people)
March 1, 2005... softelec has appointed a new team of managers following the retirement last year of president and founder, Dr Michael Horvatin. Existing employees, Stefan Horvatin, Bernd Rau and Juergen Buhr have assumed responsibility for running the company....

OS appoints Doyle.(GEO:people)
March 1, 2005... Simon Doyle has joined Ordnance Survey as development manager within the Information Systems group. He will head up the mapping agency's software and systems application development within its technology directorate and brings with him...

Just the Mann.(GEO:people)
March 1, 2005... The Association of Geographic Information (AGI) has appointed H. Robert Mann as director following the departure of Mark Lineham, Mann describes himself as "a geographer" by training but his career has taken him to many other industries. Most...

New faces at Dotted Eyes.(GEO:people)
March 1, 2005... Dotted Eyes (Bromsgrove, UK) have made three new appointments: Sandeep Girn joins the business development team as sales coordinator. Girn graduated with a BA Hons, degree in business and management from Sheffield Hallam University in 2002 and...

Defence Geospatial Intelligence 2005, London, England: promoting interoperability to achieve battlefield dominance.(GEO:connect)
March 1, 2005... A Europe-wide study into the challenges confronting defence imagery analysts found interoperability--or lack of it--among their top concerns. To address the issue in greater depth, a special interoperability focus day mounted by the New...

European Geospatial Intelligence Seminar, Bonn, Germany.(GEO:connect)
March 1, 2005... Many of those attending the London event described above would have had a foretaste at a European Geospatial Intelligence Seminar hosted by Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions (IMGS) and held at the Haus der Geschichtend in Bonn at the...

Geokosmos, 4th International Conference and Exhibition.(GEO:connect)
March 1, 2005... The future of laser scanning and digital aerial photography were the hot topics of the 4th International Conference and Exhibition hosted by Geokosmos, 9-10 December 2004 in Moscow, Russia. Over 170 delegates from all over the world gathered to...

Map Middle East 2005, Dubai, UAE.(GEO:connect)
March 1, 2005... This year marks the first gathering of Map Middle East, a conference and exhibition on geospatial information, technology and applications held, 23-25 April at Al Bustan Rotana Hotel in Dubai, UAE. The conference aims to highlight the need for...

GeoSpatial World 2005.(Events in brief)
March 1, 2005... Registration is now open for Intergraph's GeoSpatial World 2005 which will be held 26-28 April, 2005. The venue for this annual event is the Hilton hotel in San Francisco, USA. The technical programme is packed with over 200 sessions across the...

First for Kuwait.(Events in brief)
March 1, 2005... Kuwait's first International Remote Sensing Conference and Exhibition will be held 26-28 September 2005. Dr Farouk El-Baz. director of the centre for remote sensing at Boston University (USA) and chairman of the conference hopes that the event...

Data centres Europe 2005, London, UK.(Events in brief)
March 1, 2005... 28-29 April 2005: Kingsway Hall Hotel at Covent Garden in London is this year's host of Europe's only summit for data centres, colocation providers and website hosts. Speakers at the event include Globix, CB Richard Ellis, The Colocation...

BE Meeting 2005, speakers confirmed.(Events in brief)
March 1, 2005... Bentley Systems Inc has confirmed the line up of speakers for the BE Meeting Prague 2005, which takes place 28 February to 2 March, Dr Xavier Lopez, director of Oracle's Spatial and Location Technologies group, will lead the proceedings; he...

Situation normal: noticing abnormalities and problems is easy with hindsight. Monitoring for unusual situations could largely be done automatically yet, as Bob Barr explains, in order to do this we need to be confident in the reliability of our data and rule bases.(dangling segment)
March 1, 2005... The North West of England is still coming to terms with the case of the notorious general practitioner, Harold Shipman, who killed at least 250 of his patients. Pharmacists, other doctors and the coroner's service have all been investigated and...

Spreading the message: European Conference for ESRI Education Users, Copenhagen, Denmark.(FOCUS)
March 1, 2005... The 2004 European Conference for ESRI Education Users was staged to coincide with ESRI's Europe-wide conference in November of last year. While both events convened in Copenhagen, they were held some little distance apart and each had its own...

Lending a helping hand: in the second part of our special tsunami coverage, MapAction team member Nicola Capes gives a personal account of the charity's work in Sri Lanka and beyond.(tsunami special coverage)
March 1, 2005... When disaster strikes, the immediate concerns of those affected are for medicine, clean water, food and shelter... maps don't readily spring to mind as a priority. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] However, once you embark on the logistics of...

IMAPS points the way: GEO:connexion visits UNEP-WCMC to find out how its online mapping facility has been aiding environmentalists in their response to events in the Indian Ocean.(tsunami special coverage)
March 1, 2005... While the cost of the Indian Ocean tsunami has been immense in terms of lives lost, homes destroyed and economies shattered, early reports painted a mixed picture of the fate of flora and fauna in devastated coastal regions. [ILLUSTRATION...

A step in the right direction? Martin Cullen summarises a report that signposts the way for those with designs on Britain's highways and byways.(utilities)
March 1, 2005... Over the past months, the Geospatial Engineering Board (a joint body set up by Britain's Institution of Civil Engineers and the Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors) has been in discussion with industry and academia to examine the status...

Out of sight. Out of mind? Chris Wright addresses the vexed question of data quality in asset management databases and outlines a promising two-step solution.(utilities)
March 1, 2005... Utilities are schizophrenic organisations in being both asset managers and customer service organisations. They rely on knowledge of their network assets and customer connections in order to run their business. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

Fixing it in France: Patrick Bezard-Falgas relates how French Chartered surveyors aim to have a nationwide position-fixing network up-and-running by the end of the year.(france)
March 1, 2005... That's the ambitious objective set by France's Order of Chartered Surveyors (Ordre des Geometres Experts or OGE), a body charged since 1946 with providing a public service to demarcate, protect and develop land and property. The resulting...

Showtime in Paris!(le geo-evenement 2005)
March 1, 2005... France's premier geospatial conference and trade show, Le Geo-Evenement (Le Geo-Event), opens its doors later this month for three days at the Paris Expo (Porte de Versailles) exhibition centre in southern Paris. From 30 March to I April it is...

Open for business: Paul Dure explores how cartographic publishers are coping with change in a fast-moving industry.(france)
March 1, 2005... Today, more than ever, success in the world of cartographic publishing calls for a high degree of openness: open in your choice of tools: open to your suppliers' input formats; open to your customers' wishes (or should we say 'demands'), and...

Charting the depths: offshore or inshore, one French company is charting its future with software to support modern legal and regulatory frameworks.(france)
March 1, 2005... Geomod, a service company with offices in Lyon and Brest, and French distributor of the SIS (Spatial Information System) from Cadcorp, has exploited the powerful editing tools, topology and multiple read/write format capability of the system to...

The mobile revolution: as portable navigation celebrates its fifth birthday, Andrew Little looks at developing trends in an impressive growth market.(satellite navigation)
March 1, 2005... It was just five years ago that application developers first started looking at producing portable, personal navigation devices. Since then technology has moved on at a great pace, making it much easier and faster to access map data--which in...

New moon rising: Mike Bedford looks at the whys and wherefores of the Galileo satnav system.(satellite navigation)
March 1, 2005... In 2002, the European Union gave its final approval to the development, in association with the European Space Agency (ESA), of an independent global satellite navigation system. Designated Galileo, it will offer an alternative to America's...

Smart fixes for Smartphones: as GPS-enabled smartphones enter the market, GEO:connexion asks Oliver Leisten of GPS antenna specialist, Sarantel, how the company is adapting its designs to meet emerging needs.(satellite navigation)
March 1, 2005... GEO:connexion: What techniques are Sarantel employing to improve GPS performance for this new breed of products and what commercial considerations apply? Oliver Leisten: Our goal is to improve the ability of GPS enabled mobile devices to...

Virtual Aarhus: thanks to public-private sector collaboration, municipal planners in Denmark's second city are able to shape the future while preserving the best of the past.(visualisation)
March 1, 2005... Founded a thousand years ago in the Viking age, Aarhus on Jutland's east coast is today a city of a quarter of a million people, famed for its 800 year-old cathedral, university, and year-round cultural events. And while progress demands...

The power of unity: growing a community through technology; Brad Zaytsoff explains how powerful visualisation and intelligence-sharing tools are supporting humanitarian efforts in disaster-hit areas.(visualisation)
March 1, 2005... The death toll for the South and Southeast Asia region as of February 3, 2005, stands at approximately 300,000. Over one million have been displaced, and two million are in need of food. The carnage created by the December 26 tsunami disaster...

XenoVision Mk III: visualising terrain on-screen is one thing; visualising it with XenoVision adds a whole new dimension.(visualisation)
March 1, 2005... Remember those pre-digital age boards of sliding metal rods into which you could gently press your face and which responded to the pressure to produce a mask in glorious relief? Less-than-satisfactory results could be discarded with a quick...

English Partnerships.(Business Briefs)
March 1, 2005... English Partnerships, the national regeneration agency in the UK, is the first organisation to sign up as an account holder to Cities Revealed Online (Cambridge, UK), an online service offering access to imagery on demand. Imagery is available...

ERI.(Business Briefs)
March 1, 2005... ERI (California, USA) recently participated in the Standards in Action meeting sponsored by the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The highlight of the meeting was the 3rd GML Relay, which challenges GIS vendors to exchange data...

Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors.(Business Briefs)
March 1, 2005... The Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors (ICES) has extended its offer of membership to members and fellows of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors' construction and geomatics faculties. The aim of this promotion is to call upon...

Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions.(Business Briefs)
March 1, 2005... Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions (Alabama, USA) has been selected by the water department of Cobb County, Georgia (USA) to deploy its mobile resource management (MRM) solutions to automate the sorting and routing of work orders and...

Leica Geosystems GIS & Mapping, LLC.(Business Briefs)
March 1, 2005... Leica Geosystems GIS & Mapping, LLC (Georgia, USA) has been selected by the Department of Survey and Mapping in Malaysia (JUPEM) to provide its Leica Photogrammetry Suite (LPS). JUPEM employs Leica Geosystems products at every step of its...

Star Informatic.(Business Briefs)
March 1, 2005... STAR INFORMATIC (Liege, Belgium) has been certified ISO 9001. The company took the decision to become certified following concerns about customer satisfaction while delivering improved services. In January 2004 QUALIBEL was brought in to help...

Aligned Assets.(Software Briefs)
March 1, 2005... Aligned Assets (Old Woking, UK) has launched EasyPlot, a program to create mapping layouts in MapInfo. The utility enhances MapInfo printing and plotting allowing users to create multi-featured presentation templates at sizes ranging from A4 to...

Blue Marble Geographics.(Software Briefs)
March 1, 2005... Blue Marble Geographics (Maine, USA) has released an update to its GeoTransform software developer tool kit 5.1. The application is an image transformation library behind the Blue Marble's Geographic Transformer; the DLL tool kit allows...

Blue Marble Geographics.(Software Briefs)
March 1, 2005... Blue Marble Geographics (Maine, USA) has also announced the release of cross platform versions of GeoCalc 6.0. First released on a NET platform last year, Blue Marble is now rolling out cross platform versions of those libraries. GeoCalc 6.0...

DM Solutions Group Inc.(Software Briefs)
March 1, 2005... DM Solutions Group Inc. (Ottawa, Canada) has announced the availability of Chameleon version 2.0. an Open Source technology which allows users to create customisable web mapping applications. This latest version provides the flexibility for...

ESRI.(Software Briefs)
March 1, 2005... ESRI (California, USA) is now shipping PLTS for ArcGIS 9--Foundation. Foundation provides the PLTS components found within each of the PLTS solutions (aeronautical, defence, mapping agency and nautical) and allows users to define their own...

GfK MACON.(Software Briefs)
March 1, 2005... GfK MACON (Waghausel, Germany) has released updated and expanded digital maps of India. The map package consists of 35 federal states and 604 districts and includes a map showing the 6-digit postcodes across 26,869 areas. The dataset is...

Idevio.(Software Briefs)
March 1, 2005... Idevio (Gothenburg, Sweden) has announced that its vector compression and streaming technology. RaveGeo, is now available for ESRI's ArcGIS as a plug-in. "I'm very pleased that ESRI users now have access to the exciting vector streaming and...

IONIC.(Software Briefs)
March 1, 2005... IONIC (Grace--Hollogne, Belgium) has released RedSpider LOBOS, an open solution for deploying location based services for mobile devices, web applications, and enterprise processes. It has already been implemented in a 3G telecommunications...