Exploring the world of free tools for GIS, GPS, Google Earth, neogeography, and more.
Enter a surname (last name) into the World Names Profiler, and get a choropleth map showing the population density of that name:
A table of the countries with the highest FPM (frequency per million) of that name:
Continue reading ‘Map Surname Densities With The World Names Profiler’
Zoe Watson writes about ZipWho.Com, a website that provides a quick summary of demographic data for any US Zip Code:
You can also search for zip codes that meet up to four criteria like household income, married status, ethnicity, educational level, etc., narrowing the search down to specific cities and states if you like.
The OneGeology website gives its mission as:
Make web-accessible the best available geological map data worldwide at a scale of about 1: 1 million, as a geological survey contribution to the International Year of Planet Earth.
While the official launch of the site is scheduled to coincide with the International Geological Conference in Oslo, August 6-14, the mapping portal site is already partially functional, although a few bugs and quirks still exist. It currently works with Internet Explorer 6/7, and Firefox 2, but not Firefox 3 (hope this changes soon). And while the goal is to have data for the whole world at a 1:1,000,000 scale, data for significant areas of the world are currently not available at that scale; for example, the US data is at the 1:5M scale. A partial list of the WMS data available and its scale is on this page.
Continue reading ‘Online 1:1M Geology Maps At The OneGeology Portal’
Slashgeo links to an announcement on Canada’s GeoBase site that SPOT imagery will become available for all of Canada by 2010. Panchromatic (black-and-white) imagery will be at 10-meter resolution, while four multispectral bands (Green, Red, Near IR, short-wavelength IR) will be available at 20-meter resolution; this is compared to Landsat 7 data (also available from GeoBase), with 15/30/60-meter resolution but more bands (one panchromatic, 6 multispectral, 2 thermal IR). A fair amount of imagery is already available:
Free registration required for access to GeoBase’s downloadable data, which includes a lot more Canadian geographical datasets (road networks, hydrography, topography, and more).
Monday’s post on the Thematic Mapping Engine reminded me that I’ve been meaning to post about Uuorld (pronounced “world”) for a while. Uuorld is also a thematic mapping tool, but uses its own custom 3D display engine instead of a standard digital globe or file format (like the TME’s use of KMZ for display in Google Earth or other compatible programs). It comes with roughly 120 or so datasets of demographic/commercial/land use data, which can be displayed for a preset world region, or for a custom region you can create yourself. Many of the datasets are time-based, allowing you to create animated prism or choropleth maps that can be exported in a number of video formats (mp4, mpg, avi and flv). Controls let you set the tilt and orientation of the 3D view, and export it as a TIFF, JPEG or PNG:
Continuing on from the first post in the series …
MetaCat: “Metacat is a flexible metadata database. It utilizes XML as a common syntax for representing the large number of metadata content standards that are relevant to ecology. Thus, Metacat is a generic XML database that allows storage, query, and retrieval of arbitrary XML documents without prior knowledge of the XML schema.”
ht to Matt Perry.
MetaLite: “MetaLite is a simple tool for collecting and validating Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) compliant metadata. It allows a user to quickly document geospatial data while still adhering to FGDC Metadata Content Standards.” Features include:
Metascribe: “The NOAA Coastal Services Center’s MetaScribe tool is designed to reduce significantly the labor required to produce metadata compliant with the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM). This software tool takes advantage of the fact that, within a collection of records for a given data type, the records are generally very similar in content, with only a few fields or phrases changing from one record to the next. MetaScribe delivers the greatest savings when used to create a collection of similar records. In fact, this tool is not appropriate for the creation of multiple metadata records with little redundant content.”
Metavist: “Metavist 2005, a software tool for the metadata archivist, is used to create metadata compliant with two of the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) metadata standards—“FGDC Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata” (FGDC 1998) and “FGDC Biological Data Profile of the Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata” (FGDC 1999).” Can be ordered on CD, or downloaded directly here.
Morpho: “Morpho allows ecologists to create metadata, (i.e. describe their data in a standardized format), and create a catalog of data & metadata upon which to query, edit and view data collections. In addition, It also provides the means to access network servers, in order to query, view and retrieve all relevant, public ecological data.”
NPS Metadata Tools And Editor: “The NPS Metadata Tools & Editor (MTE) is a custom software application for authoring, editing, and managing National Park Service (NPS) metadata. The MTE operates either as an extension to ArcCatalog versions 8.3/ 9.x or as a standalone desktop application. The MTE is intended to be the primary editor for metadata that will be uploaded to the NPS Data Store and produces XML metadata based on the NPS Metadata Profile. Metadata editing is accomplished with editing stylesheets that transform an XML metadata file into an editable record.”
SHAME: “SHAME is a library that leverages editors, presentations and query interfaces for resource centric RDF metadata. The central idea of SHAME is to work with Annotation Profiles which encompasses:
These annotation profiles are then used to generate user interfaces for either editing, presentation or querying purposes. The user interface may be realized in a web setting (both a jsp and velocity version exists) or in a stand alone application (a java/swing version exists). ”
Three Tab Metadata Editor For ArcCatalog 8.* and 9.*: “The Three Tab Editor is a user interface for entering Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) and ISO Metadata for ArcCatalog.
USGS Formal Metadata: A suite of metadata tools, including mp, cns, xtme, Tkme, mq, and DBFmeta. The last is a tool “designed to facilitate the documentation of data contained in DBF files”
GeoNetwork opensource: “GeoNetwork opensource is a standards based, Free and Open Source catalog application to manage spatially referenced resources through the web. It provides powerful metadata editing and search functions as well as an embedded interactive web map viewer. This website contains information related to the use of the software.”
ht to Grant McKenzie.
On his excellent Thematic Mapping blog (now part of my blog roll), Bjorn Sandvik has been running a series on thematic mapping techniques in Google Earth. Examples have included choropleth maps, bar charts, prism charts, Collada objects, map legends, including examples of animated time series. If you’re into the techy part of this stuff, the series is well worth a look for the ideas you’ll get from it, and the downloadable example files. But for non-techy types, the prospect of learning how to do this might have been a bit intimidating. Heck, I find it intimidating, and I know at least a litlle about this stuff.
But Bjorn has taken his examples to the next level, by creating an online tool that can convert datasets to thematic Google Earth maps on the fly, the Thematic Mapping Engine:
Only Prism maps are supported in this initial release, with other types (Choropleth, Proportional Symbol and Chart) coming in the future. You’re also currently limited in the datasets to 15 worldwide datasets from the UN, but the ability to import your own data is also coming. You can select data for one year, for a time series, or create a time map with a slider that lets you view the chart in animated format as the years roll by. The “colour” scale sets the endpoint colors for the chart, and these colors will be used to generate a legend for the chart. Click on Make KML, and you can download the KMZ file to your computer / open it in Google Earth directly:
In Google Earth, use the slider at the upper right to change the data year, or click on the play button to see it animated.
I did find one minor quirk, but it’s likely a Google Earth bug. On my system, the first time I load one of these Thematic Mapping Engine KMZ files into Google Earth, I often see something like this:
By turning the “sun” on (the View => Sun menu), and then turning the sun back off again, I get the correct view (i.e. the first picture). Resizing the Google Earth view can also create this effect, but the solution is the same.
The new stable release of MapWindow, with its built-in metadata editor and viewer, reminded me that I had a folder full of bookmarks to other metadata-related software. I may get around to longer posts on each of these at some point, but for now, I’ll just put up links and descriptions from the websites.
CatMDEdit: “CatMDEdit is a metadata editor tool that facilitates the documentation of resources, with special focus on the description of geographic information resources.” Note: Multiplatform, written in Java.
Computerized Process and Quality Assurance (CPQA): “CPQA is being developed as an automated QA/QC process for spatial data collection. It will assist the contract monitor and the contractor with this process and provide the Corps with the most efficient and cost effective means of evaluating a surveying and mapping project. The current version (CPQA Beta) is a Windows-based software package that assists the user in the production of a Scope of Work for surveys such as topographic, hydrographic, boundary, control, photogrammetric, etc. Based on user input and guidance from USACE Engineering Manuals and Engineering Circulars, the software provides suggestions as to the accuracy, scale, measurement density, etc., needed to complete specified projects. Later modules will assist in evaluating the quality of a survey and perform error checking on the survey information submitted by the contractor.”
Datalogr: “DataLogr is a free software package that helps people input and format metadata for geographic data. DataLogr (pronounced ‘data logger’) was developed and copyrighted by IMAGIN, a consortium of organizations in Michigan.”
Enraemed: “The Enraemed software is a freeware client/server or stand-alone metadata software collection tool. Enraemed will allow you to develop, archive and distribute your metadata according to metadata standards such as ISO, FGDC, Dublin Core and GILS. The backend database is Microsoft SQL.”
EPA Metadata Editor (EME): “The EPA Metadata Editor (EME) was developed to simplify and standardize geospatial metadata development across the Agency. It allows users to create and edit geospatial metadata records that meet the EPA Geospatial Metadata Technical Specification and Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM) requirements.” Addendum: Requires ArcGIS 9.2 Service Pack 1 or higher
ImseVimse: “ImseVimse is a full-fledged graphical IMS metadata editor written in Java. It is a spin-off from the Conzilla project.”
Metadata Authoring Tool (MATT): “MATT runs from within a web browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape or Mozilla and has been written using a combination of XHTML and client-side JavaScript. Therefore it can be used either over the internet, across a network or directly from your hard-drive (offline).”
Metadata Enterprise Resource Management Aid (MERMAid): “NCDDC provides coastal data resources (organizations and individuals) with a web-based tool to develop, validate, manage and publish metadata records via secure internet access. The Metadata Enterprise Resource Management Aid (MERMAid) allows users/data providers to establish unlimited metadata databases to organize their metadata records any way they see fit (i.e. by program, project, data type, personnel).”
More in the next post …
