NEWSBRIEFS – GIS

Introducing GIS for IP based network alert notification

Desktop Alert Inc. a premier provider of network centric emergency mass notification systems to the US government pronounced that it has completed its GIS for implementation with the Desktop Alert Mass Notification System being the first such implementation worldwide. It employs industry standards for GIS mapping systems. The new product has been built on using AJAX technologies along with detailed street and aerial imagery data, and an open API. It allows customization of the map output along with the ability to add situational awareness and response capabilities using application-specific data to the map. www.desktopalert.net

UN-HABITAT and Lebanese Army in GIS cooperation

UN-HABITAT and the Directorate of Geographic Affairs (DGA) – Lebanese Army concluded a cooperation framework to promote and further develop the nationwide GIS and mapping tools available within the DGA. It is providing the necessary support to UN-HABITAT recovery project in Southern Lebanon with the aim of establishing three Local Urban Observatories in towns of Tyre, Bint Jbeil and Jabal Amel. The agency is undertaking a series of recovery projects in Lebanon to respond to the massive destruction caused by the July 2006 war. www.reliefweb.int

Punjab may take to GIS monitoring of crops

Agricultural sustainability has gained highest priority in Indian city of Punjab, which is struggling with an abysmal agri growth rate of a little over 2 %. The Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, is mulling ways to bring science to the aid of agriculture by using GIS for crop monitoring. Andhra Pradesh has already shown how GIS can be a powerful tool for monitoring crops and natural resources, such as rivers, right up to the village level. By integrating information with remote sensing, it is gaining importance for sustaining agriculture. www.expressindia.com

GIS enabled kiosks in Jaipur

This season, the tourists coming to the Jaipur, India might be saved from haggling and harassment at the hands of tour guides and escorts, thanks to various infrastructure upgradation plans. The government is planning to set up touchscreen information kiosks, among other things, to make the city touristfriendly. The proposal is to have these kiosks furnished with comprehensive details with inbuilt GIS location maps that can also be pulled out at the touch of a button. The kiosks would provide detailed information on all the tourist destinations in the state, which include monuments, forts, palaces and museums. The kiosks would also provide online information on hotels, important routes in the cities and about tourist vehicles along with their normal tariffs. Details of road, railway and air services would also be made available on the kiosks http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

Mapping out new deal for Shanghai street traders

The Shanghai Public Sanitation Bureau is going to make a clean sweep of illegal street vendors with a new digital map service. The map, which will be published on the Internet, will name the streets where road-side vendors are allowed and show the indoor sites where they can set up their businesses. Trading hours will also be shown.

“It’s a reasonable solution to meet the demands for road-side vendors without upsetting normal urban management,” the bureau said. For years road-side stalls have been illegal and a concern as unsupervised street traders sometimes disturb the populace and can involve criminal activities. http://www.shanghaidaily.com/

Myanmar’s rice production regions monitored with GIS

Subsequent to Cyclone Nargis, a category 3 tropical storm that struck the lowlying and heavily populated coastline of Myanmar on May 2, 2008, the Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) began producing a series of GIS based maps using ESRI technology, of the damaged agricultural areas to accompany its commodity intelligence reports. FAS achieves a part of this mission by analyzing global crop production capacity with remote-sensing and GIS tools and by issuing commodity intelligence reports highlighting current international crop conditions. GIS-based maps, available in PDF format, provide a visualization of the analysis performed and often serve as each report’s basis. The project included satellite imagery obtained from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) moderateresolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite to delineate the postcyclone flooding region. www.esri.com