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About socalgovgis - Michael Carson

Michael Carson, GIS Manager (retired) for the City of Burbank and President of Southern California Government GIS User Group. Currently teaching GIS at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita.

The Best April Fools Joke Using a Map

On 1 April 1977 the Guardian produced a 7 page travel supplement on the tiny tropical republic of San Serriffe, “a small archipelago, its main islands grouped roughly in the shape of a semicolon, in the Indian Ocean”, which was apparently celebrating ten years of independence.  The article included a map of the island republic. Continue reading →

CCEA Meeting

Add April 7th to your calendars for the City and County Engineers Association (CCEA) meeting.

Time: Social – 11:30am to Noon, Buffet Lunch – Noon to 12:45pm, Program – 12:45pm to 1:30pm

Place: Luminarias Restaurant, 3500 Ramona Boulevard, Monterey Park, CA, 91754, (323) 268-4177

Cost: $30 – Members, $35 – Non-members, $15 – Students

Program: Marianne Jeffers, Section Head, LA County Mapping and GIS Services and Mark Greninger, Geographic Information Officer, LA County – “How LA County Public Works Improves Services with GIS”

Please RSVP by Tuesday, April 5th, 2016

OpenStreetMap Mapathon

Hi SoCalGIS group,

We’re reaching out to you and your organization about an upcoming mapathon Saturday April 2nd (http://meetu.ps/2Wjm0m) at the LA Times in downtown LA to get people together to edit OpenStreetMap and import all the buildings in the City of Los Angeles!

This is part of a larger effort to import all 3 million buildings in Los Angeles County using open data from the LARIAC (Los Angeles Region Imagery Acquisition Consortium) Program and the L.A. County Assessor. The import will improve Southern California’s maps by adding building shapes and data on heights, elevation, general use, year built, and the number of residential units. Continue reading →

USGS Crowd-Sourced Structures Data Webinar

This is a reminder that U.S. Geological Survey is hosting a webinar next week on our Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) program. VGI provides an editing environment that allows interested persons to add, delete, and modify certain structures in the USGS structures database. The online VGI editor is based on the popular Open Street Map interface and anyone who is interested can sign up for an account to help us update structures and improve the quality of our data for future release to the public.

Structure types available for editing include schools, colleges/universities, fire/EMS stations, police stations, correctional facilities, state capitol buildings, hospitals, ambulance services, cemeteries, and post offices. Continue reading →