Category Archives: News

Report: California Needs GIS Officer

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A government watchdog agency recommended that Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature create the position of state Geospatial Information Officer to coordinate and advance the use of GIS technology across all departments.

The Little Hoover Commission’s report on geographic information systems technology, called Mapping a Strategy for GIS, follows a study of whether the state government is using GIS to its full capacity and in a cost-efficient manner. The report concludes that overall, the state’s use of GIS is “inconsistent and lacks centralization and coordination.” The 18-page document recommends that the governor and Legislature take three specific steps:

  • Designate a full-time state Geospatial Information Officer
  • Create a GIS Advisory Council, whose members would come from the public sector, the IT industry and nonprofits
  • Use GIS technology to evaluate regional disparities in funding and the delivery of state services.

Click here to read the Techwire article.  Click here to read the report.

Fire Operations Technology Summit

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ESRI is hosting a Fire Operations Technology Summit at their headquarters in Redlands on January 22-23, 2020.

The Fire Operations Technology Summit is a two-day exclusive event that will bring together fire operations chiefs from across the state and emerging technology partners servicing fire and EMS industries with the goal of improving daily operations and firefighter safety.  Learn about real world tech being developed for the fire service of tomorrow and used by the fire service of today.

The summit is free, click here for more details and to register.

History of Cartography Competition

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Students of the history of cartography are invited to submit papers for the 2020 Ristow Prize competition. Undergraduate, graduate, and first-year postdoctoral students of any nationality are eligible to compete. Papers must be in English, not exceeding 7500 words, and should be submitted digitally as a PDF document to kaparker18th@gmail.com by 1 June 2020. Appropriate illustrations, especially maps, are encouraged. The winning essay will receive a cash prize of $1000 and will be published in The Portolan, the journal of the Washington Map Society. The prize, named in honor of the late Dr. Walter W. Ristow, is sponsored by the Washington Map Society of Washington, D. C. For more information, including a list of previous winners, go to the website www.WashMapSociety.org or contact Dr. Katherine Parker at kaparker18th@gmail.com.

GIS Day Next Week

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GIS Day 2019 is almost upon us.  If you have an event and want to get the word out, send an announcement request through the About page and I will get it posted right away.

Here is one for the City of Irvine.  They are celebrating GIS Day on November 14.

The big one at LA County will happen on November 13.

GIS Day will be celebrated at a number of colleges like: Pierce College, CSUN, and USC.

Channel Islands Regional GIS Collaborative (CIRGIS) will have GIS Day on December 6 at Ventura College.  The keynote speaker will be Michael Goodchild.

Also make sure to register your event on the GIS Day website.

 

98 Map Projections

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If you work with GIS in a local government, you usually do not get to try out some of those more interesting map projections.  If you deal with world data, then you might get to use them.  Like this one, the Rectified Skew Orthomorphic:

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With ArcGIS 10.7.1 and ArcGIS Pro 2.4, you have access to 68 unique map projection algorithms and another 30 variations, 98 in total!  Check out this story map showing a gallery of the 68 supported map projections, from Aitoff to Winkel Tripel.

68mapprojections