I read this article today and thought how Geography is very important!

Long Beach mayoral candidate sends out mailer with San Diego skyline:

The GIS Certification Institute is conducting it’s 3rd annual map contest.  This year’s competition is to produce a high quality map of a portion of the U.S. National Bridge Inventory (NBI). This will require parsing and geocoding  ASCII files in which the NBI is stored, as well as the production of a quality map which could be viewed on the web. First, second, third place and honorable mentions will be awarded.  The winning poster will be taken to the ESRI User Conference and submitted to the ESRI map book, if it was generated with ESRI products.

Who may enter: Anyone is eligible, except those who are going to judge.

Submission Time Frame: March 1 to 31, 2014 – Online portal to accept files along with a required submission form.

Prizes:

• 1st – $500, 2nd – $250, 3rd – $100, People’s Choice $500 and Honorable Mentions
• Each winner (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and People’s Choice) will also have their initial certification fee waived if the application is submitted within one year of the date the winners are announced.  Current GISPs will have their renewal fees waived at their next recertification date
• Map submittal earns / qualifies for 1 point under the Contribution to the Profession category

More information here.

25 years ago the first US GPS satellite was placed into orbit.

18 months ago ESRI acquired Portland-based startup Geoloqi and now has put the startup’s technology to use by releasing a new geotrigger service.  The geotrigger service, which was in beta since November, allows developers to more easily serve content to users based on their location, for example, if a user enters an area, send a notification email.

Of course this new service is not free, however you can try it out for with an introductory developer account.  Find out more here.  The service does use “a fraction of an ArcGIS Online credit” which is 1 credit/12 geotrigger events.

Dr. Roger Tomlinson has passed away.

Tomlinson is generally recognized as the “father of GIS.”  He is the visionary geographer who conceived and developed the first GIS for use by the Canada Land Inventory in the early 1960s. This and continuing contributions led the Canadian government to give him its highest civilian award, the Order of Canada, in 2001. Text for that award reads, “he pioneered its uses worldwide to collect, manage, and manipulate geographical data, changing the face of geography as a discipline.”

Tomlinson tells the story of how this came to be. In the early 1960s he was working as a photo interpreter for Spartan Air Services in Canada. They had a contract to identify the best location for a tree plantation in Kenya. They turned to their young geographer Tomlinson and asked him to develop a methodology. He tried various manual methods for overlaying various environmental, cultural, and economic variables, but all were too costly. He turned to computers and found the solution. Subsequently he sold this approach to the Canada Land Inventory that had the responsibility of using data to assist the government in its land use planning activities. His GIS approach reduced the task from three years and eight million Canadian dollars to several weeks and two million dollars.

He went on to serve the community in many ways. He chaired the International Geographical Union’s GIS Commission for 12 years, where he pioneered the concepts of worldwide geographical data availability. He is a past president of the Canadian Association of Geographers a recipient of its rare Canadian Award for Service to the Profession.

Other awards followed including the James R. Anderson Medal of Honor for Applied Geography (1995) and the Robert T. Aangeenbrug Distinguished Career Award (2005) from the American Association of Geographers. He was the first recipient of the Aangeenbrug award and also the first recipient of ESRI’s Lifetime Achievement Award (1997). National Geographic gave him its rare Alexander Graham Bell Award for exceptional contributions to geographic research (2010). He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the recipient of multiple honorary doctorates in addition to his own PhD from University College London.

Since 1977 he operated Tomlinson Associates, Ltd., Consulting Geographer which has advised clients like the World Bank, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the U.S. departments of Commerce and Agriculture, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Bureau of the Census, the Canadian Forest Service, and numerous U.S. state and Canadian provincial and municipal government agencies. The Order of Canada award documents the impact of that work. “Governments and scientists around the world have turned to him to better understand our environment and changing patterns of land use, to better manage urban development and our precious natural resources.”

His book, Thinking About GIS: Geographic Information System Planning for Managers, provides guidance for both senior managers responsible for a broad range of activities in their organization and the more technical managers responsible for actual implementation of GIS. The 5th edition of this popular book reflects the latest trends in geospatial technology and includes updated case studies. Exercises from Roger Tomlinson’s course Planning for a GIS and a video of the “Planning and Managing a GIS” seminar from the 2012 Esri International User Conference are included on the accompanying DVD.

University Consortium for Geographic Information Science
http://ucgis.org/ucgis-fellow/roger-tomlinson