popular logistics

Mapz: a gis librarian  - a mysterious and anonymous GIS librarian, to boot - has a post which may well answer the question - what do underfunded and non-funded community-based groups do about their GIS needs.

In this post,  My Powerful Geospatial Suite of Free GIS, Mr. Mapz has a pretty impressive list of applications, about which he says:

These are the freely available applications and services that make up my own personal free GIS. Individually, many freely available applications do not of themselves constitute a full geographic information system, but when these are all pulled together within one suite of tools…Well, it is remarkable what someone can do without spending a cent. (And without needing to spend an enormous amount of time developing your own applications out of open source components or needing to learn, or install, complex applications, such as GRASS GIS.)

- snip -

For a more comprehensive freeware software list, see FreeGIS.org.

Mapz also points to a more exhaustive list of resources of desktop GIS applications, including not-free software, at this link on Very Spatial.

The GIS/map piece of the planning function is, without question, critical. There are two barriers, I think - cost and learning curve - that prevent community-based groups from doing more. This is especially true in communities where local government isn’t supporting community planning and response: it’s hard to get to thinking about a steep learning curve when you’re worried that your municipality is slacking on basic safety issues and you’re trying to persuade your neighbors to buy flashlights.

The Supreme Being in Time Bandits had Randall, Fidgit, Strutter, Og, Wally and Vermin. ((See also Wikipedia entry about Time Bandits for, among other things, theory that Terry Gilliam meant the Bandits to represent the Pythons.)) Jonathan Crowe of Map Room now brings us the new that the

The United States Geological Survey’s National Map makes use of a corps of volunteers, who are assigned a given area (a USGS quad) and report the names and coordinates of various map features, such as schools, town halls and other facilities, and any changes thereto. The sorts of things that aerial surveys might reveal, but not necessarily identify. Sounds interesting — something a dedicated individual with spare time and a GPS might have a lot of fun doing, akin to what OpenStreetMap volunteers are doing in the UK. (U.S. geographic data is in the public domain, so this may well be the next best thing.) Via Very Spatial and Catholicgauze.

Maproom post here.

Another example of the amazing thing that can be done by volunteers - and by distributed and coordinated teams of people.
The United States Geological Survey’s National Map makes use of a corps of volunteers, who are assigned a given area (a USGS quad) and report the names and coordinates of various map features, such as schools, town halls and other facilities, and any changes thereto. The sorts of things that aerial surveys might reveal, but not necessarily identify. Sounds interesting — something a dedicated individual with spare time and a GPS might have a lot of fun doing, akin to what OpenStreetMap volunteers are doing in the UK. (U.S. geographic data is in the public domain, so this may well be the next best thing.) Via Very Spatial and Catholicgauze.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to a point where this is the preferred means of communications or cartography in a domestic emergency in the United States. However, Popular Logistics is committed to makings its readers aware of all types of systems, although we’ll probably drawn the line at squirrels. Here’s an image of a German World War I photo-taking pigeon, from PigeonBlog:

Link to concise article on this subject on PigeonBlog here.

Via Cynical-C.

The NPMS Public Viewer  generates maps of gas and “hazardous liquid” pipelines.

We’ve yet to sort out the definitions (precisely what “gas” and “hazardous liquid” mean), the map viewer (you see we haven’t provided a sample map), and what’s in the restricted access database (the main page provides for government and contractor login - it may just be for submissions).

Check back for more on this. Anyone who knows their way around .asp applications - and how we can export images - we’d be happy to have some assistance.