Category: Data

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Data General GIS GIS in Art GIS in Computer Science Slideshow Videos

Phone-call cartography

Here’s a link to an interesting NYT story, “Phone-call cartography,”  on mapping connectedness via data points from mobile phone calls.  The accompanying map was produced by M.I.T.’s SENSEable City Lab using the origin and end point locations for cellphone traffic within the U.S. in July of last year.

Phone-call cartography video:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFKZnbIAboI

Phone-call cartography map:

 

The “Phone-call cartography” map project is just the latest in a long series of projects the SENSEable City Lab has done using cellphone data to explore the idea of connectedness.  In 2008, the group produced a map installation called “New York Time Exchange” for the NYC MoMA’s ‘Design and the Elastic Mind’ exhibition. The installation featured wall-sized maps displaying nearly real-time data on cellphone calls with origins and/or destinations in the New York City area. See this Newsweek article or this NYT article for more information about the “New York Time Exchange” exhibit and how SENSEable’s research is informing our understanding of globalization, the digital divide and other measures of connectedness.

Click here to read an article about SENSEable’s use of real-time cell phone data to analyze the economic impact of New York City’s 2008 ‘Waterfalls’ exhibit in New York Harbor.

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Bucknell/Local Interest Data Digital Humanities Environment General GIS GIS in Biology GIS in Computer Science GIS in Engineering GIS in Environmental Studies GIS in Geography GIS in Geology GIS in History GIS in Humanities GIS in Psychology GIS in Sociology Map Apps Marcellus Shale Miller Run Restoration Project Slideshow

What we’re up to this summer (and why we’re not posting)

Thanks to the Mellon grant and a huge number of faculty teaching and research projects it’s been a very busy summer of GIS work at Bucknell.  Over the coming weeks I’ll write detailed posts about the work we’re doing on each of the projects.  If I’m really ambitious I might try to post some interviews with faculty and students – and some footage of the aerial drone flights that Nick Urban ’12 is doing. But for now here’s a short overview of who’s doing GIS work at Bucknell this summer and what we’re doing:

GIS Student Assistants:

  • Chad Lawlis, Environmental Studies ’11
  • Dan Dougherty, Geography/History ’12
  • Max Stiss, Geography/Anthropology ’12
  • Nick Urban, Computer Science ’12
  • Mike Grasso, Environmental Studies ’13
  • Robby Holler, Geography/International Relations ’13 (pictured below)
  • Darin Rockwell, Geography/Geology ’13 (pictured below)
  • Dan Ladd, Middlebury College ’14 (pictured below)

Key Projects:

  • Maps for Sudan field guide atlas to mammals
  • GPS data collection for Lewisburg Cemetary
  • GPS data collection for Miller Run restoration project
  • Aerial drone data collection for Miller Run restoration project
  • Lycoming County/Williamsport community asset mapping
  • Mapping toxic contamination from Marcellus Shale natural gas wells
  • Mapping locations of Marcellus Shale water withdrawl permits
  • Georeferencing & vectorizing 19th century economic maps of Vietnam
  • Georeferencing & vectorizing maps of environmental hazards and resources in Kyrgyzstan
  • Georeferencing & vectorizing 1868 Historic Atlas of Union & Snyder Counties
  • Data development for Stories of the Susquehanna project
  • Support for student research projects – including GPS’ing dumpster locations on campus for an analysis of campus waste and recycling, and updating Arboretum tree dataset with location info for newly planted and felled trees
  • Develop pilot web map apps for showcasing faculty research
  • Develop pilot web map apps for use in teaching
  • Implement backend IT infrastructure to support ArcGIS server
  • Maps for Bucknell admin purposes, including: analysis of parking shortages on campus; maps for task force report on campus climate; maps for SBDC report on services by county; arts festival map.

 

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Bucknell/Local Interest Data Digital Humanities Environment Events/Calendar General GIS Slideshow

Details on $520K Mellon grant for environmental studies, GIS integration

I posted a few weeks ago about the $520K grant awarded to Bucknell by the Mellon Foundation. Here are some additional details on how the grant money will be used to strengthen environmental studies and GIS integration across the university. From the Library & IT Matters newsletter:

  • Up to twelve faculty members will receive $400 to participate in either a 4-day (intro) or 2-day (advanced) summer GIS workshop. Click here for more details on the intro and advanced workshops.
  • Faculty members may submit requests to receive up to $1,000 to revise a course to include GIS ($5,000 total)
  • Four student researchers will be provided with summer research funding to conduct research projects involving GIS technology
  • Funds will be available to support consultants and student workers to create new maps or to develop new datasets for use by faculty in integrating GIS for their curriculum and courses
  • Additionally we have support to help with the acquisition of data which can only be obtained through purchasing data sets or through membership in consortia which provide access to proprietary datasets

Contact me by e-mail at janine.glathar@bucknell.edu or by phone at x. 1990 if you are interested in any of the options listed above.

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Bucknell/Local Interest Data Environment General GIS Slideshow

New data available on Pennsylvania forest patches

New data on Pennsylvania forest patches is available on Xanthus.  The datasets were created by the Pennsylvania chapter of The Nature Conservancy (TNC). The forest patches were delineated using the new 2006 NLCD data (also available on Xanthus).  The TNC defines forest patches as “contiguous areas of natural cover bound by any linear fragmenting feature (roads, railroads, rights-of-way) or non-forest edge.”

Two files are available – (1) forest patches for all of Pennsylvania; and (2) forest patches greater than 100 acres in size.  One important caveat to keep in mind is that the  dataset is intended for analyzing patterns of forest cover and forest patch sizes at a relatively small scale (e.g. state or regional as opposed to small sections of a particular forest or locality).  The NLCD land cover data from which the forest patches were derived is relatively coarse in resolution – so the forest patch boundaries are approximations and not intended for use in applications where exact measurements are needed.

Please contact me if you need to get access to the Xanthus data folder.

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Bucknell/Local Interest Data GIS in Engineering GIS in Environmental Studies GIS in Geology Slideshow

GIS in education – EPA grant and campus mapping

Notes on two interesting stories about GIS in education. Thanks to Adena Schutzberg’s All Points Blog for the heads up about the stories.

1. Texas State University’s Center for GIScience was recently awarded 500K grant from EPA to use GIS for modelling/mapping air pollution-exposure-health effects:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science to Achieve Results (USEPA-STAR) program has awarded a grant of nearly $500,000 to The Texas Center for Geographic Information Science in the Department of Geography at Texas State.

The grant will support a project entitled “Air Pollution-Exposure-Health Effects Indicators: Mining Massive Geographically Referenced Environmental Health Data to Identify Risk Factors for Birth Defects.”The three-year project will develop air pollution exposure assessment methods, visual geospatial data mining tools, and epidemiological analysis procedures to define new air pollution-exposure-health effect indicators that cover three components of the hazards-exposure-health effects-intervention paradigm.

– San Marcos Local News

Click here to see more EPA STAR Research Grant Announcements.  The EPA STAR grants are just one of the types of research grants available through the US EPA National Center for Environmental Research.   Click here for an overview of the Center’s research and fellowship opportunities.  Check the Bucknell GIS Calendar (featured on the main page of the GIS blog) this fall for deadlines for student grant applications for the EPA GRO fellowships – awarded each year to undergraduate students in environmentally related fields of study.  From the EPA Fellowships web page:

Eligible students will receive support for their junior and senior years of undergraduate study and for an internship at an EPA facility during the summer between their junior and senior years. The fellowship provides up to $19,700 per year of academic support and up to $9,500 of internship support for the three-month summer period, for a total of up to $48,900 for the two year period.

2.   Grad students at Utah State University are collecting high resolution imagery of their campus using a small blimp.

Soaring above the Quad on Tuesday afternoon, a white blimp controlled by Utah State University graduate students was almost hard to spot against the Cache Valley’s overcast sky.The only object that was clearly visible was a black digital camera, snapping one picture every five seconds, providing color georeferenced aerial photography of the entire Quad in UTM (metric) coordinates.

The students were conducting a lab by running a blimp survey for Joseph M. Wheaton’s geographic information systems class. The objective: To provide aerial imagery of the entire Quad. The 1,000-plus pictures the blimp provides them with will be used to make an image that can fit “on top of” the images on Google map, said Bryan Watt, a USU graduate student in the class.

– Herald Journal

Could we do this at Bucknell? Twice in the last month I’ve had faculty (half-jokingly) suggest that we rent a plane to do a data collection fly-over of Lewisburg. Forget the plane, let’s figure out how to get our hands on a blimp!