Categories
Bucknell/Local Interest Crisis-Mapping Digital Humanities General GIS GIS in Environmental Studies GIS in Geography GIS in History GIS in Humanities GIS in Political Science GIS in Public Health GIS in Sociology Map Apps Slideshow

How big is it really?

Back in December I posted about an NPR story about map scale.  I got so excited about the baseball on the moon map that I neglected to point out the other really interesting link from the story – to the BBC Dimensions website.  Dimensions (or, ‘howbigisitreally’) has a tool that lets you plug in any zip code or location and then choose from a list of events, places or things that you want to superimpose onto your area. See below for a map showing the area that the Guantanamo Bay Naval base would occupy if it was located in Lewisburg. I’ve also included maps showing what the ancient walls of Athens and the Gulf oil spill would look like if superimposed over the Lewisburg area. The Dimensions website has numerous places, events and things to choose from in making your map, including: the war on terror, ancient worlds, the industrial age, space, environmental disasters, depths, cities in history and more.

Categories
Data General GIS Map Apps Slideshow

Map your name

A fun new map site from Stephen Von Worley of Datapointed.net.  Click here then scroll to the ‘Find This First Name’ tool (screenshot below) and type in your first name.  Clicking the ‘Map it!’ button will return a map showing the worldwide locations of streets, places and things with your name. Clicking the ‘Earth it!’ option will give you the option of saving and/or opening a Google Earth KML file with the data.

Map my name tool:

Map of streets, places and things named ‘Janine’

Google Earth view of streets, places and things named ‘Janine’

Categories
Data General GIS Map Apps Slideshow

Forecasting snow and finding supermarkets

If you’re the type of person who loads up on bread and milk at the first hint of snowfall, then ArcGIS Online is your new best friend.  Using ArcGIS Online you can create a map showing projected snowfall amounts for your area along with the locations of nearby supermarkets. The ArcGIS Online Gallery has free basemaps that you can use to create quick and easy mash-ups online, stream directly into your ArcGIS map project, or (in many cases) download the raw data to use in whatever way you want. The basemaps shown below for snowfall forecasts and supermarket access are just two of the dozens of basemaps you can choose from in the ArcGIS Online Gallery.

View Larger Map

Read more about this on the ESRI ArcGIS Online blog.

ArcGIS Online Basemaps

Snowfall forecast map

Supermarket access in Lewisburg

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Bucknell/Local Interest Environment General GIS Slideshow

Bucknell awarded $520,000 Mellon grant to support environmental studies, GIS integration

Bucknell has been awarded a $520,000 Mellon grant (the largest Mellon grant ever received by BU) to support the development of courses and initiatives related to environmental studies.  Click here to read the announcement on the BU home page. In addition to providing stipends to faculty who create new courses that include environmental connections, the grant will also support the development of GIS technology as a tool in teaching, learning and research related to environmental topics. Specifically, the grant will:

  • provide stipends to faculty who attend GIS workshops
  • fund GIS Student Research Assistants
  • fund development of course materials – labs, lecture materials, datasets, web-based course modules, etc. – that integrate GIS with environmental studies content

Contact me with any questions or ideas you might have about the GIS part of this grant.

Categories
General GIS

USAID launches new online map app for disease-tracking

The NY Times recently featured a story on a new online map tool developed by USAID for tracking disease outbreaks that might jump from animals to humans. The online mapping tool, known as Predict “will monitor data from 50,000 Web sites with many types of information, including World Health Organization alerts, online discussions by experts, wildlife trade reports and local news.” Click here to check it out.