Monthly Archives: March 2010

Mar 30, 2010

Staff Allocate 2009 Charitable Contributions

By

This article is a bit late,  but I wanted to wait until after we made the announcement about our becoming a certified B Corporation, and that got pushed aside by the name change thing.

While Azavea is organized as a for-profit company, our mission also includes other significant elements.  In particular, we also seek to:

  1. create a challenging and intellectually stimulating environment for our colleagues;
  2. work on projects with social value; and
  3. impress the heck out of our customers.

In addition to carefully selecting the types of projects with which we engage – public health, crime analysis, human services, cultural resources, economic development, and land conservation, to name just a few – Azavea also operates a pro bono program and gives away a portion of its profits to non-profit organizations each year.  In the past, the executive team has decided how to allocate these contributions, but this year we are trying something new.  We have asked each member of our staff to allocate the contributions we will make.  This was done by giving 10 points to each of our 25 staff so they could distribute across a list of organizations that matched our areas of priority including:

  • Ecosystem Services
  • Local Arts and Culture
  • Open Government and Rule of Law
  • Open Data and the Internet
  • Sustainable Transportation
  • Growing Underdeveloped Markets

Our staff picked the following organizations to receive contributions this year.  We think these are worthy organizations, so if you are wondering where to spend part of that year-end bonus check, we hope you’ll consider these folks.

Ecosystem Services

Local Arts and Culture

Open Government and Rule of Law

Internet and Open Data

Sustainable Transportation

Growing Underdeveloped Markets

Comments Off
Mar 26, 2010

GLONASS Constellation Update

By

Russia launched three additional GLONASS satellites on March 1, 2010.  The launch was originally scheduled for September 2009, but had to be postponed when problems emerged with a similar satellite already in orbit and sent the three new satellites back to the factory for pre-launch repairs.  The GLONASS constellation now includes 23 operational satellites, two of which are being used in a reserve capacity.  A 21-satellite constellation provides 98.5% global availability.  With three additional satellites expected to launch in August and another launch scheduled for November, the GLONASS constellation could reach 99.5% global availability by the end of 2010. 

As a comparison, the current GPS constellation maintained by the United States includes 32 satellites and reached full operational capacity in 1995.  It takes a minimum of 24 operational satellites to provide complete global availability.

Comments Off
Mar 21, 2010

When will ESRI Support OpenStreetMap?

By

OpenStreetMap: the free wiki world map

ESRI has a perception problem. It is similar to the one that Microsoft and other commercial software firms have developed vis-a-vis open source software projects. ESRI is perceived by many in the open source world as being opposed to open source software. While I think ESRI has fed this perception to some extent, the open source community has also cultivated a “David vs. Goliath” approach that encourages an adversarial relationship with the larger software companies that I don’t think it terribly helpful either.

But as Paul Ramsey recently pointed out in his address at the FOSS4G 2009 conference in Sydney, most of the mainstream commercial software firms now support open source software platforms, melding commercial and open source business models. Commercial software firms contribute to open source projects for a myriad of reasons including:

  • As a critical component of their platform
  • Low cost R&D
  • Build a broad constituency for a standard
  • Increase the number of developers focused on a particular platform
  • Retire a platform while still enabling customers to receive support

ESRI has pursued at least three of these approaches in its work with open source projects, and while projecting a competitive attitude about some open source projects (and justifiably so), they also deserve some credit for supporting open source projects in a variety of areas including:

ESRI also gave us an open specification on the now venerable shapefile and looks set to do the same (after some years of delay) for the File Geodatabase. And ESRI has contributed resources to development as well as platform support for many of the OGC standards. I would also argue that many of the most successful open source projects could not exist without substantial support from commercial software companies.  PostGIS would not have got off the ground without early and ongoing support from Refractions. Apache and many Java projects gained from substantial investments by IBM.  In other words, I don’t think we gain by having open source software seen as being in opposition to commercial software.  It’s simply part of a complex software development ecosystem.

But I opened by saying that ESRI has a perception problem. In addition to continuing to support select open source projects when it makes strategic sense, I’d like to make a pitch for ESRI supporting the OpenStreetMap project. OpenStreetMap is really multiple projects. It does include open source (GPL) software that would probably be of limited interest to ESRI, but it’s primary output is an open map of the planet. Just as ESRI has helped to encourage the broad use of free government data sets like the Census TIGER and USGS data sets, it should help promote the OpenStreetMap effort.

Why support it?

  • More data means more use of GIS: In the same way that free distribution of TIGER, USGS, Dept of Defense and other data sets catalyzed GIS development in the 1980′s and 1990′s, more data in more parts of the world will encourage more sophisticated uses of GIS, where ESRI really shines.
  • PR value: Support for the OpenStreetMap project will give ESRI some of the street cred that companies like AutoDesk have gained by contributing software projects to the open source community.
  • Free data for ArcGIS Online: The OpenStreetMap data set offers a free, global data set with distinctive cartography that covers some parts of the world even better than the commercial providers. Providing an OSM map service to ArcGIS Online will only make it more attractive for ESRI’s customers.

How should it be supported?

  • ArcGIS Desktop: Enable ArcMap to both display data from OSM and be an editor. The ESRI desktop GIS community are some of the most skilled and knowledgeable people engaged with map production. By enabling them to use the software tools with which they are already familiar (rather than the capable, but clunkier tools like Mercartor and JOSM), they will be able to make valuable contributions to OSM that will make the map better in every part of the world.
  • Toolboxes: Create tools that convert OSM data formats to feature classes.
  • ArcGIS Online: Provide an OSM-based map tile set.

The OSM project is not public domain, so there are important license considerations, but even with the currently proposed revisions, it’s a pretty open license with only attribution and share-alike provisions limiting its use.  But as the Haiti earthquake response demonstrated, OSM is an important and evolving piece of infrastructure that will only be better with ESRI’s support.

——–

UPDATE: 3/22/2010

I should have also cited a recent ESRI blog on some techniques for incorporating OpenStreetMap into ArcGIS Server that are possible now.  These include:

  • Use the WMS extension
  • Use the Data Interoperability Extension (a nice package from Safe Software that is an extension for both the ArcGIS desktop and ArcGIS Server) which now support the OSM XML file directly.  Export the data from OSM to shapefiles or a geodatabase and serve it up.
  • You can also use an extension Azavea (that’s us) created for the ArcGIS Flex API that supports direct integration of the OSM tile structure for Flex apps.
Comments (3)
Mar 16, 2010

Crime Science vs. Criminology

By

The video below is of Professor Gloria Laycock, Director of the UCL Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science talking about near repeat patterns and other risk forecasting methodologies being researched at the UCL Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science. She makes an interesting statement in regards to the differences between criminology and crime science which she describes as:

…the use of science and scientists directly in the control of crime. Not just using technology, but getting everyone to think as scientists and test hypotheses to build knowledge from the data

Comments Off
  • Azavea Journal
  • Azavea Atlas
  • Azavea Labs
  • Azavea.com