Showing posts with label GIS Academics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GIS Academics. Show all posts

Monday, February 28, 2011

Resort Areas in Wisconsin - Geographical Review

Note: A research on the popular resort areas in Wisconsin and the three independent sets of data that verify the importance of each resort.

John Fraser Hart, he seems to me, is one of the movers of the Geography profession having published refereed articles, book reviews, and other publications, and more than a dozen books, including the award-winning, The Land That Feeds Us (1992) and his most recent The Changing Scale of American Agriculture (2003 ). Reading Resort Areas in Wisconsin simply proves his love for Geography by studying various relationships of independent geographic data to come up with conclusive judgments about how each of the dataset could verify the importance of well-known resort areas in Wisconsin. This article looks into these three: seasonally vacant housing units, numbers of persons per housing unit, and sales taxes paid by hotels, motels, and resorts – traits common to resorts, which if studied further, could differentiate one resort from the other. Readers of this article should have at an idea (though not necessary) of the locations of the resorts mentioned in the texts for a clearer picture of the descriptive approach the author used to characterize each.

Hart brings clarity to the substantial increase of summer cottages in the more remote rural areas of the northern part while there is a declining rage on the metropolitan outskirts, as he contrasts. This is true as summer cottages have been converted to retirement homes or even residences for commuters.

Hart makes a strong case for the contention that the major clusters of resort counties in Wisconsin vary differently, and in two ways: they differ from non-resort and from one another. This is really true as each resort has its own character and thus attracts different personalities. One appeals to those who prefer nature, and another one that caters to people who go for speed and excitement, and another one to the entire families. Others may even have the mixture of all personalities.

The strong point in this article may come from the final selection of the three major resort areas out of the many that thrive in the county. This, I think, is crucial to giving clarity to the state and development of what he called at the beginning of his article as “second homes”. Investigating each resort via historical facts and figures unfolds interesting gospel of the summer cottages – even to a point of analyzing in-migration and retention of people.

In finality, his conclusion is simple, as he says, that resort areas are not all alike. Each resort area must identify, establish, polish and publicize a particular image in order to attract visitors and to avoid attracting people who will be disappointed. Further, the article is able to cover the demographic and social aspects of Wisconsin and relate it to the growth of the counties due to the presence of the resorts.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

USC College - GIS Online Degrees

University of Southern California, USC College, has launched a new Web site for its online Geographic Information Science and Technology Master of Science and Graduate Certificate Programs.

The programs are designed and overseen by geography professor John Wilson, one of the world’s leading scholars in spatial sciences.

“The U.S. Department of Labor recently identified geospatial as one of the three most important emerging and evolving fields of study and employment growth over the next two or three decades,” Wilson said.

The online courses are designed to enhance a student’s spatial thinking abilities, build knowledge of the field and develop skills in geospatial technologies.

Coursework prepares graduates of these programs for existing and emerging jobs in emergency and environmental management, food production, intelligence, public safety, real estate, and telecommunications and utility sectors.

“USC is committed to providing distance learning programs that reflect the academic quality one expects from a world-class research university,” said Howard Gillman, dean of USC College.

The benefits of the USC College programs include:

• interacting with our world-class faculty;
• collaborating, networking and exchanging ideas with a diverse student population;
• learning from an approach that examines today’s problems from multiple perspectives, including health, planning, architecture and more;
• participating in a one-week trip to the USC Wrigley Marine Science Center on Catalina Island;
• accessing an online program at any time from any place.

The courses are not limited to individuals following a geography path. “I found [the] technology to be interdisciplinary in nature, enhancing the decision-making process and allowing individuals to communicate complex issues across language and cultural barriers in a clear, concise and easily understandable way,” said Jeremy Olson-Sheton ’09. “It changes a PowerPoint filled with words into a dynamic illustration of the issue being presented.”

Matthew Stuemky, a Geographic Information Science and Technology certificate graduate with a degree in business administration and computer applications and systems, said that he appreciated the program’s quality. “I am glad I discovered it when I did, as I was ready to take my career in a new direction.”

Students enrolled in the Master of Science program — which can be completed in one year — will prepare an individually guided thesis to take with them when they apply for a job in the marketplace.

To learn more about these programs, visit gis.usc.edu

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Using KML for Thematic Mapping

Bjørn Sandvik of the Thematic Mapping blog shared his MSc research paper titled "Using KML for Thematic Mapping".

Paper Abstract
The use of geobrowsers has increased considerably over the last few years. Thematic mapping has a long history in cartography, but the new geobrowsers (like Google Maps and Earth) tend not to focus on this aspect of geographical information representation. This paper examines how Keyhole Markup Language (KML) can be used for thematic mapping. KML is not targeted towards thematic mapping, but it is possible to use KML elements in ways that were probably not intended. Current possibilities for making proportional symbol maps, chart maps, choropleth maps and animated maps with KML will be presented. These experiments show that KML and geobrowsers offer great potential for thematic mapping, but that there are gnificant issues that need to be resolved.

"Using KML for Thematic Mapping" paper is available for free download (PDF, 2.3 MB).

Lithuanian Universities to Use ESRI GIS Software in Classrooms

Lithuania's minister of education and science, Gintaras Steponavičius; ESRI president Jack Dangermond; and Linas Gipiskis, managing director of HNIT-BALTIC, UAB, ESRI's distributor in Lithuania, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) during the recent ESRI European User Conference. The MOU allows Lithuania's universities and colleges to obtain educational site licenses for ESRI's geographic information system (GIS) software products, providing access to ArcGIS core software and its extensions.

"This agreement opens the door to increased problem solving-based learning for university students across Lithuania, something that helps build valuable job skills," said Steponavičius.

Dangermond added, "Several Lithuanian universities have already demonstrated the value of GIS in their teaching and research activities. This agreement facilitates the uptake of the technology by a wider range of academic departments that are considering how spatial thinking and problem solving can impact their studies."

Monday, October 20, 2008

Earth Science Week 2008: No child left inside

The winners of the Geologi08 short film competition were announced today to conclude Australian celebrations for Earth Science Week 2008.

Over 200 students participated in the national competition with entries from Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria.

Students had to submit a film based on one of three themes: Natural Hazards, Earth’s Resources or Deep Earth. We received films about volcanos, geysers, rock types and mineral resources.

The winners gathered in Canberra for the official award ceremony and public film screening event.

"The results this year were very impressive, and I hope some of these very talented young people will follow a career in the geoscience field," said Dr Neil Williams, CEO of Geoscience Australia.

Earth Science Week 2008 ran between 12 - 18 October, with the theme ’No child left inside’ encouraging young people to get off the couch, away from the computer and explore the world of science outside.

Earth Science Week began in spectacular fashion with an Open Day at the Geoscience Australia building in Symonston, Canberra on Sunday 12 October. Around 1200 visitors enjoyed the range of activities, displays and talks on offer. Visitors saw the Earth in 3D, toured the Geoscience Australia Operations Hub of the Joint Australian Tsunami Warning System, panned for gold and discovered some of the region’s local wonders at the ACT geology display.

[via]

Friday, August 29, 2008

Featured GIS University: South Dakota State University - GIS Center of Excellence

The Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence (GIScCE) is a joint collaboration between South Dakota State University (SDSU) and the United States Geological Survey's National Center for Earth Resources Observation and Sciences (EROS). The purpose of the GIScCE is to enable South Dakota State University faculty and students, and EROS scientists to carry out collaborative research, seek professional development, and implement educational programs in the applications of geographic information science.
The idea for the GIScCE was formed and implemented by administrative leaders at SDSU, EROS, and the South Dakota State Board of Regents, and represents a unique partnership that strengthens both SDSU and EROS. EROS, a longtime collaborator with researchers at SDSU, is the largest civilian repository of remotely sensed data sets and a renowned center of applied earth systems science. In recognizing these strengths, a primary emphasis of the GIScCE will be the use of remotely sensed data sets to study the land surface and it's modification over time.

The GIScCE will employ the capabilities of geographic information science, namely remote sensing, geographic information systems, digital mapping, and geostatistics, to document and understand the changing earth. To fully achieve this, an interdisciplinary center of study is required, one which utilizes engineering principles to efficiently and accurately process earth observation data, geographic principles to create meaningful thematic depictions of land cover and land use change, and applications which focus on the resultant effects of change on the geosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere. To date, 13 researchers from SDSU and EROS have been recruited to constitute the GIScCE staff of Senior Scientists. By serving the South Dakota, national and international communities through the teaching and research investigations of the GIScCE staff, we expect SDSU to be recognized as a global center of expertise in geographic information science studies.

If any of you is interested to proceed into GIS or Remote Sensing graduate studies, please contact any of the following professors:

Dr. Mark A. Cochrane - Fire Ecology, Land Cover Change, Land Cover and Land Use Interactions, Dynamic Systems

Dr. Matthew Hansen - Co-Director, Geography, global land cover mapping

Dr. Geoffrey M. Henebry - Synoptic ecology, landscape ecology, land surface phenology, ecological modeling, spatio-temporal analysis, grasslands, land cover/land use change

Dr. Shuguang Liu - Land Surface Dynamics Modeling with an emphasis on quantifying the impacts of land use and climate change on ecosystem services (e.g., carbon cycle)

Dr. Thomas R. Loveland - Co-Director, Geography, land use and land cover change

Dr. David Roy - Geography; development of remote sensing and advanced computing methods to map and characterize terrestrial change, in particular the occurrence and spatial extent of vegetation fires; the causes and consequences of land cover and land use change; and fire-climate-vegetation interactions

Dr. Gabriel Senay - Regional Water Balance Assessment and Monitoring

Dr. James E. Vogelmann - Botany with vegetation health monitoring emphasis

Dr. Michael Wimberly - Landscape Ecology, Spatial Epidemiology, Disturbance Ecology, Ecological Modeling

Dr. Chunsun Zhang - Photogrammetry, feature extraction, image geometry

Current graduate students: Henok Alemu, Rafael Barreto de Andrade, Sarah Arnold, Christopher Barber, Christopher A. Barnes, Stephen Boyte, Mark Broich, Jean-Robert Bolambee Bwangoy-Bankanza, Jeffrey J Danielson, Amadou M. Dieye, Narayana Ganapathy, Ronald W Hayes, Collin Gordon Homer, Valeriy Kovalskyy, Zhengpeng Li, Erik Lindquist, Luiz Mestre, Yolande Munzimi, Vincent de Paul Obade, Kari Pabst, Tsolmongerel Papilloud, Eric Ariel L. Salas, Sanath Kumar Sathyachandran, Sabina Shahnaz, Jodie Smith, Jason Stoker, Manohar Velpuri, Stefanie Wacker.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

URISA Leadership Academy Course Details

The Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) is pleased to announce the course details for its inaugural URISA Leadership Academy. The program will be held December 5-7, 2007 in New Orleans, LA. The only leadership training program of its type, the Academy is tailored to industry leaders and practitioners faced with unique challenges of GIS leadership and management and who want to make an impact leveraging the power of GIS.

The Academy will cover these important topics:

* Introduction to leadership and various leadership styles
* Ethics in leadership
* The manager as communicator
* How to build a successful team of GIS professionals
* Outreach and expansion of GIS in the organization
* How to build a GIS budget and enumerate costs and benefits
* The politics of GIS leadership
* How to plan for change
* Trend spotting, GIS as an integrative tool


The Leadership Academy has been organized into two 2-1/2 day courses, the first of which (Leadership Academy, Part 1) will be presented in New Orleans this December. The Academy will be offered at least twice during each calendar year, with Leadership Academy, Part 2 planned to debut in June 2008.

For details, including speaker biographies and registration information, please visit www.urisa.org/ula .

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Asian Institute of Technology launches UNIGIS programme

AIT, Asian Institute of Technology has entered into an agreement with Salzburg University's Centre for Geoinformatics to jointly deliver postgraduate diploma and MSc programmes to students across South-East Asia. This innovative online distance learning programme has been inaugurated with an orientation workshop for prospective students and new faculty on September 8th, 2007 and is now accepting applications from interested students.

Professionals from this region are now supported through Bangkok-based AIT as a highly regarded and widely acknowledged centre of excellence when pursuing their lifelong learning objectives in Geoinformatics. Along with UNIGIS International, a worldwide consortium of universities offering postgraduate GIScience qualifications via online studies, to facilitate career advancement for people already in the GIS workforce as well as attractive job options for graduates from all application disciplines.

"We are very proud to work with AIT as a partner," says UNIGIS Salzburg director Prof Josef Strobl, "in this institution a highly qualified faculty serves an important mission of capacity building".

Dr Nitin Tripathi from AIT's School of Engineering and Technology emphasizes "AIT now has an opportunity to reach out to a new audience through UNIGIS@AIT, and to further enhance careers and many nations' development prospects!"

AIT's offering will be closely associated with UNIGIS programmes in South Asia. Regional director Dr. Shahnawaz remarks: "Today we have reached an important milestone towards making UNIGIS accessible throughout Asia".

Source : www.unigis.net ,www.unigis.net/AIT_Bangkok