Find Geographic Coordinates Instantly with Our Free Lat Long Finder
Geographic coordinates serve as the universal language of location, enabling accurate position sharing across GPS devices, mapping applications, and navigation systems. Our lat long finder tool provides instant access to coordinates in multiple formats, making it invaluable for fieldwork planning, application development, geocaching, academic research, and location-based projects.
This free online coordinate tool eliminates the need for complex GIS software or expensive surveying equipment. Simply interact with the map to retrieve decimal degree coordinates and degrees-minutes-seconds (DMS) formatted values within seconds, with convenient copying and sharing capabilities built directly into the interface.
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Decimal Degrees
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Degrees, Minutes, Seconds
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Neighborhood-level data reveal where chronic conditions concentrate, how socioeconomic factors shape health outcomes, and where prevention efforts can have the greatest impact Over 75% of the adult population in the...
The post Mapping the Burden of Chronic Disease Across the United States appeared first on PolicyMap.
JGASS is still going strong! All teams are hyped and motivated, its never been a better time to launch your Special Operations career!
In this article we will cover everything you need to know about the Jobs available and program information for the JGASS program. JGASS stands for Joint Geospatial Analysis Support Services. The contract was awarded in 2021 and has a value of $373 Million and will last up to 8 years! The purpose of JGASS is for contractors to supply the full spectrum of geospatial intelligence to the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).
The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) is a unified combatant command of the United States Armed Forces responsible for overseeing the various special operations components of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. USSOCOM is headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.
Most of the contract positions are located in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Northern Virginia, and...
CNG, Planet, and Clark University are convening a two-day in-person sprint on March 10-11, 2026 at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts focused on defining standards for Earth observation (EO) vector embeddings. The goal of this sprint is to collaboratively draft and align on a practical specification that can be tested, extended, and adopted by the broader EO community.
The potential of EO vector embeddings
EO vector embeddings – compressed representations generated by AI models trained on satellite imagery – enable new approaches to understanding our planet. These embeddings can make AI-driven geospatial analysis accessible on consumer-grade hardware, making it possible for many more people around the world to access applications like global content-based search, change detection, and pattern recognition. Moreover, they have the potential to replace raw satellite observations as input to many downstream applications and empower new localized models.
Adoption of EO vector...
We have launched the first version of the Fields of The World (FTW) web app— a tool that lets you run AI models on satellite imagery, visualize field boundaries, and help improve how these models perform across different landscapes.
This is an early beta. You should expect downtime and bugs as we continue building. But it’s ready for you to explore, test, and shape through your feedback
What is Possible in V1
Select your area of interest. Start by navigating to any location on the map or searching for a specific region. Draw a bounding box around the agricultural area you want to analyze.Select a year. Select your year of interest.
Select a year. Select your year of interest.
Scene selection. The app automatically selects Sentinel-2 Level 2A Collection 1 scenes based on the crop calendar for your location, but you can manually select specific images if you prefer different timing or...
Space Park Leicester’s chief executive has been invited to join the UK government’s delegation attending Commercial Space Week in the US. William Wells will showcase the University of Leicester’s £100m space research, innovation and teaching hub at the event this week which will attract more than 5,000 attendees from over 30 countries. The high-profile week […]
Hexagon Multivista integrates multiple architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) brands into one streamlined portfolio The unified brand offers a holistic service from reality capture to modelling and analysis, building on Hexagon’s vision for seamless, integrated support that maximises construction project value Through its global franchise network spanning more than 60 territories, Hexagon Multivista offers […]
How high-speed digitization and edge processing from Teledyne SP Devices enable scalable satellite signal monitoring across multiple frequency bands. Satellite monitoring enables continuous observation of satellite communications and navigation signals to ensure link quality, detect interference, and verify compliance with spectrum regulations. These systems provide global and consistent visibility of uplink and downlink behavior, […]
London, 27 January 2026 – The Association for Geographic Information, the membership group for organisations and individuals working in geospatial, is seeking submissions from individuals and organisations wanting to showcase innovation, achievement, and best practice. New for 2026 are the Chris Holcroft Award in recognition of contribution to UK geospatial industry, and the AGI Foresight […]
~ Enhanced software accelerates analysis and interpretation of tactile data ~ Tactile sensor specialist PPS has announced Chameleon 2026, the latest generation in tactile visualisation, acquisition, and data interpretation software. Developed at the company’s engineering headquarters based in the United Kingdom, Chameleon 2026 is currently provided as a beta release with newly shipped PPS systems, giving engineers […]
The colours over my head pulsed in the darkness of early morning. The Northern lights, auroa borealis, seemed to be meeting over my head with electromagnetic majesty. standing in the cold, with my eyes getting used to the light while the sleep cleared from my head, the lights above moved to their own rhythm. Propelled by the pulsations of the sun days before, the particles this morning were charged.Looking up from my backyard.My journey to North51 usually takes me through the Canadian Rockies. I am privileged to drive south on one of the most beautiful highways in North America to get to Canmore, Alberta. While the winter driving can be a little touchy at times, this year was clear. Clear and absolutely beautiful. And this week’s drive started with a light show.North51 is not a normal event; it is unique and notoriously small. We call it intimate, but that intimacy means everyone speaks to everyone, and everyone has something meaningful to say. Don’t come to make sales. Instead, come...
When and where?
Geomob Edinburgh was held at 6:30pm (doors open at 6pm) on Tuesday, January 27th, 2026
at room LG34 in Paterson’s Land, The University of Edinburgh Holyrood Campus
(Google / OSM)
Thank you to The Community Access to Rooms project for providing this space for us, free of cost!
Agenda
Our format for the evening will be:
doors open at 18:00, set up and general mingling
at 18:30 we begin the talks with a very brief introduction
Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10 minutes.
After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions.
We head to a nearby pub for discussion and #geobeers sponsored by OpenCage, Esri.
The speakers:
The speakers:
Jamie Wallace, Vibe-coding trainable towards a Scotland-wide launch.
Rebecca Wilks, Counting Elephants from Space
Chris Fleming, State of the OpenStreetMap Scotland 2026
We are always looking for speakers, volunteer to speak!
The organizers:
Geomob Edinburgh is organized by...
Today, Reddit user u/Brooklyn_University posted an animated GIF of Martin Behaim’s Erdapfel, the world’s oldest surviving terrestrial globe, dating to 1492. As the globe turns, you’ll notice a striking absence: the Americas are nowhere to be found. Sail west from Europe on this map and the first landmass you would expect to encounter is “Cipangu” (Japan).Made in the same year
The first images from Europe’s pioneering meteorological infrared sounder were unveiled today at the EU Space Conference in Brussels, marking a major advance in the ability to monitor how the atmosphere evolves before and during severe weather.
Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
• By Lessons from Scale #7: Humans Are Not a Scalable Integration Pattern
•
Ignore the person behind the curtain
For most of my career, GIS has “worked” not because the systems were resilient, but because very smart, very patient people were standing just out of frame.
When something broke, a person noticed.
When data didn’t line up, a person fixed it.
When a workflow wasn’t documented, a person remembered how it worked last time.
Because that person existed, the system appeared stable.
It wasn’t.
It was buffered.
GIS grew up assuming that humans would always be there to absorb ambiguity, reconcile inconsistencies, and quietly make the output “look right.” That assumption is so deeply embedded that we rarely question it. And for a long time, it mostly worked.
Until it didn’t.
There’s a particular kind of failure mode that shows up in spatial systems. Nothing crashes. No alert fires. No exception bubbles up. Instead, someone notices that the map looks weird.
So they rerun a job. Or reproject a layer. Or fix a filename. Or resend a link. The immediate...
Bildquelle [1]
Befragt man eine KI zum Thema „Indizierung von Datenbanken“, bekommt man z. B. folgende Antwort:
„Datenbankindizierung beschleunigt Suchanfragen durch das Erstellen von separaten Datenstrukturen (Indizes), die wie ein Inhaltsverzeichnis funktionieren und schnellen Zugriff auf bestimmte Datensätze ermöglichen, indem sie die Notwendigkeit des sequenziellen Durchsuchens großer Tabellen reduzieren; dies erhöht die Performance bei Suchen, erfordert aber zusätzlichen Speicher und Pflege bei Schreibvorgängen (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE).“ [hier Google-KI-Antwort vom 26.01.2026, 20:00 Uhr]
Aber wusstet Ihr, wie viele verschiedene Arten der Indizierung in einer PostgreSQL möglich sind? Mir waren in meiner Praxis bisher im Wesentlichen nur B-Tree und speziell für Geodaten der GIST unter gekommen. Aber es gibt deutlich mehr. Durch einen LinkedIn-Beitrag [1] und einen Tweet [2] von Crunchy Data bin ich angepingt worden, dort kommen sie auf 10 verschiedene Arten von Indizes,...
In the world of geospatial intelligence, the value isn’t in collecting data — it’s in what you do with it. That’s where Analysis & Exploitation (A&E) truly defines mission success: transforming raw information into actionable insights that drive decisions, protect communities, and empower operational advantage.
At Geo Owl, A&E isn’t a tagline. It’s where our people, technology, and mission focus fuse into capabilities trusted by government agencies, defense partners, and the world’s most demanding intelligence missions. What once was Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination – is now a multi-layered simultaneous production effort powered by expert humans and game changing artificial intelligence, PED is now A&E.
What Is Analysis & Exploitation (A&E)?
In intelligence tradecraft, Analysis & Exploitation refers to the process of:
Interpreting raw geospatial and imagery data,
Identifying patterns, relationships, and anomalies,
Producing intelligence that informs...
In this Opening Address at GeoBuiz Summit 2026, Sanjay Kumar, CEO of Geospatial World, sets the strategic context for the global geospatial industry and its evolution from buzz to business.
He explains how innovations once viewed as emerging trends have matured into real economic impact, with the global geospatial market now valued at $677 billion. While geospatial has grown into a larger direct market than space, space continues to play a critical enabling role through Earth observation, GNSS, and satellite connectivity.
The address highlights the growing convergence of geospatial and space technologies as foundational pillars of digital infrastructure, driving the transition toward the autonomous age. As Sanjay Kumar emphasizes, maps are no longer created and consumed only by humans—machines are now active participants, enabled by spatial computing and digital twins.
He also underscores how governments worldwide are increasingly recognizing geospatial as...
This false-color image from Landsat 9’s Thermal Infrared Sensor, acquired Oct. 11, 2025, shows the thermal signature of waters off the coast of Maine—revealing finer-scale temperature differences between neighboring coves.
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
এই ম্যাপিং কার্যক্রমে রাজশাহী জেলার বাগমারা উপজেলার নাগা বাজার এলাকাকে কেন্দ্র করে মাঠপর্যায়ের তথ্য ব্যবহার করে OpenStreetMap হালনাগাদ করা হয়েছে। এতে নাগা বাজারের নিকট অবস্থিত একটি ইসলামি শিক্ষা প্রতিষ্ঠান (মাদ্রাসা), অবস্থান ও প্রাসঙ্গিক ট্যাগ যুক্ত করা হয়েছে, যা স্থানীয় শিক্ষার্থী ও পথচারীদের জন্য সহায়ক হবে।
NLT Blog - New Light Technologies
• By NLT Staff
•
When a hurricane makes landfall, an earthquake ruptures critical infrastructure, or a wildfire sweeps through remote terrain, the cellular networks and internet connectivity that modern society depends upon are often among the first casualties. First responders, emergency managers, and field personnel find themselves operating in environments where the very tools designed to support their mission: smartphones, tablets, and mobile applications: become inoperable precisely when they are needed most. This paradox represents one of the most significant yet underaddressed challenges in contemporary disaster response technology, and it demands a fundamental shift in how organizations approach mobile application architecture for mission-critical environments.
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
Second day of “quick” weekend project.
Frankly, I’ve run out of interesting things to map around my immediate surroundings. During the holiday season I travelled around the countryside and noticed long stretches of cycleways running alongside highways, occasionally featuring benches, bins, and similar roadside infrastructure. On one trip I tried mapping a rural street using EveryDoor, but the result was similar to summer cycling: frequent stopping dropped my average speed by 10–15 km/h.
I needed a solution where I could mass-save coordinates while moving, and deal with proper mapping later. Vespucci’s copy-paste workflow is probably the closest thing in the OSM ecosystem, but it still requires first tagging a node, then tapping the correct spot on the map. If the map is accidentally dragged, follow-position mode is disabled, and changing the type of copied element requires tagging a new node.
After concluding development I was suggested OsmAnd may support something...
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
La mia proposta è in fase proposed
osm.wiki/Proposal:Civil_Protection_Areas
https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/rfc-proposal-civil-protection-areas-emergency-waiting-area-shelter-area-staging-area-rescue-logistic-entry-rescue/141031
A European rival to Starlink pitches itself to Canada’s Armed Forces The startup Canada Rocket Company seeks to develop Canadian rocket capability The Government of Canada seeks proposal in support of data centre projects Interactive [...]
The post Canadian Geospatial Digest – January 26, 2026 appeared first on GoGeomatics.
Geo Owl was recently awarded the Missile Defense Agency SHIELD Multiple Award Contract! The contract will provide the framework for America’s Golden Dome and includes competitive task orders for a wide variety of requirements.
In an era of escalating global threats—think hypersonic missiles from China or ICBMs from North Korea the United States is doubling down on its missile defense capabilities. Enter the Golden Dome, a next-generation missile defense system inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome and mandated by President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order. But what’s the secret sauce behind this ambitious shield? Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) is emerging as a game-changer, powering America’s defense against aerial attacks. In this article, we’ll explore why GEOINT is critical to the Golden Dome, how it enhances missile defense, and why it’s a cornerstone of the U.S.’s national security strategy in 2025.
What Is GEOINT and Why Does It Matter?
Geospatial...
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
The Canton of Bern has released its updated Geoinformation Strategy for 2026–2030, setting a focus on customer-oriented services, long-term capacity building, and stronger cooperation across authorities. New topics include #AI, #NoCode/#LowCode environments, natural-language applications, #DigitalTwin-s, and #opensource, among many others.
If you work with geospatial data in Canada, you have likely heard the phrase “CSRS modernization” more often over the past few years. Sometimes it comes up in discussions about reference frames, sometimes in relation [...]
The post CSRS Modernization: What It Means, and Why It Matters appeared first on GoGeomatics.
Summerside’s city council has voted against a proposed bylaw change that would have designated parts of the community as flood plain and coastal overlay zones. The decision followed a well-attended council meeting that drew about [...]
The post Flood Mapping and Community Concerns: A Canadian Perspective appeared first on GoGeomatics.
Ed Parsons has spent his career working where technology, geography, and real-world decision-making intersect, often behind the scenes of systems that operate on a global scale. Best known for his work across digital mapping platforms and for his long engagement with open geospatial standards, he brings a rare mix of platform experience and standards governance to his role as Chair of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Board of Directors. At a moment when geospatial data is increasingly entwined with AI, real-time systems, and climate risk, Parsons reflects on what it takes to build technology that works across cultures, institutions, and everyday life.Most people use digital maps and location-based services every day without giving a second thought to the systems running behind them. Through your work, you have helped shape how billions of people navigate the world. When did you first recognize the significance of influencing something so essential, yet largely invisible?I am not...
My colleague Megan Engel GISP has written some very sound advice on keeping your GIS data organized, that I thought would be especially useful for the readers of this Spatial Reserves data blog, and with Megan’s permission, I am sharing it here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-i-keep-my-gis-data-mostly-organized-megan-engel-gisp-cthme/
Megan’s points include documentation and tracking and listing sources, writing something about every data set you use, even if it is just a sentence. I also like Megan’s advice, “And lastly… When it comes to data, TRUST NO ONE. Without proper documentation or clear metadata, you can’t assume anything about a dataset. Your map is only as reliable as the information it’s built on. Sometimes the only person who can verify it… is you.”
As this data blog makes clear, with the advent of web GIS tools, servers, and web mapping applications, increasingly, some of “your” data (“your” in quotes here because you use it, but you might not have...
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
The Invisible Thread Holding Our World TogetherImagine a world where your phone can't guide you, where planes struggle to navigate safely, where the power grid flickers towards instability, and where monitoring the health of our planet becomes a blurry guess. This isn't science fiction; it's the potential reality if we neglect a fundamental, yet largely invisible, science: geodesy. It’s the discipline dedicated to meticulously measuring and understanding our dynamic Earth – its shape, its wobble in space, its gravitational heartbeat, and how these change, constantly, relentlessly. Far from a niche academic pursuit, geodesy provides the invisible threads that...
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
Le Mur des réformateurs (ou Monument international de la Réformation) est désormais mieux cartographié et libellé en OSM.
Ce résumé décrit les divers éléments d’OSM dans leur état actuel (25 janvier 2026) et fournit des liens, bien que les détails aient pu changer depuis. Il précise également les champs (ou “tags”) utilisés pour donner ces informations.
Dans OSM, il y a 5 groupes d’éléments:
1 élément pour l’ensemble
10 éléments pour les statues
8 éléments pour les bas-reliefs avec les inscriptions monumentales
4 éléments pour les pierres commémoratives
1 élément pour le bassin
Restent à préciser les armoiries (Genève, Berne, Ecosse).
Statues
Il y a le groupe central:
Guillaume Farel
Calvin
Théodore de Bèze
John Knox
Les statues situées sur les côtés sont, à gauche (face au mur):
Gaspard de Coligny
Guillaume le Taciturne (Willem van Oranje)
...
Isometric NYC is a huge pixel art map of New York City - and I mean huge. Anyone who lives in, or knows NYC can spend hours exploring this map, zooming in on their favorite neighborhoods, streets, and landmarks, all reimagined in a classic old-school pixel art style. From iconic skyscrapers to tucked-away corners, Isometric NYC has captured the city block by block in isometric perspective.Of
Screenshot: LKW-Daten vom 15. Januar 2025 in und um Halle, hier mit der Identifikation eines A14-Abschnittes (Bildquelle [2])
Ricardo Klinger hat via LinkedIn [1] auf hochinteressante Daten zur Beanspruchung von Fernstraßen und Autobahnen im Toll Collect Lkw-Verkehrsportal [2] aufmerksam gemacht. Ihr findet dort zum einen die „Lkw-Befahrungen pro Tag“ (bis 60 Tage zurück) und zum zweiten „Lkw-Befahrungen nach Fahrzeugparametern“ (bis zwei Jahre zurück). Genutzt werden die Daten aus der Maut für Verkehrsanalysen. Auf der Startseite heißt es:
„Das Lkw-Verkehrsportal ist eine nutzerfreundliche Visualisierung von anonymisierten, historischen Mautdaten des Bundes für die interessierte Öffentlichkeit. Toll Collect und das Bundesamt für Logistik und Mobilität (BALM) stellen im Lkw-Verkehrsportal Informationen zur Befahrung des Mautnetzes in Deutschland zur Verkehrsanalyse zur Verfügung.“ [2]
[1] …...
Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
• By Lessons from Scale
•
Abandoned data falling back into nature
There’s a comforting myth we like to tell ourselves in technology:
If only everyone followed the standard, things would work.
This is almost never true. And when it is true, it’s usually long after the problem has already moved on.
Standards don’t fail because they’re poorly designed. They fail because, over time, we stop being honest about what they are and what they’re actually doing for us. We treat them as fixed truths instead of what they really are: temporary agreements between people trying to solve a very specific problem at a very specific moment.
Early on, standards work because they’re a little vague. They leave room for interpretation. They allow different teams to project their reality onto a shared shape. That ambiguity isn’t a bug—it’s the adoption strategy. It’s why things like the SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) worked as well as they did. Not because it was perfect, but because it was permissive, practical, and just...
Open Cosmos, the company building satellites to understand and connect the world, has today launched the first satellites in its new proprietary low-Earth-orbit (LEO) telecom constellation, just one week after securing high-priority Ka-band spectrum.
A VerySpatial PodcastShownotes – Episode 77719 January 2026
CES highlights
Click to directly download MP3
YouTube (audio only)
AVSP – Episode 777 Transcript (docx)
http://traffic.libsyn.com/avsp/AVSP_Episode777.mp3
News:
US withdraws from everything..
Ohio uses Waze for snowplowing
UVA uses imagery and AI to map ghost trees
Web corner
Lost At Night georeference Earth’s lights
Topic:
CES 2026
Events:
AAG Annual Meeting node 17 – 21 March, watch party call for participants
QGIS user conference: 5-6 October, Laax, Switzerland
Music: My Hide and Seek by Vian Izak
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
🚀 Launch
CNEFE System – OpenStreetMap Brazil.
UMBRAOSM has just launched the CNEFE System, a new collaborative mapping tool that integrates open data from the CNEFE / 2022 Census (IBGE) with OpenStreetMap, covering all of Brazil.
With the CNEFE System, mappers can:
✔ Identify street names missing from OSM
✔ Correct spelling errors and variations
✔ Update street names based on official data
✔ Edit directly in JOSM or iD, avoiding rework
🛠️ The system was developed by Raphael Assis, president of UMBRAOSM, with data processing and organization carried out by Anderson (Santamariense), a result of the collaborative effort of the OSM Brazil community.
📘 Supporting material:
https://cnefe.mapaslivre.com.br/tutorial/tutorial-logradouro.php
🎥 YouTube video lesson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_Shjt4IjTg
🌍 Access the tool:
https://cnefe.mapaslivre.com.br/logradouro/index.html
If 2026 started like this, the future of collaborative mapping in...
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
Building on his Master’s thesis, Fabian Rechsteiner launched Vectormap, a project focused on making Swiss #geodata accessible as modern, high-performance #vectormaps. With regularly updated #cadastraldata and ready-to-use styles in #PMTiles format, Vectormap explores pragmatic, #cloudnative ways to bring geodata to the web.
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
Today, uBlock Origin detected 2 trackers. There was an attempt to fingerprint my GPU by extracting canvas data. What is going on, OSM? Is this why I’ve been donating you my free time? Maybe you’re not so better than Google after all…
Towards Data Science - Geospatial
• By Prithviraj Pramanik
•
Understand air quality: access the available data, interpret data types, and execute starter codes
The post Air for Tomorrow: Mapping the Digital Air-Quality Landscape, from Repositories and Data Types to Starter Code appeared first on Towards Data Science.
Subway Sim: Watching a City Think
In 2010, researchers in Tokyo ran a slime mold experiment on a map of the city.They placed oat flakes on a map of the Greater Tokyo Area, positioning each flake over a metropolitan center. Then they released a slime mould - Physarum polycephalum - at the location of Tokyo itself.Slime moulds are single-celled organisms with no brain, no nervous system,
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
Dnes, 24.1.2026, je to přesně rok od mé první úpravy na OpenstreetMap (a také měsíc od Vánoc). Od té doby jsem objevil a zažil spousta nových věcí. Naučil jsem se více si všímat věci kolem sebe, být více precizní a přesný a hlavně mě to ještě více motivovalo cestovat. Ze začátku jsem vůbec nevěděl, že existuje nějaká relace nebo dokonce mulipolygon. Na každou cestu jsem zbytečně dával tunu tagů. Ale každý někde začíná.
Díky a přeji všem krásný den 😊
By Ron Anderson, Chief Innovation & Technology Officer, Edmonton Police Service Canada’s transit systems are the lifelines of our major cities—moving millions of people every day through complex urban spaces. But across the country, a [...]
The post A GIS-based approach to modernizing transit safety in Canada appeared first on GoGeomatics.
Finnish geotechnical solutions provider Geonordic has been granted exclusive resale rights for the Luka GNSS receiver in Finland and Sweden under a new cooperation agreement signed with Tersus GNSS. The partnership represents a strategic step for both companies, expanding access to high-precision positioning technology in the Nordic region while strengthening Geonordic’s offering to surveying and […]
Dr Gladys West, the mathematician whose work laid the foundations for modern GPS and GNSS technology, has died at the age of 95. Her passing on 17 January marks the loss of a pioneering figure whose contributions continue to underpin global navigation, positioning and geospatial data systems used worldwide. Although her work remained largely unrecognized […]
Purpose‑built for customers: FARO CREAFORM, turning portable and automated dimensional measurement into strategic advantage for manufacturers, and FARO INSIGHT, transforming captured reality into trusted insight for construction, public safety, and geospatial professionals. Lévis, Québec, January 22, 2026 — FARO Technologies and Creaform, businesses of AMETEK, Inc., are announcing a major new chapter in their evolutions […]
Nelson, BC — January 2026 — The GoGeomatics Nelson networking group is set to kick off the new year with a community-focused meetup on Tuesday, January 27, 2026, proudly sponsored by Nupqu Resource Limited Partnership, [...]
The post Nupqu Resource Limited Partnership Sponsors January GoGeomatics Nelson Meetup appeared first on GoGeomatics.
Somebody’s been talking about Greenland again, and we’re getting another flurry of articles about how Greenland’s apparent size on maps may be to blame for the obsession. Last year it was suggested that Trump wanted… More
Fuel Poverty in the UK has become a significant issue as households struggle to afford adequate warmth and energy services, primarily due to a combination of low incomes, high energy costs, and poor home energy efficiency.
To address the issue, the UK government recently announced the £15 billion Warm Homes Plan, aimed at helping millions of families with energy-efficient improvements by 2030.
Turning up the heaters is only a preliminary solution to this problem, with heat retention inside the homes being of significant value, which is often overlooked.
Working to identify the causes, Ordnance Survey, Great Britain’s national mapping agency, analysed 23.6 million homes using the OS National Geographic Database (NGD). Through this, OS NGD identified over 600 million features affecting the heating conditions – from identifying trends to comparing the physical characteristics of homes using a heat index to assess how easy they are to heat.
The Pros of Urban Living
According to Ordnance...
One year into his presidency, Donald Trump is again breaking records. He is now even more unpopular than at any point in his political career. To mark the first anniversary of his second term, a number of new polls have been released evaluating the president’s popularity across the United States.
The Economist's Approval Tracker shows the president's net approval rating at -19%. Using YouGov
Screenshot: Im GitHub verfügbare Tools zur Qt5/Qt6-Migration [2].
Wer für QGIS Plugins programmiert, kommt bei der im Februar 2026 geplanten Umstellung auf QGIS 4 nicht um den Wechsel von Qt5 auf Qt6 herum, denn QGIS 4 ist dann Qt6-basiert. Von Bert Temme kam jetzt via X (ehem. Twitter) [1] der Tipp auf im GitHub verfügbare Tools zur Qt5/Qt6-Migration [2]. Gern gebe ich es hier weiter, ich selbst habe es (noch) nicht getestet, gern könnt Ihr Eurer Erfahrungen in den Kommentaren teilen.
Hier der Original-Tweet [1]:
Plugin migration to be compatible with Qt5 and Qt6 https://t.co/dBgmSDUaYp— Bert Temme (@berttemme) January 21, 2026
[1] … https://x.com/berttemme/status/2013898258381164980?s=20[2] … https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/wiki/Plugin-migration-to-be-compatible-with-Qt5-and-Qt6
Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
• By COG + STAC Isn’t a Stack. It’s a Contract.
•
For a long time, we told ourselves a comforting lie:
“It’s just a file.”
The file lived in a folder.
The folder lived on a server.
The name of the file basically told you what it was.
And if it didn’t, you could always ask the person who created it.
Which, of course, worked great — right up until it didn’t.
COG and STAC didn’t emerge because the geospatial community suddenly discovered better compression or cooler acronyms.
They emerged because scale finally made the real system visible.
And that system was never “files.”
It was assumptions.
Filenames Are Metadata (If You Know the Person Who Wrote Them)
In small systems, filenames carry an incredible amount of unspoken meaning.
final_v3_reprojected_fixed.tif
Everyone nods.
Everyone understands.
Everyone agrees to never talk about it again.
At small scale, this works because:
The number of files is manageable
The number of producers is small
The workflows are tribal knowledge
The humans are still reachable
At large scale,...
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
Finally got around to watching this gem: “Your Dorky Spatial Database is My Magic Answer Machine” by Brian Timoney. In this insightful and engaging #PostGISDay presentation, Brian explores how #AI can both use #PostGIS and be used from within PostGIS. A must-watch for anyone curious about the future of intelligent geospatial workflows!
Turn disorganized JPEGs into meaningful spatial data. Follow our guide to embedding GPS coordinates in photos and visualizing them in QGIS with automatic map tips.
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
#GeoFeeds is a non‑curated aggregator tracking nearly 90 geospatial and adjacent blogs created by Bill Dollins and James Fee, now enhanced with an #MCP endpoint. The new setup lets #AI tools query and analyze the feed’s cached data directly, opening up creative ways to explore sources and trends in the geospatial blogosphere.
By Betty Huang
This map depicts the global distribution of marine protected areas (MPAs) by protection level. MPAs are places in major bodies of water designated for the protection and restoration of marine life and habitats. They can be found in the ocean and Great Lakes. Environmental groups and governments have been working over the past decades to increase the number and size of these special maritime preserves to not only boost biodiversity, but to provide opportunities for people to experience maritime environments and explore cultural maritime heritage.
Global marine protected area targets aimed for 10% coverage by 2020 (Aichi Target 11) and at least 30% by 2030 (the 30×30 goal) under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The 30×30 target, adopted by over 190 nations, was established based on scientific research indicating that protecting at least thirty percent of the ocean is the minimum required to restore marine life and sustain the benefits it provides to...
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
Cet article est un retour d’expérience sur la contribution aux commerces sur plusieurs années dans une métropole.
La contribution aux commerces est un sujet qui a toujours eu une importance dans la communauté OSM, car ce sont des données essentielles à tout à chacun au quotidien pour se repérer dans l’espace et répondre aux besoins primaires. C’est aussi une thématique de contribution qui permet de rendre OSM crédible auprès du grand public face aux applications et plateformes développées par les GAFAM et un point d’entrée pour commencer à contribuer.
Un regain d’intérêt a eu lieu sur cette thématique dans la communauté OSM France depuis environ 1 an avec l’émergence de nouveaux outils de contribution.
Une des difficultés étant d’assurer une pérennité de la donnée dans le temps, de l’exhaustivité et de la qualité (cela s’applique bien sûr à toute donnée dans OSM).
OSM vs réalité
Premier défi rencontré dans mon territoire, les commerces ont été mis à jour en majorité il y a...
Eclipse Company co-founder Jesse Tomlinson writes: “Since you have many eclipse map posts on your site, I wanted to send a quick message letting you know about our newly rebuilt website, The Eclipse App. In 2023, you wrote… More
A new, far more detailed map of the landscape underneath Antarctica’s ice sheet, generated “by applying the physics of ice flow to ice surface maps and incorporating geophysical ice thickness observations.” There’s an aspect of… More
Don’t forget who got you where you are. Hint: it’s the customers… The growth of the industry, as well as the firms that support geomatics and geospatial communities, has been overall a positive thing. Successful [...]
The post Geo-Vendor Growth is a Good Thing… Mostly… appeared first on GoGeomatics.
Level-2 NewsSatellogic Signs $18MM USD Agreement with Portugal to Deliver Two Mark V High-Resolution Satellites [link]Satellogic signed an $18M agreement with Portugal’s CEiiA, the Centre of Engineering and Product Development in Portugal, to deliver and deploy two 50 cm-class NewSat Mark V satellites, strengthening Portugal’s and Europe’s sovereign Earth-observation capabilities.The satellites, part of the Atlantic Constellation, will transfer to Portuguese ownership and operational control in Q2 2026, with over 85% European-sourced components and a built-in knowledge-transfer program.SkyFi Integrates Vantor Imagery and Analytics for On-Demand Earth Intelligence [link]SkyFi has integrated Vantor into its platform, enabling on-demand tasking and access to high-resolution satellite imagery, archives, and analytics. The partnership expands access to Vantor’s spatial content through SkyFi’s self-service tools, supporting use cases across defense, disaster response, urban planning, and...
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
A Mapathon has been organised for Saturday 21st February 2026 from 11am to 1pm in Belfast. Pizza will be provided at QUB Geosciences building on Elmwood Avenue behind the Student’s Union. Numbers are limited to 30 attendees.
Sign up on eventbrite here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/belfast-openstreetmap-workshop-tickets-1981332125724
Event Location:
osm.org/#map=19/54.585251/-5.939057
GIS sits at a strange crossroads. It is more accessible than ever, yet still widely misunderstood. Satellite imagery updates faster, dashboards look cleaner, and automation does more heavy lifting. And yet, many assumptions about GIS remain stuck in a much earlier era.
Some of these myths date back to the early 2000s, when spatial data was expensive and tightly controlled. Others are newer, fuelled by AI hype or the rise of free online imagery. What they have in common is this, they quietly influence expectations, budgets, timelines, and risk decisions across forestry, mining, agriculture, and environmental compliance.
So let’s clear the air.
Below are fifteen GIS myths that continue to surface in real projects, and what actually sits behind them.
1. “Satellite imagery is always live”
It sounds reasonable, but it is rarely true. Most satellite imagery is captured on scheduled revisit cycles. Availability depends on orbit patterns, tasking priorities, and plain old weather. Cloud cover...
Distributed processing in SimActive’s Correlator3D enables photogrammetry workflows to be executed across multiple PCs (or VMs) instead of relying on a single node.
When and where?
Geomob Netherlands took place in Utrecht on the evening of Thursday, January 22nd, 2026 at READAR: Princetonlaan 6, 3584 CB, Utrecht Utrechtinc, OpenStreetMap, Google Maps
Agenda
Doors open at 16:30, set up and general mingling
Talks begin at 17:00 with a very brief introduction
Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10-15 minutes.
After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions.
After the speeches, we vote for the best speaker. The winner will receive the best speaker prize and unending glory (see the full list of all past winners).
Discussion and #award and #geobeers paid for by the sponsors: READAR.
The speakers:
Sven Briels, How to map every green roof in The Netherlands?
Bart Louwers, MapLibre Tile: A new modern and efficient vector tile format.
Garret Speed, Litte Geo Tools in Streamlit.
Dirk Voets, SenseRemote
The organizers:
Geomob Netherlands (GeomobNL) is organized by
Dirk Voets,...
META is building a massive (AI)-focused data centre in northeast Louisiana. The site footprint is 2,250 acres of land - making the Hyperion Data Center one of the largest data-center construction sites ever attempted in the United States. It is a nearly five-mile-long, one-mile-wide tract of land that is being developed to power Meta’s AI ambitions.It is hard to understand the true scale of a
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
I have been trying to mark my business on openstreetmap
it is already there on google maps. I have a question if anyone can answer please.
Do it need to connect google my business with bing places
https://www.dublinsalsacademy.com/
Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
• By Lessons from Scale #5: Scale Doesn’t Break Systems — It Reveals the Real One
•
Fixing problems
For a long time, I believed scale caused problems.
Latency spikes.
Weird edge cases.
Workflows that worked perfectly fine yesterday suddenly melting down under load.
Data inconsistencies that only showed up once customers started doing things “wrong” — which is to say, doing things like actual humans.
I don’t believe that anymore.
Scale doesn’t break systems.
Scale reveals the system you actually built.
And that realization is… uncomfortable.
The Lie of the Small System
Small systems are incredibly forgiving. Almost suspiciously so.
Manual steps hide behind heroics.
Implicit assumptions masquerade as “flexibility.”
Undefined ownership feels like “collaboration.”
Missing metadata is waved away with a confident “we’ll add that later.”
At small scale, humans are the system.
Someone notices a failed job and reruns it.
Someone recognizes a weird file and fixes it manually.
Someone knows which toggle not to touch because “last time it broke prod.”
And because things...
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
I’ve dabbled with overpass turbo on and off for maybe a year now, but I feel like I’ve just now started to get a better understanding of how it works.
I’ve been using it to find hikes that can lead to ruins or abandoned places:
(
nwr['abandoned']({{bbox}});
nwr['historic'='ruins']({{bbox}});
);
out;
and for campsites:
(
nwr['tourism'='camp_site']({{bbox}});
nwr['tourism'='camp_pitch']({{bbox}});
);
out;
And while those are certainly useful, especially for hard to find places that won’t show up on AllTrails or other popular spots, I didn’t feel like I learned much since they’re fairly simple queries.
The way I understand it at the moment: the Overpass query language treats things as sets. There is a default set (named “_”) that gets populated with the queries.
In the case of the camping, there are two lines enclosed in parentheses which groups the two requested object sets as a union (or OR operation) to store in the default set which is then output with the “out”...
Live event in 43 minutes! 2025 World Model 500 Performance Review. Includes discussion with Ryan Kmetz about an AI tool for analysing the geospatial stock market.Date: TODAY 21st JanuaryTime: 8pm ETLive event linkThis Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Screenshot: 28 neue Themen im Geobasis_Loader, hier in Baden-Württemberg, insgesamt jetzt mit 729 Themen
Seit der letzen GBL-Meldung [1] sind weitere 28 neue Themen im Katalog 1 des QGIS-Plugins „GeoBasis_Loader“ (GBL) [2] hinzu gekommen. Dabei handelt es sich um Flure, Gemarkungen und Verwaltungsgrenzen für die Bundesländer HB & BHV, NW und BW*. Damit stehen mit Stand heute 729 Themen im GeoBasis_Loader zur Verfügung.
* … Danke für die Zuarbeiten von Thomas Wölk! [1] … https://geoobserver.de/2026/01/08/gbl-geobasis_loader-mit-neuen-themen/[2] … https://geobasisloader.de
I have said repeatedly throughout my career that the effective use and adoption of technology requires a deep understanding of your own business processes and workflows. This is true regardless of the nature of the technology: proprietary or open-source, SaaS or cloud or on-prem, web or desktop or mobile, SQL or not. None of these things can paper over poorly understood processes.
As James is currently pointing out over on his blog, technology tends to expose that lack of understanding. It often unfairly shoulders the blame but, in the highly deterministic world of software, getting the wrong answer usually means you didn’t understand the question. Technology doesn’t suffer uncertainty well.
Target lighting levels depicted in Photometrics AI
So what about our non-deterministic frontier of generative AI? The same thing applies. In fact, your understanding of your business is even more crucial. As the non-deterministic, “hallucinating” nature of LLMs and related technologies...
Frank Winters will be our Keynote Speaker for this year’s annual GIS/SIG Conference (April 14, 2026) at the RIT Inn and Conference Center in Rochester, NY. His talk is entitled “We Are the Spotlight: How Geographers Shape the World – Look Upstream and Downstream”. Please check out Frank’s abstract and bio here: https://gis-sig.org/2026-conference/ The Call for Abstracts is now […]
SureCam, the video telematics and fleet safety technology specialist, has launched a next-generation, multi-view dashcam solution to deliver combined 360° visibility and AI-powered insights for commercial fleets. SureCam Vantage will provide up to six synchronised views around the vehicle to help meet regulatory requirements and reduce on-road risk.
Teledyne Technologies, a provider of advanced imaging solutions, announced that its Space Imaging division has successfully deployed its cutting-edge Speedster HyViSI (Hybrid Visible Silicon Imager) Focal Plane Arrays (FPAs) aboard NASA’s BlackCAT CubeSat Mission.
CLIPSBig models beat decades of research:When ML Beat Physics-Based Forecasts:Lorenz’s two-week dogma questioned:The Tiny GNN That Shook Weather Forecasting:EPISODEThis is episode 2/3 with Alex Merose about his thoughts on weather foundation models. He is a member of the technical staff at Open Athena. In this episode, Alex steps through ML weather models, their history and how they work.Links to items discussedECMWF Reanalysis v5 (ERA5): https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/dataset/ecmwf-reanalysis-v5I got fooled by AI-for-science hype—here's what it taught me: Understanding AII got fooled by AI-for-science hype—here's what it taught meI’m excited to publish this guest post by Nick McGreivy, a physicist who last year earned a PhD from Princeton. Nick used to be optimistic that AI could accelerate physics research. But when he tried to apply AI techniques to real physics problems the results were disappointing…Read more8 months ago · 401 likes · 66 comments · Nick McGreivyTHIS EPISODE...
With inflation making a night out increasingly expensive, getting drunk can cost a small fortune. To save your wallet, I created Drunk Map - a way to experience the dizzying effect of looking at a map while inebriated, without spending a cent on today’s sky-high alcohol prices.There’s no practical purpose to Drunk Map, but it serves as a neat demonstration of how you can access and
Today we added a new view to OSM Inspector rendering postal code boundaries.
In some regions, mappers map postcodes not only as tags on objects with an address (addr:postcode=*), but also in the form of postcode polygons.
The new view supports this endeavour by helping mappers see where postcodes are missing and where existing postcode areas overlap. As a side effect, it’s something we can show a potential customer when they come asking for “global postcode boundaries” – the view makes it clear what you can expect from OSM and what you can’t.
Postcode coverage is shown in semi-opaque blue. Polygons which overlap each other are yellow. Most of these are cases where both the administrative boundary and a second boundary object have a postal_code=* tag.
If postal_code=* is used on a polygon without boundary=*, it will appear as dark blue (low zoom) or orange lines (larger zoom level).
Keep in mind that OpenStreetMap primarily aims to collect ground truth. Administrative boundaries...
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge — a geospatial newsletter that’s hotter than a Nelly song… In any case, the aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:Maritime Risks: Narrow lanes face $192 billion in trade risks.Extreme Rainfall: Local history drives risks for a billion people.Simple Models: RNNs outperform complex setups for African rainfall.Ecosystem Loss: Agriculture threatens vital grasslands and non-forest landscapes.Building Data: High-resolution building characteristics for the Global South.Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. The massive $192 billion trade risk hiding in our shipping lanesGlobal trade relies on a handful of narrow passageways, known as maritime chokepoints, which are surprisingly vulnerable to a bunch of different hazards. A new study in Nature Communications finds that about $192 billion of trade is exposed to disruptions every year from things like cyclones,...
Das netzwerk | GIS Sachsen-Anhalt e. V. plant, den 17. Geofachtag als Präsenzveranstaltung am Mittwoch, 18.02.2026 (9.00 Uhr bis ca. 15.30 Uhr) auf dem Campus Dessau der Hochschule Anhalt (Audimax, Bauhausstraße 5, Haus 8) durchzuführen. Bitte merken Sie sich diesen Termin vor! Das Programm [1] mit dem Schwerpunkt KI und Geoinformation steht zum Download bereit, die Anmeldung [2] ist frei geschaltet. Die Teilnahme ist kostenlos, eine Anmeldung erforderlich.
Screenshot: Lageplan Audimax und Bauhaus (Quelle: OpenStreetMap [3])
[1] … https://netzwerk-gis.de/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/17.-Geofachtag_2026_Programm_04.pdf[2] … https://netzwerk-gis.de/anmeldung-17-geofachtag/[3] … https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/51.839650/12.229180
Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
• By GIS Doesn’t Create Complexity. It Just Stops Letting You Ignore It.
•
Confused?!?!?!
At some point, almost every GIS team hears the same complaint: “GIS makes everything more complicated.” This is usually said right after a map exposes something inconvenient, like the fact that two systems describing the same thing don’t agree on where it is, what it’s called, or who owns it. Naturally, the map is blamed.
GIS didn’t make things complicated. It just showed up with receipts.
Before GIS gets involved, organizations are remarkably good at living with ambiguity. Boundaries are “approximate.” Definitions are “understood.” Data is “basically right.” None of this causes much trouble because the inconsistencies are nicely siloed. Spreadsheets don’t argue with each other. PowerPoints don’t ask follow-up questions. GIS does. The moment you try to put multiple datasets into the same spatial frame of reference, the contradictions stop being theoretical and start being visible.
This is usually where someone decides the GIS is the problem. Not the fact that three...
The Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology of the Sultanate of Oman (MTCIT) and Novaspace announce the second Edition of the Middle East Space Conference (MESC), taking place from January 26 to 28, 2026, in Muscat, Oman, under the patronage of His Highness The Deputy Prime Minister for Relations and International Affairs and the Special Representative of His Majesty the Sultan, HRH A’Sayyed Asa’d Bin Tariq Al Said.
Building on the strong momentum of its inaugural edition, MESC 2026 will convene more than 450 senior-ranking decision-makers representing over 190 organizations from more than 20 countries.
With Geospatial World onboard as a Knowledge Partner, the conference will bring together government leaders, space agencies, industry executives, investors, innovators, and academic institutions to shape the next phase of growth of the Middle East space ecosystem.
As a high-level platform for dialogue and deal-making, MESC reinforces Oman’s position as a...
Overture Maps Foundation is the latest organization to become a supporter of OpenStreetMap US, as an Organizational Member at the Strategic level.
Overture creates and distributes reliable, easy-to-use, and interoperable open map data. Overture is a significant user of OpenStreetMap data and views OSM as a critical source of data for several of its open data themes. By supporting the OSM ecosystem, Overture helps ensure the continued growth and quality of the collaborative mapping project that benefits its own mission.
Overture’s membership will be used to support OSM US tooling, namely MapRoulette, which is an essential tool that makes it easier for mappers to contribute to OpenStreetMap. MapRoulette provides bite-sized mapping challenges that help improve map data quality and completeness, helping both new and experienced contributors to make meaningful improvements to the map. Originally a Charter Project, MapRoulette is now a full program of OSM US and this membership is a step...
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
Las notas de OpenStreetMap son una ventana al conocimiento local y a la colaboración en tiempo real. Para aprovechar mejor esta información, he desarrollado un conjunto de scripts en Bash que permiten mantener una base de datos actualizada con las notas, sus comentarios y cambios de estado en menos de 10 segundos.
El sistema se apoya en herramientas comunes de Linux (curl, awk, sed, grep, jq, psql, entre otras), evitando dependencias complicadas. Con ellas se procesa el dump diario de notas del Planet, se convierte en CSV, se carga en PostgreSQL y se georreferencia por país o límite marítimo. Un daemon se encarga de mantener la base sincronizada con el API de OSM.
Esto abre la puerta a múltiples aplicaciones: análisis de actividad comunitaria, visualización de notas recientes por región, o desarrollo de nuevas herramientas basadas en este componente. El código está disponible en GitHub: OSM-Notes-Ingestion.
¡Me encantaría conocer tus ideas y aportes!
Explore Winter Trails with OsmAnd’s Snowmobile Mode
When the landscape turns white and roads become snowy paths, OsmAnd is your perfect winter riding companion.
With the dedicated Snowmobile map style, you can easily identify official routes right on the map. Trails mapped as route=snowmobile in OpenStreetMap appear clearly, distinct from standard roads. Snowmobile map legend is here. Because OsmAnd works completely offline, you can rely on guidance even in backcountry areas with zero network coverage.
Just tap on a visible trail on the map to follow the track and start your adventure.
Personalize Your Ride
To make your rides even more tailored to the season, you can create a custom Snowmobile profile.
Choose a snowmobile icon fit for your vehicle, set a distinct profile color, and adjust navigation preferences such as speed display, routing types, or road avoidances. Choose Snowmobile map style for this profile.
Whether you’re on a short local ride or a cross-country...
Adventures In Mapping | John Nelson Maps
• By John
•
Hey, check out the black labels for the black polygon features in this map!
Oh, wait, you can’t read them. Ok, I’ll just switch them to white, like this:
Foiled again! Now the white features’ labels are invisible. I suppose I could choose a neutral color like gray, but that would still be pretty hard to read over the medium-toned features.
Is there a way to set the visual style of a layer’s labels so they are legible over any of the symbols’ fill colors?
Absolutely you can. Your new best friend is called a “Label Class” and it’s here to save the day.
Label classes let you create distinct groups of labels so you can style each as needed. There’s even a shortcut to auto-create a label class for each of your layer’s symbol classes.
Here’s how you can work with label classes in ArcGIS Pro and ensure no label gets left behind…
Thanks for watching, friends! Happy labeling, John.
It’s been about a year since we rolled out GeoFeeds, a spatial new aggregator along the lines of the old Planet Geospatial. During that time, it’s been humming along, and we’ve added about 90 blog feeds to it. It provides a single, rolling, aggregated feed of posts from those blogs over the previous year. I’ve been impressed by the surge is RSS feeds over that time.
If you have a blog or feed related to geospatial, personal or corporate, you can simply add an issue to the repo, including the title, and feed URL, and it will get added to the OPML.
Today, I pushed an MCP endpoint to production. This enables your AI client, such as Claude Desktop, to analyze the cached feed, providing an additional way to monitor the state of the geospatial market as it evolves in real time. For example, I asked Claude to tell me the most prolific blogs so far this month (January, 2026). I spot checked a few of these and the numbers were right. (It also correctly flagged OSGeo’s spam...
The AGS Globe: The Atoll Nations Facing Rising Tides by American Geographical Society
The American Geographical Society’s Weekly Newsletter for Tuesday, January 20, 2026
Read on Substack
The wind can be strong near the coast, so its direction makes a difference. Today I faced a fairly strong head wind on the way out. And a tail wind on the way back. A cold wind on the back is nicer than a cold wind in the face.My ride passed through Warkworth. I was already aware of Warkworth Cemetery and its 19th century chapel, but I had never visited. It lies alongside NCN1, almost hidden behind trees, at the top of the hill on the road to the beach. My return journey was going more quickly than expected, so I went to have look. Discovering the view across the town was a highlight of today's ride.
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
•
What You’ll Learn This Week How AI liability is beginning to reshape insurance underwriting and what that means for insurability of GeoAI systems.Why the federal–state conflict over AI regulation is likely to create layered compliance uncertainty for nationwide geospatial operations.How the Department of War’s “AI-first” strategy is driving new expectations for interoperable geospatial data pipelines and modular architectures.Why documented governance, provenance, and technical controls are becoming critical to both legal compliance and risk management in GeoAI.GeoAI and the Law is not legal advice. The reader should consult with a trained lawyer on legal matters associated with GeoAI.What’s NewHow AI Liability Risks are Challenging the Insurance Landscape (IAPP)The IAPP article describes how emerging AI liability risks are reshaping the insurance market, with insurers beginning to scrutinize AI governance practices, data controls, and human-in-the-loop safeguards before underwriting...
From May 2025: a blog post from TeleGeography looking back at their annual maps of submarine cables, which they’ve been putting out since at least 2013, and with a different design each year (here’s my… More
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
In the corridors of industry conferences like the GEOINT Symposium and across the digital expanse of the Project Geospatial community, a singular question echoes with persistent frequency. It comes from the transitioning Army Specialist leaving Fort Liberty, the mid-career analyst pondering a move from the National Capital Region, and the fresh graduate looking at a map of the United States. They ask, with earnest anxiety: "Where should I go to find a good geospatial job?"Over the years, I’ve realized this is, fundamentally, the wrong question. It betrays a static understanding of a market defined by volatility. It assumes a "job" is a fortress where one can raise the drawbridge and retire thirty years later. In the “cleared” geospatial sector, contracts end, primes lose re-competes, and missions pivot overnight. The "good job" you found on Monday can vanish by Friday.The better question, the one this report answers, is about Market Liquidity. If you lose your seat on Friday, can you...
Since the United States’ controversial military operation in Venezuela - including the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro - and in light of recent threats by Donald Trump to invade a NATO ally, there has been renewed interest in the long history of U.S. military interventions around the world.American Empire: A Century of Global Military Presence is a new interactive atlas that visualizes
Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
• By Lessons from Scale #4: Workflow Orchestration Is a Product Surface
•
For a long time, I treated workflow orchestration as plumbing. Important plumbing, sure, but still plumbing. Something you install, test once, and then politely forget about while you move on to the “real” problems. As long as data showed up where it was supposed to and nobody was paging you at 2 a.m., the orchestration layer could stay safely out of sight, like pipes in the wall.
This worldview survives right up until scale shows up and kicks the wall in.
What breaks first isn’t performance. It’s comprehension. As systems grow, workflows stop being singular, repeatable things and start becoming families of closely related behaviors. On paper, they still look like the same workflow. In practice, inputs arrive at different times, schemas drift, dependencies wobble, and failure modes multiply. The orchestration layer quietly absorbs all of this complexity while everyone continues to pretend it’s still “just running jobs.”
At this point, teams often convince themselves they’re...
SkyWatch, a geospatial data platform that simplifies access to premium satellite and aerial imagery, announced a partnership with Nearmap, a global leader in property intelligence.
It’s election season at OpenStreetMap US! We are seeking two mapping enthusiasts to fill the open seats. Nominations for the OpenStreetMap US Board of Directors will open on Monday, January 26, 2026. We hope you will consider running. As a member of the OpenStreetMap US board, you can help shape the strategy and future of OpenStreetMap US at an exciting time of growth for the organization. The benefits and responsibilities of the board include:
Working with the other board members in support of the OSM US community
Supporting our Executive Director & the staff team in strategic planning efforts
Supporting the mapping community through mailing lists and chat rooms
Making a difference at the local, national, and international levels
Facilitating interactions with other organizations, academics, government, and private companies, and supporting fundraising efforts.
There are two open seats in this election. The board members whose terms are expiring are Levente Juhász and...
MapTiler News
• By MapTiler (Petra Duriancikova)
•
Experience the classic OpenStreetMap style in a dark mode. It offers cartography with high-contrast icons, colours, and typography to ensure perfect clarity against the dark background.
Gladys West has died at the age of 95. An African-American mathematician who grew up in Jim Crow Virginia, West “devoted herself to solving one of science’s most complex challenges: accurately modeling the shape of… More
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
Przystanki w Powiecie Koszalińskim
Zabieram się za dodawanie i poprawianie nazw przystanków według uchwał przystankowych konkretnych gmin w Powiecie Koszalińskim.
Linki do uchwał:
* Gmina Będzino,
* Gmina Mielno,
* Gmina Biesiekierz,
* Gmina Sianów,
* Gmina Polanów,
* Gmina Bobolice Nie znalazłem nowszej wersji
* Gmina Świeszyno
Written by Paul Van Haaren Solutions Engineering Manager at VertiGIS . . The key is bridging the gap between powerful enterprise systems and Esri’s ArcGIS Your organization runs on data,
The post Adding “Where” to Your Why: The Power of Geospatial Data Integration appeared first on VertiGIS.
I have just been reading in the current issue of ArcNews about the new data set and app about the 40 years of USGS Land Cover data, and it is a treasure for researchers and also for instructors to look at change over space and time with their students. As I was working as Cartographer at the USGS at the time of the original USA-wide Land Cover data compilation (hem! … in 1992!), I have had a longstanding interest in this data. It touches right at the heart of the questions, “what’s where, why is it there, and why should we care?”
The USA Annual NLCD land cover layer represents the predominant surface state within the mapping year with respect to broad categories of artificial or natural surface cover. This new 40 year time slice of annual time-enabled service of the National Land Cover Database groups land cover into 16 classes based on a modified Anderson Level II classification system. Classes include vegetation type, development density, and agricultural use. Bodies of...
Live event link hereDate: Wednesday, 21st JanuaryTime: 8pm ETTopic: 2025 World Model 500 Performance ReviewLast year I produced 2024 Geospatial Stocks Performance report:It was detailed and driven by what interested me. I will run a live event this time before preparing the 2025 report. I want to get feedback from you on what signals you need from the noise. We are up to 500 stocks now. This is a lot of noise. For example - see the X list:This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.You can scroll on forever and not glean much insight on trends, who won and who lost.So let’s have a brief huddle to consider what you want to know about what happened in the world model or geospatial stock market in 2025. Then I’ll produce the report. I look forward to an engaging discussion.This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
GoGeomatics
• By Volunteer Editors and Group Writers
•
Welcome to this week’s edition of the International Geospatial Digest, where we highlight significant developments in Earth observation, mapping, and space technology from around the globe. Maps Reveal Greenland’s Critical Role as Arctic Temperatures Rise [...]
The post International Geospatial Digest – January 19, 2026 appeared first on GoGeomatics.
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
Years of Growth and Community Impact
I joined the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team with a simple interest in mapping, not fully aware of how profoundly it would shape my personal journey and the growth of the OSM Kenya community. What started as basic mapping tasks gradually evolved into deeper involvement in humanitarian mapping, data quality, and community-driven impact.
Over these years, HOT has played a critical role in strengthening my technical skills and perspective on geospatial data. Through initiatives such as the ESA Hub Validation Fellowship, I progressed from mapping to advanced validation and third-pass quality assurance, where accuracy and data integrity are paramount. I contributed to humanitarian projects in Sudan, supported disaster response mapping for Hurricane Mellisa in Jamaica, and worked on local risk-reduction initiatives such as the Elgeyo Marakwet landslide mapping project. These experiences highlighted how reliable geospatial data directly supports...
LIVE ONLINE EVENTLive event link hereDate: Tuesday, February 3 Time: 8:30pm ET Topic: we will learn from Molly Freeman about how to start a geospatial consultancy. Based on her experience as CEO of whereabouts. Let's demystify entrepreneurship.Whereabouts is an Esri Partner, and a certified Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE). The agenda is simple. We will demystify starting a consultancy. She will talk honestly about the steps to set one up, how to get clients and how to gain the certifications and partnerships mentioned.Looking forward to this live session with Molly!For those who can't attend, the recording will be on the podcast as usual.This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
The Swedish Armed Forces partners with ICEYE to enhance its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities and strengthen the resilience of intelligence architecture across the Nordics, the Arctic, and NATO’s North-Eastern Flank.
Ankur Gupta has created an impressive Map Poster Generator. The code for which is available on GitHub.While the original repository is fantastic for developers, it also requires a local Python setup, terminal commands, and the installation of geospatial libraries like OSMnx and GDAL - which can be intimidating if you aren't a coder.I’ve therefore adapted the core logic into a Google Colab
Marine seismic innovations business PXGEO has strengthened its senior leadership team with two key appointments to drive operational excellence across its global operations.
Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
• By Lessons from Scale #3: Metadata Is Operational Infrastructure
•
Metadata is one of those things everyone agrees is important—right up until the moment it slows something down.
At small scale, metadata feels optional. Nice to have. Something you’ll clean up later if there’s time. When you’re moving fast and shipping results, it’s easy to treat metadata as documentation rather than infrastructure.
Scale has a way of exposing how wrong that framing is.
The Comfortable Lie About Metadata
The comfortable lie we tell ourselves is that metadata exists to describe data.
Who created it.
When it was last updated.
What projection it’s in.
What the fields mean (roughly).
That definition works fine when the data stays close to its creators. When the same people who produced the dataset are also the ones using it, metadata gaps get filled in through conversation, Slack messages, or institutional memory.
The data “works” because people make it work.
At scale, that safety net disappears.
When Metadata Stops Being Descriptive
The first time metadata becomes...
Wann ist das Fitnessstudio am leersten? Statt auf Bauchgefühl zu setzen, habe ich Daten gesammelt und dabei spannende Muster entdeckt: von Neujahrsvorsätzen bis Abend-Peak. Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen von 10 Monaten Fitnessdaten. Als ich letztes Jahr mit Fitness begann, fragte ich mich: Wann ist das Gym am leersten? Statt auf mein Bauchgefühl zu vertrauen, …
Jupyter Notebook [1] als interaktive Arbeitsumgebung wird vor allem für Datenanalysen, wissenschaftliches Rechnen, in der Lehre und beim Prototyping genutzt. Besonders stark ist es immer genau dann, wenn man wirklich jeden Schritt oder Block einzeln testen und optimieren und das Ganze auch nachvollziehbar behalten und speichern will. Außerdem können in einen Notebook sowohl Code (z. B. Python) als auch beschreibender Text (als Markdown) gemischt werden. Seit Ende des letzten Jahres kann Jupyter Notebook nun auch via dem neuen QGIS-Plugin „QGIS Notebook Plugin“ [2] von Qiusheng Wu direkt im QGIS genutzt werden. IMHO eine wirklich coole Entwicklung, wenn wohl auch noch nicht alles perfekt ist, wie Anita Graser in [4] beschreibt. Mein Tipp: Schaut Euch das Video [5] an, es lohnt sich. Ich bin sicher, das Ding hat Potenzial und QGIS-Entwickler dürfen noch Großartiges erwarten, ich beobachte weiter und halte Euch auf dem Laufenden. Danke Qiusheng Wu!Ich hab’s mal kurz angetestet, siehe...
We all enjoy a nice cup of tea with family or friends over Christmas, Walter Schwartz spotted this mappy teapot on his travels.
“This little teapot, short and stout, was in the Two English Ladies Tea Shoppe, a booth at the San Francisco Dickens Fair. It says “Cardew’s London Maps” on the bottom and may have originally been for sale in 1992. Although it is in the collection of the shop owner, they removed from it display case and let me photograph it because I explained it was for the internationally renowned mappery.org website.”
My guess is that this was made for Multimap, a London based mapping business at the time of the first dotcom boom (late 90’s early 2000’s), as a corporate gift. Maybe one of my friends who worked there will be able to confirm.
Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
• By Most GIS Problems Aren’t GIS Problems
•
After a few decades working around GIS, I’ve come to a fairly reliable conclusion: when something goes wrong, it’s almost never because the GIS “didn’t work.” The map rendered. The analysis ran. The coordinates were fine. The problem is usually everything wrapped around it.
GIS just happens to be where organizational issues finally become visible.
When people say “the GIS is wrong,” what they often mean is that upstream data was late, incomplete, or quietly changed shape. Or that nobody ever agreed on what “correct” meant in the first place. Or that a workflow designed for a single analyst in 2009 is now expected to support an enterprise, real-time decision system. GIS didn’t fail. It faithfully reflected the mess it was handed.
This is why GIS teams so often end up acting as institutional truth serum. Spatial systems have an annoying habit of forcing assumptions into the open. Schema drift shows up immediately. Missing metadata becomes painful instead of theoretical. Conflicting...
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
Trạm biến áp 500kV Bắc Ninh
Trạm biến áp 500kV Quỳnh Lưu
Trạm biến áp 500kV Bình Định
Cấp điện áp: 500/220/35 kV
AT1 900MVA
Dự phòng AT2 900 MVA
900 MVA (1 x 900 MVA)
Dự phòng 1.800 MVA (2 x 900 MVA)
Khởi công quý 3/2027
Đóng điện quý 4/2029.
Tổng vốn đầu tư >2.260 tỷ đồng
Tuyến đường dây đấu nối 220 kV số 1 và 2: Xây dựng mới 2 tuyến đường dây 220 kV, 2 mạch, chiều dài mỗi đoạn khoảng 4,1 km đấu nối chuyển tiếp trên 2 mạch đường dây 220 kV Phước An - Phù Mỹ hiện hữu.
Tuyến đường dây đấu nối 220 kV số 3: Xây dựng mới 1 tuyến đường dây 220 kV, 4 mạch, dài khoảng 29 km đấu nối chuyển tiếp trên 2 đường dây 220 kV Pleiku 2 - Phước An và đường dây 220 kV An Khê - Quy Nhơn hiện hữu.
Trạm biến áp 500kV Bình Dương 1
Trạm biến áp 500kV Tây Ninh 1
Trạm biến áp 500kV Đồng Nai 2
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
Earlier this week, I accepted a PR to our codebase that made a bad and duplicated phone numbers. What happened was, that we use contact:phone=* per convention, but many entries used phone=*, which was not detected by our dupe scanner.
That’s 100% on me. I should have been more vigilant on that one, should have checked better (the few I checked on did not have phone=, so that’s another lesson for the books), and should have checked more vigilantly afterwards as well.
What I did: wrote a rescue to check all 600 edits we did, removed phone= dupes, and moved all phone= that were still there to contact:phone= in the process.
We also do contact every albergue we list (and thus sync) and ask them about their preferred/working phone numbers. So we went ahead and removed stale numbers that no longer worked, and updated those that did to a fully working set.
Of course the code is now fixed as well, and all edits have been too. Sorry again, this is 100% on me.
One of the biggest problems I face when riding across the prairie is identifying the cattle ranching owners of lost steers. Which is when I turn to Ranch Brand Search!Ranch Brand Search is an interactive map that brings one of the most distinctive traditions of the American West into the digital age. Instead of leafing through dusty brand books or wrestling with outdated state websites, users
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
I’ve run into a strange behaviour in my OSM user diary entry when documenting a batch/ffmpeg command.
This line in a code-block (ignore formatting):
ffmpeg select=eq(pict_type,I)
is automatically turned into:
ffmpeg https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:select=eq(pict_type,I)
This happens even inside code blocks (
, fenced code, etc.). It does not happen if I add spaces around the = (e.g. select = eq(pict_type,I)), but I cannot change the code because it must stay exactly as written.
...,
...
,
...
and similar combinations do not stop the autolink.
Is this a known issue with the OSM Wiki parser or is this a feature?
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
In order for OpenStreetMap to thrive, we need to attract and retain new mappers. To be welcoming to newcomers, we should avoid high barriers to starting mapping and instead support contributions that can be made with limited time, context, and experience. StreetComplete is a great example of this approach: by asking simple, well-scoped questions, it enables contributors to improve data quality in small, incremental steps. An effort-inclusive tagging philosophy builds on this idea by encouraging tagging schemas where each additional piece of information can be added independently and still be useful on its own. For example, amenity=bench is still a bench regardless if mapper knew about backrest=* and armrest=*.
I am writing this because I have encountered cases where newcomers are advised to follow practices that I consider unnecessarily demanding for basic contributions. A particularly stark example appears in the context of CCTV and ALPR mapping, where a sub-community...
GEO Jobe is excited to announce Admin Tools for ArcGIS 2.4, a release packed with brand-new capabilities that help administrators move faster, reduce manual edits, and keep content consistent across their organization.
The headline for 2.4 is a major expansion of Web Scenes administration—with a new set of tools designed to help you update, standardize, and clean up Web Scenes at scale. This release also includes quality-of-life improvements across settings, licensing, email workflows, and caching, along with a solid list of fixes.
Let’s take a look at the new features, improvements, and bug fixes available in Admin Tools 2.4.
New Features
New Web Scenes Toolset
Managing Web Scenes by hand can be time-consuming, especially when you need to apply the same change across many scenes. Admin Tools 2.4 introduces a suite of new Web Scenes tools built to handle common “bulk update” scenarios quickly and safely.
New Tool: Add Layers to Web...
A Call to Shape GeoIgnite 2026 GeoIgnite 2026 is Canada’s national forum for geospatial leadership. For the last 7 years, it has convened senior leaders from government, industry, academia, and standards organizations to address the [...]
The post When Geospatial Matters to Canada This Is Where It Happens appeared first on GoGeomatics.
OverviewTestbed Europe is an emerging Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) initiative exploring how Europe’s geospatial ecosystem can evolve to meet rapidly changing technical, policy, and operational demands. Building on OGC’s proven testbed model, it provides a neutral, standards-based environment where public authorities, industry, and stakeholders can jointly explore new approaches before they become operational commitments. The initiative is being shaped collaboratively with National Mapping Agencies (NMAs), European institutions, industry, and security stakeholders, including NATO.The ChallengeEurope’s authoritative geospatial infrastructures face mounting pressures: requirements for timeliness and cross-border consistency are increasing; defense and dual-use needs are intersecting more strongly with civil systems; cloud computing, APIs, and AI are transforming data production and access; and NMAs face capacity constraints while maintaining quality, governance, and public trust....
Fathom’s scientifically validated flood hazard and terrain data are now being integrated into Swiss Re’s internal catastrophe model, strengthening the reinsurance leader’s view of global flood risk.
Are you feeling lucky? You probably should be. Based on where most Maps Mania readers are located, there’s a good chance you’ve already won the birth lottery.The Birth Lottery map makes global inequality tangible by illustrating how much our quality of life depends on chance. With a single spin, the map randomly “re-births” you somewhere in the world based on real statistics. It poses a simple
OsmAnd's Topography plugin offers an Avalanche color scheme for the Slope layer, coloring terrain by steepness to highlight potential avalanche risks. This visualizes slope angles intuitively for safer backcountry navigation.
How to Enable Avalanche Colors
Avalanche colors requires the OsmAnd Pro version.
Enable the plugin: Go to Main Menu → Plugins → Topography (requires OsmAnd Pro).
Download maps: In Menu → Maps & Resources, select Terrain map (3D) for your region under Worldwide or Regions.
Activate layer: Menu → Configure map → Topography → Terrain → Slope. Choose Avalanche from Modify button (only OsmAnd Pro).
Who It's For
Backcountry enthusiasts: Skiers, snowboarders, snowshoers assessing terrain exposure offline.
Risk-aware adventurers: Pair with daily avalanche forecasts for freeride planning (over 30 deg highlights danger).
General hikers/bikers: Spot steep sections quickly in any terrain.
Winter tip: During winter season, combine with Snowmobile, Winter and...
How many novels include maps? For his 2013 monograph on fantasy maps and settings, Here Be Dragons, Stefan Ekman surveyed a random sample of 200 fantasy novels and found that about a third of them… More
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
#ESA is giving the long-serving #Sentinel‑2A #satellite a fascinating new role: Experimenting with capturing night-time images of Earth before its retirement. These unexpected “night vision” tests not only produce stunning visuals but also lay the groundwork for the next generation of #EarthObservation missions. #EO #RemoteSensing
In a Guardian piece last month, Laura Spinney briefly touches on three books and the ways in which they subvert our understanding of what’s on the map and how we use them to see the… More
The
section between Newcastle and Berwick-on-Tweed is said to be the most popular part of the Coast and Castles Cycle route that connects Newcastle, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. If that is true, it's for good reason. The 60 miles from Amble to Berwick delivers what it says on the tin. It's full of unspoilt coastline, small fishing ports, the tidal island of Lindisfarne and a choice of castles. The 15 miles between Newcastle and Whitley Bay includes a couple more castles and another five miles of coast. Not as unspoilt as the section further north, but full of interest.But what about the 30 miles (or so) between Whitley Bay and Amble? That's roughly a third of the distance. It's not as picturesque as the other sections, and it's certainly not unspoilt. But I think it's under-appreciated. It has a complex history. It's full of interest, and I'm now equipped to explore it in some detail. There's no shortage of potential destinations.Today's ride covers part. At 25 miles it was my...
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
#GeoGirafe 1.0, the first Long-Term Release of this #opensource #WebGIS ecosystem, is now available. GeoGirafe positions itself as geospatial web component offering a comprehensive #webmap viewer with #OGC services, authentication, search, measurement, drawing, 3D, and more capabilities.
By Ivana Mowry-Mora
Bushfire.io was born out of necessity during Australia’s devastating 2019–2020 Black Summer. The founder of Bushfire.io narrowly escaped a massive fire on the south coast, witnessing firsthand how lack of information hampered evacuations and firefighting efforts. Motivated by the knowledge that better situational awareness saves lives, Bushfire.io was built to bring together critical, real-time data that helps communities make informed decisions.
A bushfire is an unplanned vegetation fire. It is a generic term that includes grass fires, forest fires and scrub fires. Bushfires are a natural, essential and complex part of the Australian environment and have been for thousands of years. Bushfires can significantly impact on lives, property and the environment. Bushfires can be started by natural causes, such as lightning strikes, or by people (accidentally or on purpose). Weather conditions and fuel conditions play a part in bushfires...
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
In Fall 2024, I broke my radius (arm) at the wrist of my dominant hand, and didn’t map at all for 2 months, gradually picking things up as my arm healed and gained strength.
It was agonizing to not have my daily OSM fix - and a palpable relief when my wrist could once again handle an extended session with a mouse.
Not content with my previous mapping outage, in Fall 2025 I had a cancerous tumor in my parotid (cheekbone salivary gland) removed - except that a relatively straightforward 2 hour surgery turned into a 13-hour marathon and an overnight hospital stay ballooned into 8 days in a hospital bed. The cancer had spread to lymph nodes, to one of my jugular veins and into muscle tissue in my neck. Recovery from the surgery turned into immediate chemotherapy + immunotherapy and radiation.
So now I map when I’m able, which unfortunately is not very frequently. My #Mali project gathers dust, with almost all of my current OSM edits focused around related work with my one remaining...
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
Jangan melarang seseorang melakukan pemetaan di negara lain jika anda bukan internal dari OSM!!! Internal OSM tidak melarang seseorang memetakan negara lain. cheers
I really love this Tokyo Last Train Map, which is designed to visualize the times of the last train from every Tokyo station. If you’ve ever stayed out too late in Tokyo, you’ll know that missing the last train can be an expensive mistake. The Tokyo Last Train Map turns this anxiety into something beautiful — and strangely mesmerizing.On this transit map, the city’s rail network is reframed
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) announces that Tonya P. Wilkerson has joined the OGC Board of Directors.
“Tonya Wilkerson brings to the OGC Board of Directors deep experience from across the U.S. Intelligence Community, including senior leadership at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and within defense and national security organizations,” said Peter Rabley, Chief Executive Officer of OGC. “She is highly respected for her work in GEOINT and satellite operations, and her experience adds an important perspective to the Board’s governance.”
Wilkerson has more than three decades of distinguished service across the U.S. Intelligence Community. Most recently, she served as the Deputy Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) from 2021 to 2024, where she led global geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) efforts to support U.S. national security. In 2024, she was the Presidential nominee for Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and...
In meinem vorgestrigen Beitrag [1] gab es wohl einige Fragen [2] bzgl. meiner Ausführungen bei der gemeinsamen Nutzung der vereinfachten Daten in einer Datenbank. Da vermutlich nicht alle die Diskussion verfolgen, versuche ich jetzt noch einmal zu präzisieren. Per SELECT wird die Vereinfachung natürlich nur einmalig für den Anfragenden berechnet, nur ihm/ihr steht das Ergebnis zur Verfügung. Nutzt man die Funktionen hingegen, um die Daten innerhalb der Datenbank zu vereinfachen und das Ergebnis in diese zurück zuschreiben, z. B. mit CREATE, stehen die Ergebnisse dann allen berechtigten Nutzern zur Verfügung.Hier ein Beispiel, die Eingangsdaten werden mit einer Toleranz von 10m mit der CLEAN-Funktion (ST_CoverageClean) [3] vereinfacht:
-- Clean the coverage, merging gaps with width <= 1CREATE TABLE test.test_1_poly_10 as SELECT id, ST_CoverageClean(geom, 10) over() AS GEOM FROM test.test_1_poly;
Screenshot 1: Der Eingangsdatenbestand „test_1_poly“ mit typischen Geometriefehlern...
Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
• By File Formats Don’t Define Interoperability
•
For a long time, I believed interoperability in spatial systems was mostly a file format problem.
That belief is understandable. File formats are tangible. You can point to them. You can argue about them. You can put them in requirements documents and architecture diagrams. If two systems can read the same format, surely they can work together.
At small scale, that assumption holds just well enough to be dangerous.
When you’re dealing with a handful of datasets and a small group of people, exporting data from one system and importing it into another feels like progress. The geometry comes across. The attributes mostly survive. Everyone nods and moves on.
The cracks don’t show up immediately. They show up later, when the system is asked to behave like a system.
Where the Cracks Appear
The first thing that breaks at scale is the illusion that a file represents the truth.
A file is a snapshot. It captures what the data looked like at a specific moment, after a specific set of...
TomTom (TOM2), the specialist in mapping and location technology, announced the launch of Area Analytics, an advanced traffic analytics tool that enables cities, governments and organizations to define any custom area and analyze traffic over specific days, months, or years, with detailed hourly aggregations for deeper insight into mobility patterns.
The high priority Ka-band spectrum filings, awarded to Open Cosmos by Liechtenstein, marks a pivotal step in diversifying options for critical infrastructure, space sovereignty and digital resilience for Europe and the world.
The OSM US Charter Projects program provides a long-term home for significant projects in the OSM ecosystem. MapRoulette and OSMCha have been Charter Projects since 2023, which provided both projects with a fiscal home and infrastructure support. In 2024, a significant donation enabled the steering committees to hire a full time engineer to support the projects. This enabled major technical investments in both applications, such as an overhaul of OSMCha’s backend data pipeline that made OSMCha significantly faster and more reliable.
In August 2025, funding for development of the Charter Projects ran out, which meant the end of the dedicated Charter Projects Engineer position, and forced us to place MapRoulette and OSMCha in maintenance-only mode. OSM US has continued to pay for hosting costs for these projects out of the OSM US budget, but both applications also need ongoing maintenance and development to remain reliable and improve over time.
After discussion with OSMCha’s creator...
I’ve been doing more (a lot more) with Claude Code lately. With its subagents and skills features, it’s become more customizable and powerful. I can really dial it into doing things the way I want them done, which accelerates my development and quickly gets me to where I am focused on important behaviors, rather than rote scaffolding.
I recently wanted to trying expanding beyond code generation to analytic tasks, so I set about building a Claude Code Skill to do point-in-polygon analysis between two PostGIS tables. Truth in advertising: I used AI to help me with this experiment.
First, what is a skill? A skill is a modular package that extends Claude’s capabilities by providing specialized knowledge, workflows, scripts, and reference materials for specific domains or tasks. It is essentially an “onboarding guide” that gives Claude additional domain expertise. It generally consists of a few pieces, laid out in a file structure like this:
Starting with SKILL.md, a...
A new job has been added to the NYS GIS Association website. Visit the GIS Job Postings page to view GIS jobs. The NYS GIS Association is your source for GIS jobs in NYS!
Adventures In Mapping | John Nelson Maps
• By John
•
Basemaps can be a busy place. Highly variable visual content sitting behind your line features can make them hard to see. Also, maps with lots of feature types, like road networks, need a visual hierarchy so that the primary features are most visible, and so on. Think interstate expressways vs local roads in an atlas. In cartography we use “casing” to add a visually protective wrapper around our symbol. Typically it’s a contrasting tone from the center symbol, making them visually prominent and apparent over most any background.
Here’s an example of a hiking trail with and without line casing.
Here is how you can create cased lines in ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online, and how to use symbol layer drawing to keep them from accidentally stacking up where they don’t belong.
0:00 Floating head introduction0:14 How to create a cased line symbol in ArcGIS Pro0:47 Avoid rendering gotchas with symbol layer drawing1:12 Casing in ArcGIS Online2:25 Getting creative with cased line...
The Guardian maps the devastation wrought by wildfires across the globe. “Brazil, Bolivia, Russia, Australia and Canada have all endured some of their worst fire seasons in recent years, as heatwaves stoked by fossil fuel… More
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge — think of us as a safe space for the EPSG:4326-curious. The aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:Damage Mapping: Sentinel data maps disaster damage effectively. Road Safety: Probabilistic model predicts crash risk uncertainty. Human Mobility: Satellite imagery predicts urban movement flows. Renewable Energy: Microsoft maps global solar and wind sites. Fire Emissions: Global database tracks landscape fire emissions. Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. Predicting human mobility flows from satellite imageryUnderstanding how people move around cities is obviously quite important for transport systems and urban planning. Traditionally, we’ve relied on expensive surveys or mobile phone data to track these mobility flows. However, surveys are costly to update and mobile data comes with privacy concerns. A new study in Nature Communications proposes a...
Managing ArcGIS environments can be increasingly complex. Between growing datasets, rising user expectations, and heightened security requirements, GIS administrators are expected to do more—often with limited time and resources.
Symphony is a no-code workflow builder designed to automate ArcGIS administration across ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise. Instead of manually monitoring services, validating content, or reacting to system issues after they occur, Symphony allows teams to build automated tasks that run on schedules or trigger instantly from real-time events.
In our upcoming webinar, we’ll demonstrate how Symphony enables organizations to:
Automate content, user, and service management
Respond to ArcGIS Monitor alerts and server log events
Enforce governance and security through validation workflows
Use webhooks and Survey123 events to trigger immediate action
Proactively maintain system health and performance
Whether you’re managing day-to-day...
The Guardian has Mapped: how the world is losing its forests to wildfires and, in the process, managed to transform abstract climate statistics into clear, spatial comparisons.The story opens with an interactive 3D globe that is used to reveal the sheer scale of forest lost to wildfires around the world. By panning and zooming the globe to recognisable areas, the article provides
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
I’ve been updating bus routes;
it’s a fun task, but takes a real long time;
slow progress in the wiki: osm.wiki/Braga
i’ve added tons of sidewalks and crosswalks and i’m totally happy to see them start rendering on OSMAnd;
if ppl actually used OSM while driving they would get vocal warnings for crosswalks, i’ve tried it before and it works and its really good to know whenever you approach a sidewalk as a driver; ofc this is a feature which is pedestrian centered, so the whole point is to especially help people navigate on foot; also i really like the added complexity layer when sidewalks appear on the map and you can actually start navigating the city through sidewalks, footways, footpaths and informal paths, the city is more interesting when seen through a walking perspective
we need to properly address this, i’m thinking of starting activism, we cant have 300 ppl getting run over per year (just in braga!)
i’m quite confused if and how exactly i should mark informal...
More than 18,000 users have downloaded some 15,500 pan-European datasets and carried out 96.4 million web service transactions since Open Maps For Europe 2 (OME2) launched in early 2023.
HawkEye 360, the global provider of signals intelligence data and analytics, announced that Michael Turner has joined the company as Chief Legal Officer, effective December 2025.
Purpose‑built for customers: FARO CREAFORM, turning portable and automated dimensional measurement into strategic advantage for manufacturers, and FARO INSIGHT, transforming captured reality into trusted insight for construction, public safety, and geospatial professionals.
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
A recent #JOSIS publication by Pebesma et al. highlights common challenges and opportunities across #RStats, #Python, and #Julia in spatial #datascience. The paper makes interesting recommendations for fostering cross-language collaboration and advancing geospatial tooling for researchers, developers, and educators.
The AGS Globe: Journey to the End of the World: South America’s Patagonia by American Geographical Society
The American Geographical Society’s Weekly Newsletter for Tuesday, January 13, 2026
Read on Substack
CLIPSPredicting floods saves lives — if we act:Hybrid AI model helping farmers in India:The 64,000-Person Weather Factory:Why Weather Data Is ‘Sparse’:EPISODEThis is episode 1/3 with Alex Merose about his thoughts on weather foundation models. He is a member of the technical staff at Open Athena. In this episode, Alex steps through the background on doing weather prediction, from early efforts around a century ago to numerical and physics based models. This prepares us for later episodes on machine learning or AI based approaches. Links to items discussed:Pangeo, a community for open, reproducible, scalable geoscience.Alex's Google Scholar profile.Episode with Sergei Nozdrenkov on a coral reef foundation model: Global Climate Data Collaboration: The Intentional Dream by George Dyson:Hurricane Melissa.Arham Ansari on GeoRiskAI: What can a technologist do about climate change.THIS EPISODE ELSEWHERE
The British comedy/panel show QI had this short bit about silk escape maps being made into underthings after World War II. (This is from episode 6 of series U, which aired in February 2024.) The… More
Where are you located on Earth?
I live in the small town of Lancaster, in the north of England (this is important later). Historically built on the textile industry as an important west coast port city with links to the lands across the Atlantic and hence the evils of slavery. The town still has a few large mill buildings, one of which is now accommodation for one of the two universities that have campuses here. Education has become perhaps the town’s primary function, alongside tourism and as a gateway to the Lake District National Park.
What do you do?
I work at one of the universities – Lancaster University, founded in 1964. I’m a Research Fellow in the Medical School, but I won’t be the one standing up when the flight attendants ask if there’s a doctor on board. I teach R and Python to Masters’ students and get pulled into interesting data analysis and statistics projects with a geographical aspect. My latest project involved looking at factors influencing medical...
If you render maps using the Mapnik rendering engine, you might have come across Nik4 by Ilya Zverev. It is a Python utility rendering single map images for a given bounding box, center coordinate, image dimensions and/or scale. At Geofabrik we use it to create maps for printouts.
Nik4 has one problem. It relies on Mapnik’s Python bindings. They do not have any releases and fail to build from time to time. In order to get rid of that unstable dependency, we decided to port Nik4 to C++ because Mapnik is written in C++.
Nik5 aims to behave exactly as Nik4 in order to make migration easy for its users. However, the syntax of the command line options --bbox, --size-px and --size was changed from space to comma as separator. If you wrote --size-px 800 600 in the past, you now have to use --size-px 800,600.
Nik4 used ImageMagick’s montage utility to stitch tiles together if the requested map size exceeded the maximum image limits of Mapnik. We replaced it by the libgd. Tiles will be...
War Atlas is an interactive, web-based map that visualizes 8,500+ historical battles spanning from around 1500 BC to the present day - providing users with a guided historical tour of human conflict.At its core, War Atlas is an interactive timeline-driven map. Users can select a specific war, explore through time using a slide control or through inputting a specific year, and see battles
Bitte beachtet auch das Update vom 15.01.2026.
Screenshot (Bildquelle [1])
Wer mit Geodaten zu tun hat, kommt oft in die Situation, diese Daten mit geeigneten Werkzeuge zu vereinfachen. Oft wird dazu der lokale GIS-Client mit Funktionen wie Clean oder Simplify genutzt. Das heißt aber auch, dass die Clienten auch bei Nutzung einer Datenbank jeweils nur für sich selbst diese Arbeiten ausführen und ggf. kein Anderer davon partizipiert. Die Datenbank selbst mit ihren spatialen Erweiterungen bietet heutzutage jede Menge leistungsfähiger Funktionen für diese Aufgaben an. Was spricht also dagegen, diese auch gleich dort zu nutzen, z. B. um Abfragen performanter zu machen oder Datenbestände zentral zu vereinfachen? Einen lesenswerten Beitrag dazu „PostGIS Performance: Simplification“ [1] von Paul Ramsey habe ich via X (ehemals Twitter) [2] im crunchydata-Blog [3] gefunden. Dort werden eine Vielzahl nützlicher Vereinfachungs-Funktionen direkt in der Datenbank, aber auch ihre Grenzen...
Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
• By What Working at Trimble Has Reinforced About Spatial Scale
•
One of the things working at Trimble has reinforced for me—over and over again—is that scale changes everything.
And I don’t just mean big data in the abstract sense. I mean scale across:
data volume
data diversity
organizational boundaries
disciplines (GIS, CAD, BIM)
and, most importantly, human workflows
It’s easy to talk about spatial technology in isolation. It’s much harder—and far more interesting—when you see what happens when spatial data is forced to operate inside real, production-grade systems that people depend on every day.
Spatial Thinking Breaks (or Evolves) at Scale
At smaller scales, spatial problems often look deceptively simple.
You can:
load a dataset
run a process
export a file
hand it to the next system or person
That mental model works… until it doesn’t.
At enterprise scale, that same approach starts to collapse under its own weight. Data isn’t static. Formats aren’t stable. Ownership isn’t clear. And workflows aren’t linear—they’re branching,...
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
Děje se toho tolik, že pokud se na něco konkrétního nesoustředím, tak už to nelze zpozorovat pouhým periferním vnímáním. A abych byl alespoň trochu v širším obraze, nakonec ke zpozorování používám i dostupné technologie tak, jak se postupně rozvíjejí.
Digitální kartografie prošla zásadní proměnou a OpenStreetMap se stala pilířem globální informační infrastruktury. Od svého založení v roce 2004 se tento projekt vyvinul v unikátní kolaborativní databázi využívanou pro navigaci i krizové řízení. Současná geopolitická situace charakterizovaná napětím mezi mocnostmi klade na otevřená data nové nároky. Mapa již není pouhým zrcadlem reality, protože její role v politickém a vojenském rozhodování přímo ovlivňuje dění ve světě. V tomto kontextu bylo nezbytné zkoumat, jakým způsobem jsou data využívána v oblastech konfliktů a jak jsou chráněna před restrikcemi ze strany státních aktérů usilujících o digitální suverenitu.
Základem metodologie OpenStreetMap zůstala doktrína popisu...
My ride today was from Embleton to Preston Tower, and back. The earliest records of Preston Tower date from 1415 and 1499, but Peter Ryder believes that it was originally the defensible south end of a 14th century hall house. By 1719 it was no longer used as a house, and the tower needed a new roof. In 1799 the house alongside the tower burned down and had to be rebuilt. In 1864 the tower was restored and the clock inserted by Henry Robert Baker Cresswell.It wasn't a day to hang around, but there are information panels outside, and apparently there's a display inside the tower which sound as though they are worth a return visit.A lapse of concentration on the way back meant that I missed a turning so the return journey was a bit longer than planned. That resulted in ride of a little over ten miles. Back at Embleton the Old Vicarage is another 14th century house, with a tower constructed c.1390. It was extended by John Dobson in 1828 for Rev. George Grimes. I believe it's now a...
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
This morning, when I woke up, I felt that something was different. The sky looked darker, the temperature felt colder, and the faint sound of drizzling rain outside carried a gloomy tone.
I immediately rushed to check the forum chat that morning, trying to scrape together information. What was going on out there?
07:17:55: “Heavy rain”
07:18:44: “Same here in Bogor”
07:19:39: “With a storm like this, how am I supposed to get to the office?”
07:39:11: “Anyone in North Jakarta who lives toward the east / near Bekasi. Is it storming there?”
07:40:20: “Yep. Storming. Starting to ease up a bit though.”
07:48:25: “Seems pretty widespread. Cikarang’s getting wind and rain too.”
07:50:04: “Still early morning but the rain is insanely heavy. What a Monday.”
07:55:41: “With rain this heavy, it’s best to just go back to sleep~”
08:00:26: “Heavy rainnn”
08:10:46: “The rain is so damn heavy.”
08:14:28: “Waiting for it to stop, but it’s just getting heavier.”
08:16:52: “This storm. No way...
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
1st January 2026
Happy New Year!
I went for a walk, today, to geo locate some benches. Given my physical challenges (not to mention my tendency to over do it all the time), benches are an absolute godsend — more often than not, a four-mile stroll feels like a ten-mile slog (and today, ironically, was no exception).
I got the job done, though, and bagged both benches at 51.4751546, -3.2752249 and 51.4742791, -3.2777702. There's a really cool MapComplete theme called Benches that I use a fair bit, so I've also got some photos ready.
I'll upload everything shortly — just as soon as my back stops hurting, my legs stop wobbling, and my ankle stops threatening an early retirement.
3rd January 2026
Locating a Quarry
I've decided to find and map the quarry in Plymouth Great Wood. According to Outdoor Cardiff's guide, it should be located somewhere around 51.483825, -3.257899.
The quarry was excavated in the late...
A short piece in The New Yorker from Adam Gopnik about Proposal 5, which appeared on the New York City general election ballot last November. It called for a unified single digital city map maintained… More
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
In the quiet, climate-controlled corridors of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a tool of immense power hums silently, its servers processing a world of complexity. It’s called the Modernized Integrated Database (MIDB), and it represents the absolute pinnacle of structured intelligence analysis. For decades, it has been the U.S. military’s knowledge canvas, mapping the intricate webs of global infrastructure to give strategists an unparalleled, three-dimensional understanding of the world. It’s a system designed to find critical vulnerabilities and predict the cascading effects of action. But what if this remarkable creation, born from the crucible of national security, could be repurposed to fuel an economic renaissance? What if the very logic that targets an adversary's weaknesses could be used to build our own strengths? How can we do it? The proposition is as audacious as it is transformative: the time has come to consider unleashing the genius of the MIDB framework upon the global...
People Over Papers is a community-driven map showing reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity. People Over Papers lets anyone submit sightings of possible ICE operations and view recent reports near them. The project’s stated objective is to “collect community-submitted information about possible ICE activity to help inform the public and raise awareness,” with every
Reinder spotted this in the in the public library in The Hague ” on the floor there is a map – not surprisingly – of the city of The Hague, the Netherlands. Been here many times, but never saw this before. “
Queclink Wireless Solutions has been ranked third in Berg Insight’s Global Aftermarket Vehicle Telematics Hardware Market report following a strong year of sales growth, expanding international reach and product development.
Viridien has announced a new basin-scale reimaging program within the hydrocarbon-prolific Balingian-Luconia-Baram basins, in collaboration with PETRONAS, through Malaysia Petroleum Management.
This data and society blog Spatial Reserves frequently discusses the rapidly changing environment in which all of us in the geospatial field discover, access, and use data. How we access imagery in a GIS environment is also rapidly transforming, resulting in spending less time searching and formatting, and more time on analysis and decision-making. As announced in 2025, Esri launched the Content Store, a web app developed by Esri and SkyWatch that simplifies the process of accessing commercial satellite imagery. SkyWatch, a geospatial platform, is “on a mission is to democratize access to Earth observation and remote sensing data.”
To learn more, start here. The Content Store is free to use but credits need to be purchased to access the imagery. Search for existing premium Earth Observation Data, using areas of interest (AOIs) or from the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World. SkyWatch says that you can access “over 90% of commercial Earth Observation satellites with a few clicks.”...
Upgrade your local cartography with the Buildings tileset: a high-detail expansion for the latest map v4 styles featuring stable IDs, 3D geometry, and precise entrance points.
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
Comecei a contribuir com o OpenStreetMap movido pela curiosidade e pela vontade de ajudar. Aos poucos, percebi que mapear não era apenas desenhar ruas ou ajustar pontos no mapa: era participar de um projeto global que transforma informação em impacto real.
Nos últimos meses, tenho dedicado boa parte do meu tempo ao mapeamento do Vale do Rio Pardo, no Estado da Bahia. É uma região rica, diversa e ainda pouco representada nos mapas digitais. Cada nova via identificada, cada edificação revisada e cada detalhe adicionado ajuda a tornar o território mais visível e acessível para quem depende dessas informações.
Antes disso, concentrei meus esforços na melhoria do mapa de vários municípios do Sul e Sudoeste Baiano. Foram horas revisando imagens, corrigindo traçados, adicionando estradas rurais e atualizando áreas urbanas. Ver essas regiões ganhando mais precisão e completude no OSM é uma sensação de realização difícil de descrever.
Meu trabalho voluntário envolve revisar imagens de...
Unknown source
• By OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
•
[Ex-YU] Naški
##Postavimo Banju Luku na (digitalnu) kartu – Pridružite se #FOSMBL
Da li ste se ikada zapitali kako možemo najbolje iskoristiti potencijal našeg regiona? Sve počinje sa podacima. Pod hashtagom #FOSMBL (Friends of OpenStreetMap Banja Luka) želimo da sve izmjene na OpenStreetMap-u u Banjoj Luci i okolini učinimo vidljivijim i lakšim za pronalaženje.
Zašto #FOSMBL? Korištenjem ovog hashtaga u komentarima vaših izmjena (changesets), pomažete u stvaranju lokalne zajednice. To nam omogućava da pratimo napredak i bolje se koordinišemo. Ali cilj je mnogo veći od samog mapiranja:
Turizam: Ažurne karte pomažu turistima da pronađu naše znamenitosti, ugostiteljske objekte i staze.
Ekonomija: Precizni podaci su ključni za logistiku, lokalne biznise i ekonomski razvoj.
Vizija: Vrijeme je da razmislimo o formiranju zvanične OSM grupe za Banju Luku i regiju. Zajedno možemo organizovati “mapatone” i unaprijediti kvalitet podataka na viši nivo.
Hajde da zajedno pokrenemo Banju...
Melinda Clarke, the creator of the Melbourne Map has branched out with a range of beautiful silk scarves with some very stylish map designs including, of course, The Melbourne Map. n this pic my pal Denise McKenzie is wearing Melbourne at the GeoBusiness conference.
Here’s Melinda with her vintage New York scarf
And here she is with the Melbourne map
You can order the scarves from her site at https://www.themelbournemap.com.au/collections/scarves, a beautiful gift for a map lover.
Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings
• By underdark
•
Finally it’s here: Jupyter notebooks inside QGIS. I don’t know about you but I’ve been hoping for someone to get around to doing this for quite a while.
Qiusheng Wu published the first version of the Notebook plugin on 26 Dec 2025. Late Christmas present?!
For the setup, there’s a handy tutorial by Hans van der Kwast and, additionally, Qiusheng published an intro video:
Development is going fast (version 0.3.0 at the time of writing) so there will be new features when you install / update the plugin compared to both the tutorial and the video.
The user interface is pretty stripped down with just a few buttons to add new code or markdown cells and to run them. And there is a neat drop-down menu with all kinds of ready-made code snippets to get you started:
For other functionalities, for example, to delete cells, you need to right-click on the cell to access the function through the context menu. And, as far as I can tell, there is currently no way to...
Homes Are Expensive is an interactive map that can help you find the cheapest and most expensive places to buy a property in the United States. The house prices are based on data from Zillow listings.The map visualizes property prices across the USA using data scraped via hasdata.com in November 2025, and provides a comprehensive look at the 1.85 million homes currently on the market. What makes
Gartrell is proud to partner with Esri in supporting the City of Hillsboro, Oregon on an important and forward‑looking initiative: the development of a comprehensive Equity Index and accompanying geospatial toolkit designed to bring an equity‑focused lens to local decision‑making, policy development, and civic investment.This project builds on similar work our team has been privileged to lead for county library systems, parks and recreation departments, and regional planning organizations—each focused on helping public agencies better understand community needs and advance more equitable outcomes.A Growing, Changing City Seeking Better InsightHillsboro is a dynamic city that has experienced significant population growth and diversification over the past two decades. As the community evolves, so do the needs, opportunities, and challenges faced by its residents. City managers and GIS practitioners recognized that strengthening their analytic toolkit would help ensure that public...
Bildquelle [1]
Das Konferenzorganisationsteam der FOSSGIS 2026 [1] teilte am Donnerstag mit, dass die Anmeldung zur FOSSGIS-Konferenz 2026 freigeschaltet wurde. Ihr findet die Anmeldung auf der FOSSGIS 2026-Anmeldungsseite [2].Außerdem werden wie in jedem Jahr noch freiwillige Helfer gesucht, wer sich also beteiligen kann und möchte, findet alle Infos dazu im FOSSGIS 2026 ENGELSYSTEM [3].
[1] … https://www.fossgis-konferenz.de/2026/[2] … https://www.fossgis-konferenz.de/2026/anmeldung/[3] … https://helfen.fossgis.de/
A VerySpatial PodcastShownotes – Episode 7764 January 2026
The annual, annual review and prognostications
Click to directly download MP3
YouTube (audio only)
AVSP – Episode 776 Transcript (docx)
http://traffic.libsyn.com/avsp/AVSP_Episode776.mp3
News:
FCC bans drones produced abroad
Mattel releases Barbie doll honoring astronaut and imagery analyst, Dr. Ellen Ochoa
Topic:
The annual, annual review and prognostications
Events:
Digital Cultural Heritage in the Era of AI and Extended Reality: 26 May, Cyprus
NEH 250 Years of Teaching With Maps Summer Institute, 13-31 July, 2026, Chicago, IL Due March 6
Music: “Are you with me” by Josh Quat
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
A bit of fun from the #OpenStreetMap community: Matt Whilden hosts the ingenious XofY #OSM Geometry Viewer. This open-source tool lets you explore and compare OSM geometries – from quirky lakes to oddly shaped museums – arranged as small multiples based on any #Overpass query you create.
The Narwhal reports that flood map updates are getting pushback in Canada too: As provinces and municipalities amend decades-old flood maps and strengthen flood preparedness measures in the face of inclement climate change, a vocal… More
Adventures In Mapping | John Nelson Maps
• By John
•
There are a lot of things to think about and manage and tinker with when you assemble a map into a layout, but here are three overarching things to consider:
A well-balanced composition. The map and all the other elements have a visual weight. A good looking layout will balance these items, like you’d balance plates on a cafeteria tray.
Organized and distilled text. There’s a discipline to refining, referring, or omitting, what might otherwise be giant titles and paragraphs. A good layout does more showing than telling.
Simplified surrounds. Sometimes an austere eye is needed to appropriately design, or delete, the non-map doodads.
Here’s an example layout that has some issues.
Those issues have been addressed in this update.
And here it is in a portrait orientation.
You can download this source ArcGIS Project package to take a closer look.
Of course, there’s no one right way to make a map, but you’re looking for a little bit of guidance, here...
Bentley’s Blyncsy solution uses AI to help the Hawaii Department of Transportation spot roadway damage faster, prioritize repairs, and keep drivers safe.
As photogrammetry projects scale up, combining cloud computing and distributed processing with Correlator3D enables large datasets to be handled efficiently without heavy hardware investments.
bikemap.nyc is an interactive visualization of the entire history of New York City’s Citi Bike system. Every animated arrow you see on the map represents a real bike ride, taken by a real person somewhere in New York City.And there are a lot of them.The map visualizes 291 million Citi Bike trips, spanning more than 12 years, from June 2013 through December 2025. If you want, you can simply sit
Telecom and utility networks are entering a new era. In this article, I reveal my 2026 predictions and explain how these shifts will impact software deployment strategies for forward-thinking organizations.
Was Schönes zum Wochenende? Die IMHO wohl schönste Datenvisualisierung (DataViz) zum Thema „Sonnenauf- und untergänge“ habe ich via LinkedIn [1] bei Benjamin Niedermann [2] in seine Anwendung „Sunrise and Sunset“ [3] gefunden. Einfach starten, beim Start seid Ihr auch gleich beim aktuellen, Datum und die Karte auf Euern gewünschten Standort bewegen. Dann auf Wunsch am äußeren (Monats-)Rad drehen, Sonnenauf- und untergangszeiten sowie die Sonnenhöhe ablesen.
Screenshot: Sonnenauf- und untergang am 9. Januar 2026 in Halle (Saale) (Bildquelle [3])
„Eine orange Kurve veranschaulicht den Sonnenaufgang und -untergang an diesem Ort und ermöglicht so eine intuitive Erkundung der Tageslichtmuster und jahreszeitlichen Veränderungen.“ [3]
[1] … https://www.linkedin.com/posts/benjamin-niedermann_datavisualization-infographics-astronomy-activity-7403436878886002688-nc47[2] … https://se.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-niedermann?trk=public_post_feed-actor-name[3] …...
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
Swisstopo and partners have introduced a new “Vision for Cadastral Surveying” that extends the time horizon to 2040, adding a shared long-term framework regarding Swiss cadastral surveying. This vision emphasizes multidimensional, legally reliable georeference data (above and below ground, across past, present, and future objects) and positions cadastral surveying as the core provider of official geoinformation for land ownership.
Tepuis are flat-topped mountains that rise like massive stone islands above the rainforests of the Guiana Highlands in northern South America. Most are found in Venezuela and western Guyana, with Mount Roraima towering at the meeting point of Venezuela, Brazil, and Guyana. From the surrounding lowlands, their sheer cliffs and frequent rings of cloud give the illusion that their summits are suspended in midair. The name tepui comes from the Pemón language and translates to “house of the gods,” a fitting title for landscapes that feel both imposing and otherworldly.
The origins of the tepuis stretch back over a billion years. What was once an immense desert hardened into thick layers of sandstone, later fractured by tectonic forces. Over immense spans of time, wind, rain, and flowing water sculpted the remaining rock into the steep-sided plateaus seen today. Many tepuis rise more than 1.5 miles above the surrounding terrain. They are surviving fragments of the ancient Guiana...
Realizing the full potential of AI in utiltiies depends on a workforce empowered to capture high-quality data at every point of contact with the grid. By modernizing field workflows and prioritizing a human-in-the-loop approach, organizations establish the reliable data foundation necessary for long-term resilience and advanced automation.
Key insights
Success with AI in utilities depends entirely on the integrity of information entering the system, as “garbage data” creates unreliable insights that lead to expensive mistakes. It also undermines predictive maintenance, where small data errors can mask early warning signs.
Real progress in utility digital transformation happens only when field teams and office staff align on a single strategy that treats technology as a partner rather than an overseer.
Removing administrative hurdles through ambient data collection and intuitive interfaces increases both the volume and accuracy of high-resolution...
The Infrastructure Africa Business Forum will convene government leaders, project developers, investors, development finance institutions, and private sector stakeholders in Cape Town from 2–3 March 2026 with a key discussion session focussed on “Unlocking Africa’s Corridors: How Project Preparation Drives Bankability and Impact.”
AMOU (A Map of Us) describes itself as “a shared map of our memories.” In essence, the map allows people to pin their own personal stories, memories, and emotional milestones to specific locations around the world. The result is a global atlas of deeply personal landmarks.Each marker on the map - called a mou - is a short note anchored to a location. Some are deeply personal reflections,
A Discord server I use has a channel called #til, standing for Today I Learned. It’s a place to post interesting or surprising things you recently learned.
I took my posts to that channel from the last couple of years, tidied them up and have listed them below. Hopefully you’ll find something interesting there:
TIL that elements with even atomic numbers are more abundant than elements with odd atomic numbers, because of the way elements are formed through fusion. [Source]
TIL that the BCG vaccine (for TB, you may have had it as a child/teenager) is also an effective chemotherapy treatment for bladder cancer, apparently by causing a local immune reaction against the tumor. [Source]
TIL how guns are traced by serial numbers in the US, with no computers allowed. [Source]
TIL a lot about the extremely complex engineering behind the Manhattan Project. [Source]
TIL that 314159 is a prime number. [Source]
TIL more details about how various types of display screens work....
Auch 2025 war wieder ein aktives Jahr auf digital.ebp.ch. Wir haben (ohne den Rückblick auf 2024) insgesamt 13 Blogposts publiziert zu unseren Themen IT und Geoinformation entlang von «Analyze, Plan, Build, Run». Aber welche Themen haben unsere Kundinnen und Kunden und uns speziell beschäftigt? Zeit, kurz zurückzublicken in einer Art «Highlight Reel». Veranstaltungen: Digitale Transformation, …
“World of communication’, in Rome, in the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. It dates from 1972 and is made by Jiří Kolář. ” I htink the collage on the globe is made with postage stamps.
Utilities are under unprecedented pressure to modernize the grid - balancing aging infrastructure, extreme weather, electrification and growing regulatory demands. In this episode of Bitesize Electric, host Brandon Curkan sits down with Adrian McNulty from IQGeo to unpack one of the most significant operational shifts happening across the industry today - geospatial work execution - and why it’s becoming critical for modern utility operations.
We are happy to announce that the QGIS User Conference 2026 will take place on 5–6 October 2026 in Laax, in the heart of the Swiss Alps. Visit the conference website to find out all details.
The conference will be hosted at Crap Sogn Gion, at 2,222 metres above sea level, offering a unique setting with panoramic mountain views and direct access to the surrounding alpine landscape. Despite its mountain location, Laax is well connected by public transport and provides a wide range of accommodation options in the valley.
As Chair of the QGIS Project and of the QGIS User Conference 2026, I’m very much looking forward to welcoming the community in my hometown and place of birth of QField.
The conference will bring together users, developers, and contributors from around the world for two days of presentations, workshops, and discussions covering a wide range of QGIS-related topics. Around the main conference days, additional events are planned, including workshops,...
A smarter, faster workflow for surveyors, real estate professionals and AEC teams worldwide, delivering instant layouts, intuitive refinement and full user control — all powered by Pointorama’s next-generation AI engine.
CLIPSAI Will Replace Tasks, Not ResponsibilityHype Clears Tech DebtWho Gets the BudgetWaymo drove straight into a floodEPISODEMark Munsell is Distinguished Fellow of Artificial Intelligence at Lindenwood University and Executive Director at GeoSTL. He is also Former Chief AI Officer at the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. As such, he has rich experience for us to mine. We used it to navigate the AI hype and transition from LLMs to world models. If you want to get an impression of him outside this episide, here he is at SC25 talking about Pixels, Petabytes, Predictions (and Possibilities!):He was also recently published in The Cypher Brief.EPISODE TOPICS:What Mark achieved as an inventor.His reflections on hype cycles after a career in geospatial.Using this experience to examine the meaning of world models.Notable achievements by world model companies.GEOINT use case: Venezuela and the US.Mark's ambitions for St Louis: GeoSTL.How the World Model 500 can help.
Reinder spotted these mappy suitcases in a hotel window in Rome. He was so taken with them that he didn’t mention the nice looking globe, while his wife apparently was more impressed by the towels folded as swans. Go figure!
If only those cases were a bit bigger and had wheels.
On New Year’s Day, I released a small virtual fireworks show to celebrate the start of the year. The Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung then put my effort to shame by publishing an impressive orbital tour of the entire planet on the same day - recorded by the International Space Station.Illuminated Cities and Northern Lights: A New Year's Flight around the World around the World is a guided
Transforming your static engineering drawings or scanned maps into interactive map layers is now easier than ever. Upload georeferenced PDFs directly to the Cloud.
The Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation District (THPRD) has officially climbed aboard Gartrell’s Cloud Express, launching a major modernization effort to prepare for their upcoming enterprise asset management system.To set the foundation for future success, THPRD selected our Cloud GIS team to migrate their ArcGIS Enterprise platform to the cloud and to provide ongoing monitoring, management, and support for their entire GIS platform, data, and application portfolio.We’re thrilled to help THPRD strengthen their GIS capabilities—shifting the team’s energy away from maintaining aging systems and toward actually doing GIS. With a modern cloud platform and a trusted support partner, THPRD can now focus on innovation, efficiency, and delivering greater value to the community they serve.We’re stoked for what comes next.
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
#DevelopmentSeed has released #stacmap, an #opensource, map-first visualizer for exploring and searching #STAC collections through a simple, browser-based interface. It already supports natural-language queries (albeit experimentally) and also stac-#geoparquet.
The AGS Globe: NYC Flooding Adaptation Strategies by American Geographical Society
The American Geographical Society’s Weekly Newsletter for Tuesday, January 6, 2026
Read on Substack
The following is a Case Study examining a collaboration with Esri Partners GEO Jobe and OHM Advisors.
In November 2024, OHM Advisors partnered with GEO Jobe to modernize its internal ArcGIS Enterprise environment. While OHM had a strong GIS foundation, growing multi-office operations and evolving client needs required a more scalable, high-performance solution. What began as a strategic assessment quickly became a hands-on collaboration, with GEO Jobe guiding OHM through technical decisions, system deployment, and operational best practices—demonstrating the true spirit of “Partners Helping Partners.”
Understanding the Business and the Technology
OHM Advisors and GEO Jobe are both longstanding members of the Esri Partner Network, with OHM holding Gold status and GEO Jobe Platinum, as well as State and Local Government Specialties, respectively. This shared background created a foundation of trust and technical understanding, enabling both teams to work efficiently...
We just wrapped our weekly review of active and recently closed projects. What stood out—alongside a healthy near‑term pipeline—is how evenly our work is now spread across our three core services: Geospatial Strategy, Apps & Integrations, and Cloud Managed GIS. We also noticed some clear patterns in the project log. Given that most of our clients are public agencies and utilities, I suspect some of these themes echo broader industry trends. We’d love to hear what others in this space are seeing—and whether any of this resonates.
Topo Map: Crater Lake, Oregon Environs
...
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
•
What You’ll Learn This WeekHow the AI LEAD Act could convert GeoAI “engineering choices” into product-liability exposureHow “global AI governance” is converging on lifecycle controls even as laws fragmentWhy robots.txt is not a legal “gate”and what actually reduces scraping and training-data misuse risk GeoAI and the Law is not legal advice. The reader should consult with a trained lawyer on legal matters associated with GeoAI.What’s NewAI LEAD Act — Bill S. 2937 (Congress.gov)By defining training data selection, model tuning, and unexpected behaviors as part of a system’s “design,” the AI LEAD Act could make GeoAI developers legally accountable for harms linked to how spatial models are built, trained, and deployed. For geospatial companies, this raises the stakes around dataset choice, model validation, warnings, and post-deployment monitoring.Analysis: The AI LEAD Act would extend traditional product-liability doctrines into the AI context by treating AI systems as regulated...
Reinder spotted this mosaic map of the Old City of Rome, “Saw this in the lobby of the Santa Chiara hotel in Rome. The size of the map is let’s say 50 x 70 cm, it is made of little stones of approximately 4 x 4 mm. No artist is mentioned — but he or she deserves our respect. Ciao!”
I think we would all like to banish the United States to Mars. Well now you can thanks to a new size comparison map. There have been a lot of (what are probably mostly vibe-coded) 'true-size of' maps lately. The True Size of Countries definitely has the AI-map template aesthetic often associated with large language model–designed maps, however it also offers a fresh twist on a familiar
HERE Technologies announced the company’s plans to showcase its AI-powered map intelligence to enhance advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), automated driving (AD) and precise positioning.
The NYS Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) is hiring! They are hosting hiring events in January, where pre-qualified candidates will be interviewed and walk away with a job offer (conditional upon passing background & reference checks). There are more than 100 positions available, including many in Geospatial Services! Openings are posted on the ITS […]
In the past we have written how one can use social media or newspapers to study the world around us. Keeping with this theme of using text we (Xinyu Fu, Catherine Brinkley, Thomas Sanchez, Chaosu Li and myself) have a new editorial entitled "Not just numbers: Understanding cities through their words" which accompanies a special issue in Environment and Planning B entitled "Leveraging Natural Language Processing for Urban Analytics" The editorial discusses how researchers can use natural language processing (NLP) methods to get a sense of a diverse range of issues impacting cities. To quote from the editorial, these range: "from analyzing housing development from council planning applications (Lin et al., 2025), revealing visitor perceptions of famous attractions or passengers’ perceptions on transit service quality from social media (Luo et al., 2025; Ma et al., 2025), defining the meaning of urban imageability based on online review (Zhu et al., 2025), understanding the spatial...
I really haven’t got much time or energy at the moment (I spent most of the Christmas break with an extremely painful back, which was exhausting and frustrating), but I wanted to post a very brief list of books I read this year. I read a total of 44 books this year, which includes re-reads and audiobooks. A lot of them aren’t included here as they’ve been included in other lists I’ve posted, or are childrens books I’ve been re-reading.
The books listed below have a significant tech/nerd/infrastructure focus, but cover a fairly broad set of fields even so. I hope you find something interesting to add to your ‘to read’ list!
Killing Thatcher – About the attempted assassination of Thatcher by the IRA. Fascinating in general, covers a lot of Irish/British history, police approaches, IRA structures and so on. I learned a lot, was shocked by a lot, and thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
A Brush with Steam: David Shepherd’s Railway Story – Very good, lots of stuff about how the early steam...
Executive Summary Geospatial operational readiness in 2026 requires more than reliable systems, it demands contextually aware operations that understand where work happens, under what conditions, and how those conditions affect decision quality. Deterministic workflows remain foundational for repeatability and auditability, but they were not designed to interpret the conditional complexity inherent in geospatial data. As […]
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Fred Woods
•
How Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Can Transform ISR Analysis from Data Drowning to Decision Dominance
When More Data Means Less IntelligenceISR analysts face the same reality: the volume and velocity of information to process, exploit, and disseminate is overwhelming. Defense and intelligence organizations worldwide face this dilemma with current processes, let alone the workforce required to analyze the expected volume of sensor data, including full-motion video, air and spaceborne imagery, and present and future Internet of Battle...
Remember Santa’s Delivery Route from Xmas Eve? Ken sent me this modern version of that map which he spotted in the lobby of the Great Northern Hotel next to Kings Cross. Note that this time the map is north up.
Estimating how many people live within a specific area is a recurring challenge in public health, urban planning, and humanitarian work. Census data is often outdated, too coarse, or unavailable at the scale decision-makers need. A new open-source map created by Carlos Felipe Castillo shows how far you can get using nothing more than OpenStreetMap data and lightweight analytics.Carlos has built
For the past ten years, OpenStreetMap US has had the pleasure of hosting scholars at State of the Map US. Each year, they bring invaluable knowledge, unique perspectives, and new opinions to the conference. This summer, we’re incredibly excited to welcome a new cohort to Madison, though it will look a bit different from past years.
We’re switching things up in 2026 for a few reasons. First, we’ve received feedback from past years’ scholars that the amount of monetary support previously given isn’t enough to cover all of their travel expenses. Second, we recognize that international travel to the United States is especially precarious right now, and an increasing number of international applicants require a level of logistical support that OpenStreetMap US is unable to provide with a small team.
So, What’s Different?
This year, we’ll be offering State of the Map US Fellowships. Fellows will be awarded more – up to $1000 USD in reimbursement to be used for travel and lodging expenses...
Surekha Davies writes about on how monsters on maps led to her first book and then, in her second, to a consideration of why monsters exist as a category. By taking images of monstrous peoples… More
“The shortcomings and possibilities of generative AI are, of course, well chronicled across a million op-eds. I could write at length about the dangers or opportunities the technology presents,” writes Matt at Londonist. “But this… More
A year after launch, Topoprint has grown through community use and feedback across Switzerland. The post highlights three practical improvements aimed at making printed terrain models clearer and sturdier: route overlays, a stabilizing border ring, and multi-tile layouts. It introduces the new Designer Pro workflow for large prints, including examples and how to request print files.
I don’t know where to start with this one. Yes it is a map in the wild, but why would anyone make this decaying world held by rotting hands and then award it as a peace prize? I thought FIFA governed world football, is it really FIFA’s role to award peace prizes? As for the recipient, I think the jury is out.
This could have been an April Fool’s post but I thought it might serve as a starter for 2026. Mappy New Year!
Where do people around the world live today - and where were they born?The new Global Migration Map lets you explore international migration patterns using the United Nations’ International Migrant Stock 2024 dataset. By clicking on any country, you can discover where people living there originally came from, or where people born there now live - and how many people moved between each pair of
Tell Us About Yourself
I’m Dilara, originally from Istanbul, Turkey. I studied at the prestigious M.Sc. Cartography program at four different universities in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. I have a multi-disciplinary background spanning cartography, urban and regional planning, design, and technology. Currently, I work as a part-time data scientist in Germany.
Tell Us the Story Behind Your Map
The story of my Native Wine Grapes of the Mediterranean Region map is quite personal. When I first arrived in Germany, one of the first things that caught my attention was the strong cultural attachment to beer. This made me curious about how different regions have their own favorite alcoholic drinks, and how geography and culture shape those preferences.
For me, wine has always felt special. When I was asked to create a map during the Project Map Creation course at TU Wien, I considered many different topics, but I felt particularly drawn to this one. Grapes are one of...
The State of The Map Room in 2025: On my Patreon, I look back on how this site did in terms of traffic and income over the past year. Map Books of 2026: Already live,… More
Imagine the Earth could write to you. What would it say?Letters from The Earth is an attempt to visualize global climate data not as charts or forecasts, but as daily first-person letters written by the Earth itself. It is an experiment to see whether data can be translated through narrative and emotion to convey a broader, more intuitive form of understanding than by raw numbers
I couldn't get tickets for London's very popular New Year's Eve fireworks display, so I had to make my own virtual version.My 3D Fireworks Map displays colorful bursts of fireworks exploding above the City of London. The map starts by loading real-world buildings from the Global Building Atlas, a massive dataset of city structures from around the world.The real magic happens with the fireworks.
TLDR in 2025; I am super, super grateful to all of you for subscribing and reaching out. I got to meet/chat with so many cool people in earth observation this year, and I hope this continues next year.Forecasted US almond yield.ERA5: don’t believe his lies.No one really wants to read about anomaly detection, even if it’s on fancy newly-released hyperspectral data.Foundation models: can’t live with ‘em, can kind of live without ‘em unless you’re trying to be an influencer in the niche field of earth observation.Benchmarks kind of suck, but we also need them because we don’t have anything else.Google released embeddings, they’re honestly pretty good, and I’m still planning on milking them for content in 2026 (but I think they shouldn’t have included all that auxiliary non-EO data in training).We released Geovibes and I used it to map catfish farms, so it’s totally not a useless demo.Read on to see my slightly unhinged thoughts about my posts.Subscribe nowTechnically from 2024, but my...
Blog - The Gartrell Group
• By Molly Gartrell Earle, CEO
•
In early November, Bryce and I traveled back to the East Coast (we grew up in New Hampshire). We were heading back to our roots, to participate in a celebration of the law firm our dad founded with two others back in 1975. Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell was turning 50! In the absence of our dad (who passed away in 2011), we felt it was important that “Gartrell” have representation at the party. Besides that, it’s always nice to go “home” for a visit.
Don Gartrell, lawyering in the 1970s
As we...
So last year I didn’t do a year in review because I was sitting in the hospital with one serious thought back in January: I was probably a few days away from the year in review not mattering anymore.
How do you sum up this year. Usually I pour through a pile of things from Social Media to Work to just life in general. This year all those things have taken a back seat to more pressing things like “Not Dying” and “Hey I’m not Dead”. To sum up for people just reading this with no idea of what I’m talking about: I thought I had covid. Turns out it was heart failure (not caused by covid) which resulted in 12 hours of surgery and months of recovery. Am I perfect? No. Will I ever be? No. I did live though it and I’ve heard enough tales of people not living through that operation that I am extremely grateful. I spent close to a month in the hospital. Coupled with 3 or 4 months pre-hospital of not being able to function well and 3 to 4 months post-hospital of trying to get back on my feet,...
Earthsounds
I’m guessing you’ve heard of - and perhaps even used - the popular location-addressing system, what3words. You may even know the three-word address for your home. But do you know your home’s personal songline?
Aboriginal songlines are ancient pathways that crisscross the land, created and sung into existence by Ancestral beings during the Dreaming. Each songline is a living map:
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge. If someone asks who your favourite band is, and you answer ‘near infrared’, then we have one thing to say to you: welcome home. As usual, the aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter: Mapping Buildings: OpenFACADES turns street images into structured data. Identifying Vulnerability: New index tracks climate risks at subnational levels. Seismic Mapping: Smartphones improve accuracy of urban shaking maps. Transit Analysis: Tool links metro access to housing price trends. Forest Data: Map distinguishes natural forests from tree plantations.Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. An open framework for understanding buildings from street-view imagesGaps in objective building data are a massive headache for urban analytics. While we have plenty of street-level imagery, extracting structured data from it remains a bit of a challenge. A new study introduces...
CLIPSLethal Force to Build The LineTop Firm Called Out by the UNBuying condemnationsCourage vs. SilenceEPISODEThe Geospatial FM podcast topic profile:Data engineering for geospatialGEOSPATIAL FOR WORLD MODELS (foundation models are so last week)GEOSPATIAL IN PREDICTION MARKETS (spatial finance is so 2022)In this context, stocks, globallyHuman rights outcomes of these stocksItem 5 is always number 1. So we are finishing the year with that focus. Let's look at this BBC article about a murder of a tribal landowner to make way for the world's largest dictator vanity project, The Line in Saudi Arabia. Abdul Rahim Al-Huwaiti spoke in this video before he was murdered:One thing he predicted was being framed by the government surrounding his dead body with weapons. They did report finding his body in such a state. Another BBC article profiles Col Rabih Alenezi. He said he was a security force leader who was asked by the government to, if necessary, kill villages who resisted eviction. He...
Introduction
“Dynamic Maps”, otherwise known as interactive maps, have become a cornerstone of modern applications – from tracking delivery fleets in real time to helping customers find nearby services. As a Google Maps Platform reseller, we’ve seen first-hand how their Dynamic Maps (delivered via the Google Maps JavaScript API) empower product developers and decision-makers to create engaging user experiences at scale. Google’s mapping APIs boast over a billion active users worldwide (trusted by companies like Uber), global coverage, familiar interface, and rich feature set. This combination makes Google Maps a popular choice for websites and consumer applications.
In this post, we’ll explore what dynamic maps are, why you should implement them, and how to get the most value out of high-volume usage. We’ll also dive into industry-specific examples – from transportation and healthcare to roofing, retail, and insurance – highlighting how dynamic maps can drive innovation in each...
Most restaurant maps are designed to answer one question: what looks good right now? The dreadfully named Shittr answers a very different one - what won’t ruin my digestive system for the next 48 hours? Shittr is an interactive map that assigns restaurants a “Shit Score” - a 1 to 5 🚽 risk rating - based on real government health inspection data from the US and UK.💩💩💩At its core, Shittr uses
But first, this, North51Hey, perhaps you haven’t heard, but North51 is coming up in January. This is the geospatial thought leadership event. If you haven’t been before, you should take a look. If you have, you know what to expect, except this time we will be deep in the Canadian winter, and we have some great deals with the local ski hills.Something a little bit special?The geospatial community is full of old companies. While I don’t feel Sparkgeo is terribly old, certainly not in comparison to venerable organizations like the UK’s Ordnance Survey or Swiss Topo (Switzerland’s Federal Office of Topography), or even Esri, the leading pure commercial organization, I do feel we’ve “been around the block.” One of the reasons we’ve stayed in business is annoyingly counter to almost all the advice one might hear in the typical technology business circles. Geospatial, as a practice and at scale, is almost always a little bit custom and custom business activities usually demand a services...
The Onion: MTA Admits to Fabricating Large Parts of Subway Map. “‘Frankly, no one I know has ever ridden farther than the Carroll Street Station in Brooklyn. We’re not really sure what’s out there, but… More
Geopost Vision, the new venture dedicated to unlocking the value of Geopost’s parcel delivery fleet for mapping and mobility innovation, announces a strategic partnership with Nextbase, the global provider of connected camera technology to accelerate the emergence of a new generation of street-level imagery and mobility intelligence in Europe.
e-GEOS, a joint venture between the Italian Space Agency (20%) and Telespazio (80%), part of the Leonardo Group, has been awarded a four-year contract with the Italian Navy for the provision of geospatial data and services supporting integrated maritime surveillance.
Viridien has successfully completed the BM-S-2 seismic reimaging project in the southern Santos Basin, delivering a modern, high-fidelity 3D dataset across 8,468 sq km to support growing exploration activity in one of the most strategic, emerging offshore regions of Brazil.
A new resource is very helpful for learning about Cloud Optimized data formats and sharing this information with colleagues: https://zines.developmentseed.org/zines/cloud-native/#zine/1/ As an educator I particularly like it for its comic-magazine presentation style. I salute the Development Seed folks who put this together and know and think very highly of the authors, Kiri Carini. Through this resource, you will learn about COG, COPC, ZARR, and Geoparquet formats and how they work.
Why do these cloud optimized formats matter? As I hope our Spatial Reserves blog makes clear, data formats, data access methods, data quality, data sources, and the ways we as a community approach, work with, and teach with GIS are all simultaneously and rapidly evolving. Cloud optimized data formats allow information to be accessed and analyzed more quickly than traditional raster and vector formats, enabling sound decision making in increasingly time-sensitive environments.
As one example,...
Free and Open Source for Geospatial North America (FOSS4GNA) 2025 was running November 3-5th 2025 and I think it was one of the better FOSS4GNAs we've had.
I was on the programming and workshop committees and we were worried with the government shutdown that things could go badly since we started getting people withdrawing their talks and workshops very close
to curtain time. Despite our attendance being lower than prior years, it felt crowded enough and on the bright side, people weren't fighting for chairs to sit even in the most crowded talks.
The FOSS4G 2025 International happened 2 weeks after, in Auckland, New Zealand, and that I heard had a fairly decent turn-out too. Continue reading "FOSS4GNA 2025: Summary"
The Canadian Press reports on the closure of Canada Map Sales, a map store owned by the Manitoba government that sells topo maps, nautical charts, and other maps, posters and imagery, at the end of… More
MacRumors reports that Flyover city tours in Apple Maps appear to have been discontinued as of iOS 26. The Flyover imagery itself remains; this is about the feature that led the user from landmark to… More
2025 has been defined by geopolitical tension, rapid AI adoption, and economic pressure shaped by both. Persistent conflict monitoring, sovereign capability concerns, and budgetary volatility increasingly shaped how Earth Observation was discussed, funded, and procured. Climate urgency did not disappear, but it faded into the background under the weight of these forces.Looking back, Earth Observation did not lack progress in 2025. Instead, the year exposed a growing mismatch between a sector that continued to describe itself as broadly commercial and one shaped by defence-led demand.Those trends had been visible for years: defence alignment, AI everywhere, and commercial consolidation. In 2025, most major announcements revolved around them.Elbe River delta, Germany — Sentinel-1D, false-colour radar composite (7 November 2025). Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2025), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.Budgets made priorities explicitIn Europe, Earth Observation was treated...
Event link: LinkedIn, Calendly.Date: Monday, January 5th, 2026.Time: 1:30pm US Eastern Standard Time, 8:30pm Central European Standard Time.You are invited to a live online event with Mark Munsell. See links above. He is Distinguished Fellow of Artificial Intelligence at Lindenwood University and Executive Director at GeoSTL. He is also Former Chief AI Officer at the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.As such, he has rich experience for us to mine. We will use it to navigate the AI hype and transition from LLMs to world models.If you want to get an impression of him before this event, here he is at SC25 talking about Pixels, Petabytes, Predictions (and Possibilities!) - from 47 minute mark:This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.He was also recently published in The Cypher Brief.AGENDA:What Mark achieved as an inventor.His reflections on hype cycles after a career in geospatial.Using this...
The NGS Blog | Expert Geospatial Insights and More
• By Jason Newmoyer
•
NGS is pleased to announce the 2025.4 release of CoreSpatial Server, Basemaps and Map Manager.
This quarter has been especially busy on our services projects. We look forward to expanding our CoreSpatial product development team in 2026 to support increased velocity on our roadmap items such as: An updated Portal release based on MapStore2 v2025.02.00, as well as promoting our FIPS compliant GeoServer configuration to our main CoreSpatial Server release branch.
Other exciting features on our roadmap include:
Bulk tile collection projects via Map Manager UI
Gazetteer, Geocoding, and Routing services based on OpenStreetMap
Expanded image handling capabilities in Map Manager – georectification of commercial drone imagery using JPEG EXIF
CoreSpatial Server and Basemaps Release Notes
2025.4.3 (12/24/2025)
Update GeoServer to 2.28.1
2025.4.2 (11/13/2025)
Improvement to docker setup script around osm database initialization
Patch gson high sev...
Hey guys,Today is a bit of a special edition. A few people have been asking about how to begin writing on Substack. A bunch of people are stuck at 10-100 subscribers or so, and are wondering how to take it from here.So if you’re considering writing on Substack, I hope today’s edition will help in a few areas:1. How to initially start writing on Substack2. How to grow subscribers3. How to make writing more sustainableFirstly, and importantly let me start with some caveats. I only have about 4,000 subscribers. I don’t make any money from this blog and I do this on the side (since I have a full time job). So there are certainly other people you can learn from on how to make Substack your main source of income, if that’s what you’re into.Onwards…1. Why start a Substack: inbound opportunitiesThere a bunch of reasons why people choose to write on social media and Substack more specifically. The main one is that it helps improve your visibility, it can establish you as a domain expert, and...
The AGS Globe: How Excessive Heat Affects Young Children’s Development by American Geographical Society
The American Geographical Society’s Weekly Newsletter for Tuesday, December 23, 2025
Read on Substack
Building on earlier strategic planning engagements with the Port of Portland’s GIS and IT teams—where the Gartrell Group assessed the Port’s geospatial technology landscape and helped mature its GIS governance—the Port and Gartrell teams are now well into a major renovation of the organization’s GIS platform.This modernization effort is centered on deploying a cloud‑based ArcGIS Enterprise environment engineered for high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR). The new platform is taking shape as a resilient, scalable foundation designed to support Port staff and partners around the clock, across a wide spectrum of operational disciplines including aviation, environmental management, public safety, asset management, infrastructure programs, and more.
...
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
•
What You’ll Learn This Week Why human conception still governs AI-assisted inventorship and why companies must document human decision-making in model design, training choices, and system architecture to preserve patent rights.How data-license restrictions can undermine AI systems, such as why legacny “internal use” and non-competitive clauses may prohibit model training, embeddings, or customer-facing AI outputs, even if raw data is never disclosed.What Texas’s new Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act means in practice, including new disclosure, transparency, and oversight expectations for AI systems deployed in or affecting Texas starting in 2026.How emerging NIST AI cybersecurity guidance could shape GeoAI procurement and contracts, particularly around data supply-chain risk, model integrity, and AI-specific attack vectors such as data poisoning and model inversion.GeoAI and the Law is not legal advice. The reader should consult with a trained lawyer on legal matters...
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
In the first week of November 2025, the Hyatt Regency Reston was a hive of activity. Inside, a diverse and passionate community of users and developers gathered for FOSS4G North America. While the halls certainly held representatives from federal agencies and the titans of Silicon Valley, the heartbeat of the event was found in the independent practitioners, academic researchers, and regional advocates who came to learn, share, and sustain their local chapter. It was a picture of a thriving, professionalized industry that views open source not just as a cost-saving measure, but as a critical infrastructure requirement for the modern era.The atmosphere was...
Tell Us About Yourself
My name is Hemed Lungo a 24 years old Tanzanian Or Place where Mount Kilimanjaro is found (cause people seem to be familiar with that).I stay at Dar-es-salaam to be specific, I recently graduated this year from the Institute of Finance Management (IFM), where I studied Information Technology (IT). My background in IT has helped me build strong technical and analytical skills, but what really excites me is using those skills in creative ways — especially through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and digital cartography.You’ll mostly find me posting a lot of maps at Twitter,Mastoodon,Bluesky,Linkedn,Reddit and so on,I love spending time talking on GIS participating virtually or live for example I participated virtually on QGIS Open Days and Physically on conferences like State of Map Tanzania,Community Mapathons and Currently State of Map Africa which would be done later this Month ,Of course im Huge fan of Geohipster.I also try to contribute as in I...
The OpenStreetMap US team got up to a lot this year! The following superlatives celebrate some notable moments of 2025…
Most Dependable: Layercake
Layercake is one of the most recent tools to come under the OSM US umbrella, thanks to the work of our Software Engineer, Jake Low. Meant to make it easier to interact with the OpenStreetMap data that’s important to you, Layercake provides thematic extracts in cloud-native file formats (currently buildings, highways, boundaries, and settlements). Thanks to chatter and volunteer contributions from community members, we’re working on adding new flavors–er–layers, in 2026! Check out the project’s Github issues to see what’s in the works, and try it out for yourself.
Most Spirited: The OSM US Advisory Council
OSM US formalized a new cohort of cheerleaders over the summer: The OSM US Advisory Council, consisting of Carrie Stokes, Brandon Liu, Bill Dollins, Diane Fritz, Lee Schwartz, and Kevin Pomfret. This group of volunteers is nominated by...
The OpenStreetMap US team is beyond excited to welcome YouthMappers to the portfolio of OSM US Charter Projects, formalizing a partnership that builds on nearly a decade of collaboration between our two organizations. While YouthMappers remains an independent initiative, this project honors many years of working side by side to support students, educators, and young leaders using OpenStreetMap to address real-world challenges. This partnership will create new opportunities for shared fundraising, coordinated collaborations, and long-term sustainability, enabling both organizations to seek out opportunities together and expand the reach and impact of open mapping worldwide. At its core, this collaboration continues a shared commitment to empowering young people everywhere to “define their world by mapping it.”
YouthMappers is a global network of student-led university chapters dedicated to filling gaps in open geospatial data. The students and educators behind each chapter address...
HawkEye 360, a provider of space-derived signals intelligence, announced the acquisition of Innovative Signal Analysis (ISA), a Dallas-based provider of high-performance signal-processing technologies.
Redwire Corporation, a global provider of space and defense technology solutions, and The Exploration Company, a European aerospace company developing reusable, in-orbit-refuelable spacecraft, announced they have entered an agreement for Redwire to provide two International Docking System Standard (IDSS) compliant docking systems for TEC’s flagship spacecraft, Nyx.
Level-2 News"Sea-level rise in the Gulf Stream, by Sentinel-6B." Credit: ESAFirst image from Sentinel-6B extends sea-level legacy [link]"Copernicus Sentinel-6B, launched last month, has reached its orbit and delivered its first set of data, which show variations in sea level in the North Atlantic Ocean. This data underlines how the mission will continue to strengthen the long-term reference record of sea levels, a key parameter of climate change."Planet Reports Financial Results for Third Quarter of Fiscal Year 2026 [link]Planet reported a record Q3 FY2026, with revenue reaching $81M (+33% YoY) and strong growth in RPOs ($672M) and backlog ($734M). The quarter was also marked by major defence wins, continued Pelican and SuperDove launches, and the acquisition of Bedrock Research to accelerate AI-driven global monitoring capabilities.Other Planet News:Planet Releases First Light Image From Pelican-6 [link]Why Planet Labs (PL) Is Up 42.8% After Strong Q3 Results And Raised 2026 Revenue...
Gute Daten sind nur wertvoll, wenn wir sie verstehen. Genau hier beginnt Data Literacy oder Datenkompetenz. Der Thurgauer «MoniThur» ist ein System von Indikatoren zur Beurteilung der Nachhaltigen Entwicklung des Kantons. Anhand des Indikators «Distanz zum öffentlichen Verkehrssystem» lässt sich exemplarisch nachvollziehen, wie gute Datenaufbereitung und -vermittlung komplexe Zusammenhänge greifbar macht. Ein Blick darauf lohnt …
The Giro3D team is pleased to announce the release of Giro3D 1.0.
Giro3D, an open-source geospatial visualization project
Giro3D is a geospatial data visualization library for the Web. Free and open source, it is compatible with many types of geospatial data sources (rasters, vectors, point clouds, etc.). Giro3D’s mission is to enable you to visualize all your georeferenced GIS data—whether 2D or 3D—efficiently on the web.
Free and community-driven
Giro3D aims to be free and community-driven. We welcome all contributions, whether to the source code, documentation, or tests: everyone is welcome!
Giro3D has started the incubation process with OSGeo; you can find the project page on the OSGeo.org website.
Extensible and easy to integrate
Giro3D is designed for integration into applications and has been successfully integrated into React and Vue.js environments. Designed as a toolbox for building geospatial web applications, it is also easy to create your own plugins and data connectors...
In a previous post, we highlighted that a significant shift is underway; one that is unlocking the vast amounts of Earth observation (EO) data gathered by the European Space Agency (ESA). We’re proud to be part of modernizing how the industry interacts with this historically unwieldy data. We know when data is more accessible, it enables better science and faster insights.
A New Model for Earth Observation Data Access
Leading this shift is ESA’s Earth Observation Processing Framework (EOPF) initiative. The initiative is converting legacy SAFE data into Zarr, an open-source, cloud-native format. With Zarr, users can work directly with data in the cloud without the need for large downloads or extensive local storage.
The EOPF Toolkit is a vital component of this initiative, focusing on identifying widely used tools, ensuring their compatibility with the new format, and supporting users as they update their existing workflows.
While enabling QGIS to natively access Zarr...
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) wishes to clarify the operational structure and status of the OGC Japan Forum.The OGC is a U.S.-incorporated non-profit organization dedicated to advancing geospatial standards, with over 350 members worldwide, including more than ten in Japan.OGC members participate in the Technical Committee, which oversees all OGC publications, and may join Working Groups and Regional Forums. There are currently 13 Regional Forums, including the OGC Japan Forum.The OGC Japan Forum, established in December 2014 in Tokyo, is a subgroup of the Technical Committee. It serves as a local platform for members to collaborate and discuss relevant topics. The Forum has no legal status, cannot enter into contracts, and does not conduct business activities. Its activities are limited to organizing meetings and informal cooperation with other organizations.The Forum includes members from Japan and other countries, is managed by OGC staff, and is currently electing chairs to...
Thousands of ocean professionals will unite over three days at Oceanology International 2026 (Oi26) conference and exhibition at Excel London from 10th to 12th March.
Elevate your globe visualizations with new spacebox and halo features. Customize atmospheric effects and star backgrounds easily in Map Designer or the SDK.
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
Linda Stevens has published “GIS and Geospatial 2025: A Year in Review”, summarizing the highlights and lowlights that shaped the past year in our industry – from the rise of geospatial #AI to pricing pressures. The piece offers a timely perspective on where the sector has progressed and where it continues to struggle as 2026 approaches.
Migrations have been the name of the game for the City of Forest Grove, Oregon over the past couple of years. What began as a strategic evaluation of the City’s GIS capabilities has evolved into a broad, multi‑phase modernization effort—one that has reshaped how data is managed, accessed, and applied across departments.From Assessment to ActionIn late 2024, our Geo Strategy Team completed a city‑wide GIS Program Maturity Assessment. That assessment uncovered a familiar set of challenges: performance limitations, resiliency concerns, and ongoing support gaps tied to the City’s legacy ArcGIS Enterprise deployment.With the findings in hand, the City made a decisive move—they opted to undertake a full replatforming effort to stabilize, modernize, and future‑proof their GIS program.Replatforming to a Cloud‑Based ArcGIS EnterpriseOur Cloud Managed GIS Team worked closely with key City stakeholders to design a modern, cloud‑forward architecture. The result was a highly resilient, AWS‑based...
Reintroducing Multi-Layer Maps The Multi-Layer mapping tool is one of the most powerful features in the PolicyMap platform. It allows users to combine up to five data layers, apply conditions...
The post The Power of Intersection: Multi-Layer Maps appeared first on PolicyMap.
AI data center power demands are reshaping how utilities plan, build, and maintain their electric grids and distribution systems. Faster development cycles, shifting load patterns, and new on-site assets create conditions that rely heavily on accurate, timely field intelligence. Utilities that adopt field-first workflows gain a clearer picture of evolving sites and a stronger foundation for decisions that support smart grid technology throughout each phase of AI-driven growth.
Key insights
AI data center power demands compress planning and construction timelines, placing more pressure on field-driven visibility and real-time monitoring.
Early site observations guide routing, siting, environmental considerations, and utility grid modernization efforts.
On-site power generation, energy storage systems, and rapid construction milestones require consistent, structured updates from field teams.
Evolving load patterns introduce new reliability challenges that depend on...
The NGS Blog | Expert Geospatial Insights and More
• By Jason Newmoyer
•
NGS has been selected for award under the GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS). This 20-year IDIQ establishes a long-term, government-wide contracting vehicle that gives federal customers a direct and streamlined path to buy our engineering, geospatial, cybersecurity, and DevSecOps services under pre-negotiated terms.
Contract Number: 47QTCA26D002HAward Notice: https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/153612a111854ae1a8a6d64f4f76f20c/view
What is GSA MAS and why it matters
GSA MAS is the primary procurement channel federal agencies use to acquire commercial services and solutions. Award under MAS means our offerings are pre-vetted and available under negotiated labor categories and pricing, which reduces procurement friction for agencies and shortens the time from requirement to delivery.
Key outcomes of a MAS award• Agencies can place orders directly against our contract rather than running a standalone RFP• Faster procurement cycles and reduced administrative overhead for...
On the Library of Congress’s Worlds Revealed blog, a fascinating piece on a fascinating piece of hardware used by NASA to process lunar photographs taken for and by the Apollo program into orthorectified imagery useful… More
The Ordnance Survey has announced that the triple alignment of true north, grid north (on OS maps) and magnetic north—the so-called three norths—has left England and is now over the North Sea. It’ll make landfall… More
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Fred Woods
•
At the beginning of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) thought it maintained dominance of the electromagnetic (EM) operational environment (EMOE). This advantage enabled the introduction of modern networked systems. However, radio-controlled improvised explosive devices (RCIEDs) and commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Global Positioning System (GPS) jamming devices forced the U.S. military to realize that they did not actually own the spectrum. The U.S. Military's response to RCIEDs and GPS jamming was the inflection point that pivoted the EMOE operational paradigm, shaping how the U.S. conceptualized and deployed systems and...
This OGC Code Sprint, supported by is a collaborative and inclusive event designed to advance the development and implementation of OGC standards, with a primary focus on the GEOINT Imagery Media for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (GIMI) standard. In addition to GIMI, participants will also work on OGC APIs and selected Integrity, Provenance, and Trust (IPT) topics. The Sprint is supported by the OGC Testbed-21 initiative and supported by Open Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) and the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and thus will include software implementations from those and other organisations. We encourage participants to bring their implementations to the code sprint.Several geospatial standards will be featured in this code sprint. Everyone is welcome to participate and work on their preferred standard during the code sprint.The Sprint is open to participants from across the geospatial ecosystem.Registration is now live at...
Europe has given fresh momentum to its Galileo navigation system following the successful launch on December 17 of two new satellites aboard an Ariane 6 rocket.
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge — a safe space for sinusoidal fetishists. In any case, the aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:Segmentation Uncertainty: Deep learning models struggle with pixel-level confidence. Earth AI: Google combines foundation models for geospatial analysis. Urban Greening Simulation: IBM predicts park cooling effects before planting. Burned Area Data: ESA provides monthly fire data at 25km resolution. Building Density: TEMPO offers quarterly global building height estimates.Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. How well can segmentation models know when they’re wrong?If you’ve worked with deep learning models for satellite image segmentation, you’ve probably wondered how much you can trust the model’s confidence scores. A new paper from Google DeepMind benchmarks different methods for estimating uncertainty in segmentation models trained on remote sensing...
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
Dewey Dunnington’s latest blog post dives deep into how pruning, the selective reading of relevant data, makes #GeoParquet blazing fast in both local and #cloudnative contexts. Featuring hands-on comparisons across #SedonaDB, #DuckDB, #GeoPandas, #GDAL, and #Sedona #Spark, it’s a must-read for anyone exploring efficient cloud-native geospatial workflows.
Adventures In Mapping | John Nelson Maps
• By John
•
Here’s how you can create an inner shadow effect for your area of interest in ArcGIS Pro. Push the area down into the landscape with realistic lighting, using some gradient stroke hacks and an invisibility cloak. And, for giggles, the world’s fasted demo showing how to invert the effect to make the area of interest elevated from the map. Give either a whirl!
0:00 Demystifying a cartographic invisibility cloak0:30 Creating a crispy edge and hacking an inner shadow1:00 Nudging the shadow over in the name of realism1:24 Our friend Global Background arrives on the scene1:42 Masking, blending, and invisibility2:24 Reversing the stream for an elevated effect
There are lots of ways to make your area of interest visually prominent without interfering with data symbology. These are just two. Have fun styling your area of interest so it appears visually prominent while still allowing for the context of outside areas. And think deviously about blend modes, they’re a fast and...
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
In case you are interested in buying #map #art, “Independent Map Sellers” is a nice curated shopping guide offered by the Independent Map Artists. The guide features the work of more than 50 independent cartographers whose work can be bought.
Measuring and evaluating access to healthcare has long been a challenge for researchers and policymakers. One reason is the complexity of relationships between healthcare facilities and how those relationships shape...
The post Understanding Healthcare Access Through the Compendium of U.S. Health Systems appeared first on PolicyMap.
Bitesize Fiber Wrapped 2025: End of Year Special!
In this special year-end episode of Bitesize Fiber, the IQGeo team reflects on a year defined by rapid digital transformation, major advances in fiber network construction, and the growing influence of AI across the telecom industry. Kicking things off with holiday chaos stories from the field, the conversation quickly expands into a deeper look at the operational challenges and technology breakthroughs shaping modern fiber deployments.
#Data is more than an asset: it is a designed experience, a product. Jed Sundwall’s article “Great #DataProducts” reminds us that #OpenData matters only when paired with intent, usability, and care in creation. A shout out for #DataDesign and #ProductThinking for #geospatial data.
Adventures In Mapping | John Nelson Maps
• By John
•
Here’s how you can make the classic National Geographic sort of political style map, with inner tint band ribbon buffalo tint things, AND ensure no colors touch each other. We’ll use way more tools than you think and rely on a hotly contested mathematical theorem!All from the comfort of ArcGIS Pro.
Here’s a closer look at the three component’s we’ll be styling up: an inner tint band of color (aka Buffalo tint), a thicker semitransparent band of color, and a dotted border line.
Buckle up, it’s time to get political! With our map styles…
0:00 Politically correct introduction1:03 Behold! The donut symbol effect!1:48 Color theorem calculation time3:10 Unique value symbology3:20 Hacking the “Favorites” style for quick symbol bashing5:13 Customizing an individual color5:24 Duplicating and modifying a layer6:21 Setting a reference scale6:42 Polygon to line, and topological integration insurance8:40 Customizing a dash pattern
And that’s how you can make a handsome...
In the past we have written about how one can use social media to monitor dust storms along with how multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) can be used to analyze images. At the recent American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting we (Sage Keidel, Stuart Evans and myself) brought these two strands of research together in a poster entitled "Creating and Assessing an Unconventional Global Database of Dust Storms Utilizing Generative AI."In this work we showcase how MLLMs are providing new opportunities and accessible methods for information extraction from imagery data using geo-located images from Flickr which have a dust keyword tag associated with it from multiple languages (e.g., Arabic, English, Spanish). We run these images through ChatGPT, which classifies them as dust storms or not and compare this classification with human classifed images. If this sounds of interest, below you can read the abstract, see the poster along with a selection of images that have been labeled as...
Organizations invested heavily in geospatial tools and data throughout 2025. Yet many leaders found the return on that investment lower than expected. A core issue is fragmentation rather than a lack of data or technology capability. When spatial data is scattered across teams, tools, and formats, it becomes harder to trust, harder to maintain, and […]
Viridien has announced a new multi-client seismic reimaging program over Angola’s highly prospective offshore block 22 to support the country’s upcoming licensing round.
Space42, the UAE-based AI-powered SpaceTech company with global reach, and Cobham Satcom, a global provider of satellite communications for defense, government, and commercial sectors, announced the completion of the full range of advanced terminals for the Thuraya-4 Next Generation Satellite (T4-NGS).
Erin on https://erdavis.com/datasets/ has posted some fascinating and unusual data sets that I encourage you to investigate, for teaching, research, visualization, and to learn more about coding-with-mapping.
As a geographer who loves roads, I am particularly fond of Erin’s “road suffixes mileage” data set, and waterfalls, too (who doesn’t love waterfalls?). Erin even posted a set of intriguing visualizations about books read over the past year, which is near and dear to my heart as each New Year’s Day I post a video about the books I have read over the prior year. Erin takes this to the next level entirely!
One of my other favorites is this fall color map and dataset (below). As with other maps and data sets, Erin explains how she worked with the data to clean it, map it, and analyze it. From an instructional standpoint, especially if you are teaching coding-with-GIS courses and looking for intriguing examples, this will be particularly helpful. Erin says “almost all...
We’re happy to announce that the next QGIS User Conference will take place in Switzerland in October 2026.Please mark the following dates in your calendar:
4 October 2026 – Informal active outdoor pre-event day
5–6 October 2026 – QGIS User Conference
7 October 2026 – Workshops
7–9 (10) October 2026 – QGIS Contributors Meeting
As always, the conference will bring together users, developers, contributors, public administrations, companies, and educators from all over the world to share experiences, workflows, and ideas around QGIS and open-source GIS.
Location and further details will be published in January 2026.For now, save the date and keep an eye out for the updates in January.
We’re looking forward to welcoming the global QGIS community to Switzerland.
All members of the OpenStreetMap community are invited to propose a session for State of the Map US 2026, coming to Madison Wisconsin this summer! Each year, the conference planning committee is continually impressed and delighted by the wide variety of conversations State of the Map US is able to foster through our program – from hyper-local mapping efforts and homespun tools to international disaster response and data collection efforts. Unlike recent years, there is no distinct theme for State of the Map US 2026, except for OpenStreetMap of course!
Timeline
December 15, 2025: Call for Proposals opens
January 5, 2025: Fellowship application opens
February 16, 2026: Call for Proposals closes
Mid-March: Speakers notified
June 11-13, 2026: State of the Map US
Session Formats
This year has the widest range of session types on offer yet. In addition to the classic lightning talks, longer talks, workshops, mapathons, panels, and...
TLDR:I used embeddings to map aquaculture in Alabama.This map is much better than the one provided by CDL.When performing this kind of exercise it can be useful to think of first solving the problem at the tile/geometry level, then moving to pixel level if necessary.You too can use geovibes + existing embedding databases to perform this kind of exercise.New in geovibes: sampling + classification functionalityNew in geovibes: 'detection mode’ : iterate on your classifier outputs.New in geovibes: add any GEE layer onto your map to help you label.Subscribe nowTwo months ago,we released geovibes, a tool that allows users to interact with geospatial embedding databases. The motivation was to allow those who were interested in geospatial embeddings to ‘see for themselves’ rather than be told what embeddings can and can not do by LinkedInfluencers™. Unfortunately, we released something that falls squarely in the “cool-demo” bucket, and not necessarily the '“actually useful” bucket: yes you...
Next October, we’re bringing the global cloud-native geospatial community back to the mountains of Utah. CNG Forum 2026 will gather geospatial data practitioners from governments, startups, universities, and enterprises who are shaping how we work with geospatial data.
If you were at our inaugural forum earlier this year, you know what made it special: over 250 people from over 100 organizations having real conversations about where geospatial data is headed. We surveyed our attendees and received a 4.7-star rating, and over 95% of attendees said they’d attend another CNG event.
So we’re putting one on: October 6-9, 2026 at Snowbird in Utah.
What we’re building
Our goal with CNG Forum is to create a space where geospatial data practitioners can come together to talk about what’s working, what isn’t, and what comes next. If you’re working with geospatial data – whether you’re a GIS analyst, data engineer, software developer, scientist, researcher, educator, policymaker, or student –...
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
In his latest post, Mark Litwintschik compares a range of global administrative #boundary datasets, from #OpenStreetMap to #NaturalEarth, assessing geometric #accuracy, data #completeness, and information content. The analysis, powered by #DuckDB and #QGIS, reveals surprising differences in how nations’ borders are represented across data sources.
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Miguel Marques
•
Let me be blunt: if you don’t map your clients, you’re running your business blind in space. You have data -sure- but it’s fragmented. Disconnected. Static. You probably know who your clients are, but not where they are, how they behave, or what your business looks like on the ground.Think about it: if you could see your clients on a map tomorrow, with hotspots glowing where your business is thriving and cold zones where it’s shrinking, what would you do differently? That’s exactly the kind of insight you’re missing today.
Map of clients in Netherlands,...
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Pedro Moura
•
⚠️ Long read ahead - but if eCommerce is a meaningful part of your business (and especially at Christmas), believe me it’s worth your time.TL;DReCommerce does not happen in a locationless internet. People buy from real places, behave differently depending on where they are, receive deliveries in specific contexts, and experience service quality geographically. As eCommerce keeps gaining weight versus offline retail in Europe and the US, managing it without geography becomes increasingly expensive. In Part 1, I explain why eCommerce is objectively geographical. In Part 2, I share a practical cheat sheet on how Geographical Intelligence can be used today to improve eCommerce performance, marketing efficiency, market share analysis, and customer experience. Part 1 - Why eCommerce is Geographical (Whether You Like It or Not)It’s Christmas season. Peak demand. Peak expectations. Peak pressure. For many companies, these weeks don’t just close the year - they define it.And every year, the...
In the past we have written a number of posts on synthetic populations, however, one thing we have not done is compare the various techniques that can be used to create them. This has now changed with a new paper entitled "Quantitative Comparison of Population Synthesis Techniques" which was recently presented at the 2025 Winter Simulation Conference.In this paper, we (David Han, Samiul Islam, Taylor Anderson, Hamdi Kavak and myself) investigate five synthetic population generation techniques (e.g., Iterative Proportional Fitting, Conditional Probabilities, Simple Random Sampling, Hill Climbing and Simulated Annealing) in parallel to synthesize population data for different North America settings (e.g., Fairfax County, VA, USA and Metro Vancouver, BC, Canada). Our findings suggest that while iterative proportional fitting and conditional probabilities techniques perform best, it also suggests at the same time that it is important to consider the basis of choosing certain methods over...
Installation artist Luke Jerram’s past work includes large reproductions of the Earth, Moon, Sun and Mars. His latest is Mirror Moon, a touchable stainless steel globe of the Moon created with NASA topographic data. A… More
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
Under Article 9 of Switzerland’s “Federal Act on the Use of Electronic Means to Carry Out Official Tasks” (#EMBAG/#LMETA), federal authorities must publish the source code of software they develop or commission, marking a step toward greater digital #sovereignty. The resulting Swiss Federal #OSS Catalog now lists around 60 #opensource projects with #swisstopo’s #STAC API and the mapping application #KADASAlbireo among them.
I was recently surprised to learn the extent to which the United States dominates the list of world’s largest corporation by market capitalization. As the chart posted below shows, the seven most valuable companies are headquartered in the U.S., as are 16 of the top 20. It is an open question as to whether this preponderance is due mainly to the underlying dynamics of the American economy or to the over-valuation of the U.S. stock market stemming mainly from unrealistic optimism about AI. Presumably time will tell.
List of Top 20 Global Firms by Market Capitalization, December 2025
This discovery prompted me to begin mapping the locations of the world’s top companies and how these geographical patterns changed over time. My initial efforts will be focused on market capitalization, which limits me to publicly traded companies. If privately held companies could be considered in an assessment the world’s top companies by valuation, the results would probably be similar but not the same....
The Overture Maps Foundation is now three years old, and we’ve met every milestone we’ve set out to meet. But there’s still much more to come. Please enjoy this interview with Software Engineering Radio’s Gregory Kapfhammer and Amy Rose, Overture CTO, and Jennings Anderson, software engineer at Meta. It is one of the best, most complete overviews of Overture’s progress and goals to date.
In it, you’ll learn:
Core concepts associated with geospatial data and why geospatial data platforms are a sort of “super-powered map” akin to any other kind of information system.
The importance of map data being normalized to one schema, which describes the structure of the data, and enables consistency when dealing with different data sources that may have unique ways of describing things. Without a common schema, users spend too much time converting data before they can even use it. Overture does that upfront work for everyone’s benefit.
That Overture’s dataset includes 4.2 billion features...
Africa lacks up-to-date, reliable maps, which makes it hard to plan infrastructure, deliver services, and respond to emergencies.
The Map Africa Initiative aims to create accurate digital base maps for all 54 African countries.
Base maps are the core reference maps that show things like roads, buildings, rivers, and boundaries. They are the starting layer for almost every mapping and planning task.
The project uses satellite imagery, AI, and GeoAI (artificial intelligence applied specifically to location data and maps) to generate these maps faster and more cheaply than traditional methods.
Space42 provides satellite data and leads project management and fundraising; Esri designs and runs the mapping workflows and GeoAI; Microsoft supplies cloud computing and AI tools through its Azure platform.
Regional data hubs across Africa will train local specialists so that countries can update and manage their own maps over time.
The new maps will support sectors such as transport, ports,...
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.–December 11th, 2025 – The Sanborn Map Company, Inc. (Sanborn Geospatial) today announced the renewal of its ISO 9001:2015 certification, a globally recognized standard for quality management systems. This renewal affirms Sanborn’s ongoing commitment to excellence in its geospatial information products and services and, for the first time, expands the certification’s scope to include Sanborn Geophysics in Ontario, Canada – the company’s geophysical sensor manufacturing and survey subsidiary.
ISO 9001:2015 is an international standard for quality management systems, providing a framework and set of principles that ensure organizations consistently meet customer requirements and improve their processes. More than one million companies across 170+ countries are ISO 9001 certified, reflecting its status as the worldwide benchmark for operational excellence. Achieving and maintaining this certification signals to clients and partners that an organization embraces...
As we close out an exciting year of innovation across our product portfolio, IQGeo continues to accelerate how fiber, telecom, and utility operators design, build, operate, and monetize their networks. Over the past six months, we've expanded automation, added deeper analytical capabilities, introduced powerful integrations, and delivered more scalable, cloud-ready workflows across our ecosystem.
The new Landscape map style: an artistic canvas for journeys. With unique hand-drawn hillshading and adaptive clarity, it brings your data stories to life.
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
A research team from the Technical University of Munich (#TUM) led by Prof. Xiao Xiang Zhu has released the #GlobalBuildingAtlas, a 3D dataset comprising 2.75 billion #buildingmodels worldwide at 3‑meter resolution. Built from #PlanetScope satellite imagery and #ML-based extraction, it represents the most detailed and comprehensive global building dataset produced so far.
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
swisstopo has published the concept “Elementary geodata for a digital Switzerland” developed by a working group comprising various stakeholders. The document outlines principles and suggests priority themes for essential geodata, aiming to ensure cohesive, up-to-date, and centrally accessible official geoinformation.
In the world of GIS, managing a complex ArcGIS environment can feel like conducting an orchestra – but sometimes, it feels more like a chaotic jumble of instruments. Repetitive tasks, manual checks, and large datasets can create bottlenecks, diverting valuable time and resources from strategic initiatives.
Enter Symphony for ArcGIS, GEO Jobe’s innovative master application engineered to bring harmony and efficiency to your ArcGIS system. Imagine an environment where routine administrative tasks are automated, system insights are readily available, and performance is optimized – that’s the promise of Symphony.
What is Symphony for ArcGIS?
Think of Symphony as your conductor for GIS automation. Symphony is more than just a tool; it’s a comprehensive platform that centralizes the management of your ArcGIS environment. It acts as a single point of access for several powerful dependent applications, including:
Scheduler: Automate routine administrative tasks like...
Blog Archive - SSP Innovations
• By Carrie Turner
•
ArcGIS Data Pipelines is a service that’s currently available with an ArcGIS Online (AGOL) subscription and will be released for ArcGIS Enterprise beginning in version 12.0. The 12.0 Enterprise version will be released first as a beta product which essentially means you can experiment with the technology but don’t rely on it for critical production data workflows.
The post ArcGIS Data Pipelines Introduction appeared first on SSP Innovations.
(Note: This is the final post in a long series on basic physical geography, which was originally designed to help educators teach the subject. As the series progressed, however, posts have strayed outside the pedagogical realm. I do hope to return eventually to the original project and write more short essays on the fundamentals of global climatology, landforms, biogeography, and so. But for the time being, I am eager to move on to other topics.)
As I have been harshly critical of latitude-based climate maps, it is only fitting to offer an alternative, which can be found below. Note that I do not label this scheme as a “climate map,” but instead return to the ancient Greek term “clime.” A clime is closely related to a climate zone but is not the same, as it based strictly on latitude, ignoring the other factors that determine climate. As such, it could be described as an “Earth-sun relations map,” one that mostly indicates zones of seasonally changing sun angles and day...
So back last year I started something and have just finished one small part of it: https://training.northrivergeographic.com
The Intro to QGIS class has a new home and that new home has a lot of room for a lot of different things.
Something like 12 years ago (or more – 2013 to be exact) I started doing “online” training. At the time I was using a commercial platform and the theory was I could upload my class and record some content and you could offer training online. Except it never quite worked because no one could follow the slides unless I was standing there, I couldn’t make the content “work”, and my pricing was way off. After two months of earning negative income I cancelled the training.
With COVID, training morphed into an online offering. Honestly – It had it’s good points and it’s bad points. One good point: I reached a lot of people from all over the globe. The bad: People are all over the globe and just randomly planning a class didn’t work well.
Of...
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Overview Map of Soviet Era Missile Defense Locations during the Cold War
Series Note: This is the third installment in our "Geospatial Frontiers" series, excavating the physical legacy of the Cold War through historical GIS analysis. Following our exploration of the American homeland in The Concrete Archipelagos and the NATO frontline in The Silent Front, we now turn our digital lens eastward. We cross the Iron Curtain to map the mirror image of Western paranoia: the sprawling, monolithic defense network of the Soviet Union.The Architecture of Paranoia: Inside the PVO StranyIf "The Concrete Archipelagos"...
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge a newsletter that has as many fans as a multispectral image has bands… In any case, the aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:Urban Mapping: AI blends text and satellite data for better insights. Healthcare Planning: AI optimiser improves hospital placement and reduces travel times. Irrigation Risks: Water use cools air but increases dangerous humid heat. Smoke Impacts: Wildfire particulates raise heart and neurological risks in children. Population Data: New dataset offers global population projections through 2100.Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. Teaching AlphaEarth to understand citiesIf you’ve used satellite images before, then you’ve most likely used it for some of the most common use cases like detecting changes in deforestation or urban sprawl. However, remote sensing struggles to capture the ‘human’ side of cities, like socioeconomic...
2024 and 2025 were landmark years for the UK fiber market. Thanks to strategic investment and rapid network expansion initiated by the government’s Project Gigabit, the UK achieved its goal of providing gigabit broadband access to 85% of households and businesses by 2025.
Copernicus Sentinel-5A has delivered its first images after its launch on 13 August 2025, marking a significant milestone in the monitoring of air quality from space. [link] Credit: ESACopernicus Sentinel-1D and Sentinel-5A provide first images, marking important advances in earth and atmospheric monitoring [link]"Following their successful launches in 2025, two new Copernicus satellite missions, Sentinel-1D and Sentinel-5A, have returned their first images, representing important progress in the EU’s capacity to monitor the planet’s surface and atmosphere."Related:Sentinel-1D delivers first images: from Antarctica to Bremen [link]Sentinel-5 debuts images of atmospheric gases [link]Level-2 NewsESA Member States commit to largest contributions at Ministerial [link]Europe has just made its largest-ever commitment to space, with €22.3 billion approved at ESA’s Ministerial Council in Bremen. Member States reinforced Europe’s autonomy and leadership across science, Earth observation,...
Gulf of Mexico Oil & Gas Infrastructure Map: Interactive Database of Wells and Pipelines
Explore the complete network of oil and gas infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico with our interactive map showing thousands of offshore wells, production platforms, and pipeline systems. Access official Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) data on Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) drilling operations, including well locations, operator information, production status, water depths, and pipeline networks across federal waters.
Interactive Gulf of Mexico Oil & Gas Map
Use the map below to explore offshore oil and gas infrastructure across the Gulf of Mexico. Red markers indicate individual wells and production facilities, while purple lines show pipeline networks. Click any well or pipeline to view comprehensive details, including operator, status, depth, location, and technical specifications.
The map uses clustering technology to display thousands of wells efficiently – zoom in to see...
By all accounts, 2025 was a year of turmoil and upheaval. The year began with widespread layoffs in the US Federal Government which was poorly managed and chaotic, sending shockwaves through the GIS and geospatial industries. These changes deeply affected professionals across the industry, leaving many careers in limbo. Simultaneously, funding for critical projects were slashed, particularly those related to climate, Earth sciences, human health, infrastructure, global stability, sustainability, alternative fuels, and more.The ongoing turmoil in the United States is creating ripple effects across numerous sectors, including the GIS/Geospatial industry. However, by taking a broader view, we can identify a few key areas where significant change emerged.HighlightsMainstreaming of geospatial AI and automationFoundation models and cloud platforms made object detection, change detection, and feature extraction from imagery far more accessible, shrinking workflows that used to take weeks...
What You’ll Learn This WeekThis week, you will learn how Australia’s new AI policy is reshaping the regulatory environment for GeoAI by relying on existing laws rather than AI-specific rules. You will also see why AI agents present a new category of risk for geospatial systems and what safeguards are emerging to manage autonomous, multistep workflows. You will gain clarity on how different classes of AI are being adopted across the space and Earth-observation enterprise. Finally, you will learn why geospatial sovereignty increasingly will depend on the alignment of technical architectures with enforceable legal and governance controls.GeoAI and the Law is not legal advice. The reader should consult with a trained lawyer on legal matters associated with GeoAI.What’s NewAustralia Unveils AI Policy Roadmap (IAPP)Australia’s new National AI Plan shifts away from strict, AI-specific regulation and instead relies on existing legal frameworks and a forthcoming AI Safety Institute, creating...
Fragmented systems drain budgets, complicate regulatory compliance, and burn out crews, but modern utility asset management offers a fix. We explain how integrated asset management eliminates the chaos of disconnected spreadsheets to lower operating costs, guide smarter infrastructure investments, and extend asset life across the entire infrastructure life cycle. Read on to see how utility operations can improve electric grid reliability and transform utility infrastructure management from a headache into a strategic advantage.
Key insights
Disconnected spreadsheets create hidden costs on every truck roll because stranded data forces unnecessary site visits and makes it harder to demonstrate regulatory compliance to oversight bodies and government agencies.
Integrated asset management treats data as a dynamic ecosystem to eliminate expensive knowledge gaps.
Utility infrastructure management software must respect field reality because complex interfaces cause crews to...
Your Presenters:
Rebecca Davis, Project Manager, 10 years GIS experience focused on municipal government data from parcels to utilities systems.
Carson Vallino, Project Manager, 9 years GIS experience and currently working with the City of Gloucester, MA on managing and maintaining the city's water utility system and preparing the city to meet the LCRR Lead Inventory deadline.
Emily Casadaban, GIS Analyst, 5 years GIS experience focused on municipal government data and currently working with Gloucester, MA on implementing a Lead Service Line Solution.
Back in October of 2023, we covered the EPA's 2021 Federal Lead and Copper Rule Revisions (LCRR) right before release of the 2024 Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI). Now it's time for part 2!
Join us as we cover what has changed in the world of Lead Service Reporting/Monitoring and how municipalities across the nation are tackling the challenges of mandated lead replacement, inventory management, and public outreach....
Global Power Plants Map: Interactive Energy Infrastructure Database
Explore power generation facilities worldwide with our comprehensive interactive map. From nuclear power stations and coal plants to wind farms and solar installations, discover detailed information about electricity generation infrastructure in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and across the globe.
Interactive Global Power Plants Map
Use the map below to explore power generation facilities worldwide. Click any marker to view detailed information, including capacity, fuel type, technology, ownership, and operational status. The map displays three categories: non-renewable plants (red markers), renewable energy facilities (green markers), and energy storage systems (blue markers).
Click on any power plant marker to view detailed information. Use the layer control in the top-right corner to filter by renewable vs non-renewable facilities.
...
In searching the internet for climate maps that might be useful for educational purposes, I have continued to be disappointed and occasionally dumbfounded. Many highly ranked maps provide outright misinformation. Consider, for example, the two maps posted below, both of which divide the world into climate zones based simply on latitude. As explained in previous posts, this expedient is problematic, although can be useful in certain circumstances. But these two maps make the inexcusable error of labeling the subtropics as “dry climates.” (The two maps might seem to have identical content, but they differ slightly, as the first puts the outer limit of the northern subtropical “dry” zone at 35° N, the most common definition, whereas the second puts it at 37° N.)
Map Labeling the Sub-Tropics as Dry, 1
Map Labeling the Sub-Tropics as Dry, 2
Although the belts of land between 23.4° and 35° north and south of the Equator do contain the world’s most extensive arid areas, and some of its...
New Zealand School Zones Map: Interactive School Finder & Catchment Boundary Tool
Find your local school zone instantly with our comprehensive interactive map of all New Zealand schools and official enrolment scheme boundaries. Whether you’re a parent researching schools, buying property in a school zone, or relocating to New Zealand, this tool provides everything you need to make informed decisions about education.
Interactive New Zealand Schools Map
Use the map below to explore schools and school zone boundaries across New Zealand. Click on any red school marker or colored zone boundary to view detailed information. Zoom in to see specific neighbourhoods or zoom out for a nationwide overview.
Click on any school (red marker) or zone boundary (colored lines) to see comprehensive information, including contact details, student demographics, enrolment schemes, and more.
Click on a school to view details
How to Use the NZ...
Blog Archive - SSP Innovations
• By Carrie Turner
•
There are always new ways for utilities to identify the best solutions for getting the most out of their GIS. In this context, it is widely known that many utilities are in the process of modernizing their GIS with the migration of their facility network to Esri’s Utility Network.
The post Practices for Attribute Automation in the Electric Utility Network appeared first on SSP Innovations.
Level-2 NewsSentinel-6B launched to extend record of sea-level rise [link]"The Copernicus Sentinel-6B satellite is now circling Earth, ready to continue a decades-long mission to track the height of the planet’s seas – a key measure of climate change.Like its predecessor, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, Sentinel-6B carries the latest radar altimetry technology to further extend the sea-surface height record that began in the early 1990s. These measurements help scientists understand sea-level rise – crucial information for shaping climate policy and protecting the millions of people living in coastal areas around the world."Canada announces massive jump in funding to European Space Agency [link]"Canada, seeking tighter ties with the European Union, will boost its investment in European Space Agency programs by C$528.5 million ($377.96 million), a tenfold increase compared to previous contributions, a top cabinet member said on Tuesday.Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who won an April...
The GRASS GIS 8.4.2 release provides more than 35 improvements and fixes with respect to the release 8.4.1. Enjoy!
The post GRASS GIS 8.4.2 released appeared first on Markus Neteler Consulting.
Easily collect GPS data on your Android device with Mergin Maps. This powerful and user-friendly app integrates seamlessly with QGIS for efficient mobile data collection, syncing and collaboration even when offline.
North51First, don’t forget about booking tickets for North51, January 21–23, 2026. If you like this Substack, you’ll love North51! This is not a traditional conference. It is curated, ideas-driven, and built for people who want real conversations about the future of geospatial. Even better, this year we’ll have sessions especially curated by Priscilla Cole and the Geospatial Risk team.An executive-level opportunity to talk about the pressing issues in the geospatial community of practice. And this year seems more pressing than most! See you in Canmore, Alberta. New tools, old patternsSometimes, I get a sudden wave of realization. This could be while laying awake in the small hours of long night. It could be that two thirds into a long run, when coming to the crest of a raise, I just stop. It could be, like this time, when I was flitting between sleep and wakefulness on a transatlantic flight. It’s usually at a moment like that when my mind is tricked into wandering. Tricked, out of...
Dear Association Members and Supporters, It is with sincere gratitude that I write this message today as your President of the NYS GIS Association. My involvement with our organization began as a member, transitioned to a Communications Committee volunteer, increased in responsibility as an appointed and subsequently elected Board of Directors member, and now has […]
(00:00) Differences between medium-res and high-res worlds: data sizes, off-nadir imaging, co-registration issues(28:42) High-res SAR/Umbra data detour: building damage estimation in Jamaica, matching imagery up to vector datasets(34:33) Embeddings mentioned(37:10) Differences in seasonality, illumination and histogram matching: foundation models mentioned, discussions around Krishna’s model performance over Gaza
A VerySpatial PodcastShownotes – Episode 77430 November 2025
Alli Crandell on digital initiatives
Click to directly download MP3
YouTube (audio only)
AVSP – Episode 774 Transcript (docx)
http://traffic.libsyn.com/avsp/AVSP_Episode774.mp3
Topic:
Alli Crandell, Director of The Athenaeum Press and Digital Initiatives
Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts at Coastal Carolina University
Cross over episode with Recreat.us Podcast
The previous GeoCurrents post harshly criticized several climate maps for extending the subtropical zones too far toward the poles. But after doing a little casual research, I was chagrined to discover that these maps largely fit the formal, or “geographical,” definition of the term. The Wikipedia article on the subtropics states that “they cover the middle latitudes from 23°26′09.3 to approximately 35° to 40° north and south.” Both ChatGPT and Grok give the same figures. But in the United States, the subtropics are seldom if ever imagined in such terms. The idea that Chattanooga, Tennessee (35°N) is subtropical, let alone Columbus, Ohio (40°N), would strike most Americans as absurd. It is also noteworthy that very few maps that purport to depict the subtropics follow this latitudinal definition – and for good reason.
Problematic Latitudinal Definition of the Subtropics in the United States
The main reason why the common conception of the subtropics does not match the formal...
The race to win in the UK’s full-fiber market is heating up. At the end of 2024, Ofcom reported that full-fiber is available to 20.7 million homes—representing 69% of the UK’s total 30.1 million households. Between May 2023 and July 2024, take-up of full-fiber rose from 28% to 35%, indicating a steady increase in customer demand. Getting full-fiber connection into every home and business in the UK is a national priority. The UK Government has ambitious gigabit broadband coverage targets, aiming to achieve 85% coverage in 2025 with the goal of nationwide availability by 2030. To meet the deadline, the government is allocating significant resources to deliver broadband to hard-to-reach communities through its Project Gigabit initiative.
VertiGIS Blog -Posts Archive
• By Richard Gassner
•
Written by Greg Brazeau, Director of Sales, Utilities What if your most important asset isn’t a transformer or a substation, but the system that understands the relationship between all your
The post The Future of Utility GIS: From Design Tools to Asset Intelligence appeared first on VertiGIS.
VertiGIS Blog -Posts Archive
• By Richard Gassner
•
Written by Andy Berry, CEO VertiGIS Next-gen GIS technology uses AI, cloud computing, and mobile accessibility to streamline business processes, improving efficiency, decisions, and sustainability. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are
The post From Maps to Insights: PwC Report Highlights How Geospatial Technology Drives Operational and Financial Performance appeared first on VertiGIS.
Modern electric utility operations run on data from operational technology, GIS, asset systems, information technology applications, and field crews, but silos between those utility systems create blind spots that slow outage restoration, complicate business continuity management, and raise risk. See how breaking down those silos and creating a connected operational picture turns raw operational data into faster, safer decisions in the field, the control room, and the utility field operations center.
Key insights
Data silos between operational technology, GIS, asset records, and field tools create information gaps that slow outage response, code compliance efforts, and maintenance decisions.
A connected operational picture that unifies SCADA events, network maps, asset data, and field updates gives every team the same current view of the grid.
Strong governance, a clear business process framework, and clear system-of-record roles keep operational data accurate, secure,...
Adventures In Mapping | John Nelson Maps
• By John
•
Ah the winter season is a time when we can slow down and appreciate the things that really matter. A chance to take stock of lasting joy. Clearly I’m talking about the opportunity to print out this paper craft ornament template, cut out the component globe gore panels, and assemble them into a simple treasure.
So blow some dust off the printers, push some card-stock through them, and roll up your sleeves. We’re about to dive in to some exquisite holiday crafting. Geographer-style!
Save and print this image…
Then follow the instructions on the page to create a glorious little holiday bauble. It’s sure to engage students, bedazzle your friends, and just knock the socks off your colleagues. Something to do while chatting about year end goals and sipping on eggnog. You know the feelz.
What’s that you say, you’d prefer a different map style for your globe ornament? You are covered, my mappy friend. Download this ArcGIS Pro project and customize to your cartographic heart’s...
By Alice Yee
From the wetlands of Mesoamerica to the woodlands of the Northeast, Indigenous agricultural innovation shaped entire landscapes — and still influences sustainable farming today. From The Three Sisters in North America to the chinampa systems of Mesoamerica, Indigenous communities developed farming methods best suited to the local climate and surrounding ecosystems.
Jöhehgöh is the Seneca word for “Three Sisters” and is often referred to as ‘the foods that sustain us’. The Three Sisters are crops planted together in a shared space: corn, beans, and squash. This methodology is known as companion planting or interplanting, where the plants mutually support one another in a sort of cycle. The corn provides a structure for the bean plants to climb, while the beans contribute nitrogen to the soils. This replenishes the soil with nutrients for low-growing crops like squash or pumpkins, whose leaves shade the ground, preserving moisture and inhibiting weed growth.
While there is...
As I’ve recounted before, what became HIFLD started as the M: drive on a Windows server in a musty government building in Norfolk, VA. Early exercises made it obvious that the data on our M: drive didn’t match the data on other M: drives. They also made it clear that sharing data, especially across 2002-vintage government networks was painful. (Picture shapefiles sent as email attachments to multiple messages to keep under the 5MB attachment size limit.)
So a couple of us stood up an ArcIMS server to share some of the data. Partner organizations could see, in what passed back then for real time, what we had and were able to give us feedback. Some of them stood up their own servers so we could do the same. IT policies prevented feature streaming, but feedback loops were shortened noticeably.Then we had to sort out how to get state and local partners to be able to participate. Then we had to sort out how to license commercial data sets across the community. Each win exposed a new...
MapTiler's first user conference Connect 25 was a great success. Launching GeoSplats, Mobile Mapping SDKs, next-generation maps, Open Foundation, and more.
Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings
• By underdark
•
The journey continues: QgsArrowIterator is now merged! This makes it possible to iterate over QgsFeatures as Arrow batches.
This is where we are now, quoting Dewey Dunnington:
import geopandas
from nanoarrow.c_array import allocate_c_array
import qgis
from qgis.core import QgsVectorLayer
# Create a vector layer
layer = QgsVectorLayer("tests/testdata/zonalstatistics/polys.shp", "layer_name", "ogr")
schema = qgis.core.QgsArrowIterator.inferSchema(layer)
it = qgis.core.QgsArrowIterator(layer.getFeatures())
it.setSchema(schema, 1)
c_array = allocate_c_array()
schema.exportToAddress(c_array.schema._addr())
it.nextFeatures(5, c_array._addr())
print(geopandas.GeoDataFrame.from_arrow(c_array))
#> lev3_name geometry
#> 0 poly_1 MULTIPOLYGON (((100.37934 -0.96049, 100.37934 ...
#> 1 poly_2 MULTIPOLYGON (((100.37944 -0.96044, 100.37955 ...
#> 2 poly_3 MULTIPOLYGON (((100.37938 -0.96049, 100.37949...
As noted in the previous post, many educational climate maps that rank high in internet image searches are based on a simplistic climatic model that is too focused on latitude. In this post, I scrutinize and criticize four such maps.
The most simplistic example that I found (posted below) essentially replicates Aristotle’s five-zone climate scheme, although it does not strictly follow latitudinal lines. The marginal notes on this STUDYLIB map claim that the climate zones that it depicts are based on both average temperature and average rainfall, but that is simply not the case. While the text states that the tropical zones “get the most rainfall,” the map puts the world’s largest hyper-arid area, the Sahara Desert, in this category. While the text states that the temperate zones experience “rainfall year-round,” the map puts many place that almost never get summer precipitation in this category. While the text states that the polar zones are “almost always below freezing,” the map...
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
The Cartography of the InvisibleIf the Cold War defense of the North American continent was characterized by "Concrete Archipelagos", isolated islands of defense ringing major industrial metropolises like Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles, the defense of Western Europe was defined by a fundamentally different, and far more terrifying, geometry: The Belt. Viewed through the lens of modern geospatial data, the KML files preserved by digital archivists reveal not a series of disconnected circles, but a rigid, linear scar running from the gray waters of the North Sea to the granite peaks of the Alps. This was the "Nike Belt," a contiguous chain of high-altitude,...
Summary Thread
Post by @[email protected] View on Mastodon
When and where?
Geomob Barcelona took place at 6:00 PM on Wednesday the 3rd of December, 2025 at CoWorkIdea, at Carrer de Torres i Amat, 21, First Floor.
doors open at 18:00, set up and general mingling
at 18:30 we begin the talks with a very brief introduction
Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10-15 minutes.
After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions.
The talks will be in English.
We vote - using FeatureUpvote - for the best speaker. The winner will receive a SplashMap and unending glory (see the full list of all past winners).
We head to a nearby bar for discussion and #geobeers paid for by the sponsors.
The speakers:
Matteo Ferrari, Factual - Lane Patrol
Núria Julià Selvas, CREAF: Involving citizens in collecting evidences of environmental concerns through geospatial standards.
Alex Lopez Cruces, Indra Space,...
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge — your weekly map to the latest geospatial news (sorry)... In any case, the aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:Wealth Inequality: Local wealth gaps predict economic mobility. Farm Size Projections: Global farms could triple by 2100. Multimodal Foundation Models: Survey covers geospatial AI advances. CO₂ Mapping: Fusing satellite and ground data improves resolution. WeatherNext 2: Google’s AI model generates forecasts in seconds.Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. Wealth inequality matters more than income inequality for mobilityA new study published in Nature Communications looks at how growing up in areas with high wealth inequality affects your chances of moving up the income ladder. The author combines local wealth inequality estimates from GEOWEALTH-US with intergenerational mobility data from Opportunity Insights to examine outcomes for...
Every December seems to arrive a little faster than the one before. Maybe it is the rush of wrapping up projects or the long list of client deadlines that stretch right to the last week. Or maybe it is just the way the geospatial world moves now, with near daily advancements in imagery, analytics, automation, and regulatory shifts that keep every GIS team on its toes.
Either way, 2025 gave us a lot to look back on. It was a year where the geospatial industry pushed forward with new constellations, sharper sensors, and better analytical pipelines. And for us at Swift Geospatial, it became a year where our purpose felt clearer than ever. Offering spatial intelligence that people actually understand and use in the real world. Not fluffy visuals. Not complicated data dumps. Real insight that helps real operations.
Let me take you through the highlights, some behind the scenes thoughts, and what you can expect from us in 2026.
A Big Year for Satellites and Spatial IntelligenceIf there is...
MapTiler News
• By MapTiler (Petra Duriancikova)
•
Introducing the new MapTiler Streets map. Features include localized shields, last-mile detail, Dark mode, and enhanced transit networks for navigation.
As earlier GeoCurrents posts in the current series on educational geography have noted, sun angles, which are determined by latitude, play a huge role in shaping the geography of climate. Simply put, the lower the latitude of any given location, the more solar radiation it will receive and the warmer it will be. Historically, latitude has been considered the prime determinant of climate. It often still is.
The actual situation, however, is far more complicated. Climate is not just a matter of average temperatures, nor are average temperatures just a matter of latitude. Even equatorial locations can have cool climates if they sit at high elevations; Quito, Ecuador, at 0° latitude and an altitude of 9,350 ft (2,850 m), has a mild annual daily mean temperature of 60.1° F (15.6° C). And even tropical lowland areas can have seemingly non-tropical climates. Consider, for example, the coastal city of Lima, Peru, which, at 12° S, is well within the tropics. Yet in December, a month with high...
From a mathematics student who stumbled into geospatial science almost by accident to now leading Côte d’Ivoire’s national mapping authority, Fernand Bale’s career has been shaped by curiosity, collaboration, and a belief that geographic information can improve lives. Today, as Director of CIGN within BNETD and a former Co-Chair of the UN-GGIM Committee of Experts, he stands at the center of a rapidly evolving geospatial landscape – one where standards, data sovereignty, and digital innovation are transforming how nations plan, build, and govern.In this conversation, Bale reflects on his journey, the growing role of geospatial infrastructure in Africa’s development, and how partnerships with organizations like OGC are helping accelerate capability, access, and global alignment.Your career has evolved significantly within Bureau National d’Études Techniques et de Développement (BNETD), leading now to your role at Centre d’Information Géographique et du Numérique (CIGN). How did...
Every year, the FOSS4G community shows what is possible when people come together to push geospatial technology forward. For Sparkgeo, this gathering represents something more than a technical showcase. It reflects a shared belief that the future of geospatial work is open, collaborative, and accessible to anyone who wants to be part of it.
Over the past few years, we have expanded that commitment through a sponsorship that matters deeply to us: childcare. Creating space for parents, caregivers, and families aligns with our goal to help remove barriers that prevent people from contributing to the community. When childcare is available, participation becomes possible for people who often can’t attend.
We also show up with knowledge. Sparkgeo team members regularly present sessions at FOSS4G events, sharing what we have learned about scalable architecture, open data design, and the operational realities of running large geospatial systems. The goal is simple. Support people who...
By Albi Wiedersberg and Marc Prioleau
Imagine asking an AI agent to book a hotel. The agent books the room, finds restaurants you like, a concert venue nearby, and lines up ground transportation. This smooth, integrated experience is the future of travel. Today, it is nearly impossible.
Like many industries, travel has an “action barrier”. Finding the right flight or hotel is challenging; booking it is hard. This is caused by data complexity that costs money and frustrates customers.
Three data-related challenges cause this:
Bad Data: Information about locations is different or wrong, causing bookings to fail.
System Chaos: A single trip may require over 100 systems to connect, each speaking a different “language”.
Being Skipped by AI: New AI assistants plan trips but may not know about specific travel providers and their offerings.
The Global Entity Reference System (GERS) is an open “common language” designed to solve these exact problems.
What is GERS?
GERS is a stable, open,...
Spatialists – geospatial news
• By Ralph Straumann
•
#Sentinel‑1D, the newest radar satellite in #ESA’s #Copernicus Sentinel‑1 mission, was launched on 4 November and has already delivered its first C‑band #SAR images within just 50 hours of liftoff. Replacing Sentinel‑1A, it continues the mission’s all‑weather #EarthObservation while enhancing capability for detecting “dark” ships and sea pollution. #EO #RemoteSensing
Have you ever noticed your favorite app or software becoming less useful over time? It starts with small annoyances—more ads, features moving behind a paywall, or a clunky interface that never seems to get fixed. This slow decay isn’t a coincidence. It’s a process known as “enshittification,” and it’s affecting industries everywhere, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS).The term, coined by writer Cory Doctorow, describes a three-stage cycle where platforms gradually decline in quality as they shift focus from serving users to maximizing profits. Understanding this pattern is crucial for GIS users, business partners, and anyone who relies on these powerful mapping and analysis tools.This is a deeper dive into Enshittification and GIS that complements a recent Geospatial Innovations Live Linked Event where Tim Nolans and I discuss this critical topic. What is Enshittification? A Three-Stage CycleDoctorow outlines a predictable pattern for how platforms die. It begins with a...
The first wave of utility digitization is over; the new executive mandate is to get predictive. Fulfilling that mandate requires a new breed of field technology built on three pillars: active intelligence at the point of capture, seamless enterprise integration, and immediate operational insight driven by modern data analytics and artificial intelligence. The combination of the three pillars creates a resilient operational model, helping utilities manage grid complexity and adopt smart grid technologies. It also supports the shift from reactive responses to predictive operations.”
Key insights
The first wave of digitization is over; the new mandate is for predictive operations built on clean data.
Future field tech will be defined by three pillars: active intelligence, seamless integration, and immediate insight.
Practical AI, like hands-free audio, is already accelerating fieldwork; computer vision is the next logical horizon.
Data silos are critical bottlenecks;...
I’ve been trying to write my thoughts down more and have just been lost in life. The last 30 days have had me in Oak Ridge, Murfreesboro, and Reston Virginia. Yet another reason I mumble I really need to cut down on traveling. Which reminds me I need to discuss Foss4GNA 2025 sooner than later.
I haven’t been to the Doctor in 3 months. Which is completely insane for me to say but I’ve been doing well enough that once I got through all the normal doctor visits that revolve around your heart – things got boring.
I’ve been walking a lot. I need to get some new shoes.
Did a 10 mile canoe trip with ease.
I’ve not been on my bike lately but that’s on my list.
One the paddling front I had Swim the Suck which is a 10ish mile paddle through the Tennessee River Gorge.
How did my swimmer do? No Clue. I think we fell out in the upper half of the group. The group consists of about 150 swimmers plus 150 boats plus some extra everything thrown in. My job is to make sure...
The site https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=927944e867624504bfd6c489b0d2aec7 gives you access to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, the world’s largest database of species observations, aggregating over 3 billion records from ~2,500 organizations, including iNaturalist, OBIS, and eBird. This Geoprocessing Tool for ArcGIS Pro (version 3.2.x and newer) queries the GBIF API and returns up to 100,000 records for a single species.
At the moment, you need to use a tool in ArcGIS Pro to access it. To do so, see the above URL, and find the data set by searching Living Atlas for “GBIF” in the Catalog Portal pane. Use the Item ID 927944e867624504bfd6c489b0d2aec7 for a more specific search. Right click the result and select Add To Project.
After entering a genus, species, and your study area, you can then filter by time period, and you will receive 23 fields from the data set. This joins other recent truly big data announcements (including iNaturalist, here:...
As the previous GeoCurrents post noted, longitude is to a significant extent a matter of time. Historically, every town kept its own time based on its longitude. Wherever you found yourself, “noon” was the moment when the sun reached its highest point, with the other hours of the day set around that time. Travelers reset their watches as they came into new towns if moving east or west, but there were no “time zones” as there are today. When railroads were developed in the mid-1800s, allowing much faster travel, local timekeeping made it almost impossible to schedule the arrival and departure of trains. In response, uniform time-zones were established at one-hour intervals.
The entire world was eventually divided into 24 time zones, one for each hour of the day. As there are 360° of longitude around the Earth (180° west and 180° east of the Prime Meridian), and as 360 divided by 24 is 15, geographical units of one hour of time are equivalent to swaths of 15° degrees of longitude....
In the past we have posted about how we can utilize data and models to explore pandemics and peoples reactions to them. And while interest in the COVID might of waned, there will be future pandemics. To this end, at the 53rd Annual Meeting of NAPCRG we (Laurene Tumiel Berhalter, Sanchit Goel, Dawn Vanderkooi, Bruce Pitman, Yinyin Ye, Jennifer Surtees and myself) had a poster entitled "Integration of Community Level Data into Mathematical Models to Predict Future Public Health Emergencies." The objective of the poster is to showcase how one can integrate 211 data into models to predict future public health emergencies. If this sounds of interest, below you can see the poster and at the bottom of the post you can access the abstract. Full Reference:Tumiel, L.M., Goel, S., Vanderkooi, D., Pitman E.B., Crooks A.T., Ye, Y. and Surtees, J. (2025), Integration of Community Level Data into Mathematical Models to Predict Future Public Health Emergencies, North American Primary Care Research...
Build an Enterprise Geospatial Web Application With Django, GeoDjango & Leaflet
Life in GIS
Today, geospatial technology is no longer optional. It powers logistics platforms, land management systems, climate dashboards, utility planning,...
The post Build an Enterprise Geospatial Web Application With Django, GeoDjango & Leaflet appeared first on Life in GIS published by Wanjohi Kibui
For nearly two centuries, airborne data collection has pushed the boundaries of how we see our world. From the first aerial photographs taken from hot air balloons in the 1850s to today’s hyperspectral, LiDAR, and SAR systems, this industry has been defined by constant innovation in data capture. However, while our ability to collect data has advanced significantly, the way we deliver, manage, and monetize the data we collect has lagged behind.
For many in the industry data is still processed, managed and stored in the same way it was done 20 years ago, on tired servers and hard drives, with many hands touching every aspect of the process from collection to transfer, from transfer to processing, from processing to QA/QC, to transfer and delivery.
For the past 15 years, Sparkgeo has been building data management and distribution platforms for some of the world’s largest organizations, satellite operators, technology companies, NGOs, and startups. These platforms have been built...
Learn how to collaborate on QGIS projects using Mergin Maps. Discover sync workflows, user roles, mobile & desktop collaboration scenarios, and how to streamline field data collection with reliable versioning and cloud integration.
My perspective about AI swings between slot-machine chaos, mind-blown optimism, and Black Mirror dread. I turned that back-and-forth into an infographic about living in this emotional loop.
In the evolving telecom and utility environments, contractor management has become a critical priority. Yes, outsourcing offers flexibility, agility, and access to specialized talent, but it also introduces complexity: inconsistent quality, unclear accountability, delayed payments, and a rising number of disputes.
Operators need better tools to ensure that contractors meet quality standards and provide documentation that is both accurate and actionable. The key to solving these challenges lies in a technology that can replace operators’ eyes in the field: Visual AI. Learn from IQGeo how the data provided by this technology increases transparency, minimizes disputes, and strengthens business relationships, and see how operators can elevate contractor management by driving the adoption of Visual AI.
VertiGIS Blog -Posts Archive
• By Richard Gassner
•
Discover how VertiGIS Neo empowers energy, telecommunications, and municipal sectors to overcome challenges like aging infrastructure and climate impacts. With modern GIS applications, cloud strategies, and AI innovations, VertiGIS Neo
The post Video: Modernizing Spatial Asset Management with VertiGIS Neo appeared first on VertiGIS.
Why migrate to QGIS?
At Oslandia, we offer a technology stack with high technical quality and extensive functional completeness for Geographic Information Systems: the QGIS platform.
This modular platform provides all the features needed for all types of geospatial data usage.
Its wide range of features for all GIS needs is a reliable, secure, and sovereign alternative to proprietary solutions.
There are therefore many reasons to migrate to the QGIS platform, including but not limited to:
Technological sovereignty and control
No vendor lock-in
Rich functionality
Guaranteed interoperability
Strong momentum for development and adoption
An extensible ecosystem
Controlled TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
Consistent multi-platform management: desktop, web, mobile
Pooling resources through OpenSource
So how do you migrate to QGIS?
A migration must adhere to several key principles to ensure its success:
Establish a strategic plan
Involve teams as early as possible
Involve the OpenSource...
Towards Data Science - Geospatial
• By Aakash Goswami
•
The high-resolution physics turning microwave echoes into real-time flood intelligence
The post RISAT’s Silent Promise: Decoding Disasters with Synthetic Aperture Radar appeared first on Towards Data Science.
In Conversation with Kannan Thiruvadi, Regional Executive, South Asia, Bentley Systems
As India accelerates toward its ambitious targets under PM Gati Shakti, the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP), and Viksit Bharat 2047, the importance of integrated, digital, and future-ready engineering ecosystems has never been greater. At the centre of this transformation stands Bentley Systems—driving innovation across transportation, water, energy, and urban development through cutting-edge digital engineering and open, connected data environments.
In this exclusive interview, Kannan Thiruvadi, Regional Executive for South Asia at Bentley Systems, shares how emerging technologies—from AI and geospatial intelligence to digital twins and cloud collaboration—are redefining how infrastructure is planned, executed, and operated across India.
Bentley Systems has been closely aligned with India’s major national infrastructure missions. How is Bentley supporting programs like PM Gati Shakti, the...
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
The Geometry of Fear
Image 1: Data regarding NIKE Hercules, and AJAX Systems around the US during the Cold War
The view from low Earth orbit, or more commonly today, the view from a web-browser-based digital globe, reveals the surface of the United States as a palimpsest of infrastructure. We see the bold strokes of the interstate highway system, the sprawling grey dendrites of urbanization, and the rectangular patchworks of agricultural zones....
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge — a newsletter that’s almost as niche as GeoDA. In any case, the aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:Forest Warming: Albedo effects can cancel out carbon storage. Vegetation Loss: New system tracks global land changes daily. Crop Mapping: AI models use rotation logic for better accuracy. Mapping Favelas: Specialized satellite AI outperforms generic models. New Google Tools: AI models map deforestation and identify wildlife.Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. We’re miscalculating the value of forestsIt’s easy to view planting trees as a guaranteed win for the climate because they suck up carbon. But a new study in Nature Communications reveals a blind spot in the Voluntary Carbon Market regarding surface albedo. When we plant dark forests over lighter landscapes like snowy fields or grasslands, the land absorbs more sunlight and heats up. This...
On GIS Day, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced the launch of 3D Underground (3DU), a cutting-edge program to develop a highly secure, 3D-data-sharing platform for New York City’s underground built and natural environment. The platform will help government agencies and utility companies securely share and access information about what lies below New Yorkers’ […]
Earlier in my career, I was working on an infrastructure protection task and we were reconciling data from several sources that addressed the same road network. The data from the locality was authoritative, but it lacked some information we needed so we were conflating other data to the linework. I commented on the general lack of metadata and the government team lead said something like “We’ll never get this done if we wait for that. Overlay everything and use your experience to toss out the outliers. We’re shooting for consensus, not perfection.”
If you’ve spent any time around geospatial data, you’ve probably heard some version of “We really ought to write better metadata.” It’s one of those perennial truths in geospatial, right up there with the fact that someone, somewhere, is still using a shapefile from 2003. Most of us know metadata is important, but it tends to get pushed aside in favor of the more immediate work of getting maps made, services deployed, or analyses out...
When and where?
Geomob Edinburgh was held at 6:30pm (doors open at 6pm) on Tuesday, November 25th, 2025
at CodeBase
at 37a Castle Terrace, Edinburgh EH1 2EL (Google Map,OpenStreetMap)
Agenda
Our format for the evening will be:
doors open at 18:00, set up and general mingling
at 18:30 we begin the talks with a very brief introduction
Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10 minutes.
After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions.
We head to a nearby pub for discussion and #geobeers sponsored by OpenCage, Esri.
The speakers:
Samarth Bachkheti, Geospatial machine learning for subsea engineering
Chris McNeill, Storytelling with GB power grid data
Alex Merrington, NERC Field Spectroscopy Facility, The NERC Field Spectroscopy Facility: a Library of Remote Sensing Equipment and Expertise for Multidisciplinary Research
We are always looking for speakers, volunteer to speak!
The organizers:
Geomob Edinburgh is organized by Gala...
On-premises rasterization is now available on all platforms with Server! Serve modern maps from any operating system to legacy systems that are up to 20 years old.
As was noted in an earlier post, most maps made in the 1500s and 1600s were relatively accurate in the north/south direction but often strikingly inaccurate in the east/west direction. This discrepancy was because latitude was relatively easy to determine (by the midday sun angle or by the position of the north star), whereas longitude could only be estimated. The inability to measure longitude led to countless shipwrecks, demanding a response. The problem was finally solved in the late 1700s by the development of better clocks.
Most students, in my experience, are surprised to learn that sturdy and accurate clocks allowed mariners to determine longitude. But whereas latitude is mainly a matter of sun angles, longitude is mainly a matter of time. Owing to the rotation of the Earth, places to the east of one’s own position are later in the day while places to the west are earlier. As modern travelers know, the time-disruption known as jetlag only occurs when one flies a long distance...
In counties across the United States, childcare costs can become incredibly burdensome. Full-day infant care can cost a typical family anywhere from around 5% to 30% of the median family...
The post Childcare Costs Take a Growing Share of Family Income appeared first on PolicyMap.
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
•
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter is free, but proceeds from paid subscriptions are used to law students who attend geospatial conferences and events worldwide.What You’ll Learn This WeekHow the EU’s new Digital Omnibus proposal could reshape GeoAI development, including stricter rules on data provenance, lawful training bases, and cross-border data handling across the EU AI Act, Data Act, GDPR, and related frameworks.How a potential U.S. federal preemption of state AI laws could impact GeoAI compliance, and what geospatial companies should prepare for as transparency, bias-testing, and data-handling obligations may shift, or disappear, under a national framework.Why AI-specific contract clauses are becoming unavoidable for geospatial professionals, and the key responsibilities emerging around data rights, training-data documentation, accuracy, bias testing, privacy, and national-security-related data restrictions.GeoAI and the Law is not legal advice. The reader should consult with a...
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Fred Woods
•
Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) deploy unattended ground sensors (UGSs) to form a wireless sensor network (WSN) for persistent terrestrial monitoring, where OSINT falls short.
Today's defense operations require continuous, 24/7 Situational Awareness (SA) across vast denied areas. Current intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) paradigms rely on high-value, intermittent platforms, such as air and space reconnaissance assets, vulnerable to kinetic strikes and electronic warfare.Deploying thousands of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) at scale presents a logistical, technological, and operational...
Welcome, BetaNYC, the latest OSM US organizational member! As a civic organization, BetaNYC is dedicated to improving lives in New York through design, technology, and data.
BetaNYC helps New Yorkers access information and utilize technology for the public interest, using tools like OpenStreetMap. When empowered with these tools, residents can hold their government accountable while improving their economic opportunities. The organization helps New York’s governments and community organizations work for the people, by the people, and for the digital era.
“BetaNYC is proud to become an OSM US Community Member because OSM is the platform for our community teachings. Additionally, it’s the platform that enables us to represent what currently exists, while also allowing us, as a collective, to envision what our future could be.”
Jazzy Smith
, Chief of Staff, BetaNYC and OSM US Board Member
The OSM US team is excited to grow this partnership with BetaNYC.
OpenStreetMap...
The Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) 2025 conference happened in Auckland, New Zealand from 17-23 November 2025. It was a week-long event with 2 days of workshops followed by 3 days of talks and networking sessions. I want to share my experience and resources in this post.
Opening Keynote Session
Workshops
The first 2 days of the conference were dedicated to workshops. There were over 50 workshops on a range of topics.
Cloud Native Geospatial for Earth Observation Workshop
Alex Leith led the workshop on cloud native geospatial, going over the basics of using odc-stac, xarray. Michelle Roby then went over a complete workflow for Exploring Sea Surface Temperature Data using STAC Geoparquet.
Alex Leith at the Cloud Native Geospatial for Earth Observation Workshop
The materials for the workshops are shared on the GitHub Repository, which also has a nice example of Land Productivity for SDG 15 using a Cloud-Native approach.
The Deep...
With apologies for skipping the last 18 days…it’s day 24 of the 30 day map challenege and I’m back!
In my first post about SedonaDB I did a brief investigation into the least creatively named waterbodies in Nova Scotia based on the water segments data in Nova Scotia. Anecdotally I’m also aware that there are many “Long Lake"s and “Little Rivers” out there that paddlers (and lake scientists) have to contend with. My favourite of these names is “Mud Lake”. Let’s make a map!
Today I’ll use SedonaDB for R, as installed from SedonaDB on R Universe, in addition to r-spatial favourites sf, wk, and geos. For visualization I’ll use ggplot2 and ggspatial with extras provided by ggrepel and patchwork. We’ll start with installing SedonaDB since that is a little non-standard at the moment:
install.packages('sedonadb', repos = c('https://apache.r-universe.dev', 'https://cloud.r-project.org'))
Next we’ll load the lakes data we’re working with. In some previous posts I’ve downloaded the data but I’ve...
I had decided to move on from exploring the priority of north & south over east & west, but I realized that the most prominent example in the United States had escaped my attention: the northeast coast. Although this coast is often regarded as mostly oriented in a north/south direction, its actual orientation in more east to west. Boston, for example, is 114 miles north of New York City but 153 miles to its east. The situation is southeastern Massachusetts is more extreme. The town of Nantucket, for example, is 203 miles east of New York City but only 39 miles to its north. From New York to Cape Cod, the coastline runs almost west to east. Countering common expectations, moreover, New England is not north of New York state. If one excludes sparsely populated northern Maine and insular Long Island, New England is essentially due east of New York. While I imagine that this fact is widely understood locally, I have a strong suspicion that most Americans would find it...
Adventures In Mapping | John Nelson Maps
• By John
•
When working on the Earth Blocks layouts recently I was reminded of an idea I had years ago for a silly earth-slice cutaway graphic that I could strategically place over a 3D globe in an ArcGIS Pro layout. And since it’s a chill Friday afternoon I thought I’d follow up on that idea finally, and share the results with you.
Here’s the PNG graphic. Right-click it and save it to your computer:
Then in an ArcGIS Pro layout (this image fits 17×11 inch), insert it over a global scene. Navigate/position the globe as you like.
Before:
After:
Fun! And simple. Anyway, it was a quick project and I enjoyed the result so I thought I’d share it with you.
Hacky mapping! Love, John
Terrestrial laser scanning is a LiDAR system different from airborne systems. Terrestrial LiDAR generates a point cloud at ground level.
The post What Is Terrestrial Laser Scanning? appeared first on GIS Geography.
Learning the cardinal directions is an important but often neglected aspect of early geographical education. It is my impression that the understanding of cardinal directions, like most other aspects of geography, is in sharp decline. There are several reasons for this regression, but surely one of the most important is the abandonment of map navigation in favor of following simple right-left instructions generated by automated mapping programs. If we are to revitalize geographical education, we should teach students about the cardinal directions at an early age.
It is usually best to begin such teaching at the local scale and then gradually expand the coverage. Start by giving young students a neighborhood map and then ask them to plot several courses to a familiar destination. Those courses can then be taken on foot while paying careful attention to the cardinal directions that one is following.
Obtaining maps at the appropriate scale can be a problem. My solution is to take a...
Yesterday I made the questionable life choice of taking a train from DC to NYC. It’s been a while since I’ve done the whole American-rail experience, and apparently, I forgot that here in the States, train travel feels less like gliding through Europe and more like hitching a ride in the back of a semi truck driven by someone trying to make their delivery window before the sun explodes.
About 45 minutes in, I realized I should’ve popped a Dramamine. I’ve had smoother rides on those sketchy airport shuttles that feel like they were engineered during a smoke break behind the terminal. The cabin rattled, the tracks complained, and I suddenly understood why half the EU rolls their eyes at us. They get sleek, quiet, efficient trains. We get nostalgia for covered wagons.
...
So welcome to my crossover post. Which I hardly talk about Geohipster. Geohipster is one of those “side things” that’s been happening for over 10 years now. Back in the dearly days of twitter……or I should call it the “Golden Age of social media”, Atanas Entchev had an idea to Document the industry. So a handful of us post articles highlighting professionals in the industry AND – We have this Calendar.
The best part of the calendar is it’s maps made by people. Some are professional cartographers. Some aren’t. All are excellent and tell a story of some sort. For the last 3 years I’ve been in charge of putting the call out and trying to spread the word far and wide that the calendar is accepting submissions.
This year was a bit different. If you’ve kept up (or if you haven’t), I tried my best to pull the greatest disappearing act of all time back in January 2025 thanks to an unknown medical condition. So I’ve been a bit off on the Geohipster front. I’ve gotten a few...
You may be wondering “Hey when does the longest running Artisanal completely Organic Map Calendar come out?”
Guess What? It’s PostGIS Day and you’re favorite calendar is back (and the right year – I tripled checked).
This year I put out the call and the Cartographers Answered. From the Phillipines to Germany to the US, people sent their maps. Amazing Maps. Maps that made judging this years entrants difficult but worth it!
Purchase here!
We had some amazing maps – From the Barry Rowlingson’s “Dance Anthem” map…..
To Antonio Smith’s Forest Cover Map…..
To a great trail map of Riesachsee, Austria by Lucia Van der Heijden.
The 2026 Calendar is now out and about! Support the cause with a purchase!
The post 2026 Geohipster Calendar appeared first on GeoHipster.
The Zarr community convened in Rome, Italy, on October 13-17, 2025, for the first-ever Zarr Summit! It was an incredible experience.
During the first three days, Zarr developers collaborated on crucial improvements to the Zarr ecosystem. We prototyped long-requested features, bootstrapped a framework for flourishing community-driven metadata conventions, and dramatically improved cross-language implementation parity.
During the final two days, we welcomed adopters from diverse organizations to meet with developers to discuss best practices and common roadblocks, exchange ideas, and build connections across the Zarr Community.
Zarr Summit adopter days group photo
And most importantly, we had a blast!
Takeaways
Zarr is taking off 🚀
We knew Zarr was getting big even before the event; ESA’s adoption of Zarr for Sentinel products was a key inspiration for the summit. Still, we were blown away by the depth and breadth of Zarr adoption worldwide across all sorts of institutions. Large...
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – The Sanborn Map Company, Inc. (“Sanborn”), a national leader in geospatial data and mapping solutions, today announced the official expansion of EDCON-PRJ’s capabilities as it becomes part of the Sanborn family of companies. This integration strengthens Sanborn’s geophysical surveying offerings, while providing EDCON-PRJ customers with expanded technical capacity from the equipment developed by Sanborn Geophysics. The move also brings EDCON-PRJ access to more markets and capabilities across Sanborn’s broader portfolio.
For nearly 56 years, EDCON-PRJ has been a leader in worldwide land and marine gravity and magnetics services for petroleum and mineral exploration. For more than 40 years of those years, EDCON-PRJ has provided airborne gravity and magnetic surveying supporting mineral exploration and energy development. Its reputation for precision, scientific rigor, and project reliability aligns directly with Sanborn’s long-standing mission to deliver...
Let’s be honest: the pace of today’s news cycle is ridiculous, and not in a charming way. You can’t even drink your morning coffee without getting smacked in the face by another crisis, another conflict, or some political circus designed to fry your last remaining brain cell. Scroll a little deeper and suddenly social media is feeding you a parade of end‑of‑the‑world nonsense: alien attacks supposedly being covered up, secret underground civilizations planning their comeback, and, of course, the 3I Atlas conspiracy crowd convinced fragmentation is a sign of impending galactic collapse. It’s nonstop, and it’s exhausting in a way caffeine can’t fix.
And still, buried in all that noise, there’s one quiet force that cuts through the chaos with more honesty than most headlines manage all year:
GIS.
...
The solar industry is booming, with new installations popping up everywhere from residential rooftops to vast solar farms. Despite all its growth, the process of solar companies designing and proposing solar solutions still faces significant hurdles. Costly site assessments, time-consuming manual measurements, and the challenge of quickly providing accurate quotes can still eat up time and resources.
The new Google Maps Platform Solar API helps address these challenges by providing reliable solar potential data, 3D roof geometry, shading analysis, and annual sunlight estimates. Derived from Google’s high-resolution imagery and mapping data, these data sets enable solar companies and application developers to streamline their workflows and improve design accuracy without requiring on-site assessments.
Google Maps Platform Solar API to make this a reality for solar businesses like yours. We’re not just offering a tool; we’re providing a strategic advantage. Sanborn helps organizations...
When and where?
Geomob Berlin took place at 18:00
on Wednesday the 19th of November, 2025, at the offices of
HERE at Invalidenstr. 116, 10115 Berlin.
Maps:
HERE,
OpenStreetMap,
Google Maps.
The nearest stations are Nordbahnhof and Naturkundenmuseum.
Summary Thread
Post by @[email protected] View on Mastodon
Agenda
Our format for the evening will be as it always has been:
doors open at 18:00, set up and general mingling
at 18:30 we begin the talks with a very brief introduction
Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10-15 minutes.
After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions.
We vote - using Feature Upvote - for the best speaker. The winner will receive a SplashMap and unending glory (see the full list of all past winners).
We head to a nearby pub for discussion and #geobeers paid for by the
sponsors.
The speakers:
Harald Körtge, What can you build with 512KB of memory?
Patrick...
When and where?
Geomob Lisbon took place on the evening of Wednesday, November 19th, 2025 at Startup Lisboa, Rua da Prata 80, 1100-420 Lisbon (Google Maps, OpenStreetMap). Doors open at 17:30 and talks will begin at 18:00
Doors open at 18:00 and talks will begin at 18:15.
##Summary Thread
Post by @[email protected] View on Mastodon
Agenda
Doors open at 18.00, set up and general mingling
Talks begin at 18:15 with a very brief introduction
Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10-15 minutes.
After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions.
We vote the best speaker. The winner will receive the best speaker prize and unending glory (see the full list of all past winners).
Discussion and #award and #geobeers paid for by the sponsors.
The speakers:
João Manuel, from GeoInsight, will explain how Discrete Global Grids can help us create geospatial insights.
Luis Calisto will talk about Geodata and APIs, and...
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge — a support group for the geospatially-curious. In any case, the aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:LLMs and Earth Data: Can agents analyse satellite imagery.Walkability Emotions: Attachment to neighbourhood shapes walking.Disaster Detection: Training-free model runs directly in orbit.Energy Cooperation: Coordinated grids cut clean power costs.Roman Roads: Most detailed digital network of the empire.Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. Can we use LLMs to analyse satellite images?Say you want to figure out how many days last year saw more than 25% of Chicago experiencing surface temperatures above 300K, using Landsat 8 data. That’s not something you can answer by just looking at a satellite image. You need to download the right data, calculate brightness temperatures, apply thresholds across hundreds of images, and aggregate the results. Current...
Ein Jahr nach dem GIS Day 2024 sitze ich wieder im Zug. Ungefähr, denn heute ist streng genommen noch nicht internationaler GIS Day, also dieser Tag, der international Geoinformationen gewidmet ist. Für den Tag nach dem GIS Day gibt es bekanntermassen einen Namen: PostGIS Day . Für den Tag vor dem GIS Day gibt es …
Introduction The word “open” gets used so often in tech that it starts to feel universal, like everyone must be talking about the same thing. But once you listen closely, it becomes obvious that different groups mean very different things when they say it. A software engineer is thinking about readable source code and licenses. […]
Adventures In Mapping | John Nelson Maps
• By John
•
Download this ArcGIS Pro project package that lets you make fun block diagram poster things in minutes. There are ten layout designs in two colors, waiting for your experience and ideas. Slice out little pieces of earth and drop them onto labeled poster paper. What could be more fun? It’s simple, just…
Grab the project package.
Define your locations and descriptions
Profit
When you download the ArcGIS Pro project package and open it up, you’ll see a bunch of layouts. Choose the layout you like and modify the map extents (right-click and choose “activate”) and edit the text fields (double-click a text item from the table of contents and edit it in the properties dialog). Share a finished layout by choosing the “Share” tab and opening the “Export Layout” dialog.
There is only one Map used in all the map frames, so changing one will change them all. You can always change anything about the project to meet your own needs, of course.
Here is a bit more information...
Coverage in Jackson Mississippi
To the uninitiated, address data appears simple. Scrawl an address on an envelope and a postal service will deliver it to the specified destination. However, the data enabling these systems is a complex mess of unique local formats, thousands of data sources, and obscure rules that at times seem nonsensical.
Finding, evaluating, and combining these sources, so you don’t have to, is Overture’s core work. Today, our addresses dataset includes nearly 200 data sources representing over 450 million addresses, and growing.
In a recent release, we added coverage for the US state of Mississippi. Though it’s a small slice of the address pie, the story of how we assembled Mississippi addresses is a perfect example of our larger work, involving plenty of detective work, complex engineering, and careful data reconciliation.
The Goal: One Format, One Release, All Addresses
What does our address data look like after it’s gone through our process? One data format, one...
When and where?
Next on our tour-de-Belgique is Antwerp, on Tuesday, 18 Nov. 2025.
The event’s venue is at Buurtcentrum Cortina in the Kerkstraat 68, Antwerpen.
We will welcome everyone at 6:30 PM and aim to start the talks by 6:45 PM.
Agenda
Our format for the evening will be:
6:30 PM: doors open, set up and general mingling
6:45 PM: we begin the talks with a very brief introduction
Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10-15 minutes.
After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions.
This time we stay in the same place (we are already in a ‘pub’!) #geobeers paid for by the
sponsors.
The speakers:
Maarten Lambrechts, Development Data Group - World Bank, Space2Stats: fresh open geodata from the World Bank
Manuel Claeys Bouuaert, allmaps.org , Allmaps - an open source toolbox for georeferencing and exploring IIIF maps
Stijn Vernaillen, City of Antwerp/Smart Ways to Antwerp, Finding the balance between OSM and own data.
...
The geospatial world is changing fast. AI is reshaping how data is created and interpreted. New APIs are emerging across domains. And organizations everywhere are trying to modernize aging systems without breaking what already works.In moments like these, it’s easy to talk about “standards.”It’s much harder — and far more important — to make sure they actually work in practice.That’s what an OGC Code Sprint is: a pressure-test of reality — a place where ideas become implementations, where assumptions meet code, and where gaps surface early enough to fix them.OGC Code Sprints are where Standards stop being text on a page and start becoming tools people can actually use. They create space for implementers, editors, and curious newcomers to:
Prove what works (and what doesn’t)
Discover edge cases nobody anticipated
Catch integration issues before they hit production
Test emerging patterns against real-world code
Build shared understanding and practical...
On a hot August afternoon in the early 2040s, a wildfire flares in a parched valley in the Mediterranean. A single satellite snaps a frame; just one tile in the endless strip of data silently collecting in low-Earth orbit.But this time, the image never touches a ground station.Instead, it veers sideways, into a shoebox-sized rack of GPUs bolted to the inside of another satellite. Within seconds, an onboard model flags a new ignition, cross-checks with wind and fuel maps, and beams down a handful of bytes: coordinates, confidence, predicted spread.On the fire command center’s screen, the alert looks almost trivial; just one more icon on a map.Behind it, though, is the question more people in cloud and space are beginning to ask out loud:Are we really going to build data centers in space?And if we do… is that an act of climate responsibility, or simply a very expensive way of exporting our problems above the Kármán line?Earth Observation isn’t the sole force pushing compute off-planet,...
If you’ve been watching the rapid growth of geospatial AI, you’ve definitely heard the buzz about embeddings—compact representations of satellite imagery that can capture complex patterns and relationships in satellite data. This summer, Google announced the AlphaEarth Foundations (AEF) model, which represents a step change for our entire community. Along with the model, Google released pre-computed global embeddings at 10-meter resolution, freely available and ready to use without expensive infrastructure or deep learning expertise.
Why This Matters to our Community
With Taylor Geospatial Engine’s (TGE) current initiative, Fields of The World (FTW), teams are testing multiple model architectures to predict field boundaries globally. We wanted to understand where AEF embeddings fit:
– Could they boost boundary-prediction accuracy? – Should they be used as direct inputs? – Or should they be used...
This post is cross-posted on the Taylor Geospatial Engine Blog
If you’ve been watching the rapid growth of geospatial AI, you’ve definitely heard the buzz about embeddings—compact representations of satellite imagery that can capture complex patterns and relationships in satellite data. This summer, Google announced the AlphaEarth Foundations (AEF) model, which represents a step change for our entire community. Along with the model, Google released pre-computed global embeddings at 10-meter resolution, freely available and ready to use without expensive infrastructure or deep learning expertise.
Why This Matters to our Community
With Taylor Geospatial Engine’s (TGE) current initiative, Fields of The World (FTW), teams are testing multiple model architectures to predict field boundaries globally. We wanted to understand where AEF embeddings fit:
– Could they boost boundary-prediction accuracy?
– Should they be used as direct inputs?
– Or should they be used as features that enhance...
This Landsat Surface Temperature Web Mapping Application and data could be very useful in physical geography, environmental science, and GIS courses in instruction, and for research purposes:
https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/landsat-surface-temp/#mapCenter=-117.180%2C34.055%2C10.000&mode=dynamic&mainScene=%7CSurface+Temperature+Colorized+%28Fahrenheit%29%7C
From this application, you can obtain the land or water surface temperature as of the time the Landsat image was generated for any point on the planet, generate a surface profile to look at change over time, use Landsat scenes stretching back to the 1970s, and then use additional maps and data to compare the surface temperature to the air temperature, analyzing the reasons for the differences. The same data is available as image services in ArcGIS Online and in ArcGIS Pro, too, for further analysis.
Below I show the dynamic function and the profile function in the application. I think this touches on a trend we have...
A VerySpatial PodcastShownotes – Episode 77316 November 2025
Geography Awareness Week 2025
Click to directly download MP3
YouTube (audio only)
AVSP – Episode 773 Transcript (docx)
http://traffic.libsyn.com/avsp/AVSP_Episode773.mp3
News:
Gemini is Google Maps
MapGuide Open Source 4.0
GISCI recertification grace period
New Emlid models
Sentinel 1D
Web corner
#30DayMapChallenge
Topic:
Geography Awareness Week
Making Spaces of Possibility
https://www.aag.org/geography-awareness-week-2025/
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/242619483f124ee2b10848e9ddb49782
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/celebrate-geography-awareness-week/
https://www.gisday.com/en-us/overview
Events:
GeoWeek: Feb 16-18, Denver
Music: A Place Called Home by Justin Morgan
Written by Paul Van Haaren Solutions Engineering Manager at VertiGIS . . Modern geospatial platforms offer significant improvements in speed, scalability, and security while reducing costs and risks. The growing
The post Modernize or Marginalize: How to Solve the Geospatial Application Dilemma appeared first on VertiGIS.
While AI can scale fault detection across rail networks, the process only succeeds when railway inspection crews confirm conditions on site. Crews verify each alert’s location and severity, capture photos, measurements, and GPS data, and document everything within structured workflows. Human-in-the-loop validation turns automated detection into actionable maintenance, cutting errors, reducing backlog, and keeping rail repairs aligned with real-world conditions. In addition, field verification keeps inspection data tied to actual track infrastructure and supports Federal Railroad Administration compliance requirements.
Key insights
AI speeds fault detection across rail networks with imaging, sensors, and geometry models, but inspections still depend on crews verifying each alert in the field.
Separating automated detection from human confirmation prevents false positives and ties maintenance work to real track conditions.
A structured alert-to-work-order process of...
Blog Archive - SSP Innovations
• By Carrie Turner
•
The Utility Network shouldn’t require your editors to relearn everything. Our geo-coincident (snap-based) approach keeps familiar GN-style editing intact and delivers full UN behavior like phase propagation and per-phase operability.
The post SSP Electric Data Model appeared first on SSP Innovations.
Resilience planning demands more than a patchwork of outdated maps and scattered inspections. By combining high-level GIS with real-time field data, organizations gain the unified insight needed to predict risks, respond intelligently, and recover faster. An integrated approach transforms resilience planning into a proactive, data-driven process. It also strengthens management practices, improves data security, supports facilities teams, and delivers measurable cost savings across the infrastructure life cycle.
Key insights
Resilience planning breaks down when GIS and field data live in disconnected silos
Spatial analysis is the first step, allowing teams to model where systems are most vulnerable before a crisis hits and infrastructure safety is compromised.
Advanced mobile platforms like Fulcrum capture the dynamic, real-time ground truth that strategic maps lack.
A live operational model enables predictive maintenance and strengthens resilience planning across...
Stop letting broken field software and data silos kill your productivity. Replace them with no-code tools and automated workflows that fit how your teams actually work. Learn how low-code platforms empower your field teams to build the fieldwork apps they actually need, turning IT from a police force into a strategic partner.
Key insights
Low-code and no-code platforms eliminate the need for massive IT builds by enabling direct process creation from the field.
Citizen developers like field supervisors, techs, and ops leads are driving innovation with drag-and-drop workflows and real-time tools.
Field-first platforms must meet two core demands: built-in GIS and full offline reliability.
Enterprise-grade low-code platforms prevent shadow IT by centralizing control without slowing down the field.
Most field operations are running on borrowed time, technologically speaking.
Outdated tools and disconnected systems create drag across every part of field operations....
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
•
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter is free, but proceeds from paid subscriptions are used to law students who attend geospatial conferences and events worldwide.GeoAI and the Law is not legal advice. The reader should consult with a trained lawyer on legal matters associated with GeoAI.What You’ll Learn This WeekThis issue explores how courts and policymakers across the world are reshaping the legal landscape for GeoAI in areas such as copyright and data provenance to governance, liability, and compliance frameworks.Copyright and Model Training:Two landmark rulings reach different conclusions on whether use of training data constitutes infringement. You’ll learn what these cases mean for GeoAI models trained on licensed imagery, maps, or sensor data, and how to mitigate infringement risk through lawful data sourcing and provenance controls.Governance and Accountability Frameworks:Australia’s Voluntary AI Safety Standard and India’s AI Governance Guidelines (2025) highlight global moves...
How Local Policies Are Making a Difference, and Why Federal Policy May Undo It All Millions of Americans are burdened with medical debt, often exacerbated by a lack of insurance...
The post Medical Debt in America: Policy, Health, and Financial Impacts appeared first on PolicyMap.
Learn how to use HTML in your Mergin Maps project to improve survey workflows, create Google Maps links, display species info dynamically, and access offline documents.
The PostGIS Team is pleased to publish PostGIS 3.6.1. This is a bug fix release that includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.6.0.
This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18, Proj 6.1+, and GEOS 3.8+. To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.12+ is needed.
SFCGAL 1.4+ is needed to enable postgis_sfcgal support. To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 2.2+ is needed.
3.6.1
source download md5
NEWS
PDF docs: en
HTML Online en ja fr zh_Hans
Cheat Sheets:
postgis: en ja fr zh_Hans
postgis_raster: en ja fr zh_Hans
postgis_topology: en ja fr zh_Hans
postgis_sfcgal: en ja fr zh_Hans
address standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder: en ja fr zh_Hans
Tell us about yourselfI’m a visual projects editor at The Guardian in the UK. As a visual journalist, making maps is part of my job, but I’ve always been a bit of a jack of all trades, and I love learning new tools that help me tell visually led stories. I fell in love with maps during the pandemic, when two things happened at once.
First, I discovered raster files, and I was amazed by how a single pixel of data could reveal so much about a place—its altitude, temperature, depth… Then I found out that my great-great-great-grandfather, Manuel María Paz, was a watercolour artist and cartographer who worked with Agustín Codazzi on the Chorographic Expedition in Colombia—a scientific mission in the 1850s to describe the country’s geography. I took that as a sign!
Tell us the story behind your mapI’m Colombian, but I’ve lived in London for 25 years. The first time I flew back home and saw the mountains from my aeroplane window, my heart skipped a beat. That’s when I realised how...
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge, a newsletter that’s almost as famous as Moran’s I. The aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week…In today’s newsletter:Satellite to Street: AI turns satellite views into street imagery.Forest Recovery: Mapping how Europe’s forests bounce back after fires.Geo Reasoning: Training AI to understand spatial relationships.Global Boundaries: World Bank releases new administrative maps.Cooling Data: Mapping residential air conditioning across the U.S.Subscribe nowFirst up, it was great to meet a bunch of you at the EAEA Conference in Manila last weekend. It was great fun, and looking forward to next year. I’ll be in Bangkok in a couple of weeks for Clean Air Week, so hit me up if you’re in town.Research you should know about1. Turning satellite images into street view imageryIf you’re like me, you’ve spent many long hours dreaming about how you can turn satellite images into street-view...
Using GIS to Support Insurance Risk Management in Commercial ForestryWildfires have always been part of the natural landscape, but for insurers, farmers, and forestry managers, they represent a growing financial risk. A single blaze can destroy years of work, devastate commercial plantations, and leave insurers facing enormous claims. Managing that risk effectively requires more than just field reports or local weather data. It needs precision, speed, and insight.
That is where Geographic Information Systems (GIS) make a real difference. By combining satellite imagery, spatial analytics, and environmental data, GIS provides insurers and their clients with a detailed, near real-time view of fire risk, detection, and impact. It turns uncertainty into clarity, helping both underwriters and asset owners make better, faster decisions.
The Challenge: Quantifying Fire Risk Across Vast LandscapesIn the world of commercial forestry and agriculture, fire doesn’t just destroy assets, it disrupts...
At Sparkgeo, we spend a lot of time thinking about how things could be done better and recognizing when it’s time for a major shift. We thrive in periods of innovation, but we know it doesn’t come easy. It requires trust in the unknown, persistence through friction, and a deep belief that data should be easier to access and use. That’s why we’re excited to be part of the big changes underway at the European Space Agency (ESA).
The ESA EOPF Initiative and Why it Matters
ESA’s Sentinel missions collect a staggering volume of Earth observation data; petabytes of imagery that can reveal stories about our planet’s climate, land use, and infrastructure. Until now, most of that data has been locked inside the legacy Standard Archive Format for Europe (SAFE). The format worked well in the early days, but with today’s data volumes, existing processing and analysis workflows simply can’t keep up.
To address this need for change, ESA launched the Earth Observation Processing Framework...
Level-2 NewsAriane 6 launches Sentinel-1D. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/ArianeGroup/Optique video du CSG–P. PironAriane 6 launches Sentinel-1D [link]"The Copernicus Sentinel-1D satellite has joined the Sentinel-1 mission in orbit. Launch took place on 4 November 2025 at 22:02 CET (18:02 local time) on board an Ariane 6 launcher from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana."ESA’s HydroGNSS Scout satellites ready for launch [link]"After arriving at the California launch site at the end of September, the two HydroGNSS satellites have been carefully prepared for liftoff, scheduled this month.HydroGNSS – a twin-satellite mission – marks the European Space Agency’s first ‘Scout’ venture. By harnessing signals from navigation satellites, HydroGNSS will help scientists gain new insights into key climate variables linked to water."Rheinmetall and ICEYE establish joint venture in Neuss [link]"The technology group Rheinmetall and ICEYE, have completed the establishment of their joint venture,...
By Jed Sundwall, Executive Director of Radiant Earth
This is an abridged version of a keynote given at the 2025 Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Open Science Meeting.
Photo provided by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
I’m an English major. I have degrees in Spanish and English from the University of Utah and a master’s in foreign policy from UCSD. Despite my non-technical background, due to a series of accidents, I’ve managed to work in data sharing and science policy for almost two decades. And despite my technical career, I’m still a humanities guy at heart, and I’m convinced that the language we use to talk about data is keeping us from realizing its full potential.
As we contemplate the future of data sharing in 2025, it’s worth looking at how far we’ve come over the first quarter of the century. Here’s a cherry-picked set of technological and institutional innovations that have shaped my career:
2004: Facebook founded. First AWS service announced.
2006: Amazon S3 launched.
2007:...
While we have explored disasters in the past through agent-based models and other computational social science approaches, one area we have not explored is how one can use agent-based models to explore evacuations durring a wild fire event. This has now changed with a new paper with Zhongyu Zhou and myself entitled "Modeling Wildfire Evacuation with Embedded Fuzzy Cognitive Maps: An Agent-Based Simulation of Emotion and Social Contagion" which was recently presented at the 2025 International Conference of the Computational Social Science Society of the Americas (CSSSA). In the paper we present an agent-based model combined with an embedded fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) to simulate residents’ evacuation behavior during a wildfire event. If this sounds of interest, below we provide the abstract to the paper along with some of the figures that showcase the model logic and some of its results. A detailed ODD, the model and the data needed to run the model can be found at:...
Warning: we swore a little in this one, if that’s the kind of thing that offends you I recommend you don’t listen!This episode was about failures: that sinking feeling you get when a project just isn’t working out. (00:00) Experimental failures. Krishna won’t let Chris forget about his failed SimCLR experiments.(04:30) Geographic generalization discussion. Husky vs Malamute vs Wellpad.(11:32) Chris fails to map coconut palm because it’s hard. Read the paper carefully.(15:30) Krishna maps oil slicks, but it’s hard.(20:30) Cognitive debt, problem selection and failure modes in geospatial.(31:00) The sales cycle, promises, inflated expectations. Limitations in geospatial.(34:00) Problem selection in journalism. Are we running out of ideas?(37:00) Turning a failure into a success. Cover crop mapping is hard.(45:00) Turning failure into a success: predicting sugarcane yield is hard.(49:00) Is building tooling easier than solving modeling problems?(53:00) Vertical seems better than...
For decades, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have helped people see the world differently. Planners, governments, corporations, researchers, and nonprofits use GIS to uncover geospatial relationships, manage resources and infrastructure, develop integrated plans, operationalize maps, and shape better futures. But as with many maturing technologies, GIS is entering a troubling phase—a process some call “enshitification.”Coined by tech critic Cory Doctorow, “enshitification” describes how once-great platforms decay under the pressures of greed and control. They begin as open, user-centered systems but gradually morph into closed ecosystems optimized for corporate rent-seeking rather than public good. GIS, long built on ideals of openness and shared data, now shows many of these symptoms.The Decline of OpennessEarly GIS revolved around collaboration. Governments invested in public basemaps, universities shared tools, and the rise of open-source projects like QGIS fostered...
Meet Hefni Azzahra – our new QGIS documentation writer, joining us from Indonesia!
Hefni holds a Bachelor’s degree in Geodetic Engineering and brings a strong background in geospatial science and mapping to the QGIS project. She’s passionate about GIS and has a curious mind that loves exploring new tools and ideas — a great match for the QGIS documentation team!
In her new role, Hefni will help improve and expand QGIS documentation, from clarifying existing tools to making new features easier to understand for users of all levels.
Outside of work, she enjoys swimming (her favorite!), going to the gym, painting, and discovering cozy cafés.
We’re excited to have her on board. Welcome to the team, Hefni!
I wasn’t looking forward to FOSS4G North America. The political and economic situation in the US made it much more difficult to attract sponsorship dollars. The government shutdown and the preceding sets of arbitrary and capricious cuts to government staff made attendance hard to predict. Three weeks prior to the event, it was not at all obvious it would be successful. It simply felt hard and, for me, that made it one more hard thing in a year that has been full of hard.
To those of you who tuned into this post expecting a FOSS4GNA recap, I apologize in advance. There will be something like that before it’s done, but I’m going to veer off into some personal processing first. This year started with some health issues for me. The issues themselves were mostly not dire and there are others in our community who have endured much more serious health issues recently. I started the year with two consecutive eye surgeries, one planned and the other unplanned.
The first was a scheduled...
Human mobility datasets are essential for investigating human behavior, mobility patterns, and traffic dynamics. In the past we have written about how one can use agent-based models to generate patterns of life trajectories datasets. Building on this work at the ACM SIGSPATIAL 2025 conference, we (Hossein Amiri, Richard Yang, Shiyang Ruan, Joon-Seok Kim, Hamdi Kavak, Andrew Crooks, Dieter Pfoser, Carola Wenk and Andreas Züfle) had a paper entitled "HD-GEN: A Software System for Large-Scale Human Mobility Data Generation Based on Patterns of Life"In this paper, we extend our previous work by introducing a software system that provides a new suite of tools built on top of the Patterns of Life simulation framework. Specifically
this work consolidates our contributions into a unified data generation pipeline that includes:additional discussion of the motivation and applications of large-scale simulated trajectory data, detailed instructions on running the simulation and...
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today The Sanborn Map Company announced a new 1-inch ground sample distance (GSD) oblique aerial imagery offering. Using next-generation cameras, Sanborn can now cost effectively capture oblique images with 1-inch per pixel resolution, dramatically increasing the economic practicality of ultra-hi-resolution imagery.
“Sanborn is providing industry-leading image quality with precise geometry for use across our markets,” said Jason Caldwell, Vice President of Sales.
Sanborn’s 1-inch oblique imagery offering brings several key advantages:
Ultra-high resolution: Each pixel covers only one inch on the ground, giving up to 9× the detail of traditional 3‑inch aerial surveys. As CEO John Copple notes, “The combination of oblique and nadir data processed to ASPRS accuracy standards with one inch resolution gives an information-rich view of assets from all perspectives.” This clarity and accuracy are invaluable for detailed asset inspection, tax...
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), in partnership with the U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) and our members, is spearheading an ambitious effort to envision the future of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)—the systems that underpin how location-based data is collected, shared, and used. The initiative, showcased through the newly launched SDI Modernization Gateway, highlights how members of the OGC Community envision—and indeed, are already building—the SDI of the future.For the OGC, this effort embodies our core values of collaboration and interoperability, ensuring that the next generation of SDI is built not just for today’s challenges, but also for tomorrow’s opportunities across communities, industries, and nations.A Decade of AmbitionThe SDI Modernization Project aligns with a U.S. national 10-year spatial data strategy, drawing on public and private expertise to deliver more responsive, integrated, and interoperable geospatial services—and led by the FGDC. This...
Day 6 of the 30 day map challenege is Dimensions, and when I read the prompt I immediately thought: I have to do something with M values.
M values, you say? It’s true that these don’t come up as often as Z, but many spatial specifications out there allow combinations of XY, XYZ, XYM, or XYZM values. The M stands for “measure” because I think the original motivation was that sometimes the linear distance along a feature is actually the easiest thing to measure (think: you’re mapping a rail line before reliable high-precision GPS and what you write down is the odometer reading of the train). The ability to store a fourth dimension is also helpful when communicating time. I’m not 100% on the history here (if you have a definitive history feel free to share and I’ll link it!) but I did once meet somebody from ESRI who told me their dad invented them and that M values are popular in South America. Who knew?
From an implementation junkie’s perspective (me), M values (in particular the XYM...
Taylor Geospatial Engine (TGE) exists to accelerate the development and commercialization of geospatial innovation emerging from academic research. Through its Innovation Bridge Program, TGE connects academia and industry to turn research-stage concepts into technology that’s quickly usable by many organizations. In 2024, TGE supported the development of Fields of The World (FTW)—the largest benchmark dataset for extracting field boundaries from satellite imagery. Now, FTW is in Phase 2 which expands the work and focuses on producing usable field boundary data in collaboration with partners in sustainable agriculture, supply chain, and food security. As part of our FTW journey, we’re profiling key contributors who are making this vision a reality.
When Caleb Robinson joined Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab five years ago, after completing his PhD at Georgia Tech, he brought with him a passion for...
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge. If you know what a Zarr is, then we have one thing to say to you: welcome home. In any case, the aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:GeoLink model: Trains remote sensing 10× fasterMapping favelas: Graph networks detect informal settlementsHyperspectral AI: Boosts both spatial and spectral detailZero tillage: Proven to cut India’s stubble burningHigh-res DEM: NASA’s EarthDEM provides 2m resolution data.Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. Training remote sensing models 10x faster with OpenStreetMapRemote sensing models have been getting pretty good at interpreting satellite imagery, but they’ve mostly ignored a huge source of geographic knowledge: OpenStreetMap. A new study introduces GeoLink, a foundation model that learns from both satellite images and OSM vector data at the same time. The clever bit is how it connects the two. Rather than just...
It’s day 5…earth! I was particular excited about this day in the 30 day map challenege because earth is my thing…I did a M.Sc. in Geology and taught Geomorphology at Acadia University for several years. While my first thought was mapping bedrock or surficial geology in Nova Scotia, I was foiled by the fact that Nova Scotia DNR distributes its files as self-extracting executable files and I’m on a Mac. Instead, I turned to the open data of my new home in Winnipeg, Manitoba for the earthiest thing they could come up with. Turns out: it’s LiDAR.
My initial attempt to map the whole city fell apart after it took took too long to download the files, so I constrained my problem to downtown Winnipeg where there was a fighting chance of observable elevation change and a truly excellent market with some of the best Fish & Chips out there. I took a look at the tile map and figured out the download URL was a bit of a pattern.
# pip install "apache-sedona[db]"
import sedona.db
sd =...
With the federal government shutdown continuing through November, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) initially faced a suspension of benefits as no emergency funds had been authorized by the Trump...
The post Mapping the Impact of SNAP Benefit Reductions During the Federal Shutdown appeared first on PolicyMap.
Adventures In Mapping | John Nelson Maps
• By John
•
Ever feel like your beautiful web map is trapped in the confines of your monitor? Do you wish its bounty could spill out beyond the stifling domain of 1920×1080? Here’s how to trick a browser’s device emulation tools to capture enormous screenshots. Now you can export your screen as though it were the size of a billboard. So many pixels. I’ll use it to export huge maps from the ArcGIS Online Map Viewer.
0:00 A really nice little intro.
0:33 How to create a fake (and potentially gigantic) device in the browser’s device emulator. You only have to do this part once.
1:33 Capture huuuuuge screenshots at the emulated dimensions.
1:50 Profit.
It’s a useful hack for exporting your ArcGIS Online web maps and apps at absurd sizes. Printing a huge poster for the Esri User Conference? Check. Sending a hero-shot image of your cool dashboard to a plotter? Check. Engineering need a print of your site plan at absurd resolution? Check. Marketing wants your map for a page in a...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Joe Calamari
•
Join Karyn Hayes-Ryan (Deep Waterpoint), Shawana Johnson (Global Marketing Insights), and Joe Calamari (CACI) as they share their firsthand experiences and key takeaways from the GEOINT 2025 symposium. This insightful discussion delves into the evolving landscape of the geospatial intelligence industry, highlighting shifts in NGA's presence, the impact of the Golden Ticket program, and the growing prominence of AI and advanced analytics.Highlights:• Golden Ticket Program Experience: Joe Calamari, a USGIF Golden Ticket winner, discusses his unique experience at GEOINT 2025, which provides younger professionals with unparalleled access to senior leaders and peers, fostering valuable mentorship and networking opportunities. Shawana Johnson also shares how her interns, prepared through extensive geospatial work, successfully leveraged the program for career advancement.• Evolving NGA Presence and Industry Engagement: The symposium saw a "different" NGA presence, with key leaders attending...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Joe Calamari
•
The video features an in-depth discussion on effective leadership and people development within the geospatial, defense, and intelligence communities, hosted by Karen Hayes-Ryan of Project Geospatial with trailblazing leaders Shawana Johnson (CEO, Oval Marketing Insights), Meredith Davis (VP, Govini), and Deb Davis (Board member, USGIF and OGC). The leaders detail efforts to support the next generation through extensive student internship programs and social enterprises focused on transitioning military veterans into high-tech roles. Key strategies for leadership include cultivating a culture of caring, managing succession, and identifying future talent based on traits like drive, curiosity, and flexibility. The panelists also share personal struggles—such as balancing family life with demanding careers or earning a doctorate while working full-time—and offer essential advice for navigating industry turbulence: stay flexible, focus on immediate problems ("10-meter target"), and get AI...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Joe Calamari
•
Harley Emery, founder of Charted Consulting, discusses her new woman-owned small business specializing in geospatial data analysis and reporting for humanitarian and development organizations. Motivated by unmet needs in the UN system and job defunding, Charted aims to provide specialized external services. Plans include scalable, user-friendly tools with automated and AI-supported workflows, highlighting Geoint's crucial role in humanitarian decision-making. Harley also details Charted's lean, flexible team model, utilizing vetted consultants and creating opportunities for skilled humanitarians. The discussion emphasizes opportunities for Geoint integration via user-friendly tools, machine learning, imagery analysis, and private sector partnerships, alongside the invaluable mentorship and networking from the USGIF GEOINT Symposium's Golden Ticket program.Key Highlights:• Charted Consulting: A new woman-owned small business offering data analysis, GIS, and report production for...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Joe Calamari
•
Gain a competitive edge in your geospatial career! We recently sat down with a panel of distinguished leaders for a revealing discussion on successful career navigation, building a powerful personal brand, and the indispensable value of networking. This insightful conversation was expertly guided by Moderator Karyn Hayes-Ryan and featured the expertise of Tara Mott (ESRI), Susan Case (TekSynap), Shawana Johnson (Global Marketing Insights, Inc), and Katie Betts (Albedo). Their shared wisdom underscores how adaptability, dedication, and a commitment to lifelong learning are fundamental to reaching your career goals.Highlights You Can't Miss:🌟 Learn why networking and personal branding are non-negotiable for career advancement.🤝 Discover how active community engagement can create significant growth and opportunities.🎓 Understand why your passion might speak louder than your degree in the hiring process.💪 Get advice on embracing the unique value of your experiences, especially when...
Our Apps & Integration team just wrapped a major generational upgrade of TxDOT’s TAMES application—TxDOT’s Accessibility Management Enterprise System. TAMES is a web and mobile solution built on the ArcGIS Enterprise platform, designed to help TxDOT elevate accessibility across the state’s transportation network.TAMES powers a wide range of accessibility workflows, including:ADA Self‑Evaluations – supporting systematic assessment of physical barriers and compliance standards.Accessibility Data Management – tracking, organizing, and visualizing accessibility information to guide remediation.A Comprehensive Accessibility Program – enabling 100% public right‑of‑way data collection, progress monitoring, and expenditure reporting.What We Loved About This WorkA full‑stack overhaul. This upgrade touched every layer: data elements, data stores, services, a completely new API, and a rebuilt front‑end using the Calcite design system. Delivering modern performance, rock‑solid architecture, and a...
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
•
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter is free, but proceeds from paid subscriptions are used to law students who attend geospatial conferences and events worldwide.From the EditorAs AI systems evolve from tools to agents, the legal frameworks around them are shifting just as quickly. This week’s developments—from Singapore’s lifecycle security guidance to the EU’s interpretation of “provider” obligations—highlight how governments are refining accountability in autonomous and data-driven systems. For geospatial professionals, these changes are not theoretical; they shape how location intelligence, analytics, and model governance will operate across jurisdictions.What You’ll Learn This WeekHow Singapore’s Agentic AI Addendum may redefine controls for autonomous GeoAI systemsWhy the UK’s “contextual, regulator-led” model is reshaping compliance for geospatial firmsWhat Reddit v. Perplexity teaches about lawful data sourcing for AI trainingWhen fine-tuning under the EU AI Act makes you a...
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Fred Woods
•
Simulated battlespace: Motes are deployed within a denied battlespace, forming a mesh network. A semi-buried satellite uplink enables the streaming of measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) data for GEOINT processing, analysis, and dissemination.
...
Experienced geospatial executive with a strong background in national mapping policies will lead Overture’s next phase of expansion and adoption
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — November 3, 2025 — Overture Maps Foundation, a collaborative effort to build a foundational base layer of map data to facilitate data exchange, today announced Will Mortenson as its new executive director as Overture moves into its next phase of growth and industry leadership.
Mortenson has an extensive track record as a senior geospatial official in the U.S. federal mapping world and was most recently the director of the Office of Geography at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). He succeeds Overture’s inaugural executive director, Marc Prioleau, who announced that he would be retiring at the end of the year.
“Overture’s work to date has positioned it as a cornerstone of the open geospatial ecosystem,” said Mortenson. “I am excited by Overture’s collaborative model, bringing...
From October 14-16, the STAC and Zarr communities came together at ESA ESRIN in Frascati, Italy, for the first-ever STAC sprint in Europe focused on advancing cloud-native multidimensional geospatial data. After three intensive days of collaborative development, we’re excited to share what we accomplished and what we hope to be the path forward for STAC-Zarr integration.
Participants gathered at ESA ESRIN for the first European STAC sprint
A Community Comes Together
Twenty-six developers from across Europe and beyond converged on ESA’s facility in Frascati, representing a remarkable cross-section of the geospatial data community. Organizations including ESA, CEDA, DLR, EODC, Eurac Research, CloudFerro, Terradue, Element 84, Development Seed, DKRZ, Tilebox, and many others brought their unique perspectives and expertise to hammer out how multidimensional data should be represented in STAC.
What made this sprint particularly powerful was the convergence of two communities, STAC and...
An astounding and outstanding 3D model of Sutro Tower in San Francisco has been released by Vincent Woo. Sutro Tower in 3D is a fully interactive representation of the city’s 977-foot (298-meter) tall radio and television transmission tower. The model was created using thousands of aerial images of the tower, all captured by UAV / drone. These images were then processed into a fully interactive 3D model, thanks largely to Gaussian splatting (read more about it here).
Fly around the tower interactively, zooming in and out to examine any detail of the structure. It even includes interactive markers that, when clicked, provide information on various features of the tower.
You could supplement this: https://explore.sutrotower.com/the-view/zoom/south with a Gigapan view of San Francisco, such as those found here: https://gigapan.com/gigapans?query=san+francisco
Ways to use it: Land Use: Discuss the land use patterns in the city, how elevation impacted (or did not impact)...
Day two of the 30 day map challenege is lines! A few weeks ago I wrote a post about stream traversal with SedonaDB. For day two I’ll do this with the river system for Gaspereau Lake (starting at the mouth of the beautiful Gaspereau River!). For anybody not familiar with the Gaspereau River, it features excellent wineries and the best tubing this side of any line you draw.
Let’s get to it!
# pip install "apache-sedona[db]"
import sedona.db
sd = sedona.db.connect()
sd.options.interactive = True
Let’s get ourselves some data! I’ll use the same GeoParquet as in the last post, but while in the last post I downloaded it using curl, I’ve since realized that SedonaDB can load it straight from the http url in a few seconds. I’ll augment the segments right out of the gate with the start/end points…the feature code list I had to iterate on a bit because the Gaspereau River system has a few fun hydrological components I hadn’t spotted in the last post (notably: canals, flumes, dams, and coastal...
A VerySpatial PodcastShownotes – Episode 7721 November 2025
A push in AR/XR and maps
Click to directly download MP3
YouTube (audio only)
AVSP – Episode 772 Transcript (docx)
http://traffic.libsyn.com/avsp/AVSP_Episode772.mp3
News:
Grounding with Google Maps
Geospatial Reasoning and Gemini in Google Earth
Google AR/Galaxy XR
Meta Ray-Ban Display
Meta’s Wearables Device Access toolkit announced
Amazon AR for delivery drivers
Web corner
The Leventhal Center’s Atlasscope Map Tool
Events:
GeoAI 2026: 3-5 June, Ghent city center, Belgium CFP due 20 January
The 2026 International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management (GISTAM): 21-23 May, Benidorm, Spain CFP due 5 January
The 2026 GIS-in-Central-Asia (GISCA) conference: 28-30 May, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
TREEHOUSE by Tomy Wyne
Living Planet Fellowship call for proposals 2025 [link]ESA invites young researchers in ESA Member States to submit scientific proposals to the Living Planet Fellowship Call 2025. The LPF aims at supporting the new generation of scientists in ESA Member States to undertake cutting-edge research in Earth Observation and Earth System and Climate Science that may maximise the scientific impact of ESA missions and European EO capacity and respond to the main challenges of the new ESA Earth Observation Science Strategy: Earth Science in Action for Tomorrow’s World.Submission deadline – 14th November 2025Level-2 NewsSentinel-1D encapsulated inside Ariane 6 fairing [link]"The Copernicus Sentinel-1D satellite has been encapsulated inside the Ariane 6 fairing at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.Encapsulation is when the satellite is placed inside the protective ‘nose cone’ of the rocket, known as the fairing. It is the final view of the satellite before launch, which is scheduled for...
Day one of the 30 day map challenege is points!
One of the datasets I use all the time in testing is named ns-water_point from GeoArrow Data. When I made this test data I didn’t think very hard about it…the Nova Scotia Geospatial Data Directory has a hydrological section and I spent the better part of a decade there working on lakes…it seemed like fun! Other than a few sanity checks I never really looked at the data, though, even though I read in the points one all the time as an example because it’s the smallest.
Day one of the 30 day map challenege seemed like a good time to resolve this. What is ns-water_point, anyway!?
Let’s roll. I’ll be using SedonaDB, so let’s load it:
# pip install "apache-sedona[db]"
import sedona.db
sd = sedona.db.connect()
sd.options.interactive = True
Next, let’s get the GeoParquet url from the GeoArrow Data page:
url = "https://github.com/geoarrow/geoarrow-data/releases/download/v0.2.0/ns-water_water-point_geo.parquet"
Next I’ll read it in as a view....
Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings
• By underdark
•
The conversation around Looking for better ways to convert between QGIS VectorLayer and (Geo)DataFrame is continuing over at https://fosstodon.org/@underdarkGIS/115442614331293320
What I’ve learned so far:
QgsVectorLayer.as_geopandas() has landed in QGIS master on 13 Oct 2025.
There’s also QgsVectorLayer.field_to_numpy() which will be useful for many applications and has landed on 29 Oct 2025.
QgsArrowIterator is in the works right now.
Exciting times for spatial data science tooling
VertiGIS Blog -Posts Archive
• By Richard Gassner
•
As our world becomes more connected, coordinating complex workflows to meet rising demands is increasingly challenging. Digitalization opens new opportunities—especially through the powerful combination of Digital Twins and Geographic Information
The post From Map to Reality: GIS as the Foundation for Digital Twins and Smart Workflows appeared first on VertiGIS.
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is pleased to announce that Keith Ryden, Software Development Director, Operations & Standards, at Esri, has been named the recipient of the 2025 Kenneth D. Gardels Award. The award recognizes his exemplary contributions to advancing open geospatial standards, his commitment to community collaboration, and his influential role in shaping the foundation of modern geospatial interoperability.Named in honor of OGC’s founding member Kenneth D. Gardels, the award celebrates individuals who have made outstanding contributions to OGC’s consensus standards process and who embody the spirit of open collaboration that Gardels championed.Keith Ryden has been an active and highly influential member of OGC for more than two decades. His impact began with one of OGC’s most enduring achievements: he was among the key editors of the Simple Features Specification for SQL (1997), a standard that laid the groundwork for how spatial data is efficiently stored and...
Recipient of the 2025 Kenneth D. Gardels Award, Keith Ryden has spent more than two decades helping shape many of OGC’s most widely used standards. In this conversation, he reflects on how collaboration across competitors laid the foundation for today’s interoperable geospatial ecosystem—and why open standards continue to matter.
Congratulations on the Gardels Award. You’ve been deeply involved with OGC for decades. How did you first get involved, and what kept you engaged in this community for so long?One of the early OGC projects was to define how spatial data should be stored in a relational database. This was in the mid-90’s and aligned with work we were doing at Esri for spatial data management. The problem the industry was trying to solve was how to use SQL capabilities to efficiently store and query spatial data – and OGC added “in a standard and interoperable way” to that challenge.The OGC provided a forum where we could bring together different interested parties and work...
Introduction: The Lifeguard Dives into Innovation
In the world of modern transportation planning, the answer is yes. Consider the story of Bradley Adams, PE – once a lifeguard, now Senior Vice President of Transportation at The Sanborn Map Company. Brad’s journey from scanning pools for swimmers to scanning roadways with lasers epitomizes the leap in technology that transportation agencies are experiencing. His journey is not unlike Sanborn’s, who was one of the first companies to make the evolution from paper maps and CAD drawings, intelligent GIS systems, and dynamic digital twins. They are more than just tech stories – they’re narratives about making travel safer and more efficient. This was captured during the accompanying podcast to this blog (shown below) hosted by Matthew Byrd and the Reality Capture Network (RCN), where Brad demonstrates how Sanborn is leading the charge, turning data into actionable solutions that save time, save money, and save lives.
From CAD to Digital...
Since starting our Open Data Resources page in 2010, we have received thousands of requests from people looking for various geospatial data to use with their geospatial projects. We now have an ongoing list of places where you can find Canadian Lidar Data that is available to use for free.
We hope that as more people start using this data and that the geospatial community will help us add more Canadian LiDAR Data sources to this page ...
The post Canadian Lidar Data appeared first on Canadian GIS & Geomatics.
A 2023 heatwave killed nearly all of Florida’s main reef-building corals, leaving the reef functionally extinct.
The post Florida’s Primary Reef-Building Corals are ‘Functionally Extinct’ appeared first on Geography Realm.
With PolicyMap and Moody’s Analytics’ new Housing Gap Analysis, the scope of Chicago’s housing challenges is clear–nearly every neighborhood from Logan Square to Pilsen, Albany Park to Bridgeport shows some...
The post Analyzing Housing Supply and Affordability in Chicago Neighborhoods appeared first on PolicyMap.
Once again, FOSS4G North America is bringing together the people shaping the future of open-source geospatial technology. This year, it takes place November 3–5 at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, Virginia, just a few miles from the centers of federal decision-making where open data, open tools, and open collaboration appear to be increasingly at risk.
I’ve attended and helped organize FOSS4G NA for a few years now, and the 2025 program stands out for how clearly it reflects the direction our field is heading. The sessions, workshops, and conversations all point to a few unmistakable trends: the convergence of open-source geospatial with artificial intelligence, cloud-native data, and enterprise-grade interoperability.
GeoAI and Large Language Models
One of the strongest themes this year is the integration of AI and large language models (LLMs) into geospatial analysis. Several sessions will explore how retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and graph-based architectures can give...
A hydraulic engineer by training, Nicolas Godet has been working at ISL Ingénierie for just over seven years and holds the position of hydraulic project manager (flood risk, hydraulic structure safety), deputy director of the Saint-Jean-de-Luz facility, and QGIS (and GIS in general) advisor.
He discusses the implementation of QDT and the associated methodology for deploying QGIS across ISL’s IT infrastructure.
What are the objectives of the collaboration?
Before I took charge of deploying QGIS at ISL, it was a bit of a mess: no one had the same version, the same plugins, or the same practices.
Following the switch to QGIS3, there was a desire to standardize the QGIS fleet at ISL to have the same version, the same plugin base, and preconfigured profiles.
An initial, semi-homemade solution was implemented in 2022, but it proved difficult to maintain.
At the end of 2024, with a budget allocated, we decided to seek assistance from Oslandia to professionalize our QGIS deployment so that...
We look at summarising vector polygon data within larger polygon zones using two different workflows.
Polygons give us a handy way of creating zones, within which we might be interested in knowing what’s going on. Think of country boundaries, regions, school zones or even your own property boundary. Within those zones we often need to summarise some other phenomenon or physical characteristic. Suppose, for example, we’re interested in getting a breakdown of landcover within a river catchment. Sounds like it should be a pretty easy thing in GIS, yeah? Well, not necessarily. At least I haven’t found a straightforward way to do it yet so here I’ll outline two ways to do this. To give us some context, we’ll work with the catchment for Lake Forsyth/Wairewa on Banks Peninsula (which is composed of several different rivers and the lake):
I extracted this from the level 10 HydroBASINs layer on J:, just to give us something to work with. And here’s the Landcover...
Discover the new photo sketching feature in Mergin Maps – annotate images with sketches, notes, and highlights directly in the app using touch or stylus. Learn how to enable and use this tool in your QGIS projects.
I’ve been trying to write more as I get into this “New Life” thing since January.
I’m not a developer. There was a time I did give it a go and it wasn’t my thing. I can write small programs that scratch an itch but they aren’t for mass consumption. I have found a large amount of happiness in SQL and GDAL as of late and PyQGIS….but the PyQGIS blog post is another post for another time.
So here’s an update for the TN911 project. I had mentioned in a previous post I was working on another 911 database job and from that I’ve been learning how to be pickier with error checking the 911 data. I was doing a small amount of checks but nothing serious. I grabbed a backup of one client’s data and have been picking my way through it and looking at “what can be wrong”;
The Pre-Direction could be wrong – that’s the part of the address that’s North/South/etc – so something like “North Main Street”. What if someone fat fingered it and made it “North East Main Street”. The person doing the...
Ryan Kmetz is Research Director at IQSpatial. We are privileged to have his time in this episode. He talked with us about economic conditions faced by geospatial workers in the US. We reflected on the emergence of a protest movement, the No Kings march a couple of weekends ago. We observed how this has emerged in the context of very high cost of living, lack of wage growth, high costs of housing and education. Ryan is a useful guest here because he has in his family history a great great great grandfather who was involved in similar protest movement against a Russian czar and was sent to Siberia as punishment. In a hero’s journey like so many who have come to America over the centuries, this man escaped prison to New York City where he sold newspapers on a street corner. A few generations later we have Ryan to tell this story and remind us that things happen in cycles.By using a translation service you can read more about this family member here.Ryan also told us about another family...
Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings
• By underdark
•
Plugin developers who want to use (Geo)Pandas-based functionality in their plugins regularly face the challenge of converting QGIS vector layers to (Geo)DataFrames. There is currently no built-in convenience function.
In Trajectools, so far, I have been performing the conversion manually, looping through all features and taking care of tricky column types, such as datetimes and geometries:
def df_from_layer_trajectools(layer,time_field_name="t"):
# Original Trajectools 2.7 version
names = [field.name() for field in layer.fields()]
data = []
for feature in layer.getFeatures():
my_dict = {}
for i, a in enumerate(feature.attributes()):
if names[i] == time_field_name and isinstance(a, QDateTime):
a = a.toPyDateTime()
my_dict[names[i]] = a
pt = feature.geometry().asPoint()
my_dict["geom_x"] = pt.x()
my_dict["geom_y"] = pt.y()
data.append(my_dict)
df = pd.DataFrame(data)
...
Chris and Krishna talk about validation as a practical part of developing geospatial analytics, focussing on their personal experiences mapping oil palm and land cover at scale.A central theme in throughout this conversation is the use of auxiliary geospatial products, science and human intuition to validate maps.(00:00) Introduction, what is validation?(02:30) Chris talks about mapping oil palm using Sentinel-1(25:00) Krishna talks about global land cover mapping using Sentinel-2(51:00) What tools do Krishna and Chris use for validation. (Krishna loves QGIS)
Towards Data Science - Geospatial
• By Robert Constable
•
An example workflow for vector geospatial data science
The post Building a Geospatial Lakehouse with Open Source and Databricks appeared first on Towards Data Science.
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
•
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter is free but proceeds from paid subscriptions will be used to fund law students who wish to attend local geospatial conferences. What’s NewMonitoring Adoption of Artificial Intelligence and Related Vulnerabilities in the Financial Sector (Financial Stability Board)The FSB report warns that reliance on a small number of GenAI and cloud service providers could create systemic vulnerabilities in finance and urges regulators to monitor AI supply-chain dependencies, data quality, and model governance. For GeoAI systems used in financial analysis, insurance, or risk modeling, expect increased emphasis on transparency about geospatial data sources and model oversight to prevent concentration, bias, and cascading failures across institutions.US Federal Privacy Legislation Tracker: Introduced in the 119th Congress (2025-2026) (IAPP)The 2025 Federal Privacy Tracker shows a surge in bipartisan efforts to regulate AI-enabled data use, covering automated decision...
Utilities field operations keep critical infrastructure running, often under dangerous conditions, but they’re burdened with outdated, fragmented tech systems never designed for the field. The patchwork of disconnected apps and processes creates inefficiencies, risks, and unnecessary friction. It’s time for utilities to adopt a true field-first platform that empowers workers and supports modern operational demands.
Key insights
Utilities field teams are stuck using fragmented systems not designed for field conditions, leading to inefficiencies and safety risks.
Field workers often resort to paper because current digital tools are clunky, unreliable, or hard to use in real-world environments.
Field-first platforms must enable offline functionality, cross-functional workflows, and field-level adaptability without bureaucratic delays.
Accurate, real-time field data is critical for AI initiatives and enterprise decision-making across departments.
Utilities can’t meet...
I live in Arizona, which is always on Mountain Standard Time, except for the Navajo Nation, which observes Daylight Saving Time (DST) like most of the U.S. (except Hawaii and all U.S. Territories).For me, most of the year aligns with Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), and during winter, it's one hour ahead of PDT. This means my meetings shift on my calendar, and my day starts very early to accommodate Eastern and European time zones. Globally, approximately 1 billion people will soon end their observance of DST; this date varies by country, because of course. Soon, 1B+ clocks will be set back by 1 hour at 2 am on a Sunday. Most of the world’s population, over 7 billion, doesn’t have to deal with this completely fabricated rule system. Everything about this intro feels strange when you really think about it. DST, like many of our human concepts of time, is entirely arbitrary. In the case of DST, it’s also needlessly unhealthy. In fact, almost everything about how humans measure time is...
Central Place Theory is a way to understand why cities and towns are where they are. Walter Christaller developed this theory in the 1930s.
The post What Is Central Place Theory? appeared first on GIS Geography.
I said last year I was going to cut back on conferences and forgot about that in the lead up to January. So far this year there’s been three conferences I’ve attended. I’ve got another 2 plus one speaking engagement and then I’m done for a bit. Of course that leaves me wondering about next year.
My typical conference experience is:
Keynote
Food
Talks
social
It’s pretty much church (if you’re in the south and you’ve been to a church it’s pretty much wash rinse and repeat).
Sometimes you skip the Keynote on Day 2 in the morning and occasionally the keynote is lunch. Possibly it is a time for the Gold/Diamond/Aluminum Sponsors to talk. I’ve wondered what would happen if you just stick everyone in a room and yell “Go”. You can talk about anything. Give a keynote long talk. Do a 20 minute talk. An entire demo. Maybe just all slides. I think these were basically “un-conferences” back when that seemed to be more popular.
About my last reason to go to a...
How Earth Monitoring Empowers Better Business DecisionsSeeing the Bigger Picture
There’s something fascinating about perspective. From the ground, every decision feels local, a plot of land, a supply chain, a single project site. From above, patterns emerge. You start seeing how one decision ripples into another, how landscapes change, and how subtle shifts in data signal much bigger stories.
That’s exactly where Earth monitoring steps in.
Business leaders today make decisions that move not just companies but communities and entire economies. Yet much of that decision-making still depends on partial, delayed, or fragmented information. Field reports can take weeks. Environmental assessments might reflect last season’s conditions. By the time data arrives, the world has already moved on.
Earth monitoring bridges that gap. Through satellites, drones, and geospatial analytics, it provides a live window into reality, the kind that shows what’s happening right now. It quantifies terrain,...
Live Stream Gauge Map: Real-Time Water Level & Flood Monitoring Tool
Track River Conditions and Flood Status with Official Stream Gauge Data for the US, Canada, England, Ireland, Germany, and Australia
Monitoring water levels in rivers and streams is essential for flood preparedness, water resource management, and outdoor recreation planning. The **Live Stream Gauge Map** is a free, interactive web application that visualizes real-time stream gauge data from thousands of monitoring stations worldwide. This tool provides instant access to current water levels, flow rates, and flood status information, helping users make informed decisions about water-related safety and activities.
Whether you are a homeowner in a flood-prone area, an emergency manager coordinating disaster response, a water resource professional, or an outdoor enthusiast planning river activities, this stream gauge viewer delivers critical hydrological data in an easy-to-understand visual format. The map...
TIME STAMPS0:00 - Motivation for Microsoft to compete with Esri1:20 - Who is Rakesh and data engineering services of SketchMyView6:40 - Deploying a land and planning GIS for the UK government with Microsoft Synapse22:25 - Is there a similarity between Synapse and Fabric?26:26 - ACID compliance, delta files, lakehouses, bronze, silver, gold layers35:18 - Apache Sedona in Fabric tutorial57:20 - Why is it worth it to use Apache Sedona in Fabric?1:00:44 - SedonaDBCLIPSNo More Esri Tax: Open Geospatial Alternatives:Is Microsoft the Next GIS Powerhouse?The Wild World of Geospatial Complexity:How Delta Lake Prevents Data Catastrophes:EPISODEApache Sedona is a way for a regular Apache Spark using data analyst to acquire geospatial capabilities. With Sedona, if you know SQL, you know GIS:Rakesh Gupta is Principal Consultant at SketchMyView in London. He tells us about how to set up Apache Sedona in Microsoft Fabric in 2 lines of code. It was a privilege to have his time for this tutorial...
It made me sad.
I’m working on a project involving 911 data and it’s made me do quite a bit of thinking. The short story on this is it’s not in Tennessee. I’m taking data in it’s raw form and shoving it into that state’s NG911 format. So I have about half of it “pre-written” with existing scripts.
I was lucky in Tennessee as the Standard was written around a database and left the user to “fix” the data by whatever means you wanted. You could edit the data in Autocad (shudder) if you wanted and as long as it was loaded into the format the state was expecting you were good. So I made it all work in QGIS/PostGIS. It works well enough now that I’m down to quality checks and whether these run automatically or by the user. One runs every night. One runs when needed. In both cases nothing may happen because you can ignore both options.
This pile of data has been way different. Being stupid lead me down one path and I failed. They have a toolset in Arcpy to help you find errors and...
When and where?
Geomob London took place at 6:00 PM
on Wednesday the 22nd of October, 2025
at Geovation Hub at (Sutton Yard, 65 Goswell Rd, London EC1V 7EN)
Summary Thread
Post by @[email protected] View on Mastodon
Agenda
Our format for the evening will be as it always has been:
doors open at 18:00, set up and general mingling
at 18:30 we begin the talks with a very brief introduction
Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10-15 minutes.
After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions.
We vote - using Feature Upvote - for the best speaker. The winner will receive a SplashMap and unending glory (see the full list of all past winners).
We head to a nearby pub for discussion and #geobeers paid for by the
sponsors.
The speakers:
Joe Leach, Unique property reference numbers, a very British love affair
Rain Wu, Maps as desires
James Cheshire, The Library of Lost Maps
Nigel...
VIIRS Satellite Thermal Hotspots Map: Real-Time Fire Detection from NASA & NOAA
Track Active Fires and Thermal Anomalies Worldwide with Live Satellite Data
Satellite technology has revolutionized our ability to detect and monitor fires, volcanic activity, and thermal anomalies across the globe. Our VIIRS Thermal Hotspots Map provides real-time access to thermal detection data from NASA and NOAA satellites, offering unprecedented visibility into active fire locations, intensity measurements, and heat sources worldwide.
Whether you are a fire management professional, environmental researcher, agricultural monitor, or concerned citizen tracking wildfire threats, this interactive satellite fire detection tool delivers authoritative data directly from space-based sensors orbiting Earth every day.
What is the VIIRS Thermal Hotspots Map?
The VIIRS Thermal Hotspots Map is a free, interactive web application that visualizes thermal anomalies detected by the Visible Infrared...
Alternative Fuel Stations Locator: Find EV Charging & Clean Energy Stations Near You
Interactive Map of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations, Hydrogen, CNG, and Alternative Fuel Locations Across America
The transition to clean energy transportation is accelerating, with millions of Americans now driving electric vehicles, hybrid cars, and alternative fuel vehicles. Our Alternative Fuel Stations Locator provides a comprehensive, interactive map of EV charging stations, hydrogen fueling stations, compressed natural gas (CNG) stations, and other alternative fuel locations across the United States.
Whether you’re an electric vehicle owner planning a road trip, a fleet manager transitioning to clean energy, or simply exploring sustainable transportation options, this free tool gives you instant access to thousands of alternative fuel stations nationwide.
What is the Alternative Fuel Stations Locator?
The Alternative Fuel Stations Locator is a free, interactive web application...
NOAA Storm Reports Interactive Map: Real-Time Severe Weather Tracking
Track Tornadoes, Hail, and Damaging Winds with Official National Weather Service Data
Severe weather strikes without warning, affecting millions of Americans each year. Our NOAA Storm Reports Interactive Map provides real-time access to official severe weather reports from the National Weather Service, helping you track tornadoes, large hail, and damaging wind events across the United States as they’re reported.
Whether you’re a weather enthusiast, storm chaser, emergency manager, researcher, or simply concerned about severe weather in your area, this interactive tool delivers authoritative storm data directly from NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center.
What is the NOAA Storm Reports Map?
The NOAA Storm Reports Interactive Map is a free, web-based visualization tool that displays severe weather reports collected and verified by the National Weather Service. This powerful mapping application aggregates...
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge — a newsletter that’s slightly more reliable than an AWS server… In any case, the aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:Population Mapping: 73 global datasets merged into one tool.Drought Impacts: New index captures unseen ecological droughts.Earth Model: AI generates detailed satellite image captions.Change Detection: Largest multi-task benchmark for monitoring change.Irrigation Maps: Global 60 m data on water sources.Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. 73 global datasets merged into one (free) population mapping toolA new paper from the WorldPop team introduces something pretty remarkable for us geospatial nerds (let’s call a spade a spade). It’s a massive open dataset to support human population distribution modelling. It’s a collection of 73 standardised global datasets designed to help us figure out where people actually live. The datasets...
US Wildfire Timeline Map: Real-Time Tracking & Interactive Visualization Tool
Track Current Wildfires Across America with Live Data from NIFC
Wildfires pose an increasing threat across the United States, with thousands of incidents occurring annually. Our US Wildfire Timeline Map provides real-time wildfire tracking, leveraging official data from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) to help you monitor active fires, understand fire perimeters, and access critical incident information.
Whether you’re a homeowner in a fire-prone area, a researcher studying wildfire patterns, or simply concerned about air quality and safety, this interactive wildfire map delivers the essential information you need.
What is the US Wildfire Timeline Map?
The US Wildfire Timeline Map is a free, interactive web application that visualizes current and recent wildfire incidents across the United States. Built with advanced mapping technology, this tool aggregates official wildfire data...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Joe Calamari
•
In this episode of Project Geospatial, host Joe Calamari sits down with Mollie Martin from Privateer Space — a trailblazer in the geospatial intelligence industry. Mollie shares her journey from Deloitte Ventures to leading Privateer’s go-to-market strategy, helping bridge the gap between space data, analytics, and real-world business insights. Privateer Space is building an open, extensible geospatial intelligence platform that merges orbital and Earth observation data into powerful business-ready insights. With a focus on sustainability and accessibility, Privateer enables organizations to understand and act on what’s happening — both in orbit and on Earth. Highlights: 🛰️ How Privateer’s Wayfinder platform tracks satellites and debris for space sustainability 🔄 The integration of Orbital Insight and Privateer’s shift to commercial geospatial analytics 🧩 Breaking down organizational silos and democratizing geospatial insights 🔄 How Privateer differentiates from satellite...
Interactive Magnetic Declination Calculator: Click Any Location to See True North vs Magnetic North vs Grid North
Experience the Difference Between Three Norths Through Real-Time Map Interaction
Stop reading confusing explanations about magnetic declination and grid convergence—see them for yourself. Our interactive magnetic north calculator transforms abstract angular concepts into visual, tangible arrows you can watch diverge on an actual map. Click anywhere on Earth, and instantly see three colored arrows extending from that point: green for True North, red for Magnetic North, blue for Grid North. Watch how they spread apart. Read the exact angular differences. See which direction compasses actually point versus where maps indicate north.
This isn’t another static declination calculator where you type coordinates and get numbers. It’s a complete interactive visualization that shows you why these corrections matter by letting you see the physical angular differences...
This month, the Fields of The World (FTW) project team gathered in-person to assess progress, conduct an in-person sprint, and advance the path forward for creating a global, open-source ecosystem for field boundary detection. Although ongoing work is constantly happening between contributors on a remote basis, having in-person sessions for a focused sprint are invaluable to the project. Held twice a year, these in-person opportunities are a hallmark of the Taylor Geospatial Engine’s (TGE) Innovation Bridge approach—creating a foundation of deep understanding between collaborators and accelerating output.
From October 8-10th, TGE hosted seventeen contributors in St. Louis with an additional three joining remotely from Europe. Here’s the latest update on what’s happening at the intersection of satellite imagery, machine learning, and...
Esri IMGIS 2025 centers on resilience, sustainability, and the growing role of AI in GIS to connect planning, operations, and field execution. Across sessions on digital twins, field mobility, and data integration, the message remains clear: real progress depends on accurate, timely field data. As an Esri partner, Fulcrum shares that focus, helping teams keep GIS systems current through connected, field-first workflows that complement ArcGIS Pro and the ArcGIS Utility Network.
Key insights
Esri IMGIS 2025 brings together leaders across utilities, engineering, transportation, and public works to explore how GIS is transforming infrastructure management.
The conference highlights the growing impact of AI in GIS, digital twins, and data integration in creating more resilient and sustainable systems.
Field mobility remains the bridge between on-site work and enterprise GIS, ensuring that digital systems reflect real-world conditions in real time.
Accurate, high-quality...
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Pedro Moura
•
Why It’s Time to Stop Painting Maps and Start Powering DecisionsFor more than 30 years, tools like ESRI ArcGIS, MapInfo, and QGIS have defined what it means to “do geography” inside organizations. They are extraordinarily powerful - capable of building 3D city models, simulating flood risks, or calculating trade areas with surgical precision. The sheer power of geographic analysis can be mesmerising, and these tools work wonders in the right hands.But let’s be honest: For 95% (99%?) of business users, these tools are simply unusable.They’re technical, expensive, complex, and deeply disconnected from the daily questions that marketing, sales, or operations teams face.And yet, many GIS departments still believe they’ve “covered” all geospatial needs in their company just because they own a few ArcGIS licenses (probably some still ‘decorating’ shelves) and can export some PDFs with pretty maps.That belief is not just wrong — it’s dangerous.The Myth of “We Already Have GIS”In many...
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
The Case of the Wandering MeridianIt’s a classic tourist photo-op. You’re at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, straddling the brass line embedded in the courtyard floor that marks the Prime Meridian of the world. With one foot in the Eastern Hemisphere and one in the West, you pull out your smartphone to capture the moment. You open your mapping app, expecting to see a satisfying string of zeros: longitude 0° 0' 0". Instead, your screen displays something perplexing. Your GPS, a marvel of modern technology, insists you are about 102 meters east of the Prime Meridian.Your phone is not broken. The GPS is not wrong. In this small, humorous discrepancy lies the story of a monumental, and largely invisible, shift in how humanity defines "where" we are. The historic meridian, established by astronomers peering through telescopes meticulously leveled against the local pull of gravity, is a relic of an Earth-bound perspective. The meridian your phone sees belongs to a different...
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Pedro Moura
•
How Mapidea and its partners are shaping the future of Retail & FMCG using Geospatial Intelligence In every industry, location has quietly become one of the most powerful competitive assets.Every sale, every delivery, every campaign, every customer - it all happens somewhere. And yet, only a small share of organizations truly leverage geography as a continuous, strategic variable in their decision-making.That’s changing fast. Across sectors, awareness of the power of Geospatial Intelligence is rising, and so is the understanding that those who fail to embrace it will quickly fall behind.Geospatial Intelligence - the fusion of data, geography, and analytics - is no longer an abstract or futuristic capability. It’s here, it’s tangible, and it’s transforming how Retail and FMCG leaders plan, act, and grow.At Mapidea, together with our partners NielsenIQ, NOS, and LTPlabs, we believe the time to act is now. Our goal is to show how Geospatial Intelligence can be applied immediately -...
A satellite for the peopleCommon Space is working toward a new kind of satellite mission - one driven by impact, not profit. Their goal is to deliver open, high-resolution imagery where it’s needed most: to support communities, journalists, educators, and human rights advocates tackling crises on the ground.They're designing this mission around societal impact, and they want your input on what that should look like. Share your thoughts here: Fill out the surveyRead more about the initiative here: https://www.commonspace.world/Level-2 NewsMETimage delivers spectacular first images [link]"EUMETSAT has released the first Earth images from its METimage instrument on board the recently launched Metop Second Generation A1 (Metop-SGA1) satellite, with these early teasers showcasing the exquisite detail, true-to-life colour, and data products that will ultimately support national weather services in improving forecasts that save lives, protect communities and benefit economies."Planet Awarded...
I mentioned in my previous post that, at a previous career stop, I built open-source support into our IT lifecycle. Specifically, we used QGIS. The primary reason we made that choice is that we were a Mac shop. It’s true we could have run ArcGIS Pro inside Parallels, but I didn’t see the need to pay the “VM tax” in terms of performance to use software that was essentially a match in capability to QGIS, which ran natively on MacOS.
One of the nice things about QGIS and its open-source licensing is that we could simply add it to our Jamf profile for our geospatial analysts and install it remotely as part of the default setup via the MDM. It integrated seamlessly into our IT management without any worry about licensing. We had roughly five to seven analysts using it at any one time, with some working remotely (this was pre-COVID), so the ability to manage it via MDM was essential.
The other nice thing about QGIS is that it mostly ships with everything. It’s roughly equivalent...
Welcome to GeoAI Unpacked! I am Ali Ahmadalipour and in this blog, I share insights and deep dives in geospatial AI, focusing on business opportunities and industry challenges. Each issue highlights key advances, real-world applications, and my personal takeaways on emerging technologies.Subscribe nowIn this article, I’ll unpack why many so-called physics-based models in Earth sciences aren’t as purely physical as we think, and what that means for how we model the world. ❗️A reminder that these are my personal observations and opinions, and do not reflect the views of my employer. Let’s dive in!Here’s a 5 min summary of this article for those who prefer watching a video:1. IntroductionAcross hydrology, fire, weather, and climate science, models are often described as physics-based—a phrase that evokes rigor, transparency, and trust. Yet, beneath the surface, much of what drives these models are empirical relationships and parameterizations rather than direct solutions of physical...
The nature of frontline warfare has shifted dramatically during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and when I think about the modern frontline, it's striking how much it has changed in just a few years. What used to be a clearly defined line on a map has transformed into something far more complex: a layered, constantly observed operational environment where weather and local conditions can dictate whether an action succeeds or fails, and whether people live or die.
Frontlines today aren't single, static lines. They're made up of belts and zones where presence, exposure, and risk overlap in unpredictable ways. Burned tree lines, ruined settlements, and scattered wreckage reshape how people see, move, and survive.
Behind...
When challenges arise or new opportunities appear, our instinct is often to gather more data. We analyze, interpret, and build insights. But information on its own rarely changes outcomes. It's when we share it, securely, thoughtfully, and with purpose that it truly begins to make a difference.
For many years, our focus has been on collection and analysis. Today, we need to give equal attention to what happens next: how knowledge moves between people, teams, and organizations. Intelligence that remains locked away is only potential. But when it reaches the right hands, at the right moment, in the right format, it can guide better decisions and stronger cooperation.
When we get this right, we don't just improve processes, we...
You are already using open-source. I’ve said that time and again to various audiences. The most committed Microsoft and Esri users will immediately balk, but it’s easy to knock the objections down. Azure? Linux abounds. Esri? GDAL under the hood. And what does the “Py” in ArcPy stand for? Oh yeah, Python, the open-source programming language. You’re already using open-source, even if you don’t know it.
I’ll be charitable and say that “using” could be a strong word, but it’s certainly fair to say you are relying on open-source, whether you know it or not.
The reason that’s fair to say is because open-source is everywhere and there is a study to demonstrate it. I’m not sure how I missed it when it came out in 2024, but Harvard published a rigorous study on the value of open-source. They surprised even themselves when they came up with a $9 trillion estimate of the global value of open-source, using a replacement value approach. I won’t get into the details here, but you can...
I’m an obvious fan of GeoParquet and SedonaDB and it should be no surprise that I worked (still working!) pretty hard making sure SedonaDB could take advantage of all GeoParquet had to offer. This post talks about one of those things: lazy reads (or if you’re a databse nut, “pruning”).
Basically, GeoParquet was designed to allow traditional GIS software to take advantage of a decade plus of heavy investment in the Parquet format and the software that reads and writes it. Two spot examples are that (1) software that reads traditional GIS formats is not particularly good at splitting the work up so that all the cores on your computer are put to good use and (2) most formats are not particularly good at being plonked onto a web server and have sections of them selectively queried1 (which can often save data producers from standing up a 24/7 web service).
FlatGeoBuf, of course, is the shining example of being great at being plonked onto a web server in this way and it’s great as long as...
The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.5.4.
This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta1, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+.
To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.12+ is needed.
SFCGAL 1.4+ is needed to enable postgis_sfcgal support.
To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 1.5+ is needed.
3.5.4
source download md5
NEWS
PDF docs: en
This release is a bug fix release that includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.5.3.
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge — a newsletter you can digest quicker than you can say ‘sinusoidal projection’… The aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:AI Coding: DeepMind’s system reads papers, writes expert code. Crop Mapping: Models transfer surprisingly well across regions. Earthquake Response: Transformers speed up power grid restoration. Map Agents: Hierarchical AI handles complex geospatial queries. Wildfire Prediction: ECOSTRESS data predicted 90% of Australia’s fires. Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. Google DeepMind’s AI that actually reads academic papers to solve geospatial problemsGoogle DeepMind has released a new AI system that combines large language models with tree search algorithms to write scientific software that matches or beats expert performance. The system works by using an LLM to suggest code improvements, which are then evaluated and kept only if...
We review several digital river networks and how they can be used.
Spatial data for rivers are one of those fundamental data layers needed for many different kinds of analysis, along with elevation and landcover. Over the years there have been a few different datasets available so we’ll do a quick survey and see how they’ve changed over that time.
When I first started playing this GIS game, the layer of choice was from the LINZ Topographic Database – a layer called river_cl.shp. (You can find a copy on J:\Data\Toposhapefiles.) (Ed. That is soooo last century…) This layer showed the locations of rivers and streams based on the 1:50,000 scale topomaps from LINZ. They are just digitised versions of what we can see on the maps:
Attribute-wise, there’s not much to it:
This was fine if all you needed were lines on the map but didn’t offer much by way of analysis. In 2004, our friends at NIWA developed the River Environment Classification – a laudy attempt...
A VerySpatial PodcastShownotes – Episode 77112 October 2025
Looking for GIS jobs
Click to directly download MP3
YouTube (audio only)
AVSP – Episode 771 Transcript (docx)
http://traffic.libsyn.com/avsp/AVSP_Episode771.mp3
News:
2026 Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) ROV World Championship Open
Web corner
Mapping the Past: The Welsh LiDAR Portal
Topic:
Unique GIS Jobs (From reddit)
I’m a geography major with a concentration in GIS and I’ve done some digging through jobs but what are some unique GIS related jobs? What companies that you wouldn’t think have a GIS person have them?
Events:
AAG: 17-21 March, San Francisco – Abstracts due October 30
PA GIS Conference 2026: 15-17 April, State College, PA – oral submissions due Jan 11
Esri UC: 13-17 July, San Diego – Abstracts due October 24
Music: Link in the Chain by The Old North
Libraries have always been engines of access and innovation. They’re also launchpads for entrepreneurs; connecting small business owners and local startups with the data and insights they need to grow....
The post Libraries That Mean Business: Helping Entrepreneurs Map Opportunity with PolicyMap appeared first on PolicyMap.
We’ve long thought that we’re onto something big here at Overture. And now the rest of the world does, too.
I’m pleased to announce that Fast Company has recognized the Overture Maps Foundation as a winner in its 2025 Next Big Things in Tech competition for the Global Entity Reference System (GERS). We landed in the “Small and Mighty” category, which honors smaller teams achieving outsized impact through innovation.
This recognition belongs to everyone who’s contributed to Overture, our team, members, engineers, partners, and organizations who believed in our mission. You built GERS. You’re the ones solving real problems that have plagued geospatial data for years.
The award validates what many in this community have been saying all along: there must be a better way to handle spatial data.
The entire Fast Company Next Big Things list celebrates technologies that reshape industries and improve lives. It is one of the most competitive and respected awards programs in media and...
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
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What’s NewGlobal AI Governance Law and Policy: European Union (International Association of Privacy Professionals)The report notes that the EU’s AI Act is now in effect and rolling out in stages through 2026. As it uses a risk-based approach, the more an AI system can affect people, the more you must document how it works, manage the data it uses, and keep a human in the loop. This is addition to complying with other rules, like GDPR and the Data Act. Standards, liability, and copyright rules are still being finalized. However, for geospatial work it will be important to keep a simple, living checklist of your models and datasets (what they are, where the data came from, and where it’s sent). Pay special attention to more autonomous (“agentic”) systems and high-risk uses like public services. Responsible by Design: Strategic Guidance Report on the Risks, Opportunities, and Governance of Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain (Global Commission on Responsible AI in the Military...
Adventures In Mapping | John Nelson Maps
• By John
•
Ten years ago today I registered this domain. It was my final week on the job where I’d been for over a decade. There were giant unknowns ahead in the form of a new job, working from home, and a baby on the way. What a time. Things have gone wonderfully these last ten years both in my role at Esri and sharing my map-making adventures here (though they are hopelessly intertwined). I couldn’t be happier with how these years have gone. Thanks for sharing them with me!
Here are some photos of the backyard woodshed office construction.
Love, John
P.S. Here’s the office, ten years in!
Decision-Making Information Resources & Solutions
• By proximityone
•
How many housing units are within a 1-mile radius of a given location? 5-miles? Use Site Analysis tools to count the number of housing units by census block as of 2020 and 2024. Use the use the VDA (Visual Data Analysis) GIS (Geographic Information System) VDA GIS tool with the VDA Base project to develop a 1-mile circular Site Analysis with focus on Disneyland (Anaheim). You can choose any California location. Give it a try. It is all online. Follow the steps below.
Start: https://proximityone.com/vdagis_discovery/index.html?blocks.htm
Enter disneyland in searchbar
Select layer named CA Blocks in Legend Panel
Select Tools>GeoSelect/SiteAnalysis; form appears
Click Select by Circle/Radius (top)
Click marker; one mile radius shows; zoom out; Position to view 1 mile radius
View blocks; e.g. 060590875053004
View SiteProfile, lower left, housing 2020 8,454 to 2024 8,559
Final view. Click graphic for larger view.
These steps are also shown in...
Ownership and sovereignty of geospatial data is a key concern of our times and a topic we frequently address in this blog space. Jonathan Murphy has written what I consider to be the most important and thoughtful essay about digital sovereignty of our times, here:
https://gogeomatics.ca/canada-can-no-longer-pretend-digital-sovereignty-isnt-at-risk/
Jonathan is the CEO, President, and Founder of GoGeomatics Canada. He is also the founder and chair of GeoIgnite, Canada’s national geospatial leadership conference, and Canada’s National Geomatics expo. Jon has created Canada’s largest professional geospatial network, aiming to strengthen and empower our geospatial ecosystem. Thus, Jonathan has spent a time in thought about this important issue, and the article applies not just to Canada, but has implications in many areas of our increasingly interconnected and complex world–a world of a mixture of publicly-funded and privately-funded data, a myriad of where that data is...
QGIS comes bundled with a simplified version of the Natural Earth Countries shapefile that is suitable for quick map-making. The layer can be loaded into your canvas by typing the keyword world in the coordinates bar.
While this is useful, there is no single political map of the world that is accepted by every country of the world. There are many disputed international boundaries, and each country has its own version of accepted international boundaries. To allow mapmakers to adhere to local mapping regulations, Natural Earth also publishes Countries point-of-views shapefiles for many countries that depict the world map according to each country’s law and/or local conventions. We provide a simple script to replace the bundled world map with your country’s point-of-view layer.
The script can be run from the QGIS Python Console. This is a one-time step that will ensure you get a locally compliant world map when you type world in the coordinates bar.
Go to QGIS →...
CLIPSWhy Data Now Beats Software in Geospatial:How AI Broke the Classic Tech Business Model:Market Research Reports Are a Scam:Your Phone Is Powering a Data Gold Rush:EPISODEHaving started his career at USGS in 1980, Joe Francica is a veteran of the geospatial industry. He has a lot of experience in publishing, for example as Editor In Chief of (the now shuttered) Directions Mazagine:…and he has been host of On Point with Korem:Joe’s latest venture is www.LocationIntelligence.us. In my endless search for the world’s geospatial companies, I came across his Guide to the Location Intelligence Marketplace.It contains his global list of over 1000 such companies. What a treasure trove! Joe has of course made his own effort to segment the market:A main takeaway of this effort is that data now trumps software in geospatial. Have a listen for more detail on this. Hint - AI, and foundation models, are inhaling as much data as can be found, and geospatial data is not immune.In Appendix 4, the...
Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings
• By underdark
•
The last time I preprocessed the whole GeoLife dataset, I loaded it into PostGIS. Today, I want to share a new workflow that creates a (Geo)Parquet file and that is much faster.
The dataset (GeoLife)
“This GPS trajectory dataset was collected in (Microsoft Research Asia) Geolife project by 182 users in a period of over three years (from April 2007 to August 2012). A GPS trajectory of this dataset is represented by a sequence of time-stamped points, each of which contains the information of latitude, longitude and altitude. This dataset contains 17,621 trajectories with a total distance of about 1.2 million kilometers and a total duration of 48,000+ hours. These trajectories were recorded by different GPS loggers and GPS-phones, and have a variety of sampling rates. 91 percent of the trajectories are logged in a dense representation, e.g. every 1~5 seconds or every 5~10 meters per point.”
The GeoLife GPS Trajectories download contains 182 directories full of .plt files:...
Decision-Making Information Resources & Solutions
• By proximityone
•
In 2020, centenarians (people of age 100 or more) accounted for just 2 out of 10,000 people. Centenarians in the U.S. increased by 50% from 53,364 in 2010 to 80,139 in 2020. The graphic shows patterns of centenarians in the lower 48 states. See more at https://proximityone.com/centenarians.htm.
About VDA GISUse VDA GIS tools to meet wide-ranging mapping needs and geospatial analysis. VDA Desktop GIS and VDA Web GIS have similar features that can be used separately or together. Each is a decision-making information resource designed to help stakeholders create and apply insight. VDA Web GIS is access/used with only a Web browser; nothing to install; GIS experience not required. VDA Desktop GIS is installed on a Windows computer and provides a broader range of capabilities compared to VDA Web GIS. VDA GIS resources have been developed and are maintained by Warren Glimpse, ProximityOne (Alexandria, VA) and Takashi Hamilton, Tsukasa Consulting (Osaka, Japan).
Data Analytics Web...
Maps, Tattoos, & Geospatial Views
• By Brian Monheiser
•
When most people hear the word wayfinding, they picture signs that point from point A to point B. And that’s not wrong, those systems help people get where they need to go. But that’s only a fraction of what’s possible. True wayfinding isn’t just about navigation. It’s about connection and storytelling, helping people understand where they are, what’s around them, and how their journey fits into the larger story of a place.Inspired by T-Kartor and their success with City Wayfinding in cities like London, Toronto, New York, and Cleveland, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what’s next. The conclusion I’ve come to is simple: most cities are just scratching the surface. Wayfinding isn’t something that happens to a city, it’s something cities and communities build together.Thanks for reading Maps, Tattoos, & Geospatial Views! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Fragmented Journeys, Missed OpportunitiesToo often, cities approach wayfinding as a series of...
As part of the GeoAI and Deep Learning Symposium at the 2026 AAG Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California we have a call for papers for sessions entitled "Geosimulation and Its Emerging Directions with AI"Call for Papers:Simulating past, present, and future events can empower humans to understand the composition and interactions in complex systems and explain their emergence and evolution from bottom up. In practice, geosimulations constitute a powerful tool in engaging different stakeholders, exploring what-if scenarios, and evaluating alternative policy outcomes.We invite interdisciplinary works for the exploration and understanding of complex social and environmental processes by means of computer simulation. We focus on all aspects of simulation and agent societies, including multi-agent systems, agent-based modeling, microsimulation, artificial intelligence (AI) agents, and the integration of Generative AI with simulation.As GenAI is impacting all aspects of our lives, we are...
Yesterday I read Sylvain Lesage’s post Parquet with GEOMETRY type is not GeoParquet and started writing a reply for Linkedin but it ended up a bit too long to just be a comment, so I thought I’d just post it here as a blog. Overall it’s a great write-up and I appreciate that Sylvain took the time to share his understandings, and that he’s been diving deep to be able to support the geospatial + Parquet ecosystem. And most all of it is right on, but I wanted to provide some more context, and one tweak.
The only thing that I think is ‘off’ in the post is the timeline that says GeoParquet 1.1 was ‘published three months after the introduction of GEOMETRY and GEOGRAPHY in Parquet’. GeoParquet 1.1 was June 19th of 2024, while the geospatial types landed in Parquet core in March of 2025.
The original PARQUET-2471 discussion started about 1 month before the 1.1.0 release. And the main topic for the core GeoParquet group members after the 1.1.0 release was to help ensure that Parquet and...
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge — your weekly geospatial roundup that drops almost as frequently as France changes Prime Ministers... In any case, the aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:Wildfire Mapping: Google uses embeddings to predict vegetation types.Mangrove Heat: Rising seas threaten coastal ecosystem recovery.Water Quality: AI ensemble predicts rivers with near-perfect accuracy.Radiation Data: Longwave record captures 41 years of variability.Habitat Maps: Global projections for endangered vertebrate species.Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. How Google is using geospatial embeddings to map wildfire riskI’ve previously discussed Google DeepMind’s AlphaEarth Foundations Model in this blog. The bottom line is that it provides 64-dimensional, global embeddings at 10 m resolution, learned from Landsat and Sentinel data. You can think of these as a beefed-up version of...
Following the earlier announcement that QGIS is moving to Qt 6 and launching QGIS 4.0, we want to share an important update about the QGIS 4.x roadmap.
After extensive discussion on the developer mailing list, the QGIS community has agreed to adjust the 4.x release schedule to ensure a smooth transition to Qt 6 and give plugin developers, testers, and packagers the time they need.
New Release Date for QGIS 4.0
QGIS 4.0 will now be released in February 2026 instead of October 2025. This change is reflected in the updated QGIS release roadmap.
QGIS 4.2 Will Be the First 4.x LTR
The first LTR in the 4.x series will be QGIS 4.2, and it is scheduled to land in the LTR repos in October 2026.QGIS 3.44 has been released as the final version of the 3.x series and will serve as the last long-term release (LTR) before the transition to QGIS 4.0. This ensures users will have a stable 3.x platform for an extended period.To avoid delays for macOS users, we are exceptionally...
NY Climate WeekA couple of weeks ago I attended NY Climate Week. The restart of GeoNYC was a hit:Something cool mentioned was the Wherobots startup accelerator, recommend checking it out:We had a fantastic Tech Workshop: Open Data and Applied Risk Analysis the next day. All 12 presenters got through their talks on time, we managed to keep the two networking slots in the schedule and retained enough space for the two longer keynotes. Here is Tom Nicholas talking through the Earthmover Marimo notebook in the final keynote:Of course I had to visit the Wall Street bull, the true highlight of NYCW and an inspiration for creating something with true impact:One of the presenters was Arham, who appears in today’s episode of the podcast.CLIPSWhere are our flood alarms?How political shifts kill life saving programs:Ignoring earth’s curve causes big flood errors:His Model Rivals World’s Best Flood Systems:So let’s get into it.EPISODEArham Ansari confronts some challenges that most of us in the...
"Captured on Aug. 21, this image from NISAR’s L-band radar shows Maine’s Mount Desert Island. Green indicates forest; magenta represents hard or regular surfaces, like bare ground and buildings. The magenta area on the island’s northeast end is the town of Bar Harbor." Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechNASA-ISRO Satellite Sends First Radar Images of Earth’s Surface [link]"The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) Earth-observing radar satellite’s first images of our planet’s surface are in, and they offer a glimpse of things to come as the joint mission between NASA and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) approaches full science operations later this year."Level-2 NewsPlanet Releases First Light Image From Pelican-3; Multiple Pelican Launches Slated for the Next Year [link]"Planet released first light images from its Pelican-3 satellite of Turin, Italy. It was taken on September 5, 2025, from an altitude of 458 km. Image quality is expected to improve as the spacecraft complete the...
From PixabayIt’s a foundational truth in the world of AI and analytics: bad data inevitably leads to corrupt and unreliable models. If your input data is biased, inaccurate, incomplete, or simply irrelevant, the algorithms will learn from these flaws, producing outputs that are fundamentally skewed and untrustworthy. Once a model is built upon such faulty foundations, attempting to “clean” or rectify its inherent biases becomes an exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, task. The structural integrity of the model is compromised from the outset, making piecemeal fixes largely ineffective.Attempts to train models on data that AI models created can lead to model collapse. Trying to build large models exacerbates this problem as data sources become murky.Instead, a more robust strategy involves building smaller, purpose-built models, each trained on carefully curated and known data sets. This approach ensures that each component model is highly accurate and specialized for its intended...
Last week I had the pleasure of being a guest on a Cloud Native Geospatial webinar with my colleagues Jia Yu and Matt Forrest where we talked SedonaDB. In the webinar Matt demoed a fantastic blog post comparing a real-world workflow on SedonaDB, DuckDB, and PostGIS. In preparation, I came up with a few examples and only a small bit ended up making it to the live demo. Here’s the full version!
The gist of the post: let’s use SedonaDB’s top-notch (if I do say so myself) Arrow interop to ingest some totally bonkers real-world data and write it to nice clean GeoParquet.
Let’s get started: SedonaDB can be instealled with pip:
pip install "apache-sedona[db]"
We’ll create the handle to our session (sd) and turn on interactive mode to auto-print results (handy when not running queries against remote data!).
import sedona.db
sd = sedona.db.connect()
sd.options.interactive = True
Now let’s get into the problem a little. In 2012 I got a job as a Project Coordinator at a small environmental...
Stephanie May is a geographic technologist and cartographer based in Seattle, Washington. In addition to being a founding member of CNG’s Editorial Board, she serves on the board of the MapLibre Organization, an open source ecosystem for webmapping, and is the Principal of Liminal Maps.
1. What geospatial trend or tool excites you right now?
I’m energized by how much easier it has gotten to build, host, and embed cloud-enabled web maps. A few technologies stand out: PMTiles allow for serverless hosting from anywhere that supports HTTP range requests, which means you can build a map in a GitHub repo and host it via GitHub Pages, or for larger projects shift to a cloud storage bucket. Pair with Protomaps for a full map solution: extract a region in PMTiles format paired with a stylesheet and all the other assets you need to embed a map in your project site or app via MapLibre, or customize it in a huge variety of ways, such as mixing in other sources (e.g. OpenStreetMap US just...
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
•
What’s NewCommission Collects Feedback to Simplify Rules on Data, Cybersecurity, and Artificial Intelligence in the upcoming Digital Omnibus (European Commission)The EU’s “Digital Omnibus” initiative seeks to simplify overlapping rules on data, cybersecurity, and AI while cutting compliance costs, with a special focus on SMEs. For GeoAI developers, this could mean lighter administrative burdens but continued obligations to align with EU standards on data use, security, and AI accountability.AB-2013 Generative Artificial Intelligence Training Data Transparency Act (CA.gov)California’s new AI Training Data Disclosure Law requires developers of generative AI systems to publish detailed information about the datasets used to train generative AI models. For GeoAI companies, this means they will need to reveal whether geospatial datasets include personal or proprietary information, raising compliance, intellectual property, and privacy considerations.Governor Newsom signs SB 53, advancing...
You would be surprised how many satellite companies have a product or project called Skynet. At Sparkgeo, we don’t, but it seems like a darkly humorous self-fulfilling prophecy to me*. However, killer robots aside, we need to combine AI with satellites in Canada to solve a series of key geographic, political, sovereignty, and climate-related problems. We have an unfenced backyard, and we need to start paying attention to our back forty. Arrive-Can’tIf you’ve followed the Canadian news in the last few years, you will likely have heard about the ArriveCan app procurement debacle. In essence, the Canadian Federal Government paid a contracting organization an astronomical amount of money to build a travel management app during the COVID pandemic. It’s hard to imagine how a company of 5 could spend $54m in 6 months, but that’s what happened. I expect a few late nights burning the midnight caviar were involved.Strategic Geospatial is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and...
A VerySpatial PodcastShownotes – Episode 77028 September 2025
Geography as an interdisciplinary binding agent
Click to directly download MP3
YouTube (audio only)
AVSP – Episode 770 Transcript (docx)
http://traffic.libsyn.com/avsp/AVSP_Episode770.mp3
News:
First images from NISAR, joint NASA-ISRO SAR mission
Niantic spatial creates geospatial Death Stranding game
Earthmover climate startup focuses on weather data
Web corner:
Maps Learning Hub
Topic:
Geography as an interdisciplinary binding agent
Events:
CalGIS 2026, January 20-23, Redlands, CA, call for papers
GISSuRF 2026, January 30-31, Andhra Pradesh, India, call for papers
2026 GIS/Valuation Technologies Conference, March 30 – April 2, Mobile, Alabama, call for papers
Since the launch of the OSM US & Mapillary Camera Grant Program in April of this year, 21 grantees have uploaded over 3 million images to Mapillary, and grant packages have been shipped to New Jersey, Ohio, Alaska, and beyond. For this entry in our Mapper Highlight series, we want to take a moment and shout out a few of the grant recipients for their amazing work improving pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure data in Mapillary and OSM.
Amy Bordenave with the University of Washington Taskar Center for Accessible Technology in Seattle, Washington
Tell us about one of your recent excursions to gather street level imagery.
Two capture sessions come to mind! One, a walk around the neighborhood north of Green Lake in Seattle. This was done following OSM Seattle’s meetup to celebrate the 21st birthday of OpenStreetMap. Special thanks to those who joined, including Clifford Snow of the Data Working Group! It was really nice to meet new people and to catch up with people I hadn’t seen...
🌎 Join us in San Francisco for an evening entirely dedicated to Hexagons and the H3 spatial index. We’ll share the history of this powerful system and update you on the latest updates directly from the project team.Discover how H3 seamlessly transforms points and shapes into an elegant hexagonal grid, providing a flexible and efficient way to analyze spatial data. Learn about its unique capabilities, including hierarchical indexing, and explore its newest advancements and practical applications across industries like geospatial analysis, urban planning, location intelligence, site selection, resource tracking and data visualization. This is an unparalleled opportunity to connect with fellow data enthusiasts and the visionary minds behind the project.Date: October 21Time: 5:00 PM - 7:30 PMLocation: Manny’s in San FranciscoWe look forward to seeing you there for an engaging discussion. ✅ Register today to reserve your spot.
Tell Us About Yourself
Hi, I’m Jan Paul Miene. I’m currently completing my Master’s degree in Geodata Technology at the Technical University of Würzburg/Schweinfurt in Germany. My background is in geovisualisation, and I’ve always been fascinated by the intersection of data, geography, and design.
What I enjoy most about cartography is that maps have the unique ability to tell stories and spark curiosity in ways that words often cannot. I love diving into datasets, finding patterns, and then translating them into something visual that makes people pause, reflect, and ask questions.
Outside of my studies, I’m constantly experimenting with new styles and techniques — whether it’s for competitions, creative challenges, or personal projects. I’m particularly interested in exploring how maps can be both highly analytical and visually striking, striking a balance between art and science.
Tell us the story behind your map
This map was born out of a challenge — literally....
Rocket Lab, a US-based launch services and space systems company, has announced an expansion of its partnership with Japanese SAR provider Synspective. The 10-satellite launch extension comes a year and a half after both companies agreed on the first multi-launch agreement, which promised 11 satellite launches.
With a total of 21 Strix satellite launch agreements in place across multiple missions, this partnership solidifies Rocket Lab’s expansion and influence in the growing small lift launch market. All launches are planned to originate from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand.
For Synspective, a 30-satellite constellation is planned by the late 2020s. The company has three launch contracts with SpaceX and another for nine missions with Exolaunch’s mission management services. The use cases of their satellites range from land displacement monitoring, flood damage assessment, and object detection and classification.
“Rocket Lab’s precision and track record have consistently...
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge — a newsletter designed for people who know what ggplot2 is. In any case, the aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:Heatwaves and Carbon: Linking 180 firms to extreme events.River Conflicts: Monthly scarcity predicts flashpoints across basins.Urban Voids: Mapping leftover land for social potential.Vulnerability Projections: Country-level socioeconomic risk data to 2100.Weather Dataset: U.S. infrastructure-critical extremes at high resolution.Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. Tracing heatwaves back to fossil fuel firmsCarbon warming has made every one of 213 major heatwaves between 2000 and 2023 both hotter and more likely, and roughly half of that extra heat is traceable to the emissions of 180 named fossil fuel and cement producers. With this context in mind, a new Nature study has systematically traced the fingerprints of human-induced climate...
The NGS Blog | Expert Geospatial Insights and More
• By Jason Newmoyer
•
NGS is pleased to announce the 2025.3 release of CoreSpatial Server, Basemaps and Map Manager.
We anticipate the release of Portal in the upcoming weeks based on MapStore2 v2025.01.01, as well as promoting FIPS compliance for GeoServer to a generally available release.
Other exciting features on our roadmap include:
Expanded deployment options with Docker Compose
AI Enablement via MCP API
Expanded FIPS 140 compliance across all CoreSpatial modules
CoreSpatial Server and Basemaps Release Notes
2025.3.5 (9/24/2025)
Docker setup scripts hardened and simplified:
Unified permission / ownership helpers (fix_dir, fix_file) across data load steps
More robust curl version / SigV4 capability detection and consolidated S3 / MinIO download logic
Non‑root friendly: scripts no longer require running as root
Default basemap data storage now points to Cloudflare R2 (via BUCKET_HOST)
2025.3.4 (8/29/2025)
Update GeoServer to 2.27.2
Docker build now...
I have no problem with vibe coding. Yes, you can make bad code with it, and quite easily. The worst way to vibe code is to issue a monolithic prompt like “Build a word processor with the features of Microsoft Word.” But using techniques like chain-of-thought or plan-and-solve prompting in an iterative manner can yield pretty good results. Not perfect – you’ll still have some last-mile editing to do – but it can provide a pretty good jump start.
I’ve been writing code in one form or another since I was ten years old. Commodore, Apple, HP MPE, Unix of various flavors, VAX, a few Linuxes, more Windows than I care to recall, MacOS, a little Android and so on. A litany of languages across those platforms. Over that time (which seems to coincide perfectly with me getting older), I have grown more fond of helper tech. IDEs? Yes. Auto-indent? Bring it on. Intellisense? Even better. Anything that lets me focus more on the problem I am trying to solve and less on the tooling I am using...
When and where?
Geomob Edinburgh was held at 6:30pm (doors open at 6pm) on Tuesday, September 30th, 2025
at the office of Esri UK: Floor 2, Quartermile Three, 10 Nightingale Way, EH3 9EG Edinburgh Google Maps, OpenStreetMap
Summary Thread
Post by @[email protected] View on Mastodon
Agenda
Our format for the evening will be:
doors open at 18:00, set up and general mingling
at 18:30 we begin the talks with a very brief introduction
Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10 minutes.
After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions.
Matthew will show us the diorama / physical model of Fort William his team made!
We head to a nearby pub for discussion and #geobeers sponsored by OpenCage, Esri.
The speakers:
Noon van der Silk, Is this the worst school crossing in Edinburgh?
Peter Creasey, Raytracing large Scottish Lidar datasets
Matthew Akerman, Esri UK, Building a topographically correct diorama
We are always...
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
This is Not a Map, It's a CompassLet me be clear from the outset: what follows is not a solution served on a silver platter. It is not a finished project plan, complete with budgets and timelines that can be executed tomorrow. To offer such a thing would be arrogant and miss the point entirely.Instead, this is a white paper in the truest sense—a conceptual foundation, a challenge, and an impassioned plea meant to spark a difficult but necessary conversation. It is born from a sense of profound loss for what the Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data (HIFLD) portal represented, but also an unshakeable belief in our collective ability to build something far more resilient in its place. This is not a map to a finished destination. It is a compass, offered in the hope that we, as a community, can agree on a direction and begin the journey forward. The government abdicated its responsibility as a steward of our shared digital commons; now, the duty and the opportunity fall to us.The...
10 months ago I posted something that resulted in 14 comments:A month ago there was another signal, this time a post that got 22 likes, 12 comments and 8,500 impressions:Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.I’ve since begun to arrange calls with former podcast guests and some others who’ve expressed a general interest in a financial product about the geospatial industry. Those people were all very enthusiastic to talk with me. The former, a geospatial stock news service, is tough but doable. The latter, a financial product like an ETF, is for finance industry professionals. Not me. So I am interested in your needs for a stock analysis service about the geospatial industry. Will you be happy with news based on the list in the first image above? Less? More?Respond to this email. Comment below. DM me on Substack, X, Bluesky or LinkedIn. I’d also be happy to discuss your ideas for a financial product. Use the same channels to reach out....
TLDR;Using Geovibes you can interact with a foundation model/embeddings using a jupyter notebook via similarity searching on your laptop.This gives you a sense of your model’s vibes, i.e minutiae in the data/minority classes that perhaps only you care about, and aren’t measured in benchmarks.We provide a script that enables you to build a searchable index from embeddings provided online.We suggest the community uses the following schema for the release of embeddings: geoparquet files with [tile_id, geometry, embedding] where geometry is a (lat, lon) representing the centre of a tile. Each geoparquet file should contain the embeddings generated over an Military Grid Reference System (MGRS) tile. Metadata on temporal range, tile size, overlap and pixel resolution should also be includedPotential future plans may involve: dealing with embedding rasters, making this more memory efficient, an embeddings pipeline for you to generate your own using custom models, experiments showing that...
Fields of the World Phase 2 Update
Today’s interconnected world faces mounting challenges such as food security monitoring, supply chain transparency, climate impact assessment, and sustainable development tracking. These challenges require an understanding of agricultural landscapes through satellite imagery but despite rapid advances in satellite technology and artificial intelligence, a gap persists in geospatial science—the ability to apply AI and Machine Learning (ML) to automatically detect features in satellite imagery.
Because of this technology bottleneck, organizations are forced to spend countless hours on building in-house field boundary datasets through in situ field identification, data manipulation, and validation. The result? Many organizations are spending time and money developing the same baseline data and valuable agricultural insights remain locked away, accessible only to...
As challenges such as accelerating urbanization, traffic congestion and data privacy continue to rise, so too does the need for more innovative transportation solutions. TomTom, a leader in location technology, is at the forefront of this transformation, providing governments and city planners with the tools to develop smarter, more effective and sustainable urban environments.
TomTom’s location technology supports municipalities at both local and national levels, focusing on infrastructure development, public safety, and sustainable urban growth. By prioritizing privacy, we enable governments to make data-driven decisions tailored to the diverse needs of cities, helping tackle geospatial challenges and improve citizen safety.
Recent disasters, such as the earthquakes in Turkey and flooding in Valencia, Spain, underscore the importance of timely information. In emergencies, mobility transcends mere movement; it becomes a lifeline for emergency services and communities seeking...
The sky has always engendered a sense of the mystic. Mysteries of the circular movement of points across an infinite black. An assembling of shapes, appearance of tones, and motes of regular reflections all capture by an upwards tilt of the head. We’ve had a glimpse of the astral workings of the mechanical clock of our universe. Humans would see patterns that foretold seasons and catastrophes. Photo by Greg Rakozy on UnsplashToday, we still consult with the sky, asking questions about what it sees. While many still look out, our geospatial and Earth observation community, use orbital sensors to look back down at ourselves. These sensors are the bringers of truth. Looking down from the heavens on us and the world we have sculpted. That truth is only demeaned by humanity's crass interpretations of those pixels. While those sensors, in the silence of orbital velocity, continue to capture, record, and transmit… Capture, record, and transmit…Strategic Geospatial is a reader-supported...
Starting a company is both an exciting and daunting endeavor. Yet, for data scientists, technologists, environmental advocates, innovators, and GIS/geospatial professionals, the opportunity to build something truly meaningful has never been greater. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is unlocking new possibilities for extending the potential of geospatial/GIS, inspiring many to launch their own companies and explore this exciting frontier. But how do you position your startup for long-term success?Drawing on years of experience across geospatial/GIS technologies, executive leadership, and entrepreneurship, here are some of my guiding principles for launching and growing your business.Elements of Success: Clarify Your OfferingEvery startup begins with a simple but important question: what is your company offering? Narrowing your focus is critical. Whether you’re providing a new productivity tool, GIS services, Earth observation (EO) insights, or data collection tools, success comes from...
In this episode Chris and Krishna talk a little about their career paths, reply to some questions from listeners about Episode 1 concerning embeddings, and profess their undying love for Google Earth Engine.Throughout this conversation, a common theme explored is the nature of the abstractions implemented in Google Earth Engine, vs the open-source ecosystem.If anyone from Google sees this: we would love more export tasks.(00:00) Introductions and career paths(08:00) Questions from Episode 1(17:00) Geospatial platform discussion. Descartes Labs, Google Earth Engine, the Impact Observatory pipeline and more!
Stories by Chris Holmes on Medium
• By Chris Holmes
•
Yesterday I read Sylvain Lesage’s post Parquet with GEOMETRY type is not GeoParquet and started writing a reply for Linkedin but it ended up a bit too long to just be a comment, so I thought I’d just post it here as a blog. Overall it’s a great write-up and I appreciate that Sylvain took the time to share his understandings, and that he’s been diving deep to be able to support the geospatial + Parquet ecosystem. And most all of it is right on, but I wanted to provide some more context, and one tweak.The only thing that I think is ‘off’ in the post is the timeline that says GeoParquet 1.1 was ‘published three months after the introduction of GEOMETRY and GEOGRAPHY in Parquet’. GeoParquet 1.1 was June 19th of 2024, while the geospatial types landed in Parquet core in March of 2025.The original PARQUET-2471 discussion started about 1 month before the 1.1.0 release. And the main topic for the core GeoParquet group members after the 1.1.0 release was to help ensure that Parquet and Iceberg...
Last Wednesday the Apache Sedona project announced SedonaDB. There’s also a great post on the Whereobots blog that has a bit more context, or if you’re like me and you just want to see the code you can do that too.
I’ve been a sparse blog poster ever since I (1) got a job and (2) had kids, but if you’ve been vaguely following over the past few years you’ll notice that I mostly have written about what happens when spatial data gets a little too big to be comfortable for the standard R and Python tools to handle (mostly sf and geopandas). By “too big to be comfortable” I mean anything where the key part of your iteration takes more than 10 seconds, which is roughly the amount of time the average person is willing to wait before trying to do something else. The blog posts and the sofware I worked on over the past few years were cool but never solved anything: I basically found some great workarounds that people could implement if they were willing to write a pile of low-level R, C, or...
Decision-Making Information Resources & Solutions
• By proximityone
•
.. The United States 119th Congress is in session from Jan 3, 2025 to Jan 3, 2027. This post is focused on the demographic change of the 119th Congressional Districts from the 2020 (Census 2020) to 2023 (ACS 2024) by 119th Congressional District. The ACS 2024 data became available on September 11, 2025. See the 119th Congressional Districts main page for more detail.
119th Congressional Districts – Patterns of Population %Change 2020-24
The graphic below shows patterns of percent population change from 2020 (Census 2020) to 2023 (ACS 2024) by 119th Congressional District, contiguous 48 states. See inset legend to associate color pattern to percent change. Click graphic to for larger view with CDs labeled with percent change.
The 119th congressional districts ranged in percent population change, 2020-2024, from -8.4% (NY09) to 23.4% (TX08) .. the CD with the lowest 2023 median household income ($MHI) was NY15 ($44,554) and the CD with the highest $MHI was CA17 ($181,913). The...
When and where?
Geomob Berlin took place at 18:00
on Thursday the 25th of September, 2025
in the office of Bettermile
at Oranienstr. 183 (Aufgang B), 10999 Berlin
(Google Maps, OpenStreetMap). The nearest station is Kottbusser Tor.
Summary Thread
Post by @[email protected] View on Mastodon
Agenda
Our format for the evening will be as it always has been:
doors open at 18:00, set up and general mingling
at 18:30 we begin the talks with a very brief introduction
Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10-15 minutes.
After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions.
We vote - using Feature Upvote - for the best speaker. The winner will receive a SplashMap and unending glory (see the full list of all past winners).
We head to a nearby pub for discussion and #geobeers paid for by the
sponsors.
The speakers:
Michael Cruickshank, Anthropocene Analytics: Leveraging geospatial data and complex network...
New research from Moody’s Analytics, PolicyMap, and Reinvestment Fund offers the most detailed look yet at the U.S. housing shortage, drilling all the way down to the census tract level....
The post Preserving LIHTC Units: A Key Strategy in Addressing Housing Shortages appeared first on PolicyMap.
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Executive SummaryThe recent announcement of Project Orbion by defense simulation leader Aechelon Technology and a consortium of specialized partners marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of geospatial intelligence and digital twin technology. This initiative represents a profoundly ambitious endeavor: to create a live, AI-enabled, planetary-scale digital twin of Earth, rendered in what Aechelon terms "Synthetic Reality". The project aims to forge a living, dynamic synthesis of real-time satellite imagery, all-weather radar intelligence, and ground-level photogrammetry, all governed by accurate physics and constantly updated with real-world conditions. This report provides an exhaustive analysis of Project Orbion, its underlying technologies, the strategic implications of its partnership model, and its potential impact on the rapidly expanding digital twin market.Against the backdrop of a global digital twin market projected to grow from over USD 36 billion in 2025 to more than USD...
January 30th & 31st, 2026
Hop in the virtual Mapmobile, it’s time for Mapping USA 2026! Every year, Mapping USA gathers hundreds of OpenStreetMap contributors, data users, and enthusiasts online for two days of presentations, workshops, and other mappy activities; in 2025 we were joined by over 150 folks in the OSM community for 25 talks, 3 workshops, 1 mapathon, and 4 office hours/birds of a feather sessions.
The Call for Proposals is Open!
You can submit your session proposal now through November 24th at 5:00pm Eastern Standard Time.
All are welcome and encouraged to participate in this year’s event. Even if you’ve never presented at a conference before, we encourage you to submit a proposal! Check out the talks from Mapping USA 2025 if you’re looking for inspiration.
Register Today
As always, Mapping USA is free for anyone to attend. If you are not currently an OpenStreetMap US member and you’d like to support the team behind Mapping USA, a $10 USD donation is greatly...
Organizations like hospital systems, Primary Care Associations (PCAs), health systems, health centers, and consultants are tasked with completing evaluations on community health, whether through market assessments or health needs assessments....
The post How PolicyMap Supports Market and Health Needs Assessments appeared first on PolicyMap.
How Remote Sensing Supports Smarter AgricultureAgriculture is one of humanity’s oldest practices, rooted in survival and tradition, yet today it is evolving faster than ever before. Fields that were once managed by walking the land and relying on inherited knowledge are now being observed from hundreds of kilometers above the Earth’s surface. Remote sensing, powered by satellite constellations such as Planet Dove, which captures daily global imagery, and Maxar’s high-resolution systems, which provide some of the sharpest commercial views available, is reshaping how farmers and agricultural businesses understand and manage their land.
This is not just about pretty pictures from space. It is about turning raw imagery into practical insights that guide everyday decisions on the ground. By tracking subtle changes in vegetation, monitoring soil moisture, and comparing seasonal patterns, remote sensing creates a living map of agricultural landscapes. That map becomes exponentially more...
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge — we’re a bit like the geospatial version of Windsurf: we have 4,000 people. In any case, the aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:Super-resolution: Doubling Sentinel-1 detail while cutting noise.Urban design: Walkable cities boost daily step counts.Public R&D: Funding flows widen Europe’s regional gaps.Multi-hazards: Satellites map where disasters converge.NVIDIA: New global reforecast dataset.Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. Super-resolving and despeckling Sentinel-1 in one goAs you may know, Sentinel-1 is one of the most widely used radar satellites (I go into more detail here), but its imagery has a couple of big drawbacks: relatively low spatial resolution and heavy speckle noise. Commercial SAR satellites provides sharper, cleaner images, but their costs put them out of reach for most researchers. Until now, most methods have tackled...
OpenStreetMap US is excited to announce the general availability of the OpenStreetMap US Tileservice: a free web service which provides vector map tiles and related resources to help people create maps that use OpenStreetMap data.
The Tileservice already provides tiles for OpenStreetMap US-supported projects, including Americana, OpenTrailMap, OSMCha and SliceOSM. By making the Tileservice available to the public, we hope to help developers in the OSM community overcome the technical barriers to creating new maps and applications based on OSM data.
What’s Available
The Tileservice provides:
Vector tilesets derived from OpenStreetMap data in several schemas, suitable for making interactive maps
Raster tilesets for hillshading and other specialized purposes
Fonts suitable for use with MapLibre and compatible renderers
Documentation, including a list of available tilesets and demo maps of each, is available at tiles.openstreetmap.us.
Usage Policy
The service is free for...
FOSS4G captures the collaborative and innovative spirit reminiscent of early GIS events, while simultaneously providing attendees with a crucial insight into the field's future. It’s a space where innovative ideas are born, complex geospatial challenges are tackled, and meaningful solutions take shape. The keynotes aren't lectures—they inspire engagement—and live demonstrations showcase real data and software in action. This event fosters collaboration, with speakers sharing valuable insights that spark conversations, drive innovation, and promote growth and change.Explore some of the highlights from this annual event. I strongly encourage your participation, regardless of your GIS/Geospatial tech stack.💡 Secure your discount on full registration tickets by using promo code Spatial_1103 at checkout.FOSS4G North America 2025 HighlightsWhen: November 3-5, 2025Where: Hyatt Regency Reston, VA500+ attendees across sectors100+ technical talks on open-source geospatial adoption,...
Dustin Sampson has been Sparkgeo’s CTO for 12 years. During this time, he watched the evolution of the geospatial sector through the lens of software development. In this video, we discuss the use of vibe coding techniques to accelerate software development practices, especially around proof of concept development and vibe planning. Hopefully, you find it interesting and useful.Leave a commentThanks for reading Strategic Geospatial! This post is public, so feel free to share it.Share
DENVER, September 22, 2025 – The Sanborn Map Company Inc. (Sanborn), one of the nation’s most established geospatial solutions providers, has entered a multi-year partnership with SatVu, a UK-based provider and leader in high-resolution thermal data. This collaboration integrates SatVu’s advanced thermal infrared data into Sanborn’s mapping and analytics solutions, unlocking powerful new insights for government agencies, utilities, and commercial organizations across the nation.
Founded in 1866, Sanborn has over 150 years of experience delivering trusted mapping solutions nationwide. Now, with thermal data acquired from space at 3.5-meter resolution by SatVu’s growing satellite launched in 2023, with two more scheduled for 2026 – Sanborn’s customers can access thermal intelligence that enables day-and-night monitoring and reveals heat patterns invisible to conventional satellite imagery.
The collaboration brings thermal intelligence (actionable insights derived from thermal infrared...
Janelle Daigle holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Geography and a Masters of Science degree in Geoinformatics. She began her integration of GIS and space weather during her graduate studies at Millersville University where she participated in Millersville’s SWEN (Space Weather and the Environment) program. Her Masters thesis focused on utilizing geospatial technology to assess the potential risks that space weather can have on precision agriculture. Interview by Terry Griffin and Randal Hale.
Janelle Where are you on earth and what do you do for a living?
I am from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, home of the largest Amish community, the infamous Shoo-fly Pie and the Whoopie Pie (despite what they say in New England). Currently, I am a GIS specialist for a civil engineering firm. Within my role for the firm, I utilize a variety of geospatial tools and workflows to enhance transportation planning, environmental planning, and emergency management services. In addition to the...
In conversation with Mr. Eric DesRoche, Director, Infrastructure Business Strategy, AEC Design, Autodesk, where he talks about the adoption of Digital Twin and its role in critical infrastructure, major opportunities in the AEC sector, and the importance of Open Data and partnerships.
The post We’re going through a digital transformation in the AEC industry appeared first on Geospatial World.
In our ongoing series on geospatial raster data formats, Julia
Signell and I have been exploring the
finer points of array data storage. Throughout our research, we’ve found that
chunking – breaking a large dataset down into smaller pieces for individual
storage and retrieval – is universally relevant regardless of data format.
Chunking, as we’ve seen, is an absolutely necessary strategy for making large
datasets usable, but in the cloud era, it has become something
tyrannical,
making data access efficiency strictly tied to chunk alignment.
Diverging from an access pattern aligning with the dataset’s chunking scheme and
compounding inefficiencies will cripple data access at scale. Pretend, for
example, we are an official in Chico, a city in the central valley of
California near the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, who wants to examine
changes in monthly average maximum temperatures in the city over the years 2010
to 2020 to understand possible increases in air conditioner usage. Say...
I was lucky enough to support the See Change Sessions - Earth Observation Data track last week in Burlington, Vermont, as a topic guide. This meeting was designed to help build narratives around critical global concerns and policies. Highlighting the power of stories and the give-and-take nature of storytelling. Burlington was a beautiful location, providing both fertile soil for growing ideas and a blank page on which to sketch rough narratives. In my role, I was asked to paint a picture of the future. I based my thoughts on the poem below. Both setting a scene and then exploring a world where technical difficulties had been diminished. Petabytes of data flow through the thin skin of our atmosphere every day. Millions of pixels with their associated ephemeris report on the state of our landscapes when assembled. Providing a visual reflection our changing planet in almost real time.But today, we are not.The Lament of the Lonely PixelCaptured by a CCD in the sky,Never looked at by a...
Geo for Good is Google’s annual conference focused on their geospatial and cloud offerings. The 2025 edition of the summit was hosted at both New York and Singapore. I was glad to take part in the Geo for Good 2025 Summit at Singapore that took place from Sept 8-11, 2025 at the Google Singapore office. The summit provided an excellent opportunity to learn about the latest advancements in Google’s geospatial tools and to build new professional connections.
The Conference
As Earth Engine gets more integrated with Google’s Cloud offerings, the focus of the conference has also shifted to interoperability and integration with other cloud services. Google has also invested a lot of resources into their AI offerings – particularly with the new Satellite Embedding dataset and it was at the center stage throughout the conference.
Geo for Good Singapore Summit Participants (Photo by Google)
I saw the following main themes in this year’s conference:
Theme 1:...
This plenary panel from AEC Forum 2025, moderated by Ananyaa Narain (Vice President – Consulting, Geospatial World), explored how the integration of geospatial, BIM, and digital twin technologies is transforming infrastructure development.
The discussion addressed definitions, practical benefits, and challenges in implementing a connected infrastructure ecosystem, with emphasis on resilient, data-driven, and sustainable solutions. The panel included Rajan Aiyer (Managing Director, Trimble), KKVN Raju (Sharath, Managing Director, Clove Technologies), Abhishek Sinha (Solution Architect, Bentley), and Kailash Chandola (Co-Founder & CEO, Arth), who shared sectoral insights and case studies, highlighting the critical need for interoperability, open standards, and stakeholder
The post Geospatial + BIM + Digital Twins: Enabling Connected Infrastructure Systems | AEC Forum 2025 appeared first on Geospatial World.
Oslandia is pleased to announce the release of the QGIS plugin: QSunPotential, a tool for assessing the solar potential of roofs developed by Oslandia in collaboration with CRAIG (Auvergne Rhône Alpes Regional Center for Geographic Information).
The plugin, using the PVGIS solar reference tool, allows you to assess solar potential and identify roofs that offer good monthly or annual returns. In practical terms, it is possible to model roofs on a city or neighborhood scale, identify the solar potential in kWh for each sector, and answer the question, “How much electricity can I produce with solar panels on my roof?
An essential tool for all local authorities and other organizations involved in the energy transition! Thanks to the Department of Isère for providing a dataset.
Now available in the official QGIS plugin repository: https://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/qsunpotential/
Future improvements are already planned. If you would like to know more, please contact us...
A VerySpatial PodcastShownotes – Episode 76914 September 2025
A relaxing discussion about world building
Click to directly download MP3
YouTube (audio only)
AVSP – Episode 769 Transcript (docx)
http://traffic.libsyn.com/avsp/AVSP_Episode769.mp3
News:
International Geomagnetic Reference Field Explorer Updated
Researchers use AI machine learning to uncover hidden earthquakes
Web corner
McAtlas – McAtlas.com
Topic:
This week we return to a discussion on worldbuilding this time focusing more on games that allow for worldbuilding.
Music: Who Put That Ceiling There by niko
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge — a newsletter that’s almost as niche as the Julia programming language. In any case, the aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:Biodiversity mapping: NASA’s BioSoundSCape records 825,000 minutes of audioPlane turbulence: Satellites help explain the Singapore Airlines incidentWater quality: Explainable AI predicts river conditions in IndiaFoundation models: Lessons from deploying Presto in WorldCerealVegetation maps: Global 30m median vegetation dataset releasedSubscribe nowResearch you should know about1. Mapping biodiversity using soundA new dataset called BioSoundSCape has been released as part of NASA’s BioSCape project. It’s focused on the Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) in South Africa. The GCFR is home to the Fynbos biome, a global biodiversity hotspot with super high rates of endemism among plants, birds, and amphibians. To capture how...
Did you know “MapThis!” is more than a blog for geo nerds?
In honor of our 25 years in business, we sat down with some key members of our team to talk about the company’s past, present, and future.
In this video, GEO Jobe’s Chief Operating Officer Danny Menikheim joins CEO David Hansen to discuss the company’s “MapThis!” initiative—how what started as an effort to bring geography to the forefront of the classroom has grown into an ongoing vehicle for informational awareness and, ultimately, a passionate community.
Want to show off your support for GEO Jobe’s MapThis initiative?
Click below to shop our MapThis Store!
About Our Company
GEO Jobe is a leading GIS software and geospatial solutions provider, serving over 10,000 organizations globally. GEO Jobe is best known for developing the most popular applications in the ArcGIS Marketplace, including Admin Tools for ArcGIS, Backup My Org, Clean My Org and Scheduler...
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
•
What’s NewFTC Cracks Down on 'AI Washing' (Federal Trade Commission)[KP1]The FTC’s final order against a company offering an “AI Content Detector” highlights the risks of overstating the use of AI in products and services. The complaint alleged the company’s detector was far less accurate than advertised. The order included requirements that the company email eligible consumers about the consent order and submit compliance reports to the FTC one year after the order is issued and every year for the following three years. For companies offering GeoAI products and services, this case signals that regulators will scrutinize claims about AI model performance, especially when inaccurate claims could harm users or distort trust in AI-generated outputs. See the Deep Dive below for more.Executive Order No. 24: Advancing Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence That Benefits All North Carolinians (NC Governor’s Office)North Carolina’s order establishes a framework for “trustworthy AI” in state...
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
A Signal from Orbit
On July 15, 2025, a transaction was finalized that sent a clear signal from orbit to boardrooms across the technology sector. IonQ, a leading developer of trapped-ion quantum computers, completed its acquisition of Capella Space, a prominent operator of a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite constellation in an all-stock deal valued at approximately $318 million. On the surface, it was a merger between a deep-tech hardware firm and a next-generation Earth observation company. But viewed from a strategic vantage point, this...
The Gartrell Group’s Geo Strategy Team recently partnered with the Multnomah County Department of Health to develop a strategic plan and information architecture for a new mobile application designed to connect at‑risk populations with timely, high‑quality care delivered through mobile health clinics. The initiative supports the Tri‑County Mobile Van Collaborative, formed in June 2024 to share information, resources, and promising practices across county and partner organizations.Grounded in Community ValuesThis work is guided by shared values that center equity and trust:Culturally responsive services and adaptabilityRelationships and partnershipsEquitable access to low‑barrier, high‑quality careConsistency as the foundation of trustOvercoming geopolitical barriers to extend services across boundariesMeeting people where they areWhy Mobile Vans—and Why NowLarge disparities persist across leading diagnoses and local treatment options. Mobile health vans help bridge these gaps by...
Your Presenters:
Laura Doty, Customer Support Team Lead
Rebecca Davis, Project Manager
MapGeo is transforming the way organizations communicate vital data, both internally and with the public. Whether you're a municipal leader, GIS professional, or community advocate, this session will showcase how MapGeo delivers measurable impact through smarter information sharing and strategic visibility.
What You'll Learn:
Cost Savings in Action: Discover how municipalities have saved tens of thousands of dollars and thousands of staff hours using MapGeo. From reduced in-person visits to streamlined data access, MapGeo's Return on Investment (ROI) reports reveal significant savings.
Web Statistics That Matter: Learn how monthly MapGeo usage reports track site visits, clicks, and user actions.
Boosting Public Engagement: Explore strategies to increase the visibility of your MapGeo site.
The post Spatial IQ for MapGeo Webinar – Understanding How MapGeo is Contributing to your Organization...
Learn how to turn Mergin Maps field data into professional QGIS reports using maps, tables, photos, and Atlas automation for stakeholder-ready results.
This year, Sparkgeo turned 15. To celebrate, our annual meet up was held in Prince George, British Columbia, the place where it all began in 2010. As a remote team, face-to-face time matters, and it’s especially important that the things we do together are fun. This year was a chance to reflect on our roots while also embracing new experiences together.
Roots in Wild Places
Our founder, Will Cadell, built a life in Prince George with his wife after they moved from Scotland to Canada. In this small northern city, it’s possible to ski, run, and bike in wild places right from your front door, while still staying connected to the global technology market. With Pacific time zone convenience, a small airport, and a short hop to Vancouver’s international connections, Prince George became the perfect launch point for Sparkgeo’s global reach.
Sparkgeo began with a simple idea: put maps on the internet. It was clear that the web would transform how mapping products were delivered....
I will be at NY Climate Week on Tuesday, Sept 23rd and Wednesday 24th. I wanted to let you know about the geospatial meetups, workshops - even breakfasts - I’ll be attending or MCing. It would be great to cross paths if you’re there. Tech Workshop: Open Data in Applied Risk Analysis - I will be the MC for this. You are encouraged to submit a 7 minute lightning talk. Submission form is available in the dialog to get tickets. It is Wednesday, September 24 · 1 - 4:30pm EDT at St. John's University Manhattan Campus.GeoNYC Relaunch: Climate Week Edition. It is Tuesday 23 September, 18:00 - 20:00. Register to see the location. Nature Data with Dumplings. It is Wednesday 24 September, 8:30 - 10:00. Register for the address.Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Philadelphia, PA – From June 23 to 25, the vibrant halls of the Loews Philadelphia Hotel bustled with over 400 innovators from 23 countries as the Cesium Developer Conference unfolded. As I, and some of my Project Geospatial interns, attended, the conference proved to be an engaging, lively, and extremely productive gathering, though its sheer wealth of information occasionally bordered on overwhelming. Philadelphia itself, a city rich in history and innovation, offered an amazing and refreshing change of scenery from the traditional geospatial conference hubs of Washington D.C., Denver, or St. Louis. Amidst the technical presentations and dynamic networking,...
Level-2 News"The cumulative downloads from 2008 to present are shown in this graphic. The release of Collection 2 products in 2020, which improved data quality and accessibility, helped drive downloads upward."Landsat Celebrates Major Open Data Milestone [link]"On July 14, 2025, downloads of Landsat products passed 200,000 terabytes (TB). This milestone highlights the vast scale of the Landsat archive and growing demand for its data.This achievement stems from the 2008 policy change that made all Landsat products available for download from the U.S. Geological Survey for no-charge. In the last 17 years, scientists, land managers and the public have used this resource to understand the changes on our landscapes around the world. "Planet Reports Financial Results for Second Quarter of Fiscal Year 2026 [link]Planet had a strong Q2 FY2026, reaching record revenue of $73.4M (+20% YoY), generating $85M in operating cash and $54M in free cash flow so far this year. The company’s future...
At AEC Forum 2025, Tapan Mozumdar, Senior Vice President, The Global Network for Zero, unpacks the real challenges and opportunities of digitalization in construction. He highlights why interoperability in BIM models, integration of IoT and real-time data into Digital Twins, and life-cycle digitalization are essential for large-scale adoption. Through examples from India’s rapid infrastructure growth, he stresses the importance of designing climate-resilient, sustainable, and safe projects that meet ISO standards and global benchmarks. This session is a roadmap for engineers, developers, and policymakers to accelerate towards a net zero world.
The post Interoperability, BIM & Digital Twins: The Road to Net Zero Infrastructure | AEC Forum 2025 appeared first on Geospatial World.
I've heard geospatial professionals describe GIS as Google Maps. But is this really true? We compare Google Maps vs other GIS software.
The post Is Google Maps Really a GIS Software? appeared first on GIS Geography.
Would you like to know how we build #MerginMaps to run on your phone?
Mergin Maps is #QGIS running on your phone with a simplified UI for touch screens. It's a long and difficult journey.
Are you curious? Read about it here: https://www.lutraconsulting.co.uk/blogs/how-we-build-mergin-maps-to-run-on-your-phone
https://lnkd.in/eKdxnFGQ
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge — a newsletter that’s almost as optimised as a Zarr. With jokes that terrible, the aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:Cell Towers: Machine learning optimises tower placement.Air Quality: Kalman-BiGRU improves forecast reliability.SAR Ships: Classification-aware super-resolution boosts accuracy.GeoFlow: AI agents streamline geospatial workflows.Facebook: new geospatial migration dataset released.Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. A smarter way to expand mobile networksOk, so I’m pretty interested in the impact of internet access and mobile connectivity on development (in fact, I’ve co-authored some work on the topic with Neil Lee and Zhiwu Wei). By extension, it’s important to try and work out where new cell towers should be constructed. Telecom operators have long relied on methods like drive tests, where engineers literally drive around with...
I started a podcast with my friend Krishna Karra! Krishna is extremely knowledgeable, and I firmly believe that he is one of the people who has looked at the most earth observation pixels on the planet.We worked together briefly in 2022, on a satellite imagery retrieval tool called Earth Index. Throughout this time, we spent a lot of time investigating the current topic du jour: embeddings. Since interest is increasing in this technology, we thought we’d share our opinions and experiences working with them and developing applications on top of them. Our first episode is titled: “Embeddings in Context: Tools for Geospatial Problem Solving” and you can find it on spotify, apple and youtube. Give it a listen to find out: what problems we solved use embeddingshow I spent $40,000 in cloud credits on pre-training on satellite imagery only to be beaten by ImageNet weightswhy I think embeddings for search should be high recall across a broad range of problems at the expensive of precision,...
Wenn man sich mit Daten-Themen auseinandersetzt, ist „Datenräume“ schon einige Zeit ein geflügeltes Wort. Was die aktuellen Entwicklungen im Thema sind, habe ich am Swiss Data Spaces Forum in Rotkreuz mit anderen Interessierten diskutiert. Quelle Header-Bild: Swiss Data Alliance Datenräume Letzten Dienstag traf sich die Schweizer Daten-Community in Rotkreuz zum diesjährigen «Swiss Data Spaces Forum». …
The Future of Farming: AI, GIS, and Big Data in Agriculture
Agriculture is entering a new era where decisions are no longer based purely on tradition or intuition, but on data-driven insights. Farmers today face challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity, shifting consumer demands, and the pressure of feeding a growing population. The integration of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Big Data is creating solutions that allow farmers to grow more with fewer inputs while ensuring farming remains sustainable for future generations.
The power of GIS has grown significantly over the past decade. Where early systems focused mainly on static maps, modern platforms deliver real-time, cloud-based analysis that integrates satellite imagery, sensor networks, and predictive models. A leader in this space, Esri’s ArcGIS, is now widely used in agriculture to manage everything from soil health to export logistics. Farmers and agronomists can build...
Sometimes things happen at a slow burn. One thing I’ve been trying to do in what spare time I have is resurrect the QGIS-US group. It’s starting.
I’ve reached the point now where emails/virtual hangouts are about to start happening.
So I made a google form and in general I’m just trying to figure out “who” and “where”. So if you’re interested in a QGIS US Users group add your name to the list and we will attempt to get things rolling. I’m not sharing your info with anyone – this is more for me to gauge on how to proceed.
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The post QGIS-US User Group appeared first on North River Geographic Systems Inc.
At AEC Forum 2025, Satish MV, Executive Committee Member & Advisor to CMD, Larsen & Toubro, explores how digital technologies are redefining construction and infrastructure worldwide. From automated generative design at Navi Mumbai Airport to common data environments that eliminate version chaos, L&T has embraced BIM at every dimension—3D, 4D, 5D, 6D, and 7D. These innovations enable budget certainty, time optimization, safety-by-design, sustainability planning, and real-time facility management. Beyond BIM, L&T leverages geospatial technology for mega EPC projects, AI for contract analysis and cost estimation, and digital twins for smart operations. Satish MV shows how construction is no longer about pouring concrete—it’s about integrating intelligence, data, and digital foresight into every structure. This is the future of infrastructure—smarter, faster, and more sustainable.
The post Digital Engineering at L&T: The Power of BIM, AI & Smart Construction | AEC Forum 2025...
Chris and Krishna discuss their experiences working with geospatial embeddings, search and remote sensing in general, and how they think through problems.Timestamps sustainably sourced and hand crafted.(0:00) Intro(2:30) Background, earth observation and existing algorithms and the embedding fallacy.(9:49) Validation, how to solve problems, seductive embeddings, the museum of cool demos.(19:22) What are embeddings?(21:00) Search vs embeddings, the development of Earth Index.(25:00) Expert embeddings: the dumbest embeddings that work.(30:25) Computer vision embeddings/ImageNet. Experiments in pre-training, how to spend $40,000 in cloud credits.(37:22) Should we pre-train on satellite imagery? DINO v3(44:30) What properties should embeddings have for search? Recall vs Precision/Landcover+(50:00) Real world consequences of mapping(54:00) Future outlook, Krishna is jaded
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
A Picture of a CrisisIn the sweltering, chaotic hours after Hurricane Harvey made landfall, as emergency managers struggled to grasp the scale of the unfolding catastrophe, they were not just looking at a weather map. In operations centers across Texas and in Washington D.C., a different kind of picture was taking shape on screens—a complex, layered tapestry of digital information. The storm’s projected path, a swirling vortex of color, was overlaid with the precise locations of hospitals, nursing homes with vulnerable residents, critical power substations, and the cellular towers that formed the fragile backbone of communication. This was not just data; it...
This was made with AI.Note: This is an expansion of my previous post: Revolutionizing Geospatial Workflows: Agentic AI will Transform the Future of GIS Geographic Information Systems (GIS) revolutionized how we approach planning, mapmaking, and research. By automating maps, attributes, topologies, and geographic operations such as buffering, overlaying, geocoding, proximity analysis, and routing, GIS has become an indispensable tool for understanding and interpreting our world. However, its original design was never meant for the fast-paced, real-time demands of tactical operations. This has created a gap between what GIS can do and what modern operations require.The original design of GIS was not intended to meet the fast-paced, real-time demands of operations.The future of geospatial technology depends on moving beyond static data layers and proprietary silos. We need to make data operational, delivering actionable insights precisely when and where they are needed. This evolution is...
Many small and mid-sized organizations find technology modernization daunting due to costs, complexity, and skill shortages. However, a strategic, step-by-step approach focusing on business goals and small, high-impact wins can ease the process. Embracing gradual changes and leveraging expert guidance helps unlock new efficiencies and competitive advantages.
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
A Tale of Two MapsConsider two scenarios, each a testament to the power of modern geospatial technology. In the first, a global hospitality giant like Marriott builds a sophisticated "Risk Atlas" using Esri's ArcGIS platform. This system analyzes a torrent of data—news reports, social media, meteorological information—to evaluate threat levels by location, ensuring the safety of travelers and assets around the world. In another corner of the corporate world, FedEx executives monitor global dashboards, tracking real-time information on plane schedules and performance to maintain the intricate logistics network that underpins modern commerce. This is a world of...
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
•
What’s NewGlobal AI Governance Law and Policy: South Korea (International Association of Privacy Professionals)South Korea’s new AI Basic Act (effective January 2026) positions the country as the world’s second comprehensive AI regulator after the EU, blending promotion of AI innovation with safeguards for trust, transparency, and human oversight. The law’s focus on high-impact systems, generative AI, and rights impact assessments means geospatial applications using AI (e.g., location analytics, surveillance, smart city systems) for certain applications will need to demonstrate accountability and transparency while navigating a framework that also encourages adoption and international cooperation.FTC Announces Crackdown on Deceptive AI Claims and Schemes (Federal Trade Commission) The FTC’s Operation AI Comply signals that regulators are moving beyond principles to active enforcement against deceptive AI claims, targeting companies that exaggerate capabilities, generate fake content,...
A VerySpatial PodcastShownotes – Episode 76831 August 2025
Geography & AI
Click to directly download MP3
YouTube (audio only)
AVSP – Episode 768 Transcript (docx)
http://traffic.libsyn.com/avsp/AVSP_Episode768.mp3
News:
New U.S. Cooperative National Geologic Map for the Nation
CREAM AI developed to address satellite space debris
Study Analyzes National Geography Curriculum across countries
Web corner
Esri World Sizes App
Topic:
This week we contemplate Geography and AI from the history of the some of the concepts around its use
Music: “Why Do I Cry” By Vian Izak
Blog Archive - SSP Innovations
• By Carrie Turner
•
In utility technology projects, success doesn’t start with the kickoff meeting—it starts much earlier, with a clear understanding of what’s being delivered, why, and how. That’s why scope and expectation management is more than just administrative discipline—it’s the backbone of effective delivery.
The post Setting the Foundation: Scope and Expectation Management for Utility Technology Projects appeared first on SSP Innovations.
Blog Archive - SSP Innovations
• By Carrie Turner
•
Starting with ArcGIS Pro 3.4, and now also 3.5, the conda environment that ships with ArcGIS Pro includes the pydantic python package. Pydantic has been my go-to data validation library for years, but to use it alongside ESRI’s python tools required cloning the arcgispro-py3 environment, and then installing pydantic into the cloned environment, so I’m very happy that it’s included out of the box now.
The post Using Pydantic with your ESRI GIS appeared first on SSP Innovations.
Blog Archive - SSP Innovations
• By Carrie Turner
•
Utilities across the country are facing a perfect storm of challenges in maintaining and modernizing grid infrastructure while dealing with resource constraints. Many utilities report significant difficulties in recruiting and retaining qualified technical staff.
The post Strategic Resourcing for Utilities: Staff Augmentation vs Managed Services appeared first on SSP Innovations.
Blog Archive - SSP Innovations
• By Carrie Turner
•
For utilities, GIS is no longer just an internal back-office tool…it is a mission-critical system used by field crews, engineers, contractors, and even public safety partners. Since ArcGIS Enterprise is a mission-critical system for web and mobile GIS, the question arises: how do you make it accessible to both your internal employees and external contractors without compromising security or creating a nightmare for IT?
The post Using Split DNS with ArcGIS Enterprise to Support Internal and External Utility Users appeared first on SSP Innovations.
Welcome to GeoAI Unpacked! I am Ali Ahmadalipour and in this blog, I share insights and deep dives in geospatial AI, focusing on business opportunities and industry challenges. Each issue highlights key advances, real-world applications, and my personal takeaways on emerging opportunities.Subscribe nowIn this issue, I’m taking a closer look at the emerging world of agentic geospatial, where LLMs and agents intersect with maps, climate, and spatial intelligence. ⚠️❗️Note that these are my personal observations and opinions, and do not reflect the views of my employer (Google). ❗️ Let’s dive in!1. IntroductionThe past year has seen a shift in AI from large language models as text predictors to agents; systems that can reason, call external tools, and act. In geospatial and climate-tech, this shift is particularly significant. The challenge isn’t just answering questions in natural language but connecting fragmented datasets, reasoning over spatial and temporal relationships, and turning...
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge. If you’re the type of person who uses the Raster package on R, then fear not. We’re here to save you. With bold statements like these, our aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:Black Carbon: Global models miss emissions in the South.Night Lights: VIIRS data extended back to 1986.Tourism Villages: GIS shows Sichuan’s “Six Cores” clusters.Conflict Forecasts: Machine learning predicts refugee displacement flows.Oil Spills: 3,550 incidents compiled into global dataset.Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. How black carbon is underestimated in the Global SouthBlack carbon, produced by incomplete combustion, is a major pollutant with serious climate and health impacts. But how well do our global emission inventories capture it? Using thousands of ground measurements from the SPARTAN network and other sources, a new paper in Nature Communications compared...
OpenStreetMap US is excited to partner with Mapillary to launch a US version of their popular global challenge: CompleteTheMap. This initiative rewards new and returning Mapillary contributors for their efforts collecting street-level imagery with exciting prizes. More crowdsourced street-level imagery means more accurate, detailed, and up-to-date reference photos for OpenStreetMap contributors!
How it works
Interested participants can join CompleteTheMap by filling out this application form. Once the challenge period begins, hit the road knowing that every mile of your imagery contributions within the challenge period will count towards your total. Potential prizes include:
Mapillary and/or OpenStreetMap US swag
Electronic gift cards
Discounts and complimentary tickets to State of the Map US 2026
A GoPro MAX 360º camera
Your contributions will be totaled using the Unique Captured Miles (UM) method per each user. This means that the same road segment captured multiple...
The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.6.0!
Best Served with PostgreSQL 18 Beta3
and recently released GEOS 3.14.0.
This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta3, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+.
To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.14+ is needed.
To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 2.2.0+ is needed.
3.6.0
source download md5
NEWS
HTML Online en ja sv fr zh_Hans
PDF docs: en ja, sv, zh_Hans, fr
Cheat Sheets:
postgis: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
postgis_raster: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
postgis_topology: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
postgis_sfcgal: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
address standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
This release includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.5.3 and new features.
Topoprint now supports creating relief maps as RoundRects (rounded rectangles) alongside traditional disc shapes. Backend optimizations have accelerated 3D model processing significantly: a model that once took up to 10 minutes now completes in less than three minutes, complete with a progress bar update to keep users informed. Additionally, the Topodisc Designer web app has been revamped for mobile devices, making interaction more intuitive on the small screen.
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Cami Maselli
•
The Enigma of the Dragon LadyPoised against the inky blackness and gentle curvature of the Earth, a slender, almost ethereal silhouette patrols the upper reaches of the atmosphere. This is the domain of the Lockheed U-2, an aircraft that has etched itself into the annals of aviation history and global geopolitics. Known by evocative, almost mythical, monikers such as the "Dragon Lady" or "the black lady of espionage," its presence has been a constant, often unseen, factor in international affairs for the better part of seven decades. From the iciest depths of the Cold War to the complex surveillance demands of the 21st century, the U-2 has adapted and...
Things to Learn Before Others in GIS (and Why they Matter)
Life in GIS
The field of Geospatial Development is vast and diving in without the right learning order can quickly turn...
The post Things to Learn Before Others in GIS (and Why they Matter) appeared first on Life in GIS published by Wanjohi Kibui
The OpenStreetMap US team welcomes our latest organizational member, the American Geographical Society (AGS).
“AGS convenes a diverse global community of innovators, thinkers, and practitioners to create and curate geographical knowledge, and advance geographic science and technologies to address society’s challenges and opportunities… Most notably AGS’s commitment to our fall symposium Geography 2050 and our TeenMaptivists Initiative are great examples of our work.”
“AGS utilizes OSM for their TeenMaptivists Initiative, which introduces high-school students to the power of open mapping, and its impact on communities both locally, and globally. Currently, our network includes 15 high schools across the U.S., which have worked together to add over 311,000 points to OpenStreetMap throughout the 2024 - 2025 academic year. We highly value the opportunity to partner with OSM US to continue our mission of building the next generation of geographic leaders.”
John Konarski
,...
Image by Pete Linforth from PixabayAs GIS/geospatial vendors rush to adopt AI for tasks like scripting, data analysis, feature extraction (GeoAI) and natural language interfaces, the true impact of AI in this industry will become evident when it disrupts and transforms the entire segment.Modern enterprise systems, largely dominated by ESRI, emphasize the value of an all-in-one solution. It makes it easier for IT and GIS Administrators and purchasing agents. However, this approach comes with significant drawbacks. Built on outdated architecture and overloaded with features that not everyone needs, these systems often become cumbersome, limiting innovation while remaining slow and costly to maintain.Envision seamlessly integrating GIS and geospatial data, intelligence, and capabilities into any workflow.With Agentic AI, the system not only understands the problem but also identifies the right tools and applies them intelligently to execute tasks. This concept has long been out of reach...
Photo Source: Riccardo (Pexels)
ArcGIS Dashboards puts the power of location intelligence at your fingertips, but mastering its full potential takes more than just dragging and dropping widgets—these expert tips will help you level up your dashboards and deliver insights that truly stand out.
What is ArcGIS Dashboards & How Does it Work?
ArcGIS Dashboards is an app within the ArcGIS Online and Portal ecosystems that allows users to convey geographical information and other location-based analytics using interactive data visualizations on a single screen. The powerful dashboards can be used …“To help make decisions, visualize trends, monitor status in real-time, and inform communities.”
ArcGIS dashboards have multiple widgets that include maps, tables, graphs, and other interactive components that can be tailored to the user’s needs and are customizable. Learning how to use and customize a dashboard can be daunting due to all the pieces that work together; and even...
At State of the Map US 2025 this past June, the OSM US team had the chance to hear from maintainers of popular and emerging tools in the OSM ecosystem who expressed interest in additional opportunities to connect with each other. In response to this desire, OpenStreetMap US is excited to announce the Maintainers Working Group: an ongoing, dedicated forum for collaborating on tool functionality, sustainability, and interoperability.
Some topics we plan to discuss in the Working Group (based on responses from a recent survey) are:
Managing burnout
Navigating a project’s lifecycle
Finding opportunities for collaboration between projects
Sharing knowledge between primary developers and volunteers interested in contributing
The first meeting of the Maintainers Working Group is on Monday, September 8th at 2:00pm Eastern on Zoom, and you can RSVP here. Initially the Working Group will meet bi-monthly, with the option to adjust meeting frequency based on participant...
Geospatial Frontiers - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
A Discovery on the Mountaintop
Image from National Geodetic Survey | https://geodesy.noaa.gov/surveys/mark-recovery/index.shtml
The air is thin, the wind a constant pressure against your back. After hours of climbing, you’ve reached the summit, a granite crown on a remote mountain. The world unfolds below in a panorama of ridges and valleys. Amidst this raw, natural beauty, your eye catches something out of place: a small, metallic glint set into the bedrock. You kneel for a closer look. It is...
Hey guys, here’s this week’s edition of the Spatial Edge. If you’ve ever considered naming your pet dog ‘GDAL’, then we have one thing to say to you: welcome home… In any case, the aim is to make you a better geospatial data scientist in less than five minutes a week.In today’s newsletter:Pollution & Diabetes: Clinical data links PM2.5 to diabetes.AI & Cities: Generative models propose adaptive urban plans.Cloud Detection: New model works across multiple satellite sensors.SAR Dataset: 130k SAR images paired with text captions.Farmlands Data: Global dataset maps terraced agricultural parcels.Subscribe nowResearch you should know about1. What particulate pollution reveals about diabetes riskAs someone who’s based in Southeast Asia, I find myself reading a lot about air pollution. And a lot of the impacts of it are pretty widely known. But I was surprised to see a new link between air pollution and type II diabetes, as was recently unveiled in a Scientific Reports publication.Researchers...
Finding the right balance between Running-the-business (RTB) and Changing-the-business (CTB) can be challenging. This post explains that if RTB tasks are kept to a minimum, Scrum can be effective. However, if those tasks increase, adopting a hybrid or Kanban system can significantly help maintain smooth workflows and achieve operational excellence.
In today’s geospatial landscape, organizations are asked to deliver more with less. Executives expect greater insights from GIS, yet most teams remain understaffed and overextended. At Spatialty, we’ve been there, and we’ve built a philosophy that turns these challenges into opportunities.
Automation is the foundation of a modern GIS. By designing systems that do the heavy lifting, your team can focus on strategy instead of repetitive tasks. From streamlining data pipelines to orchestrating enterprise workflows, automation drives both efficiency and resilience. What makes Spatialty different is that we engineer automation from the ground up, embedding it into every layer of your geospatial program instead of bolting it on as an afterthought.
For a deeper dive into how automation specifically addresses this challenge, see our article on the Types of Geospatial Automation.
Self-service GIS unlocks the real value of your investment. With ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS...
Planning ahead
Dwelling patterns are never static and as certain locations become more desirable to move towards due to nearby job opportunities, upgraded infrastructure, or attractive landscapes, new residential structures begin to appear across the board. This type of growth is a sign of progress in the economy and the city itself. The problem we look to address arises when dwellings start appearing in areas where construction is not authorised, such as servitudes, environmentally protected zones, or land surrounding critical infrastructure.
In South Africa, where land scarcity, unemployment, and delays in service delivery create intense pressure, informal settlement in unsuitable or unsafe areas has become a significant challenge.
Encroachment Challenges in South AfricaThe spread of unauthorised settlements is not new in South Africa, but it has accelerated in recent years. This growth is fuelled by rapid urbanisation, ongoing housing shortages, deep socio-economic inequality, and...
MapTiler News
• By MapTiler (Petra Duriancikova)
•
A fresh set of 2024 aerial images has just been added to our satellite map, covering the Netherlands in remarkable clarity. The new data comes at 7.5 cm/px resolution, capturing the country’s unique mix of landscapes and cities with impressive precision.
A very brief continuation of yesterday’s post.Photo by Aubrey Odom on UnsplashIn the MIT study we discussed yesterday, there is a note about an emerging “shadow AI economy.” This is a simple idea that individuals were using AI to accelerate personal workflows. This is a counterpoint to how those individuals might have been using the pilot GenAI workflows designed corporately. A number of reasons were suggested for this. One was the personalization that individuals had put into their own AI experiences. In essence, their prompts were vibing with the individuals more, and as a result, giving better responses. Another might be that the corporate experiences lacked the foundational depth of experience that the consumer tools have. Or for whatever reason, the corporate experiences were a little clunky and forced the user into a new and uncomfortable workflow.Any IT manager would be horrified by this, knowing they do not control any sensitive corporate IP or private data that might be...
Overture is collaborating with the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA), which recently joined the Linux Foundation and Overture as a member, to solve a long-standing challenge in the travel industry: data interoperability. For years, the travel sector has struggled to standardize location data for hotels, attractions, and other points of interest across a complex ecosystem of providers.
Overture’s Global Entity Reference System (GERS) and Bridge Files provide the open map data infrastructure to solve this problem. GERS assigns a single, reliable ID to any physical place, and Bridge Files connect that ID to existing systems, making it easy to link disparate datasets.
A Common Language for Travel Locations
Overture provides the infrastructure to create a single source of truth for location data in the travel industry.
A Global Places Dataset: Overture provides a foundational dataset of over 60 million places of interest with names, categories, and addresses. This creates an open, global source...
Under a baking sun, I’m watching tumbleweed blow down the main street of my inbox. Summer is a time for forced reflection. When seemingly everyone is taking the time for holidays and long weekends, the space that would be filled with calls instead is filled with consideration. Photo by Jonas Allert on UnsplashA focal point of my reflection is always the place of geography within society. With geospatial technology as the digital expression of geography. Whether in consumer applications, such as Google Maps or Strava, or in more industrial uses of geography for logistics or natural resource management. I care about how geography is used. Partly, this is due to the complex mysteries that geography constantly presents, but also because of geography’s ability to connect data and experiences through space and time. I’ve often referred to geospatial as a deep horizontal, because location is often a component of consumer and commercial workflows, but rarely the whole story. While the deep...
The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.6.0rc2!
Best Served with PostgreSQL 18 Beta3
and recently released GEOS 3.14.0.
This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta3, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+.
To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.14+ is needed.
To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 2.2.0+ is needed.
3.6.0rc2
source download md5
NEWS
HTML Online en ja sv fr zh_Hans
PDF docs: en ja, sv, zh_Hans, fr
Cheat Sheets:
postgis: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
postgis_raster: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
postgis_topology: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
postgis_sfcgal: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
address standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
This release is a beta of a major release, it includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.5.3 and new features.
Towards Data Science - Geospatial
• By Lee Vaughan
•
Use Python, GeoPandas, Tropycal, and Plotly Express to map the number of hurricane encounters per county over the past 50 years.
The post Where Hurricanes Hit Hardest: A County-Level Analysis with Python appeared first on Towards Data Science.
In high-usage environments, it doesn’t take much for geocoding inefficiencies to start affecting both cost and performance. As a Google Cloud Partner specializing in geospatial solutions, Sanborn has helped many enterprise teams optimize their geocoding workflows. In this post, we’ll share expert strategies to get the most out of Google’s Geocoding API at high volumes – keeping both cost and performance in check.
Understanding Geocoding Costs and Limits
Geocoding requests are billed on a pay-as-you-go model. This means millions of address lookups can translate into a substantial monthly spend rate. Google also enforces a rate limit of 3,000 queries per minute (QPM) for the Geocoding API (summing both client-side and server-side calls). In practical terms, that’s about 50 requests per second across your project. Exceeding this limit will cause geocoding requests to return OVER_QUERY_LIMIT errors or be throttled, disrupting real-time applications.
At scale, these constraints make it...
From the earliest cave markings to carved stick charts and drawn maps, early humans relied on visual tools to communicate complex ideas. Where to find water, how to travel safely, or what dangers to avoid were too critical to leave to memory alone. Early maps served as powerful forms of storytelling and communication, passing knowledge across generations. They transformed lived experience and spatial awareness into shareable formats others could see, interpret, and act upon. In this way, maps were among humanity's first acts of design: an intentional shaping of information into a visual form with the goal of guiding others.
I view cartographers as 'specialized designers' because effective cartography requires more than technical accuracy; it requires a grasp of design fundamentals. The seven principles of design—emphasis, balance, contrast, repetition,...
The OpenStreetMap US team is thrilled to announce our latest organizational member, TomTom. In 2019, TomTom attended and sponsored its first State of the Map US in Minneapolis, and has been a growing part of the OSM US community and a SOTMUS sponsor ever since. Organizational membership demonstrates TomTom’s commitment to the OSM ecosystem and supports projects that companies like TomTom rely on, including OSMCha, MapRoulette and the OSM US Tasking Manager. Shaundrea Kenyon, Director of Community & Partnerships, Maps shared more about TomTom’s commitment to open data in this interview:
How does TomTom utilize OpenStreetMap?
In 2023, TomTom expanded its Orbis Maps Platform globally, incorporating various data sources, including OSM data, to enhance coverage and detail. OpenStreetMap contributes valuable base maps, pedestrian pathways, and visual features, which complement TomTom’s proprietary data. This integration is especially beneficial for applications in urban planning, disaster...
The OpenStreetMap US team proudly announces the OSM US Advisory Council, designed to complement the Board of Directors and help shape the organization’s long-term strategy and sustainability. The Advisory Council convenes to offer advice, support fundraising efforts, and supplement the organization’s core knowledge on important issues related to finance, law, politics, geospatial technology, and engagement. This group differs from the Board in that the Council has no official decision-making or fiduciary responsibility for the organization.
Advisory Council members are nominated by the Executive Director and approved by the Board of Directors on a rolling basis. Members are chosen based on their professional experience, roles, or expertise in the OSM & geospatial communities. Members are asked to serve a minimum of a 2-year term, with a limit of 4 years of service before a 1-year break.
Help OSM US welcome our inaugural members: Bill Dollins, Brandon Liu, Carrie Stokes, Diane Fritz,...
Im ersten und zweiten Teil dieser Mini-Blogserie habe ich gezeigt, woher GNSS-Daten (umgangssprachlich GPS-Daten) stammen und wie sich diese in spezialisierten Tracking-Studien gezielt erfassen lassen. Im heutigen und letzten Teil widmen wir uns nun einer Anwendung, die den Nutzen solcher Daten greifbar macht. Ich zeige, wie sich der Einfluss von Hitze auf fussläufige Erreichbarkeiten quantifizieren …
The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.6.0rc1!
Best Served with PostgreSQL 18 Beta3
and soon to be released GEOS 3.14.
This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta3, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+.
To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.14+ is needed.
To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 2.2.0+ is needed.
3.6.0rc1
source download md5
NEWS
HTML Online en ja sv fr zh_Hans
PDF docs: en ja, sv, zh_Hans, fr
Cheat Sheets:
postgis: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
postgis_raster: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
postgis_topology: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
postgis_sfcgal: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
address standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
This release is a beta of a major release, it includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.5.3 and new features.
Welcome to GeoAI Unpacked! I am Ali Ahmadalipour and in this blog, I share insights and deep dives in geospatial AI, focusing on business opportunities and industry challenges. Each issue highlights key advances, real-world applications, and my personal takeaways on emerging opportunities. For a sneak peak at the topics I plan to cover in upcoming issues, visit here.Subscribe nowIn this issue, I’ve explored the rise of data-as-a-service (DaaS) in the geospatial sector. We’ll look at how the industry has shifted from public data programs to a growing ecosystem of private data providers, the business models behind them, and the opportunities and challenges shaping this evolving market. Let’s dive in!1. The Changing Face of Geospatial DataThe concept of selling geospatial data isn’t new. In its early forms, “data as a service” largely meant delivering post-processed datasets; a weather forecast API for an energy company, a climate risk layer for an insurer, or a bulk download of flood...
Tell Us About Yourself
Hi, I’m Aaron Koelker. I was introduced to GIS while pursuing an Environmental Science degree and quickly became hooked on its unique blend of problem solving, storytelling, and visual design. I then spent eight years with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection providing enterprise GIS support and working on a wide variety of mappy tasks from imagery and dashboards to scripts and wall posters. Recently, I moved to the Finger Lakes region of New York and joined the state’s Office of Information Technology Services Geospatial Services team, where I’m also helping to support a variety of GIS projects and tasks. Outside of work you can often find me working on maps for personal projects and exploring topics that interest me. Nature and history are two that I come back to often.
Tell us the story behind your map (what inspired you to make it, what did you learn while making it, or any other aspects of the map or its creation you would like...
We use GIS for a bit of detective work with lines of sight, compass bearings, viewsheds and webmaps.
(I’ll apologise at the outset for the quality of some of the images in this post. My camera doesn’t work that well in low-light situations.)
As we stood out on the porch of friend and colleague Erin’s house in the Beckenham Loop one evening, she looked up on the hill and said, “there’s the red light again. I wonder what it is?”. Sure enough, a bright red light was visible up on Cashmere Hill. Was it a car’s stop light? No, it stayed on and in the same place while we watched. A business perhaps? Curious.
I didn’t think much more about it until another evening when, whilst walking the hound, I saw it from close to where we’re living. “Curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice said. Surely I could use GIS to find that, right? And so the saga began.
One thing I noticed was that the light wasn’t on every night, so I had to wait for it to get flicked on. The same red light is visible...
The GIS landscape is changing once again, and this time it’s the familiar Concurrent Use (CU) license model that’s being phased out. Esri has announced the deprecation of both Concurrent Use licenses and the ArcGIS License Manager. This will directly affect users of ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS CityEngine currently using CU. While this shift aligns with broader trends in software licensing, it does mean that organizations relying on these legacy models will need to start planning for a transition.
Why the Change?
Esri is transitioning to a licensing framework that emphasizes secure, permission-based access and centralized management of GIS content. The recommended path forward is through ArcGIS user types, which offer “a more modern and scalable approach to managing access across teams and platforms” (Esri). Unlike Concurrent Use, which leverages a shared pool of licenses, named users are assigned to an individual person.
Don’t Want to Change?
Sadly, you will need to decide if you want...
Paul Shapley's Open Source Geospatial Blog
• By [email protected] (Paul J. Shapley)
•
With reference to the source 'Compiling SAGA on Linux'.https://sourceforge.net/p/saga-gis/wiki/Compiling%20SAGA%20on%20Linux/You can also simply run these modules in QGIS but you would miss out on some excellent advantages such as having multiple map windows synchronized and a simple interface.Current 'Debian/Ubuntu' libraries only go up to version 9.2.0. This will install the latest version (currently 9.10.0).1. ~$ sudo apt install libwxgtk3.2-dev libgdal-dev libproj-dev libpq-dev libpdal-dev libopencv-dev libhpdf-dev unixodbc-dev(You may see this error:) 'E: Unable to locate package libpdal-dev' this does not prevent continuation of compilation process.2. ~$ sudo apt-get install g++ cmake cmake-qt-gui make libtool git3. ~$ sudo apt install libwxgtk3.2-dev4. ~$ sudo apt install libcurl4-openssl-dev5. ~$ sudo apt install g++ make cmake git swig python3 python3-dev python-dev-is-python36. ~$ sudo mkdir /home/devel7. ~$ cd /home/devel8. ~$ sudo git clone...
NLT Blog - New Light Technologies
• By NLT Staff
•
A Journey of Growth: NLT’s Evolving Role at TUgis
New Light Technologies (NLT) is proud to have served as the Platinum Sponsor of the 2025 Maryland GIS Conference (TUgis 2025). Our journey with TUgis has been one of significant growth and deepening commitment. Over the years, we have evolved from presenters and lower-tier sponsors to becoming a leading sponsor in 2025. This progression underscores our dedication to the geospatial community and our continuous efforts to advance geospatial solutions.
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Mapidea Location Intelligence
•
Interview with Oliver Pape, Senior Sales Consultant at GeoMarketing, NIQ (NielsenIQ), on the role of Location Intelligence and the Strategic Collaboration with Mapidea, one month before the joint webinar “Boosting business value for Retail & FMCG using Geospatial Intelligence [NielsenIQ + Mapidea]” (more info an registration here).Mapidea: Oliver, why is this collaboration with Mapidea strategically important for NIQ at this time?Oliver Pape: At NIQ, our mission is to provide the most complete understanding of consumers and markets. That mission increasingly requires not just the right data, but also the right tools to activate that data in a meaningful way. Location has always been a critical part of consumer behavior - where people live, where they shop, how far they’re willing to travel - and yet many companies still struggle to analyze and act on geographic insights.That’s why this collaboration with Mapidea is so valuable. It allows us to offer our clients not only world-class...
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Pedro Moura
•
Charles Darwin explained it's not necessarily the strongest or most intelligent that survive, but rather those best adapt to their environment, in regards to the evolution of species. There’s a clear analogy between this and Business Territorial (Re)Organization. This article explains why most companies tend to neglect the real business value of a sound adaptation of their territories (their ‘body’) to their dynamic environment, and how this crucial business function can be optimized.Over the years at Mapidea and before, me and my colleagueshad the privilege of supporting territorial reorganization exercises across many industries - retail, pharma, telecommunications, utilities, and more. But if there’s one area where the stakes are highest, it’s sales territories. Sales territories are the front lines of business performance: the framework that determines coverage, workload balance, customer relationships, and revenue potential. I’ve seen reorganizations make or break sales teams,...
CLIPSHow AI Empowers Underserved CommunitiesBuilding Communities Through Educator EmpowermentStudents Use AI for Greener Bronx SpacesWhy Communities Must Master Their Own AI ToolsRomoGISFrank Romo is an inspiring leader in geospatial. He runs several educational programs with school students across the country such as in The Bronx and recently St Louis. The focus of episode was therefore on how AI is being used to facilitate better outcomes for students. Frank gave examples from his community organising work such as urban planning and urban design renderings in The Bronx, gathering data for geospatial projects, and as a study aid by creating a quiz to help pass the Part 107 drone pilot license. Frank is a joy to talk with. He is such a breath of fresh air because of the concerted efforts he makes to be approachable to all. He dresses the part. It is deliberately memorable and contrasts strongly with typical office dress. He wears a bandana in some of the photos with students. As such,...
It’s weird to say “Time for the 7 month check-in” but there I stood at the doctors office waiting for my 7 month evaluation.
Long story short – I’ve got some form of Heart Disease. I say some form because people have said a half dozen things around me and they all resolve around that two word thing – Heart Disease. The good news is with the surgery and some drugs I’m pretty much “good”. Well as good as you can get with Heart Disease. I can do a 2 mile walk without breaking a sweat which means it’s time for 3 or 4 miles. I want to do 10.
Did a small hike the other day to see how I can do “uphill”. I can do uphill. It was a one mile down and a one mile back up thing.
For probably the last 15 years I’ve had a lot of complaints of “You’re too fat”. It’s amazing what a functional heart and some exercise can do. I’m hanging at 239 and I think now that I’m 7 months out I’m going to see if I can hit 230. I was at 280. I’m pretty sure I can hit 230 or lower. If I can’t I’ll...
Stopping Losses Before They Escalate
Illegal mining remains one of the most damaging and costly threats to natural resources and commercial operations. Carried out in hard-to-reach areas, it often goes unnoticed until the damage is severe. The impacts are wide-ranging, including loss of revenue for governments and landowners, destruction of ecosystems, water contamination, and serious safety risks for nearby communities.
Swift Geospatial addresses this challenge by combining Planet’s daily 3m resolution satellite imagery with advanced change detection software. Together, they form a fast, reliable monitoring system that enables early detection, rapid response, and a significant reduction in both environmental and financial losses.
Why Daily 3m Imagery Changes the Game
Illegal mining can begin with little warning and often transforms from a small-scale disturbance into a large, highly destructive operation in just a matter of days. The challenge for authorities, landowners, and...
CNG is the place where geospatial data users create the future together. To make the share of knowledge between those data users even smoother, we’ve refined our process for getting blog posts onto cloudnativegeo.org. Whether you want to share a deep-dive technical tutorial, highlight lessons learned from a recent project, or explore ways to strengthen our community, this updated approach makes it simple to propose, write, and publish.
The following information can also be found at CONTRIBUTING.md.
What we’re looking for
Evergreen topics - We are always open to content about new ways of using geospatial data, case studies that show the benefits of using cloud-native approaches, technical tutorials, open-source tools, best practices in geospatial data management, and tools that help data users share, access, and work with geospatial data more effectively.
Current priorities - This year, we are also interested in blog posts that address the following common community challenges that...
A quick note on earth engine prices:Google Earth Engine lowered their prices! Simon Ilyushchenko very generously mentioned a previous post I had made referencing the confusing economics of earth engine. While I think removing pricing for individual seats and lowering online pricing is a great step in the right direction, it unfortunately is unlikely to have a huge effect on the calculations in my post which were all based on the batch API. What I think is more likely to happen is that companies will have to choose between switching their batch pipelines (exporting) over to online workflows (high volume API, streaming etc…). Perhaps the lowering of the online API price means we’re likely to see xee gain more adoption in commercial settings.Subscribe nowTLDR;Sounds like The Moose was a good cat ❤️. Google shows that FMs don’t appear to scale effectively for linear-probing on tasks: I would not train another general EO FM right now.It does not make sense to try to build a business on...
The NGS Blog | Expert Geospatial Insights and More
• By Jason Newmoyer
•
We’re excited to announce a major enhancement to CoreSpatial Server: support for running GeoServer in FIPS 140 compliant mode on both Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and containerized environments. This capability represents a key milestone for CoreSpatial as we continue to expand its use in high-security environments across government and enterprise sectors.
What Is FIPS Compliance and Why Does It Matter?
FIPS stands for Federal Information Processing Standards, a set of publicly announced standards developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for use in computer systems by non-military government agencies and contractors. Specifically, FIPS 140-2 and 140-3 relate to cryptographic module validation. They define the security requirements for cryptographic operations like encryption, hashing, and signing.
Learn more about FIPS 140-2
Explore the latest FIPS 140-3 standard
NIST’s full FIPS series can be found at csrc.nist.gov
Many...
A TypeScript & JavaScript library for handling large file uploads with multipart support and progress tracking. The Upload JS provides a simple way to upload files to MapTiler and track progress.
VertiGIS Blog -Posts Archive
• By Richard Gassner
•
Written by Drew Millen, Chief Technology Officer at VertiGIS For over two decades, VertiGIS has been at the forefront of delivering specialized GIS solutions that solve real-world business problems for
The post The Future of Industry-focused Geospatial Solutions is Flexible: How VertiGIS Neo’s Cloud Strategy Puts Organizations in Control appeared first on VertiGIS.
VertiGIS Blog -Posts Archive
• By Richard Gassner
•
Written by Drew Millen, Chief Technology Officer at VertiGIS In my previous article about VertiGIS Neo, I’ve shared our deep vertical market specialization. Today, I want to focus on what
The post The Future of Verticalized Geospatial Intelligence: How VertiGIS Neo is Revolutionizing GIS with AI appeared first on VertiGIS.
VertiGIS Blog -Posts Archive
• By Richard Gassner
•
Written by Drew Millen, Chief Technology Officer at VertiGIS For over two decades, VertiGIS has been at the forefront of geographic information systems, helping utilities, telecommunications companies, local governments, and
The post Beyond Technology: How VertiGIS Neo Solves the Real Business Problems That Keep Industry Leaders Awake at Night appeared first on VertiGIS.
I hardly ever do Mergin Maps blog posts. I need to do more.
So I’ve been mapping random things in Chattanooga for OSM – which puts me out with my Bad Elf GPS and Mergin Maps. I don’t do nearly enough field work these days. It sort of scratches an itch. It’s fun. I’m probably breaking some crazy security thing by putting Fire Hydrants in OSM – but it’s relaxing.
The latest release of Mergin Maps (Phone and Plugin) adds sketching into the mix. You can take your phone out and make notes on screen. After playing with it it’s basically streaming digitizing with an eraser and about 6 or 8 colors to choose from.
Fire up your QGIS project and go to Project Properties. Scroll to your Mergin Maps Section and be sure to turn on Sketching.
When you go to create your project you’ll have one new option: Map Sketches.
. Zoom way in….and trace a comment with your phone or stylus. Since it’s a new “layer” it’s also a geopackage that will sync back with your project....
Each month, we’re highlighting the community leaders who volunteer their expertise to guide CNG’s direction. Our Editorial Board Spotlight series features a different board member sharing their perspectives on geospatial trends and tools, what’s capturing their attention through reading or their current work, and the challenges they believe our community should focus on.
1. What geospatial trend or tool excites you right now?
I’m particularly excited about the growing convergence of geospatial data and AI, especially through open-source tools that lower the barrier to entry. Tools like the Segment Anything Model (SAM), combined with geospatial wrappers such as segment-geospatial and GeoAI, are enabling rapid experimentation in image segmentation and classification workflows. These tools empower researchers and practitioners to apply cutting-edge vision models to Earth observation data with minimal friction.
In addition, the emergence of geospatial foundation models—large, pretrained...
CLIPSHow Texas Uses Live Flood Maps for RescueBillions on Fire Alarms, But What About FloodsHow Real-Time Flood Forecasting Saves LivesFLOODMAPPJuliette Murphy, CEO and co-founder of Floodmapp joins us to continue the coverage of how the geospatial industry is responding to the flood season. This is after an episode with Shelly Klose about True Flood Risk a couple of weeks ago. I should also highlight the episode on flood models with Fathom last year:Juliette describes the capacity of her company to perform operational impact based flood forecasting. This is about using live data feeds such as from measures of precipitation, flood gauges, earth observation to provide a more accurate, real time estimate of where inundation will occur. Due to these factors, it will be better than, for example in the US, FEMA's 100 year flood polygons, for example:Source.As such, she was able to give examples from the State of Queensland in Australia where the system was used by emergency responders to...
Trusted Where It Matters Most
When I joined T-Kartor, I stepped into a company with a legacy of trust, precision, and purpose. I also stepped into one of the most capable platforms I’ve seen so far:
T-Kartor Iris™
.
It didn’t take long for me to understand why Iris has become the foundation for so many mission-critical environments across NATO, national defense, and public safety. This is more than a geospatial data platform. Iris is a trusted system of record, a secure bridge across networks, and a living example of what interoperability looks like when done right. Iris was designed to meet the realities of defense and high-security operations, segmented...
CLIPSHow AI mapping transforms delivery logistics. AI Agents & Exciting Geospatial AnnouncementsEnabling AI for Real-Time GeocodingAre we witnessing machine cognition?EPISODEClemens Schotte is Senior Program Manager at Azure Maps. It is pronounced "Claymens SuHotte". Microsoft has a few geospatial offerings: Microsoft Bing Maps is the most well known amongst the public. It is a web-based mapping service offering street maps, aerial imagery, and route planning for public and consumer-facing applications. Microsoft Azure Maps is a cloud-based geospatial platform designed for developers to integrate real-time mapping, routing, and spatial analytics into enterprise and IoT applications. Code samples. Microsoft Planetary Computer Pro was released 2 months ago. It provides global-scale environmental datasets and analytical tools, tailored for scientific research and sustainability use cases, with deep integration into cloud-native workflows. It's nice to see a big tech monopolist has...
In a previous post we talked about the potential of Generative AI for urban modeling, keeping with this theme at the 11th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2), Na Jiang, Boyu Wang and myself had a poster entitled Agent-based Models with Large Language Models: Two Modeling Examples. In this poster and extended abstract we detail how LLMs can help with many aspects of agent-based modeling development. If this sounds of interest, below you can see the abstract, the poster and the full referece and link to the extended abstract .Abstract:Large language models (LLMs) play an important role in AI-powered code assistants such as code completion, debugging, and documentation. Such models can be further fine-tuned on smaller amount of data for specific tasks, often with the improvement of performance compared to generic LLMs. However, such fine-tuning techniques are seldomly used in generating sophisticated agent-based models (ABMs), because they are often...
A weekend walk gets us thinking about the tramping season.
A walk up The Monument Track to Te Ahu Pātiki (Mt Herbert) over the weekend got me thinking about the up and coming tramping season. The family has the Heaphy Track planned for September so this was a bit of a warm up.
One of the more satisfying parts of the walk was getting up high enough that suddenly the view expanded immensely – off in the distance were the foothills of the Southern Alps, white capped from some recent snow, and there was Port Levy and Whakaraupo, not to mention Te Waihora, spread widely as its name implies, and the Tasman Sea beyond. 360⁰ views. The curve of the coast to the north and south made it feel like were getting an outer space perspective with our feet still on the ground. Plus it was neat to be looking down on the transmission tower at Sugarloaf rather than up at it. You get a real sense of the old volcano from up here.
And this, of course is all due to elevation. Te Ahu...
It’s that time of year!
We’re excited to issue the call for maps for contributions for the 2026 GeoHipster calendar. Entries are subject to these rules and guidelines for entry are listed below.
So, send us your maps! (The deadline is 2025-10-23.)
Guidelines:
Your submission should be a map! Submit images please, (they’ll be printed after all), hi-res JPG or PNG, landscape orientation, 8 inches × 10.5 inches (20.32 cm × 26.67 cm) or proportional. See the sample below.
Please note that we may opt to place a semi-transparent box containing author information (Name and/or handle), the GeoHipster logo, and, potentially, a calendar sponsor logo. Please consider this, as well as about 1/4″ for bleed and 1/2″ for margins in your map design. If you have a preference as to which corner the box should be placed in, please note that at the time of submission.
While we want your map to be understood, past experience has taught us that lots of detailed explanatory text...
This is the second blog post in our Mapper Highlight series, celebrating the individual mappers and local groups who make up the OpenStreetMap US community. Thank you to Martijn van Exel, Jessie Pechmann, Daniel Nelson, employees at Snyderville Basin Recreation, and all of the OpenStreetMap Utah members who contributed to this post.
How did OSM Utah get started?
Martijn: “OSM Utah got started in 2011. I had just moved to [Salt Lake City] and discovered that there were a few active mappers, but no local meetups. I started hosting monthly meetups in local cafes. Usually, 1 or 2 people would show up, sometimes nobody at all. Over the next few years, we slowly built a more active community. We accomplished quite a few things beyond just creating the best map of Salt Lake City! We managed to get permission from the state GIS office to use all their data for OSM, we imported useful data like addresses and fire hydrants, we presented OSM to state lawmakers and GIS professionals, hosted...
VertiGIS Blog -Posts Archive
• By Richard Gassner
•
How VertiGIS Studio Turns Complex Workflows into Efficient, Collaborative, and Accessible Solutions Transportation agencies today juggle growing infrastructure complexity, coordination across levels of government, and the need for increased public
The post Top 5 Takeaways: Transforming Transportation with GIS appeared first on VertiGIS.
Joseph Elfelt is a software developer in the geo world as a result of a life-long interest in maps and self-teaching. His interest in maps began as a child looking at his father’s collection of USGS topographic maps for a large part of Minnesota. After college, Joseph moved to Seattle and went to work for Boeing helping to implement database technology. A few years later he changed careers and spent most of his working years as an independent real estate investor. Now mostly retired, he continues to write geo software as a hobby. The first-of-their-kind features in Joseph’s software are free to use and have no registration requirement, no ads, no tracking and no personal information collection.
Joseph. What do you do and where are you on earth?
My name is Joseph Elfelt and I live on a small acreage parcel near the city of Redmond, Washington State, USA. Although I am mostly retired from the real estate field, I still do some consulting work producing online property line...
Many of the best OpenStreetMap tools emerge organically as personal projects built by members of the global community. Informal structures can be great for getting a project off the ground, but at some point they become a barrier to its growth and sustainability. In 2020 OpenStreetMap US launched its Charter Project program to support the long-term stewardship of projects that are integral to the open mapping ecosystem. Through this program, community tools can grow within the 501(c)(3) framework of OSM US. The Charter Project program currently supports three amazing projects: OpenHistoricalMap, MapRoulette, and OSMCha.
In addition to offering a fiscal home for projects, the Charter Project program provides crucial ongoing technical, infrastructure, and engineering support. To that end, in 2024 OSM US was able to hire a dedicated Charter Project Engineer (Jake Low), made possible through donations from corporate partners. This funding enabled major technical improvements to our...
It’s been a summer full of side projects here. Which is a very good sign — I used to do many, many side projects, but for the last couple of years, poor health has left me with reduced energy, and my output dropped off significantly. It’s nice to feel inspired again, in so many directions at once.
I’m pleased to share with you my first-ever map of a US National Park. It’s one I’ve not yet been to, though I’m hoping to change that in the coming years.
I’m making 30×15 inch prints of this available, but be warned that it’s pricier than my usual work: this map contains a lot of very fine details, and the print-on-demand services that I have used in the past were not quite able to achive the quality that this piece needs. So, I need to work with a much more expensive printer geared toward fine art.
CHECK IT OUT ON ETSY
FREE DOWNLOAD
While this map is free to download, it took a long while to make. So if you grab a digital copy, consider clicking the...
CLIPSWhen Citizens Fix Government Data MistakesLosing 60% of Historic Place NamesThe Fast & Flawed Redrawing of VietnamThe Birth of Saigon's First Digital GIS MapEPISODETue (Matt) Le-Quang is a Data Reporter at VnExpress.net. He spent time with us today analysing and mapping the upgrade of Vietnam's administrative boundaries. Quoting from his publication VnExpress (Google Translate): After the reorganization of 34 provinces and cities, the number of commune-level administrative units in Vietnam decreased by 67%, from 10,035 to 3,321 units. Of which, Hanoi merged the most units with a reduction rate of more than 77%.Tue has made a web app about this here. There has been a bit of debate over it the past half decade, such as this 2020 piece from VnExpress. Most recent English coverage I can find is this. The country used to have 63 provinces, now there will be 28 with 6 extra cities as their own areas, for a total of 34. A pertinent quote from that article speaks of large savings for the...
Level-2 NewsNRO Contracts Hydrosat’s Thermal Imaging Data [link]"Hydrosat announced a follow-on contract with the NRO, giving the DoD and intelligence community access to the company’s thermal imaging data through the NRO’s strategic commercial enhancements program.The deal is a follow-on to a $1.2M Stage 1 contract Hydrosat won in 2023, which tasked the company with performing modeling and simulating services.Since then, Hydrosat has placed two sats in orbit—VanZyl-1 and VanZyl-2. The Stage 2 contract will give the NRO access to thermal data for a combined 10M+ sq km of the Earth imaged every day."BlackSky Blames Politics For Revenue Hiccup [link]"BlackSky Technology told investors last week that its 2025 revenue forecast fell by $12M to $20M due to “anticipated impacts of US government budget uncertainties, and volatility in contract timing.”The $BSKY disclosure is another data point for investors watching to see how EO companies will fare under the new Trump administration."Planet...
We’re excited to announce that Mike Long, Co-Founder of Spatialty, has received a 2025 Esri Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award for his impactful work at CapMetro, Austin’s regional transit agency.
This recognition honors Mike’s leadership in developing a geospatial platform that integrates an extensive range of operational systems using FME and ArcGIS Enterprise. At CapMetro, Mike led efforts to automate and streamline data pipelines between GIS and platforms like:
GTFS (transit scheduling data)
OrbCAD (vehicle location and CAD/AVL)
Swiftly (real-time transit performance and schedule adherence)
Trapeze (operations and scheduling)
Jira & ServiceNow (ITSM and incident tracking)
Socrata (open data platform)
Snowflake (enterprise data warehouse)
Hexagon EAM (Enterprise Asset Management)
By bringing data from these systems into ArcGIS Enterprise, Mike enabled spatial context for transit operations, planning, and analysis in ways never before...
Today we are excited to announce the release of stac-fastapi-indexed!
stac-fastapi-indexed is an implementation of the STAC API specification. Like several similar projects, it draws on the indispensable stac-fastapi package. This project implements a new approach to data management to reduce hosting overheads.
STAC and STAC API
The STAC and STAC API specifications have proven both useful and successful since their release. STAC continues to spread throughout the geospatial domain, and Sparkgeo’s client engagements regularly involve STAC and STAC API in some capacity.
The SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) specification defines a consistent structure for geospatial asset metadata. It is commonly used to describe earth observation products, such as pixel data generated by satellite platforms, but its application is not limited to this format. In addition to helping better organise the world of geospatial data, STAC enables a growing ecosystem of interoperable tools...
Tell Us About YourselfI’m Qianyi Cao, with a background in Geographic Information Science and currently part of the Erasmus Mundus MSc in Cartography program across TU Munich, TU Vienna, and TU Dresden. My academic path blends map design, geospatial science, and cross-cultural storytelling. I’m passionate about using cartography as a bridge — one that connects environmental data, historical narratives, and human experience.
To me, maps are more than technical products; they’re emotional, cultural, and philosophical expressions of how we understand the world — and time.
Tell Us the Story Behind Your MapThe idea began with a question: How do cultures map time, not just space?
The 24 solar terms — a traditional timekeeping system used for millennia across East Asia — offered a profound answer. These terms synchronize human life with solar movement, seasonal rhythms, and agricultural practice. I wanted to translate this system into a visual narrative that merges planetary...
Running together at CNG Conference 2025
On the last day of CNG Conference, we held a facilitated discussion to identify what our community needs to thrive.
As Chris Holmes noted in his opening keynote, the geospatial field has reached a pivotal moment. We have more data, better tools, and greater computational power than ever before. The question now is how we use these resources to address real-world challenges. The six themes below emerged from our discussions and will shape our collective work in the coming year.
These challenges are deeply interconnected. Progress in one area often enables progress in others. And with AI rapidly changing the landscape, we need to stay adaptable and collaborative. We invite governments, funders, educators, enterprises, and entrepreneurs to join our community in this ongoing effort.
Geospatial education isn’t helping people get good jobs
The problem
Workforce and talent development surfaced as a top priority from the discussion. There’s a clear...
GIS and Linear Servitude Monitoring: Protecting South Africa’s Critical Infrastructure
Across South Africa, utility providers, local governments, and infrastructure operators are confronting a growing problem: encroachment into legally protected linear servitudes. These servitudes include the designated corridors that carry critical infrastructure such as powerlines, gas and water pipelines, railway tracks, and fiber optic cables. These systems form the backbone of the country’s economy and society, enabling everything from electricity distribution to communication and transport.
As cities expand into surrounding areas, informal settlements multiply, and agricultural boundaries shift outward, the pressure on these servitudes increases. Many of these developments occur without formal planning or approval. Over time, this results in unauthorised structures being built, trees growing too close to high-voltage lines, or even farming operations overlapping pipeline routes. When servitude...
Another year another State of the Map US! Over 300 mappers gathered in Boston, Massachusetts in late June for OpenStreetMap US’s 13th annual conference, and to celebrate the organization’s 15th anniversary.
This year, the OSM US team wants to look back on SotM US by highlighting your experiences as scholars, scavenger-hunters, educators, GIS professionals, first-timers, and OSM-lovers. Below are excerpts from a variety of blog posts, social media posts, and quotes from folks in the community – thank you for sharing your reflections. Think of this blog post as a digital postcard of sorts!
Lindsey Peña – Chief Operating Officer at NSGIC and conference scholar
“Have you ever experienced that amazing moment when you ⚡ZING⚡ with someone? During Andrew Middleton’s “Know Your Audience!” presentation at [State of the Map US] I experienced just that with Tee Barr. During the hands-on arts and crafts session (yes…markers, paper, tape and scissors were involved! ✂️), attendees were paired up...
CLIPSBalancing Data, Art, and Audience Needs in MapmakingTraining Peacekeepers with Virtual Reality and Community DataCitizen Drone Imagery Accelerates Disaster MappingThe Vital Role of Local Open Data Communities WorldwideUN MAPPERSThe podcast is picking up the pace in terms of meeting my heroes. UN Mappers is an open spatial data volunteering programme run by the UN. Michael Montani stepped through the part of the UN he works for and some conflicts or disasters his team is currently helping on. We were also given a look at the UN's operational web map and some commentary on the unique cartographic style that they have to use. We then discussed what the UN's mapping team cannot do, and the place this creates for a worldwide volunteer effort. To get involved, he instructs us to go to HOT OSM Tasking Manager and search for tasking by the UN Mappers organisation. We were also given details on the comprehensive and multilingual geospatial training offered by the UN to prepare volunteers...
AC Transit’s basemaps sit at the heart of how the agency operates and communicates—powering internal information products, supporting staff workflows, and reaching hundreds of thousands of riders who rely on accurate maps every day. As expectations for real‑time information and digital service delivery continue to accelerate, maintaining these basemaps with efficiency and precision has never been more important.Recognizing the opportunity to modernize, AC Transit is exploring a new solution stack that streamlines basemap updates, improves data integration, and reduces the need for labor‑intensive, manually driven workflows. Today, the agency maintains three separate basemap products through processes built on aging, disparate technologies. These tools have served AC Transit for many years, but the lack of unified workflows and synchronized update cycles introduces inconsistencies, technical debt, and operational strain—issues that become more visible as demand for accurate maps grows...
Canada is investing heavily in infrastructure, sovereignty, and resilience, and geomatics sits at the center of those priorities. Expo 2025 will bring together practitioners across government, industry, academia, and non-profits to shape how geospatial systems support ports, roads, airstrips, secure networks, and projects in the North.
GoGeomatics Expo 2025 is where Canada’s geomatics community will converge to convert technical innovation into strategic impact. Whether you’re designing digital twins, building resilient infrastructure, or setting geospatial policy, this is the moment to connect, learn, and lead.
Click here to register and to find out more ...
The post Canadian Geomatics Expo 2025 appeared first on Canadian GIS & Geomatics.
TLDR;It is cool that people are releasing embeddings, kudos to the Deepmind/Google team!Google’s Embedding Fields show large scale spatial variation that can be problematic for semantic search.DuckDB is awesome, and can serve as a vector database.Embeddings should be served at a scale that is larger than 10m pixels for ease of access.Embeddings for retrieval should compress what is hard to join later (texture, specific land-use, shape), not what is trivial (elevation, lat/long, other raster dataset).It’s important to do experiments with your embeddings: search and PCA are two easy ways to get a sense of the vibes.Subscribe nowAs part of a recent project, I’ve been assembling various types of geospatial embeddings and testing out retrieval on them. This is all part of a bigger release of some open source tools that will hopefully enable you to do this type of analyses as well, which is coming soon!Google Satellite EmbeddingsOne of the first embedding sets we turned to was the Google...
Im ersten Teil dieser Mini-Blogserie habe ich gezeigt, woher GNSS-Daten (umgangssprachlich GPS-Daten) stammen und wie sich diese in spezialisierten Tracking-Studien gezielt erfassen lassen. Heute nehmen wir solch eine Studie genauer unter die Lupe und zeigen, wie sich mit moderner Tracking-Technologie und passenden Befragungen Verhaltensexperimente durchführen lassen, die komplexe Fragen der Verkehrs- und Stadtplanung beantworten. Die …
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Miguel Marques
•
Whenever I demo Mapidea, the reaction is almost always the same — a mix of surprise, recognition, and disbelief.In just a few minutes, we load a company’s business data — customer lists, sales volumes, infrastructure, stores, deliveries, service points, you name it — and bring it to life on a map. Not just as pins or dots, but as geographic objects with business meaning.We explore spatial patterns and relationships: where sales are concentrated or missing, where networks are underused, where customers are underserved, how catchment areas overlap, how regions perform differently. And we do it live, interactively, with dynamic filters and real data — not static slides.That’s usually the moment when someone says: “I didn’t even know this was possible.”And that’s the problem. Not because the technology isn’t ready — it is. Tools like Mapidea are enterprise-grade, cloud-native or on-premises, and integrate easily with internal systems, data lakes, AI/ML algorithms, and dashboard tools....
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Pedro Moura
•
I'm writing this to you—BI managers, data scientists, analytics leads, and decision-makers working with data lakes, dashboards, and machine learning pipelines. I’ve been where you are. I spent more than 10 years in the Business Intelligence world, building datamarts, OLAP cubes, ETL processes, reports, and dashboards for executive teams and business departments.And I still remember, vividly, the day we plugged a simple geographical visualization into one of our tools—Knosys ProClarity, sitting on top of Microsoft SQL Server 7’s OLAP engine. Nothing changed in the data model. But the reaction from our client? It was like we had turned on the lights.They were blown away by the ability to see their business on a map: regions colored by performance, the ability to drill down into cities and even individual stores or territories. It felt obvious. It felt powerful. It felt like something that should’ve always been there. But it wasn’t.And honestly? It still isn’t.The Most Underrated...
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Mapidea Location Intelligence
•
[Join our upcoming webinar with NielsenIQ and Mapidea where we’ll dive deep into this powerful partnership, showcase real demos, and discuss how this integration supports smarter decisions across the retail lifecycle. Register here: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/nielseniq-mapidea-geomarketing]Are you ready to see how cutting-edge geospatial intelligence combined with rich market data can transform your retail or FMCG business?In today’s rapidly evolving retail and FMCG landscapes, having the right data — in the right hands, in the right format, and at the right time — is more critical than ever. Competitive pressures are mounting, customer journeys are becoming omnichannel, and personalized, location-based marketing is no longer a luxury but a necessity.This is why the recent partnership between Mapidea and NielsenIQ [Read the press release here] marks a significant step forward. Together, we bring the full potential of location intelligence to retail chains and FMCG companies by...
The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.6.0beta1!
Best Served with PostgreSQL 18 Beta2
and soon to be released GEOS 3.14.
This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta2, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+.
To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.14+ is needed.
To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 2.2.0+ is needed.
3.6.0beta1
source download md5
NEWS
HTML Online en ja sv fr zh_Hans
PDF docs: en ja, sv, zh_Hans, fr
Cheat Sheets:
postgis: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
postgis_raster: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
postgis_topology: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
postgis_sfcgal: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
address standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder: en ja sv fr zh_Hans
This release is a beta of a major release, it includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.5.3 and new features.
In the past we have written about how one can study urban shrinkage with a specific emphasis on Detroit from both an agent-based modeling perspective and also from analyzing newspapers through natural language processing Keeping with the theme of Detroit and urban shrinkage we (Xiaoliang Meng, Yichun Xie, Junyi Wu, Heather Khan Welsh, Shi Zeng and myself) have a new paper entitled "Examining spatial expansion and stemming strategies of urban shrinkage: evidence from Detroit, USA" which was recently published in npj Urban Sustainability. In this paper we introduce a method for studying urban shrinkage by constructing multi-scale spatial structures based on urban network connectivity which we call gravity-networked spatial interaction zones-based spatial panel modeling or GSIZs-Spanel for short. We demonstrate this method by exploring the spatial processes and scopes of past urban shrinkage in Detroit between 2000 and 2020. If this sounds of interest, below you can read the abstract...
Landsat imagery and NDVI are used to monitor vegetation change, from invasive grass spread in rangelands to early stress detection in coastal marshes.
The post Using Landsat and NDVI to Map Vegetation Change appeared first on Geography Realm.
Opening Up Earth Observation to Everyone
Satellite imagery holds enormous potential for environmental monitoring, urban planning, agriculture, and more, but tapping into that potential often requires specialized knowledge and tooling. While SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) APIs are powerful and flexible, they can be challenging to use for those unfamiliar with geospatial data formats and query structures.
We’re prototyping an approach that aims to simplify this process. What if you could just type “Show me Sentinel-2 images of Berlin from September 2023,” and get a result instantly?
That’s the idea behind our natural language interface prototype. By combining modern NLP techniques, serverless architecture, and geospatial standards like STAC, we’re exploring how satellite imagery could become searchable using plain English.
Core Concept: Translating Language into Data Queries
The system interprets free-form language and translates it into structured STAC queries...
Many of you attended our webinar “3D: a new dimension!”
Vincent Picavet was on the mic :
3D challenges in 2025: digital twins, publishing data on the web, sharing data, managing volume, sharing OpenSource tools
case studies
presentation of OpenSource components made in Oslandia: Giro3D, Piero, py3Dtiles, CityForge
The replay is available after completing a quick questionnaire
Would you like to move forward on these topics and discuss your 3D projects? Contact us: [email protected]
Do you deal with sensitive geospatial data ? Are you concerned by cybersecurity threats ?
Oslandia and partners ( e.g. OPENGIS.ch) launched the « Security Project for QGIS » : a mutualized funding effort to increase QGIS cybersecurity.
️During this webinar, Vincent Picavet first presented the context of the project : new regulations are coming ( CRA, NIS2 ), cyberattacks increase, software see a growing complexity, and QGIS legacy makes it difficult to increase security … and its benefits !
You can access the replay for free, after filling in a quick survey.
Do not hesitate to pledge for the project on https://oslandia.com/en/security-project-for-qgis/, and contact us for any question [email protected] !
Huge thanks to the amazing QGIS community! 💚 With your help, we hit our €75K goal to boost 3D digital twin support in open source. Big features coming soon!
#QGIS #OpenSource
https://www.lutraconsulting.co.uk/blogs/crowdfunding-campaign-completed-qgis-3d-for-open-source-digital-twins
When measuring distance it pays to be aware of which coordinate system your data are using.
Hot off a discussion of coordinate systems and map projections in the GIS courses, I was reminded of something that threw me for a loop with some of the global scale analysis we’ve been doing lately. This one was around modelling E.coli distributions based on measured values and then extending these as predictions globally. We had a point layer of waterwater treatment plant locations and wanted to use the distance to the nearest river reach as a parameter in the model. The plant locations came from HydroWASTE while the river network came from HydroRIVERS (both available on the J: drive). I’d love to show you the whole dataset but at the global scale there are too many points to see any detail, so here’s a zoomed in version from our neck of the global woods:
(I used Graduated Symbols to symbolise HydroRIVERS using the stream order attribute.)
As noted above, we’re interested in...
Over the last couple of weeks, I was lucky enough to attend both the Living Planet Symposium (LPS) in Vienna and the High-Level Experts Group (HLEG) Towards a Big Data revolution for the Planet: From Uncertainty to Opportunity in Frascati. These two events were both inspiring and enriching. This post is a scattergun of thoughts inspired by these two events. For the HLEG, I was lucky enough to act as a rapporteur and facilitator for both a tech and innovation session and two of the three deep dives. As a result, I have a tremendous amount of notes and photos of slides. If you want more specific observations, please comment or reach out directly. Subscribe nowGiven that this event was subject to the Chatham House Rule, all specific commentary is anonymized, and I will try to provide an overview of the tone. My thoughts are focused, as you might expect, more on technology and execution than on policy. I’m staying in my lane for now!Geospatial data is a mess. Maybe not locally, but...
Photo: ESA/J. Mai (source)
Recently the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Living Planet Symposium (LPS) was held in Vienna, Austria.
This was likely the world’s largest gathering of the Earth Observation community. The LPS website claims there there were 6500+ registered participants and 4200+ presentations & posters in 250+ sessions, but those are conservative numbers… I counted 4428 presentations & posters in 453 sessions.
Also it says there were 2300 “Children at the School Activities”, and I can confirm there were lots of kids at the conference (and on the metro). Awesome to see!
I attended LPS on behalf of Radiant Earth and the Cloud-Native Geospatial (CNG) Forum.
I was there to learn how CNG specs and tools are being adopted by the Earth observation community and to help build awareness. Given the size of the conference (it had 30 separate content tracks!), my first challenge was to determine what content would be presented where and at what time, in order to plan out where I...
This is a living document. Expect changes.Every headline now has a latitude and longitude. Wildfires darken skies half a continent away, supply chains reroute in hours, and satellite images expose current events before diplomats can draft statements. In this high-velocity world, whoever understands “where” outpaces the competition, protects communities, and shapes policy. Geospatial is no longer a specialist’s hobby; it is a critical input to decision-making. This document, a “GEOFESTO*,” lays out the principles and emerging trends that let practitioners ride the wave instead of drowning beneath it.The Calgary Eleven: Kurtis Broda**, Jon Neufeld, Tammy Peterson, Tee Barr, Ben Tuttle, Cade Justad-Sandberg, Kyle Ryan, Sarah Pryor, Andrew House, Will Cadell, Sam RondeelPhoto by philippe spitalier on UnsplashBy adopting these principles, geospatial practitioners can both enhance their community of practice and drive geospatial technology into a better and bold future.The GEOFESTOA call...
Ohne harte Fakten bleibt jeder Veloweg ein Bauchentscheid und jede Taktverdichtung ein Ratespiel. GNSS-Tracking, besser bekannt als GPS-Tracking, schliesst diese Wissenslücke, indem es Bewegungsmuster in hoher räumlich-zeitlicher Auflösung liefert. Dieser Beitrag zeigt, welche Datenquellen es gibt, welche Technik dahintersteckt und wie eine Tracking-Studie geplant und durchgeführt werden kann. Daten sind das Grundgerüst jeder Verkehrs- und …
Some Ways to Help:Please consider donating to help Central Texas flood recovery:Kerr County Flood Relief FundTEXSARKerrville Pets AliveSalvation Army KerrvilleMercy ChefsIn geospatial, it’s rarely good news. Weather data and satellite imagery never accompany “senior dog who was in the shelter for 2 years adopted” articles. Instead, earth observation images are often used to observe geopolitical and natural upheaval and the accompanying death and devastation. This is an important function: it helps bring awareness to just how devastating conflict and natural disasters can be. This function comes with an implicit responsibility: when your pixels represent real lives, empathy and accountability must guide your messaging and actions.I’ve noticed a concerning trend in the industry recently where sharing information and raising awareness quickly morphs into engagement farming and marketing. If you’re in the business of information the line is unfortunately blurred; but when a tragedy such...
A global dataset of 700 mud volcanoes was recently published by geologists from Sapienza University.
The post GIS Data: Shallow Sea Mud Volcanoes appeared first on Geography Realm.
The NGS Blog | Expert Geospatial Insights and More
• By Jason Newmoyer
•
Whether you’re working in disaster response, public safety, environmental monitoring, or national defense, the need for accurate, flexible, and interoperable geospatial tools is constant.
At NGS, we built CoreSpatial to give government users control over their mapping stack – without locking them into a commercial ecosystem. CoreSpatial combines proven open-source technologies with enterprise support, secure delivery, and mission-aligned flexibility.
What Is CoreSpatial?
CoreSpatial is a fully deployable, modular geospatial platform built on proven open-source technologies.
CoreSpatial Server
Host and serve geospatial data securely and efficiently with GeoServer – an OSGeo project that has long served as a staple of OGC compliant web GIS. CoreSpatial Server provides a hardened, scalable, OGC-compliant GeoServer for WMS, WFS, WMTS, and vector tile services, including GDAL and PostgreSQL/PostGIS for advanced spatial data processing and visualization. It supports...
When we started working on the next generation of Iris, the goal wasn't to build just another content management platform or data portal. We were trying to solve a deeper, more persistent problem that nearly every organization inevitably faces: the inability to connect information from systems that were never designed to work together in the first place.
Whether a government agency manages sensitive spatial data or a coalition of partners responds to a crisis across borders, the challenge is always the same. Data is often stuck in silos, systems are traditionally built by vendors using proprietary formats, and people who need answers fast are left waiting while teams scramble to translate, convert, and clean up the mess.
This was the pain...
FAO’s global dataset maps access to towns and cities of all sizes within reasonable travel times, identifying patterns of urban interconnectedness.
The post Explore the City-Regions Dataset from FAO appeared first on Geography Realm.
When you think of London, certain icons come to mind: the Underground map, the double-decker red buses, the rhythm of a world-class city in motion. But behind that rhythm is a quiet, powerful system helping millions of people find their way every day. Legible London, the city's pedestrian wayfinding network.
We're proud to say that for more than two decades, T-Kartor has been at the heart of it.
From the first Legible London signs to the thousands of maps across bus shelters, bike stations, and Tube exits, T-Kartor has worked alongside Transport for London (TfL) to make one of the busiest, most complex cities on Earth feel navigable, human, and connected.
...
Researchers mapped 540 million years of sea level change, showing major short-term shifts during ice ages driven by Earth's orbital cycles.
The post Mapping Short-term Sea Level Changes Over 540 Million Years appeared first on Geography Realm.
von Laurin Bertozzi (sieber&partners), Daniela Herzig (EBP Schweiz), Patrick Saxer (EBP Schweiz) Workshop-Inhalte Im Workshop 3 BIM in der Bauausführung – Informationsbedürfnisse und veränderte Möglichkeiten haben wir uns folgendem Inhalt gewidmet:Die Bauausführung ist ein komplexes Zusammenspiel zwischen Bauherr:innen, Unternehmer:innen und Planer:innen – drei zentralen Akteur:innen mit jeweils unterschiedlichen Informationsbedürfnissen und -verantwortlichkeiten. Im Zuge der fortschreitenden …
von Claus Maier (EBP) & Philipp Dohmen (QAECY) 30 Teilnehmende, eine Frage: Wie verwandeln wir vorhandene Daten in nutzbares Wissen für bessere Entscheidungen? Die Anwesenden schilderten ihr gemeinsames Problem: Unmengen von Daten liegen verstreut in Modellen und Ablagen vor. Doch wie können sie sinnvoll erschlossen und genutzt werden? Aus diesem Grund stiess das Thema des …
Groundwater stored over many years is a significant contributor to streamflow in Western United States mountains according to a published study.
The post Water Can Take Years to Seep out of Mountains appeared first on Geography Realm.
NLT Blog - New Light Technologies
• By Mario Field
•
DMVGIS Website launch: An Excellent Resource to drive and facilitate collaboration, coordination, and awareness of GIS in the DMV region.
New Light Technologies (NLT) is thrilled to launch the DMVGIS website, your new online platform for the geospatial community in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia region. This website is designed to be a central hub for DMVGIS, offering a handy resource for GIS information, data, and events. It will also help facilitate professional networking, participant collaboration, and information sharing. Whether you're looking for the latest GIS news or details on upcoming events, this website will serve as the nexus of activity for our regional geospatial community.
Bubbles created by the movement of waves can influence how much carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean.
The post Study Models How the Behavior of Waves Affects Blue Carbon Storage appeared first on Geography Realm.
GIS Is Disappearing and Nobody’s Talking About It
Life in GIS
“GIS is disappearing”. Not because it’s dying or becoming irrelevant, but because it’s becoming invisible, embedded and essential....
The post GIS Is Disappearing and Nobody’s Talking About It appeared first on Life in GIS published by Wanjohi Kibui
When Data is Easy, Geospatial Will Change Everything
Geospatial technologies are transforming how we model the world, plan infrastructure, monitor change, and make decisions. But for that transformation to be realized at scale, one foundational element must be addressed: access to data.
At Sparkgeo, we believe that improving access to geospatial data is essential for the next era of geospatial innovation. To better understand where friction exists, and where opportunity lies, we are launching a focused Industry Data Survey.
This initiative is about more than Sparkgeo’s internal priorities. It is about contributing to a broader, shared understanding of the conditions shaping geospatial work across sectors. We are committed to publishing the results, ensuring that the insights we gather can support product development, policy, investment, and innovation across the many verticals of geospatial technology.
Why Now
As an organization that builds tools, advises national and...
Blog Archive - SSP Innovations
• By Carrie Turner
•
In the natural gas industry, emergencies don’t occur during optimal conditions. They happen in the middle of the night, on the weekend, and when it’s freezing cold outside. Whether it's a main break, third-party damage, or a detected leak, knowing exactly which valves to close and which customers will be affected is not just a convenience; it's a critical component of safety and operational efficiency. GIS is no longer just a mapping tool; it's a critical decision support system, and GIS professionals are often the first line of support for operations and emergency response teams. That's where a well-structured GIS isolation subnetwork and custom valve isolation tracing come into play.
The post When Every Second Counts: Using GIS Isolation Tools to Improve Emergency Response appeared first on SSP Innovations.
This is a guest post by Guilhem Allaman.
Mid-June, the French-speaking QGIS Users Meeting was held in Avignon, Southern France – a city often described as “the City of the Popes“, thanks to the Popes’ Palace, the city’s number one attraction. Not far from the non-terminated bridge, which has inspired some happy songs around the world as well as the 2025 edition banner :
The French-speaking QGIS community could meet, discuss and share some insightful ideas and moments together. The conference brought over 280 people from the 6 corners of France including Guadeloupe, as well as Belgium, Togo, Switzerland. The QGIS-fr Users Meeting, using the #QGISFR2025 hashtag on social media, proposed events during 3 days :
During day 1, participants were able to take part to the 20 workshops, on a variety of balanced QGIS topics. Approximately 200 people attended that day. On the evening, a shared aperitif and dinner was organized.
Day 2 was the conference day, with no less...
In the current issue of Environment and Planning B, we (Boyu Wang, Na Jiang and myself) have a new editorial entitled "Generative AI and Urban Modeling". The premise of this editorial is that Generative AI (GenAI) is impacting all aspects of our daily lives and as such has we were wondering how will it impact urban modeling? For example, in the editorial we discuss how GenAI could speed up the overall urban modeling process. To demonstrate this we show how ChatGPT (and its built-in coding interface Canvas) can take published papers and build agent-based models from them (one being of an abstract space and another being spatially explicit). However, while model building is time consuming task, another challenge modelers face is how to incorporate decision making within them. To this end we also discuss how large language models (LLMs) have the potential to help with agent-decision making in the form of generating agent-personas or scheduling agent activities. We conclude the...
The Canadian Geographical Names Database (CGNDB) is a key Federal open data set that most geospatial users in Canada should be familiar with. It is Canada's authoritative source for all official geographical names, and their associated attributes. It can be accessed by ...
The post Official Canadian Geographical Names Data appeared first on Canadian GIS & Geomatics.
We’re thrilled to share that Stephanie Long, co-founder of Spatialty, has been awarded the Faculty Leader of the Year for 2025 at Austin Community College (ACC).
This recognition celebrates Stephanie’s exceptional leadership and long-standing commitment to advancing geospatial education. As a professor and former Department Chair of the ACC GIS Department, she has guided curriculum development, mentored countless students, and built lasting partnerships that bridge the gap between education and industry.
At Spatialty, Stephanie brings the same passion for promoting lifelong learning into our consulting work, leading custom training programs and helping agencies grow their in-house GIS expertise. Her unique ability to translate complex technology into accessible learning experiences makes her an invaluable part of every project we take on.
After a long development cycle, Giro3D 0.43 is available.
The Globe entity
We were talking about it in a previous article, the main feature of this release is of course the Globe entity, allowing the display of planets, stars or any celestial body of your choice.
Using the same API as the Map entity, it can contain an elevation layer to display terrain, as well as an unlimited number of color layers (satellite imagery, maps, vectors, cloud coverage…).
Atmospheric effects
Complementing the Globe entity, you can also combine your globes with three new entities:
Atmosphere, to represent the atmosphere of a planet as seen from space,
SkyDome, to represent the sky as seen from the surface of the planet, including atmospheric scattering
Glow, to represent a light-emitting globe, such as stars.
See the article dedicated to atmospheric effects.
Spherical panoramic images
The second major feature of this release is the new SphericalPanorama entity, to display spherical panoramic images,...
Urban Tree Counting with GIS and Satellite Imagery: A Foundation for Greener Cities
Urban trees play a critical role in the health and resilience of cities. They provide shade, cool urban surfaces, reduce air pollution, support biodiversity, and contribute to both physical and mental wellbeing. Yet many cities lack a clear and current urban tree count, leaving planners and policymakers without the data needed to manage these valuable natural assets. As urban landscapes continue to expand and change, maintaining an accurate urban tree count has become essential for sustainable city planning, climate adaptation, and green infrastructure management.
The Importance of Urban Tree Data
Urban trees are not simply decorative features. They form a vital part of a city’s living infrastructure, offering services that are measurable, impactful and increasingly indispensable to modern urban life. From moderating temperatures and improving air quality to managing stormwater and supporting...
We’re extending the QGIS 3D crowdfunding campaign!
We didn’t hit the goal just yet, so we’re keeping it open until July 15.
Still time to support open-source digital twin tools in QGIS. Let’s keep going!
🔗 https://www.lutraconsulting.co.uk/crowdfunding/qgis-3d-for-open-source-digital-twins
Platform Hunger GamesPicture this: you’re a small, scrappy geospatial start up with a dream. Maybe you want to map floods, or maybe quantify soil carbon. Maybe you want to count cars in a parking lot, who knows! Don’t let your investor’s dreams be dreams. Where are you going to get imagery, merge it with compute in order to deliver beautiful models and maps? Five years ago, the landscape certainly looked different: at the time, Descartes Labs1 (now EarthDaily) was certainly still a strong option, and possibly the only viable one at the time. Planetary computer has just launched. Google Earth Engine (GEE), while it had launched much earlier in 2010, still did not offer a commercial license.These days: while Microsoft has launched Planetary Computer Pro (pricing tbd), GEE is probably the most established commercial geospatial platform as it stands2. There is of course a final option: roll your own! Yes, writing GDAL is scary, wrangling AWS Batch/Lambda is scary, scaling compute and...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Dive deep into the world of Terradepth with CTO Andrew Lunstad, as he discusses their mission to revolutionize how we understand and interact with the ocean. Learn how Terradepth is tackling the challenge of gathering and making sense of vital undersea data, an area less explored than the surface of Mars. Discover their innovative two-pronged approach: developing high-endurance autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for massive data collection, and their powerful, sensor-agnostic Absolute Ocean data platform. This platform, built on CesiumJS, offers advanced visualization and management tools, allowing users to interact with both current and historical undersea surveys to make better decisions for critical applications like offshore energy, resource management, and defense. Andrew also shares insights into their cloud strategy, their shift to AWS GovCloud for enhanced security, and how Absolute Ocean enables faster collaboration and decision-making, moving from "scan to decision" in...
NatureServe has developed an updated 30-meter hexagon map of regional ecosystems in the contiguous United States and adjacent areas.
The post High Resolution Ecosystem Map of the Contiguous United States and Adjacent Areas appeared first on Geography Realm.
I have just gotten back from attending the 19th International Conference on Computational Urban Planning and Urban Management (CUPUM) in London and thought I would share the two papers we presented at the conference. The first paper was with Qingqing Chen and Linda See and was entitled "Using New Sources of Data for Urban Climate Modeling Generated through MLLMs on Street View Imagery. "As the title might suggest, this paper was about how one can leverage multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) to extract information on building height, age and function from street level photographs. We demonstrate this using street view images from Mapillary and than ask ChatGPT to estimate the building height, age and function and compare the results to authoritative data sources. If this sounds of interest, below you can see the abstract to the paper, some if the figures (i.e., the work flow and prompts) while the results can be seen in the attached paper (see the link below).
Abstract:Urban...
🚨 Last call for the QGIS 3D crowdfunding campaign! 🚨
We’re so close to the goal!
This upgrade will bring some powerful new tools to open-source GIS:
🌐 3D vector points
🌐 I3S
🌐 Point cloud support
🌐 Cross sections in orthographic view
🌐 and more!
🔗 https://www.lutraconsulting.co.uk/crowdfunding/qgis-3d-for-open-source-digital-twins
It was amazing attending the Living Planet Symposium last week (23–27 June 2025) in Vienna. It’s definitely a fantastic event to get inspired, meet people, have interesting discussions — and nerd out about space!It’s been just three years since the previous LPS in Bonn (2022), and so much has changed in the meantime. The commercial sector had a much stronger presence this time. ESA's roadmap to ensure Copernicus data extends well into the 2040s, reflects a growing emphasis on long-term continuity. The research landscape has also pivoted: traditional methods are still around (thankfully, far fewer talks and posters using Random Forest), but there's clearly a strong shift toward deep learning and foundation models for EO, bringing in fresh talent from outside the EO bubble.The Role of EO in a Changing World“Without access to satellite imagery, we’d be attempting to serve the world blind.”This is what Aarti Holla Maini, Director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, said...
This blog post outlines the process of creating multi-color 3D prints using the Bambu Lab X1 Carbon printer and the Topoprint software. I explain how to prepare multiple STL files for distinct landscape features, using OrcaSlicer for effective slicing. The final print, requiring extensive filament changes, showcases the Landwasserviadukt.
Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings
• By underdark
•
The QGISUC2025 team has done an awesome job recording and editing the conference presentations. All “presentation” type talks where the presenter has accepted to be published are now available in a dedicated list on the QGIS Youtube channel.
I also had the pleasure of presenting our Trajectools plugin and you can see this talk here:
Thank you to all the organizers, speakers, and participants for the great time!
Paul Shapley's Open Source Geospatial Blog
• By [email protected] (Paul J. Shapley)
•
If your concerned about sharing QGIS projects on the web there are many options apart from the 'qgis2web' plugin. This just utilises a docker image containing a demo project.Share your QGIS projects with QGIS Server • Gispo
Today, Overture Maps Foundation announced the general availability of the Global Entity Reference System (GERS). GERS provides common, open, accessible IDs for geospatial entities like buildings, places, and roads, making data sharing, onboarding, and joining easier. This post explains how GERS works and how to use it.
The Challenge GERS Solves
Organizations today spend up to 90% of their time and resources on data preparation and integration rather than value-adding analysis. When it comes to geospatial data, the challenge is even more acute: different data sources describe the same real-world entities in different ways, making it expensive and time-consuming to combine datasets.
Often, the cost of integrating data exceeds the cost of licensing it. This is the data conflation tax – a hidden cost that affects everyone working with data from multiple sources.
GERS changes this equation by providing persistent, unique identifiers for every geospatial entity – from buildings and roads...
One of our goals at Overture is to make geospatial data easier to work with. We want to help geospatial experts and data generalists easily connect to our datasets and, in turn, facilitate data sharing among them all. This is why we spend so much time on our persistent Global Entity Reference System, or GERS.
Last month, Overture introduced a new set of data artifacts to help teams connect to 3rd party input datasets we use to create Overture data releases. Bridge files are available for seven source datasets, connecting their respective identifiers to the specified Overture themes.
We’re releasing bridge files to support three key use cases:
Bridge files make Overture onboarding easier
Bridge files make enriching Overture data easier
Bridge files increase data transparency
Let’s take these in order.
Bridge Files Make Overture Onboarding Easier
If you’re already using and/or connected to any of these source datasets, you can easily connect to Overture data and...
Unique IDs make it easier and cheaper to attach data to geospatial entities, such as buildings, streets, places, etc.
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—June 25, 2025 — The Overture Maps Foundation, a collaborative effort to build interoperable open map data, today announced general availability of its groundbreaking Global Entity Reference System (GERS). GERS provides a unique ID for every geospatial entity, making it easier to build richer mapping solutions across industries such as automotive, local search, urban planning, ride-sharing, logistics, and more.
Mapping applications and spatial analysis have benefited from an explosion of new data types, but that comes at a cost. Combining data from various sources requires significant time and money to ensure that the data is correctly associated with the right entities in the map. That cost to evaluate and conflate data can exceed the cost of licensing the data, which ultimately will discourage its use.
The GERS IDs enable organizations to more...
How Precisely’s Data Link program connects data from leading providers via unique ID systems, including GERS, to eliminate the “conflation tax” and unlock instant access to enriched location intelligence
Precisely, a global leader in data integrity with over 12,000 customers, including 93 of the Fortune 100, has integrated Overture Maps’ Global Entity Reference System (GERS) into their Data Link program. Data Link streamlines integrating datasets from multiple providers by connecting data from Precisely and other organizations via unique identifier systems. The connection Data Link establishes between GERS and Precisely’s unique IDs dramatically reduces the time and cost of integrating Overture Maps’ standardized and interoperable datasets with Precisely’s comprehensive data portfolio spanning properties, locations, markets, and more.
By pre-linking GERS IDs across Places, Addresses, and Buildings themes with their own unique IDs, Precisely transformed what traditionally required...
Lake Chapala was formed at the intersection of three grabens.
The post Lake Chapala: a Tectonic Lake at Mexico’s Triple-graben Intersection appeared first on Geography Realm.
When someone proposes an idea to you, smile and assure them that you understand (yes ...). Express your enthusiasm about it (... yes ...) with an even bigger smile. Then, offer to enhance and extend their great idea (... and ...). You can compare this creativity technique to rubber duck debugging, but always remember that you should not replace a human with an LLM.
📍 Day 24: ESRI Scene Layers (I3S)
Like 3D Tiles, the I3S format also recognizes several data types - we will focus on supporting 3D Objects and Integrated Mesh, as these are by far the most popular ones.
👉 Help us make this reality here: https://www.lutraconsulting.co.uk/crowdfunding/qgis-3d-for-open-source-digital-twins
#QGIS
Big news for QGIS users!
Globe view has landed in QGIS 3.44! 🌍 Explore your maps in stunning 3D.
This huge technical feat makes global 3D smooth & stable!
Read more here: https://www.lutraconsulting.co.uk/blogs/qgis-3d-globe-view-is-here
#QGIS #3DMapping #GIS #OpenSource #GlobeView
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Mapidea Location Intelligence
•
When working with location data, defining an influence area is often one of the first analytical steps. Whether you’re evaluating a new store location, optimizing field operations, or analyzing access to public services, your analysis begins with a simple question: "Which surrounding area matters?"Two common approaches exist: Linear Distance Buffers and Time-Based Buffers (Isochrones). While both define a "zone of influence" around a point, their assumptions, precision, and use cases differ significantly.Linear Distance Buffers (Radial Buffers)Also known as Euclidean Buffers, these represent a circular area around a point based on a fixed distance (e.g., 1 km). They are simple, fast to compute, and easy to interpret. But they make one big assumption: that the surrounding area is equally accessible in all directions.This approach does not factor:Street networksTerrain or physical obstaclesReal travel behaviorBest for:Radio signal propagation (e.g., cell tower coverage)Environmental...
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Pedro Moura
•
In today’s hyper-competitive retail landscape, knowing where to act is just as critical as knowing what to do. Having the best marketing team, the most agile logistics, or a sleek omnichannel strategy is no longer enough—if you’re making decisions based on outdated, isolated, or poorly contextualized data, you’re missing out.That’s why the combination of high-quality market datasets, like those from NielsenIQ, with advanced GeoSpatial Intelligence platforms, like Mapidea, is changing the game. Together, they offer retailers not just more data—but better insights, smarter decisions, and tangible business results.Beyond Data: Trustworthy, Timely, Actionable IntelligenceLet’s be clear: not all data is created equal. In retail, decision-makers need credible, current, and granular data to identify patterns, track performance, and spot opportunities. NielsenIQ delivers exactly that, with world-class data on consumer behavior, purchasing power, retail turnover, and competitive dynamics...
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Mapidea Location Intelligence
•
Mapidea joins NielsenIQ Partner Network to Deliver Advanced GeoSpatial Intelligence and Geomarketing Solutions[Lisbon, 23/06/2025] – Mapidea, a leading GeoSpatial Intelligence SaaS provider, has joined NielsenIQ Partner Network to offer businesses a transformative combination of Location Intelligence and Geomarketing data. This strategic collaboration enables clients across various industries to harness the power of geographic data and insights for smarter decision-making and business growth.Through this collaboration, Mapidea will integrate and offer NielsenIQ’s GeoMarketing datasets within its intuitive, no-code analytical platform. At the same time, NielsenIQ will enhance its data offerings by enabling clients access to Mapidea’s GeoSpatial Intelligence solution, multiplying the value and precision of market insights.Unlocking Unparalleled Market InsightsBy combining NielsenIQ’s comprehensive datasets—covering consumer behavior, purchasing power, retail turnover, and more—with...
Since launching Source Cooperative in 2023, we’ve grown to host over a petabyte of data.
We are proud to have reached this milestone, but we’re still barely getting started. We’re now at a point where we have enough data and enough users to meaningfully guide future product development. We recently conducted some user research, and our users have made it clear that we need to balance the power of Source with greater accessibility.
Here’s where we stand and what we’re doing to make Source usable by a wider range of people.
Source hosts over one petabyte of data & transfers half a petabyte per month
Source now hosts over 1 petabyte of data – more than doubling the 450 terabytes we were hosting when we announced our support from Navigation Fund in October 2024.
We host over 300 data products. Some exciting additions to Source in recent months have been cloud-optimized global forecast data from dynamical.org, global satellite imagery embeddings from Earth Genome, the Ocean Carbon Dioxide...
TLDR;Make maps, not war (just) benchmarksI made the Santa Fe Quartet as a geospatial equivalent to Anscombe’s quartetIf you are interested in building this kind of map-benchmark let’s chat!Subscribe nowBenchmarks are not enoughIn a recent post on on Geospatial Foundation Models, I used publicly available benchmarking data to show that they did not appear to be scaling well. This prompted some healthy discussion around how we should actually measure the utility of some of these models.I think a fairly obvious answer is: along with model + benchmark releases people should also deploy their model over an actual area and produce a map. This would enable interested users to immediately gauge the quality and the behavior of the model in the wild (aka '“model vibes”). These is just something that looking at the data can tell you that metrics can’t. An additional benefit is: researchers get to feel the pain of practitioners and are more likely to develop models that produce good-looking maps...
This is a slightly different post to normal, in the sense its not really about papers but my take on agent-based modeling, urban analytics and the growth of Artificial Intelligence impacting both. First up, while I was in Santa Fe last October for the 2024 International Conference of the Computational Social Science Society of the Americas I was interviewed by John Cordier from Epistemix for their Flux Podcast which resulted in this "From Micro-Behaviors to Macro-Patterns: Exploring Agent-Based Models with Andrew Crooks. Rather than me trying to sum it up I will just quote from the podcast episode "In this episode of The Flux, host John Cordier sits down with Andrew Crooks ..... They dive into the world of agent-based modeling (ABM) - what it is, why it matters, and how it helps us simulate and better understand human behavior in complex systems. From simulating traffic jams to modeling social influence on vaccine uptake, Andrew shares how data, geography, and synthetic populations...
Geo Strategy:
Selecting an EAM system for the Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation District
Gartrell was recently awarded an RFP to help the Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation District (THPRD) in Washington County, Oregon evaluate potential asset‑management software solutions. With a service area of more than 50 square miles and over 250,000 residents, THPRD manages an extensive and varied asset portfolio—facilities, utilities, indoor and outdoor infrastructure, and a substantial fleet.A key focus of this engagement was identifying...
Watch live: Living Planet Symposium 2025 [link]"One of the biggest Earth observation conferences in the world will take place next week in Vienna. You can watch streamed plenary discussions and presentations each day on ESA Web TV.ESA’s Living Planet Symposium will be held in the Austrian capital from 23 to 27 June.The themes for the week are summarised in the symposium’s strapline “from observation to climate action and sustainability for Earth”. There will be discussions on how we can work together in the fields of Earth science and with the Earth observation industry to promote effective climate action to address the environmental crisis, with presentations also on new trends in Earth observation.As many as 6000 participants are expected from up to 119 countries, including at least 800 members of the scientific community.The event is organised with the support of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency and Austria’s Federal Ministry of Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility,...
QGIS interface with the new 3D Globe (Telecommunication cables (EMODnet) and Bing Satellite)
Open source geospatial 3D innovation has just reached another important milestone, thanks to a Cesium Ecosystem Grant for a new 3D globe view in QGIS. This is the second grant that the team of North Road and Lutra Consulting received from Cesium, and we’re proud of what we’ve delivered for our QGIS users. The new 3D globe will be available to all in QGIS v.3.44.
This was an extremely interesting project to undertake, as it required a heavy research and experimentation process by our developers. There’s many potential approaches for implementing a large-scale, 3D globe, and each have their advantages and trade-offs. We were very lucky to have insight from Cesium’s Kevin Ring to advise us at the start of this process, and his advise proved critical for the ultimate success of the project.
So what did we deliver?
QGIS 3D Globe
The new QGIS 3D Globe offers:
A new mode for visualising 3D data...
Landsat's Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) measures the Earth's surface temperature by focusing on the infrared part of the light spectrum.
The post Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) on Landsat appeared first on GIS Geography.
VertiGIS Blog -Posts Archive
• By Richard Gassner
•
Game-changing Technologies Revolutionize how Networks are Monitored, Maintained, and Optimized Written by Steve Grise, Head of Strategic Consulting at VertiGIS The Role of GIS in Modern Utility Management Geographic Information
The post Geospatial Network Operations Management: A New Era for Utilities appeared first on VertiGIS.
Help improve QGIS!
We are 13 days away from the end of the crowdfuning.
Support the campaign to enhance 3D vector data, ESRI Scene Layers (I3S), Point Clouds and more!
Every share and donation counts!
Learn more here: https://www.lutraconsulting.co.uk/crowdfunding/qgis-3d-for-open-source-digital-twins
#crowdfunding #QGIS #PointClouds
Credits: Pixabay (Pixabay Content License)
The Importance of Compliance
A geographic data layer must comply with many rules and constraints.
For example:
Geometric
Topological
Arbitrary rules
– no angles smaller than 15°
– no polygons smaller than 0.3 m²
– no polygons inside another polygon
– no holes
Digitizing errors
– polygon with fewer than 3 points
– single line in a multi-line geometry
– duplicate node
– self-intersections
Checking the compliance of a geographic layer is an essential step in data validation, either to detect errors or to ensure that it won’t corrupt the information system into which it will be integrated.
When possible, being able to automatically fix these errors allows for a fully automated compliance-checking process.
What About QGIS?
The geometric and topological verification plugin is available to perform these checks using a step-by-step assistant.
After extensive work on code updates, processing creation, and method standardization, all these...
The map depicts Indigenous Place Names in Canada, shared by several First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities. A high resolution digital version is provided that may be downloaded for free and printed for personal or educational uses.
The post Indigenous Place Names in Canada Map appeared first on Canadian GIS & Geomatics.
TLDR;Just as GPT-style cross-entropy predicts language utility, Waymo shows motion cross-entropy tracks autonomous driving safety; we have yet to find the same appropriate objective for geospatial/EO.Waymo shows their objective scales with compute budget in a similar fashion to LLMs.We should think more carefully about deriving closed-loop-like metrics for earth observation to measure model utility, rather than model performance.Subscribe nowAutonomous Driving ScalesWaymo, the autonomous driving company whose burning cars became one of the enduring images of the Los Angeles anti-ICE protests, recently released a paper titled ‘Scaling Laws of Motion Forecasting and Planning: A Technical Report‘. In this report, the authors note that analagous to LLMs, the abilities of motion forecasting models also follow a power-law as a function of training compute. The plot below shows this scaling for several different metrics:Motion forecasting and planning appear to scale as power-laws with...
Read about how the Amazon once flowed east to west and how the strength of Hurricane Isaac once change the course of the Mississippi river.
The post Rivers that Flow Backwards appeared first on Geography Realm.
The NGS Blog | Expert Geospatial Insights and More
• By Jason Newmoyer
•
Today, NGS has published the 2025.2 release of CoreSpatial Server, Basemaps and Map Manager.
This release includes major security and performance updates across the stack. We are hard at work to bring a new release of Portal based on the recently dropped MapStore2 v2025.01.00, as well as FIPS compliance for GeoServer (CS Server).
CoreSpatial Server and Basemaps Release Notes
2025.2.3 (6/10/2025)
Update GeoServer to 2.27.1
Update Jetty to 9.4.57.v20241219
Update PostgreSQL JDBC jar to 42.7.6
Update C3P0 Connection Pooling lib 0.11.1
Update Marlin Jar to v0_9_4_8_jdk17
2025.2.2 (5/12/2025)
Add ability to map data from mounted volume in Kubernetes environment
2025.2.1 (5/2/2025)
Improvements to container initialization scripts
Multiple High and Medium severity security patches in OpenJDK, libexpat, c-ares, and giflib
Update OSM database to 3/31/2025 build
CoreSpatial Map Manager Release Notes
2025.2.2 (6/10/2025)
Bump Spring...
I’ve got into a bit of a habit of writing occasional posts with links to interesting things I’ve found (probably because it’s a relatively easy blog post to write). This is another of those posts – this time, written in June 2025. So, let’s get on with some links:
Why COUNT(*) can be slow in Postgres: a good delve into how Postgres works ‘under the hood’ and why that means that counting rows can sometimes be quite time-consuming
f2: handy command-line tool for bulk-renaming files, with the default mode being a dry-run
Tree Species Map for England: a new open dataset from Defra which shows species of trees across the UK
Leaflet v2.0 alpha: an alpha version of a new major version of Leaflet, the web mapping library. I actually tend to use MapLibre these days (it seems faster for MVTs, though I haven’t tested that properly), but I prefer the Leaflet API and tend to use it for simpler applications. The new version seems to tidy up a lot of stuff, which is good.
cqlalchemy: this is a...
We are 19 days away from ending our QGIS 3D for Open Source Digital Twins campaign and every share counts! 🌐
Here are a few features this crowdfunding will bring:
📍 Add a library of 3D models.
📍 Make vector layers work in globe scenes.
📍 Add anti-aliasing
📍 Improved background
and so much more!
https://www.lutraconsulting.co.uk/crowdfunding/qgis-3d-for-open-source-digital-twins
The QGIS International User Conference 2025 happened in Norrköping, Sweden from 2-3 June 2025. I have been to the previous conferences in 2024, 2023 and 2019 and always look forward to the annual event. The conference keeps getting bigger and this year it attracted a diverse audience of 300+ participants from around the globe.
Conference Group Photo, Image courtesy: QGIS Sweden
This was also a special conference for me as I brought my family along. The event featured a range of social activities that welcomed families, allowing my wife and daughter to connect with the community in meaningful ways. The conference itself was hosted at Visualization Center C – a wonderful and inspiring space for science and exploration with many exhibits specifically designed for kids.
The Conference
The 2-day conference started with a plenary session in a beautiful opera theatre packed with all the attendees. The keynote talk was by Anders Ynnerman – who is the professor of scientific...
Have you seen it yet?
We’re crowdfunding new 3D tools in QGIS to support open-source digital twins 🌍
🚀 20 days left — be part of it:
👉 https://www.lutraconsulting.co.uk/crowdfunding/qgis-3d-for-open-source-digital-twins
#QGIS #DigitalTwins #OpenSourceGIS #Crowdfunding
By Jed Sundwall, Executive Director of Radiant Earth
Below is the written version of a talk I gave at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs on December 10th, 2024. This talk was the culmination of my semester teaching a class called Planetary-Scale Data Institutions at the Jackson School. While my course examined the details of data production and governance, this talk gave me an opportunity to zoom out and examine the overarching impact of the Internet on global governance.
While the Jackson School shared a write up of it (and it was described as “informative, terrifying, and entertaining in equal measure”), the session was not recorded and the talk has never been published until now.
I’m sharing it today because the last six months have reinforced the core thesis of the talk which is that the Internet has enabled the creation of a new kind of power that nation states have failed to grasp. This is not a novel idea and professional scholars have written about this extensively,...
Mergin Maps announces Camptocamp as its first official reseller, offering enterprise deployment, support, and training for QGIS-based mobile data collection.
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
In this interview from the 2025 GEOINT Symposium, Adam Simmons of Project Geospatial speaks with Phill Thomas from Innovate. Phill discusses his career path, starting at Accenture and moving into federal government work. He introduces Innovate as a woman-owned small business headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, with a history primarily in federal civilian and commercial sectors. Innovate is now excited about bringing their solutions to the Intel community. Phill details Innovate's evolution, including their decision in 2012 to focus intensely on the Salesforce and Esri platforms, becoming "an inch wide and a mile deep". He highlights their extensive experience with over a thousand Esri deployments and over 800 Salesforce deployments, their gold level partnership with Esri, numerous specialty certifications, and the presence of Salesforce certified architects. This deep expertise allows them to build reusable component repositories for efficiency. Phill shares that GEOINT 2025 is...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Adam Simmons interviews Yuval Lorig, VP R&D at Asterra, at the GEOINT 2025 conference. Yuval shares his background in physical geography and the geospatial industry. They delve into Asterra's work, which utilizes satellite data, particularly SAR, to monitor critical infrastructure like dams, levies, and canals, in addition to their traditional focus on water leaks. Yuval discusses the company's expansion into APIs, a SAS platform called EO 2.0, their global reach across over 70 countries, and their focus on improving technology accuracy and developing in-house AI models.Highlights• Interview with Yuval Lorig, VP R&D at Asterra.• Astera focuses on monitoring critical infrastructure (dams, levies, canals) and the water industry.• They utilize satellite data, specifically SAR, for subsurface penetration to gain insights.• Expanding their offering to include APIs and a SAS platform (EO 2.0).• Customer base is now global, working in more than 70 countries with almost a thousand projects.•...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Adam Simmons of Project Geospatial speaks with Burt Wagner, a Data Architect at Broadcom, during the GEOINT 2025 Symposium. Burt, with 25 years supporting the US intelligence community and federal law enforcement, discusses Broadcom's lesser-known big data solutions. While Broadcom is widely known for semiconductors and acquiring VMware, Burt highlights their significant data products, including Gemfire and Greenplum databases. He explains how Greenplum, based on PostgreSQL, provides massive scalability (up to tens of petabytes) for analyzing geospatial data, overcoming PostgreSQL's limitations. The conversation also covers Broadcom's Unified Data Management (UDM) solution, which includes capabilities for crossing network security boundaries and operating in environments with denied, delayed, intermittent, and latent communications. UDM facilitates bringing edge data centrally for detailed analysis and building AI/ML models that can then be exported for use on small edge...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Adam Simmons interviews Craig Brower from Unseenlabs US at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium. Craig discusses Unseenlabs' capability to provide satellite-based RF (Radio Frequency) data for monitoring and tracking, which is integrated into customer workflows for rapid tasking and delivery. He highlights the ongoing need to educate the community about RF data and SIGINT-type sources, noting that many, including traditional imagery analysts, may be unfamiliar with it. Craig describes their data as simple "dots on a map" where status changes indicate behavior, such as a vessel turning off its AIS. He mentions that Unseenlabs is unique in being a profitable company, recently secured a large investment to build 20 new satellites and next-generation birds, and currently has 16 satellites on orbit.Highlights• Interview with Craig Brower from Unseenlabs US.• Provides satellite-based RF (Radio Frequency) data for monitoring and tracking.• Data is integrated into customer workflows for quick tasking...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Adam Simmons of Project Geospatial interviews Dan DeGennaro (CTO), Bryan Cosme (CEO & Co-founder), and Brian Buttaccio (COO) of Trevity at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium. Bryan shares his background, including experience in the Marine Corps specializing in geospatial, which informs Trevity's focus. Dan, a physicist turned coder, focuses on AI, Augmentation, and integrating capabilities into analyst workflows. All of them discuss Trevity's mission to increase analyst productivity, believing they can nearly double it. They highlight their new software, Inkwell, which addresses the challenge of managing vast amounts of geospatial data. Inkwell allows for targeted data scraping and, crucially, enables analysts to interact with and filter data using natural language. This helps analysts quickly find and understand relevant data within an area of interest.Highlights• Trevity's founders have a background in the Marine Corps specializing in geospatial intelligence.• Trevity aims to significantly...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Mats Palsson, CEO of T Kartor Group, shares his journey from engineering to finding his passion in geospatial and maps. He introduces T Kartor Group, founded 40 years ago, which specializes in map and information management solutions based on the principle that maps represent information assets with a position. T Kartor provides solutions for major cities, defense organizations, and public safety sectors in Europe and the US. Palsson mentions T Kartor has significant operations in St. Louis and Sweden. He explains that "making maps" for them involves managing information and tailoring its presentation for diverse end-users, such as military personnel and public transport systems. The company has evolved to focus on information management with a cartographic element. Recent developments include providing customers with dashboards to monitor how their information is used. Palsson discusses the significant industry changes driven by the tremendous amount of data from satellites and...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Adam Simmons of Project Geospatial interviews Geoffrey King, Vice President of Strategy at Greater St. Louis Inc. (GSL), at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium. Geoffrey discusses GSL's role in growing and strengthening the geospatial cluster in St. Louis through the GeoFutures Initiative. He explains GSL's various functions, including business attraction, downtown revitalization, and supporting small and diverse businesses. Geoffrey highlights NGA as a key anchor institution for the region's geospatial growth. He talks about GSL's presence at GEOINT for over five years, showcasing St. Louis's assets to attract talent and investment. He notes that St. Louis is hosting GEOINT for the third time this year and will host again in 2029, emphasizing the significant effort invested in the 2025 event. GSL aims to collaborate with partners and connect different sectors and communities to maximize the economic impact of geospatial growth in the region.Highlights• Geoffrey King of Greater St. Louis Inc....
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Adam Simmons interviews Tim Klawa of Figure Eight Federal at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium. Tim discusses the critical importance of data validity for training effective AI programs, particularly for users like warfighters and operators. He emphasizes that understanding the attributes and relevance of training data to specific mission needs is essential for building confidence in the resulting AI models. Tim mentions that Figure Eight Federal's technology, including their enterprise data labeling platform Artemis and their Hydra AI platform for situational awareness and decision support, helps address this challenge. He notes that they will be demonstrating their capabilities at Amazon's booth.Highlights• Interview with Tim Klawa of Figure Eight Federal.• Emphasizes the importance of data validity for AI programs.• Understanding data set attributes and alignment with mission needs is crucial for AI confidence.• Discusses Figure Eight Federal's technology platforms.• Artemis platform is...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Adam Simmons of Project Geospatial speaks with Billy Sokol and Brent Perry of Progress Federal during the GEOINT 2025 Symposium. Brent, with a background in full stack engineering and data analytics for defense and IC customers, highlights geospatial as one of the top ways to visualize intelligence. They introduce Progress Federal, a business unit within Progress Software that includes the capabilities of the acquired company MarkLogic. They explain that MarkLogic's history spans diverse industries and government, focusing on a multi-modal database that can aggregate data from multiple systems, regardless of format. This database is designed to operate at immense scale and also to scale down to a laptop for use in hostile environments with denied, delayed, intermittent, or latent communications. They emphasize the importance of being agile due to the rapid rate of change in user expectations and technology in the market.Highlights• Progress Federal is a business unit of Progress...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Guy De Carufel, CEO of Cognitive Space, shares his background as an aerospace engineer from NASA and Firefly. He introduces Cognitive Space as an AI software company dedicated to making the most effective use of space leveraging assets. De Carufel explains his motivation for starting the company was to apply modern AI to automate space operations, addressing the manual methods previously used. He describes their product focused on mission management for ground systems, which automates the process of generating effective schedules from mission priorities and integrates with C2 systems. Cognitive Space uses AI to orchestrate proliferated satellite systems, diverse sensors, and different organizations (national, commercial, allied). He also mentions their Sentient Earth product for aggregating data and providing predictive capacity analytics. Their primary customers manage constellations, including government and commercial entities. De Carufel highlights Cognitive Space's focus on...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Adam Simmons of Project Geospatial interviews Nicole Sullivan from Gateway Geospatial Group at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium in St. Louis. Nicole proudly states that Gateway Geospatial Group is St. Louis born and bred. She shares some of the company's capabilities and interests, including their work with low-cost mesh networks for data collection. A key area of focus is performing near real-time AI/ML on the data collected via their mesh network. They are also interested in the challenges related to different data formats. Nicole encourages attendees and viewers to visit their booth or website to learn more and share ideas.Highlights• Nicole Sullivan represents Gateway Geospatial Group at GEOINT 2025.• Gateway Geospatial Group is a company based in St. Louis.• They work with low-cost mesh networks for data collection.• A key capability is performing near real-time AI/ML on collected data.• The company is interested in exploring ideas related to their technology and addressing challenges...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Adam Simmons speaks with Will Clapperton from GDIT at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium. Will highlights GDIT's focus on supporting tactical missions with advanced technology. He provides an example of their innovative work using VR/AR technology for post-damage assessment scenarios. This allows users to immerse themselves in a virtual landscape containing geospatial data, identify areas needing attention like damaged infrastructure, plan subsequent steps, and share that critical information with other responders. Will stresses that GDIT's involvement goes deep into everyday missions, far beyond traditional IT support, and emphasizes their passion for working close to the tactical edge. He also offers advice to young professionals entering the field, encouraging technologists to prioritize understanding and addressing tactical mission needs.Highlights• Interview with Will Clapperton from GDIT.• GDIT focuses on supporting tactical missions with technology.• Discusses the use of VR/AR...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Adam Simmons speaks with John True and Andy Dearing from Cultivation Capital at GEOINT 2025, gaining insights from their perspective as investment professionals in the geospatial sector. They offer advice to startups attending GEOINT, emphasizing the importance of developing dual-use technology applicable to both government and commercial markets rather than focusing solely on federal contracts. They highlight that they look for companies that are genuinely solving problems for the customer base, particularly addressing the challenge of data overload and analyst shortages, potentially leveraging AI and machine learning. They discuss monitoring exit strategies in the market, like SPACs, and the increasing value of data for internal processing by larger companies to build solutions. John and Andy are proud of Cultivation Capital's foundation built on the experience of former geospatial operators, which allows them to offer unique insight and support to entrepreneurs.Highlights•...
Podcast Archive - Project Geospatial
• By Adam Simmons
•
Susan Moreira from Axiologic Solutions discusses her company's role as an Intel integrator specializing in system, data, and cyber security engineering for complex intelligence systems. She explains their support for geospatial data across customers like NGA and DIA, including managing the Mars program and improving analytic workflows. Moreira highlights their "mission ready" approach, working directly with analysts and operators to translate requirements. Axiologic Solutions is involved with AI efforts, supporting Project Maven and prototype development, focusing on successfully integrating AI with constrained resources and accelerating Authority to Operate (ATO) processes. Other supported efforts include the common data fabric and DIA's data hub. Cyber security is a key focus, integrated from the project's beginning, offering advisory services and researching future challenges like quantum engineering for security. Moreira shares what Axiologic hopes to achieve at GEOINT, such as...
As drones become a staple in modern industries—from infrastructure inspection and agriculture to public safety and energy—the demand for skilled drone professionals is growing rapidly. But while the technology continues to soar, a major challenge has emerged: finding qualified drone talent.
Why the Demand is Exploding
Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are no longer reserved for military use or hobbyists. They’re transforming commercial workflows in efficient, cost-effective, and increasingly indispensable ways.
Industries driving the surge include:
Utilities & Energy: Inspecting power lines, wind turbines, and solar farms without endangering human lives.
Construction & Infrastructure: Surveying and monitoring projects from planning through execution.
Agriculture: Assessing crop health, mapping fields, and optimizing irrigation.
Environmental Monitoring: Measuring coastal erosion, wildfire mapping, and wildlife tracking.
Public Safety: Supporting...
The NGS Blog | Expert Geospatial Insights and More
• By Jason Newmoyer
•
For years, open-source GIS was often seen as the underdog – powerful, flexible, but not always ready for the demanding requirements of national security, defense, and public sector operations. That perception is rapidly changing. Today, open-source geospatial platforms are powering mission-critical systems in federal agencies, the Department of Defense (DoD), and homeland security.
At NGS, we’ve seen this shift firsthand through CoreSpatial – our secure, customizable, open-source GIS stack designed specifically for federal use cases. Here’s why open-source GIS is now a viable, and often superior, option for government agencies.
Reason #1: Security and Compliance Have Caught Up
Modern open-source GIS tools like GeoServer, PostGIS, OpenLayers, and CesiumJS now meet many of the same cybersecurity standards as commercial platforms. They benefit from active community and vendor-backed development cycles that rapidly address CVEs and harden default configurations.
With platforms...
Chris Holmes giving the opening keynote at CNG Conference
Well, we did it.
The Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum (CNG) community came together on April 30-May 2 for our first in-person conference in Snowbird, Utah–and honestly? It was something special.
For 2.5 packed days, we welcomed around 250 attendees from over 100 organizations, spanning cloud service providers, government and nonprofit agencies, academic institutions, and private sector companies. People flew in from across the globe, with participants joining from countries including Australia, Argentina, Japan, South Korea, Germany, France, and more – all ready to learn and share what it takes to build geospatial workflows for the cloud.
Who showed up?
Our attendees largely consisted of highly technical, skilled data practitioners, including software engineers, data scientists, and geospatial developers. Here’s a breakdown of who was in the room:
45%: Senior technical professionals (software engineers, geospatial developers,...
Last week, Switzerland’s Birchgletscher collapsed and caused a major rock avalanches, altering the landscape and burying the village of Blatten. With the data of the federal Rapid Mapping service and the help of individual experts, a first open post-event elevation model was made available. I used the model to create pre- and post-event visualizations and prints at a local scale.
TLDR;Models good, scaffolding gooder.Embeddings based search available to anyone with access to a laptop and who can run a jupyter notebook, coming soon.I’ll try to map Indonesian aquaculture with this workflow to prove it scales.Thank you Earth Genome for releasing data + code!Model ScaffoldingIn ‘AI’ world, model scaffolding is any post-training structure you wrap around a foundation model to guide or enhance it’s behavior. Prompts, memory stores, tool-calling or even calls to other models can all be qualified as scaffolding.What is scaffolding for geospatial models? Embeddings-based search and human in the loop labeling and ML is an area that many have been investigating for a long time, yet is somehow still in my opinion under-explored. Humans are still state-of-the-art (SOTA) when it comes to end-to-end geospatial tasks like “find all the aquaculture ponds in Bali”, so any tool that can allow humans to inject their vision, reasoning and domain intuition is extremely high...
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Mapidea Location Intelligence
•
“Birds of a feather flock together.”This old saying captures a deeply human truth: we naturally gravitate towards people who are similar to ourselves. This tendency is known as homophily—a term that may sound a little exotic but is at the heart of how we build social networks, form communities, and shape our everyday lives.In more accessible terms, we often talk about lookalikes: people who share similar social, economic, or behavioral characteristics. While the word “homophily” might be less familiar, it carries a fascinating power—especially when we look at it through the lens of Geospatial Intelligence.From People to Places: Geographical HomophilyHomophily doesn’t just happen in social circles. It manifests in the spaces we occupy:Where we liveWhere we workWhere we shopWhere we spend our leisure timeSimilar people often cluster in the same neighborhoods, frequent the same stores, and even share the same transit routes. This spatial manifestation of homophily—geographical...
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Mapidea Location Intelligence
•
At RealWorld Systems, we believe that geospatial intelligence is the missing link between operational excellence and strategic growth for telecommunications companies. As a global specialist in spatial asset management for the telecom and utilities industries, we have spent over three decades delivering integrated spatial solutions that drive real results.Our latest innovation—Geospatial Insights for IQGEO—addresses the growing demand for advanced analytics in the telecom sector. While IQGEO’s solutions already provide telecom operators with powerful geospatial network management tools, we saw an opportunity to unlock even more value by adding a layer of geospatial intelligence and analytics.Why We Created Geospatial Insights for IQGEOTelecom operators today face unique challenges: churn driven by service quality issues, underperforming network investments, and missed growth opportunities in an intensely competitive market. Even with IQGEO’s operational solutions in place, many...
Tell Us About YourselfMy name is Antonia Blankenberg. Alongside being a drummer with the fantastic TBL8 Brass, I’m a Lead Consultant in Utilities with Esri Ireland and I’ve been working in GIS for 6 years now. I’ve always been interested in geography, but I only first came across GIS during my undergraduate degree. I was so intrigued and inspired that I decided to further pursue the area, undertaking a Master’s degree in GIS which led me to where I am now. My current focus is accessibility in web mapping applications and how we can provide a better user experience for anyone who interacts with maps. A tricky challenge in the area of utilities, but important nonetheless!
Tell us the story behind your map (what inspired you to make it, what did you learn while making it, or any other aspects of the map or its creation you would like people to know)
This map is all about space and distance. I made it as part of the 30 Day Map Challenge a couple of years ago, and it ended up...
The current version of GIS can be seen as a 1.0 model—built in an era when computers were in their infancy, and storage and processing power were both limited and prohibitively expensive. It was originally tailored to meet the needs of landscape architects and urban planners. However, since those early days, computing technology has advanced dramatically, and the demands for managing, analyzing, and modeling geospatial data have evolved significantly. Despite this progress, the foundational design of GIS, still widely in use, has become outdated and no longer meets modern requirements. Our geospatial world is rapidly evolving, shaped by factors such as climate change, digital twins, ecological disruptions, war, natural disasters, human displacement, globalization, and the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), location-aware devices and drones. The surge in Earth observation data further highlights the dynamic nature of this landscape.As I explore the next innovation in geospatial...
Crowdfunding alert!
QGIS is going 3D - and you can help make it happen.
Lutra Consulting and Northroad is crowdfunding to bring native 3D rendering+open digital twin support to QGIS.
🔗 https://www.lutraconsulting.co.uk/crowdfunding/qgis-3d-for-open-source-digital-twins
#QGIS #OpenSource #3DGIS #DigitalTwins
NLT Blog - New Light Technologies
• By Mario Field
•
Reflecting on Another Event Facilitating Regional Collaboration, Share, and Advancement of Geospatial Innovation in the DMV
The DMV GIS Day 2025: Midpoint Meetup, held on April 30, 2025, served as an engaging follow-up to the successful DMV GIS Day 2024. This virtual event convened a vibrant geospatial community to highlight the significant impact of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the innovative advancements shaping progress throughout the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) region.
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
•
Recommended ReadingAI Data Security: Best Practices for Securing Data Used to Train & Operate AI Systems (Joint Cybersecurity Information)A joint publication of the National Security Agency’s Artificial Intelligence Security Center, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre, the New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau’s National Cyber Security Centre and the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre, this document provides comprehensive guidance on safeguarding data throughout the AI system lifecycle.Proposed Moratorium on US State AI Laws is Short-Sighted and Ill-Conceived (Tech Policy Press)Regardless of one’s view on a bill that would put a 10-year moratorium on the ability of states to enforce restrictions on AI, this article does an excellent job of explaining the state of play in the U.S. on this issue.In Lawsuit Over Teen's Death, Judge...
If you're technically inclined, consider using Borg, Vorta, and rsync.net for encrypted remote backups. If that feels a bit too complex, Arq Backup might be a simpler option for you.
Topoprint has introduced three significant updates to its service for creating 3D mini-reliefs, or Topodiscs, of Swiss locations: bridges with arches, an easy-to-use Topodisc designer and an automated printing-as-a-service option.
Wie wir für den Kanton Graubünden komplexe Daten nutzerfreundlich aufbereiteten – und dabei auf das richtige Tool setzten. Im Auftrag des Kantons Graubünden analysierten wir, wie sich der Tourismus auf die regionale Wertschöpfung und Beschäftigung auswirkt – kantonsweit sowie in einzelnen Regionen. Grundlage bildeten drei Befragungen mit über 30’000 Personen, Daten des Bundesamtes für Statistik …
VertiGIS Blog -Posts Archive
• By Richard Gassner
•
Insights on Resilient Urban Development Cities today face the challenge of accommodating growing populations while maintaining efficiency and inclusivity. To meet these demands, future-proofing urban systems is critical. During our
The post Top 5 Takeaways: Future-Proofing Your City appeared first on VertiGIS.
NLT Blog - New Light Technologies
• By Ran Goldblatt
•
New Light Technologies Inc. (NLT) is honored to serve as a Platinum Sponsor of the 10th annual Innovation Summit for Preparedness & Resilience (InSPIRE), taking place May 28–29, 2025, at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Organized by the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG) Foundation, InSPIRE brings together leaders from across the public and private sectors to advance the role of geospatial technology in public safety and disaster resilience.This year’s summit is especially significant as it looks back at the 20 years since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, recognizing the transformative role these devastating events played in shaping today’s emergency management practices. Many of the professionals attending and organizing InSPIRE 2025 were directly involved in the response to those historic storms.
Many US government agencies have seen recent reductions in spending, limiting participation in conferences like State to the Map US. National events like SOTMUS are critical for building relationships and sharing knowledge. Government partners have become valued stakeholders in collaborations for open data.
OpenStreetMap US wants to fill that gap! The SOTMUS Public Service Scholarship is open to current and recent government employees to attend State of the Map US 2025 in Boston, June 19-21, 2025. Participation from our public partners will help OpenStreetMap continue to thrive as a key component of the US spatial data infrastructure. Let’s maintain crucial networks, strengthen government capabilities, and make a positive impact in the lives of dedicated geospatial professionals. Interested in making an investment? Additional donations would allow us to extend the scholarship’s reach so consider supporting today!
Scholarship Details
At the time of publication, OSM US has received...
OSMCha, the OpenStreetMap changeset review and validation tool, got quite a bit faster recently. If you’ve used OSMCha over the past year or so, you may have noticed that it often took 15 to 30 seconds to display a changeset, and sometimes would fail to load at all. OSMCha users were telling us that this made reviewing changesets frustrating and difficult, so over the past few months I’ve put a lot of effort (spoiler alert: 200+ hours!) into making OSMCha faster. To do this, I made big changes to how OSMCha works under the hood. If you’d like to learn more about how OSMCha works, the rest of this post is for you.
Background
In OpenStreetMap, a changeset is a group of related map edits, made by a single user and typically in a single editing session. When you click “Save” in iD or “Upload” in JOSM, you’re creating and uploading a changeset. This changeset contains all of the edits you made to individual elements on the map. It also has metadata, like your OSM username, a timestamp,...
Immer wieder wird im Geschäftskontext über Datenqualität gesprochen. Leider oft genug ziemlich unscharf. Nachdem ich im ersten Blogpost dieser informellen Serie auf den Begriff der Datenqualität generell eingegangen bin, möchte ich nun etwas hineinzoomen auf die Beschreibung der Datenqualität. Ich tue das anhand eines breit etablierten Standards. Aber erst ein Kürzest-Recap von Teil 1: Wieso …
TLDR;After 10²¹ FLOPs and 500 B patches, IBM’s TerraMind beats a supervised U‑Net by just +2 mIoU on PANGAEA; losing on 5/9 tasks, most other GFMs do worse. Current pre-training objectives are unlikely to scale further with compute and data.I am disappointed.Subscribe nowBenchmarksThere's been a lot of hype concerning Geospatial Foundation Models (GFM) recently. Just recently, IBM announced a new model , which is supposedly state-of-the-art (SOTA) across the PANGAEA benchmark. Specifically, in their press release they claim:"In an ESA evaluation, TerraMind was compared against 12 popular Earth observation foundation models on [PANGAEA, a community-standard benchmark](https://ai4eo.eu/portfolio/pangaea/), to measure the model’s performance on real-world tasks, like land cover classification, change detection, environmental monitoring and multi-sensor and multi-temporal analysis. The benchmark showed TerraMind outperformed other models on these tasks by 8% or more."Reading through the...
Gentle readers, I have just wrapped up a fun side project that will be of great interest to a very small number of you. The result of one of the most technically demanding efforts of my career, I am very pleased to share it with you.
Click to have a look at a detailed version. Contact me if you’re interested in a physical copy.
Most of you will wonder what this place is, but I hope that, for a few of you, the names clicked into place in your memory. This is the planet Chiron, the setting (and one of the main characters) of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri—a computer game from 1999 that has a cult following; I count myself among the cult. I know many of you are, as well (and if you have a few tens of dollars and want to express your fandom by obtaining a physical copy of the map, you can email me at somethingaboutmaps AT gmail.com).
I could go on about the game—which is deep and thought-provoking and has a remarkably beautiful and carefully considered visual language—but I’m...
The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.6.0alpha1!
Best Served with PostgreSQL 18 Beta1
and GEOS 3.13.1.
This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta1, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+.
To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.12+ is needed.
To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 2.1.0+ is needed.
3.6.0alpha1
source download md5
NEWS
HTML Online en ja fr zh_Hans
PDF docs: en ja, zh_Hans, fr
Cheat Sheets:
postgis: en ja fr zh_Hans
postgis_raster: en ja fr zh_Hans
postgis_topology: en ja fr zh_Hans
postgis_sfcgal: en ja fr zh_Hans
address standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder: en ja fr zh_Hans
This release is an alpha of a major release, it includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.5.3 and new features.
Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings
• By underdark
•
The latest releases of MovingPandas and Trajectools come with many “under the hood” changes that aim to make your movement analytics faster:
Instead of immediately creating a GeoPandas GeoDataFrame and populating the geometry column with Point objects, MovingPandas now has “lazy geometry column creation” that holds off on this operation until / if the geometries are actually needed. This way, for many operations, no geometry objects have to be generated at all.
MovingPandas TrajectorySplitters now support parallel processing and Trajectools uses parallel processing whenever available (e.g. for adding speed & direction metrics, detecting stops, splitting trajectories).
When a minimum length is specified for trajectories, MovingPandas now avoids computing the total trajectory length and, instead, immediately stops once the threshold value has been reached (“early skip”).
Trajectools now offers the option to skip computation of movement metrics (speed & direction). This...
The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.5.3.
This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta1, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+.
To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.12+ is needed.
SFCGAL 1.4+ is needed to enable postgis_sfcgal support.
To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 1.5+ is needed.
3.5.3
source download md5
NEWS
PDF docs: en
HTML Online en ja fr zh_Hans
Cheat Sheets:
postgis: en ja fr zh_Hans
postgis_raster: en ja fr zh_Hans
postgis_topology: en ja fr zh_Hans
postgis_sfcgal: en ja fr zh_Hans
address standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder: en ja fr zh_Hans
This release is a bug fix release that includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.5.1.
Introduction
In this post, we’ll explore an experimental project — not something built for practical use, rather for exploring some technology and techniques. The goal is to create an immersive, cube-shaped map visualization using web tools and Python backend services. Specifically, we’ll use:
FastAPI to collect map tiles and process them into cube faces.
OpenCV to warp top-down map tiles into side-facing cube views.
Marzipano, a web-based panorama viewer, to render a navigable, interactive map cube in the browser.
Imagine standing inside a cube where every wall is a piece of a map — north, south, east, west, and beneath your feet — while the top is left open. Users can click in different directions to navigate the map and explore surrounding areas. Along the way, hotspots display contextual information about the current tile.
Joey from Friends goes into the map (Season 4, episode 23), in a similar fashion to users of our experimental app.
While not necessarily...
Towards Data Science - Geospatial
• By Remko de Lange
•
A step closer to spatial AI with geospatial processing with Fabric
The post The Geospatial Capabilities of Microsoft Fabric and ESRI GeoAnalytics, Demonstrated appeared first on Towards Data Science.
We look at extending our marine ecoregion polygons to get more observations categorised – not as straightforward as it might sound.
In a previous post we looked at extracting data on marine ecoregions to a set of observations points. For the most part it worked pretty well, but out of our 2million+ points, around 200,000 had no data (~10%). Visual inspection showed that many of these points were around large, inland water bodies, like the North American Great Lakes, while others were close to shorelines but some distance inland. On advice from marine scientist Chad, we thought we might extend the ecoregions 20 nautical miles (nm) inshore to try and reduce this number as much as we could. Some of these observations could be in inland freshwater lakes or in estuarine areas of rivers, or quite possibly just in the wrong place.
And therein lies a classic GIS phenomenon: it sounds like this should be an easy thing to do but is actually quite challenging. Surely I could just buffer...
Today marks my first day at Fotokite, a Zurich-based company that designs and manufactures actively tethered UAVs forpublic safety and emergency response. I’ll be leading the application engineering team and am excited to help build a great company with an innovative product.
In the past month of April, there were 28 new plugins published in the QGIS plugin repository.
Here follows the quick overview in reverse chronological order. If any of the names or short descriptions catches your attention, you can find the direct link to the plugin page in the table below:
Spatial StatisticsThis plugin provide spatial statistic tool.FinBIF_API_PluginThis plugin helps you to get data from FinBIF API directly to your QGIS.GéoplateformeConnectez-vous avec votre compte cartes.gouv.fr, accédez à votre communauté, publiez vos données sous forme de services hébergés sur la Géoplateforme de l’IGN.GPF – Isochrone Isodistance ItinéraireIntégration de l’API de la Géoplateforme de calcul d’isochrone, d’isodisance et d’itinéraires dans QGIS.SFTPUpload QGIS projects and data via SFTP.SegMapAI-powered interactive image segmentation for rapid map digitization with just a few clicks.地番JUMPThis plugin searches for the parcel number and displays it in the center of the map...
Friends, you might remember that, last year, I wrote to you about how I was finally able to see a dream I’d had for many years come true: bringing together a bunch of map creators onto a single website. I had hoped that this would only be the beginning of our cooperation with each other. Those of us who sell map-related goods have a lot to gain, I think, in combining forces.
This summer I’m embarking on a new experiment in expanding the reach of our group (the Independent Map Artists). We’re going to be offering a Map of the Month club.
For a one-time subscription fee of $200, folks can get new mappy goods sent to them each month for five months (so, $40 per month). People can explore items from multiple artists, and I hope it will help bring new attention to my colleagues—support that these individual mappers might not otherwise get if they were not part of a group. Picking out individual interesting maps can be hard, so we’re making it easy for people to receive an...
A month ago, a news headline about a landslide near Kelowna caught our attention, not just for its tragic impact, but for the question it raised: Was this slope destabilized by last season’s wildfires?
We’ve since had a chance to explore the event more closely. Our satellite-based analysis suggests that wildfire-related landscape changes likely played a role. It’s a compelling case study on how post-fire terrain can set the stage for future hazards, and how baseline risk assessments, while not predictive, can still guide meaningful monitoring and preparedness.
PlanetScope imagery of the slide area, before and after the event.
We decided to explore this further by doing a simple risk assessment of the area. But here’s an interesting twist: neighbouring areas seemed to pose a higher risk than the area where the slide actually occurred. Let’s take a look at how we did the assessment first. Then, we’ll talk about why this result matters.
Tools and...
One of our goals at CNG is to create a larger and more diverse community of geospatial data practitioners. While tremendous progress is being made to make geospatial data easier to access and use in the cloud, we know that there are many people in need of training and educational opportunities to benefit from this progress.
To this end, we are starting to experiment with issuing badges to recognize individuals who have completed cloud-native geospatial trainings. We have started by partnering with thriveGEO, a training and technical consulting company based in Germany. In April 2025, thriveGEO gave its first Cloud-Native Geospatial 101 training course and we have issued CNG Badges to course participants.
CNG Badges use the Open Badges Specification which allows us to give people a verifiable digital credential that asserts they have completed a CNG-approved training course. By maintaining a vendor-neutral view of the geospatial technology landscape, we seek to establish CNG Badges as...
In the past we have explored how social media can be used to delineate earthquakes, study human-wildlife interactions, understand urban morphology, urban smells or locating wildfires among many other things. Keeping with the last topic (i.e., locating things), in a new paper published in GeoJournal entitled "Crowdsourcing dust storms in the United States utilizing social media data," Stuart Evans, Festus Adegbola and myself explore how we can use X (formerly Twitter) and Flickr to source observations of windblown dust. As such the paper demonstrates how social media data can act as supplementary source for dust events monitoring and captures the seasonal trends of such events. Furthermore, the paper highlights the potential of using crowdsourced data for the often overlooked field of dust monitoring that has substantial health and economic impacts. If this sounds of interest, below we provide the abstract to the paper along with some figures which showcase our methodology and...
Applications for NASA DEVELOP are now open! [link]"DEVELOP offers 10-week, paid, applied research opportunities for students, recent graduates, early or career-transitioning professionals, and military personnel and veterans. From September 15 – November 21, teams will work alongside science advisors to conduct feasibility studies that apply NASA Earth observation data to support partner organizations’ decisions. Applications are due Friday, June 13."Level-2 NewsOutstanding Sentinel1C commissioning completed with successful IOCR [link]"On May 7th, the latest member of ESA’s Sentinel1 — Sentinel-1C — was released into operations after successful completion of its In-Orbit Commissioning Review (IOCR) at ESTEC in the Netherlands." Iceye Continues European Expansion With Rheinmetall JV and Manufacturing Center in Spain [link]"Iceye has made key moves in Germany and Spain as it continues to grow its presence in Europe. In Germany, it has signed an MoU with German defense manufacturer...
In today's data-driven world, knowing where something happens is often just as important as knowing what is happening.
That's where geospatial technology comes in. By analyzing the spatial aspects of data—location, proximity, movement, and patterns—organizations can uncover insights that lead to better decisions, more efficient operations, and new opportunities.
Geospatial technology includes tools like Geographic Information Systems (GIS), GPS tracking, remote sensing, and spatial analysis software. While it's already a mainstay in fields like transportation and urban planning, many industries are just beginning to tap into its full potential.
Below, we explore seven sectors that stand to benefit from adopting or expanding their use...
Location intelligence is becoming increasingly central to enterprise analytics, with organizations in sectors such as retail, logistics, and financial services integrating geospatial data into decision-making systems. A 2016 McKinsey report projected that data-driven decision-making could generate trillions in economic value, with location data playing a key role in operational and strategic improvements (Manyika et al., […]
It was great attending the ESA-NASA International Workshop on AI Foundation Model for EO, the first workshop on this topic, and one clearly driven by user demand. The hands-on sessions sold out within hours of opening registration and around 300 people attended on-site — a turnout that likely surpassed the organisers’ expectations.Back in 2017, when I was working on my thesis — Land Cover Mapping using Deep Learning Models (based on this, implemented in the now-retired deep learning library Theano, and this) — deep learning wasn’t widely adopted by the EO community. Traditional ML approaches such as SVMs still dominated. It’s not that more powerful DL models didn’t exist — they did — but they hadn’t yet made their way into the EO workflows. ML was a tool, and at the time, most EO experts didn’t know how to use it effectively.It’s no surprise that it took a couple of years for U-Net to reach EO applications. I believe a key turning point was the DSTL satellite imagery competition on...
Towards Data Science - Geospatial
• By Iñigo Pallardo-Fernández
•
Identify spatial gaps in the urban pharmacy network suitable for the installation of new pharmacies, while adhering to legal requirements on minimum distance between establishments, using geospatial tools such as OSMnx and NetworkX.
The post Pharmacy Placement in Urban Spain appeared first on Towards Data Science.
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Mapidea Location Intelligence
•
In an industry built on solid science, are we still blind to space?Pharma companies are awash in data. Sales figures, prescription volumes, CRM activity, population health trends — all meticulously tracked. Yet one critical dimension remains underused: geography.And that’s a problem. Because everything that matters happens somewhere. Every doctor. Every patient. Every rep visit. Every prescription. Every result. Most pharma organizations capture these events — but not in context. Not in space. That’s a blind spot. And in today’s increasingly competitive market, a costly one.The Stakes Are RisingPharma is shifting fast — from product-centric to precision-driven. Commercial models are under pressure to become smarter, leaner, and more locally relevant. As this transformation accelerates, a quiet trend is emerging: more pharma companies are adopting Geospatial Intelligence.Not just mapping, but operational geo-analytics. Tools and processes that bring spatial context to...
We look at mapping observations of different marine species globally.
It’s been said that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about our own Earth-bound oceans. I suspect that’s true. The amount of data available once we step off the land and into the briny is quite limited compared to terrestrial data. So we were pleased as punch when marine scientist Chad got in touch recently with some spatial interests. In this post I’ll cover the mapping side of what we did from start to finish and some useful things I learned along the way.
With a dataset of over 2 million points in his dataset of marine animal observations, Chad would like to know which marine ecoregion (from the Marine Ecoregions of the World (MEOW)) each point is in as well as which major fishing area it’s in (from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)).
We started, as we often do, with an Excel spreadsheet of data. Five sheets broken down by phyla: Annelida, Arthropoda, Chordata,...
UAV mapping has changed how we do aerial surveying. With drones, we can now map areas quickly, accurately, and in a cost effective way.
The post UAV Mapping for Aerial Surveying appeared first on GIS Geography.
TRX is a free online coordinates transformation tool that allows users to transform coordinate values between between different geometric reference frames such as NAD83(CSRS) & ITRF), epochs and coordinate systems such as geographic, cartesian and local projections systems (UTM / MTM etc.).
The post TRX Coordinate Transformation Tool appeared first on Canadian GIS & Geomatics.
This is a short discussion with Tee Barr on the need for spatial thinking, now and in an AI-powered near future. Apologies for all the “umms,” I will work on that. This is virtually unedited other than for a few seconds on either side.
When most people hear “geospatial,” they immediately think of maps. But in many advanced applications, maps never enter the picture at all. Instead, geospatial data becomes a powerful input to machine learning workflows, unlocking insights and automation in ways that don’t require a single visual. At its core, geospatial data is structured around location—coordinates, areas, […]
Why Building Geospatial Web Apps is a Game of Trade-offs
Life in GIS
When I first got into geospatial web app development, I thought the biggest hurdle would just be getting...
The post Why Building Geospatial Web Apps is a Game of Trade-offs appeared first on Life in GIS published by Wanjohi Kibui
In today’s AI-driven and geospatially enabled world, data is an organization’s most valuable asset — yet it is often treated as an afterthought until issues arise. Poor data quality, incomplete metadata, and inconsistent governance can quickly derail even the most sophisticated projects. At Cercana, we believe that data stewardship must be intentional, continuous, strategic, and […]
What is FedGeoDay? FedGeoDay is a single-track conference dedicated to federal use-cases of open geospatial ecosystems. The open ecosystems have a wide variety of uses and forms, but largely include anything designed around open data, open source software, and open standards. The main event is a one day commitment and is followed by a day […]
OK I will admit it took me longer than I had planned to finish this up. Life got in the way. But now I think is a good time to finish up the series and move on to another.
In the first parts of this series, we looked at why English is such a challenging language for natural language processing (NLP), and how early methods like rules-based systems and Bag of Words models approached the problem. But like everything else, access to power GPU’s and AI has had a big impact on modern NLP techniques.
Today, NLP has evolved dramatically, powered by new methods that are far more powerful — and much better at handling the complexity and ambiguity of human language.
Let us look at some of the modern techniques that have reshaped NLP in recent years.
Word Embeddings: Giving Words Meaning
One major leap forward came with word embeddings — ways of representing words as vectors in a multi-dimensional space, where words with similar meanings are close together.
Unlike older methods that treated...
Three weeks ago I was introduced to Lovable by Sparkgeo’s UK Lead, Dan Ormsby. The next week I messed around with it, and was deeply impressed. Last week my team published a post on it. What’s the fuss about? Well, on one hand it’s “just another prompt based code generation app” - it’s just vibe coding. Though it can provide good output, that output is still a bit rough around the edges. The code quality is reasonable, but the main complaints we had were around executing closely to user stories, thus meeting expectations. On the other hand, the products we managed to create with Lovable are exactly the kind of thing that Sparkgeo was once paid to create.Is this a case of AI taking our jobs? Yeah it is, and I’m all for itPhoto by Steve Johnson on UnsplashStrategic Geospatial is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.This week, I was lucky enough to be in Calgary for a small meeting of geospatial minds....
Living Planet Symposium - Registration is Open [link]The event will take place on 23–27 June 2025 in Vienna, Austria and the deadline to register is 26 May."ESA’s Biomass satellite, encapsulated within a Vega-C rocket fairing, has been rolled out to the launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana ahead of liftoff, planned for 29 April at 11:15 CEST." Credit: ESABiomass mission – measuring Earth's 'lung capacity' from space [link]"Forests cover 40.6 million square kilometres of our planet – almost a third of Earth' s ice-free land area. Often called the 'green lungs' of our planet, they supply our atmosphere with fresh oxygen. But how healthy is this vital organ of our Earth? Can it continue supplying us with enough fresh air to keep Earth's ecosystems functioning? To answer these questions, we must first determine the lung capacity of our forests.This is the task of the Biomass mission, which is scheduled to launch on 29 April 2025 on a Vega-C rocket from Europe's Spaceport in...
As global threats continue to evolve, the role of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) in national security has never been more critical. Whether you’re a transitioning veteran, a defense contractor, or an intelligence analyst looking to expand your expertise, OSINT careers offer an exciting and impactful path in the world of government intelligence.
In this guide, we’ll explore what OSINT jobs are, the skills required to land one, and introduce a high-impact opportunity deployed to the CENTCOM AOR that’s hiring right now.
Are you already an OSINT Professional? Apply Here
What Is OSINT and Why Is It Important?
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) involves the collection and analysis of publicly available data to generate actionable insights for national security and defense operations. This can include:
News and media reports
Social media activity
Public records and databases
Geospatial imagery and metadata
Academic and technical publications
Unlike...
We are extremely pleased to announce the six funded proposals for our 2025 QGIS.ORG grant programme. Funding for the programme was sourced by you, our project donors and sponsors! Note: For more context surrounding our grant programme, please see: QGIS Grants #10: Call for Grant Proposals 2025
These are the proposals:
Trusted Projects and Folders
Port SQL Query History to Browser
Add screenshots to PyQGIS reference documentation
Coverity Scan cleanup
SIP Incremental builds
Adopt wasm32-emscripten as a build target for QGIS
As usual, we provide a summary of the proposal discussions.
Since the total requested budget is equal to the available budget, there is no need for a voting this year.
On behalf of the QGIS.ORG project, I would like to thank everyone who submitted proposals for this call!
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Mapidea Location Intelligence
•
TL;DR: Telcos are sitting on a goldmine of spatial data—but most of it is locked behind technical tools and inaccessible to the majority of the organization. Operational GIS is critical but not enough. To win, telcos must democratize Geospatial Intelligence across departments, empowering thousands of users to make smarter decisions, faster.In telecommunications, geography is not just a background element—it is the core of the business. Every antenna, cable, customer, competitor, and opportunity exists in a specific place. Yet, despite the inherently spatial nature of the industry, most telecom operators still reserve Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for a narrow technical audience. The result? A tremendous volume of valuable data sits underutilized, locked away in highly specialized systems.Operational GIS: The Engine Room of Telecom NetworksSolutions like GE Vernova's Smallworld or IQGeo are indispensable for telecom infrastructure teams. They are the digital blueprints of fiber,...
For the past two months, OpenStreetMap US has featured short interviews with OSM contributors in our newsletter. We received so many interesting stories that we decided to expand the highlights into a blog series, to allow for more details about the mappers and mapping groups featured. For the first in this new blog series, enjoy an interview with Jacob Hall and Daniel Schep of MapRVA, Richmond, Virginia’s local mapping group!
Give a brief history of MapRVA.
After a bunch of Richmond-based mappers met each other at the State of the Map US conference in 2023, I think there was some interest in meeting up. A few months later a community member named Robert reached out on the OSMUS Slack to see if anyone was interested in an RVA meetup. A few of us agreed, and MapRVA has grown ever since!
We’ve had some regulars show up for most meetings, and others come and go. Our membership has generally increased since we started, especially after we published a map of the famed Richmond Water...
The relentless chaos stemming from the Trump Administration's erratic tariff policy—hardly a cohesive strategy—elicits deeply unsettling emotions. It’s driving companies to cut jobs while simultaneously raising prices. On the other, the uncertainty of the current economic landscape is profoundly unnerving causing consumers to spend less.It got me reflecting on the nature of happiness. Uncertainty and fear undeniably take a toll on our sense of joy. Yet, life is a series of highs and lows, moments of triumph and challenges. So, if happiness is our goal, how can we maintain a steady foundation of happiness through life’s inevitable waves of stress? I recently listened to a talk on this very topic, and one key insight stood out: contentment plays a vital role in sustaining true happiness.If happiness is our goal, how can we maintain a steady foundation of happiness through life’s inevitable waves of stress? Geography and GISMy expertise lies in two key areas. First, my passion for...
Geo Owl is uniquely positioned to support the Department of Defense (DOD) modernization initiatives through our advanced geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. With extensive experience supporting intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions for elite defense and intelligence agencies, Geo Owl has developed proprietary technologies and methodologies that enhance decision-making and operational efficiency.
Our state-of-the-art Patternflows platform integrates advanced machine learning algorithms with diverse geospatial data streams—including commercial and government satellite systems, UAV platforms, and terrestrial sensors—to deliver rapid, precise, and actionable intelligence solutions. By automating complex data processing and analysis tasks, Patternflows significantly reduces cognitive load on analysts, accelerates mission planning, and improves response times during critical operations.
To align with DOD modernization...
Readers might of noticed that recently we have been exploring the use of street view images to explore cities or how we can utilize geosocial media to understand the form of function of cities, but one thing we have not explored is the role of smell and how it shapes peoples perceptions of urban spaces. However, in a new paper recently published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers with Qingqing Chen, Ate Poorthuis we do just that. The paper is entitled "Mapping the Invisible: Decoding Perceived Urban Smells Through Geosocial Media in New York City" In the paper we use text mining techniques to tease out smell related information from over 56 million geolocated tweets which are then assigned to specific small categories (e.g., nature, food, waste) resulting in a new smellscape map for New York city. If this sounds of interest, below you can read the abstract to our paper, see our workflow and resulting smellscape map. While the the analysis steps, along with the...
Cercana Systems is excited to share that our entire team will be in attendance at FedGeoDay 2025! This is a great opportunity to meet with us face-to-face and learn more about our capabilities and the work we do. The event is happening April 22, 2025 at the Department of Interior’s Yates Auditorium in Washington, D.C. […]
It’s “conference season” in the industry I work in; it seems like there is an event each week. Check out this excellent curated list from . This is both exciting and exhausting; it’s great to connect with peers and learn about their work and priorities. For me, this is the best part about an event. The travel, the lack of sleep, the exhaustion from 12+ hour days … that’s the unglamorous part. It’s still very much worth it. On my most recent trip, each one of my four flights experienced delays; I missed two connecting flights due to weather and mechanicals. To top it off, my Airbnb completely flaked, and I booked a hotel late at night. Despite all that, the event I attended was absolutely fantastic! With a packed season of conferences and events on the horizon, I recently shared a few personal observations, quirks, and hopes for organizers—principles I believe could make events more rewarding for everyone. The response on LinkedIn was amazing, with several great comments adding even...
We’re happy to share some major updates coming to the QGIS platform over the next few months. These changes are part of a long-planned technical migration that will bring new possibilities and ensure QGIS stays modern, fast, and future-ready.
QGIS Is Migrating to Qt6
Qt6 is the latest version of the cross-platform application framework that QGIS is built upon. Moving to Qt6 allows us to:
Future-proof the QGIS codebase.
Take advantage of modern libraries with significant performance and security improvements.
Simplify long-term maintenance and development.
While most of the migration is complete, a few final tasks remain, especially around Continuous Integration (the automated processes that run on each change to the QGIS code base to help reduce bugs), layout rendering, and PDF output. The core team is actively working on these and making significant progress.
Enter QGIS 4.0
To mark this significant backend shift, we’ve decided to align the Qt6 migration...
Cleared Intelligence Jobs in North Carolina: Join the Mission with Geo Owl
Are you a skilled intelligence professional with a security clearance looking for exciting opportunities in North Carolina? At Geo Owl, we’re hiring the best and brightest minds in geospatial intelligence, imagery analysis, and full-motion video (FMV) to support critical national security missions. Whether you’re transitioning from the military or growing your civilian career, North Carolina is quickly becoming a hub for cleared intelligence jobs — and Geo Owl is leading the charge.
Why North Carolina?
North Carolina is home to Fort Bragg, one of the largest military installations in the world and a critical center for special operations and intelligence. With its strategic location and proximity to Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the region has become a powerhouse for defense-related opportunities, especially for individuals with Top Secret / SCI clearances.
Combine that with the area’s lower cost of...
Career Opportunities: Navigating the Landscape of TS/SCI GEOINT Analyst Jobs
In today’s rapidly evolving geopolitical environment, the demand for skilled GEOINT (Geospatial Intelligence) analysts with TS/SCI clearances has never been higher. Organizations across the defense, intelligence, and national security sectors are actively seeking professionals who can transform complex geospatial data into actionable intelligence. If you’re considering a career path that leverages your analytical skills, security clearance, and geospatial expertise, now is an exceptional time to explore the field.
What Makes GEOINT Analysts Essential
GEOINT analysts serve as the critical bridge between raw geospatial data and the intelligence insights that inform strategic decision-making. These professionals combine technical proficiency with analytical thinking to:
Interpret satellite imagery and remote sensing data
Analyze patterns and anomalies in geospatial information
Create detailed intelligence...
In today’s fast-paced professional world, it’s easy for young professionals to assume that hard work alone will get them ahead. While grinding at the desk and delivering results matters, relying solely on your work to speak for itself may leave you overlooked in a competitive field. Getting out of the office and into local conferences, […]
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Mapidea Location Intelligence
•
The electric vehicle (EV) market has grown exponentially in the past decade, fueled by a global push toward sustainability and clean energy. And with more EV ownership comes the need for an accessible charging network that can answer to both existing and future demand.Creating EV charging stations in the right locations is essential. If a station is too far from high-traffic corridors or underserved areas, it risks low use rates and poor ROI. So how do you decide where to put an EV charging station? That’s where location intelligence comes in. By leveraging good data analysis, interactive maps, and advanced spatial insights, a platform like Mapidea helps you pinpoint the best sites for EV charging stations.Why GeoSpatial Intelligence matters for EV chargingIdentifying ideal sites for charging stations is more than just targeting areas with high EV ownership. It involves analyzing multiple data layers, from demographic and socioeconomic indicators to real-time traffic patterns and...
Wayfinding is a central part of our work at T-Kartor, and we believe in its power to build, maintain, and grow strong communities.
Many of us use different forms of wayfinding every day to get around and travel. At its core, wayfinding is about understanding our position in relation to a place and planning effective routes.
Wayfinding also plays into other community areas—let's explore those and discuss the benefits.
Accessibility
Thoughtful wayfinding design makes environments more inclusive. Well-designed navigation tools are critical for people with disabilities.
...
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
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This week’s reading addresses various aspects of artificial intelligence regulation and procurement. The EU has published the third draft of its General-Purpose AI Code of Practice focusing on transparency, copyright, and safety to aid compliance with the AI Act and has updated its model contractual clauses for AI procurement. In the US, a court opinion addressed copyright infringement claims against Microsoft and OpenAI, with mixed rulings on direct, contributory, and DMCA claims while the California Attorney General issued guidance on applying existing state laws to AI, highlighting consumer protection and civil rights. In addition, the White House has provided a memorandum to federal agencies on efficiently and responsibly acquiring AI.Driving Efficient Acquisition of Artificial Intelligence in Government (White House)This White House memorandum, M-25-22, provides guidance to federal agencies on how to efficiently and responsibly acquire artificial intelligence (AI) systems and...
Though it’s been about a week since we sent it out there, I just recalled that I haven’t alerted all of you to the 2025 edition of the freelance cartographer survey that Aly Ollivierre and I conduct. Due to popular demand, we are going to try conducting it annually, rather than biennially.
TAKE THE SURVEY
This survey is for anyone, anywhere in the world, who did any amount of freelance mapping last year. Even if it was just one project. You don’t have to think of yourself as “running a business” — as long as someone paid you to make a map, and it wasn’t part of a normal salaried job, we want to hear from you!
This survey helps provide valuable information to the cartographic community, at a time when we all need to stick together. To that end, you might want to consider signing up for the Alliance of Freelance Cartographers mailing list, which announces the survey and distributes the results (and occasionally does other things).
Results will be posted here once we have...
Friends, I’m excited to share that I have just completed a world physical map, in my new asymmetric monstrosity projection.
Daniel Huffman is not liable for any sanity damage you suffer in the course of experiencing this map.
DOWNLOAD JPG (17MB)
PURCHASE A PRINT
It’s free to download, or if you want to buy a 30″ × 20″ print, you can also do that (and I will be pleasantly surprised). If you download it and print it yourself, I hope you’ll consider making a donation using the links you’ll find below. This project took a lot of time, and while I am giving it away, your support helps me continue doing things like this.
PATREON
PAYPAL
SUBSCRIBE
Also, spreading the word about my work is a big help, so please share this around! Finally, consider subscribing, to make sure that you catch every post here.
This is only the second world wall map I’ve made (the first was for a private client), and it’s definitely the most interesting and/or...
Last year over 10 million images were uploaded in the United States by the 2023 awardees of the OpenStreetMap US + Mapillary Camera Grant. Now, OSM US and Mapillary are back for round 2, with 40 cameras up for grabs to capture imagery across the country!
Street-level imagery is vital to the OSM community’s pedestrian-centered mapping efforts. This data allows mappers to verify details difficult to detect through aerial imagery, but that pedestrians and folks with mobility aids rely on daily (such as curb cuts, traffic signals and signs, and tactile pavings). OpenStreetMap US is excited to expand our support for this corner of the mapping world in addition to the Pedestrian Working Group and the upcoming Charting the Course theme at State of the Map US 2025.
The primary goals for round 2 of this program are to:
Facilitate the capturing of updated, high-quality street-level imagery in major metropolitan areas across the United States.
Create a community of imagery...
BIM, or Building Information Modeling, is a smart way to design buildings. It creates virtual 3D models about the its materials and systems.
The post BIM – Building Information Modeling appeared first on GIS Geography.
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
•
Deep DiveIn today’s Deep Dive we will explore a court ruling in February in the case Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence which could have a significant impact on the use of material protected by copyright as training data. In this case, Thomson Reuters, the owner of the legal research platform Westlaw, sued ROSS Intelligence, a competitor that developed a legal research search engine using artificial intelligence, for copyright infringement. The central legal issue in the dispute is whether ROSS infringed Thomson Reuters's copyright by using Westlaw headnotes to train its AI search tool. ROSS raised several defenses against the copyright infringement claim, including fair use.From an AI standpoint, the issue of fair use is important, as it has frequently been raised as justification for the use of material protected by copyright in training models. A court considers several factors in determining whether fair use applies. These factors include:· Purpose and character of the use.·...
In the last couple of months a total of 57 new plugins were published in the QGIS plugin repository.
Highlights
In early February a new web portal for QGIS plugins was launched, in line with the main website overhaul, intending on improving the user experience and with new functionalities as well as detailed information on over two thousand plugins. Congratulations on all involved, and enjoy everyone!
Overview
Here follows the quick overview in reverse chronological order. If any of the names or short descriptions catches your attention, you can find the direct link to the plugin page in the table below:
Space traceDraws a spacecraft’s ground trace over the Earth’s surface.SpaceMouse3DconnexionPlugin Direct HID support for 3DConnexion SpaceMouse in QGIS 3D views.ČHMÚ/CHMI – Meteorological Data ProcessingWeather measurements and spatial interpolation.UHIUrban Heat Island.FPT Plot AllocationPlot allocation for forest inventory.CornelisHelp produce ‘cartographic’...
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
•
Recent DevelopmentsThis week’s Recent Developments covers a range of issues: from concerns about algorithmic pricing and legislative efforts to govern AI, to legal challenges concerning AI authorship in copyright law and guidance on the responsible use of AI by federal government agencies.Accelerating Federal Use of AI through Innovation, Governance, and Public Trust (White House) - This White House memorandum outlines a strategy for accelerating the federal government's adoption and use of AI. It directs agencies to innovate with AI, establish governance frameworks, and foster public trust in its implementation.Anthropic wins early round in music publishers' AI copyright case (Reuters)- The plaintiffs had filed a motion to prohibit Anthropic from using copyrighted song lyrics to train its generative artificial intelligence (AI) models. In denying the motion, the judge ruled that the plaintiffs had not established the prerequisite factor of irreparable harm.Thaler v. U.S. Copyright...
A year of weather 2024EUMETSAT released its 2024 weather visualisation, revisiting key weather events of last year on a global scale.Level-2 NewsD-Orbit Acquires Italian EO Company Planetek [link]"Space logistics company D-Orbit announced a deal on Friday to acquire Italian Earth Observation (EO) and analytics company Planetek Group to bring together in-orbit servicing and space data.D-Orbit has acquired all of Planetek’s shares. D-Orbit said the two companies will retain operational autonomy, but will “explore new innovative business models and synergies” together. "New contract signed for continued development of CLCplus Core [link]"The Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) announced the signing of a new contract designed to support the ongoing development and operation of the CLCplus Core platform—an integral component of the expanding CLCplus product suite."ESA’s Arctic Weather Satellite hailed as excellent [link]"Launched just seven months ago, ESA’s Arctic Weather Satellite...
NLT Blog - New Light Technologies
• By NLT Staff
•
We’re excited to announce that New Light Technologies (NLT) is once again a proud sponsor of FedGeoDay, happening April 22, 2025, in Washington, D.C. at the American Red Cross Building – DOI Yates Auditorium.
I was playing around with TiTiler for visualising Cloud-Optimised GeoTIFFs (COGs) in the browser. While reviewing resources on how it works, I stumbled upon a video where someone casually loaded a COG from their own S3 bucket into QGIS.I paused the video… Stared at it… You can do that?!TLDR: I searched a STAC Catalog for Sentinel-2 and Landsat imagery, accessed their COG assets and programmatically built a QGIS project that streams false-colour composites - no (persistent) download required.Steps to stream a Cloud-Optimised GeoTIFF (COG) in QGISOpen QGISGo to Layer → Add Layer → Add Raster Layer …In the dialog: Source type: Protocol: HTTP(S), cloud, etc.Type: HTTP/HTTPS/FPTURI: https://sentinel-cogs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/sentinel-s2-l2a-cogs/36/R/VU/2025/3/S2C_36RVU_20250313_0_L2A/TCI.tifClick AddAdding a raster layer to QGISOr, using AWS S3 Protocol (works for the same URI once we separate the S3 Bucket name and Object key)In the dialog: Source type: Protocol: HTTP(S), cloud,...
We struggle with a point dataset’s coordinate system and delve into UTM.
Ah, if only every day could be a carnival at GIS Central…sigh. Rather than a samba to start the day, here’s a fairly common occurrence: a colleague sends me some data in a CSV file and asks me to map them. As usual, sounds easy, but… We’ve been continuing with more of the global data modelling, this time looking at world-wide estimates of available phosphorus in soils and, hence, which areas could benefit from reduced applications. Thus far, I’ve got a dataset of 44,380 points we’re using to extract variables related to climate, soils, cropping, runoff, and a host of others which will then be used to develop a predictive model – here are the points:
These were mapped from a CSV file that looks like this:
Nicely formatted data with Latitudes and Longitudes in WGS84. Life is good, almost a carnival.
But arriving in my inbox one sunny morning was a new CSV file with some new data...
We’re excited to share that our work at CapMetro was recently featured in an Esri case study.
Over the past few years, we’ve been building a modern, cloud-based geospatial infrastructure to better serve our teams, riders, and the region. From automating data pipelines with FME to migrating ArcGIS Enterprise to Azure, the goal has always been the same: empower smarter decisions with reliable, real-time spatial data.
Check out the article to see how we’re using ArcGIS Enterprise and automation tools like FME to streamline operations and make transit smarter, faster, and more transparent.
Read the full article here: From Data Chaos to Clarity: How CapMetro Built an Enterprise GIS for Transit
NLT Blog - New Light Technologies
• By NLT Staff
•
We are excited to announce the DMV GIS Day 2025: Midpoint Meetup, a follow up to the inaugural DMV GIS Day 2024. This is where the dynamic geospatial community of the Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) region comes together to showcase the history, latest innovations, applications, and trends in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This half-day event highlights the diverse ecosystem of GIS professionals, organizations, and enthusiasts working to solve real-world challenges using cutting-edge geospatial technologies in our community.
There’s some big news from the OpenStreetMap US Team – funding is now available to support our members’ mapping and community building efforts! OSM US is thrilled to announce OpenStreetMap US Microgrants, a new program for investing directly in the people growing the OpenStreetMap community in the United States. Applications for the first round of microgrants open today, so read on and learn how you can apply!
What activities are funded?
There are three opportunities for funding through OSM US Microgrants:
Travel: Travel Grants are available to support the transportation, lodging, and registration costs for folks speaking about OpenStreetMap at conferences, symposiums, or other professional or academic networking events around the country. Learn more about the Travel Grant ➔
Events: Event Grants are available to new and existing local OpenStreetMap community groups to fund the cost of advertisement, food, space and equipment rental, and other expenses related to hosting meetups,...
From March 23–25 in St. Louis, MO, TGE hosted a three-day event to kick off the second phase of our Fields of the World initiative—a bold effort to use machine learning and computer vision to extract real-world features from satellite imagery at a global scale.
Our long-term vision is ambitious: to build the core infrastructure needed for computers to automatically identify any feature of interest from satellite imagery. To start, we’re focusing on field boundaries—an essential building block for agricultural analysis, as they define the spatial units used to measure yield, vegetation health, land use change, and more.
On day one, we convened project sponsors and strategic partners to align on shared priorities and real-world applications. Participating organizations included Bayer, Planet, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UN FAO), and the World Resources Institute...
NLT Blog - New Light Technologies
• By NLT Staff
•
NLT at the 2025 North Carolina GIS Conference
From March 18-21, 2025, Winston-Salem, North Carolina held its annual NC GIS conference, a dynamic gathering of state, local government, academic, and industry professionals dedicated to leveraging GIS for real-world solutions. New Light Technologies (NLT) proudly participated as a platinum exhibitor and Herb Stout award sponsor, making their first appearance and engaging deeply with the incredible North Carolina GIS community, demonstrating their latest geospatial innovations and strengthening collaborative partnerships for mission success.
Maps, Tattoos, & Geospatial Views
• By Brian Monheiser
•
For years, St. Louis has proudly celebrated its legacy as a leader in geospatial talent and technology. This legacy has become a rallying cry for economic development, building on the success of Biotech and AgTech and setting the stage for an even more thriving geospatial ecosystem through education, awareness, and innovation.Thanks for reading Maps, Tattoos, & Geospatial Views! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.If you’re searching for the gold standard in geospatial excellence or looking to contribute to a better St. Louis, look no further than Seiler Instrument and Manufacturing Company, a legacy that began in 1945 as a small survey instrument repair shop on Pine Street in downtown St. Louis. Founded by Eric H. Seiler and his wife Dora L. Seiler, the company flourished under the leadership of their son, Eric P. Seiler Sr., a man who exemplified honor, integrity, and dedication to both his craft and his community.Eric P. Seiler Sr. made a profound impact,...
The NGS Blog | Expert Geospatial Insights and More
• By Jason Newmoyer
•
NGS is pleased to announce our 2025 Q1 release of CoreSpatial Server, Map Manager and Portal.
Below are the release notes. As usual, please reach out to our support email if you have any questions or would like any assistance with upgrades.
Please note that this release contains critical security patches. It is recommended that you update production systems immediately.
CoreSpatial Server 2025.1.2 (3/16/2025)
Updates GeoServer to 2.26.2
Update PostgreSQL JDBC jar to 42.7.5
Allow container to start with default catalog
Added support for optional map data loading in container initialization
Moved Docker container usage instructions to Admin Guide
Enable use of WPS for Geoprocessing services in CoreSpatial Portal
Fixed issue with loading fonts in container image
CoreSpatial Map Manager 2025.1.3 (3/13/2025)
Improve startup logic for creating highres store and layers in GeoServer
Fix bug with initialization of PG variables in...
As the AAG has just wrapped up I thought I would write brief (well actually quite long) post on the talks that I was involved with at the conference. These talks would not have been possible without the many great students and colleagues who I have been collaborating with over time. Below you will find a brief summary of the talks and if any sound interesting, please reach out and we can give you more details. First up (in order in which they were presented) was "Utilizing Streetview Images for Mapping Building Attributes with ChatGPT" with Qingqing Chen and Linda See. In this talk we discussed how multimodal Large Language Models are giving us a new way to study cities, in the sense, lowering the boundary for information extraction. Using ChatGPT and street view images from Mapillary as an example, we showed how one can extract building age, usage (e.g., commercial, mixed use, residential) and estimate building height which could all be used to inform urban climate models which...
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
•
Recent DevelopmentsThe following is a recap of some of the most recent developments since the newsletter was last published.Increased Efforts to Regulate AI at the State Level – As noted in this AI State Law Tracker from the International Association of Privacy Professionals, we are seeing efforts across the United State to regulate AI. By some counts, there are approximately 900 AI-related bills proposed. As is the case with data protection/privacy, a patchwork of state laws with different requirements makes it complicated —and expensive —for technology companies. Not surprisingly, in responding to a request for comments on a proposed AI national regulatory framework some technology companies are now calling for federal AI legislation that would supersede state laws.Trump Administration Issues Executive Order on AI – On January 23, 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14179, titled "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence." The stated goal...
Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings
• By underdark
•
At the end of yesterday’s TimeGPT for mobility post, we concluded that TimeGPT’s trainingset probably included a copy of the popular BikeNYC timeseries dataset and that, therefore, we were not looking at a fair comparison.
Naturally, it’s hard to find mobility timeseries datasets online that haven’t been widely disseminated and therefore may have slipped past the scrapers of foundation model builders.
So I scoured the Austrian open government data portal and came up with a bike-share dataset from Vienna.
Dataset
SharedMobility.ai dataset published by Philipp Naderer-Puiu, covering 2019-05-05 to 2019-12-31.
Here are eight of the 120 stations in the dataset. I’ve resampled the number of available bicycles to the maximum hourly value and made a cutoff mid August (before a larger data collection cap and the less busy autumn and winter seasons):
Models
To benchmark TimeGPT, I computed different baseline predictions. I used statsforecast’s HistoricAverage,...
Level-2 NewsPlanet Labs PBC Releases Images From Pelican-2 [link]"Planet released first light images from its Pelican-2 satellite of the Port of Laem Chabang in Eastern Thailand, the primary deep sea port in Thailand. They were taken on March 12, 2025, from an altitude of around 506 km. Pelican-2 launched on SpaceX’s Transporter-12 Rideshare mission on January 14, 2025."Planet Labs Signs Contract with ESA to Support Greek National Space Services [link]"Planet Labs signed a contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) on behalf of the Hellenic Ministry of Digital Governance to support the Greek National SmallSat Program, Planet announced on March 24."Iceye Provides SAR Satellite Data to NATO Situation Center [link]"Iceye announced it will provide satellite data to the Situation Center at NATO HQ (SITCEN). The collaboration will give SITCEN access to Iceye’s capabilities, which Iceye said will enhance its ability to deliver data-driven assessments to decision-makers."OroraTech to...
In this post, you will learn how to work with the Open Buildings 2.5D Temporal data and download it for many useful downstream applications, such as Visibility Analysis, Population Modeling, and 3D Visualization.
Google has two important large-scale AI-derived open building datasets:
Open Buildings V3 Polygons: This was released a few years ago and contains all buildings polygons detected from Google’s corpus of high-resolution imagery. You can read more about it in our post Mapping Building Density with Open Building Datasets.
Open Buildings 2.5D Temporal V1: This is a newer dataset that aims to extract useful attributes for buildings such as year of construction and building height. Since this data is derived from open-source medium-resolution Sentinel-2 imagery, it has temporal coverage from 2016-2023. A deep learning model was trained to predict building heights from Sentinel-2 images, so we also get the height information each year.
We will cover a Google Earth...
Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings
• By underdark
•
tldr; Maybe. Preliminary results certainly are impressive.
Introduction
Crowd and flow predictions have been very popular topics in mobility data science. Traditional forecasting methods rely on classic machine learning models like ARIMA, later followed by deep learning approaches such as ST-ResNet.
More recently, foundation models for timeseries forecasting, such as TimeGPT, Chronos, and LagLlama have been introduced. A key advantage of these models is their ability to generate zero-shot predictions — meaning that they can be applied directly to new tasks without requiring retraining for each scenario.
In this post, I want to compare TimeGPT’s performance against traditional approaches for predicting city-wide crowd flows.
Experiment setup
The experiment builds on the paper “Deep Spatio-Temporal Residual Networks for Citywide Crowd Flows Prediction” by Zhang et al. (2017). The original repo referenced on the homepage does not exist anymore. Therefore, I forked:...
I recently gave a careers talk to students at Solent University, and through that I got to know a MSc student there who had previous GIS experience and was now doing a Data Analytics and AI MSc course. Her GIS experience was mostly in the ESRI stack (ArcGIS and related tools) and she was keen to learn other tools and how to combine her new Python and data knowledge with her previous GIS knowledge. I wrote her a long email with links to loads of resources and, with her permission, I’m publishing it here as it may be useful to others. The general focus is on the tools I use, which are mostly Python-focused, but also on becoming familiar with a range of tools rather than using tools from just one ecosystem (like ESRI). I hope it is useful to you.
Tools to investigate:
GDAL
GDAL is a library that consists of two parts GDAL and OGR. It provides ways to read and write geospatial data formats like shapefile, geopackage, GeoJSON, GeoTIFF etc – both raster (GDAL) and vector (OGR). It has a...
Blog Archive - SSP Innovations
• By Carrie Turner
•
On Friday February 28th Esri released the Migration Toolset, this is a pre-release and will be part of 3.5. I was a beta program tester taking this tool for a ride and I will say it is pretty slick. Kudos to the Esri team!!
The post Unleash the Power of Utility Network with Esri Migration Toolset appeared first on SSP Innovations.
Blog Archive - SSP Innovations
• By Carrie Turner
•
Long before the acronym OCM (or Organizational Change Management) became commonplace, the phrase “Human Factors” was used to describe how changes like a large-scale technology implementation affected the people and workflow processes within an organization experiencing varying levels of transformation.
The post The Human Factors Element of Utility Network Migration appeared first on SSP Innovations.
Mapidea Location Analytics Blog
• By Mapidea Location Intelligence
•
Far too many companies overlook the power of maps in favor of spreadsheets and charts. Choices about opening new stores, buying ad space, or expanding services often hinge on numerical projections or intuition alone. That might have worked years ago—but business now spans physical shops and online platforms, with customers frequently mixing and matching services from multiple providers. One person might have a checking account at one bank, a savings account at another, and still use an app for everyday transactions. It’s clear that these multi-channel, multi-vendor dynamics call for a more holistic perspective.That’s where geospatial analytics comes in. By placing data on a map, businesses can see exactly where operations, customers, and opportunities intersect. Rather than guessing where a new store might succeed, you can identify patterns in how people spend, move around, and engage—insights that are hidden when you only look at cells in a spreadsheet. And in today’s data-driven...
Last year we put out a call for abstracts for presentations for our sessions Geosimulations for Addressing Societal Challenges. The session description is as follows: There is an urgent need for research that promotes sustainability in an era of societal challenges ranging from climate change, population growth, aging and wellbeing to that of pandemics. These need to be directly fed into policy. We, as a Geosimulation community, have the skills and knowledge to use the latest theory, models and evidence to make a positive and disruptive impact. These include agent-based modeling, microsimulation and increasingly, machine learning methods. However, there are several key questions that we need to address which we seek to cover in this session. For example, What do we need to be able to contribute to policy in a more direct and timely manner? What new or existing research approaches are needed? How can we make sure they are robust enough to be used in decision making? How can...
GeoAI and the Law Newsletter
• By Spatial Law & Policy
•
I want to extend my sincerest apologies for the extended hiatus in the newsletter. This pause was taken to reassess and refine the format of our newsletter to better serve the geospatial community. I appreciate your patience and continued support.Going forward the plan is to publish two emails a week. One will be a summary of legal and policy developments from the past week that could have an impact on the adoption of GeoAI. This might include laws, regulations, bills, court decisions and interesting articles. This newsletter will be available free to all subscribers.The second email will be a deep dive into an important legal issue related to GeoAI. This might be a detailed analysis of a law or regulation, a discussion of how an existing law, such as the European AI Act could apply to a GeoAI use case, or a breakdown of key legal issues, such as copyright, privacy or national security. This newsletter will be made available to paid subscribers.The revenue generated from paid...
Maps, Tattoos, & Geospatial Views
• By Brian Monheiser
•
I've touched on this in past blog posts and LinkedIn updates, but my journey with St. Louis began back in the late 1990s while I was in Arkansas, either attending or pretending to attend Arkansas State University. At that time, St. Louis was simply "the closest big city" to northeastern Arkansas (sorry, Memphis—you’re loved too). My connection to the city was largely through watching the St. Louis Cardinals, one of the only Major League teams you could follow in Arkansas, alongside the Dallas Cowboys. It was an exciting time, with Mark McGwire of the Cardinals and Sammy Sosa of the Cubs chasing the single-season home run record.That was my entire understanding of St. Louis back then. I think a lot of people still see it through a similar lens: a baseball town, a beer town, and home of the Gateway Arch aka the symbol of westward migration. When I moved here in 2002, those impressions remained, but I added one more, it was now home to my employer, The National Geospatial-Intelligence...
Have you missed our webinar Editing LiDAR data in QGIS 3.42 and beyond?
No worries! You can now watch the recording here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/TRxW-g0HYjU?feature=shared
📢 Reminder
Editing LiDAR data in QGIS 3.42 and beyond webinar starts in 90 minutes 🕧
We can't wait to see you all!
Link to the webinar: https://www.youtube.com/live/TRxW-g0HYjU
#QGIS #Lidar #dataprocessing #webinar
By Jed Sundwall, Executive Director of Radiant Earth
Next month, we will host the first in-person conference for the Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum (CNG), our initiative to support the communities working to make geospatial data easier to access and use. We’ll be meeting from April 30th to May 2nd at Snowbird in Utah with students, entrepreneurs, and leaders from governments and enterprises all under one roof.
Most of the conference is dedicated to technical talks and hands-on learning workshops, but we have an entire track titled Building Resilient Data Infrastructure where we’re going to discuss how we move forward given recent changes to science policy in the US.
At the beginning of last year, I wrote “it is clear that 20th century institutions are not able to create, manage, or share the data needed to cooperate on the global challenges we face in the 21st century.” Today, many U.S. scientific institutions are being actively diminished, defunded, or eliminated. It’s no longer...
Spatial Product Growth with GeoCalamito
• By Anthony Calamito
•
Those of you who know me, know that I am a proud Penn State alumnus with a degree in geography. Like countless other compatriots in the geospatial industry, I didn’t start out with the intention to be a geographer when I grew up. Note to self; this topic could actually be a very good topic for another post at a later date. I actually started my college education as a meteorology major, fortunate enough to have been accepted into the meteo program at Penn State, known as one of the best in the country.While I still consider myself a weather nerd today, meteorology - honestly - was just too much math for me. I could do the math, but I just didn’t like it. But I knew I loved earth science, so my advisor asked me if I had considered geography instead. Of course, I hadn’t, because who ever heard of anyone getting a degree in geography?! I literally laughed at the mere idea of it, realizing (uncomfortably) that my advisor was not joking.The truth is I had no idea what GIS was, nor did I...
Satellite Earth observation is at a crossroads, balancing national defense priorities, environmental monitoring, and commercial innovation. As competition intensifies and AI-driven analytics reshape the industry, the sector faces key challenges: pricing models, regulatory shifts, and the push for actionable intelligence over raw imagery. With market consolidation on the horizon, the future of Earth observation lies in the ability to extract value from data while navigating geopolitical and technological disruptions. 🚀
Less than 24 hours left before Lutra Consulting Editing lidar data in QGIS 3.42 and beyond.
We hope you are as excited as we are!
Link to the webinar (20.3.2025 11:30 UTC ): https://youtube.com/live/TRxW-g0HYjU?feature=share
Add event to your calendar: bit.ly/4ivcATH
This week is the Spring Equinox, one of four iconic milestones the Earth passes through during its annual orbit. For the first ~300,000 years humans have lived on the Earth, the equinoxes and solstices were only observed from the Earth’s surface, looking up at the angles of the Sun’s arc across the sky. Only in the past few decades have we had the technology to observe the Earth from space, which will be the focus of this post. Take a look at a whole year of images from space from the exceptional scientists and staff of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): Thinking about ancient cultures, phenomena like solstices, equinoxes, and eclipses had to have been so mysterious, so much so that entire monuments and buildings were constructed in alignment with the Sun. During the spring equinox at Chichén Itzá, the sun's rays create the illusion of a serpent descending the pyramid of Kukulcán, a phenomenon that draws thousands of visitors each year from March...
GNSS vs GPS: GNSS is an umbrella for multiple navigational satellites. Under this umbrella, GPS, along with other systems, finds its place.
The post GNSS vs GPS: What’s the Difference? appeared first on GIS Geography.
We use network analysis to find streamflow gauging stations downstream of phosphorus sampling points
In his novel Howards End, E.M. Forster encouraged us to “only connect”. He was talking about connecting the prose and the passion in our lives, to the exaltation of both, but here we’ll talk about connecting sampling sites within a river network. I’m afraid this post won’t be nearly as eloquent as Forster (Ed. or nearly as entertaining…) but here goes anyway.
In a previous post we looked at using Near to help identify river flow gauging stations that were close to phosphorus sampling sites. All well and good, but before we can be confident about linking these we need to know for sure that the sites are sampling the same conditions. This brings in whole a new thing to consider – the rivers. Recall that what we’d like to end up with is a simple table that links each Phosphorus Site to the nearest Flow Site downstream. For this post we’ll continue looking at South Africa as a...
Easily track, preview, and restore changes in your Mergin Maps QGIS projects with the new History Viewer, helping you manage versions and recover lost data.
I did a post a while back which was just a lot of links to things I found interesting, mostly in the geospatial/data/programming sphere. Since then I’ve collected a lot more links – so here are some of them. The theme, such as there is, seems to be ‘this would have really helped me about X contracts ago, if it had existed then/I had known about it then’. Make of that what you will…
The stac-tools raster footprint utility – a useful new-ish tool that generates nice, accurate but simple outlines (‘footprints’) for the area covered by a raster file (as shown above) all ready to put into a STAC catalog
Is Antarctica Greening? – a brief article looking at some of the technicalities of using NDVI time series to monitor greening in Antarctica (reminds me of some of the issues I had using time series in my PhD)
VTracer – an interactive web interface to an open-source tool to convert raster images to vector SVGs (not geospatial images, just images in general). Gives great immediate feedback...
On this page we maintain a dynamic growing list of sources where you can download Nova Scotia open data and related Nova Scotia geospatial data to use in GIS applications ...
The post Sources of Nova Scotia Geospatial Data appeared first on Canadian GIS & Geomatics.
PixabayGeographers explore the world through the lenses of space, connectedness, and time, examining the processes that shape phenomena and their relationships across different periods. A clear example lies in the field of geomorphology, where they investigate how features like alluvial fans or mountains are formed. They study how water moves across surfaces, the behaviors it exhibits, and the transformations it causes to the landscape over time. William Morris Davis, widely regarded as the father of American Geography, transformed the study of geology and geomorphology. His groundbreaking principles, such as geographic cycles, emphasize integrating space, time, and interconnectedness. These ideas continue to profoundly influence the way we analyze and interpret complex phenomena. Applying these principles to build a GIS would result in a system fundamentally different from those we use today. The intricate interconnectedness of Earth's physical features - including humans - becomes...
Maps, Tattoos, & Geospatial Views
• By Brian Monheiser
•
The Marine Corps instills a leadership philosophy rooted in decisiveness, adaptability, and integrity. These principles, forged in the high-stakes world of military operations, have profound relevance in business and life.The Four Tenets of Marine Corps Leadership:1. EMBRACE THE 70% SOLUTION: If there’s 70% confidence, Marines make those choices…now. “Between a good decision now and a great decision later, you choose the good decision now,”.Thanks for reading Maps, Tattoos, & Geospatial Views! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.2. DON’T LEGISLATE THE “HOW”: There’s no manual for advisers in a hostile environment. “A large part of our job is just figuring out what our job is,” So they follow “the commander’s intent”. Commanders say what results should look like and leave the rest up to Marines.3. FALL IN LOVE WITH FLEXIBILITY: “Don’t fall in love with the plan”, Marines are taught that “no plan ever survives first contact.”4. BE A “GOOD M*****F*****R”: It’s...
As always, this post is very delayed – apologies. In fact, I was encouraged to write this by a friend who I see at PyData Southampton (Hi, if you’re reading this!). I mentioned my talk in passing to her, and she asked if I’d blogged about it yet. I admitted that I hadn’t, and promised I would by the next PyData Southampton. Well, I totally failed at that – but there is another PyData Southampton meetup on Tuesday, so I’m going to get it done in time for that.
The FOSS4G UK South West conference 2024 took place in Bristol on 12th November. I gave a talk there entitled Using cloud-native geospatial technologies to build a web app for analysing and reducing flood risk, talking about some of the work I’ve done with the company I’m currently working with: Rebalance Earth.
The talk covers the development of a web app for looking at assets (businesses, buildings, substations etc) that are at risk from flooding in the UK, and comparing various flood scenarios to understand how risk could be...
Maps, Tattoos, & Geospatial Views
• By Brian Monheiser
•
Happy 314 Day, St. Louis!As we celebrate 314 Day, I find myself reflecting on this city's journey, its triumphs, challenges, and relentless pursuit of geospatial relevance on both a national and global scale. I’ve been both critical and deeply supportive of St. Louis in this endeavor, because I believe in what we can be.Let’s be honest, we are not yet the dominant force in geospatial innovation, education, and workforce development. And maybe we don’t need to be, but one thing is non-negotiable, we must be, and we will be relevant. The truth is, we are relevant and have been for a while now. St. Louis has been a cornerstone of geospatial relevance for decades, and over the past 10 years, that relevance has only grown. Our challenge now is to push even further, to not just sustain but elevate our impact for years to come.Thanks for reading Maps, Tattoos, & Geospatial Views! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.In my 2023 blog post, “Geospatial Excellence: STL has...
The NGS Blog | Expert Geospatial Insights and More
• By Gary Rosenberry
•
Gary Rosenberry, Senior Software Developer, NGS
Gary is an experienced Software Engineer with a demonstrated history of working in the computer software industry. Skilled in GO, Java, JavaScript, Spring, React/Redux, SQL, Government, Management. Strong engineering professional with a Bachelor’s degree focused in Computer Science and Programming from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania.
LinkedIn
Introduction
As a full-stack developer since November 2016, I’ve had the opportunity to work on a variety of custom web application solutions across different tech stacks. In recent years, I’ve shifted my focus toward leading front-end development efforts, primarily working with React. My experience spans Java, Go, and JavaScript, but my main expertise lies in building and maintaining React-based projects.
For the past four years, Redux has been my go-to tool for managing and organizing application state, and more recently, Redux Toolkit has become an essential...
If I were to characterize the last five years, I would use the word complex.Photo by Thomas Park on UnsplashWe have a changing climate, with seemingly more extreme events every day. We are seeing increasing international tensions break out into kinetic conflict. The pillars of entrenched economic systems are creaking under the weight of fragile supply chains and nationalistic political agendas—all painted on a canvas of technology with the brushes of AI and a palette of algorithms.The one continuity in this changing landscape is geography itself. Geography is the framework of space; the scale that we measure change. The geographic industry has always been hidden in plain sight, with mapmakers creating the more prized economic treasures of both ancient and modern Nations. “Geospatial technology” is the modern expression of geography, encompassing geographic information systems, remote sensing, and surveying technology. It’s a convenient catch-all term for anything with a location...
We've learned the importance of reading to children and introducing math concepts early over generations of children. However, parents can go beyond reading and mathematics – children will respond to many subjects from a young age with proper introductions.
Since geospatial classes are not yet ubiquitous nationwide in elementary and middle schools, why not teach children the foundations until then?
Whether you are a parent who happens to be a geospatial veteran or want to help educate the next generation, check out these ideas to help the next generation develop integral geospatial skills and understanding.
Incorporate Toys in Teaching
...
What's your favourite infinite sequence of non-repeating digits? There are some people who make a case for e, but to my mind nothing beats the transcendental and curvy utility of π, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.Drawing circles is a simple thing to do in PostGIS -- take a point, and buffer it. The result is circular, and we can calculate an estimate of pi just by measuring the perimeter of the unit circle.SELECT ST_Buffer('POINT(0 0)', 1.0);
Except, look a little more closely -- this "circle" seems to be made up of short straight lines. What is the ratio of its circumference to its diameter?SELECT ST_Perimeter(ST_Buffer('POINT(0 0)', 1.0)) / 2;
3.1365484905459406
That's close to pi, but it's not pi. Can we generate a better approximation? What if we make the edges even shorter? The third parameter to ST_Buffer() is the "quadsegs", the number of segments to build each quadrant of the circle.SELECT ST_Perimeter(ST_Buffer('POINT(0 0)', 1.0, quadsegs => 128)) /...
GIS professionals dedicate their efforts to creating, managing, sharing, and mapping geospatial data every day. However, much of this data remains untapped, often locked away in siloed archives or restricted by proprietary formats. Meanwhile, Earth Observation (EO) data from satellites, aircraft, drones, and balloons continues to flood systems with terabytes of information, straining existing processes and infrastructure. To address these challenges, GIS professionals have turned to cloud computing technologies.Cloud-Native Geospatial marks a transformative shift in how geospatial data is processed, stored, and analyzed. By leveraging modern cloud technologies, this approach empowers GIS professionals with increased scalability, enabling them to handle massive datasets without the limitations of traditional on-premise infrastructure. It also fosters seamless collaboration, allowing multiple users to access and work on shared datasets in real time, regardless of location. This...
We use the Near tool to link streamflow gauging stations close to phosphorus sampling points.
In a previous post we looked mapping some water quality sampling points using the visual hierarchy. We’ll continue looking at a few aspects of this project over the next few posts and hopefully see some interesting and fun stuff along the way. And don’t worry; despite the title of this post, I won’t be getting all religious on you, though some people do like to do that with GIS.
With Jordan’s research, he looking at concentrations of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus, in particular) but also at contaminant loads in rivers. Concentrations are measures of mass per unit volume, typical as mg/L, while loads are the mass (or volume) of contaminants over time (e.g. kg/day). To convert concentrations to loads you need to know the flow rate (m3/sec) – a simple example of this conversion is:
Load (kg/day) = concentration (mg/L) x flow rate (m3/s) x 86.4
(Ed. are we still awake?) As we...
Editing lidar data in QGIS 3.42 and beyond WEBINAR💻
Date: 🗓️ 20.3.2025 11:30 UTC
Duration: 🕧30 minutes + 15 minutes Q&A session
Link to the webinar (20.3.2025 11:30 UTC ): https://youtube.com/live/TRxW-g0HYjU?feature=share
Add event to your calendar: bit.ly/4ivcATH
#QGIS #Webinar #LiDAR #lutraconsulting
Maps, Tattoos, & Geospatial Views
• By Brian Monheiser
•
A few weeks ago, I posed a simple yet thought-provoking question to the geospatial community on LinkedIn, one that many found difficult to answer, including myself:Who are the top 10 living geospatial thought leaders whose insights you prioritize, whose talks you never miss, and whose writings you always read?Thanks for reading Maps, Tattoos, & Geospatial Views! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The response was overwhelming. The comments flooded in, filled with passionate endorsements for individuals shaping our industry. What started as a personal challenge quickly became a celebration of geospatial leadership, highlighting an incredible range of experts across software, data science, policy, open-source, and more.The Numbers: A Telling Story7,000 impressions109 comments55 likes, hearts, lightbulbs, and clapping hands15+ countries and territories represented59 women and many people of color recognizedPerhaps the most exciting takeaway? 142 unique names were...
In the past I have blogged about disasters, but mainly from a social media or agent-based modeling perspective. However, after the devastating wildfires that impacted parts of Los Angeles County earlier this year led me to wonder how resilient are cities to such events? Or more generally, what role could urban analytics play on the various stages of disaster management (i.e., preparation, response, recovery, and mitigation), or how can data, models, and methods at the disposal of researchers be leveraged to better prepare us for future disasters and be linked to policy?If these questions sound of interest, I encourage you to go and read a short editorial that I recently published in Environment and Planning B entitled "Cities and Disasters: What can Urban Analytics Do?"Full referece: Crooks, A.T. (2024), Cities and Disasters: What can Urban Analytics Do?, Environment and Planning B, 52(3): 523-526. (pdf)
Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings
• By underdark
•
In today’s post, we (that is, Gaspard Merten from Universite Libre de Bruxelles and yours truly) are going to dive deep into how to analyze public transport data, using both schedule and real time information. This collaboration has been made possible by the EMERALDS project.
Previously, I already shared news about GTFS algorithms for Trajectools that add GTFS preprocessing tools (incl. Route, segment, and stop layer extraction) to the QGIS Processing toolbox.
Today, we’ll discuss the aspect of handling realtime GTFS data and how we approach analytics that combine both data sources.
About Realtime GTFS
Many of us have come to rely on real-time public transport updates in apps like Google Maps. These apps are powered by standardized data formats that ensure different systems can communicate. Google first introduced GTFS in 2005, a format designed to organize transit schedules, stop locations, and other static transit information. Then, in 2011, they introduced GTFS...
OK, it has been a while since the last time I published this data, but I have a valid excuse.
The most striking feature of the 2024 chart is the zero’ing out of IBM’s piece of the pie. Big Blue, which once billed the government $107M in a year, has been reduced to a billing rate of less than $5M per year over the last two years.
Everything else feels more or less the same. After seven years of NDP government, the overall trajectory of outsourcing growth has beeen flattened, but in no way reversed. It is a smaller proportion of overall spend, but the substantial change wrought by the Campbell Liberal government starting around 2005 has been durable – BC IT has a huge outsourced component still.
The initial surge in smaller local companies after 2017 stalled out by 2021 and had been flat since.
The most consistent grower is now CGI, which entered the Victoria market around 2005 and has grown to $60M/year in billings with consistent year-over-year increases.
Spatial Data Science - Medium
• By Juan C. Montes-Herrera, Ph.D.
•
Ten years of using uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs or ‘drones’) for different mapping projects — scientific, educational, and commercial —…Continue reading on Spatial Data Science »
Spatial Data Science - Medium
• By Remko de Lange
•
Photo by Katherine McCormack on UnsplashIntroductionThe growing volume of geospatial data has led to an increased need for innovative ways to handle, process and use this information. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and scalable compute environments have become crucial elements in managing geospatial data, significantly transforming traditional methods and enabling more efficient and sophisticated analyses.Traditional Methods and Expertise RequiredHistorically, the management of geospatial data was the domain of specialized experts who developed data products for widespread use, such as the maps and functionality found in navigation applications. These experts utilized a range of specialized tools like Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and methodologies to ensure the accuracy and utility of the data.Shift Towards AI-Driven Data Creation and UseIn recent years, there has been a forced shift in how geospatial data is managed and consumed as the result of the sheer volumes of geospatial...
Back to entry 1
I recently “celebrated” my “cancerversary”, the one-year mark since my GI doctor phoned me up and said the fateful words – “you have cancer”.
At that moment, my universe shrank down immensely. All the external stuff, job, professional relationships, volunteerism, just kind of fell away, I had no mental space for it. It was just me and my immediate family and the many, many unknowns.
My experience since then has included two major physical insults. The “curative” surgery that removed most of my rectum, and the associated c.difficle infection that brutally wrecked my GI tract.
The insults really knocked me back. Moving around the house involved effort. Meals would lead to stomach pain and long sessions on the toilet. Runs were replaced with walks and then shorter walks. A trip to the cafe became my gold standard for “getting out”.
Now, I am immensely “better” than I was this summer. But I am still a very long way from the physical condition I was before (which was...
The GRASS GIS 8.4.1 release provides more than 80 improvements and fixes with respect to the release 8.4.0. Enjoy!
The post GRASS GIS 8.4.1 released appeared first on Markus Neteler Consulting.
We are pleased to announce that the minutes from the QGIS.ORG Annual General Meeting (AGM) 2024 are now available for public review.
Since the establishment of QGIS.ORG as a formal legal entity in 2016, we have held virtual AGMs to ensure transparent governance. These meetings allow QGIS Voting Members to approve the annual budget, review financial reports, elect new project members, and make other key decisions affecting the future of the project.
Key Highlights from the 2024 AGM
The AGM took place virtually from November 20 to December 1, 2024, with discussions held via mailing lists and voting conducted through online forms.
Election Results
Board Members:
Chair: Marco Bernasocchi
Vice-Chair: Anita Graser
Treasurer: Andreas Neumann
Project Steering Committee (PSC) Members:
Alessandro Pasotti
Jürgen Fischer
Régis Haubourg
Approvals
Annual Financial Report 2023 – Approved unanimously.
Annual Report 2023 – Approved...
While traditional images are taken from directly above, oblique imagery captures them at an angle. Learn more about oblique images.
The post What Is Oblique Imagery? appeared first on GIS Geography.
In 2024, OpenStreetMap experienced its largest recorded increase in pedestrian mapping, including footways and crossings. Across the top 10 U.S. cities, contributors added 9,896 km of footways and 62,153 individual crossings.
As with past trends in OpenStreetMap, most edits were made by a small but dedicated group of contributors. I wanted to understand why certain cities have better data than others and identify which variables are contributing to the increases. Here is a look into the data and a few of the most impactful efforts underway contributing to the increase.
Footways | 2023 vs. 2024
The chart below compares footway edits over time in 10 US cities. Every city saw an increase, with Austin, Phoenix, Washington, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Miami growing over 50%. These gains will be hard to sustain year over year as sidewalk networks become more complete, but don’t worry, there is still plenty of mapping to do!
Crossings | 2023 vs. 2024
We see a similar trend with crossings...
We are delighted to announce a special track on “Integrating Large-Language Models and Geospatial Foundation Models to Enhance Spatial Reasoning in ABMs” as part of the Social Simulation Conference 2025, 25th to 29th August 2025 at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. Full conference details can be found at the end of this email.Abstract for the Special Track: Recent developments in the use of large language models (LLMs) offer exciting opportunities to control agent behaviour in potentially more realistic and nuanced ways than has previously been possible. However, an LLM-backed agent can only interface with their surroundings through text prompts, which is severely limiting. The integration of large language models (LLMs) and geospatial foundation models (GFMs) presents an exciting opportunity to use AI techniques to advance agent-based modelling for spatial applications, potentially allowing for agents with more comprehensive behavioural realism, as well as an improved...
Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
• By 25 Years of SRTM
•
I noticed earlier last week that I just missed the 25th anniversary of the mission of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission aboard STS-99. I’m not sure there has been a more important elevation data product that has been released to the public than SRTM.
Given the uncertainty of funding for government programs in the new Trump administration, I’m not sure we’ll see another public 3D dataset in my time. Sure, there are private companies who collect much more detailed elevation data than SRTM, but none are as freely available as SRTM is (hopefully not was).
North Carolina is a hub for intelligence professionals seeking dynamic careers, and Geo Owl is at the forefront of this exciting field. Specializing in geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) and GIS services, Geo Owl offers a range of opportunities for talented individuals to support critical missions for the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies.
Based in Wilmington, NC, Geo Owl is actively hiring for roles like Geospatial Intelligence Analysts and GIS Administrators, with positions often located in key areas such as Fort Liberty. These jobs demand expertise—typically 6+ years of experience in full-spectrum GEOINT or 8+ years in GIS administration within DoD or equivalent government settings. Candidates with active TS/SCI clearance and a passion for leveraging cutting-edge technology to deliver actionable intelligence are in high demand.
Geo Owl’s career site showcases openings that blend analytical skills with geospatial innovation. Whether you’re fusing multi-discipline...
FOSS4G:BG: Open GIS conference is coming early in March as a local FOSS4G event in Bulgaria organized by the QGIS.bg community. The event will span in two days, having a day with workshops with deep dive in different topics and a second day with conference presentations.
Introduction Geospatial data volumes and complexity are growing due to diverse sources, such as GPS, satellite imagery, and sensor data. Traditional geospatial processing methods face challenges, including scalability, handling various formats, and ensuring data consistency. The medallion architecture offers a layered approach to data management, improving data processing, reliability, and scalability. While the medallion architecture […]
Maps, Tattoos, & Geospatial Views
• By Brian Monheiser
•
Around this time last year, we made a pivotal decision, GEO261 needed a true headquarters, a space that reflected not just where we worked, but who we were evolving. Up until then, we operated from home offices in Illinois and North Carolina, meeting wherever we could, coffee shops, borrowed conference rooms, or client spaces. St. Louis has long been a vital hub for the geospatial community, and with the upcoming opening of NGA Campus West in 2025, alongside significant public and private investments in geospatial innovation, research, and education, the region’s commitment to geospatial excellence was undeniable. It was no longer just an industry presence; it was a driving force in regional economic growth. For GEO261, the message was clear, it was time to establish our headquarters and take our seat at the table.The choice of where to establish our office was an easy one. We had recently built a strong relationship with John Berglund and the Starwood Group, owners of the iconic Post...
The post explores an SQL query using DuckDB and OvertureMaps data to
extract, filter, and visualize pizza places in Switzerland. All these steps
can be done in one line, and the generated map of Swiss pizza places can be
viewed immediately using PMTiles.
Bathymetry is used to measure water depths to help model physical underwater terrain found beneath large bodies of water. Similar to the same way that LiDAR models are represent 3D features (or relief) of land terrain, bathymetric maps illustrate the terrain or land that is located under large bodies of water.
Download Bathymetry of Lake Ontario pre-made maps and GIS data ...
The post Bathymetry of Lake Ontario appeared first on Canadian GIS & Geomatics.
A funny thing happened when I wrote up my 2025 book list – a lot of the books were parts of pairings. And I started wondering what other pairings I had read that were memorable.
So here’s another list!
Wicked, Gregory Maguire and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum
You wouldn’t know it to look at me (or would you?) but I am a person who has read all 14 books of the original L. Frank Baum Oz series. From “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” to “Glinda of Oz” and all in between.
As… that kind of person, I was truly tickled to pick up “Wicked” a couple years ago and take in not only the invented back-story of the Wicked Witch of the West (Elphaba), but also all the references to the Oz world that Maguire builds into his narrative. “Wicked” is the best kind of reimagining, one that manages a completely fresh story, but without tearing down the original source material on the way. Maguire clearly is also… that kind of person, and he treats Oz with respect while building a totally fresh...
Introduction When combining open-source GIS tools with the ArcGIS ecosystem, there are a handful of challenges one can encounter. The compatibility of data formats, issues with interoperability, tool chain fragmentation, and performance at scale come to mind quickly. However, the use of the open-source Python library GeoPandas can be an effective way of working around […]
Stories by Chris Holmes on Medium
• By Chris Holmes
•
It’s a true pleasure to share that in the time since my last couple of posts about the QGIS plugin to download GeoParquet data there is now a real community of contributors making awesome advances to the plugin.I got hooked on open source over 20 years ago when I wrote code and others showed up and made it better, and after a long hiatus from actual coding it’s been awesome to tap into that feeling again.Latest Plugin EnhancementsSo this time I get to mostly highlight the recent contributions from others. I did a couple smaller things too, but all the recent advances have been from a couple awesome contributors. These are spread across a three releases (0.4, 0.5 and 0.6), and you can get all the features by just searching for ‘GeoParquet Downloader’ in the QGIS plugin manager, and you should get 0.6 (if you don’t just refresh it).The first enhancement was to improve the installation process, reporting to the user when DuckDB is getting downloaded and installed.This was from Till...
I’m excited to share that Safe Software has featured CapMetro’s Geospatial Program in a customer success story. This article highlights how we’ve leveraged FME and ArcGIS to build a robust, automated system that powers transit operations, planning, and performance management.
We’ve worked to develop a comprehensive geospatial platform that integrates real-time data, automates complex workflows, and ensures decision-makers have the information they need when they need it. FME has been a key tool, helping us seamlessly connect systems, transform data, and streamline processes.
Read the full article here: Optimizing Austin’s transit operations with FME automation
If you’re using FME and ArcGIS to automate your GIS workflows, we’d love to hear how!
Austin, Texas, USA – Light rail train leaving the Downtown Station
At T-Kartor, we are dedicated to continuously evolving our geospatial intelligence solutions. We are thrilled to announce the release of
Iris 2.10
, our most powerful and feature-rich update yet. This latest release introduces significant enhancements that empower users with more flexibility, efficiency, and security in managing their geospatial data.
A More Intuitive Style Editor
Designing and managing map styles just got easier! With
Iris 2.10
, we introduce a new
graphical style editor
, building on the improvements made in...
The Swiss Rooftop Explorer is a cloud-native web app that retrieves
Swiss building roof heights without a GIS server. Using PMTiles,
Geoparquet, and DuckDB-WASM, it enables fast, low-maintenance geospatial
queries. This post explores the data pipeline and its benefits of cloud-optimized
formats, and how static files can replace traditional GIS infrastructure.
The GIS and geospatial sectors are undergoing significant disruption, and evolving trends are reshaping the field. Traditional funding from governments is facing instability, impacting broader institutions, while advancements like map-centric GIS, geographic modeling, and geospatial embeddings are driving innovation. The emergence of Geography as a Service (GaaS) and real-time geospatial data on demand highlights the integration of geographic concepts into AI and the information ecosystem. These changes promise a future where time, space, and real-time data are central to geospatial systems, paving the way for new applications and improved decision-making.Image by Gerd Altmann PixabayInvestments in GIS and Geospatial: This year is set to bring significant disruption to the GIS and geospatial markets. Governments and regulated industries have historically been the primary funding sources for GIS. However, instability within the U.S. federal government is expected to impact spending at...
GIS supports various ways to explore spatial relationships. Among these, fishnets stand out for their utility in spatial analysis.
The post Fishnets in GIS: An Overview appeared first on GIS Geography.
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com
Literacy skills, are essential for enabling students to develop their geographical understanding and being able to communicate this, both in writing and verbally. In order for students to be able to develop their literacy skills and become confident with reading, writing, speaking and listening, to enable communication and geographical understanding, vocabulary plays a key role.
In Geography there is a huge amount of vocabulary that students are exposed to and required to engage with, whether this be keywords, words in exam questions and texts or the wide range of other words that we use frequently within geographical topics, but may not explicitly teach as key words. For example, in a topic on rivers, students are likely to come across the following words, excluding any command words or general tier two vocabulary that would also be present:
Additionally, aside from the sheer breadth of vocabulary that is present within Geography,...
Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
• By Spring Training 2025
•
This week is one of the best in baseball—the start of Spring Training, with players practice already underway. Sadly, it’s been a long time since the Giants last made a World Series run, and the Dodgers are as annoying as ever. But hey, the team is healthy, and baseball is always fun to watch!
Stories by Chris Holmes on Medium
• By Chris Holmes
•
My main ‘side gig’ in addition to my ~3.5 days a week at Planet is serving as an ‘industry fellow’ at the Taylor Geospatial Engine. We had some great success with our first initiative, which lead to Fields of The World and fiboa.I’m incredibly pumped that we’ll be launching ‘phase 2’ of the TGE initiative that lead to And I’d like to invite you to join us! Read the ful post from TGE at https://tgengine.org/tge-innovation-bridge-phase-2/, and my take below.Come collaborate with me and Ivor!The first initiative was one of the best collaborations I’ve ever been a part of. We kicked off in St. Louis with ~20 people in person and a number of others participating remotely, representing 17 diverse organizations. And then a core group continued on for about 9 months, shipping an incredible amount of work that will likely be a foundation for many different projects for years to come. And everyone just worked together so well — at the wrap-up we all agreed that a main highlight was working with...
In late January, OpenStreetMap US wrapped up the 2024 Community Survey! Heading into 2025 and the 15th anniversary of the organization, the OSM US team wanted to provide a space for questions, feedback on OSM US tech and programs, and insight into the community. The survey ran from October 29, 2024, to January 3, 2025 (with an additional three day run during the weekend of Mapping USA in late January), and received 128 responses. Below is an overview of survey responses, including what folks are mapping and where, who is doing that mapping, and some highlights from questions such as “What is your proudest edit or story about OSM?”.
The last OSM US Community Survey took place in 2019. If you’re interested in seeing how the 2024 responses match up, you can read the blog post reviewing the 2019 survey here.
A big thank you to everyone who participated. Your feedback, perspectives, and opinions are valued!
The following percentages represent the proportion of all 128 survey...
Recently, I was helping a friend with a super cool project where his team needed high-resolution satellite imagery and an elevation model. Knowing a thing or two about remote sensing, I offered to assist. The experience was long and painful; I drafted and re-wrote a post that walked through the entire process but decided not to post all the gory details.The project centers around a detailed ground-based scan of a UNESCO Heritage site. The goal is to allow users to virtually visit and tour the site from a museum thousands of miles away. To provide a rich and immersive experience, we needed to simulate the surrounding landscape and enter the need for satellite data.Over four years ago, Joe Morrison, a “controversial industry figure,” wrote a post about how The Commercial Satellite Imagery Business Model is Broken. He has made good progress at Umbra, enabling anyone to task a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite via the SkyFi app. This assumes the user understands what SAR is, knows...
Use Tailscale to build your own gated community (a.k.a. VPN) within the public
internet: bypass geo-blocking, remotely control your smart home, and quickly
provide services as a developer.
NORTH51 Update - Mapping the unseenBefore we get into this article. I wanted to highlight NORTH51, the independent geospatial thought leadership event. N51 is about big ideas, and we have just published our program for this year’s event in April.With sessions on Space, People, and Oceans, this year at North51 we are exploring ideas around mapping what we cannot or choose not to see. We welcome challenging, respectful discussions in the beautiful Canadian Rockies. Want to take the temperature of the geospatial industry, come and join us.Time for a change.I’ve been discussing the sheer amount of data flowing out of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for years, and that torrent of terabytes has only grown in magnitude. This firehose of data has prompted me to note that the biggest problems in Earth observation (EO), presently*, are in software, not sensors.Photo by Icons8 Team on UnsplashWhat I mean here is that we are amassing an enormous collection of surface reflectance readings organized into...
Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
• By Resurrecting Planet Geospatial
•
UPDATE: We have the domain working, you now just need to go to geofeeds.me and you’ll get the same results as below. The feed is at geofeeds.me/feed. You don’t need to update anything as the old urls will continue to work. Full speed ahead, make sure you reach out to Bill or myself if you want your blog, newsletter or other writing added.
A couple days ago, Bill Dollins reached out to me and had a crazy idea:
“Forget podcasting. We should resurrect planetgs”
It took me all of 10 seconds to respond, “Hell yes”. You can read the technical way it was brought back on Bill’s blog:
So, “Neptune” is born. The name is a nod to what Planet and Venus did/do, while the “N” planet hints at the Node underpinnings. Feel free to check it out. It’s about 50% me and about 50% Cursor. It’s not all the way baked, but good enough to release.
A lot has changed since I put Planet Geospatial to bed. It’s been 10 years, longer than Planet Geospatial was alive since the python script culled all...
In our last post, we highlighted the first successful Innovation Bridge Initiative. In this post, we’d like to explain what we’re looking to do in Phase 2, and invite you to join us! We’ll be doing an in-person kick-off in St. Louis, and we’ll continue to expand online collaborations throughout the initiative.
The long-term vision is to build a framework of components that form a digital commons to enable many different organizations to innovate by using the Fields of The World (FTW) components as a foundation for further unique insights and analysis.
We’ll first review the components that were started in Phase 1, and then share where we’re looking to go in Phase 2 and beyond.
Foundational Components
The first phase really focused on establishing the core components, creating a number of new open projects that work in concert and are each...
Seven months ago, we issued A Call to Action for the Data Community to break down geospatial data silos and make GIS a core part of analytics. Today, we’re thrilled to announce two major developments that bring this vision closer to reality:
The Parquet specification has officially adopted geospatial guidance, enabling native storage of GEOMETRY and GEOGRAPHY types
Iceberg 3 now includes GEOMETRY and GEOGRAPHY as part of its official specification
Now both Parquet and Iceberg support columns of type GEOMETRY or GEOGRAPHY just like INT32, INT64, FLOAT32, etc. columns! Yay! This is a landmark achievement for geospatial data! 🎉
A Community Achievement
First, a heartfelt thank you to everyone who contributed to this effort—engineers, early adopters, and advocates who pushed for geospatial data to be treated as a first-class citizen. This milestone wasn’t achieved overnight; it took years of collaboration across organizations and ecosystems. From the early days of GeoParquet 1.0...
The GRASS GIS 8.4.1RC1 release provides more than 70 improvements and fixes with respect to the release 8.4.0. Please support us in testing this release candidate.
The post GRASS GIS 8.4.1RC1 released appeared first on Markus Neteler Consulting.
We have refreshed aerial satellite imagery for all 50 states of America. This considerable update means a full implementation of 2021-2023 data with cutting-edge resolution ranging from 15-60cm/px.
Stories by Chris Holmes on Medium
• By Chris Holmes
•
I recently published a post on my experience using Cursor to create a new QGIS plugin. It seems to have inspired a few people, and so I decided to record a couple videos to try to show everyone exactly the process to do it. I’ve felt that being able to build things like QGIS Plugins has been life-changing, and so I just wanted to help demystify the process. And I’ve never really done any video recordings, but am inspired by Qiusheng Wu and Matt Forrest so I thought I’d give it a try. I’m quite confident I’ll never get as good as they are, but it was fun to give it a try.The first video takes you all the way through making a first functional plugin. Lately I’ve been really enjoying using Planet Insights Platform, and so I decided to center the plugin around using the Planet Sandbox Data that is available for anyone to explore. But it’s just an example, and indeed I encourage you to ‘scratch your own itch’ and build something that makes it easier to do something you...
When people think about geospatial technology, they often focus on the technical aspects—data accuracy, spatial analysis, and GIS programming. While these elements are critical, one essential factor that is frequently overlooked is
design and aesthetics
.
Well-designed geospatial tools help decision-makers absorb information quickly, improve situational awareness, and enhance user experiences. Good design can distinguish between confusion and clarity, whether a defense strategist analyzes battlefield terrain, an emergency responder navigates a crisis, or a city planner optimizes transportation networks.
The Intersection of Geospatial and Design
...
If you are interested in chatting about this type of analysis please get in touch via email here, LinkedIn, or just book a meeting here! Also please consider subscribing to make sure you don’t miss out on any posts!Subscribe now“Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else – by color.”- Paul Cézanne🎯 Key TakeawaysWyvern has released the first free, open hyperspectral satellite imagery dataset, they also provide lots of great tutorials and guidance on how to handle their data.I show how to perform anomaly detection on a sample hyperspectral image taken over the Suez Canal in Egypt: you can explore the results using this colab notebook, but you’ll need to first make a Google Earth Engine account if you don’t have one.The anomaly detector reveals lakes, roads, and interesting buildings in the area, but in an operational setting we’d need to dig into these anomalies further to draw insights.In future posts we’ll explore how to make these results...
Installing the most widely used open-source GIS software on the most popular Linux distribution should be straightforward, yet it often raises questions and even problems. This guide walks you through the process so you can refer back to it whenever needed.
TGE’s goal is to speed up the development and commercialization of geospatial innovation. We focus on turning research-stage concepts into technology that is quickly usable by many organizations, creating new market opportunities. To do so, we identified a key technology gap in geospatial science—applying AI and Machine Learning to detect distinct features in satellite imagery. Opening this bottleneck could lead to even more groundbreaking innovations.
Innovation Bridge: The concept
We’re excited to share a recap of the 2024 Innovation Bridge program. The program builds a collaboration between academia and industry to reduce the time and funding barriers that often slow new concepts to reach commercial use. TGE connects academia and industry in four key ways: gathering stakeholder insights, ensuring the technology is commonly usable, making it cloud-accessible, and increasing awareness. After our...
For PostGIS Day this year I researched a little into one of my favourite topics, the history of relational databases. I feel like in general we do not pay a lot of attention to history in software development. To quote Yoda, “All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing.”
Anyways, this year I took on the topic of the early history of spatial databases in particular. There was a lot going on in the ’90s in the field, and in many ways PostGIS was a late entrant, even though it gobbled up a lot of the user base eventually.
This blog post was first published on Chris’ personal blog on February 9, 2025 and is being cross posted here.
Have you benefitted from Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF’s? SpatioTemporal Asset Catalogs? Zarr, COPC or GeoParquet? Not just the formats, but the whole ecosystem of tools and data around it? Well I’d like to present you with an incredibly easy opportunity to ‘pay it forward’ and help build and expand the movement. And all you have to do is attend a conference! One that should be a totally awesome experience, the first in-person CNG Conference, from April 30th to May 2nd.
I have big dreams for this conference, as my hope is that it can expand in the next few years to become a truly vendor-neutral gathering for anyone working in and around geospatial data. To be one of those conferences that has the critical mass where you know ‘everyone’ you want to talk to will be there. In North America there’s really only two options for this: Esri UC and GeoINT. Both are incredible events, but...
Stories by Chris Holmes on Medium
• By Chris Holmes
•
Have you benefitted from Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF’s? SpatioTemporal Asset Catalogs? Zarr, COPC or GeoParquet? Not just the formats, but the whole ecosystem of tools and data around it? Well I’d like to present you with an incredibly easy opportunity to ‘pay it forward’ and help build and expand the movement. And all you have to do is attend a conference! One that should be a totally awesome experience, the first in-person CNG Conference, from April 30th to May 2nd.I have big dreams for this conference, as my hope is that it can expand in the next few years to become a truly vendor-neutral gathering for anyone working in and around geospatial data. To be one of those conferences that has the critical mass where you know ‘everyone’ you want to talk to will be there. In North America there’s really only two options for this: Esri UC and GeoINT. Both are incredible events, but Esri UC controls their guest list (as they should…) and GeoINT is very focused on defense and intel (as it...
With the postgis_raster extension, it is possible to access gigabytes of raster data from the cloud, without ever downloading the data.How? The venerable postgis_raster extension (released 13 years ago) already has the critical core support built-in!Rasters can be stored inside the database, or outside the database, on a local file system or anywhere it can be accessed by the underlying GDAL raster support library. The storage options include S3, Azure, Google, Alibaba, and any HTTP server that supports RANGE requests.As long as the rasters are in the cloud optimized GeoTIFF (aka "COG") format, the network access to the data will be optimized and provide access performance limited mostly by the speed of connection between your database server and the cloud storage.TL;DR It WorksPrepare the DatabaseSet up a database named raster with the postgis and postgis_raster extensions.CREATE EXTENSION postgis;
CREATE EXTENSION postgis_raster;
ALTER DATABASE raster
SET...
When Czech President Petr Pavel traveled to the United States, our Product Manager, Jaroslav Polacek, was part of the official delegation. He presented MapTiler to various audiences, strengthened business connections, and helped establish our presence.
In previous posts we have noted how one can explore urban issues through newspapers, while at the same time we have used social media to explore trends in vaccinations. In a recently published paper in PLOS Digital Health entitled "From print to perspective: A mixed-method analysis of the convergence and divergence of COVID-19 topics in newspapers and interviews" with Qingqing Chen, Adam Sullivan, Jennifer Surtees, Laurene Tumiel-Berhalter and myself, we thought we would explore how COVID-19 was reported in newspapers and how this varied from interviews. The rationale behind this was that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to diverse experiences influenced by public health measures like lockdowns and social distancing. To explore these dynamics, we introduce a novel ’big-thick’ data approach that integrates extensive U.S. newspaper data with detailed interviews. By employing natural language processing (NLP) and geoparsing techniques, we identify key topics related to the pandemic and...
Introduction The geospatial industry has seen significant transformation with the rise of open-source solutions. Tools like QGIS, PostGIS, OpenLayers, and GDAL have provided alternatives to proprietary GIS software, providing cost-effective, customizable, and community-driven mapping and spatial analysis capabilities. While open-source GIS thrives on collaboration and accessibility, it still operates within a competitive landscape influenced by […]
Cloud-Native Geospatial represents a significant shift in how geospatial data is processed, stored, and analyzed. This approach offers GIS Professionals greater scalability, allowing them to handle massive datasets without relying on traditional and often limited on-premise infrastructure. Additionally, the cloud-native approach enhances collaboration by enabling multiple users to access and work on shared datasets in real-time, regardless of their physical location, helping to eliminate data silos. This level of accessibility and flexibility empowers GIS professionals to deliver faster results, streamline workflows, and adapt to the growing demands of modern geospatial applications.
What is Cloud-Native Geospatial?
Cloud-native geospatial refers to the practice of leveraging cloud-based technologies and architectures to handle geospatial data in the cloud, ideally without migrating it between heavy/purpose-built storage and file formats. This approach focuses on scalability,...
XTools Pro is a special add-on for ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro. It’s mostly a tool for GIS analysis. But it has a fair share of productivity tools.
The post 7 Best Features of XTools Pro appeared first on GIS Geography.
Following up on my last post, I wanted to share some more details about the experience of using AI tools to code a plugin for QGIS, one that has seen some reasonable success, with over 2000 downloads in the past couple of months. My hope is to inspire others to make their own QGIS plugins and other geospatial tools, as I think more people doing AI-assisted coding has the potential to accelerate the momentum of the open source ecosystem.
Cursor & QGIS — awesome together :)
Can you really code a QGIS plug-in just using AI tools?
Before we dig in I want to give everyone who is not a coder some encouragement to jump in and try things out. The quick answer is yes! You can code a QGIS plug-in even if you’re not a software developer. I’m sure you’ve seen the videos of people building cool things with AI tools, but it can still be hard to actually dive into it. For me the most important thing is to have a real problem you’re trying to solve. I could never follow those tutorials about...
The post discusses AI hallucination - when AI generates incorrect
information. It explores two main problems: user frustration with incorrect
outputs and uncertainty about managing these errors long-term. Using a
geodetic network analogy, it explains how AI errors can propagate like
measurement errors in surveying, suggesting we need better frameworks for
detecting and managing hallucinations.
I have been watching the codification of spatial data types into GeoParquet and now GeoIceberg with some interest, since the work is near and dear to my heart.
Writing a disk serialization for PostGIS is basically an act of format standardization – albeit a standard with only one consumer – and many of the same issues that the Parquet and Iceberg implementations are thinking about are ones I dealt with too.
Here is an easy one: if you are going to use well-known binary for your serialiation (as GeoPackage, and GeoParquet do) you have to wrestle with the fact that the ISO/OGC standard for WKB does not describe a standard way to represent empty geometries.
Empty geometries come up frequently in the OGC/ISO standards, and they are simple to generate in real operations – just subtract a big thing from a small thing.
SELECT ST_AsText(ST_Difference(
'POLYGON((0 0, 1 0, 1 1, 0 1, 0 0))',
'POLYGON((-1 -1, 3 -1, 3 3, -1 3, -1 -1))'
))
If you have a data set and are running...
Stories by Chris Holmes on Medium
• By Chris Holmes
•
Following up on my last post, I wanted to share some more details about the experience of using AI tools to code a plugin for QGIS, one that has seen some reasonable success, with over 2000 downloads in the past couple of months. My hope is to inspire others to make their own QGIS plugins and other geospatial tools, as I think more people doing AI-assisted coding has the potential to accelerate the momentum of the open source ecosystem.Cursor & QGIS — awesome together :)Can you really code a QGIS plug-in just using AI tools?Before we dig in I want to give everyone who is not a coder some encouragement to jump in and try things out. The quick answer is yes! You can code a QGIS plug-in even if you’re not a software developer. I’m sure you’ve seen the videos of people building cool things with AI tools, but it can still be hard to actually dive into it. For me the most important thing is to have a real problem you’re trying to solve. I could never follow those tutorials about ‘making a...
Last month I released my first QGIS plug-in, and promised I’d write an in-depth post about it. I’ll give an overview and dig into some of the motivations, and then I’ll put the details of my experience of coding with AI in its own follow up post.
Background
I’ve been a long time QGIS user, though am very far from an expert — I mostly open different files and visualize them. I’ve never been able to afford an Esri license, so it’s QGIS all the way for me. And I’ve always loved the plugin ecosystem: the fact that many people worldwide are adding all kinds of functionality so that anyone can customize it to their needs is just awesome, and a testament to the power of open source. There’s still things Esri can do better, but we’re now at the point where there’s a lot of things QGIS can do better.
I also recently have ‘become a coder’ again, thanks to the power of AI tools. I’ll dive into more of the experience in my next post, but it meant that I could tackle something like a new QGIS...
The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into geospatial technology is fundamentally reshaping industries, from urban development and environmental conservation to logistics and disaster relief. With businesses increasingly adopting AI-powered geospatial solutions, the need for professionals who can harness these tools is higher than ever. To stay ahead, hiring teams must grasp the evolving landscape and seek out top-tier talent capable of driving innovation in this space.
The Intersection of AI and Geospatial Technology
Geospatial technology revolves around collecting, analyzing, and interpreting location based data. AI enhances these processes by enabling faster data processing, uncovering hidden patterns, and generating predictive insights. The applications are widespread and include:
• Automated Mapping & GIS Enhancements: AI optimizes Geographic Information Systems (GIS) by streamlining data classification, identifying patterns in satellite imagery, and...
What is Strategic Planning and Why Does it Matter? Strategic planning is one of the most important things you can do for your organization. It helps you not only paint the picture of where you want your organization to be in the future, but also draws the roadmap for how you’re going to get there. […]
In previous posts, we have written how large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can be used in various urban analytical applications. We have kept exploring this potential especially with respect to citizen science applications. To this end we have just published a new paper in iScience, entitled "New Directions in Mapping the Earth’s Surface with Citizen Science and Generative AI". In the paper, lead by Linda See, we discuss how multi-modal LLMs (MLLMs) which are like LMMs but can take different forms of inputs (e.g., text, images, video) and output multi-modal information (e.g., take an image and output a description) could be leveraged to enhance citizen science land cover/land use mapping campaigns. If this sounds of interest, below you can read the abstract to the paper, see some of the figures we use to build our argument, while at the bottom of the post you can see the full reference and a link to the actual paper.Abstract: As more satellite imagery has become openly...
I know it’s short notice, but I wanted to let you all know that I’m doing a livestream tomorrow. It’s been well over 2½ years since my last one.
CHECK IT OUT ON YOUTUBE
I’ll be covering a few monochrome maps I made for an upcoming book. Please come on by to ask questions, offer feedback, and share your thoughts with other folks!
I’m not sure yet if I’ll return to livestreaming regularly. I might do more this year, or it might once again be years before I get the urge. Either way, I’ll post about it on my social media channels when the time comes.
I hope to see you there!
Also, if you’ve read this far, I just wanted to note that I’ve also been putting my terrain hachures on new surfaces. Besides posters, I now have mugs and vinyl decal stickers on my store.
I’m planning, at some point, to write about my experiences with “selling out,” in hopes that it might be useful to some of you out there who are interested in launching something like this,...
Stories by Chris Holmes on Medium
• By Chris Holmes
•
(Originally posted at tgengine.org/exploring-field-boundary-data-with-llms — including here to have a record of my writing)A couple of months ago a great group of people gathered in St. Louis and participated in the final workshop and showcase for the first TGE Innovation Bridge, focused on agricultural field boundaries. It was an awesome event, and a great wrap up to an amazing set of work that launched fiboa and Fields of The World. There will be more communication about the event, but the goal of this post is to share a bit of a deep dive on a demo that was pulled together to demonstrate the power of the schema-level interoperability that fiboa enables.Connecting LLM’s to fiboaThe core demo was a chat interface to 3 different fiboa datasets, one for each of the Baltic countries, powered by OpenAI’s o1-mini.https://medium.com/media/187424a8b6c0d1e652f2c5b702662564/hrefA second demo was created with three years of data in the Netherlands, to demonstrate asking questions over time:The...
A goal for me this year is to ‘ship more’, so in the spirit of releasing early and often I wanted to share a little new project I got going this past weekend. See https://github.com/cholmes/geoparquet-tools.
It’s a collection of utilities for things I often want to do but that aren’t trivial out of the box with DuckDB. It started focused on just checking GeoParquet files for ‘best practices’, which I’ve been working on writing up in this pull request, as I realized that lots of people are publishing awesome data as GeoParquet but don’t always pick the best options (and the tools don’t always set the best defaults). So it can check compression, if there’s a bbox column, and row group size. It also attempts to check if a file is spatially ordered, but I’m not sure if it works across different types of approaches. It does seem to work with Hilbert curves generated from DuckDB.
I do need to refine the row group reporting a bit — I think the row group size in bytes is more important...
![Mergin Maps blog - [QGIS] How to Import Geotagged Photos into QGIS for Fieldwork Mapping](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/64be358a4fb0e612b228bb9e/697390d970d3c710efb9761d_unnamed%20(8)(1).png)
![Oslandia - (Fr) [Témoignage client] Nourredine Idir, AURCA](https://oslandia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/témoignage-nourredine-idir.png)
![Oslandia - (Fr) [Équipe Oslandia] Jérémy Garniaux, Doctorant CIFRE en archéologie numérique et développeur SIG à Oslandia](https://oslandia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/portrait-jérémy.png)
![Mergin Maps blog - [QGIS] A final surprise for the year - shared maps via URL](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/64be358a4fb0e612b228bb9e/694004ee1d8b1b55f7df9b19_69290d04a9518f5b407563a47a6b414a(1).png)
![Oslandia - (Fr) [Témoignage client] Jérôme STAUB, Colmar Agglomération](https://oslandia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/témoignage-jérome-staub.png)
![Mergin Maps blog - [QGIS] How to collect GPS points for QGIS on Android with Mergin Maps](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/64be358a4fb0e612b228bb9e/6936a50be2f9112e12fda97e_Image%207%20(2).jpg)
![Mergin Maps blog - [QGIS] How to use Mergin Maps to collaborate on QGIS projects](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/64be358a4fb0e612b228bb9e/6672b4a9a58311472feb9f30_Image%2030.png)
![Oslandia - (Fr) [Replay] Webinaire Appels d’offres et OpenSource](https://oslandia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/replay-webinaire-inno3-oslandia.png)
![Oslandia - (Fr) [Équipe Oslandia] Sébastien Guimmara, développeur SIG / 3D](https://oslandia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/portrait-sébastien.png)
![Mergin Maps blog - [QGIS] Support Tip: Using HTML to improve your Mergin Maps project](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/64be358a4fb0e612b228bb9e/691455af2c3e7ffea72bbef4_Image%2026%20(2).jpg)
![Oslandia - [Customer Testimonial] Nicolas Godet, ISL Engineering](https://oslandia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/témoignage-nicolas-godet-v2.png)
![Mergin Maps blog - [QGIS] Photo sketching is now available in Mergin Maps](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/64be358a4fb0e612b228bb9e/6900db90d4a847f43551597d_Image%2027%20(2).jpg)
![Oslandia - (Fr) [Équipe Oslandia] Raphaël Delhome, développeur SIG](https://oslandia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/portrait-raphael-delhome.png)
![Mergin Maps blog - [QGIS] Best Practices for User Management in Mergin Maps](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/64be358a4fb0e612b228bb9e/68e8c650a265f48562c85d8e_Image%2024%20(1).jpg)
![Oslandia - (Fr) [Webinaire] Appels d’offres et OpenSource](https://oslandia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/vignette-webinaire-inno3-oslandia-vOK.png)
![Oslandia - (Fr) [Équipe Oslandia] Julien Cabieces, développeur SIG senior](https://oslandia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/portrait-julien.png)
![Mergin Maps blog - [QGIS] Create professional survey reports using QGIS Print Layout after field data collection](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/64be358a4fb0e612b228bb9e/68c8271ac4390348acdaf45f_blog_main.png)
![Mergin Maps blog - [QGIS] Mergin Maps gets sketchy](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/64be358a4fb0e612b228bb9e/688b3145bedd990f90bc431c_Map%20Sketching%20(2).jpg)
![Oslandia - [Replay] Open source 3D webinar: a new dimension!](https://oslandia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/replay-webinar-open-source-3D-EN.png)
![Oslandia - [Replay] Webinar “Security Project for QGIS”](https://oslandia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/replay-webinar-security-project-qgis.png)
![Oslandia - (Fr) [Équipe Oslandia] Bertrand Parpoil, CEO](https://oslandia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/portrait-bertrand.png)
![Oslandia - (Fr) [Équipe Oslandia] Christophe Damour, ingénieur senior](https://oslandia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/portrait-christophe.png)
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![Mergin Maps blog - [QGIS] New API tools give you more user management options!](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/64be358a4fb0e612b228bb9e/683961345ceb5bb40c373cc4_Image%2028.jpg)
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![Mergin Maps blog - [QGIS] Great Scott! Mergin Maps Plugin has a time machine](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/64be358a4fb0e612b228bb9e/67daa339d7f7debfd82b7cf8_Image%207%20(1).png)
