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Showing posts from 2011

GIS News from around the country

Telecom News:             The National Informatics Centre (NIC) will carry out the GIS mapping of the existing Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) network of the telecom operators such BSNL, Rail Tel, Power Grid, etc. The mapping of the existing OFC will enable to calculate the incremental length of the cable required for connecting all the 2.5 lakh panchayats with OFC. The cost of initial phase of the NOFN scheme is likely to be in the region of Rs 20,000 crore.             The government of India has approved the creation of National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) for providing broadband connectivity of all panchayats. The plan is to extend the existing optical fibre network initially upto panchayats by utilizing the Universal Services Obligation Fund (USOF) and creating an institutional mechanism for management and operation of the NOFN for ensuring non discriminatory access to all service providers. Common Service Centers (CSCs):             Information kiosks set up in the rural areas of

Memories for the future

            Memories for the future – A project undertaken by Google in the hope that it will help the people of Japan rediscover their lost memories of their homes and towns.             On March 11, 2011 a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan, causing unimaginable damage. Google has created a site called “Mirai e no kioku”, which means “Memories for the Future” in Japanese. This site showcases the pre- and post-disaster imagery in Google Street View.             Check out the link http://www.miraikioku.com/streetview/en/about to know more about the project and also see the drastic changes in the before- and after-tsunami street view images.

First Google Enterprise Geospatial Summit 2011 India

              December 7, 2011 - I attended the first ever Google Enterprise Geospatial Summit 2011 held in New Delhi, India. I was so excited to attend this seminar as I work on the Google Maps API.               Reached the venue - The Sheraton, New Delhi along with a colleague of mine from my work place.   The Venue - Sheraton, New Delhi               The registration for the event took a long time though we had registered online. Pretty lousy work by the organizers, but the seminar that followed was worth the effort.              Enjoying Snacks and Coffee before the start of the exciting evening...                   The participants were pouring in and the stage was set for a wonderful Mapping evening. The speakers had a lot in store for us.               Mr. Pankaj - The Google Geospatial Head Asia, started of the proceedings with describing the Google's geospatial services and showed couple of exciting videos. Mr. Pankaj spoke for around 15-20 mins and then

Quake Risk Assessment Application...

            A GIS application has been designed to help the Chennai Corporation and the departments concerned to take quick decisions when a major earthquake strikes the city. The application has been prepared based on data collected as part of the seismic vulnerability screening of over 50,000 buildings with more than three floors by the civic body in association with the Centre for Disaster Mitigation and Management, Anna University. However, buildings in the defence areas were not covered in the seismic vulnerability screening.            The civic body has started taking measures towards providing the GIS application to other agencies such as Fire and Rescue Services, Police and Home Guards. The GIS application could be used to find out if any of the residential or commercial buildings with three of more storeys are safe when an earthquake strikes. The number of buildings that are likely to be damaged with a particular magnitude of earthquake in the city could be estima

Geofencing

         Today's post is cross-posted from GIS Lounge .          With all the location-based social media applications out there, it’s only logical that, in addition to being able to restrict access based on ones social groups (or circles), that geographic boundaries also be used as a restrictive parameter.  That capability is called a geofence, a virtual way to set the geographic boundaries that a user wants to fence off for privacy reasons or to trigger a specific action.          Flickr recently made news with the introduction of its geofence privacy feature . Users can draw circles on a map to delineate the geographic area they want to create viewing restrictions for certain geotagged photos.  Once a geofenced area is delineated, specific users can be flagged with permissions to view those photos.  Up to ten geofenced areas can be drawn.  The Flickr blog has more details  about the brainstorming that led to this new geofence feature and specifics about the featur

School mapping

          For the first time in India, Manipur has introduced Geographic Information System (GIS) for mapping schools located in remote areas of the State.  The GIS was launched by the State with technical support from Delhi based Mission of Geo-Spatial Application which is an agency of the Central Government.           Using the GIS, State Mission Authority of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan scheme has undertaken a mapping exercise of 4640 Primary and Upper Primary schools located in different parts of the State. In addition to mapping 4640 schools, the same exercise has identified 1093 different places where there is no school and in need of schools.          Since the implementation of the Right to Education Act in India which lays down that schools should be located within a specific distance from human settlement areas, the need for using GIS for mapping schools located in far off places was felt all the more. The mapping of all the Government and aided Primary and Upp

Speak to your Google map

            Amazed? Shocked? by the title? Well don't be. This is true. You can now talk to your Google map. Without even touching your keyboard, you can now talk into your Google Maps to look for places and get directions. If you are using the Google Chrome browser in the U.S. simply click the microphone icon and speak into your computer.               Using voice search can make it easier to find hard-to-spell places (like Poughkeepsie or Liechtenstein) or simply get directions without typing (for example, say “Directions from Los Angeles to San Francisco”).             Hope, you enjoy talking to your Google Maps!

Get directions between different states in India

    Having seen a simple hard coded directions example yesterday, today we will have a look at another simple example but not an hard coded one. In today's  example we will see the directions between different states in India. We have two simple list boxes stating Origin and Destination as lists of the states in India. You can select a state from either of the lists and then you will get the directions between the two selected cities.     If you see yesterday's code and today's code you will find a lot of similarities and so  it would be easy to follow. The code will look lengthy, but it is just because of the list boxes code. So don't worry about the code, just go for it.     The output of the above code will look as seen in the results section above. Hope you find this code helpful in understanding the directions services even further. Tomorrow, we will look at another - a bit complex example. Till then, happy mapping. Note: The above code will not display any r

'Sun & Moon' now on Google Maps

          How we always wish to know the weather conditions at the picnic spot we have planned to visit during the weekends! This is now possible with the new Google Maps Weather Layer. Google has added a weather layer on Google Maps on August 18, 2011 that displays current temperatures and conditions across the globe.          To add the weather layer, hover over to the widget in the upper right corner of Google Maps and select the weather layer from the list of options.          When zoomed out, you will see a map with current weather conditions from weather.com for various locations, with icons to denote sun, clouds, rain and so on. You can also see the cloud coverage which can be switched on and off. The sun and moon icons also signify whether it is day or night in that part of the world.          Clicking on the weather icon of a particular city will open up an info window with detailed data like current humidity and wind conditions, as well as the forecast

Simple Directions

    After taking an unintended long break after the 100 th post, I am back with more examples and several more GIS news. Today, we will take a look at a simple example showcasing the use of the Google’s Directions Services. Using the Google’s Direction service, we can calculate the distance between two points, show the path between these two points, calculate the average time taken to traverse this distance and we can also enforce several constraints on this path.     The Google Directions API is a service that calculates the directions between locations using an HTTP request. You may pass either an address (string) or a latitude/longitude coordinate as the origin and destination. If you pass an address as a string, the Directions service geocodes the string and converts it to a latitude-longitude coordinate to calculate directions. The origin and destination are two mandatory parameters for a directions request, whereas several other optional parameters like mode

100th Post...

            I’m so excited that I have finally reached this milestone. Well I am not completely certain that this is a big deal but anything that is ' 100 ' just seems big and grand. I have been blogging here for around 8 months now, and it gives me immense pleasure to say that now I have become an experienced blogger.:D             I never thought when I started this blog in November, 2010 that I would have much to offer compared to the hundreds of other GIS bloggers out there. But today with more than 21,000 page views, more than 100 comments, more than 100 followers and several Like and +1s the response to this blog has been nothing short of amazing. Now the next target for me would be to cross 50,000 views.             At the end, I would  like to thank all visitors and members for making this blog successful. I am so happy to have readers such as you. Thank you all who have been reading. If you are a regular reader, or if you just dropped in today, do co

Spherical Cap

    In some of the earlier posts, I have shown some examples related to creating Polygons and Polylines on the Google Map using the Google Maps API v3. In addition to this generic polygon class, the Javascript Google Maps API also includes a specific class for Circle to simplify its construction. In today’s example, I am going to show you how to generate a circle or a spherical cap on the map.     A Circle is similar to a Polygon in that you can define custom colors, weights, and opacities for the edge of the circle (the "stroke") and custom colors and opacities for the area within the enclosed region (the "fill"). Colors should be indicated in hexadecimal numeric HTML style.     Unlike a Polygon , you do not define paths for a Circle ; instead, a circle has two additional properties which define its shape:  Center: Specifies the center of the circle using google.maps.LatLng  Radius: Specifies the radius of the circle in meters.     

Map Loading...

    The blank web page seems so boring and dull when the map is still loading. You will come across such a situation quite often where you will be having a slow internet connection! We cannot do anything about the slow internet connection, but we can surely avoid the dull blank web-page by using a simple trick. We can place a "loading" image at the center of the web page so that the page doesn't look blank! An image like this:             The following code will show you how this can be done and here it is!     As you all can see the code is very very simple and the output will look as seen in the results section above. The image below shows the loading stage of the map.       Do let me know what you think about the examples shared here! Do leave your comments here! Till the next example, happy mapping!