Click to See Larger View

Recent infrared aerial photographs of the Nashville area flooding were taken by TN Department of Transportation.  Generally TDOT charges for their imagery, however, according to a super secretive resource from TDOT’s GIS department, these photos may soon become available to state and local governments for free.  How did we get this super secret information from our super secretive source?  I’ll let you in on the secret… We emailed them…

Click to See Larger View

TDOT flew Monday, May 3rd – Saturday, May 7th over major flood areas.  As you can imagine, some of the later photos taken Friday and Saturday did not capture the full flood epidemic.   The good news is that we have the flight patterns.  Hopefully some of you will be able to incorporate these photos into your GIS soon. 

 No wonder it took all week, they flew all over the place!  Oh, and thanks for the screenshots Google Earth.

Step 2 – - Using a GPS find the geocaches near the location of your geocaching event.   You could use them in your event and/or make sure that you’re caches aren’t close to those already hidden.

• Register for a free basic membership at www.geoaching.com?
• Click “Hide & Seek a Cache.”
• Enter the postal code of your event
• choose any geocache from the list and click on its name.
• Enter the coordinates of the geocache into your GPS device.
• Use your GPS device to assist you in finding the hidden geocache.

Step 3 —  While searching for the caches, also capture your geocaching event locations.  We suggest using a more accurate GPS device, like the Trimble Juno SC.

Step 4– Tranfer your points to a KML file and upload them to Google Maps and/or Google Earth.  We did this to check over our points and measure the approximate miles traveled between caches.  We don’t deem this step necessary, but it is still a lot of fun.

Transfer File into Google Maps

• Upload data from your GPS device into Pathfinder Office and save it as a KML file.
• Open Google Maps and log into your Google account.
• Go to “My Maps”
• “Create New Map”
• Import the KML file, make any editing changes, and click “Done.”

Transfer File into Google Earth

• Upload data from your GPS device into Pathfinder Office and save it as  a KML file.
• Open Google Earth
• Click “File”
• Click “Open”
• Find your saved KML file
• Click “Open”

Oh, That's Where He Hid It!

Step 5 — Purchase inexpensive containers.  We suggest purchasing small plastic paint containers (microcaches) for the event from Wal-Mart.  You can keep the paint in the container or clean them out and put other things in them.

Step 6 — The day before the event, take your points and hide the caches.  If you don’t know who is going to be apart of the event, try to avoid placing caches in dangerous/hazardous areas that could be harmful to others.  Follow along with your GPS device as if you were in the cache.  (We found a few issues with our locations that could have been avoided by following our GPS device more precisely.)

Step 7 –Email the geoacaching locations  map you created to the geocachers signed up for the event (You can also email links to the google maps you created).  Make sure each point is attributed correctly with at least the latitude and longitude, cache name, and any other comments or hints you would like to give the geocachers.  Don’t forget to include a meeting location and time in your email!

Step 8 –Create questions about each cache that could only be answered if the cache was found by the geocachers.  Print off enough for everyone in the event and make sure you bring pens/pencils for those who need them.  Also print off the latitude and longitude list of all the attributes in case the geocachers did not previously store the points from the email you sent them prior to the event.

Step 9 — Go over the rules and hand out all of the information.  Consider taking away points for people not back within a set time.  For our last event, each correctly answered cache question was worth 4 points but for any geocachers out past two hours, 1 point was reduced for each minute late.

Step 10 –Enjoy the event and make sure everyone gets back safely.  Go back and pick up the caches you placed.  If you plan on leaving the caches, fill out the online form on the geocaching website under “Hide & Seek A Cache” (you must be logged in).

What’s your favorite weather website?  Weather.com, wunderground.com, accuweather.com, weatherbug.com?

If you could take one course for free (and had time to study!) what type of course would you choose?

Just under 300 responded to it. Programming tops the list? What does that tell you about the one-size-fits-all out of the box applications and the rise of the mashup? And when it comes to creativity, who is pushing the envelope in GIS development the most today? Is it ESRI, Google, Microsoft, TeleAtlas…?

Some of the most creative consumer based user interface adaptations in mapping to come along over the last five years were developed outside of the traditional GIS space. As GIS became more accepted and recognized (Google Earth), these outsiders became the insiders and pushed the traditions around a little. They may not have recognized the name GIS, but they were certainly using an Information System based around Geography (aka GIS). Now if you want really good directions, you’ll still have to go to Mapquest which still lags behind in cool interfacing. If you want really neat imagery, though not always the most current, you’ll do best with Virtual Earth. If you want everything else, you’ll Google for it.

It’s the data, stupid.

We were talking shop the other day and realized the traditional GIS space lacks creativity in maximizing the IS part of GIS. So much focus is on data capture and display, and less on how it can be used in bigger enterprise IS systems. That’s not to say it is not being used, we just keep thinking of great ideas that still aren’t being developed yet because the mindset is still so niche focused.

As a GIS user, what say you?

HT: Directions Magazine