Geo-Pic: Mapping a Hurricane from the "Outside In"

Found this post from NASA's Earth Observatory an interesting perspective to storm data.

 Quick "Cut & Paste" Description: 

".... one satellite—Cloudsat—peered inside the storm and observed its vertical structure. It did so with acloud-profiling radar that sent pulses of energy toward Earth and recorded the strength of the signal that bounced off ice and water particles."

"....The bottom map shows the storm as observed by Cloudsat around 2 p.m. local time (18:00 Universal Time) on October 29, 2012. The image shows a cross-section—what the storm would look like if it had been sliced near the middle and viewed from the side. (Watch this animation to see how Cloudsat collects data).... "

 Image: Vertical "cut-away" of storm precipitation: 

" ... The top image, acquired the same day by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on the Aqua satellite, is shown for reference. The yellow line is the north-to-south track that CloudSat took over the storm.

In the Cloudsat data, the darkest blues represent areas where clouds and raindrops reflected the strongest signal back to the satellite radar. These areas had the heaviest precipitation and the largest water droplets. The blue line in the center of the image is the freezing line; ice particles formed above it, raindrops below..." 

Credits:
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using CloudSat FirstLook data provided courtesy of the CloudSat team at Colorado State University. Caption by Adam Voiland.

Instrument: 

CloudSat - CPR

Geo-Video: The Swiss Alps by Night

Brought to my attention by Holy Kaw! and Vimeo created by Alessandro Della Bella. The site link Helvetia's Dream includes a neat "play by play" of time-lapse points to look for during the fantastic night-time video journey.





A quick "cut & paste" summary:

‘Helvetia’s Dream’ takes you on a nighttime journey to some of the most beautiful spots in the Swiss Alps – from Arosa to Zermatt, including the world famous mountains Matterhorn and Eiger.

Please pay special attention to the following scenes:
@0:46 watch the persistent train of a bright meteor above Tijerflue Mountain in Arosa, December 2010, which was visible for about 20 minutes. A slow motion effect is applied for better visibility of the shooting star and its trail of ‘smoke’, which consists of ionized gas left behind as the meteor burns up in the atmosphere.
@1:14 clouds above Lake Geneva steam up the lens.
@1:36 on the very left: Climbers step into the unpredictable Eiger Nordwand.
@1:44 the Milky Way rises above the ‘Donkey’ rock on Pilatus.
@1:58 snowcats nearby cause the lighting of the summit cross on Fronalpstock Mountain. (Snowcat lights usually spoil time-lapse)
@2:21 the wind changes the reflection of Säntis Mountain in the Seealpsee.
@2:35 three settings showing orbits of stars. This is an alternative technique to display the movement of stars by sequentially adding the luminosity of each exposure. The result is basically a long exposure with a large aperture.
@2:49 the waxing new moon, not full moon, setting over Pilatus.

For the "making of" information and photo gallery check out the project website helvetiabynight.com.

When Maps & Art combine in Las Vegas - the McCarran International Airport web portal

This "cut ad paste" highlight of the ArcGIS Server Showcase took me to McCarran International Airport's Interactive map portal.  

Map Portal Landing page

The Flex application has a clean interface with the standard "point/click/zoom" functionality.

Terminal Zoom

 Certain "sub-header zooms" bring you to focus on particular areas of the airport, such as a terminal or parking area.

Pop-ups for terminal POIs

Each "zoom section" enables points of interest with additional pop-ups of relevant information.

Parking assistance info

I particularly like to pop-up assistance via my mobile device - relatively speaking the pages loaded just fine from my smart phone.

Menu options

The airport has a separate portal highlighting a children art mural initiative.  The photo mosaic works can we search by location or child creator.

Children Art locator

Locations for Art Murals

Full credits to ESRI, McCarran International Airport and Robert Silvers for the accomplishments displayed.

Mapping School Districts - an interactive map portal

Continuing my expose into public sites powered by ArcGIS for Server, I came upon one that is "near & dear" to the wife's heart as we contemplate relocating to a new school district in the Washington DC / Northern Virginia area. 

This site provides access to demographics, social characteristics, and economics of children and school districts from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) of the U.S. Department of Education. 

 Upon entering, it auto-queries you location to show that state of interest and provides a thematic map - customizable to the variable of interest.

The pop-up tool bars allow for changes in layer display, transparency and export/query options.

In this case, my goal was to understand the overlapping elementary, middle school and high school boundaries in northern Virginia's Fairfax Count school district to assist in our home search.

 Below is the resulting interactive map:

Full credits to ESRI and the National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education.

Thank you, Space Shuttle Endeavour

You made us dream, you made us fly, you made us work hard for good science.  Time to end the journey.  Thank you NASA & Shuttle Endeavour.

Mapping Precision Agriculture's Future - Video & Article on IBM's Big Thunder project

Video on IBM's Deep Thunder - using predictive modeling to impact the "business of weather" (see below). 




Good article reference on "Precision agriculture - Using predictive weather analytics to feed future generations"

"Cut & Paste" highlights:
"...By 2050, it’s expected that the world’s population will reach 9.2 billion people, 34 percent higher than today. Much of this growth will happen in developing countries like Brazil, which has the largest area in the world with arable land for agriculture. To keep up with rising populations and income growth, global food production must increase by 70 percent in order to be able to feed the world...."

Full credits to: 

Meet the researchers

• 

  Ulisses Mello

  Distinguished Engineer,
  Associate Director,
  IBM Research - Brazil
• 

  Lloyd Treinish

  Senior Technical Staff Member,
  Chief Scientist - Deep Thunder,
  IBM Research - Watso

Mapping Frisco, TX - Online Resources for interactive mapping

Continuing my own professional research series on ArcGIS Server applications, the below are some screenshots from the City of Frisco TX online resource center.

Nice interactive application with points of interest, city cervices, DEMs, traffic counts & flows, rel estate developments and digital imagery mixed in a public facing portal of spatial information.

Powered by Silverlight & ArcGIS Server -  the legend details, searchable layers and address geocoding really make this a great public site.

Mapping Property Values - Orange County Fl Appraisers' Award Winning site

In researching the numerous public-facing sites of location-based applications and services  powered by ArcGIS Server - I stumbled upon the Orange County FL Appraiser's Office award winning tool.

Below are some screenshot of the impressive collection of functionality - including XLS downloads, Google StreetView integration and lots more.

Silverlight application powered by ArcGIS Server

Impressive multi-thematic map displays with pop-up information

Robust tool-sets and detailed legends

Informative sidebars with filter and download ability

Parcel and demographic information

Now if I could just sell my house for what I bought if for .... :)

Got soil data? Some notes on ESRI's Online Federal Resources for data

In reacquainting myself with the ESRI suite of products and services, its neat to see how the web and cloud platforms have become the pervasive model for sharing geo-spatial information.

Beginning on the web-page http://esrifederal.maps.arcgis.com , you gain access (with proper login rights) to a scrolling panel of featured federal content:

Browsing quickly, I found one of particular interest for accessing soil data layers.

This map shows the Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service overlayed with a hydro reference layer.

With a click you get access to a more detailed metadata reference:

Description:
This map features the Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) by the United States Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service. It also shows data that was developed by the National Cooperative Soil Survey and supersedes the State Soil Geographic (STATSGO) dataset published in 1994. SSURGO digitizing duplicates the original soil survey maps. This level of mapping is designed for use by landowners, townships, and county natural resource planning and management. The user should be knowledgeable of soils data and their characteristics. The smallest scale map shows the Global Soil Regions map by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The web map combines with the soil survey with the terrain basemap and a hydro overlay layer for reference purposes.  This basemap is ideal for display of thematic data such as the soil survey map, providing a neutral terrain background with an overlay layer for reference purposes.

Access and Use Constraints

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Map Contents

World Boundaries and Places Alternate:http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Reference/World_Boundaries_and_Places_Alternate/MapServerWorld Transportation:http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Reference/World_Transportation/MapServerWorld Hydro Reference Overlay:http://184.72.212.114:6080/arcgis/rest/services/WorldHydroReferenceOverlay/MapServerSoil Survey Map:http://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Specialty/Soil_Survey_Map/MapServerWorld_Terrain_Base:http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/World_Terrain_Base/MapServer

Tags	soils, soil survey, US Department of Agriculture, USDA, Natural Resources Conservation Service, NRCS, National, Federal, USA
Credits	Source: USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service
Size	8 KB
Extent	Left: -141.19 Right: -50.31 Top: 58.7 Bottom: 2.59

Finally, using the the Open link, I panned to the Chesapeake region and clicked to pull down the data for my area of interest:

Pretty slick stuff.  Looking forward to exploring the Gallery resources further.

New career path with ESRI

Accepted a position with ESRI as the Account Manager for USDA - Team Lead for the Land & Natural Resources Group at ESRI.  Thrilled at the opportunity to join the team with such an amazing company. 

Below are some neat ESRI company facts: (full credits to Wikipedia)

Type	Private
Industry	Software Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Founded	Redlands, California (1969)
Headquarters	Redlands, California, U.S. 34°3′25.35″N 117°11′44.44″W
Key people	Jack Dangermond, Founder/President
Products	ArcGIS, ArcView, ArcGIS Server,ArcIMS, ArcSDE, ArcGIS Mobile,ArcPad
Revenue	More than $776 million per year
Employees	2,700 (US)+ (2009 statistics) [1]
Website	www.esri.com

Esri ( /ˈɛsriː/) is a software development and services company providing Geographic Information System (GIS) software andgeodatabase management applications. The headquarters of Esri is in Redlands, California.

The company was founded as Environmental Systems Research Institute in 1969 as a land-use consulting firm. Esri products (particularlyArcGIS Desktop) have one-third of the global market share. In 2002, Esri had approximately a 30 percent share of the GIS software market worldwide, more than any other vendor. Other sources estimate that about 70 percent of the current GIS users make use of Esri products.

Esri has 10 regional offices in the U.S. and a network of 80 international distributors, with about a million users in 200 countries. The firm has 3,000 employees in the U.S., and is still privately held by the founders. In 2006, revenues were about $660 million. In a 2009 Investor's Business Daily article, Esri's annual revenues were indicated to be $1.2 billion, from 300,000 customers.

The company hosts an annual International User's Conference, which was first held on the Redlands campus in 1981 with 16 attendees. More recently, the User's Conference has been held in San Diego for the past 10 years. An estimated 15,000 users from 131 countries attended in 2012.

Alteryx emeritus

After an amazing four years with the best business clients' imaginable, its time for new career horizons.  "Post Alteryx", let's keep in touch.

Photo Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

Build your own high-quality photo books at Shutterfly.com.

Mapping the Earth: The View from the Top - a Polar Perspective

The View from the Top

Quick Cut & Paste:

There have been many images of the full disc of Earth from space—a view often referred to as “the Blue Marble”—but few have looked quite like this. Using natural-color images from the Visible/Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the recently launched Suomi-NPP satellite, a NASA scientist has compiled a new view showing the Arctic and high latitudes.

 

 

Source:

Ocean scientist Norman Kuring of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center pieced together this composite image of Europe, Asia, North Africa, and the entire Arctic. It was compiled from 15 satellite passes made by Suomi-NPP on May 26, 2012. The spacecraft circles the Earth from pole to pole at an altitude of 824 kilometers (512 miles), so it takes multiple passes to gather enough data to show an entire hemisphere without gaps in the view.

 

 

Instrument:  Suomi NPP - VIIRS

 VIIRS is a scanning radiometer that acquires data in 22 spectral bands, covering visible, near-infrared, and thermal infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. It was designed to extend and improve upon the measurements of land masses, oceans, ice, and the atmosphere made over the past two decades by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS).

Full Credits:

Image & text taken from NASA's Earth Observatory site.

Image by Norman Kuring, NASA/GSFC/Suomi NPP. Caption by Michael Carlowicz. Suomi NPP is the result of a partnership between NASA, NOAA and the Department of Defense.

                              

Further Reading:

1. NASA Suomi NPP Images and Data.
2. NASA Earth Observatory Earth, Behind the Scenes.
3. NASA Ocean Color Web.

 

Mapping the 2012 Election - Win Scenarios by Electoral State

Neat interactive pictorial display of potential scenarios for the 2012 Presidential race.

I particularly like the "rescrambling" of electoral wins to outplay certain voting events...

Full credits to the New York Times Politics e-page for "Electoral Map: Building a Path to Victory".

Mapping a Mars Landing - T-40 days to the Red Planet

Mapping a new type of Mars landing sequence- brilliant engineering "madness". T-40 days till touchdown on the Red Planet on 5 August.

Mapping Valentine's Day - Bonne's Projection

Happy Valentine's Day - link to Bonne's Projection.

From Wikipedia:
A Bonne projection is a pseudoconical equal-area map projection, sometimes called a dépôt de la guerre or a Sylvanus projection. Although named after Rigobert Bonne (1727–1795), the projection was in use prior to his birth, in 1511 by Sylvano, Honter in 1561, De l'Isle before 1700 and Coronelli in 1696^[1].
The projection is:

where

and φ is the latitude, λ is the longitude from the central meridian, and φ₁ is the standard parallel of the projection^[2].
Parallels of latitude are concentric circular arcs, and the scale is true along these arcs. On the central meridian and the standard latitude shapes are not distorted.
Special cases of the Bonne projection include the sinusoidal projection, when φ₁ is zero, and the Werner projection, when φ₁ is π/2. The Bonne projection can be seen as an intermediate projection in the unwinding of a Werner projection into a Sinusoidal projection; an alternative intermediate would be a Bottomley projection^[3]

Mapping Dance Moves - Step By Step for Pulp Fiction & Napoleon Dynamite

Found this one from FlowingData, made me think of Maroon 5's recent song "Moves like Jagger". If you want to take on some "cult classic" moves from Pulp Fiction and Napoleon Dynamite ... read on.

Full credits to Niege Borges - buy his prints here.

 

Mapping the Earth - Blue Marble v.2.0

Another stunning image from NASA's Earth Oberservatory site. The below highlights and links documents the imagery collection.

Quick "Cut & Paste" Highlights:
" .... The image above, of Earth’s eastern hemisphere, was built from data collected by the Suomi NPP satellite, which flies in a polar orbit at an altitude of 824 kilometers (512 miles). The perspective of this new image, however, is from 12,743 kilometers (7,918 miles) above a point at 10 degrees South latitude and 45 degrees East longitude."

".....Kuring managed to “step back” from Earth by combining data from six separate orbits Suomi NPP made on January 23, 2012. The natural-color images come from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the satellite. The four vertical lines of haze are caused by sunglint, the reflection of sunlight off the ocean."

"The graphic above illustrates how separate images in red, green, and blue wavelengths are combined to make natural-color imagery, and how multiple, adjacent swaths—slices of Earth viewed on each satellite pass—get built into a composite. The width of the swaths covered by each pass of VIIRS is about 3,001 kilometers (1,865 miles)...."

Full article - click here

Credits:

Image by NASA/NOAA. Caption by Aries Keck and Mike Carlowicz. Suomi NPP is the result of a partnership between NASA, NOAA and the Department of Defense.

Instrument: Suomi NPP - VIIRS