The Harlow Report-GIS
2024 Edition
ISSN 0742-468XSince 1978
On-line Since 2000
GIS News Snippets
For the week of
October 14, 2024
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A “Harlow Report” From Oct 16, 2023
Here's Why Google Earth Pro Is Your Home's Secret Weapon
by Ron Baker
Measuring your lawn for landscape planning can be tedious. Now, thanks to Google Earth Pro, you can do it all without ever leaving your bed. Here's how.
You know how it is. You're driving home from work one evening and decide you will get a pet tiger, but you want to be sure your backyard is big enough for the recommended 1.24-acre enclosure. Or maybe you're simply trying to figure out how much lawn fertilizer you need to buy or how much fencing you might need. But it's tough to figure out these oddly shaped areas and long distances. Either way, Google has your solution: Google Earth Pro. TikTok user @yardfarmer.co created a stir when she revealed how she uses the tool. Like her, you reach can a good estimate of such information by simply sketching some lines on an aerial image of land you're curious about. It's almost as fun as Google Earth's other talent, letting you gawk at the lavish past homes of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith.
Don't fret if you don't think of yourself as a pro at using Earth. Few of us are. Since 2015, Earth Pro has been a free desktop version of its mobile- and web-based Google Earth products, but with a lot of added features. Earth Pro is easy to use for this sort of thing, and it has tons of advanced features that only geologists and homeowners association officers can understand.
Read full story at House Digest…
Now back to 2024
Geographic Solutions Named A Top 25 Work Tech Vendor
by Geographic Solutions Press Release
Geographic Solutions is thrilled to announce that it has been named a Top 25 Work Tech Vendor by the 2024 Inspiring Work Tech awards.
The award celebrates the best-in-class tech vendors across the world, celebrating the success and diverse range of technologies that can drive positive change for an organization and the people within it. Geographic Solutions was recognized for its commitment to developing innovative software solutions that positively impact job seekers, and career and workforce development agencies.
"Being recognized as a Top 25 Work Tech Vendor from the Inspiring Workplaces organization reinforces our commitment to drive positive change within the workforce industry", said Paul Toomey, President and Founder at Geographic Solutions. "At Geographic Solutions we strive to develop best-in-class workforce solutions that empower our clients to achieve their goals and help job seekers find quality employment".
Read full story at Geographic Solutions…
How The Geographic Information System May Help Make The World Better
by Jack Dangermond
GIS is a technology built on making systems better. Building a better world is an attainable goal with GIS, which enables us to map where we are and where we want to be.
As a 23-year-old graduate student, I worked in a place that shaped the rest of my life. It was Harvard's Lab for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis. It was 1968. The desktop computer wouldn't be introduced for nine years. Across all of Harvard, there was just one computer shared by the entire university.
The Lab was a special place. It was the brainchild of Howard Fisher, an architect who sensed the magic of combining computers and geography — to draw a new kind of map.
Extraordinary amid the tumult of the late 1960s, the Lab was a gathering place for computer scientists and mathematicians, geographers and social scientists, urban planners and designers — working together.
I was there day and night, learning how to turn all kinds of data — from geographic features to traffic flow to pollution data — into information that a computer could put on a map.
Read full story at Forbes…
Santee Cooper Elevates Its Emergency Response with GIS
by Esri
In 1934, the state legislature established the South Carolina Public Service Authority, known today as Santee Cooper, to bring electricity to rural parts of the state. Today, Santee Cooper serves more than 2 million people, is one of the nation's largest public power utilities, and is the only large electric utility headquartered in South Carolina. Santee Cooper recognized the critical need to modernize its operations in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.
… Historically, Santee Cooper relied on an aging relational database management system (RDBMS) for emergency response and field activities. Despite its effectiveness in the 1990s and early 2000s, this system became increasingly inadequate due to its lack of offline capability and the need for virtual private network (VPN) connectivity. This inhibited Santee Cooper's commitment to superior customer service. "While the tabular database system had served us well, we knew there was a better way," said Chris Berryman, GIS professional and senior application analyst with Santee Cooper.
Recognizing the limitations of their current system, Santee Cooper staff sought a comprehensive solution to address these issues and embarked on a transformative journey by integrating geographic information system (GIS) technology across the enterprise. A strategic focus on emergency response and field service management was pivotal in meeting current demands and positioning the utility for future innovations. This adoption of GIS extended its reach across various crucial areas, including distribution, transmission, and environmental stewardship.
Read full story at Esri…
Top 5 Geospatial Data APIs for Advanced Analysis
by Amanda Iglesias Moreno
Explore Overpass, Geoapify, Distancematrix.ai, Amadeus, and Mapillary for Advanced Mapping and Location Data
Geographic data is important in many analyses, enabling us to decide based on location and spatial patterns. Examples of projects where geodata can come in handy include predicting house prices, route optimization in transportation, or establishing a marketing strategy for business.
However, as a data scientist, you will frequently face the challenge of where to obtain this data. In many cases, there are public sources with information on geographic data; however, in many cases, the information they provide needs to be revised for the analyses we want to perform.
This article will evaluate five of the most useful APIs for obtaining large-scale geographic data.
Read full story at Medium…
UC Santa Cruz Launches New Degree Program in Geographic Information Systems, Spatial Technologies, Applications, and Research
by Abby Butler
UC Santa Cruz is launching a new Master of Arts program in Geographic Information Systems, Spatial Technologies, Applications, and Research (GISTAR), designed to meet the growing demand for expertise in geospatial technologies.
The two-year professional program has already begun accepting applications and students can continue applying through Jan. 15, 2024. The first cohort of students will begin their studies in Fall 2025.
GISTAR aims to provide transformative, transdisciplinary training for students interested in applying geospatial technology in fields such as environmental policy, ecological and climate modeling, urban planning, and more. The program, housed in the Department of Environmental Studies in the Social Sciences Division, and working with a large group of interdisciplinary faculty across campus, addresses a key gap in geospatial education along California's Central Coast. The program will draw on the region's integration into the tech-driven economy of Silicon Valley and surrounding areas, with geospatial technology being one of the fastest-growing sectors nationwide.
Read full story at UC Santa Cruz…
Industry News
In Government
Department of State's pilot project approach to AI adoption
by Samuel Stehle , Matthew Graviss and Eric Stein
Senior IT leaders at State argue that small-scale pilots of AI technology can help bring a wealth of benefits to federal government, such as increased transparency.
With the release of ChatGPT and other large language models, generative AI has clearly caught the public's attention. This new awareness, particularly in the public sector, of the tremendous power of artificial intelligence is a net good. However, excessive focus on chatbot-style AI capabilities risks overshadowing applications that are both innovative and practical and seek to serve the public through increased government transparency.
Within government, there are existing projects that are more mature than AI chatbots and are immediately ready to deliver more efficient government operations. Through a partnership between three offices, the Department of State is seeking to automate the cumbersome process of document declassification and prepare for the large volume of electronic records that will need to be reviewed in the next several years. The Bureau of Administration's Office of Global Information Services (A/GIS), the Office of Management Strategy and Solutions' Center for Analytics (M/SS CfA), and the Bureau of Information Resource Management's (IRM) Messaging Systems Office have piloted and are now moving toward production-scale deployment of AI to augment an intensive, manual review process that normally necessitates a page-by-page human review of 25-year-old classified electronic records. The pilot focused mainly on cable messages which are communications between Washington and the department's overseas posts.
Read full story at FedScoop…
What Is Journey Mapping, and How Is It Used in State and Local Government?
by Phil Goldstein
Agencies can both simplify citizens' understanding of government services and improve how services are delivered.
Listen (09:26)
As state and local agencies have digitized government services over the past few years, they have taken steps to make it easier for citizens to access those services.
In addition to using artificial intelligence tools to improve customer service and moving more benefit systems to the cloud, many state and local governments have started using a less heralded but no less valuable tool called journey mapping.
According to Digital Services Georgia, a citizen journey map is a "visualization of a person's process, end-to-end, to accomplish a goal." State and local agencies have used them to illustrate how citizens can navigate government systems and access benefits and services.
Read full story at StateTech…
White House Aims to Transition Nearly 100K Federal IT Jobs to Skills-Based Hiring
by Justin Doubleday
The Biden administration sees skills-based hiring, as opposed to relying on college degrees, as the key to making up the cyber talent deficit.
The Biden administration is planning to shift the federal government's primary IT job series away from relying on college degree requirements to "skills-based hiring" over the next year.
White House officials announced plans to move the GS-2210 "Information Technology Management Series" to skills-based hiring during an event at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington today.
"This is a major milestone in our national effort to move to skills-based hiring," National Cyber Director Harry Coker said. He noted "this process will take time," but said officials would "get it done" by the summer of 2025.
Rob Shriver, the deputy director at the Office of Personnel Management, said the 2210 series consists of nearly 100,000 jobs, representing most technical hires across the federal government.
Read full story at Federal News Network…
In Technology
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2024
Every year, we [MIT Techonolgy Review] look for promising technologies poised to have a real impact on the world. Here are the advances that we think matter most right now.
- AI for everything
- Super-efficient solar cells …
Read full story at MKIT Technology Review…
Google Workspace vs. Microsoft 365: What's the best office suite for business?
by Preston Gralla
Google Workspace has become a powerful, feature-filled alternative to Microsoft Office. We break down the pros and cons of each suite to help you decide which is right for your business.
Once upon a tme, Microsoft Office ruled the business world. By the late '90s and early 2000s, Microsoft's office suite had brushed aside rivals such as WordPerfect Office and Lotus SmartSuite, and there was no competition on the horizon.
Then in 2006 Google came along with Google Docs & Spreadsheets, a collaborative online word processing and spreadsheet duo that was combined with other business services to form the Google Apps suite, later rebranded as G Suite and now as Google Workspace. Although Google's productivity suite didn't immediately take the business world by storm, over time it has gained both in features and in popularity, boasting 10 million paying customers, according to the company's figures from 2023.
Read full story at Computerworld…
Microsoft's AI Boss Wants Copilot to Bring 'Emotional Support' to Windows and Office
by Will Knight
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman is overseeing an overhaul that gives Copilot an empathetic voice, the ability to see, and more advanced reasoning skills.
Mustafa Suleyman was at the center of an artificial intelligence revolution once before.
As a cofounder of DeepMind, a British company acquired by Google in 2014, he helped devise a new way for computers to tackle seemingly impossible problems by combining practice with positive and negative feedback. DeepMind demonstrated the approach by developing a superhuman Go-playing program, AlphaGo, which defeated the world's best Go player in 2016.
Now Suleyman is talking up a new kind of AI breakthrough.
As CEO of Microsoft AI, Suleyman oversees efforts to integrate the same AI that powers ChatGPT into software—including the Windows operating system—that runs most of the world's personal computers.
In its latest upgrade, Microsoft announced today that its AI assistant, Copilot, now has a humanlike voice, the ability to see a user's screen, and better reasoning skills.
Read full story at Wired.com…
In Utilities
Dep't of Energy Invests $1.5 Billion to Bolster the Nation's Electricity Grid and Deliver Affordable Electricity to Meet New Demands
by DOE
With Funding from the Investing in America Agenda, DOE Announces $1.5 Billion Transmission Investment to Improve Grid Reliability Across the Country
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced two critical actions in its continued efforts to support the expansion of the transmission infrastructure needed to ensure that the nation's electricity grid is reliable, resilient, and ready to meet customer demands with low-cost clean electricity. First, DOE announced an investment of $1.5 billion in four transmission projects that will improve grid reliability and resilience, relieve costly transmission congestion, and open access to affordable energy to millions of Americans across the country. Supported by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and administered through DOE's Grid Deployment Office (GDO), the projects selected today for the Transmission Facilitation Program will enable nearly 1,000 miles of new transmission development and 7,100 MW of new capacity throughout Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, while creating nearly 9,000 … jobs.
DOE also released the final National Transmission Planning (NTP) Study … . The study finds that the United States will need to approximately double to triple the 2020 transmission capacity by 2050 in order to meet demand growth and reliability needs, and hundreds of billions of dollars of cost savings can be achieved through substantial transmission expansion and interregional planning.
Read full story at Endery.gov…
Supreme Court Leaves in Place Two Power Plant Environmental Regulations
by Associated Press
The high court is still considering challenges to a third Environmental Protection Agency rule aimed at curbing planet-warming pollution from coal-fired power plants.
The Supreme Court left in place Friday two Biden administration environmental regulations aimed at reducing industry emissions of planet-warming methane and toxic mercury from power plants.
The justices did not detail their reasoning in the orders, which came after a flurry of emergency applications to block the rules from industry groups and Republican-leaning states. There were no noted dissents.
The high court is still considering challenges to a third Environmental Protection Agency rule aimed at curbing planet-warming pollution from coal-fired power plants.
The regulations are part of a broader effort by the Biden administration aimed at curbing climate change that includes financial incentives to buy electric vehicles and upgrade infrastructure, and rules tightening tailpipe pollution standards for cars and trucks.
The industry groups and states had argued the EPA overstepped its authority and set unattainable standards with the new regulations. The EPA, though, said the rules are squarely within its legal responsibilities and would protect the public.
Read full story at Power Engineering…
The Rise of AC Block Energy Storage Systems
by Neha Sinha,
As the energy storage industry matures, evolving technologies are available for specific use cases.
Innovations in string inverter technology and software controls are giving rise to AC block energy storage systems. While DC blocks will continue to have their place in the energy storage market, AC blocks provide distinct advantages such as granular control, higher availability and shorter project development timelines. With both solutions now available at grid scale, it is important to understand their differences and the value they both provide.
What is an AC and DC Block?
Energy storage systems require the ability to convert electric current because the electric grid operates on Alternating Current (AC), while batteries store energy in Direct Current (DC). There are two primary configurations for integrating energy storage with the grid. The first is the AC block configuration, where string inverters are internalised in each energy storage enclosure. These inverters convert DC power from the batteries to AC, allowing the energy storage enclosure to directly interface with the grid. The second is the DC block configuration, where batteries are housed in dedicated enclosures, which are then connected to central inverters to convert DC power to AC. Until recently, bi-directional string inverters did not have the required power level necessary for widespread adoption of AC blocks. With this technology now available, AC and DC block configurations are both competitive options for energy storage sites. Each offer distinct advantages that can be leveraged depending on the requirements and scope of your project.
Read full story at UtilityDive…