Alfredo Covaleda,
Bogota, Colombia
Stephen Guerin,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
James A. Trostle,
Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
Just ran across this interesting book related to GIS and Social Science applications. http://www.csiss.org/best-practices/siss/ CSISS Best Practice Publications: Spatially Integrated Social Science
Edited by Michael F. Goodchild and Donald G. Janelle Oxford University Press, 2004
Table of Contents
Foreword: Norman Bradburn Preface
Chapter
From Complexity Digest:
Excerpts: You like a certain song and want to hear other tracks like it, but don't know how to find them? Ending the needle-in-a-haystack problem of searching for music on the Internet or even in your own hard drive is a new audio-based music information retrieval system. Currently under development by the SIMAC project, it is a major leap forward in the application of semantics to audio content, allowing songs to be described not just by artist, title and genre but by their actual musical properties such as rhythm, timbre, harmony, structure and instrumentation. This allows comparisons between songs to be made (…). Source: Semantic Descriptors To Help Should this come to fruition, might there be stories in patterns — regional patterns — in music? How could we map this? And when?
Marylaine Block, at Ex Libris, suggests: “The 2005 Dubious Data Awards (http://www.stats.org/record.jsp?type=news&ID=534) Courtesy of Stats at George Mason University, “a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to improving public understanding of science and statistics.” Also check out the polling category on the navigation bar for some useful skepticism: “Skewing a Poll Result: Knowing Who Paid for the Poll,” “Caveat Samplor – Unrepresentative Samples Skew the News.”
GIS Cafe Editor Susan Smith interviews Robert Welch, president of Synergos Technologies, Inc. (STI) about the GIS-based models his company is using to estimate the New Orleans population after Katrina. Welch's models are of interest and also underscore the importance of “ground-proofing.” (When you reach the page below, scroll down to read the interview.)
Estimating Post-Katrina Populations with STI: PopStats By Susan Smith As we move into 2006, we are well aware that entire populations have regrouped or moved as a result of Hurricane Katrina and Rita. With the loss of homes, businesses and schools, not only an entire way of life, but an extraordinary amount of data was also lost.
In an interview with Robert Welch, president of Synergos Technologies, Inc. (STI) this week, I learned about the company's STI: PopStats product, which is the market research industry's only quarterly population estimating product. The first 2006 release of STI: PopStats will include population estimates for those areas impacted by Hurricane Katrina and Rita.
How is Synergos able to come out with population estimates every three months? “Our STI: PopStats product is radically different from every other population estimating product,” claimed Welch. “We're the only the only company that can do an estimate every three months.”
Philip Meyer Award Winners Read more about the 2005 Philip Meyer Award
The National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, a joint program of IRE and the Missouri School of Journalism; the Knight Chair in Journalism at Arizona State University; and IRE announce the winners of the Philip Meyer Journalism Award, a contest to recognize the best journalism done using social science research methods.
The awards will be presented March 10 at the Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference in Newark, N.J. The first-place winner will receive $500; second and third will receive $300 and $200. The contest, for work published or broadcast between October 2004 and October 2005, attracted 28 entries from across the country in its inaugural year. The judges noted it was extremely difficult to pick winners because so many of the entries were very strong. Stories are available to IRE members through the IRE and NICAR Resource Center — just contact us at 573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org.
First Place
Steve Suo, The Oregonian, for “Unnecessary Epidemic” This series of articles over the past year show how Congress and the Drug Enforcement Administration could have stopped the growth of meth abuse by aggressively regulating the import of the chemicals necessary to make it. Lead reporter Steve Suo's work included sophisticated statistical analyses of data on hospital and treatment center admissions, arrests, meth prices and purity, and chemical imports. (Story #21638)
Second Place
Chris Adams and Alison Young, Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau, for “Discharged and Dishonored” This yearlong series of stories revealed how disabled veterans were being harmed by the bureaucratic inefficiencies of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Reporters Chris Adams and Alison Young analyzed survey data and the VA's own database of 3.4 million claims to discover that more than 13,700 veterans died while waiting for their claims to be resolved, and as many as 572,000 vets may be missing out on their rightful disability payments. (Story #22132)
Third Place
Matthew Waite and Craig Pittman, St. Petersburg Times, for “Vanishing Wetlands” This project demonstrated that 84,000 acres of Florida wetlands have been destroyed by development since 1990 when President George H. W. Bush declared a national policy of no net loss of wetlands. Waite and Pittman penetrated beyond the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' poorly-documented records of development permits by using before-and-after satellite imagery and geographical information systems software to accurately measure the loss. (Story #22127)
Another good pointer from the Canadian Cartographic Assoc.
A TechNews (and a number of other news sites) story talks about the directions some of the larger online map providers are heading. With the release of Google Maps, Google Earth, Microsoft’s Live Local and upgrades to other online mapping sites such as Yahoo! Maps all in the past year, the online mapping industry has become very competitive. With many such sites offering a similar product, the key is to differentiate oneself from one’s competitors by offer new information or presenting existing information in a unique manner. States the article: “Microsoft Corp. is working on a mechanism that would have avid mountain bikers, for example, collectively plot good trails. Yahoo Inc. is appealing to its users to add information on local businesses and places of interest. Yahoo even recently bought Upcoming.org, a collaborative calendar of events.”Interestingly, Mapquest “estimates that driving directions cost [the] company a penny apiece and a static map much less — expenses recouped through sales of ads displayed at the site.” The article goes on to discuss the online map sites’ different approaches to the problem of determining the right driving directions.”
Should you not be lucky enough to read a daily that carries Wiley's “Non Sequitur” comic strip, we're taking the risk of passing this along. Note that you can buy a copy suitable for mounting at the UComics Store.It might make an appropriate poster to hang in the window of an about-to-close newspaper.
The Rocky took a bold swing at developing an interesting web server application this month. And the editor sees that this attempt is extensible.
“The Rocky Mountain News gets a lot of coverage due to its strong online presence. Some 42 “hubs” cover local news and encourage citizen journalism. So, it was quite interesting to read editor, publisher and president John Temple's discussion of attempting an interactive map of Christmas lights in his editorial from December 24 higlighting the paper's accomplishments.
I hope you feel it in this newspaper and on our Web site every day. A passion. A passion for trying new things to serve you better. A passion for telling stories. Take our new mapping service for Christmas light tours. This year, instead of just printing maps in the paper, we're offering personalized maps on our Web site. In the newspaper, we have to give everybody the same map. On the Web, you can create the map that best suits your needs. Go to com and click on “Holiday Lights” and you'll find an offer to “Get directions to light displays in your area.” It will take you to a page where you can enter the address where you want to start your tour. Click on “Find Nearest” and you'll get a listing of the best nearby displays. In my case, there were 16 within three miles. Choose the ones you want to visit and click on “Find Route” and you'll get step-by-step directions and a map of the entire route. Print it and you'll have a guide for a fun excursion. We developed this service as an experiment with ESRI, a Boulder company that specializes in Web mapping. We wanted to see what was possible. It wasn't as easy as we had hoped. For example, I'd love – yes, love – for people to be able to post their own pictures of their lights on our Web site and to have them show up with the addresses when others call up a map. I'd like for you to be able to e-mail the light show creators. And, of course, you should be able to get our maps and photos on your cell phone while you're driving, maybe even with a soundtrack to make your journey more fun. And how about coupons or special offers from coffee shops or gas stations for participating? But those ideas will have to wait for future years. This mapping effort, believe it or not, is linked to our plans to help you decide how to vote in the 2006 election. We're going to build our deepest election Web site ever, where just by punching in your address you'll be able to find links to all our stories and data, such as campaign finance reports and information about the candidates and issues you'll find on your ballot. We hope you'll walk into your polling place next November with a printout from RockyMountainNews.com as your sample ballot.
I hope you feel it in this newspaper and on our Web site every day. A passion. A passion for trying new things to serve you better. A passion for telling stories.
Take our new mapping service for Christmas light tours. This year, instead of just printing maps in the paper, we're offering personalized maps on our Web site.
In the newspaper, we have to give everybody the same map. On the Web, you can create the map that best suits your needs.
Go to com and click on “Holiday Lights” and you'll find an offer to “Get directions to light displays in your area.”
It will take you to a page where you can enter the address where you want to start your tour. Click on “Find Nearest” and you'll get a listing of the best nearby displays. In my case, there were 16 within three miles. Choose the ones you want to visit and click on “Find Route” and you'll get step-by-step directions and a map of the entire route. Print it and you'll have a guide for a fun excursion.
We developed this service as an experiment with ESRI, a Boulder company that specializes in Web mapping. We wanted to see what was possible.
It wasn't as easy as we had hoped. For example, I'd love – yes, love – for people to be able to post their own pictures of their lights on our Web site and to have them show up with the addresses when others call up a map. I'd like for you to be able to e-mail the light show creators. And, of course, you should be able to get our maps and photos on your cell phone while you're driving, maybe even with a soundtrack to make your journey more fun. And how about coupons or special offers from coffee shops or gas stations for participating? But those ideas will have to wait for future years.
This mapping effort, believe it or not, is linked to our plans to help you decide how to vote in the 2006 election. We're going to build our deepest election Web site ever, where just by punching in your address you'll be able to find links to all our stories and data, such as campaign finance reports and information about the candidates and issues you'll find on your ballot.
We hope you'll walk into your polling place next November with a printout from RockyMountainNews.com as your sample ballot.
“Of course ESRI is based in Redlands, California. I'm sure that the local office worked their butts off in developing the app. Still, he's right – the hodgepodge of voting for lights displays (which linked to PDF maps???), routing by RouteMap IMS, and a grid to find local displays were quite challenging to navigate.”
