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July 2007 Welcome to The Sensor -- the newsletter of the Enterprise for Innovative Geospatial Solutions (EIGS) bringing you the latest developments from Mississippi’s emerging geospatial industry cluster. Please feel free to share this with friends and colleagues. To subscribe, visit www.eigs.olemiss.edu For further information, or to submit story ideas, please contact Lisa Stone - lstone@olemiss.edu |
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Business finding geospatial applications necessity,
However, that is rapidly changing, according to Lisa Stone, acting director of the Enterprise for Innovative Geospatial Solutions (EIGS). The science has not quite reached the common-knowledge stage yet, but the business community as well as economic developers, are turning more and more to the geospatial industry to answer complex questions quicker and more effectively. “It is not only forestry and agriculture that utilizes geospatial information, but the military, even recreation,” Stone said. “It has uses on the every day level, and several of our companies are developing software especially for economic development.” Silver lining The reason for the growing acceptance and appreciation for geospatial products and services are many. Groups such as the EIGS and the Mississippi Technology Alliance (MTA) deserve credit for educating the general public and business community on its applications and benefits. Also, the science has gotten a lift in popularity for its non-business uses. Hunters and golfers are using global positioning systems (GPS) to help pinpoint where to find game animals or what club to select to get the ball closer to the hole. And, the motoring public has seen the advantages GPS offers when on the road. However, Stone said it was bad times, not good, that really put geospatial applications on the minds of the general public as well as the business community. After Hurricane Katrina made landfall in August 2005, the devastation was so widespread that many communities struggled with where to begin. Where were the greatest needs, and what resources should be focused there to overcome the daunting challenges of rebuilding? Enter the geospatial industry, which offered solutions that only it could provide. “I hate to say it, but Hurricane Katrina was huge for the geospatial industry. You can’t underestimate what Katrina did,” Stone said. “We spent years trying to show local communities what a powerful resource geospatial information is. After Katrina, these communities saw it first hand. Pre-Katrina, communities saw geospatial as an extra, something that would be nice to have. Now, they see it as a necessity.” The geospatial industry was involved in disaster response even before Katrina. In June 2005, NVision Solutions, an EIGS member based at the Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, entered a strategic agreement with FirstCall Network Inc. to create an integrated solution for emergency management and homeland security. The partnership created REACT (Real-time Emergency Action Coordination Tool) that utilizes geographic databases and advanced computer models for crisis preparation, management and recovery. Just days after the storm, Galileo Group Inc. and Jackson-based Forest One Inc., which recently executed a merger and is now known as Lanworth Inc., partnered to assist in recovery by offering response mapping, remote sensing and geospatial information services. Lanworth, along with the MTA and other geospatial and high-tech businesses, also introduced the TechFix Mississippi Program, designed to help Mississippi small businesses rebuild their technology infrastructure following Katrina. Building momentum Geospatial applications have continued to broaden since Katrina. The economic development community is becoming more and more reliant on geospatial information as a tool to bring new business and jobs into communities. The technology offers an effective way to identify available land and other resources so as to attract prospects to an area. A good example is TaiMap. TaiMap is a product developed through a joint effort between Taiamerica Management Company and NVision. It is a Web-based decision support system designed to enhance a community’s ability to conduct economic development activities. Users gain a technological advantage and Internet presence that increases their attraction to key parties such as site selectors, property developers as well as businesses and industries. “What geospatial information offers, among other things, is a way to identify the highest and best use of land,” Stone said, “and that has applications beyond agriculture, including economic development.” The geospatial industry itself is a job creator. Stone said trying to get a handle on the impact of the state’s total geospatial industry is difficult because many are small companies, and some companies use geospatial to varying degrees, but it is not necessarily their primary focus. Thus, industry numbers in Mississippi are near impossible to define. However, Stone does have numbers for EIGS’ members. The most recent data (July 2005-August 2006) show the EIGS with 30 member companies that employ roughly 620 workers between them. They may not sound like many, but the average annual salary among those workers is $55,000, and almost all of the positions require a college degree, many doctorates. The state is really focused now on bringing more high-tech, high-paying jobs into Mississippi, and geospatial companies certainly meet that definition. Formed in 1998, the EIGS’ mission is to nurture the growth of a cluster of high-tech companies in the geospatial technology industry statewide. Stone said the organization would continue to promote the industry to the business community and beyond using the slogan “Everyday Solutions for Everyday Business.” |
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IMAGE OF THE MONTH
NASA Satellite Captures
First View of 'Night-Shining Clouds' Image taken June 28, 2007
Jack Dangermond at the opening plenary of the ESRI User’s Conference 2007 in San Diego, CA.
The Alley Cats, with EIGS Member, DigitalGlobe’s Brett Thomassie (center) entertains crowd at the July 4th –Slidell Heritage Festival, in Slidell, LA.
GIS Preserves Family Ties While GIS has generally been used to map where things are, there have been some departures from typical applications, such as choosing sites, targeting market segments, planning distribution networks, responding to emergencies, or redrawing boundaries. One unusual implementation of GIS comes from Khatib & Alami, ESRI's distributor in Beirut, Lebanon, where the software technology was used to generate a family tree….One of the main drawbacks of a typical hard-copy drawing was the density of information and the inflexibility of updating and adding new family members. With GIS, this issue was resolved. The ArcGIS advanced editing capabilities, with the possibility of selecting, moving, adding, copying, and pasting, made data updating a flexible and enjoyable task… See full article in ArcNews Online, Spring 2007 Breakfast with an Innovator to feature SBIR Award Winner The Mississippi Technology Alliance in partnership with the Mississippi Gulf Coast Technology Council will be hosting its next Breakfast with an Innovator August 3rd at the Great Southern Club atop the Hancock Bank building in downtown Gulfport, MS. To register to attend this event, click here. The featured speaker will be Mr. Craig Harvey, co-founder, CIO and VP of NVision Solutions Inc., located at the Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, MS. NVision is a U.S. provider of mission-critical, geographic information system (GIS)-based decision support systems. The company’s innovative products and services have been developed in part through its SBIRs and related technology development efforts with the NASA Stennis Space Center. |
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July 27, 2007
October 7-10, 2007
October 15-17, 2007
November 5-7, 2007
The 2010 Census, which starts in 2009, will use GPS to map American homes, according to a National Public Radio report by Daniel Charles of All Things Considered. To collect census data, 100,000 temporary workers will travel down every street in America, for the first time armed with handheld PDAs equipped with GPS capability. The Census Bureau exepcts to capture the latitude and longitude of the front door of not only houses and apartments, but improvised housing units such as converted garages. Each dwelling, legal or not, will be added to the Census Bureau's Master Address File. The census will include the geographic coordinates — accurate to within 10 feet — for about 110 million residences. By law, the Census Bureau can't share the confidential data with anyone, even local governments that don't have resources to collect such mapping information. With the demand for geographic data booming, pressure is growing to make the information available. |
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ESRI Announces the
Availability of New Materials for GIS Awareness Program Initiatives
GIS Development: The Global
GIS Development recently announced the launch of a new publication, GIS Development: The Global Geospatial Magazine. The publication is an integration of four previous regional editions – Asia Pacific, Middle East, Malaysia and Africa. The magazine has a more comprehensive coverage of viewpoints from across the globe through a rich integration of articles, interviews and news. The publication will be monthly to help ensure better frequency and faster delivery of information to all the readers worldwide. It also features few new sections like Blogbuster, Techwatch, Picture This, Publication reviews and more global news coverage.
USGS Project Makes Landsat
Data Available Over The Web
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CONVERSATIONS WITH THE
FUTURE:
Part 1 of 2 This is the first of two articles focusing on the need for geography, earth, environmental, and computer science graduates to be prepared for a 'portfolio' career and how it is advantageous for these graduates to be able to identify and capitalize on entrepreneurial opportunities. This first article illustrates how EIGS member company NVision Solutions is addressing this need through the use of summer interns provided through the National Space Grant Foundation and DEVELOP. The National Space Grant Foundation is a tax exempt organization whose purpose is to support and enhance the Space Grant Consortia in every state to carry out education, research, and public outreach activities in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology and additional fields, related to space, aeronautics, aviation, and Earth system science. For over fifteen years, the Space Grant Consortia have actively addressed workforce development issues throughout the Nation. “Our goals in this program are to provide students at Mississippi universities with the opportunity to work in a NASA-related industry, to provide those companies in Mississippi with quality students from Mississippi universities, and to help those companies grow by giving them some quality employees without a large financial commitment,” said Dr. Peter Sukanek, Professor and Chair for the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Mississippi and Director of the Mississippi Space Grant Consortium. The Mississippi Space Grant Consortium is composed of all the eight public universities in the State as well as most of the community colleges. Participating Employers have access to all of these students. The Consortium advertises for the available positions at all the science, technology, engineering and mathematics departments in the state. Employers receive resumes that match their criteria and hire the students directly. The program has been in existence for about five years and has been highly successful program judging by the response of the students and the companies. Space Grant Intern Katrina "Katie" Hall, a Computer Science student at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), is developing the Boeing-NVision HazNet Incident Management System on top of NVision's REACT platform. Boeing Phantom Works in Seattle, Washington has partnered with NVision to combine technologies and build an emergency management system scalable nationwide. Katie states, “Working at Stennis has been a great opportunity, which I am glad I didn't pass up. The atmosphere is very welcoming and all of the people are extremely friendly. Stennis has opened my eyes to the range of possibilities that job locations can offer and this internship has allowed me to get a good view of what working for a GIS company entails, as well as what Stennis has to offer. It has allowed me to apply what I've learned in school and figure out what my strengths and weaknesses are, which will ultimately help me when beginning the job search.” Mary Clair Thompson, a Geography student from Delta State University (DSU), is working on a project to help the Hancock County Port and Harbor build up their GIS for economic development and facility management which NVision Solutions initiated shortly after Katrina. Mary Clair heard about the Space Grant Program through her GIS professor at Delta State. She recently finished her bachelor's degree and will being work on a graduate degree in mathematics at August at Auburn University. ”This job has been much more of a learning experience for me than any of my other previous jobs. Also, it is really the first time that I have had the chance to work in an office environment, so that is a very nice experience for me. This job has helped me to get a better idea of what I would like to be doing in the future, in particular, it has shown me that I would eventually like to work in a technology-related field,” commented Mary Clair. Jason Jones, a student at the University of Southern Mississippi, is on his third student summer internship at Stennis. He is currently splitting his time between the NASA DEVELOP program and interning for NVision Solutions. DEVELOP is a NASA Science Mission Directorate Applied Sciences Program that fosters human capital development to extend NASA science research to local communities. Students demonstrate to community leaders prototype applications of NASA science measurements and predictions addressing local policy issues. The activities are student-led with advisors and mentors from NASA and other partner organizations. “The DEVELOP internship has given me remote sensing experience and my work with NVision is giving me GIS and programming experience,” said Jason. “In a nutshell, I see myself working as a geospatial programmer, flying company aircraft, and collecting aerial imagery. I must say that I absolutely thrive in the "NASA family" at Stennis. I love the professional environment and getting to work with some of the greatest minds and best professionals in this part of the country. Stennis Space Center is definitely the place for me. The NVision internship has enhanced my professional skills, technical skills, developed my geospatial programming skills, and added to my professional etiquette to help make me a more competitive commodity on the market. I look forward to the possibility of someday working full time with NVision.” Be sure to look for Part II of this article in the August 2007 edition of The Sensor.
China plans third Sino-Brazilian
launch for September The China National Space Administration is planning a September launch of a third Earth resources satellite jointly developed by China and Brazil. Learn more about the September launch
European Space Agency inks deal for
next-generation The European Space Agency (ESA) announced it has ordered the first of five Earth-monitoring satellites to succeed Envisat, the biggest environmental watchdog ever launched. Learn more about ESA's next-generation satellite
China joins 'Space and Major
Disasters' charter The China National Space Administration has joined the International Charter for "Space and Major Disasters," an international initiative that provides free satellite imagery of areas affected by disasters, the European Space Agency (ESA). Read more about the CNSA-ESA announcement
Pakistan develops full potential of
natural gas resources with GIS The Sui Southern Gas Company Limited (SSGC), headquartered in Karachi, is the country's leading integrated natural gas company. SSGC's GIS is being implemented in a two-stage process. The first phase of the project includes the development of a basemap for both its transmission and distribution networks and will be completed by June 2007. After the completion of this stage, staff members will be able to visualize and query the network's georeferenced data for better planning and development within the company. This information will be distributed via the company's intranet-based Web GIS. Read more about SSGC |
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Geospatial Marketing Agreement to Bring
Cutting Edge Technology to Both Sides of the Atlantic
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Space
law group selects Joanne Gabrynowicz as board member Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz, director of the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law at The University of Mississippi, was recently appointed as a member of the International Institute of Space Law’s board of directors. As a member of the board, she will work with other IISL members to guide the direction of the organization and its role in the development of space law. The IISL, which was founded in 1960, is composed of individually and institutionally elected members from more than 40 countries.
EIGS’ Chris Harvey Receives Stennis Rotary
Club’s Top Award
The
top award, Rotarian of the Year, went to Rotary President Christine Harvey.
Harvey, who the Assistant Director for EIGS at Stennis Space Center, was
recognized for her service as President of the Club not only for the past
year, but for 2007-2008; her coordination of donations supporting Camp
Coastal Outpost in Kiln, MS; participating in numerous Rotary projects
supporting Pearlington, MS and South Hancock Elementary School; initiating
the Club website, which had been down since Hurricane Katrina; her
award-winning chili that won the best Rotary Club chili entry at the
Mandeville-Northlake Cook-off; and numerous other contributions to the Club
and community. Of her selection for the award, Harvey said, “I am so honored
to be selected for Rotarian of the Year. We have so many great Rotarians in
our Club and I am constantly amazed by the progress our small Club makes in
every community that surrounds Stennis. In every project, we strive to
identify local needs and help out where we can.”
The
Club also awarded three “Special Project Awards” for community service
projects that required not only fundraising and grant preparation, but a
significant amount of time in coordination. Rotarian Robert Broome of
Planning Systems Incorporated, an EIGS member company, was presented an
award for his work to construct an assembly center for South Hancock
Elementary School. Laurie Jugan was recognized for the playground built for
the school and Rich Kren, Commander of the Naval Meteorology and
Oceanography Command, received an award for the St. Stanislaus Language Lab
project. |
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To
sign up to receive The Sensor, visit www.eigs.olemiss.edu Enterprise for Innovative Geospatial Solutions - 100 Barr Hall - University, MS 38677 |
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"The
geographic approach…is a kind of framework for understanding and for
managing our earth. A way to analyze the measurements and the processes of
change. GIS allows us to apply the geographic approach…using the tools and
methods to collaborate; create more efficiency in our organizations. Your
work gives evidence that we can more effectively communicate through the
visual dimension. GIS will become a kind of instrument of evolution…an
information infrastructure that is determining our future."
