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November 2007 Welcome to The Sensor -- the newsletter of the Enterprise for Innovative Geospatial Solutions (EIGS) bringing you the latest developments from Mississippi’s 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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November 2007
8 Years Later…Geospatial Software Site License Program Still Making Impact One of Mississippi’s most notable and successful activities in the geospatial arena is the statewide software site license program. As the first of its kind in the U.S., this program was established in 1999 for remote sensing/GIS software with three industry-leading vendors: ESRI, Leica Geosystems, and RSI. The site license program is funded by the State Legislature through EIGS and is administered by MARIS with oversight by the IHL Geospatial Council. The Sensor recently sat down with the Chair of the IHL Geospatial Council, Dr. Greg Easson, Associate Professor and Chair of Geological Engineering at The University of Mississippi, to discuss the importance of the site licenses and the related activities of the IHL Geospatial Council. The Sensor: Okay, the number one question I am sure you get asked all the time. Who can use the site licenses? Easson: The site licenses are designated for educational and research purposes and allow for unlimited copies of the software at all 8 public universities and all 15 community and junior colleges. The Sensor: Give us an idea of how big this program is. How many licenses are being used? Easson: Including software extensions and modules, over 18,000 licenses have been issued since the program began. The Sensor: How is the software being used? Easson: The software is being used as part of curricula, it helps support research applications by faculty, and is utilized by graduate and undergraduate students conducting research projects. It is important to point out that how the software is being used is resulting in the training of the next generation of employees for Mississippi’s geospatial industry. It cannot be overestimated how important the site licensing program is in addressing the critical workforce needs of Mississippi’s growing geospatial industry. The Sensor: Do other states have a similar program? How are they funded? Easson: There are anywhere from 18 to 30 other states that have followed our lead in establishing a geospatial statewide licensing program. We are very fortunate here in Mississippi to have a supportive Legislature that has included the total costs of the site licenses in the state budget. Many other state programs absorb the costs at the institutional level which are then passed down to the individual departments that are using the software. The great thing about the way we do it in Mississippi is that there is no hindrance to a small college or a new department implementing the use of the software because of cost concerns. The Sensor: What are some of the success stories? Easson: Perhaps the number one success of this program is the cost savings for the state. As of September 2007, there were 3,141 “core” active licenses. While the total program costs for the state of Mississippi runs about $300,000, the total street value for the software, or the off-the-shelf costs, is $35,405,836. This is a one year total cost savings for the state of over $35 million. This has been an especially good deal for the state because our costs have remained fixed while the market value of the software has sky-rocketed. For example, just last year the market value of the software was a little over $23 million. So in just one year, we saw a $12 million value increase. That’s pretty incredible. The Sensor: What about training activities related to the site licenses? Easson: At the community college level, a number of new seminars, courses, and projects are a direct result of the availability of the software. In fact, many of the community colleges offer classes for free to city, county, or Mississippi state government agency employees. Also, under Mississippi’s site licensing agreement with ESRI, there are unlimited, FREE, introductory and advanced GIS and RS on-line courses through ESRI’s Virtual Campus. Anyone who falls under the statewide software program can participate. In the last six months, 539 classes were set up for a value of $78,550 virtual campus dollars. ESRI currently offers 45 instructor-led and 126 self-study classes and the number of classes continues to grow. You can check it out at http://training.esri.com/gateway/index.cfm. The Sensor: Are the activities related to the software limited to the individual campuses or do you see collaborative efforts? Easson: Since the IHL Geospatial Council was established in 1999, it has always been a very collegial group. We work well together to provide guidance and oversight for the statewide program, but we also regularly work with each other on research projects and training efforts. For instance, the GeoResources Institute at MSU and Northwest MS Community College are continuously offering a slate of training courses together. And during the response to Hurricane Katrina, we witnessed the Council at its best with most of our members involved at some level in the response efforts. From the first hours of the disaster to on-going support at the Emergency Operation Centers well into 2006, a number of IHL entities lead the way in the geospatial response and recovery efforts. The relationships and contacts developed over the years on the IHL Geospatial Council definitely impacted the effectiveness of the response to the disaster. The Sensor: How can people find out more information? Easson: The IHL Geospatial Council has a website with a list of all its members, minutes from meetings, and the available software and training courses. Be sure to check it out at http://www.maris.state.ms.us/HTM/GeospatialCouncilWebsite/index.html.
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IMAGE OF THE MONTH
WorldView-1's first images include a half-meter snapshot from Houston, Texas, USA acquired October 2, 2007. DigitalGlobe, provider of the world's highest-resolution commercial satellite imagery and geospatial information products, recently revealed the first images from WorldView-1, the highest resolution, most agile commercial satellite ever flown. source: giscafe.com Unmanned craft help map, monitor blazes
“In the past when we have done our mapping of a fire, we've done a lot by helicopter,” said Del Walters, assistant regional chief for Northern California, who was assisting in the command center in San Diego yesterday. “The Predator, and the tools in it, make mapping a whole lot more accurate and it frees up the firefighting tools, like helicopters,” Walters said. “We can take the information and from the intelligence center see something that is going on in the field and immediately contact people on the line with information of great value,” Walters said. An unmanned aircraft flying 23,000 feet above San Diego County last week pierced the thick shroud of smoke with infrared cameras to stream real-time photographs of the fires and their progression to the firefighters' command post. Hundreds of miles away, at Edwards Air Force Base, NASA pilots used a sophisticated remote control to operate the 5,000-pound plane as it flew back and forth over the fires that earlier in the week had forced the evacuation of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, which makes the aircraft.
Del Walters Walters has been assisting in the command center in San Diego EIGS would like to congratulate Talbot Brooks, Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Geospatial Information Technologies at Delta State University on being named to the Board of Directors for the Geospatial Information and Technology Association (GITA). GITA's mission is to provide excellence in education and information exchange on the use and benefits of geospatial information and technology in telecommunications, infrastructure, and utility applications worldwide. |
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November 5-7, 2007
November 13, 2007
November 27 & 28, 2007 Did you know Geotagging, sometimes referred to as Geocoding, is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as websites, RSS feeds, or images? This data usually consists of latitude and longitude coordinates, though it can also include altitude and place names. Geotagging can help users find a wide variety of location-specific information. For instance, one can find images taken near a given location by entering a latitude and longitude into a Geotagging-enabled image search engine. Geotagging-enabled information services can also potentially be used to find news, websites, or other resources. |
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ADVANCED LEVEL GIS
WORKSHOPS
Free to local and state Mississippi government employees.
Commercial and non-Mississippi
participants: 2-day workshops, $800
FOR INFORMATION CONTACT:
The National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law and the Journal of
Space Law of the University of Mississippi School of Law is pleased to
announce its new blog
Res Communis, a Blog on the legal
aspects of human activities using Aerospace Technologies. |
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8th Annual Conference on High Technology
Date:
Location:
Join the Mississippi Technology Alliance and the Mississippi Research Consortium as they present Bill Rayburn, CEO and co-founder of Mississippi’s FNC, Inc. Bill has served as CEO since FNC’s inception, guiding the company through the uncertain and sometimes treacherous waters that led an entrepreneurial start-up to capture nearly 40 percent of the American mortgage origination market. Bill manages FNC’s corporate finances, from cash control to capital-raising, to debt restructuring. You will not want to miss this opportunity to hear one of Mississippi's true success stories. Created by four professors with a vision, FNC is now booming with more than 300 employees, four locations nationwide and many of the nation's top lenders as clients. Hotel Accommodations Special rates are available at the Jackson Marriott for Conference on High Technology registrants for the night of November 27th. For reservations, please call 1-800-256-9194 and mention "Mississippi Technology Alliance" to receive your discounted rate. The cut-off date for the special rate is November 16th. To register for the event or for more information, please visit: https://www.technologyalliance.ms/coht/
China launches third Sino-Brazilian earth resources satellite
China launched the third earth resources
satellite co-developed with Brazil and the two nations will jointly
develop two more satellites. The satellite, named 02B, was launched on a
Chinese Long March-4B carrier rocket which blasted off at 11:26 a.m.
(Beijing Time) from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China's
Shanxi Province.
The new feature at the 6th year of Seatec
is geospatial technology (GIS – Geographical Information System) applied
to the maritime industry. GIS MARE 2008 is the name of this new project
at Seatec 2008 in response to the growing awareness of the fundamental
role of the sea for the economic prosperity of Europe in terms of
employment and wellbeing. As part of an ongoing plan to make more of its data available in a variety of formats, the ABS is working to enable users to generate their own tables from raw statistical data and then present the information using maps. Through census information and other ongoing survey work, the ABS already has a very rich set of geospatial information, Michael Beahan, director for census and products and services at ABS, told a panel discussion at the Government Technology World conference in Canberra.
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NVision Solutions and
Computer Sciences Corporation Selected by National Geospatial Intelligence
Agency for first NGA Mentor-Protégé Program in Mississippi Leica TITAN Premiering
Hurricane Katrina Data at GEOINT NVision Solutions Staffs Up
to Serve Clients Using ArcServer 9.2 and Oracle Bay Saint Louis, MS -- NVision Solutions, Inc., is pleased to welcome a host of new staff members who recently joined the company to serve NVision’s growing client base using ESRI’s ArcServer 9.2 as well as Oracle and other technologies to build next generation GIS applications. Digital Quest Develops
Geospatial Industry Book Series to Introduce Students to Benefits of GIS in
Business & Industry |
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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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