AgricaGeo
 
 
PositionIT e-News
 
GIS, GPS, surveying and spatial applications in Southern Africa

 Issue 21 April/May 2010 

Put land administration back on the map
by Clare van Zwieten, EE Publishers 
 
Clare van Zwieten The go-slow at the Surveyor-General Office in KwaZulu-Natal has finally come to an end and the long awaited restructuring is in the process of being implemented with surveyors being included in the process this time. It is a great pity that NEHAWU had to resort to industrial action in order to ensure that surveying personnel working in the KZN:SG offices received their due... (more)
Reportback from the Surveyor-General: KZN
by Chris Williams-Wynn, Surveyor-General: Eastern Cape and
KwaZulu-Natal
 
Chris Williams-WynnFrustrated wage negotiations at the KwaZulu-Natal Surveyor General's office made headlines but there is quite a back story to the "work-to-rule" industrial action that led to more than R4-billion worth of projects being delayed by over 4 months. NEHAWU has since lifted the work-to-rule process to ensure turn-around times be reduced to the norm of 15 working days... (more)
Matters of mutual concern regarding SAGI constitution
by Henk Bresler
 
Henk BreslerThe recent meeting of the SAGI Northern Provinces Branch was attended by a number of serving members of the egineering survey fraternity, instrument suppliers, retired surveyors and educators involved with the training of construction surveyors. The most pertinent issue was the required registration of PLATO, before eligibility for SAGI membership... (more)
Hey there! EE Publishers is using Twitter...

EE Publishers on TwitterTwitter is a free service that lets you keep in touch with all the latest news and receive "The best from EE Publishers" through the exchange and sharing of quick, frequent short messages and links. Join today to start receiving our tweets on your desktop PC, notebook PC or mobile... (more)

Monitoring underground coal mining-induced subsidence
by Yaobin Sheng et al
 
Subsidence-induced fault reactivation may cause moderate to severe damage to concrete foundations, houses, buildings, and underground services, as well as damage to agricultural land through disruption of drainage and alteration of ground gradient. Monitoring and analysing the spatial distribution of the deformed surface may be helpful for land-use planning, land reclamation or remediation... (more)
Tracking material extraction from a distance 
Information from Topcon
 
Combine Alaska's vast spaces and the high walls and large excavation and hauling equipment movement inherent in mining, and you don't exactly have a surveyor's optimal working environment. A leading gold mining company recently adopted surveying and digital imaging technology that is allowing surveyors to track material inventories across those vast spaces. The result is major improvements in surveying productivity and safety... (more)
Thoughts on a successful enterprise GIS entity at Eskom
by Adri de la Rey, ESI-GIS

Adri de la Rey, a professional Land Survey and GISc Practitioner, has spent his working career at Eskom working in either land survey or geographic information systems environments, at both the operational and corporate level.  In this article, he outlines a proposal to create an enterprise GIS entity at Eskom to enhance the availability of spatial information for decision making... (more)

Inter-departmental spatial data sharing bolsters service delivery
Information from AfriGIS
 
The Provincial Government of the Western Cape's ability to deliver ever-improving service to citizens of the province is highly dependent on the ability to share data, particularly spatial data, between various government departments going forward. While political leaders can initiate public spending to develop new infrastructure and services, the devil is in the details of any plan. In this case, the details are in the form of spatial data... (more)
Getting geoinformation and SDI to work for Africa - Part 2
by Craig Schwabe, AfricaScope, and Sives Govender, EIS-Africa

In Africa it is believed that for SDI to work and succeed it must be designed and developed in line with national priorities, especially those contained in the National Information and Communication Infrastructure (NICI) plans. Furthermore, it is believed that
the defining, inventory and cataloguing of fundamental geospatial datasets is key to the success of the SDI in Africa... (more)

2009 Spot 5 mosaic of South Africa complete 
by Dr. Corn� Eloff, CSIR SAC 

The CSIR Satellite Applications Centre is proud to announce its fourth annual SPOT 5 2,5 m spatial resolution mosaic over South Africa. To produce this mosaic implies complex, time-consuming and data storage challenges. The 2009 coverage commenced on 1 January 2009 until the last image acquisition on 5 November 2009 - a period of 10 months... (more)  

Datum transformations using the NTv2 grid 
by Julie Lovesay, Chief Directorate: National Geo-spatial Information 
 
Prior to 1999, all geospatial data in South Africa was referenced to the Cape datum (Modified Clarke 1880 ellipsoid). Since the introduction of the Hartebeesthoek 94 datum (utilising the WGS84 ellipsoid) in 1999, GIS practitioners have faced challenges combining historical data in the Cape datum and more modern data in the Hartebeesthoek 94 datum. I have investigated an approach that can easily be used to transform data from the Cape datum to Hartebeesthoek 94... (more)
A GIS framework for humanitarian relief operations
by David Bitner et al
 
Sahana is a free and open source disaster management system that began as a response to the 2005 Tsunami in Sri Lanka and has since been deployed in many disasters around the world. A major requirement arising from these deployments has been the need for geographical information systems (GIS) capability, tightly integrated with the disaster management capability of Sahana... (more
A revenue protection success story - eThekwini 
by Eric Saayman, Itron

The electrical department of eThekwini seeks to reduce its non-technical losses. This is necessary not only to optimise financial returns, but to address also the external challenges of conservation and peak demand reduction. The department's revenue protection division is tasked, among others, with meeting these objectives.Tampering constitutes one of the biggest challenges within the prepayment meter domain... (more)

Views  
 
Industry and institute news

Training news
Company and product news

Twitter
Flash editions
HTML editions
Print editions
e-Newsletters
e-Zine_Archive_Gradient
Blog
RSS feeds
Podcasts
In this issue...
- Put land administration back on the map
- Reportback from the Surveyor-General: KZN
- Matters of mutual concern regarding SAGI Constitution
- Hey there! EE Publishers is using Twitter
- Monitoring underground coal mining-induced subsidence
- Tracking material extraction from a distance
- Thoughts on a successful enterprise GIS entity at Eskom
- Inter-departmental spatial data sharing bolsters service delivery
- Getting geoinformation and SDI to work for Africa - Part 2
- 2009 Spot 5 mosaic of South Africa complete
- Datum transformations using the NTv2 grid
- A GIS framework for humanitarian relief operations
- A revenue protection success story - eThekwini
- Views
- Industry and institute news
- Training news
- Company and product news
Your e-Zines
  
(Flash flip-page edition)
(Flash flip-page edition)
 
 
(Flash flip-page edition)
 
 
Energize e-Zine
(Flash flip-page edition)
 
Published by
 
EE Publishers
 
P O Box 458
Muldersdrift
1747
South Africa
 
Tel 011 543-7000
Fax 011 543-7025
 
 
 
Copyright
 

Copyright 2010

EE Publishers
All rights reserved