Making SA's spatial data infrastructure a reality
by Clare van Zwieten, EE Publishers
 The long awaited Committee for Spatial Information (CSI) has held its first meeting and a tough journey lies ahead. The committee has been tasked with the responsibility of successfully implementing South Africa's spatial data infrastructure (SDI) and with ensuring that our country uses its geospatial data effectively for the benefit of all its citizens... ( more) |
Implementing South Africa's SDI infrastructure
by Thozi Gwanya, Department of Rural Development and Land Reform
 The emergence of GIS and the geospatial information market has seen industry respond to technological developments, economic ups and downs and societal change in equal measure. Rarely have developments in the GIS industry conflicted with broader trends; instead the GIS industry has consistently responded to wider changes by adapting to them... ( more) |
Democracy, service delivery and geography
by Pali Lehohla, Statistics South Africa
 The creation of this committee thus finds resonance in terms of benchmarks elsewhere and has a history of an attempt to have such an equivalent in South Africa about twelve years ago. This failed attempt was marked by equivocation and lack of commitment and adherence to working together amongst organs of states... (more) |
Building the next generation of geography
by Jack Dangermond, ESRI
 I want to thank the Royal Geographical Society for for recognising the role of GIS in geography. This is a milestone event for me and also for the GIS world that I am part of. Geography has been co-evolving with this interesting technology for some decades. In the last half of the twentieth century, people began exploring what I like to call computational geography... (more)
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Surveying the Moses Mabhida Stadium
by Craig Silva, Align Survey and Brad Inggs, Precision Engineering Geomatics
As with most construction projects, architectural marvels pose a number of challenges in the construction phase with a large number of these often being survey challenges. Durban's new Moses Mabhida Stadium is no different... ( more) |
Radar images show how Mexico quake deformed Earth
by Alan Buis, NASA
NASA has released the first-ever airborne radar images of the deformation in Earth's surface caused by a major earthquake - the magnitude 7,2 temblor that rocked Mexico's state of Baja California and parts of the American Southwest on 4 April 2010... ( more) |
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African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes Project
by Heinz Rüther et al , University of Cape Town
In 2005 PositionIT published an article on the African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes Project. This report is a follow-up on the previous publication, it describes the evolution of the project and some of the many challenges which had and still have to be faced and overcome... (more) |
Getting to grips with cloud computing
by John Hope-Bailie, Demand Data
While there is still significant hesitation and uncertainty about the viability of "cloud computing", businesses are getting to grips with the technology in SA. The "cloud" is actually a metaphor for the internet and is therefore an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure of the internet... (more) |
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Quality assessment of the 30 m ASTER global DEM
Compiled by André Breytenbach, CSIR SAC
The release in 2009 of the 30 m ASTER global digital elevation model (GDEM) to the geospatial community was much anticipated and a welcome addition to other global DEMs available (e.g. the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission's 90 m model). ASTER is an imaging instrument and operates on the NASA Terra platform... (more) |
4D data visualisation and quality control
by Dr. Peter Löwe, GMX, and Dr. Jens Klump, German Research Centre for Geosciences
FOSS tools in the field of geoinformatics provide options for advanced 3D/4D visualisation. To highlight the future potential, we showcase a work in progress based on the tools GRASS GIS and PARAVIEW for visual quality control for weather radar data products used in a soil erosion study from South Africa... (more) |
Location intelligence in retail banking
by Marcus Torchia, Yankee Group Research
Banking organisations are discovering that location intelligence (LI) acts as a building block to improve business performance through advanced analysis. LI is similar to business intelligence (BI) as a toolset for operational analysis and performance measurement. LI is distinct from BI in that it is optimised for spatial data... (more) |
Making infrastructure development location intelligent
Information by Jason Clark, Thiess and Ben Somerville, ESRI Australia
This article explores the emergence of GIS as a valued tool in the infrastructure and construction industries for its ability to address four broad business issues - data management, planning and analysis, field force enablement and situational awareness... ( more) |
