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Business wakes up to benefits of GIS
by Mike Steyn, Aspire Solutions
 Geographical information systems (GIS) have been invaluable tools for the public sector and scientific researchers for many years. Now businesses are waking up to the opportunities for using geographical data to solve real-world problems. From logistics and supply chain management to marketing and business intelligence... ( more) |
Mashups, crowdsourcing and their impact on the mapping industry
by Prof. William Cartwright, International Cartographic Association
 The amateur map producer has access to powerful Web 2.0 delivered software and resources, empowering them with the ability to produce and deliver maps that are both professional and current. However, Web 2.0 for the provision of maps and geographical information is not without a number of issues... ( more) |
Professionalism and professional ethics
by Paul Marshall, Plato
 In the years prior to 1984 only land surveyors were registered and without titling themselves as such they were considered to fall into the then relatively narrow definition of "professional". Apart from the qualification requirements for registration, all professionals subjected themselves to a code of conduct enforced by a procedure of discipline... ( more) |
Why geodesy matters, now more than ever
by Prof. Chris Rizos, International Association of Geodesy
 What has enabled geodesy to change from an "applied science" that underpins the making of maps to today's cutting edge geoscience? There are a number of explanations... ( more) |
Borehole radar mapping of orebodies
by Declan Vogt, CSIR
Every day, miners go underground after the blast on our gold and platinum mines to find that the reef has disappeared or the hanging wall conditions have suddenly deteriorated. What can be done to take the surprise out of these events? These risks to people and production can be minimised if miners know where the orebody is going to be tomorrow,over the next week and the next three months... ( more) |
Levee reconstruction aims to hold back floodwaters
Information from Afgen
The Rio Grande River is normally calm as it meanders southward through New Mexico and down to Texas. But periodically, the Rio Grande floods and threatens to drown out adjacent farm fields. Levees of sand were built many years ago to protect the farmland, but those levees can erode under flood conditions. To remedy the problem, the United States section of the International Boundary and Water Commission awarded three construction contracts to rebuild and raise the levees to 100-year flood standards... (more)
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Geospatial standards, data sharing and interoperability
by Steven Ramage, Open Geospatial Consortium
Geospatial (or location) technology includes everything from geographic information systems (GIS) to location services, to earth observation, the GeoWeb, sensor networks, augmented reality, location-based Web advertising and much more.The effective use of location is key to the value of many applications.The ability to integrate location resources into services and applications is often based on the use of standards... (more)
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Fit for purpose slope hazard management systems
by Robert Leyland, CSIR Built Environment
Landslides and rockfalls, like most natural hazards, cannot be prevented but the effects thereof can be mitigated using sound engineering judgement. For this reason roads are generally constructed in such a way that steep slopes adjacent to the road are avoided and the risk that a landslide or rockfall will envelop the road is reduced.However, it is impossible to avoid all areas with uneven topography and inevitably... (more) |
Mobile mapping in a southern African context
by Sander Jongeleen and Andrew Evans, Topcon, and Mike Digue, VI Instruments
Mobile Mapping should not be viewed as a one-stop-shop solution. Different applications require different resolutions of data and have varying levels of acceptable and achievable accuracy. Local needs and circumstances add another layer of requirements that need to be taken into account for successful application of mobile mapping... (more)
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Exploring options for the national mosaic
by Riaan van den Dool, SANSA Space Operations
SANSA, the South African National Space Agency, which came into operation on 1 April 2011, generates and delivers a 2,5 m SPOT 5 national mosaic to government once every year. This mosaic forms the backdrop to many of the national GIS related datasets. The success of this annual undertaking relies heavily on the data acquisition agreement between SANSA and the French Spot Image company - an agreement that comes at a considerable monetary cost to SANSA... (more) |
Mapping data for location based services
by Etienne Louw, MapIT
We are literally experiencing a mapping evolution. We all understand the traditional means of making digital maps - data collection, data capture, data verification etc. using government sources (plan approval entities), field work (sending out of mobile vans), imagery etc. Tom Tom does exactly the same, but they allow their map updating to be enhanced by the community itself... (more) |
Interorganisational GIS data sharing for address organisations
by Malete Daniel Sebake, Council for Geoscience, and Serena Coetzee, University of Pretoria
In South Africa, spatial address data has been collected by different public and private organisations, with little or no cooperation on data sharing. Although there is weighty
evidence about the benefits of spatial data sharing, organisations are still experiencing problems in making it happen, hence the costly duplication of efforts in data collection and storage still persists... (more) |
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