ASFPM Releases Report on Cost of Flood Mapping for the Nation
Flood Mapping for the Nation: A Cost Analysis for the Nation’s Flood Map Inventory
Tuesday, March 05, 2013 The Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) urges national investment in a comprehensive, updated flood map inventory for every community in the US. This will drive down costs and suffering from flooding on our nation and its citizens, as well as providing the best tool for managing flood risk and building sustainable communities.
For full text and to download a copy of the report, visit The Association of State Floodplain Managers | ASFPM.
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- More Resources on Floods – from ASFPM (recoverydiva.com)
On the power and perils of “preemptive government”
By Alex Howard, O’Reilly Strata, February 208, 2013
The last time [Alex] spoke with Stephen Goldsmith, he was the Deputy Mayor of New York City, advocating for increased use of “citizensourcing,” where government uses technology tools to tap into the distributed intelligence of residents to understand – and fix – issues around its streets, on its services and even within institutions. In the years since, as a professor at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the former mayor of Indianapolis has advanced the notion of “preemptive government.”
for full text of this article and to list to the interview, please visit On the power and perils of “preemptive government” – Strata.
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- On the power and perils of preemptive government (strata.oreilly.com)
New NRC Report: Future U.S. Workforce for Geospatial Intelligence
Mapping Sciences Committee, National Research Council Preview Report Release, Jan 2013
Authors:
Committee on the Future U.S. Workforce for Geospatial Intelligence; Board on Earth Sciences and Resources; Board on Higher Education and Workforce; Division on Earth and Life Studies; National Research CouncilAbstract: We live in a changing world with multiple and evolving threats to national security, including terrorism, asymmetrical warfare (conflicts between agents with different military powers or tactics), and social unrest. Visually depicting and assessing these threats using imagery and other geographically-referenced information is the mission of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). As the nature of the threat evolves, so do the tools, knowledge, and skills needed to respond. The challenge for NGA is to maintain a workforce that can deal with evolving threats to national security, ongoing scientific and technological advances, and changing skills and expectations of workers.
Future U.S. Workforce for Geospatial Intelligence assesses the supply of expertise in 10 geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) fields, including 5 traditional areas (geodesy and geophysics, photogrammetry, remote sensing, cartographic science, and geographic information systems and geospatial analysis) and 5 emerging areas that could improve geospatial intelligence (GEOINT fusion, crowdsourcing, human geography, visual analytics, and forecasting). The report also identifies gaps in expertise relative to NGA’s needs and suggests ways to ensure an adequate supply of geospatial intelligence expertise over the next 20 years.
To download a PDF copy of the report, visit Future U.S. Workforce for Geospatial Intelligence.
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- National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates – Geospatial Research and Mapping (GRAM) – Application Deadline March 1st 2013 (gisandscience.com)
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- Possibility and Probability in Geospatial Information Visualization (dhs.stanford.edu)
‘Why Don’t We Own This’ Site Maps Detroit’s Housing Crisis
By Ashley Woods and Kate Abbey-Lambertz, HuffPost Detroit, January 28, 2013
Alsup and Paffendorf said there are many possible uses for their improved site. Detroiters could visualize the privately created Detroit Future City framework, which provides a road map for city development over the next four decades, using WDWOT’s data. Community organizations could build private maps to keep track of abandoned lots in their neighborhood. Organizations working on foreclosure prevention may find the data to be more proactive.
But not everyone sees the open access to information as a good thing. When WDWOT first made information from the massive county foreclosure auction readily available online, some wondered if the site would just help out-of-state speculators to buy up property on the cheap — with no intention of ever improving it.
via ‘Why Don’t We Own This’ Site Maps Detroit’s Housing Crisis With New Tools To Battle Back.
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New Report: The Feasibility of Developing a US National Parcel Database
In 2010, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD charted new territory in an effort to develop a national database of standardized parcel-level property data collected directly from the most authoritative sources: local counties. HUD contracted with Abt Associates Inc. and their subcontractors, Fairview Industries and Smart Data Strategies, to embark on an exploratory project for assembling local assessor data, including key attributes such as property address, assessed value, land use, sales price, and sales history, for 127 targeted counties. The primary tasks of the project included identifying the appropriate data sources in each community, assembling the data and metadata, and standardizing the data in a common format to be accessible for HUD research efforts and for possibly aggregating data to higher levels of geography for public dissemination.
To download a PDF copy of the report, visit The Feasibility of Developing a National Parcel Database: County Data Records Project Final Report | HUD USER.
Can Mobile Phones Improve Factory Fire Safety?
by Tripti Lahiri, WSJ India, December 30, 2012
In the wake of the fire at a Bangladesh factory that killed at least 112 garment workers on Nov. 24, U.S. and European retailers who buy from the South Asian country have said they will drastically improve safety checks at the factories they use. … But few of the plans being considered by retailers seem likely to address issues that labor groups have raised with regard to the present safety audit system – that they don’t allow workers a way to alert retailers to issues that crop up when the brands’ representatives are not around. Another complaint is that information on fire safety is generally kept confidential and rarely shared in a comprehensive way with the workers most likely to be at risk. Indian-American entrepreneur Kohl Gill is hopeful that cellphones, which are now widespread in exporting countries like Bangladesh and China, could help.Through his two-year-old company LaborVoices, Mr. Gill has been developing a voice-activated system that workers can call to leave messages about workplace conditions. ….
For full text of this article, please visit Can Mobile Phones Improve Factory Fire Safety? – India Real Time – WSJ.
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- Bangladesh Fire Kills More Than 100 and Injures Many (nytimes.com)
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