The Earth Is Square

.. And a lot of resources. An interesting article on CNN about what is behind Tele Atlas’s constantly updating base road data.

Tele Atlas gets this information by combining satellite imagery, local, state and federal maps and most importantly, putting the rubber to the road in its Mobile Mapping Vans.

Now what is interesting are their vans, like the Google street view vehicles, they are also taking high resolution images as they drive around.  But this is not for street view (thought it probably could be), it is for getting road information such as number lanes, speed limits, ramp layouts and road types.

We have all seen the radar maps that are out there, but they all do about the same thing.  Show you a radar image, and in most cases you are able to loop it.  and that is what passes as “interactive” for a lot of people.

But one of the local news stations that I watch, has a new interactive radar online that is a lot more than just a  looping image.  They call it iRadar (Beta), but it is already one of my favorite radar sites to hit.

At first glance it does look like any other Radar image, with the radar shown and symbols for what type of weather to be expecting in some storm cells.

But where it gets interesting is when you put your mouse over the icons on the map, then you start getting useful information.  Such as direction of travel and how long till a different location can see the storm show up.

Now one thing I would like to see added is wind information, velocity and direction.

Another feature I like is the lightning map, when you click on it, it shows you the local area lightning strikes for the past 15 minutes.  Most weather maps will only show you a national level lightning map.

The lightning indicators can show a few strikes or hundreds of strikes, it varies by zoom level.

Another nice feature is to overlay NWS Bulletins, but this too I would like to see improved with a way to click on the bulletin area and get information about that alert.

Still room for improvements, but this is still by far the best weather/radar map I have come across to date.

This is an FYI for World Wind users.. or anyone that may be accessing the data through other applications:

This weekend, World Wind’s supporting servers will be unavailable due to a planned building upgrade. World Wind’s primary data server (Blue Marble, LandSat imagery and elevation data) is hosted at network.com and will remain online.

Edit: All done

FalconView has been released as open source under a mandate from the government by Georgia Tech. FalconView is a PC based Mapping Application widely used by the US DoD and Allied countries, but historically it has not been available to the general public.

FalconView is a Windows mapping system that displays various types of maps and geographically referenced overlays, and is an integral part of the Portable Flight Planning Software (PFPS).

Supported Base Maps:

• GeoTIFF
• TIROS TopoBath
• Digital Terrain Elevation Data (DTED) / LIDAR
• Vector Product Format (VPF)
• CADRG
• MrSID

Open Source Features:

1. Base Map Types Supported
2. KML Support
3. WMS Support
4. Shapefile Support
5. Drawings
6. Analysis Tool
7. Moving Map Tool
8. ArcGIS Support
9. SkyView Mode
10. NITF Support
11. Elevation Data / Contour Lines
12. Coordinate Grid / Coordinate Systems
13. Programmatic Extensibility

Now what would be interesting to do is integrate some/most of the features into WWJava.

Another school that is leveraging World Wind Java for a project is the International Space University.  This project consists of a group 40 students with different backgrounds ranging from satellite applications to policy and law.

The team project is described as disaster risk management (DRM) and the mission statement is to extend the current capabilities of CAPRA (Comprehensive Approach for Probabilistic Risk Assessment) using both space and ground based technologies to evaluate risk, minimize vulnerability, and mitigate the adverse effects of disasters in Central America.

This summer there are three Programming Camps being held at the iD Programming Academy at Stanford University. These camps are for 13 to 18 year olds and focuses on the Java language and NASA World Wind.

One group had to build a computerized version of Risk, to be played on the World Wind globe, while another group created a program allowing users to personalize World Wind maps by labelling points of interest and mapping routes. A third group had to figure out a way to use a Wii Fit Balance Board to move across the World Wind globe — users stand on the board and lean forward to go forward, sideways to go sideways, essentially flying over the Earth.

I have already shown a video of the WWJava Risk Game.  Which is quite amazing.

Great work for a bunch of kids.