As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, mobility data is being used to track and map out social distancing compliance and track the spread of the coronavirus.

The post Using Location Data to Map People’s Movements, Social Distancing Efforts, and the Spread of COVID-19 appeared first on GIS Lounge.

UPLAND, Ind., April 9, 2020 — (PRNewswire) —  NearSpace Launch Inc. (NSL) will be delivering its 500^th space system for launch in the Summer of 2020. The NSL vision is State-of-art Technology, Service, and Education. NSL is marking this milestone by announcing the creation of a new STEM non-profit to help students achieve their dreams of near space science research in atmospheres and astronomy.

"It is hard to believe NSL has had the privilege of seeing 500 systems and subsystems go into orbit over such a short time period," says Dr Hank Voss, co-founder and Chief Scientist of NSL. He goes on to say, "It has been accomplished in partnership with so many different customers from different industries and the hard work of a dedicated NSL team."  The NSL board and employees consist of several professors, teachers, and educators with decades of experience in teaching and space research.

NSL has built satellites and subsystems with Air Force, DoD, NASA, State Officials, Universities and Industry. One recent STEM mission included flying a 60 satellite STEM constellation for school districts in Virginia.  Over the past 5 years, NSL has had 100% mission success rate in...

World's Most Powerful Workstation Now Available with OmniSci Platform to Bring Accelerated Analytics to Individual Technical Professionals

SAN FRANCISCO, April 9, 2020 — (PRNewswire) —   OmniSci^[1], the pioneer in accelerated analytics, and Z by HP^[2] today announced a collaboration to bring the power of advanced data analytics to the HP Z8, the world's most powerful workstation. As a preloaded component in the Z8 Workstation Evaluation Program, OmniSci's accelerated analytics platform gives data scientists and analysts the ability to directly interrogate massive datasets at their workstations, overcoming the cost and needless operational hurdles presented by cloud and server-based deployments.

OmniSci offers accelerated analytics at scale. The platform is capable of processing and visualizing billions of rows of data in milliseconds, enabling data scientists as well as geospatial and business analysts to gain new insights from vast collections of internal and/or external data. With the OmniSciDB SQL database engine and OmniSci Immerse data visualization interface preloaded into the Z8 workstation, users can instantly enjoy the extreme speed and interactivity of the OmniSci platform in a discrete, secure and personalized hardware solution that is ready to use.

"We are dedicated to delivering the best user experience in all our solutions, including mobile and desktop workstations for professional creators and power users,"...

HOLMDEL, N.J., April 9, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Suntuity AirWorks ( https://suntuityairworks.com^[1]), through its collaboration with Suntuity University's AirWorks Academy ( https://suntuityuniversity.com/airworks-academy/^[2]), is offering free webinars to introduce public safety officials to drone technologies that can enable them in their fight against the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Leveraging Suntuity University's Learning Management Systems and Suntuity AirWorks' enterprise equipment support teams ( https://suntuityairworks.com/enterprise/^[3]), the webinars will enable public safety officials and first responders to take immediate advantage of the safety and efficiency of drone technologies and services during the pandemic.

The free webinars are a part of the Suntuity Group Pledge offerings ( http://suntuitygroup.com/suntuity-cares/^[4]) to give back to communities when they need it the most, and help them work safer and smarter by ensuring public safety personnel have access to the same lifesaving drone technologies used across Europe and Asia to effectively flatten the coronavirus infection curve.

"We created these webinars to enable our heroes on the front lines of this...

Nature has a behind-the-scenes profile of how the enormously popular coronavirus tracking map created by Johns Hopkins University was created.

The post The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Map Dashboard Receives a Billion Hits a Day appeared first on GIS Lounge.

BRAMPTON, ON, April 8, 2020 /CNW/ - Effective today, April 8^th, the sale transaction of MDA by Maxar Technologies (NYSE: MAXR^[1]) (TSX: MAXR^[2]) to a consortium led by Toronto-based investment firm Northern Private Capital (NPC) has officially closed. This marks the return of MDA to Canadian control as a private, independent company headquartered in Canada.

Founded in 1969, MDA is Canada's largest space technology developer and manufacturer, with over 1,900 employees across the country. Through a strong collaboration and partnership with the Government of Canada that spans several decades, MDA has delivered world-leading, iconic technologies such as the Canadarm family of space robotics for the U.S. Space Shuttle program and the International Space Station and three generations of RADARSAT Earth observation satellites for the Canadian Government.

NPC, led by John Risley and Andrew Lapham, has appointed Mike Greenley as Chief Executive Officer of MDA.  "I am very proud to lead MDA at such a pivotal moment in this great company's history," said Mike Greenley, CEO of MDA. "It is inspiring to be associated with such eminent Canadian business leaders who share in a vision to turn MDA into a global...

New GeoPortal Site Provides Free Location Data and Mapping Resources

REDLANDS, Calif. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — April 8, 2020 — Esri^[1], the global leader in location intelligence, today announced that it has launched the Caribbean GeoPortal, a comprehensive cloud-based platform that provides rich content and solutions from Esri and its partners. Built in collaboration with its Caribbean distributor Spatial Innovision, the geoportal provides premium access to Esri's ArcGIS Online software, as well as geographic data and imagery for the Caribbean community. These data are able to be analyzed with ready to use spatial analytic services and open source tools.

“This is one of the most ambitious collaborations we have had in the international arena,” said Paloma Merodio, Vice President, Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI). “Countries and territories of the Caribbean will now have increased capacity for disaster response and sustainable development through empirical evidence-based data analysis and previously untapped data sources that can inform policies and decision-making.”

International agencies, financial institutions, inter-governmental organizations, NGO’s, as well as academia and the private sector, will be able to use the geoportal to address the most urgent development challenges—from economic development and climate issues to disaster risk management and response, as well as health care. Specifically, they will now be able to leverage this technology...

PRAGUE, April 9, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Czech-based data analytics and risk assessment firm Semantic Visions^[1] (SV) has released to YouTube^[2] a dramatic geospatial visualization of the spread of the novel Coronavirus in the world's online media.

"This visualization not only mirrors the spread of the disease itself, but our data shows exactly how the coronavirus story was presented in national and regional media outlets as the pandemic grew," explains CEO Frantisek Vrabel.

The video, which was based on the semantic analysis of 82,283,207 articles in the world's 10 major languages, shows how global awareness of the disease grew from a few almost imperceptible news stories in early January to global coverage of the pandemic by the end of March.

"Our data and analysis have uncovered a trove of information related to the spread of the virus," said Vrabel. "Not only can we see how the disease was presented in Chinese media at the outset of the pandemic, but also how disinformation about Covid-19 was propagated by bad actors, namely out of Russia."

In...

New discussion paper aims to coordinate the development of data standards produced by the two leading standards organization

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and buildingSMART International (bSI) have released an industry-defining paper as part of their Integrated Digital Built Environment (IDBE) joint working group. This paper aims to coordinate the development of the relevant data standards that are produced at each organisation. The Discussion Paper, entitled Built environment data standards and their integration: an analysis of IFC, CityGML and LandInfra, is free to download from OGC’s Discussion Papers webpage^[1]. 

This report looks at a variety of challenges and addresses the need to develop better integration at a high level between BIM and GIS standards. The paper focuses on four key topics: 

1. Predominant disparities that hinder integration
2. Fundamental operations that underpin use cases
3. Methods of integration in usage
4. Proposed action points 

The IDBE working group will continue to work on the points highlighted and aims to overcome integration challenges, to articulate the main use cases, devise a system of common unique identifiers and agree on a collaborative harmonisation approach. 

Richard Petrie, Chief Executive, bSI said, “the...