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A Discord server I use has a channel called #til, standing for Today I Learned. It’s a place to post interesting or surprising things you recently learned. I took my posts to that channel from the last couple of years, tidied them up and have listed them below. Hopefully you’ll find something interesting there: TIL […]

Auch 2025 war wieder ein aktives Jahr auf digital.ebp.ch. Wir haben (ohne den Rückblick auf 2024) insgesamt 12 Blogposts publiziert zu unseren Themen IT und Geoinformation entlang von «Analyze, Plan, Build, Run». Aber welche Themen haben unsere Kundinnen und Kunden und uns speziell beschäftigt? Zeit, kurz zurückzublicken in einer Art «Highlight Reel». Veranstaltungen: Digitale Transformation, …

“World of communication’, in Rome, in the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. It dates from 1972 and is made by Jiří Kolář. ” I htink the collage on the globe is made with postage stamps.

We are happy to announce that the QGIS User Conference 2026 will take place on 5–6 October 2026 in Laax,… Read more QGIS User Conference 2026 in LAAX

Revisei recentemente áreas da Serra fortemente afetadas pelas chuvas da enchente de 2024. Um trecho da BR-470 na região da Ponte dos Arcos sofreu múltiplos deslizamentos e, 19 meses depois, ainda opera em sistema de comboio (sentido único reversível com escolta), com longas esperas, tornando várias estradas vizinhas rotas alternativas importantes. Ao refazer o levantamento ali, notei uma quantidade significativa de nova sinalização de advertência, principalmente para risco de desmoronamentos. Como o OsmAnd agora oferece suporte básico à etiqueta hazard, passei a mapear esses riscos quando há placas de advertência no local, pois tendem a permanecer relevantes por muito tempo. Pensando na utilidade prática para navegação, especialmente à noite e sob chuva, decidi focar o mapeamento de hazard apenas em dois riscos: desmoronamentos ( hazard=landslide, que podem influenciar a escolha da rota quando há chuva intensa) e animais ( hazard=animal_crossing, uma fonte comum de acidentes)....

Fort Irwin, CA, USA CALIBRE Category: Specialist

During the fellowship, I learned how to validate more effectively, especially by using filters, search functions, and setting up map paint styles. I became better at identifying issues, mapping across different countries, and validating data from other regions. This helped me understand mapping more deeply, including the different shapes of buildings across countries. I also gained a stronger grasp of quality standards and grew more comfortable using JOSM shortcuts. For example, while validating building footprints in Africa and later in Asia like Japan, North and South America, I noticed differences in building construction styles and settlement patterns. By applying filters and map paint styles, I was able to quickly identify inconsistencies such as overlapping polygons or missing tags and correct them. This experience not only improved my technical validation skills but also gave me a broader perspective on how mapping standards can be applied across diverse contexts. During...

No dia 3 de janeiro de 2026 o grupo informal OSM Braga organizou um pequeno encontro e mapathon. Em 2024 chegámos a fazer vários encontros (físicos e online) entre maio e agosto, mas em 2025 estivemos apenas em contacto virtual através do nosso grupo no Telegram, e ao aproximar-se o final do ano, o o_andras lançou o desafio de nos voltarmos a encontrar, iniciando e coordenando a conversa que veio a resultar neste evento. Já não deu para ser em 2025, mas em contrapartida inaugurámos 2026 em grande estilo — batemos o nosso recorde de participantes, passando de 5 para 9 (poucos, mas bons! 😁) Além de mapeadores da cidade e arredores, juntaram-se também membros da comunidade vindos do Porto e até Lisboa (graças ao apoio da Wikimédia Portugal que se ofereceu para cobrir despesas de deslocação dos participantes). Também tivemos uma diversidade interessante de níveis de experiência, desde mapeadores experientes até curiosos que nunca tinham editado o OSM. Vários de nós já nos...

ESQUEMAS DE ETIQUETAS PARA MAPEAMENTO TEMÁTICO COM OPENSTREETMAP PUBLICADOS EM 2025 [English below]   A empresa IVIDES DATA, associada ao Instituto Virtual para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável - IVIDES.org, publicou em 2025 quatro esquemas de etiquetas para mapeamento temático com OpenStreetMap - vilas rurais, acesso a praias, toponímia e mineração. Os documentos são resultantes de novas pesquisas conjuntas e sessões de treinamento realizados com três instituições de ensino superior brasileiras: Universidade do Vale do São Francisco - Univasf, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais - UFMG e Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ.   Espera-se que o material gerado seja adotado em mapeamentos colaborativos que não são tão frequentes, mas que possuem importância estratégica para o Brasil e os demais países. Um dos guias está em inglês e fará parte de publicação internacional sobre acesso a praias (uma iniciativa franco-brasileira), a ser lançada ainda em 2026.   [PT]...

Reinder spotted these mappy suitcases in a hotel window in Rome. He was so taken with them that he didn’t mention the nice looking globe, while his wife apparently was more impressed by the towels folded as swans. Go figure! If only those cases were a bit bigger and had wheels.

On New Year’s Day, I released a small virtual fireworks show to celebrate the start of the year. The Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung then put my effort to shame by publishing an impressive orbital tour of the entire planet on the same day - recorded by the International Space Station.Illuminated Cities and Northern Lights: A New Year's Flight around the World around the World is a guided

#DevelopmentSeed has released #stacmap, an #opensource, map-first visualizer for exploring and searching #STAC collections through a simple, browser-based interface. It already supports natural-language queries (albeit experimentally) and also stac-#geoparquet.

Our White label sites system allows organisations and companies to embed an active travel route planner into their websites easily. You can see some examples of the system in use at these sites: Ways Around The Bay (Morecambe Bay) – Plan your route Suffolk On Board – Dare to explore Cumbria Travel Actively – journey planner Cycle Ashford – route planner       Today we launch the latest release. We’ve added/enhanced a range of useful features: A fresh new mobile-friendly interface 3D itinerary mode ‘How far can I travel from here?’ – travel isochrones E-bike routing Elevation display with scrubbable control Browsing curated routes as both map/card New POIs display These enhance the main A-B routing, optional circular routing, multiple waypoints, choice of map display, curated routes, and various navigation features. . A new, user-friendly mobile display with 3D mode. New isochrones feature – shows how far from a starting location you can travel. New 3D itinerary mode,...

The AGS Globe: NYC Flooding Adaptation Strategies by American Geographical Society The American Geographical Society’s Weekly Newsletter for Tuesday, January 6, 2026 Read on Substack

GIS Specialist - City of Broken Arrow, Broken Arrow, OK posted on 2026-01-06

Sr GIS Analyst - Mecklenburg County, Charlotte, NC posted on 2026-01-06

Für das Mappen komplexer räumlicher Strukturen sind 360° Street View Bilder eine großartige Unterstützung. Schnelligkeit und Vollständigkeit der Datenerfassung sind die größten Pluspunkte. Einzig die hohen Kosten waren für mich abschreckend. Das ändert sich derzeit. Die erste und zweite Generation der Consumer 360°-Kameras kommt nun zu sehr günstigen Preisen in den Gebrauchtwarenhandel. Die Samsung Gear 360 Modell 2017 ist z.B. ab 20€ zu haben. Da musste ich zugreifen :-) Kamerahalterung fürs Fahrrad Ziel war, so schnell wie möglich Testfahrten machen zu können. Es kamen daher nur Komponenten in Frage, die im eigenen Lager oder beim Händler um die Ecke vorrätig waren. Das Design spielte keine Rolle, es sollte nur beim Fahren nicht stören und bei Nichtgebrauch rasch demontierbar sein. Die Konstruktion zeigen die folgenden Bilder: Bild 01: DIY Stockstativ fürs Fahrrad (Zoom). Länge = 165cm Bild 02: Montage am Fahrrad mit Rohrschellen (zoom). Rohrschellen mit...

Tracking Developments in AI Laws and Regulations for Geospatial Professionals

Reinder spotted this mosaic map of the Old City of Rome, “Saw this in the lobby of the Santa Chiara hotel in Rome. The size of the map is let’s say 50 x 70 cm, it is made of little stones of approximately 4 x 4 mm. No artist is mentioned — but he or […]

I think we would all like to banish the United States to Mars. Well now you can thanks to a new size comparison map. There have been a lot of (what are probably mostly vibe-coded) 'true-size of' maps lately. The True Size of Countries definitely has the AI-map template aesthetic often associated with large language model–designed maps, however it also offers a fresh twist on a familiar

Senior IT Consultant - Utility Billing (CIS/EUMS) - Statigen Technology Solutions, Coolidge, AZ, USA, posted on 2026-01-05

contributors may I point you to our online mapathon tomorrow night? Missing Maps London Online: Zoom 6th January 19:00 – 21:15 (Europe/London) The early month meeting is focused on new mappers with breakout rooms for iD, JOSM and mappers who want to learn about validation usually with JOSM. Next one is 6 January Get your free ticket . This Mapathon will take place online! If you wish to attend, then please get a ticket and details for joining will be shared with you. This event is London based in name only! Since we have moved to virtual events we have been getting attendees from all over the world - we heartily welcome this! Schedule 19:00: Introduction to Missing Maps and practical information 19:15: iD Training / JOSM Training / Validator Training 21:00: Closing discussion and potential talks

Las Vegas, January 5, 2026 — CES — Hesai Technology (NASDAQ: HSAI; HKEX: 2525), the global leader in lidar solutions, announced today that it will double its annual production capacity in 2026 — from 2 million units to over 4 million units — driven by accelerating demand for ADAS and robotics lidar. Scaling to 4 […]

In the past we have written how one can use social media or newspapers to study the world around us. Keeping with this theme of using text we (Xinyu Fu, Catherine Brinkley, Thomas Sanchez, Chaosu Li and myself) have a new editorial entitled "Not just numbers: Understanding cities through their words" which accompanies a special issue in Environment and Planning B entitled "Leveraging Natural Language Processing for Urban Analytics" The editorial discusses how researchers can use natural language processing  (NLP) methods to get a sense of a diverse range of issues impacting cities. To quote from the editorial, these range:  "from  analyzing housing development from council planning applications (Lin et al., 2025), revealing visitor perceptions of famous attractions or passengers’ perceptions on transit service quality from social media (Luo et al., 2025; Ma et al., 2025), defining the meaning of urban imageability based on online review (Zhu et al., 2025), understanding the spatial...

I really haven’t got much time or energy at the moment (I spent most of the Christmas break with an extremely painful back, which was exhausting and frustrating), but I wanted to post a very brief list of books I read this year. I read a total of 44 books this year, which includes re-reads […]

Executive Summary Geospatial operational readiness in 2026 requires more than reliable systems, it demands contextually aware operations that understand where work happens, under what conditions, and how those conditions affect decision quality. Deterministic workflows remain foundational for repeatability and auditability, but they were not designed to interpret the conditional complexity inherent in geospatial data. As […]

Today's intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) community faces a critical crisis: analysts are drowning in exponential volumes of sensor data from the expanding Internet of Battle Things (IoBT), leading to severe cognitive overload and missed threats in contested environments. The imperative solution is the rapid integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to filter noise and automate multi-source sensor fusion. This article explores how leveraging edge processing and AI-driven workflows—exemplified by DARPA programs and innovations from BAE Systems, Esri, and Palantir—can transform overwhelmed analysts into agile decision-makers, securing information dominance against increasingly sophisticated adversaries.

IRVINE, CA – Terran Orbital, a leading manufacturer of small satellites primarily serving the aerospace and defense industries, announced today that it has been selected by Lockheed Martin to provide satellite buses for the Tranche 3 Tracking Layer (T3TRK) under the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). Under the program, Lockheed Martin […]

Mapy a zobrazovací nástroje OpenStreetBrowser: https://www.openstreetbrowser.org 3D mapa: https://demo.f4map.com Freemap.sk (Martin Ždila) Tématické mapky na Umap https://umap.osm.ch/en/ https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/ https://umap.openstreetmap.de Mapovací nástroje Přehled editorů: osm.wiki/Comparison_of_editors Rozcestníky: https://osm.fit.vutbr.cz/fody/ Revert změn: https://revert.monicz.dev Mapovací zdroje a manuály Změny: https://osmcha.org Vyhledávání changesetů: https://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-changesets a další nástroje na: https://resultmaps.neis-one.org/ Hledání POI: http://mijndev.openstreetmap.nl/~marczoutendijk/openpoimap/opm2025/index.html Overpass (hledání prvků): https://overpass-turbo.eu Seznam špatných atribucí: osm.wiki/Lacking_proper_attribution Archiv české OSM: Kasparkovi.net/osm Opensource street view: Kartaview Panoramax.xyz A od Meta: https://www.mapillary.com Jiné zajímavé odkazy Převodník formátů:...

Remember Santa’s Delivery Route from Xmas Eve? Ken sent me this modern version of that map which he spotted in the lobby of the Great Northern Hotel next to Kings Cross. Note that this time the map is north up.

Estimating how many people live within a specific area is a recurring challenge in public health, urban planning, and humanitarian work. Census data is often outdated, too coarse, or unavailable at the scale decision-makers need. A new open-source map created by Carlos Felipe Castillo shows how far you can get using nothing more than OpenStreetMap data and lightweight analytics.Carlos has built

Surekha Davies writes about on how monsters on maps led to her first book and then, in her second, to a consideration of why monsters exist as a category. By taking images of monstrous peoples… More

“The shortcomings and possibilities of generative AI are, of course, well chronicled across a million op-eds. I could write at length about the dangers or opportunities the technology presents,” writes Matt at Londonist. “But this… More

Mismatched descriptions: a Categoria Aqui e graças a uma extensão que instalei no Edge (que já não sei onde fui desencantar), que me permite ver as categorias ocultas das páginas da wiki e descobri mais coisas pra fazer. No caso mais ou menos simples, mas dentro de uma estrutura hiper mega complicada (claro); fui aos confins da por assim dizer wikidata da wiki do OSM (coisa que desconhecia… e que por ter feito esta empreitada manualmente através dos artigos da wiki nem posso dar link aqui)… E pôr as descrições dos artigos a coincidir com a descrição na wikidata porque pelos vistos isso é uma coisa. Divertido q.b., e assim também traduzi e completei algumas páginas. Depois de cerca de 20 páginas aniquilidas… Fontes de dados em Portugal: a tabela Também não sei como descobri esta página incrível. Pus-me a ver se os links funcionam numa tabela infinita de links para todas as câmaras municipais do país que providenciam dados geográficos. Muito pouco claro se é possível usar esses...

25/12/2025-31/12/2025 [1] I ‘Sisparnas’ developed by the Ministry of Tourism of the Republic of Indonesia | Leaflet – map data © by OpenStreetMap Contributors. Community Carlos Felipe Castilo has developed a web dashboard to predict population figures in a region using OpenStreetMap data, such as building footprints, levels, and housing density. Evgeny Arbatov noted the importance of local knowledge from runners and walkers who discover unmapped streets. Rphyrin has conducted a field mapping expedition along the west coast of Java. Rtnf travelled to Bandung to attend a wedding, observing the surroundings during the journey and mapping them on OpenStreetMap. Imports Chris Debian is proposing a bulk import of historical bunkers and pillboxes in the UK into OpenStreetMap. Damianeue is preparing a mass data import of Italy’s boundary data from the Database di Sintesi Nazionale into OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap Foundation The OpenStreetMap Operations Team reported that they...

Last one from Reinder’s Rome trip. “I saw these on the Via dei Fori Imperiali in the Eternal City: quite spectacular!”

কাতিলা শষ্ঠীতলা মন্দিরটি সঠিক অবস্থান ও মানসম্মত OSM ট্যাগ ব্যবহার করে ম্যাপে যুক্ত করা হয়েছে। মন্দিরটি রাজশাহী জেলার বাগমারা উপজেলার যোগীপাড়া ইউনিয়নের কাতিলা গ্রামে অবস্থিত। নিকটবর্তী পরিচিত বাজার হিসেবে নাগা বাজার উল্লেখযোগ্য, যা মন্দির থেকে আনুমানিক ১.৪ কিলোমিটার দূরে।

A year after launch, Topoprint has grown through community use and feedback across Switzerland. The post highlights three practical improvements aimed at making printed terrain models clearer and sturdier: route overlays, a stabilizing border ring, and multi-tile layouts. It introduces the new Designer Pro workflow for large prints, including examples and how to request print files.

I don’t know where to start with this one. Yes it is a map in the wild, but why would anyone make this decaying world held by rotting hands and then award it as a peace prize? I thought FIFA governed world football, is it really FIFA’s role to award peace prizes? As for the […]

Where do people around the world live today - and where were they born?The new Global Migration Map lets you explore international migration patterns using the United Nations’ International Migrant Stock 2024 dataset. By clicking on any country, you can discover where people living there originally came from, or where people born there now live - and how many people moved between each pair of

Hoje passei uma dúzia (!) de horas a tentar resolver a página “Pt:Map features”… E… não consegui fazer nada de jeito (acho até que piorei a situação). Fiquei cansada de ver “aerialways” (o primeiro item da lista) o dia todo… Terrível!! Foi esta página que me entreteve a necessidade de perceber alguma coisa que fosse. Esta wikipédia tem um problema grave com os templates. Entre traduzir, fazer o cross referencing, aprender nem sei que código… E subpáginas??? E erros de JSON?! e tabelas a dar erros com letras a vermelho….!! E… Secções de artigos separadas aleatoriamente por partes de templates sem nexo nenhum… Uf. Seria muito mais fácil se realmente se usassem as tabelas que vêm com as páginas de template, assim a tradução seria praticamente automática (já quase que é, na verdade) e seria mais fácil editar alguma coisa assim à primeira. Hei-de voltar a ocupar-me com esta tarefa hiper mega complicada. Fora isso estive a ver o que mais podia sintetizar ou traduzir nas várias...

I’m finally back to mapping after an unplanned 4-month break. I usually have a casual but relatively consistent approach to mapping: every time I have to go somewhere new and my exact destination isn’t in OSM, I add it once I arrive; if the opening times of a place I visit regularly change, I update them, and so on. As of late, though, this just hasn’t happened. Either map data has become good enough for my everyday needs in Gothenburg, Sweden or I’ve been paying less attention than usual. Probably a little bit of both. Right now, on the other hand, I’m visiting my family in Agrigento, Italy, and mapping is the perfect holiday activity for me: it can (to some extent) be done without a computer, which is a nice change of pace, and it gives me an excuse to be outisde, enjoy the warm weather and take all the side streets I haven’t explored before or have forgotten about. Plus, there’s so much to do here compared to Gothenburg! Today I simply went for a walk and answered a bunchn...

Buonasera a tutti! Sto modificando da un pò di tempo la mappa nella zona dove risiedo e che, per l’appunto, conosco meglio. Avevo infatti notato che nelle zone del mio quartiere mancavano gli edifici e i relativi negozi erano alquanto assenti, e mancavano intere vie, anche importanti oppure avevano errati sensi di marcia. E oltre a questo sto cercando di aggiornare i nodi della rete ferroviaria nazionale con le relative caratteristiche mancanti(sito web ufficiale, presenza di wifi, collegamento a wikimedia commons, codice UIC……). Proseguirò a modificare la mappa nei prossimi giorni, dato che c’è tantissimo da fare sono graditi consigli, suggerimenti e correzioni da altri mapper.

S tátou často cestujeme na různá místa, kam by lidská noha jen tak nevkročila. Máme rádi ten klid a krásná, lidmi nedotčená místa. Poslouchat zvuky dravých ptákům nad zamlženým údolím Otavy, kde není ani živáčka, je lahoda. Náš koníček má výhodu i pro mapování - zmapujeme místa, která by jen tak někdo nezmapoval. Hlavním cílem dnešního výletu sice bylo místo, kde je v sezóně docela dost lidí, ale dneska to šlo. A místa kolem byla také nádherná - jak se říká, i cesta je cíl. Mapovali jsme již v autobuse - hlavně povrchy viditelné v autobusu. Překvapilo nás, jak je severní plzeňsko špatně zmapované. Ne nadarmo se mu přezdívá “Česká sibiř”. Ku příkladu v březnu 2025 zde bylo hodně sněhu a mrazivý vítr, na Šumavě však ani centimetr bílé pokrývky. Když jsme dojeli do cílové stanice (Kozojedy), čekalo nás nemilé překvapení - zdejší vyhlášený pivovar byl zavřený. Povzdechli jsme si, že vánoční svátky jsou z pohledu turistiky docela na prd. Ale pak jsem si vzpomněli na hrozivou dobu...

Labels amenity place_of_worship building chapel denomination nondenominational name Vredeskerkje ref:bag 0373100000013111 website web wikidata Q137661192 wikimedia_commons web OSM weg 274915866

Tell Us About Yourself I’m Dilara, originally from Istanbul, Turkey. I studied at the prestigious M.Sc. Cartography program at four different universities in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. I have a multi-disciplinary background spanning cartography, urban and regional planning, design, and technology. Currently, I work as a part-time data scientist in Germany. Tell Us the […] The post Maps and Mappers of the 2025 Calendar – Dilara Bozkurt – Front Cover appeared first on GeoHipster.

The State of The Map Room in 2025: On my Patreon, I look back on how this site did in terms of traffic and income over the past year. Map Books of 2026: Already live,… More

Started this year with a weekend mapping project: locate and map public traffic camera feeds from city’s website. Day 2 and I’m halfway done, about 130 out of ca 260 have live feed links now. Roughly 5 of them weren’t previously mapped at all. Purpose of this diary entry is to save the checker scipt in publicly accessible place for unlikely reuse. Script scrapes all possible camera IDs and cross references them against already mapped feeds via overpass. EDIT: Project was mostly completed as of 2026-01-02, changeset/176761784 outlines up to 10 missing cameras yet to be mapped. Overpass query to get already mapped ones: [out:json][timeout:25]; area(id:3600079510)->.searchArea; node["contact:webcam"~ristm](area.searchArea); out geom; """ Download latest Tallinn traffic camera images from ristmikud.tallinn.ee. Images are saved next to this script (or into a fixed subfolder if the directory isn't clean) and overwritten on each run. Also each image gets a small text label...

Link to the Time Lapse Video of Amaravati (2015-2025) Time lapse video of OSM has been of interest to me for more than 10 years. I learned to use QGIS in 2015 and made a physical map of Andhra Pradesh in my first attempt. Learning QGIS with its myriad menus and concepts of GIS was daunting to venture further during my infrequent attempts. Finally I made my first time lapse video after 10 years. I found OSM contributor radiotrefoil's diary entry on the subject posted about an year back very helpful. Still I had to struggle to make a good video for OSM edits for Amaravati, the green field capital of bifurcated Andhra Pradesh, a province of India. This is an attempt to document my learnings and make it easier for others. Choosing an area of interest and fetching data OSM object model is based on few simple graphical primitives and several tags to capture the inherent complexity of reflecting the physical word as a digital map. To really prepare a good quality map, map needs to...

Melinda Clarke (of Melbourne Map fame) sent me this, she said “I met this young girl, we got chatting and I shared that I was producing a map of Melbourne. She then declared her love for maps, and travelling around the world – and showed me her tattoo of a world map on the soles […]

Imagine the Earth could write to you. What would it say?Letters from The Earth is an attempt to visualize global climate data not as charts or forecasts, but as daily first-person letters written by the Earth itself. It is an experiment to see whether data can be translated through narrative and emotion to convey a broader, more intuitive form of understanding than by raw numbers

My New Year’s resolution is to try not to lose any interest in mapping! How do I do that? I don’t know. What about you guys, what is your New Year’s Resolution related to mapping?

Schleswig Holstein Landesamt für Vermessung und Geoinformation Schleswig-Holstein - Kartendienste WMS Landesamt für Vermessung und Geoinformation Schleswig-Holstein - Liste der verfügbaren OpenGBD - Web-Dienste - ALKIS Flur-, Gemarkungsgrenzen Schleswig-Holsteinisches Metainformationssystem - WMS SH ALKIS (Flur-, Gemarkungsgrenzen) AdV MetadatenInformationsSystem - WMS SH ALKIS (Flur-, Gemarkungsgrenzen) Basis-Link / getCapabilities ID-Link https://dienste.gdi-sh.de/WMS_SH_ALKIS_Fluren_Gemarkungen?VERSION=1.3.0&SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetMap&LAYERS=gema,gemabez,flur,flurbez&STYLES=&CRS={https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:proj}&BBOX={bbox}&WIDTH={width}&HEIGHT={height}&FORMAT=image/png ALKIS Flurstücke Schleswig-Holsteinisches Metainformationssystem - WMS_SH_ALKIS_OpenGBD AdV MetadatenInformationsSystem - WMS_SH_ALKIS_OpenGBD Basis-Link / getCapabilities ID-Link...

Mi sono preso l’impegno di mappare per bene il mio quartiere, e mi sono accorto che ci sono diverse cose da aggiornare, senza contare che alcuni numeri civici sono messi quasi a casaccio, ma poco male, mi sto divertendo un sacco e piano piano sono sicuro di poter fare un bel lavoro. Per quanto riguarda le informazioni dei negozi, sto cercando di metterne il più possibile, numero di telefono, sito web, e addirittura a pagina Facebook. Mi piacerebbe anche dare una rinfrescata grafica proprio a open street map, perché ne avrebbe un gran bisogno, ci sono cose che sono pugni negli occhi, tipo le icone viola, ma sinceramente non so chi “controlla” la grafica di OSM, e non saprei neanche dove iniziare a cercare per proporre la cosa. Una cosa fighissima da fare sarebbe integrare il protocollo Activity Pub in mondo fa poter interagire con il social federati, come ad esempio mastodon, ma anche li non saprei da dove cominciare per proporre la cosa. Detto questo, non pensavo che OSM...

今天是2026年1月1号，前段时间一直想要在我的世界中复刻自己的县城，一直不知道从何下手，从高德api到arnis的生成，由于数据缺失和技术受限没能完成，这几日开始填补osm的数据，以便后续使用。 今天完善了油竹的部分区域，包括青田之心青田中学伯温中学和部分居民区，继续加油！也希望有人能够加入我的这项工作。

I couldn't get tickets for London's very popular New Year's Eve fireworks display, so I had to make my own virtual version.My 3D Fireworks Map displays colorful bursts of fireworks exploding above the City of London. The map starts by loading real-world buildings from the Global Building Atlas, a massive dataset of city structures from around the world.The real magic happens with the fireworks.

This has to be one of the best maps in the wild ever! Elizabeth sent me this from Weymouth “Last night on the South Coast. Looks like the map of UK, Ireland and Denmark.” Mappy New Year to everyone who contributes maps in the wild or follows us, let it be a year full of […]

A Slightly Unhinged Year in Review

এই ম্যাপিং কার্যক্রমে কাতিলা মণ্ডলপাড়া জামে মসজিদের তথ্য হালনাগাদ করা হয়েছে। মসজিদটি নাগা বাজার থেকে প্রায় ৫০ মিটার দূরে অবস্থিত। নিকটবর্তী হওয়ার কারণে নাগা বাজারের মুসল্লিরা নিয়মিত পাঁচ ওয়াক্ত নামাজ আদায়ের জন্য এই মসজিদটি ব্যবহার করেন। এই আপডেটে মসজিদের অবস্থানগত প্রেক্ষাপট ও আশপাশের এলাকার সাথে সম্পর্ক যথাযথভাবে উপস্থাপন করা হয়েছে।

Đường dây 500kV Quảng Trạch - Thanh Hoá (Tỉnh Thanh Hóa).kml https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CAs30AqC01IdpPGEmi6uBhpdTAMdBug3/view?usp=drivesdk Hướng tuyến đường dây 500kV Thanh Hóa - Phố Nối (dữ liệu thô).kml https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u8Vvw48k3d9zRKTlVBSwFt0zJTrbhQhJ/view?usp=drivesdk Dự án Đường dây 500kV Vũng Áng – rẽ Hà Tĩnh – Đà Nẵng (Mạch 3,4).kml https://drive.google.com/file/d/18gsBSZ8rCX1n7pbaQCFgwE9beyotjSml/view?usp=drivesdk Dự án Trạm biến áp 500kV Sơn La 1.kml https://drive.google.com/file/d/146riOWv4KVbzMxUavxT38fb8Tyo6yDdE/view?usp=drivesdk Dự án NHÀ MÁY NHIỆT ĐIỆN LNG HẢI PHÒNG.kml https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mJ55SkyZvvHeX2CZS_VKfhWQLDfESd1z/view?usp=drivesdk

Všem přeji do nového roku hodně úspěchů, ale hlavně štěstí a zdraví - bez něho bychom nemohli ani mapovat. Nechť se nám stále daří precizně mapovat a nabírat nové, nadšené členy. Jsem rád, že zrovna v tento den vám mohu představit náš nový projekt: https://osmcz.michalschneider.site/ Díky za pozornost

So last year I didn’t do a year in review because I was sitting in the hospital with one serious thought back in January: I was probably a few days away from the year in review not mattering anymore. How do you sum up this year. Usually I pour through a pile of things from […] The post 2025: Year in Review appeared first on North River Geographic Systems Inc.

Last weekend I traveled to the west coast of Java, specifically Anyer in Banten. The journey was done by train from Jakarta to Cilegon, followed by a local shared minivan taxi to Anyer. Throughout the trip, I collected field observations using Sakumap. The result was a raw GeoJSON file containing coordinates and timestamps for each entry. For observations I considered significant, I wrote a detailed report on the OSM Wiki. Less critical features such as restaurants, fuel stations, farms, and forest areas were added directly to OpenStreetMap by importing the Sakumap GeoJSON into iD Editor or JOSM, without additional documentation on the wiki, as the overhead did not seem justified. Using GeoJSON as a reference layer in JOSM turns out to be somewhat error-prone. Before uploading changes to OSM, the GeoJSON layer must be explicitly disabled. If it remains active during upload, JOSM issues a strong warning that the raw GeoJSON data itself is about to be pushed to the OSM...

작년 작성 결산을 마저 하지 못해 같이 올립니다. 2024년 ◈ 집중작성한거(대략 10개안팎 정도) : 가평, 부산, 성남, 세종, 시흥, 안성, 영주, 천안, 파주, 평택, 포천 ◈ 그럭저럭작성(서너개에서 5개안팎 정도) : 공주, 대전, 부산, 제천 ◈ 한두개씩 : 사천, 인천, 진주, 창원, 통영 2025년 ◈ 집중작성한거(대략 10개안팎 정도) : 익산, 김제, 횡성, 순천, 용인, 완주 ◈ 그럭저럭작성(서너개에서 5개안팎 정도) : 군산, 정선, 영월, 강릉, 정읍, 진주, 광주, 서울 ◈ 한두개씩 : 김해, 통영, 창원, 부산, 울산, 함양, 평창, 강진, 사천

Wandering in Covent Garden I spotted this advert for the Omega Speedmaster watch which has a cute globe panel and a Snoopy graphic. Who knew that Snoopy was the official Mascot for the NASA Space Programme with the agreement of Charles Schulz?

Earthsounds I’m guessing you’ve heard of - and perhaps even used - the popular location-addressing system, what3words. You may even know the three-word address for your home. But do you know your home’s personal songline? Aboriginal songlines are ancient pathways that crisscross the land, created and sung into existence by Ancestral beings during the Dreaming. Each songline is a living map:

PLUS: Mapping vulnerability at 10x higher resolution, using phones to assess seismic risk, and more.

He intentado hacer unos cambios en el mapa para que nos dirija por un trayecto más corto y sin curvas necesasias, además de excrementos de vacas. Conozco esa carretera. Los Gps gratis que usan open street map dirigen por una zona que no debiera. Si ese mismo trayecto lo indico con el gratis de la marca que no puedo escribir o con el famoso que fué diseñado por una empesa de israel pero ahora pertenece a la gran multinacional que no puedo escribir por normas de osm, dirige por donde es rápido, más directo, sin excrementos de vacas. Y entonces mi pregunta es ¿que cambios se necesitan para que funcione correctamente? es que no es lo único que hacen mal los gps que usan open street map. Tanto que es gratis, que no depende de una empresa pero funciona mal. para que me lleve por unas escaleras, por una zona pantanosa o cualquier zona por la que no se puede ir, prefiero W _ A _ Z - E o M -A - P - S Alguien me puede responder por qué funciona mal? No me gusta depender de un gps...

Hey, this is my first post here and I think it would be fitting if I’d tell all of you why I even created an account here and started making my own edits on OSM. Background First, you need to know that I’m a student at Westpomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin in department of computer science. That means that me, and 90% of people there are nerds with interests like: trains, transportation, hacking, programming, opensource and… well… maps. How it started? It all started during a normal day at University. We were walking from one building on campus to another when I noticed that my friend has a map open with a lot of pins and some questions on his phone. I asked him what it is and he told me about “Street Complete”. That’s it! I already knew that my ADHD butt found a new hyperfocus for the indefinite amount of time. I installed it and 3 of us started adding the detail information on the map around our campus. Street Complete era So… for the next few days I had Street...

Happy New Year from OsmAnd! As we welcome 2026, we reflect on an exciting year behind us — one that marked OsmAnd's 15th anniversary and introduced major innovations to our navigation experience. Among the most significant milestones of 2025 was the launch of our new fast offline routing, designed to make your routes smoother, calculations quicker, and travel even more efficient — no internet connection required. This breakthrough, together with continuous design improvements and enhanced usability, brought OsmAnd to a new level for millions of users worldwide. Now, as we move into 2026, we're ready to build on that foundation, shaping the future of navigation with even smarter, more connected solutions. The journey continues — and we're thrilled to have you with us. 2026 New Year Resolutions​ At OsmAnd, every new year brings fresh ideas and an even stronger drive to make navigation smarter, faster, and more intuitive. As we step into 2026, we're excited to continue innovating...

My diary entries are all my own thoughts and do not represent OpenStreetMap, The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) or any organisation using the HOT systems. Any errors are all my own work. Back in January 2025 I found myself mapping a HOT project in Kulob, Tajikstan. I had wanted to find a project to gain some experience of mapping water features and this project fit the bill. In support of a local tuberculosis screening programme, Médecins Sans Frontières required the update or addition of roadways, waterways and residential areas. No buildings. This was not a high priority project, so did not get much interest from the general HOT community. Only 11 mappers, with 3 completing tasks. Local mappers would be updating feature and area names. I mapped about 85% of the project, so I have a little stakeholder interest in the data use. Around the same time I had started attending the Missing Maps London on-line mapathons early in month and mid-month events. As well as getting...

Gaëlle Sutton shared these maps a bit before Christmas. The season is still on. Happy Holidays.

Most restaurant maps are designed to answer one question: what looks good right now? The dreadfully named Shittr answers a very different one - what won’t ruin my digestive system for the next 48 hours? Shittr is an interactive map that assigns restaurants a “Shit Score” - a 1 to 5 🚽 risk rating - based on real government health inspection data from the US and UK.💩💩💩At its core, Shittr uses

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/19/i-cant-think-of-a-place-more-pristine-133000-hectares-of-chilean-patagonia-preserved-after-local-fundraising Alguien lo está mapeando?

I was visiting Sa Pa, Vietnam, and navigating with Organic Maps. I was looking for a street that would bring me back to the city center. I could not see any on OSM or Google Maps. I walked for a while and was able to see a street that led in the right direction. It turns out that it connected to another street that brought me where I wanted to go. This made me realize how much of the useful information in maps depends on people walking, running, or commuting through those streets. You cannot see these kinds of streets from satellite images. You can only know them, but knowing them, you may not use GPS tracking to record them. I think this leaves only runners and anyone who likes walking to discover most of the streets that are not currently on the map.

কাতিলা দারুস সালাম ক্বওমী মাদরাসা রাজশাহী জেলার বাগমারা উপজেলার নিচু কাতিলা এলাকায় অবস্থিত একটি পরিচিত ক্বওমী ধর্মীয় শিক্ষা প্রতিষ্ঠান। মাদরাসাটি নাগা বাজারের উত্তর পাশে অবস্থিত এবং নাগা বাজার থেকে আনুমানিক ১২০০ মিটার দূরত্বে অবস্থান করছে, যা স্থানীয় সড়ক ও পায়ে চলাচলের মাধ্যমে সহজেই পৌঁছানো যায়। প্রতিষ্ঠানটি আশপাশের গ্রামগুলোর শিক্ষার্থী ও ধর্মপ্রাণ মানুষের কাছে সুপরিচিত। এই ডায়েরি এন্ট্রিতে মাঠ পর্যায়ে যাচাই (ground survey) ও স্থানীয় তথ্যের ভিত্তিতে মাদরাসাটির সঠিক অবস্থান, নাম ও প্রাসঙ্গিক ট্যাগ যাচাই করে OpenStreetMap–এ সংযোজন/হালনাগাদ করা হয়েছে। এর মাধ্যমে নিচু কাতিলা, নাগা বাজার ও পার্শ্ববর্তী এলাকার শিক্ষা প্রতিষ্ঠান সংক্রান্ত ভৌগোলিক তথ্য আরও নির্ভুল ও ব্যবহারযোগ্য হবে বলে আশা করা যায়।

In the modern product-driven technology landscape, services revenue is often viewed as problematic. So why, in the geospatial community, are services-led companies so much more successful?

The Onion: MTA Admits to Fabricating Large Parts of Subway Map. “‘Frankly, no one I know has ever ridden farther than the Carroll Street Station in Brooklyn. We’re not really sure what’s out there, but… More

Fairfax, VA, USA Fairfax County Government Category: Database

Klick hier für Deutsch Dear OSM Community The OSM Apps Catalog presents existing apps based on OSM data. I have plans to redesign the OSM Apps Catalog. In particular, I want to make the landing page and the detailed view of the apps more accessible to a wider audience. To understand what this needs, I have created a survey. Please fill it out and share your perspective with me. I would be very grateful if you could forward the survey to people who are not particularly interested in technology. This perspective is especially important to me. Click here for the survey. Best regards Markus aka ToastHawaii

dataset column i:...

Panama Canal Authority–Supported Open Data Initiative Background and Context The Los Chorros de Ciri basin, located west of Panama City, is a hydrologically and socially important watershed that supports rural communities while contributing to regional water security. In recognition of this dual importance, the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) funded a high-resolution mapping project focused on community-oriented outcomes and long-term public benefit. This project represents a shift away from closed, single-purpose GIS deliverables toward open geospatial data that can support community planning, environmental stewardship, and collaborative mapping initiatives. Project Objectives The mapping effort was designed around the following goals: Generate high-accuracy base mapping of the Los Chorros de Ciri basin using drone photogrammetry Identify and document community presence within the watershed Release derived GIS products for public and open-source use Data Acquisition...

I am proposing a major initiative to “ratify” and enhance the military fortification data on OpenStreetMap. This project actually began with a very specific personal goal: identifying and submitting newly discovered nodes for the UKBOTA (UK Bunkers On The Air) scheme. UKBOTA is a fantastic amateur radio award program that encourages the “activation” of historical bunkers and pillboxes. While searching for sites to submit to their database, I realized that while many valid sites exist in specialized archaeological records, our coverage on OSM is often incomplete, misplaced, or lacks the specific metadata (like precise coordinates and typology) required for schemes like UKBOTA. This led me to a broader vision: cross-referencing our map with high-quality datasets—specifically the Extended Defence of Britain (eDoB) database. The Vision I have been in discussion with Matt Aldred, the lead developer of the eDoB Online viewer, about bridging his extensive research with our global map....

Reinder shared this Christmas card designed by Patrick Bergsma

How much of Berlin is designed for cars - and how much for children and nature?Hans Hack has released an interactive map that offers a clear view of how urban space is allocated in Berlin. The tool compares the amount of urban space taken up by parking lots with that devoted to children’s playgrounds and other green spaces across Germany's capital.By centering the map on any point in the city,&

A new resource is very helpful for learning about Cloud Optimized data formats and sharing this information with colleagues:   https://zines.developmentseed.org/zines/cloud-native/#zine/1/  As an educator I particularly like it for its comic-magazine presentation style. I salute the Development Seed folks who put this together and know and think very highly of the authors, Kiri Carini. Through […]

GIS Technician - SunCoast Land Services, Lafayette, LA posted on 2025-12-28

কাতিলা সরকারি প্রাথমিক বিদ্যালয় রাজশাহী জেলার বাগমারা উপজেলার কাতিলা গ্রামে অবস্থিত একটি সরকার পরিচালিত প্রাথমিক শিক্ষা প্রতিষ্ঠান। বিদ্যালয়টি নাগা বাজারের নিকটবর্তী হওয়ায় এটি শুধু কাতিলা গ্রামের নয়, আশপাশের এলাকার শিশুদের জন্যও একটি গুরুত্বপূর্ণ শিক্ষাকেন্দ্র হিসেবে পরিচিত। স্থানীয় জনগণের দৈনন্দিন যাতায়াত ও বাণিজ্যিক কেন্দ্র নাগা বাজারের কাছাকাছি অবস্থানের কারণে বিদ্যালয়টিতে শিক্ষার্থীদের আসা–যাওয়া তুলনামূলকভাবে সহজ। এই বিদ্যালয়ে সাধারণত শ্রেণি ১ থেকে ৫ পর্যন্ত পাঠদান কার্যক্রম পরিচালিত হয় এবং বাংলা মাধ্যমের সরকারি প্রাথমিক পাঠ্যক্রম অনুসরণ করা হয়। বিদ্যালয়টি প্রাথমিক শিক্ষা অধিদপ্তরের আওতাভুক্ত এবং সরকার নির্ধারিত নীতিমালা অনুযায়ী শিক্ষাদান ও প্রশাসনিক কার্যক্রম পরিচালনা করে। এখানকার শিক্ষকেরা শিশুদের মৌলিক শিক্ষা, নৈতিক মূল্যবোধ এবং সামাজিক আচরণ গঠনে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ ভূমিকা পালন করে থাকেন। OpenStreetMap-এ কাতিলা সরকারি প্রাথমিক বিদ্যালয়ের অবস্থান যুক্ত করার মূল উদ্দেশ্য হলো নাগা বাজার এলাকার শিক্ষা অবকাঠামোকে আরও দৃশ্যমান করা এবং মানচিত্র ব্যবহারকারীদের জন্য সঠিক...

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The Canadian Press reports on the closure of Canada Map Sales, a map store owned by the Manitoba government that sells topo maps, nautical charts, and other maps, posters and imagery, at the end of… More

MacRumors reports that Flyover city tours in Apple Maps appear to have been discontinued as of iOS 26. The Flyover imagery itself remains; this is about the feature that led the user from landmark to… More

So it is almost the end of the year, I thought what if I created a summary blog of what I did. In Hungary: I’m only doing small edits in my neighborhood if some changes happen Outside of Hungary: Had a small “let’s map Europe” thing, and added forest/farmland land cover/land uses to several countries (Lithuania, Greece, Switzerland, Finland, Germany, Austria, Republic of Cyprus) And also mapped in some U.S. states, main focus on West Virginia (finally finished it after almost 5 years of mapping: June 2020 till Feb 2025 - read diary entry here: @ottwiz/diary/406073) and Pennsylvania, where I clean up the huge multipolygon mess after some users not taking enough care broke a huge 1k sq km big multipolygon. So this led me to start fixing up. Of course my goal is to map the forest cover of Pennsylvania as much as possible but it’s a way harder task than West Virginia was. Quality-wise, I try to make the quality of it better than it was, so more accurate and more aligns to the...

随时补充, 同时作为参考. 中国 函谷关 (灵宝, 河南) 明水古城 (章丘, 山东) 淮军公所, 清河道署及周边 (莲池, 河北) 冠世榴园 (峄城, 山东) 颜神古镇 (博山, 山东) 恐龙公园 (诸城, 山东) 郭子仪墓 (礼泉, 陕西) 松塘村 (南海, 广东) 美国 FDR 故居 (Hyde Park, NY) 玛利诺修会总部 (Ossining, NY) 魏尔农场 (Ridgefield, CT)

DBSN (DataBase di Sintesi Nazionale) is a database containing the most significant territorial information in Italy. It is developed by IGM (Istituto Geografico Militare) and is available in ODbL, as stated on its website. For reference, here’s the DBSN page on OSM wiki. Since municipality borders in Italy were updated last time in 2001 using ISTAT (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica) data, and since these are open data, I think it’s time to update everything in the right way. With the help of dsantini’s very useful scripts, I will download boundaries data for one province at a time (starting in Abruzzo, my home region), and then I will continue in alphabetic order. This project will start on Dec 2025/Jan 2026. I really don’t know how much it will take me, there are 7’896 municipalities in Italy. Here’s how I will work: download boundaries data for the whole province opening them in JOSM in order to preserve history/chronology, I will modify existing boundary lines/ways...

I worked on Norse and Orchard in Golden Colorado. The area could use some mapping love. Info from: https://gis.jeffco.us/webmaps/pzpublic/index.html

18/12/2025-24/12/2025 [1] OSM-based web app to display Wikidata items around a location | © Rtnf | Map data © OpenStreetMap Contributors. Community [1] rtnf has developed WD-NearbyItem, an OpenStreetMap-based web app to display the Wikidata items around a location. bmaczero has setup a MapRoulette task to fix multi-pitch tennis courts in the US. Malle Yeno shared his 2025 OSM mapping activities in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, ranging from StreetComplete surveys, street-level imagery collection, pavement (sidewalk) mapping, and indoor mapping, to maintaining the city’s OSM Wiki page and proposing new OSM tags. Pieter Vander Vennet explained the current complexity and problems with the existing road crossing tagging scheme on OpenStreetMap and called on the community to improve it together. rphyrin shared the thoughts he had when wearing an OpenStreetMap-based t-shirt. SilvEsth blogged that YouthMappers UMSA Bolivia have participated in mapping the Senda Verde Wildlife...

In June 2025 I got a heat pump installed in my 3 bedroom semi-detached house built in 1900. I thought I’d document the process as it may be of interest to others, particularly some aspects of the heat pump sizing and installation of the underfloor heating, which on discussing with some people they found quite interesting and useful. I started the discussion with the local installer, Rewneable Heat, about a year before, and it took much back and forth via email with some phone calls and a couple of site visits to get the retrofit all designed. As I’d done the basic heat survey in a spreadsheet myself, they were able to use this as a starting point and saved them having to come out and do all the measurements. We moved into the property 2 years before the install, and on moving in discovered there was an issue with the thin kitchen radiator leaking at the valves, so had to isolate it quickly as no easy way to fix it properly, combined with knowing we were going to install the...

An absolute cracker from Wanmei L, shame she didn’t say where she spotted it. Seems like a good one to kick off this years 12 Mapppy Days of Christmas

আজ আমি রাজশাহী জেলার বাগমারা উপজেলার কাতিলা গ্রামে অবস্থিত নাগা বাজার এলাকায় মাঠ পর্যায়ের পর্যবেক্ষণ (field survey) পরিচালনা করি। নাগা বাজার–মৌলভীবিভা সড়ক দিয়ে চলাচলের সময় লক্ষ্য করি যে, প্রধান সড়কের পাশে একটি গ্রামীণফোন সেলুলার টাওয়ার স্থাপিত রয়েছে, যা এখনো OpenStreetMap-এ সঠিকভাবে চিহ্নিত ছিল না। মাঠ পর্যায়ে অবস্থান নিশ্চিত করার পর আমি টাওয়ারটির সঠিক লোকেশন নির্ধারণ করি এবং OpenStreetMap-এ একটি নতুন পয়েন্ট (node) যোগ করি। ম্যাপিংয়ের সময় টাওয়ারটির ধরন, অপারেটর ও নেটওয়ার্ক তথ্য যাচাই করে যথাযথ ট্যাগ ব্যবহার করেছি, যেমন—communications_tower, operator=Grameenphone এবং tower:type=cellular। এই টাওয়ারটি নাগা বাজার এলাকার মোবাইল নেটওয়ার্ক কভারেজ নিশ্চিত করতে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ ভূমিকা রাখছে। স্থানীয় ব্যবসা প্রতিষ্ঠান, বাজারের দোকানদার ও আশপাশের বসতবাড়ির মানুষ প্রতিদিন এই নেটওয়ার্কের উপর নির্ভরশীল। তাই টাওয়ারটির অবস্থান ম্যাপে যুক্ত হওয়ায় ভবিষ্যতে ডিজিটাল ম্যাপ ব্যবহারকারী, গবেষক ও জরুরি সেবাদানকারী সংস্থার জন্য তথ্যটি উপকারী হবে বলে আমি মনে করি। গ্রামীণ এলাকার গুরুত্বপূর্ণ অবকাঠামো...

I am going to make some improvements to the Walla Walla Washington area over the next week. I’ve just found the Rapid editor uses the Microsoft Building Footprint data to suggest features. That’s excellent. Speeds things up significantly.

I worked on Lloy street today in Portage MI. It could use some mapping love. Streets are there but not much else. Porage GIS: https://mi-portage.civicplus.com/177/GIS-City-Maps

The HOT Export Tool from the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team is an online service for creating custom extracts of OpenStreetMap (OSM) data.The tool allows users to select an area of interest and produce custom OSM data extracts. You can choose which map features and tags to include (e.g., roads, buildings, amenities, boundaries) and then download the data in multiple file formats (including

I wasn’t sure whether to share this but the editorial board said “F it, go for it” This tattoo is on the arm of Arsen Ostrovsky, a survivor of the Bondi Beach Chanukah shooting – no further comment needed.

What 2025 revealed about priorities, trust, and direction in EO

Today while looking at the hand drawn parcel maps that the county provides I learned the creek that runs through my neighborhood has changed it’s name. On the maps it’s called Sulphur Spring Creek. On all the other maps I’ve seen, road signs, and from what we locals call it, it’s just Sulphur Creek. There’s even a nature center / animal rescue that is named for the creek. They don’t use the spring in their name either. OK… after getting the comment re sulfurous springs, I did some digging. I haven’t found any historic proof of the claim in this article from last year, but … “Nestled in the Hayward hills, the Sulphur Creek Nature Center is home to dozens of birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals, including a coyote and a fox. The site straddles a small section of Sulphur Creek, named after the sulphur water bubbling up from nearby springs. In 1970, H.A.R.D. acquired the property, then a wellness retreat, and transformed it into the animal sanctuary it is today.” The “spring”...

Ken spotted this on US TV – I think it would make a great caption contest. Go for it!

Reinder spotted this magnificent illuminated globe at the railway station in Leiden. I think it’s a perfect choice for our Xmas day post. Happy Christmas to all who celebrate it and Seasons Greetings to the rest of you.

Jeremy spotted this in the Lemon Tree pub in London. He said “It was really interesting to interpret. Around 1850 we reckoned. The Crystal Palace is still in Hyde Park, no Tower Bridge, the terminus main railway stations are in.” You might think “that’s really neat” then Ken chipped in to identify the maps as […]

🎅 Santa’s Big Adventure: Follow Him Around the World! 🌍It’s Christmas Eve - the most magical night of the year - and guess what? Santa is already zooming around the world, delivering gifts to kids just like YOU! 🎁 This year, why not join in the fun by following Santa’s incredible journey around the world? 🎄✨ 🦌 NORAD Santa Tracker: Powered by Rudolph’s NoseDo you know how NORAD tracks

Some strategies for achieving 1k subscribers

The AGS Globe: How Excessive Heat Affects Young Children’s Development by American Geographical Society The American Geographical Society’s Weekly Newsletter for Tuesday, December 23, 2025 Read on Substack

[Des Plaines, IL] – The GIS Certification Institute (GISCI) is proud to announce the County of Lennox and Addington as its newest GISCI-designated Endorsing Employer. This designation recognizes organizations committed to professional development and the advancement of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) practices.  Nestled in the heart of Eastern Ontario, the County of Lennox and Addington […]

Reinder said “I saw this brand new edition of Ulysses in a 2nd hand bookshop in Leiden. Quite remarkable I think, that this design with a Dublin town plan was not used earlier… or was it?”

According to NASA, Christmas lights up the winter. Using nighttime satellite imagery of American cities, NASA discovered that nighttime lights in American cities shine 20 to 50 percent brighter during the Christmas season than at other times of the year. In Even from Space, Holidays Shine Brightly NASA explains that nighttime lights start getting brighter on the day after Thanksgiving. You

GIS Technician II - Highlands County Board of County Commissioners, Sebring, FL USA posted on 2025-12-22

HILLSBOROUGH, NC, USA Orange County Tax Administration Category: Database

Job posting for Orange County GIS Database Administrator - Orange County Government, 27258 posted on 2025-12-22

Tracking Developments in AI Laws and Regulations for Geospatial Professionals

Is the era of centralized open-source governance ending? This in-depth analysis examines the existential crisis facing OSGeo as it approaches its twentieth anniversary, caught in an "Institutional Trap" between a struggling global foundation and thriving regional chapters like FOSS4G North America. Explore the critical tensions defining the future of the geospatial technology stack, including debates over FOSS4G brand ownership, controversial revenue-sharing proposals, and the rising demand for "Sovereign Open Source" models to navigate complex geopolitical and regulatory landscapes.

True-Size.com has become a go-to destination for anyone curious about the real dimensions of our world. It is best known for its interactive map that lets you compare the true size of countries. The site allows users to drag countries around the globe and make direct comparisons with other countries and regions around the world. It’s a simple idea with a powerful impact, often reshaping

Reinder spotted this poster for Billy Wilder’s 1953 film Roman Holiday nestled amongst underwear in a clothing shop in Rome

Elizabeth spotted this in a cafe opposite Gospel Oak station, probably Little Oak Coffee. Looks like both Kentish Town and this cafe are worth visiting.

Another one from Reinder’s trip to Rome. “Saw this textile work of art in Rome, in the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. It dates from 1990 and is made by  Alighiero Boetti” I had never heard of Boetti, it is worth clicking on the link to look at his Mappe series.

City neighborhoods rarely have crisp, universally agreed-upon boundaries. Unlike political jurisdictions, neighborhood borders are shaped by lived experience: where people shop, who they identify as neighbors, and shifting social and cultural trends. These boundaries are often fluid, overlapping, and contested, changing over time and varying from person to person. As a result, neighborhood

Tell Us About Yourself My name is Hemed Lungo a 24 years old Tanzanian Or Place where Mount Kilimanjaro is found  (cause people seem to be familiar with that).I stay at Dar-es-salaam to be specific, I recently graduated this year from the Institute of Finance Management (IFM), where I studied Information Technology (IT). My background […] The post Map and Mappers of the 2025 Calendar – November – Hemed Lungo appeared first on GeoHipster.

GIS Analyst I - Montgomery County Texas, Conroe, TX USA posted on 2025-12-19

Another piece by Kerry James Marshall. “The past and future merge in this work. The Afrofuturist household appears to be in a cosmos far from Earth. The domestic interior is decorated with modernist furniture and ancient African artefacts, such as Yoruba sculptures. As the children look back at Earth, a hologram of the floating globe […]

Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation

Gute Daten sind nur wertvoll, wenn wir sie verstehen. Genau hier beginnt Data Literacy oder Datenkompetenz. Der Thurgauer «MoniThur» ist ein System von Indikatoren zur Beurteilung der Nachhaltigen Entwicklung des Kantons. Anhand des Indikators «Distanz zum öffentlichen Verkehrssystem» lässt sich exemplarisch nachvollziehen, wie gute Datenaufbereitung und -vermittlung komplexe Zusammenhänge greifbar macht. Ein Blick darauf lohnt …

Easily Download 3D Building Data from the Global Building AtlasThe Global Building Atlas is one of the most ambitious open mapping projects to date: a global, high-resolution dataset describing 2.75 billion buildings worldwide, including their footprints, heights, and simple 3D (LoD1) geometry. Developed by researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the dataset offers an

The Giro3D team is pleased to announce the release of Giro3D 1.0. Giro3D, an open-source geospatial visualization project Giro3D is a geospatial data visualization library for the Web. Free and...

In a previous post, we highlighted that a significant shift is underway; one that is unlocking the vast amounts of Earth observation (EO) data gathered by the European Space Agency (ESA). We’re proud to be part of modernizing how the industry interacts with this historically unwieldy data. We know when data is more accessible, it […] The post Cloud-Native Earth Observation in R with the EOPF Toolkit appeared first on Sparkgeo.

Reimagined Template Experience with Online Library   GOLDEN, Colorado, 17 December 2025 – Golden Software, a leading developer of mapping, plotting, and visualization software, has significantly enhanced the Template experience in its Grapher scientific graphing package with improved ease of use and an online Template library. The completely redesigned Template functionality streamlines data preparation, analysis, and […]

We went to an exhibition of paintings by Kerry James Marshall at the Royal Academy, there were a couple of maps in the wild tucked away in his fabulous work. The gallery blurb says “In Terra Incognita, Marshall uses multiple techniques that call attention to the complicated legacy of the Middle Passage. The collage-like composition […]

If you’re planning a long hike or bike trip, then you should definitely bookmark Welcome to My Garden. This interactive map shows the locations of gardens that offer free camping spots for slow travellers.If you’re travelling on a low budget and want to keep your journey low-impact, Welcome to My Garden is the ideal companion. The concept is refreshingly simple: find somewhere to stay, book your

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

Linda Stevens has published “GIS and Geospatial 2025: A Year in Review”, summarizing the highlights and lowlights that shaped the past year in our industry – from the rise of geospatial #AI to pricing pressures. The piece offers a timely perspective on where the sector has progressed and where it continues to struggle as 2026 approaches.

Oakland, CA, USA Nimble Consulting Category: Consultant

AI data center power demands are reshaping how utilities plan, build, and maintain their electric grids and distribution systems. Faster development cycles, shifting load patterns, and new on-site assets create conditions that rely heavily on accurate, timely field intelligence. Utilities that adopt field-first workflows gain a clearer picture of evolving sites and a stronger foundation for decisions that support smart grid technology throughout each phase of AI-driven growth. La entrada Surging AI data center power demands require a new utility playbook se publicó primero en Fulcrum.

New Philadelphia, OH, USA Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District Category: Specialist

May 3–6, 2026 | Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center | Aurora, CO USGIF is proud to announce that LTG Michele Bredenkamp, newly confirmed Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency will deliver keynote remarks on NGA’s future priorities for national security and the geospatial intelligence community at GEOINT Symposium 2026. REGISTER NOW

Looq AI Users Showcase Transformative Speed and Precision  in Critical Infrastructure Workflows Ahead of 2026 Looq User Conference San Diego, CA — December 16, 2025 — Looq AI, an innovator in ground-based reality capture for surveying, engineering, and utilities, today announced the winners of its inaugural “Looq Once Capture Everything” Video Challenge. The competition recognized […]

Helium™ family brings scalable, cost-effective sensing and high-resolution 4D point cloud data to the emerging era of Physical AI  New York, NY – December 17, 2025 – Voyant Photonics, the leader in chip-scale frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) LiDAR, today announced its Helium™ Platform  of fully solid-state LiDAR sensors and modules. The solution is built on a silicon […]

On the Library of Congress’s Worlds Revealed blog, a fascinating piece on a fascinating piece of hardware used by NASA to process lunar photographs taken for and by the Apollo program into orthorectified imagery useful… More

The Ordnance Survey has announced that the triple alignment of true north, grid north (on OS maps) and magnetic north—the so-called three norths—has left England and is now over the North Sea. It’ll make landfall… More

The era of U.S. electromagnetic spectrum dominance has ended, replaced by contested battlespaces where adversaries like Russia and China employ advanced electronic warfare (EW) to deny critical communications and disable up to 90 percent of standard sensor networks. This new reality demands a fundamental paradigm shift in the design of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and unattended ground sensors (UGS), moving away from systems built for permissive environments toward resilient architectures optimized for spectrum-denied operations. To ensure network persistence under extreme degradation, future military strategy must embrace self-healing mesh networks that utilize edge AI/ML for real-time jamming detection, advanced Counter EW (CEW) techniques like frequency agility, and operational adaptations such as passive acoustic sensors that emit no signals.

A hybrid code sprint bringing together OGC, OSGeo, and Apache ASF communities to advance open geospatial standards, interoperability, and implementations. The post Joint OGC OSGeo ASF Code Sprint 2026 appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.

Reionder said “In 2023 the artist Emilio Isgrò donated (t)his work of art called ‘Planetarium’ to the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, in Rome (Italy). He definitely did something with black ink and place names – but I could not figure out what precisely. I hope you like it. “ Apparently this technique of redacting […]

Today I ran a 33 km heart-shaped route around San Francisco to demonstrate my love for the city1. If you are interested in creating your own GPS art - or you just want to make your daily walk, jog or bike ride a little more fun - you can now use Routista to help you plan a pictorial route.Have you ever seen a bike ride that traces a heart, a star, or even a dinosaur on a map? That’s GPS art

PLUS: Google's new Earth AI framework, plus IBM's green space simulations

Dewey Dunnington’s latest blog post dives deep into how pruning, the selective reading of relevant data, makes #GeoParquet blazing fast in both local and #cloudnative contexts. Featuring hands-on comparisons across #SedonaDB, #DuckDB, #GeoPandas, #GDAL, and #Sedona #Spark, it’s a must-read for anyone exploring efficient cloud-native geospatial workflows.

This image is a combination of altimeter data from both the Sentinel-6 sea-level tracking satellites: Sentinel-6B and its twin, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, which was launched in 2020.

Waves of heavy rainfall in early December 2025 spurred landslides and flooding in parts of the Pacific Northwest.

Here’s how you can create an inner shadow effect for your area of interest in ArcGIS Pro. Push the area down into the landscape with realistic lighting, using some gradient stroke hacks and an invisibility cloak. And, for giggles, the world’s fasted demo showing how to invert the effect to make the area of interest …

In case you are interested in buying #map #art, “Independent Map Sellers” is a nice curated shopping guide offered by the Independent Map Artists. The guide features the work of more than 50 independent cartographers whose work can be bought.

Clatskanie, OR, USA Clatskanie PUD Category: Specialist

Topeka, KS, USA Kansas Department of Transportation Category: Transportation

GIS Manager - Kansas Department of Transportation, Topeka, KS posted on 2025-12-16

53 million cups of tea at a time!  Multi award-winning clean tech company Absolar has published its first nationwide set of Solar Performance Wrap Reports for its customers, revealing how high precision solar modelling and installation are transforming energy use and carbon reduction across a wide range of UK organisations.  The findings highlight a significant […]

Jeremy spotted this in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum in Kensington. Hands up if you knew that intactness was a word! Looks like the UK is no doing too well on this measure.

In 1892 Alexander Gleason, author of Is the Bible from Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe?, published his New Standard Map of the World. The map includes the subheading ‘As it is,’ reflecting Gleason’s belief that the map showed a world that was flat - and not round.The map actually uses an azimuthal equidistant projection (which the map's subheading indicates was borrowed from an English cartographer

A look back at 2025 through the projects, partnerships, and open-source communities that shaped our work and the lessons guiding us into 2026.

Oakland, CA, USA Nimble Consulting Category: Consultant

GIS Trainer - Nimble Consulting, Oakland, CA posted on 2025-12-15

#Data is more than an asset: it is a designed experience, a product. Jed Sundwall’s article “Great #DataProducts” reminds us that #OpenData matters only when paired with intent, usability, and care in creation. A shout out for #DataDesign and #ProductThinking for #geospatial data.

Here’s how you can make the classic National Geographic sort of political style map, with inner tint band ribbon buffalo tint things, AND ensure no colors touch each other. We’ll use way more tools than you think and rely on a hotly contested mathematical theorem!All from the comfort of ArcGIS Pro. Here’s a closer look …

In the past we have written about how one can use social media to monitor dust storms along with how multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) can be used to analyze images. At the recent American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting we (Sage Keidel, Stuart Evans and myself) brought these two strands of research together in a poster entitled "Creating and Assessing an Unconventional Global Database of Dust Storms Utilizing Generative AI."In this work we showcase how MLLMs are providing new opportunities and accessible methods for information extraction from imagery data using geo-located images from Flickr which have a dust keyword tag associated with it from multiple languages (e.g., Arabic, English, Spanish).  We run these images through ChatGPT, which classifies them as dust storms or not and compare this classification with human classifed images. If this sounds of interest, below you can read the abstract, see the poster along with a selection of images that have been labeled as...

Organizations invested heavily in geospatial tools and data throughout 2025. Yet many leaders found the return on that investment lower than expected. A core issue is fragmentation rather than a lack of data or technology capability. When spatial data is scattered across teams, tools, and formats, it becomes harder to trust, harder to maintain, and […]

Reinder has been on a trip to Rome and sent loads of maps in the wild which we will feature over the next couple of weeks, interspersed with our Mappy Xmas specials. This one is from Sapienza University celebrating 40 years of Arctic research – we don’t get many maps of the White Continent.

4.6 million Americans live within two miles of a facility that has been given permission by President Trump to pollute the air. In March, the Trump administration initiated a process allowing industries to apply for up to two-years of compliance exemptions under the Clean Air Act. More than 180 facilities, including coal plants, chemical manufacturing and petrochemical facilities applied and

Erin on https://erdavis.com/datasets/ has posted some fascinating and unusual data sets that I encourage you to investigate, for teaching, research, visualization, and to learn more about coding-with-mapping. As a geographer who loves roads, I am particularly fond of Erin’s “road suffixes mileage” data set, and waterfalls, too (who doesn’t love waterfalls?). Erin even posted a […]

We’re happy to announce that the next QGIS User Conference will take place in Switzerland in October 2026. Please mark… Read more Save the date: QGIS User Conference 2026🇨🇭

Holiday gifts for your computer (and you)

You can do this too!

Next October, we’re bringing the global cloud-native geospatial community back to the mountains of Utah. CNG Forum 2026 will gather geospatial data practitioners from governments, startups, universities, and enterprises who are shaping how we work with geospatial data. If you were at our inaugural forum earlier this year, you know what made it special: over 250 people from over 100 organizations having real conversations about where geospatial data is headed. We surveyed our attendees and received a 4.7-star rating, and over 95% of attendees said they’d attend another CNG event. So we’re putting one on: October 6-9, 2026 at Snowbird in Utah. What we’re building Our goal with CNG Forum is to create a space where geospatial data practitioners can come together to talk about what’s working, what isn’t, and what comes next. If you’re working with geospatial data – whether you’re a GIS analyst, data engineer, software developer, scientist, researcher, educator, policymaker, or student –...

In his latest post, Mark Litwintschik compares a range of global administrative #boundary datasets, from #OpenStreetMap to #NaturalEarth, assessing geometric #accuracy, data #completeness, and information content. The analysis, powered by #DuckDB and #QGIS, reveals surprising differences in how nations’ borders are represented across data sources.

Most companies know who their clients are, but not where they are or how geography shapes behavior. Mapping clients reveals market gaps, growth zones, service issues, and competitive threats. Learn how to start small, integrate geography, and boost decisions with location intelligence.

eCommerce doesn’t happen in a locationless internet. Customers buy from real places, markets behave differently by region, and marketing impact varies geographically. This article explains why eCommerce is inherently spatial and how Geographical Intelligence can be used to boost analysis, decisions, and performance.

There are 2,222 surface parking lots in New York City within walking distance of an MTA station. If these sites were redeveloped for housing, they could provide an estimated 62,820 additional homes citywide.This estimate is based on a mapped analysis by Tom Weatherburn. His story map, How Much Housing Could Fit on the Surface Parking Lots of NYC?, visualizes the number of surface parking lots

In the past we have written a number of posts on synthetic populations, however, one thing we have not done is compare the various techniques that can be used to create them. This has now changed with a new paper entitled "Quantitative Comparison of Population Synthesis Techniques" which was recently presented at the 2025 Winter Simulation Conference.In this paper, we (David Han, Samiul Islam, Taylor Anderson, Hamdi Kavak and myself) investigate five synthetic population generation techniques (e.g., Iterative Proportional Fitting, Conditional Probabilities, Simple Random Sampling, Hill Climbing and Simulated Annealing) in parallel to synthesize population data for different North America settings (e.g., Fairfax County, VA, USA and Metro Vancouver, BC, Canada). Our findings suggest that while iterative proportional fitting and conditional probabilities techniques perform best, it also suggests at the same time that it is important to consider the basis of choosing certain methods over...

Real-Time Earthquakes Map made by Web Mapper GPT If you’re new to mapmaking, two recently released AI tools can help you create interactive maps with little or no coding or cartographic expertise. These tools - Web-Mapper GPT and Map Doctor GPT - are designed to simplify both the technical and design aspects of map creation, making it easier than ever for beginners to produce professional-looking

Installation artist Luke Jerram’s past work includes large reproductions of the Earth, Moon, Sun and Mars. His latest is Mirror Moon, a touchable stainless steel globe of the Moon created with NASA topographic data. A… More

The exhibition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s maps at the Architectural Association Gallery in London (previously, previously) wrapped up last Saturday. The Library of America has an interview with Sarah Shin, who co-curated the exhibit… More

Under Article 9 of Switzerland’s “Federal Act on the Use of Electronic Means to Carry Out Official Tasks” (#EMBAG/#LMETA), federal authorities must publish the source code of software they develop or commission, marking a step toward greater digital #sovereignty. The resulting Swiss Federal #OSS Catalog now lists around 60 #opensource projects with #swisstopo’s #STAC API and the mapping application #KADASAlbireo among them.

I was recently surprised to learn the extent to which the United States dominates the list of world’s largest corporation by market capitalization. As the chart posted below shows, the seven most valuable companies are headquartered in the U.S., as are 16 of the top 20. It is an open question as to whether this […] The post Almost All of the World’s Top Companies by Market Valuation Are Based in the United States appeared first on GeoCurrents.

Ontario, USA City of Ontario Category: Information Technology

The Overture Maps Foundation is now three years old, and we’ve met every milestone we’ve set out to meet. But there’s still much more to come. Please enjoy this interview with Software Engineering Radio’s Gregory Kapfhammer and Amy Rose, Overture CTO, and Jennings Anderson, software engineer at Meta. It is one of the best, most complete overviews of Overture’s progress and goals to date.  The post Overture Maps Explained on Software Engineering Radio appeared first on Overture Maps Foundation.

Africa lacks up-to-date, reliable maps, which makes it hard to plan infrastructure, deliver services, and respond to emergencies. The Map Africa Initiative aims to create accurate digital base maps for all 54 African countries. Base maps are the core reference maps that show things like roads, buildings, rivers, and boundaries. They are the starting layer […]

A well-designed star chart is essential for any galactic adventure. The Interactive Star Wars Galaxy for RPGs is a detailed, dynamic map of a galaxy far, far away, built specifically with tabletop roleplaying in mind. Beyond simply charting hyperspace lanes, registered users can unlock integrated features like a dedicated dice-roller and tools for organizing your next gaming party.Even

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

A research team from the Technical University of Munich (#TUM) led by Prof. Xiao Xiang Zhu has released the #GlobalBuildingAtlas, a 3D dataset comprising 2.75 billion #buildingmodels worldwide at 3‑meter resolution. Built from #PlanetScope satellite imagery and #ML-based extraction, it represents the most detailed and comprehensive global building dataset produced so far.

swisstopo has published the concept “Elementary geodata for a digital Switzerland” developed by a working group comprising various stakeholders. The document outlines principles and suggests priority themes for essential geodata, aiming to ensure cohesive, up-to-date, and centrally accessible official geoinformation.

(Note: This is the final post in a long series on basic physical geography, which was originally designed to help educators teach the subject. As the series progressed, however, posts have strayed outside the pedagogical realm. I do hope to return eventually to the original project and write more short essays on the fundamentals of […] The post My Map of Climes: Latitudinal Zones Defined by Earth/Sun Relations appeared first on GeoCurrents.

So back last year I started something and have just finished one small part of it: https://training.northrivergeographic.com The Intro to QGIS class has a new home and that new home has a lot of room for a lot of different things. Something like 12 years ago (or more – 2013 to be exact) I started […] The post Training, Websites, and Life appeared first on North River Geographic Systems Inc.

Uncover the concrete legacy of the Cold War’s largest fortress in The Red Shield. The third installment of the "Geospatial Frontiers" series crosses the Iron Curtain to map the PVO Strany—the Soviet Union’s colossal air and missile defense network. Through historical GIS analysis, we expose the "Ring of Steel" that encircled the USSR, contrasting the Soviet Union’s "citadel" strategy with the point-defenses of the West. From the haunting ruins of the "Russian Woodpecker" and the Sary Shagan testing grounds to the operational Don-2N pyramid guarding Moscow, this chronicle reveals a landscape shaped by existential paranoia and technological maximalism. Explore the physical geography of a superpower that built a defense network designed not just to fight a war, but to survive the apocalypse.

PLUS: A new framework for mapping healthcare demand, the impact of wildfire smoke, and more.

Country Recall How to PlayIf you enjoy geography quizzes, map challenges, or just perusing a map of the world, then you need to play Country Recall. This brand new interactive geography game asks a deceptively simple question: How many of the world’s countries can you identify on an unlabelled map?Type a country into Country Recall and - if you’re right - it will instantly light up on the world

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Explore the complete network of oil and gas infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico with our interactive map showing thousands of offshore wells, production platforms, and pipeline systems. Access official Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) data on Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) drilling operations, including well locations, operator information, production status, water depths, and pipeline networks across federal waters.

John Nelson’s near-annual globe ornament blog posts are always a revelation. With the exception of the one time he went to 3D printing, they’re paper craft exercises that show just how many ways you can… More

Rising Costs, Talent Gaps, and the Battle Between Open and Closed Systems

NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday had a segment on the Osher Map Library last Sunday.

The AGS Globe: The Western Sahara Berm The American Geographical Society’s Weekly Newsletter for Tuesday, December 9, 2025 Read on Substack

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Tracking Developments in AI Laws and Regulations for Geospatial Professionals

Fragmented systems drain budgets, complicate regulatory compliance, and burn out crews, but modern utility asset management offers a fix. We explain how integrated asset management eliminates the chaos of disconnected spreadsheets to lower operating costs, guide smarter infrastructure investments, and extend asset life across the entire infrastructure life cycle. Read on to see how utility operations can improve electric grid reliability and transform utility infrastructure management from a headache into a strategic advantage. La entrada How integrated utility asset management lowers operating costs se publicó primero en Fulcrum.

Engineers of Map Art, a book on the history of Swiss cartography that focuses on work done at ETH Zurich, came out in English last September. (The German edition, Ingenieure der Kartenkunst, came out last… More

This animated map shows new housing construction in San Francisco by decade- since 1900. The map provides a clear picture of how the number of new homes built in the city has been declining since the 1970s.The orange dots on the map represent the locations of units built in that decade, while the gray dots show the existing housing stock from previous decades.The map is part of San Francisco

Explore power generation facilities worldwide with our comprehensive interactive map. From nuclear power stations and coal plants to wind farms and solar installations, discover detailed information about electricity generation infrastructure in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and across the globe.

In searching the internet for climate maps that might be useful for educational purposes, I have continued to be disappointed and occasionally dumbfounded. Many highly ranked maps provide outright misinformation. Consider, for example, the two maps posted below, both of which divide the world into climate zones based simply on latitude. As explained in previous […] The post More Cartographic Misinformation on Global Climate Zones appeared first on GeoCurrents.

New Zealand School Zones Map: Interactive School Finder & Catchment Boundary Tool Find your local school zone instantly with our comprehensive interactive map of all New Zealand schools and official enrolment scheme boundaries. Whether you’re a parent researching schools, buying property in a school zone, or relocating to New Zealand, this tool provides everything you...

Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation

The GRASS GIS 8.4.2 release provides more than 35 improvements and fixes with respect to the release 8.4.1. Enjoy! The post GRASS GIS 8.4.2 released appeared first on Markus Neteler Consulting.

If you’re determined to experience a white Christmas, I suggest booking a trip to Zermatt, Switzerland. According to White Christmas Forecast 2025, residents there have a 100% chance of snow on Christmas Day. (Disclaimer: I'm not in charge of the weather and previous snowfalls do not guarantee future flurries).Last week I linked to NOAA’s Probability of a White Christmas map. This

The dominant designs that limit us, and cost us exorbitant amounts of money!

Planet's Skysat, Umbra and more!

Alli Crandell on digital initiatives

IT Analyst Principal – GIS - Solano County, CA, Solano County, CA posted on 2025-12-05

The previous GeoCurrents post harshly criticized several climate maps for extending the subtropical zones too far toward the poles. But after doing a little casual research, I was chagrined to discover that these maps largely fit the formal, or “geographical,” definition of the term. The Wikipedia article on the subtropics states that “they cover the […] The post The Incoherent Concept of the Subtropics appeared first on GeoCurrents.

Lecturer in Geographic Information System - Loyola University Chicago School of Environmental Sustainability, Chicago, IL USA posted on 2025-12-05

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Modern electric utility operations run on data from operational technology, GIS, asset systems, information technology applications, and field crews, but silos between those utility systems create blind spots that slow outage restoration, complicate business continuity management, and raise risk. See how breaking down those silos and creating a connected operational picture turns raw operational data into faster, safer decisions in the field, the control room, and the utility field operations center.  La entrada Breaking down data silos in electric utility operations se publicó primero en Fulcrum.

Ah the winter season is a time when we can slow down and appreciate the things that really matter. A chance to take stock of lasting joy. Clearly I’m talking about the opportunity to print out this paper craft ornament template, cut out the component globe gore panels, and assemble them into a simple treasure. …

By Alice Yee From the wetlands of Mesoamerica to the woodlands of the Northeast, Indigenous agricultural innovation shaped entire landscapes — and still influences sustainable farming today. From The Three Sisters in North America to the chinampa systems of Mesoamerica, Indigenous communities developed farming methods best suited to the local climate and surrounding ecosystems. Jöhehgöh […]

As I’ve recounted before, what became HIFLD started as the M: drive on a Windows server in a musty government building in Norfolk, VA. Early exercises made it obvious that the data on our M: drive didn’t match the data on other M: drives. They also made it clear that sharing data, especially across 2002-vintage … Continue reading Data Preservation: Let the Pain Guide You →

The journey continues: QgsArrowIterator is now merged! This makes it possible to iterate over QgsFeatures as Arrow batches. This is where we are now, quoting Dewey Dunnington: Further improvements are already being planned. To quote from the ticket: “The final state after this improvement would be a compact way for Arrow Python consumers like GeoPandas to …Read More

As noted in the previous post, many educational climate maps that rank high in internet image searches are based on a simplistic climatic model that is too focused on latitude. In this post, I scrutinize and criticize four such maps. The most simplistic example that I found (posted below) essentially replicates Aristotle’s five-zone climate scheme, […] The post Avoiding Misinformation When Teaching the Geography of Climate; Part 2, Climate Maps appeared first on GeoCurrents.

Two more books from Belt Publishing came out this week, both part of their “50 Maps” series, each focusing on an Ohio city: Cincinnati in 50 Maps, edited by Nick Swartsell and with cartography by… More

Uncover the forgotten geography of the Cold War through a forensic investigation of the "Nike Belt," a continuous chain of nuclear-capable missile batteries that once shielded Western Europe from the North Sea to the Alps. By overlaying "archive missile defense KML" files onto modern satellite imagery, this article reveals the "Silent Front" where the US Army's 59th Ordnance Brigade served as custodial agents for tactical nuclear warheads on foreign soil. From the restored high-altitude launch pads of Base Tuono to the forest-reclaimed ruins of the Sauerland, explore a "digital archaeology" of the "Belt of Fire"—a defense system where the protection of land often necessitated its potential irradiation.

Summary Thread Post by @[email protected] View on Mastodon When and where? Geomob Barcelona took place at 6:00 PM on Wednesday the 3rd of December, 2025 at CoWorkIdea, at Carrer de Torres i Amat, 21, First Floor. doors open at 18:00, set up and general mingling at 18:30 we begin the talks with a very brief introduction Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10-15 minutes. After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions. The talks will be in English. We vote - using FeatureUpvote - for the best speaker. The winner will receive a SplashMap and unending glory (see the full list of all past winners). We head to a nearby bar for discussion and #geobeers paid for by the sponsors. The speakers: Matteo Ferrari, Factual - Lane Patrol Núria Julià Selvas, CREAF: Involving citizens in collecting evidences of environmental concerns through geospatial standards. Alex Lopez Cruces, Indra Space,...

PLUS: Why global farm sizes could triple by 2100, a survey of foundation models and more.

As earlier GeoCurrents posts in the current series on educational geography have noted, sun angles, which are determined by latitude, play a huge role in shaping the geography of climate. Simply put, the lower the latitude of any given location, the more solar radiation it will receive and the warmer it will be. Historically, latitude […] The post Avoiding Misinformation When Teaching the Geography of Climate, Part 1 appeared first on GeoCurrents.

The AGS Globe: The U.S. Food System and Food Waste Solutions by American Geographical Society The American Geographical Society’s Weekly Newsletter for Tuesday, December 2, 2025 Read on Substack

Fernand Bale reflects on leading Côte d’Ivoire’s geospatial transformation and how OGC collaboration is accelerating innovation across Africa. The post From Mathematics to National Mapping: Fernand Bale on Elevating Côte d’Ivoire’s Geospatial Future appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.

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Every year, the FOSS4G community shows what is possible when people come together to push geospatial technology forward. For Sparkgeo, this gathering represents something more than a technical showcase. It reflects a shared belief that the future of geospatial work is open, collaborative, and accessible to anyone who wants to be part of it. Over […] The post Sparkgeo at FOSS4G: Building an Open Geospatial Future  appeared first on Sparkgeo.

Linda Stevens believes that the GIS industry is showing signs of enshittification: “Coined by tech critic Cory Doctorow, ‘enshitification’ describes how once-great platforms decay under the pressures of greed and control. They begin as open,… More

Imagine asking an AI agent to book a hotel. The agent books the room, finds restaurants you like, a concert venue nearby, and lines up ground transportation. This smooth, integrated experience is the future of travel. Today, it is nearly impossible. The post From Discovery to Action: A New Foundation for Travel appeared first on Overture Maps Foundation.

#Sentinel‑1D, the newest radar satellite in #ESA’s #Copernicus Sentinel‑1 mission, was launched on 4 November and has already delivered its first C‑band #SAR images within just 50 hours of liftoff. Replacing Sentinel‑1A, it continues the mission’s all‑weather #EarthObservation while enhancing capability for detecting “dark” ships and sea pollution. #EO #RemoteSensing

Part Two: A deeper dive into Enshittification

The first wave of utility digitization is over; the new executive mandate is to get predictive. Fulfilling that mandate requires a new breed of field technology built on three pillars: active intelligence at the point of capture, seamless enterprise integration, and immediate operational insight driven by modern data analytics and artificial intelligence. The combination of the three pillars creates a resilient operational model, helping utilities manage grid complexity and adopt smart grid technologies. It also supports the shift from reactive responses to predictive operations.” La entrada What utilities are looking for in field technology in 2026 and beyond se publicó primero en Fulcrum.

Air Loom, a project by Benny Lim (Objective Unclear), offers a dynamic #3D #visualization platform for #realtime ADS-B #aircraft tracking around major airports. Users can explore #flight movements, airspace overlays, and adjust display options to suit educational or #aviation enthusiast needs.

Alabama’s state senate elections will now use a map drawn by an 18-year-old student. The judge chose the map over options put forward by the court’s special master because it changed the existing map less… More

National Rail’s All Stations Interactive Route Map is only nominally interactive, in that you can pan and zoom, but clicking on lines or stations doesn’t actually do anything. That said, it shows every operator, route… More

I’ve been trying to write my thoughts down more and have just been lost in life. The last 30 days have had me in Oak Ridge, Murfreesboro, and Reston Virginia. Yet another reason I mumble I really need to cut down on traveling. Which reminds me I need to discuss Foss4GNA 2025 sooner than later. […] The post Almost 11 months later appeared first on North River Geographic Systems Inc.

The site https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=927944e867624504bfd6c489b0d2aec7 gives you access to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, the world’s largest database of species observations, aggregating over 3 billion records from ~2,500 organizations, including iNaturalist, OBIS, and eBird. This Geoprocessing Tool for ArcGIS Pro (version 3.2.x and newer) queries the GBIF API and returns up to 100,000 records for a single species. At […]

As the previous GeoCurrents post noted, longitude is to a significant extent a matter of time. Historically, every town kept its own time based on its longitude. Wherever you found yourself, “noon” was the moment when the sun reached its highest point, with the other hours of the day set around that time. Travelers reset […] The post Time Zones Are Based on Longitude Overruled by Political Geography appeared first on GeoCurrents.

In the past we have posted about how we can utilize data and models to explore pandemics and peoples reactions to them. And while interest in the COVID might of waned, there will be future pandemics. To this end, at the 53rd Annual Meeting of NAPCRG we (Laurene Tumiel Berhalter, Sanchit Goel, Dawn Vanderkooi, Bruce Pitman, Yinyin Ye,  Jennifer Surtees and myself) had a poster entitled "Integration of Community Level Data into Mathematical Models to Predict Future Public Health Emergencies." The objective of the poster is to showcase how one can integrate 211 data into models to predict future public health emergencies. If this sounds of interest, below you can see the poster and at the bottom of the post you can access the abstract. Full Reference:Tumiel, L.M., Goel, S., Vanderkooi, D., Pitman E.B., Crooks A.T., Ye, Y. and Surtees, J. (2025), Integration of Community Level Data into Mathematical Models to Predict Future Public Health Emergencies, North American Primary Care Research...

It’s the end of November and I’m still finding titles to add to the Map Books of 2025 page. More to the point, I’m only now finding out about books that came out last January.… More

Build an Enterprise Geospatial Web Application With Django, GeoDjango & Leaflet Life in GIS Today, geospatial technology is no longer optional. It powers logistics platforms, land management systems, climate dashboards, utility planning,... The post Build an Enterprise Geospatial Web Application With Django, GeoDjango & Leaflet appeared first on Life in GIS published by Wanjohi Kibui

For nearly two centuries, airborne data collection has pushed the boundaries of how we see our world. From the first aerial photographs taken from hot air balloons in the 1850s to today’s hyperspectral, LiDAR, and SAR systems, this industry has been defined by constant innovation in data capture. However, while our ability to collect data […] The post Prescient: Airborne Data Management Reimagined for the Future appeared first on Sparkgeo.

My perspective about AI swings between slot-machine chaos, mind-blown optimism, and Black Mirror dread. I turned that back-and-forth into an infographic about living in this emotional loop.

Increasing levels of GPS interference have been reported around Venezuela over the past month. Since the U.S. has been moving naval assets into the area and generally rattling the sabre in Venezuela’s general direction, they… More

Why migrate to QGIS? At Oslandia, we offer a technology stack with high technical quality and extensive functional completeness for Geographic Information Systems: the QGIS platform. This modular platform provides...

GIS Analyst - geocgi, Okinawa, Japan posted on 2025-11-26

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The high-resolution physics turning microwave echoes into real-time flood intelligence The post RISAT’s Silent Promise: Decoding Disasters with Synthetic Aperture Radar appeared first on Towards Data Science.

In Conversation with Kannan Thiruvadi, Regional Executive, South Asia, Bentley Systems As India accelerates toward its ambitious targets under PM Gati Shakti, the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP), and Viksit Bharat […] The post Building Connected, Intelligent, and Future-Ready Infrastructure appeared first on Geospatial World.

Discover the forgotten "Ring of Steel" that once protected America's cities from Soviet bombers. Based on a remarkable crowdsourced Google Earth KML file from a hobbyist imagery analyst, this article unveils the sprawling network of Project NIKE missile sites. Explore the history of this massive Cold War missile defense system, from the initial Nike Ajax to the nuclear-armed Nike Hercules, and see how these batteries formed defensive shields around vital population centers and industrial hubs. This journey through geospatial history not only illuminates a hidden era of national defense but also sparks a thought-provoking reflection on what constitutes critical infrastructure—from data centers to advanced manufacturing—in our modern world.

PLUS: Some new insights on global vegetation loss, and a smarter way to map crops

The AGS Globe: Swamps as Freedom Spaces: Maroon Societies in the U.S. South by American Geographical Society The American Geographical Society’s Weekly Newsletter for Tuesday, November 25, 2025 Read on Substack

Earlier in my career, I was working on an infrastructure protection task and we were reconciling data from several sources that addressed the same road network. The data from the locality was authoritative, but it lacked some information we needed so we were conflating other data to the linework. I commented on the general lack … Continue reading Metadata Rising →

When and where? Geomob Edinburgh was held at 6:30pm (doors open at 6pm) on Tuesday, November 25th, 2025 at CodeBase at 37a Castle Terrace, Edinburgh EH1 2EL (Google Map,OpenStreetMap) Agenda Our format for the evening will be: doors open at 18:00, set up and general mingling at 18:30 we begin the talks with a very brief introduction Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10 minutes. After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions. We head to a nearby pub for discussion and #geobeers sponsored by OpenCage, Esri. The speakers: Samarth Bachkheti, Geospatial machine learning for subsea engineering Chris McNeill, Storytelling with GB power grid data Alex Merrington, NERC Field Spectroscopy Facility, The NERC Field Spectroscopy Facility: a Library of Remote Sensing Equipment and Expertise for Multidisciplinary Research We are always looking for speakers, volunteer to speak! The organizers: Geomob Edinburgh is organized by Gala...

Sunnyvale, CA, USA City of Sunnyvale Category: Geospatial

As was noted in an earlier post, most maps made in the 1500s and 1600s were relatively accurate in the north/south direction but often strikingly inaccurate in the east/west direction. This discrepancy was because latitude was relatively easy to determine (by the midday sun angle or by the position of the north star), whereas longitude […] The post If Latitude Is about Sun Angles, Longitude Is about Time appeared first on GeoCurrents.

Tracking Developments in AI Laws and Regulations for Geospatial Professionals

Modern defense operations face a critical intelligence gap in contested environments, where high-value ISR assets are too risky to deploy and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) lacks verifiable ground truth. This article proposes a scalable framework for air-dropped Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) that utilizes low-cost, "attritable" COTS technology to deliver continuous, 24/7 situational awareness without risking personnel. By functioning as a tactical verification layer, these sensor swarms validate OSINT data streams and provide the persistence that satellites and manned aircraft cannot maintain. We demonstrate how this hardware integrates seamlessly with existing GEOINT ecosystems—including BAE Systems GXP, Esri ArcGIS, and DCGS-A—to close the loop between edge detection and multi-INT fusion. Discover how leveraging swarm doctrine and commercial innovation creates a cost-effective, "fire-and-forget" intelligence architecture capable of dominating future...

In the 1890s, Thomas Ward created maps of the city of Wellington, New Zealand that are the subject of a new book by Elizabeth Cox, Mr Ward’s Map, and this article in New Zealand Geographic… More

The Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) 2025 conference happened in Auckland, New Zealand from 17-23 November 2025. It was a week-long event with 2 days of workshops followed by 3 days of talks and networking sessions. I want to share my experience and resources in this post. Workshops The first 2 days […]

With apologies for skipping the last 18 days…it’s day 24 of the 30 day map challenege and I’m back! In my first post about SedonaDB I did a brief investigation into the least creatively named waterbodies in Nova Scotia based on the water segments data in Nova Scotia. Anecdotally I’m also aware that there are many “Long Lake"s and “Little Rivers” out there that paddlers (and lake scientists) have to contend with. My favourite of these names is “Mud Lake”. Let’s make a map! Today I’ll use SedonaDB for R, as installed from SedonaDB on R Universe, in addition to r-spatial favourites sf, wk, and geos. For visualization I’ll use ggplot2 and ggspatial with extras provided by ggrepel and patchwork. We’ll start with installing SedonaDB since that is a little non-standard at the moment: install.packages('sedonadb', repos = c('https://apache.r-universe.dev', 'https://cloud.r-project.org')) Next we’ll load the lakes data we’re working with. In some previous posts I’ve downloaded the data but I’ve...

I had decided to move on from exploring the priority of north & south over east & west, but I realized that the most prominent example in the United States had escaped my attention: the northeast coast. Although this coast is often regarded as mostly oriented in a north/south direction, its actual orientation in more […] The post The Misperceived Directional Orientation of the East Coast of North America appeared first on GeoCurrents.

When working on the Earth Blocks layouts recently I was reminded of an idea I had years ago for a silly earth-slice cutaway graphic that I could strategically place over a 3D globe in an ArcGIS Pro layout. And since it’s a chill Friday afternoon I thought I’d follow up on that idea finally, and …

Last week, the fourth Journée Romande de la Géoinformation (#JRG) took place in Ecublens with more than 800 participants. Now, all videos and presentations of the plenary sessions are available online. #GeoAI #DSS #DigitalTwin

The 2026 GeoHipster calendar is available to order!

Terrestrial laser scanning is a LiDAR system different from airborne systems. Terrestrial LiDAR generates a point cloud at ground level. The post What Is Terrestrial Laser Scanning? appeared first on GIS Geography.

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Learning the cardinal directions is an important but often neglected aspect of early geographical education. It is my impression that the understanding of cardinal directions, like most other aspects of geography, is in sharp decline. There are several reasons for this regression, but surely one of the most important is the abandonment of map navigation […] The post Teaching the Cardinal Directions to Young Students appeared first on GeoCurrents.

Those of us who cut our teeth 20 years ago remember when geospatial analysis was fun. You had room to be creative, to shape something meaningful out of messy inputs.

So welcome to my crossover post. Which I hardly talk about Geohipster. Geohipster is one of those “side things” that’s been happening for over 10 years now. Back in the dearly days of twitter……or I should call it the “Golden Age of social media”, Atanas Entchev had an idea to Document the industry. So a […] The post 2026 Geohipster Calendar appeared first on North River Geographic Systems Inc.

You may be wondering “Hey when does the longest running Artisanal completely Organic Map Calendar come out?” Guess What? It’s PostGIS Day and you’re favorite calendar is back (and the right year – I tripled checked). This year I put out the call and the Cartographers Answered. From the Phillipines to Germany to the US, […] The post 2026 Geohipster Calendar appeared first on GeoHipster.

The Zarr community convened in Rome, Italy, on October 13-17, 2025, for the first-ever Zarr Summit! It was an incredible experience. During the first three days, Zarr developers collaborated on crucial improvements to the Zarr ecosystem. We prototyped long-requested features, bootstrapped a framework for flourishing community-driven metadata conventions, and dramatically improved cross-language implementation parity. During the final two days, we welcomed adopters from diverse organizations to meet with developers to discuss best practices and common roadblocks, exchange ideas, and build connections across the Zarr Community. Zarr Summit adopter days group photo And most importantly, we had a blast! Takeaways Zarr is taking off 🚀 We knew Zarr was getting big even before the event; ESA’s adoption of Zarr for Sentinel products was a key inspiration for the summit. Still, we were blown away by the depth and breadth of Zarr adoption worldwide across all sorts of institutions. Large...

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From humanitarian mappers to defense analysts, public health experts to city planners, geospatial professionals use GIS to help us understand & shape a better world.

When and where? Geomob Berlin took place at 18:00 on Wednesday the 19th of November, 2025, at the offices of HERE at Invalidenstr. 116, 10115 Berlin. Maps: HERE, OpenStreetMap, Google Maps. The nearest stations are Nordbahnhof and Naturkundenmuseum. Summary Thread Post by @[email protected] View on Mastodon Agenda Our format for the evening will be as it always has been: doors open at 18:00, set up and general mingling at 18:30 we begin the talks with a very brief introduction Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10-15 minutes. After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions. We vote - using Feature Upvote - for the best speaker. The winner will receive a SplashMap and unending glory (see the full list of all past winners). We head to a nearby pub for discussion and #geobeers paid for by the sponsors. The speakers: Harald Körtge, What can you build with 512KB of memory? Patrick...

When and where? Geomob Lisbon took place on the evening of Wednesday, November 19th, 2025 at Startup Lisboa, Rua da Prata 80, 1100-420 Lisbon (Google Maps, OpenStreetMap). Doors open at 17:30 and talks will begin at 18:00 Doors open at 18:00 and talks will begin at 18:15. ##Summary Thread Post by @[email protected] View on Mastodon Agenda Doors open at 18.00, set up and general mingling Talks begin at 18:15 with a very brief introduction Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10-15 minutes. After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions. We vote the best speaker. The winner will receive the best speaker prize and unending glory (see the full list of all past winners). Discussion and #award and #geobeers paid for by the sponsors. The speakers: João Manuel, from GeoInsight, will explain how Discrete Global Grids can help us create geospatial insights. Luis Calisto will talk about Geodata and APIs, and...

PLUS: The emotional side of walkability, why sharing power grids is three times cheaper, and more.

Community milestones and new tooling show how collaboration keeps STAC evolving

Brilliant researchers reduce months of work to unreadable screenshots. They deserve better.

Ein Jahr nach dem GIS Day 2024 sitze ich wieder im Zug. Ungefähr, denn heute ist streng genommen noch nicht internationaler GIS Day, also dieser Tag, der international Geoinformationen gewidmet ist. Für den Tag nach dem GIS Day gibt es bekanntermassen einen Namen: PostGIS Day . Für den Tag vor dem GIS Day gibt es …

Introduction The word “open” gets used so often in tech that it starts to feel universal, like everyone must be talking about the same thing. But once you listen closely, it becomes obvious that different groups mean very different things when they say it. A software engineer is thinking about readable source code and licenses. […]

Download this ArcGIS Pro project package that lets you make fun block diagram poster things in minutes. There are ten layout designs in two colors, waiting for your experience and ideas. Slice out little pieces of earth and drop them onto labeled poster paper. What could be more fun? It’s simple, just… When you download the ArcGIS …

To the uninitiated, address data appears simple. Scrawl an address on an envelope and a postal service will deliver it to the specified destination. However, the data enabling these systems... The post Building Complete Address Coverage: How We Brought Every Address in Mississippi Together appeared first on Overture Maps Foundation.

The AGS Globe: The Chihuahuan Desert by American Geographical Society The American Geographical Society’s Weekly Newsletter for Tuesday, November 18, 2025 Read on Substack

When and where? Next on our tour-de-Belgique is Antwerp, on Tuesday, 18 Nov. 2025. The event’s venue is at Buurtcentrum Cortina in the Kerkstraat 68, Antwerpen. We will welcome everyone at 6:30 PM and aim to start the talks by 6:45 PM. Agenda Our format for the evening will be: 6:30 PM: doors open, set up and general mingling 6:45 PM: we begin the talks with a very brief introduction Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10-15 minutes. After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions. This time we stay in the same place (we are already in a ‘pub’!) #geobeers paid for by the sponsors. The speakers: Maarten Lambrechts, Development Data Group - World Bank, Space2Stats: fresh open geodata from the World Bank Manuel Claeys Bouuaert, allmaps.org , Allmaps - an open source toolbox for georeferencing and exploring IIIF maps Stijn Vernaillen, City of Antwerp/Smart Ways to Antwerp, Finding the balance between OSM and own data. ...

From onboarding new developers to deep technical discussions, the Rotterdam Code Sprint advanced OGC Standards and community collaboration. The post From Rotterdam to Reality: Inside the OGC Code Sprint appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.

A deep dive into why Earth Observation may become the first real proving ground for in-orbit compute - from Starcloud-1 to Google’s Suncatcher.

The post Building Frictionless Geospatial AI: Making AlphaEarth Foundations Embeddings Accessible appeared first on Taylor Geospatial Engine.

This post is cross-posted on the Taylor Geospatial Engine Blog If you’ve been watching the rapid growth of geospatial AI, you’ve definitely heard the buzz about embeddings—compact representations of satellite imagery that can capture complex patterns and relationships in satellite data. This summer, Google announced the AlphaEarth Foundations (AEF) model, which represents a step change for our entire community. Along with the model, Google released pre-computed global embeddings at 10-meter resolution, freely available and ready to use without expensive infrastructure or deep learning expertise. Why This Matters to our Community With Taylor Geospatial Engine’s (TGE) current initiative, Fields of The World (FTW), teams are testing multiple model architectures to predict field boundaries globally. We wanted to understand where AEF embeddings fit: – Could they boost boundary-prediction accuracy? – Should they be used as direct inputs? – Or should they be used as features that enhance...

This Landsat Surface Temperature Web Mapping Application and data could be very useful in physical geography, environmental science, and GIS courses in instruction, and for research purposes: From this application, you can obtain the land or water surface temperature as of the time the Landsat image was generated for any point on the planet, generate […]

Geography Awareness Week 2025

In a recent video, Hans van der Kwast explores digital #sovereignty and its implications for #opensource software, governance, and collaboration. Using #QGIS as a case study, he unpacks how open standards and community-driven development can empower users and reshape digital services. #digitalsovereignty

From Stamen comes a deep dive into their ‘Philosophy on Dark Mode Maps’, exploring how #darkmode #map #design goes beyond simply inverting colors. Drawing on examples from their own portfolio and color scatterplot analyses, the article shows the balance between ‘night mode’ and ‘daytime dark mode’, and what each means for digital cartography.

While AI can scale fault detection across rail networks, the process only succeeds when railway inspection crews confirm conditions on site. Crews verify each alert’s location and severity, capture photos, measurements, and GPS data, and document everything within structured workflows. Human-in-the-loop validation turns automated detection into actionable maintenance, cutting errors, reducing backlog, and keeping rail repairs aligned with real-world conditions. In addition, field verification keeps inspection data tied to actual track infrastructure and supports Federal Railroad Administration compliance requirements. La entrada AI is reshaping railway inspections, but real-world validation is still critical se publicó primero en Fulcrum.

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Written by Alice Yee From 1860 until 1978, in response to The Civilization Fund Act passed by Congress in 1819 to begin the “Native American assimilation era”, approximately 357 boarding schools operated across 30 states both on and off reservations and housed over 60,000 Native American children. About a third of these schools were led […]

Resilience planning demands more than a patchwork of outdated maps and scattered inspections. By combining high-level GIS with real-time field data, organizations gain the unified insight needed to predict risks, respond intelligently, and recover faster. An integrated approach transforms resilience planning into a proactive, data-driven process. It also strengthens management practices, improves data security, supports facilities teams, and delivers measurable cost savings across the infrastructure life cycle. La entrada Resilience by design: Using GIS and field data to plan for the unexpected se publicó primero en Fulcrum.

Stop letting broken field software and data silos kill your productivity. Replace them with no-code tools and automated workflows that fit how your teams actually work. Learn how low-code platforms empower your field teams to build the fieldwork apps they actually need, turning IT from a police force into a strategic partner. La entrada Boosting agility and efficiency in field operations with low-code solutions se publicó primero en Fulcrum.

Tracking Developments in AI Laws and Regulations for Geospatial Professionals

The AGS Globe: Namibia’s Skeleton Coast by American Geographical Society The American Geographical Society’s Weekly Newsletter for Tuesday, November 11, 2025 Read on Substack

The PostGIS Team is pleased to publish PostGIS 3.6.1. This is a bug fix release that includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.6.0. This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18, Proj 6.1+, and GEOS 3.8+. To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.12+ is needed. SFCGAL 1.4+ is needed to enable postgis_sfcgal support. To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 2.2+ is needed. 3.6.1 source download md5 NEWS PDF docs: en HTML Online en ja fr zh_Hans Cheat Sheets: postgis: en ja fr zh_Hans postgis_raster: en ja fr zh_Hans postgis_topology: en ja fr zh_Hans postgis_sfcgal: en ja fr zh_Hans address standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder: en ja fr zh_Hans

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For day 7 of the #30DayMapChallenge on the topic of #accessibility, Dominic Weckmüller released the #GeoParquet Visualizer. The GeoParquet Visualizer is a free and open-source web tool built with #MapLibre and #parquet-#wasm that lets users view, style, and share GeoParquet and Parquet datasets directly in the browser.

Tell us about yourselfI’m a visual projects editor at The Guardian in the UK. As a visual journalist, making maps is part of my job, but I’ve always been a bit of a jack of all trades, and I love learning new tools that help me tell visually led stories. I fell in love with maps […] The post Maps and Mappers of the 2025 Calendar – Ana Lucia Gonzalez Paz – October appeared first on GeoHipster.

PLUS: Mapping how forest diversity shapes fire recovery, teaching AI to think geospatially and more.

At Sparkgeo, we spend a lot of time thinking about how things could be done better and recognizing when it’s time for a major shift. We thrive in periods of innovation, but we know it doesn’t come easy. It requires trust in the unknown, persistence through friction, and a deep belief that data should be […] The post Bridging Cloud-Native Earth Observation with QGIS: Our Work on ESA’s EOPF Initiative appeared first on Sparkgeo.

Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation

While we have explored disasters in the past through agent-based models and other computational social science approaches, one area we have not explored is how one can use agent-based models to explore evacuations durring a wild fire event.  This has now changed with a new paper with  Zhongyu Zhou and myself entitled  "Modeling Wildfire Evacuation with Embedded Fuzzy Cognitive Maps: An Agent-Based Simulation of Emotion and Social Contagion" which was recently presented at the  2025 International Conference of the Computational Social Science Society of the Americas (CSSSA). In the paper we present an agent-based model combined with an embedded fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) to simulate residents’ evacuation behavior during a wildfire event. If this sounds of interest, below we provide the abstract to the paper along with some of the figures that showcase the model logic and some of its results. A detailed ODD, the model and the data needed to run the model can be found at:...

Ed Parsons’ latest article cautions that while geospatial #embeddings promise analytical power, they risk transparency and interpretability long valued in #remotesensing. The article underscores the need to balance innovation with auditability and compliance in AI-driven #EarthObservation. #EO

A Rowdy One!

Part One: How Proprietary Ecosystems, Cloud Lock-In, and Feature Glut Threaten Geospatial Innovation

Meet Hefni Azzahra – our new QGIS documentation writer, joining us from Indonesia! Hefni holds a Bachelor’s degree in Geodetic… Read more New QGIS documentation writer

I wasn’t looking forward to FOSS4G North America. The political and economic situation in the US made it much more difficult to attract sponsorship dollars. The government shutdown and the preceding sets of arbitrary and capricious cuts to government staff made attendance hard to predict. Three weeks prior to the event, it was not at … Continue reading FOSS4GNA, 2025, and Life →

 Human mobility datasets are essential for investigating human behavior, mobility patterns, and traffic dynamics.  In the past we have written about how one can use agent-based models to generate patterns of life trajectories datasets. Building on this work at the ACM SIGSPATIAL 2025 conference, we (Hossein Amiri, Richard Yang, Shiyang Ruan, Joon-Seok Kim, Hamdi Kavak, Andrew Crooks,  Dieter Pfoser,  Carola Wenk and Andreas Züfle) had a paper entitled "HD-GEN: A Software System for Large-Scale Human Mobility Data Generation Based on Patterns of Life"In this paper, we extend our previous work by introducing a software system that provides a new suite of tools built on top of the Patterns of Life simulation framework. Specifically this work consolidates our contributions into a unified data generation pipeline that includes:additional discussion of the motivation and applications of large-scale simulated trajectory data, detailed instructions on running the simulation and...

In an upcoming colloquium, #swisstopo offers a look at an operational #EarthObservation pipeline turning #Sentinel-2 data into near #realtime insight for #drought #monitoring in Switzerland. #eo #remotesensing

The SDI Modernization Gateway, led by OGC and FGDC, envisions the next generation of Spatial Data Infrastructure. It’s a call to modernize governance, technology, and workforce collaboration to power smarter, connected geospatial ecosystems worldwide. The post SDI Modernization Gateway  appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.

Day 6 of the 30 day map challenege is Dimensions, and when I read the prompt I immediately thought: I have to do something with M values. M values, you say? It’s true that these don’t come up as often as Z, but many spatial specifications out there allow combinations of XY, XYZ, XYM, or XYZM values. The M stands for “measure” because I think the original motivation was that sometimes the linear distance along a feature is actually the easiest thing to measure (think: you’re mapping a rail line before reliable high-precision GPS and what you write down is the odometer reading of the train). The ability to store a fourth dimension is also helpful when communicating time. I’m not 100% on the history here (if you have a definitive history feel free to share and I’ll link it!) but I did once meet somebody from ESRI who told me their dad invented them and that M values are popular in South America. Who knew? From an implementation junkie’s perspective (me), M values (in particular the XYM...

The Swiss Federal Office of Energy and the Swiss Data Science Center have launched a #solarenergy forecast tool in the #Energy #Dashboard, offering both hourly forecasts and regional daily production statistics. The system combines multiple data sources — including data from #ML / #deeplearning analysis of aerial imagery for PV detection.​

The post Fields of The World (FTW): Building AI for Agricultural Impact with Microsoft’s Caleb Robinson appeared first on Taylor Geospatial Engine.

PLUS: A smarter way to detect informal settlements, and super-resolving hyperspectral images

It’s day 5…earth! I was particular excited about this day in the 30 day map challenege because earth is my thing…I did a M.Sc. in Geology and taught Geomorphology at Acadia University for several years. While my first thought was mapping bedrock or surficial geology in Nova Scotia, I was foiled by the fact that Nova Scotia DNR distributes its files as self-extracting executable files and I’m on a Mac. Instead, I turned to the open data of my new home in Winnipeg, Manitoba for the earthiest thing they could come up with. Turns out: it’s LiDAR. My initial attempt to map the whole city fell apart after it took took too long to download the files, so I constrained my problem to downtown Winnipeg where there was a fighting chance of observable elevation change and a truly excellent market with some of the best Fish & Chips out there. I took a look at the tile map and figured out the download URL was a bit of a pattern. # pip install "apache-sedona[db]" import sedona.db sd =...

A new no-fuss way to visualize your vector data and rasters right in the #terminal: viewinline is a lightweight #Python utility by Keiko Nomura that renders #GeoTIFF-s, #GeoPackage-s, #GeoJSON-s, and #Shapefile-s instantly in #iterm2 (and other compatible terminals).

Ever feel like your beautiful web map is trapped in the confines of your monitor? Do you wish its bounty could spill out beyond the stifling domain of 1920×1080? Here’s how to trick a browser’s device emulation tools to capture enormous screenshots. Now you can export your screen as though it were the size of …

Join Karyn Hayes-Ryan (Deep Waterpoint), Shawana Johnson (Global Marketing Insights), and Joe Calamari (CACI) as they share their firsthand experiences and key takeaways from the GEOINT 2025 symposium. This insightful discussion delves into the evolving landscape of the geospatial intelligence industry, highlighting shifts in NGA's presence, the impact of the Golden Ticket program, and the growing prominence of AI and advanced analytics.Highlights:• Golden Ticket Program Experience: Joe Calamari, a USGIF Golden Ticket winner, discusses his unique experience at GEOINT 2025, which provides younger professionals with unparalleled access to senior leaders and peers, fostering valuable mentorship and networking opportunities. Shawana Johnson also shares how her interns, prepared through extensive geospatial work, successfully leveraged the program for career advancement.• Evolving NGA Presence and Industry Engagement: The symposium saw a "different" NGA presence, with key leaders attending...

The video features an in-depth discussion on effective leadership and people development within the geospatial, defense, and intelligence communities, hosted by Karen Hayes-Ryan of Project Geospatial with trailblazing leaders Shawana Johnson (CEO, Oval Marketing Insights), Meredith Davis (VP, Govini), and Deb Davis (Board member, USGIF and OGC). The leaders detail efforts to support the next generation through extensive student internship programs and social enterprises focused on transitioning military veterans into high-tech roles. Key strategies for leadership include cultivating a culture of caring, managing succession, and identifying future talent based on traits like drive, curiosity, and flexibility. The panelists also share personal struggles—such as balancing family life with demanding careers or earning a doctorate while working full-time—and offer essential advice for navigating industry turbulence: stay flexible, focus on immediate problems ("10-meter target"), and get AI...

Harley Emery, founder of Charted Consulting, discusses her new woman-owned small business specializing in geospatial data analysis and reporting for humanitarian and development organizations. Motivated by unmet needs in the UN system and job defunding, Charted aims to provide specialized external services. Plans include scalable, user-friendly tools with automated and AI-supported workflows, highlighting Geoint's crucial role in humanitarian decision-making. Harley also details Charted's lean, flexible team model, utilizing vetted consultants and creating opportunities for skilled humanitarians. The discussion emphasizes opportunities for Geoint integration via user-friendly tools, machine learning, imagery analysis, and private sector partnerships, alongside the invaluable mentorship and networking from the USGIF GEOINT Symposium's Golden Ticket program.Key Highlights:• Charted Consulting: A new woman-owned small business offering data analysis, GIS, and report production for...

Gain a competitive edge in your geospatial career! We recently sat down with a panel of distinguished leaders for a revealing discussion on successful career navigation, building a powerful personal brand, and the indispensable value of networking. This insightful conversation was expertly guided by Moderator Karyn Hayes-Ryan and featured the expertise of Tara Mott (ESRI), Susan Case (TekSynap), Shawana Johnson (Global Marketing Insights, Inc), and Katie Betts (Albedo). Their shared wisdom underscores how adaptability, dedication, and a commitment to lifelong learning are fundamental to reaching your career goals.Highlights You Can't Miss:🌟 Learn why networking and personal branding are non-negotiable for career advancement.🤝 Discover how active community engagement can create significant growth and opportunities.🎓 Understand why your passion might speak louder than your degree in the hiring process.💪 Get advice on embracing the unique value of your experiences, especially when...

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Tracking Developments in AI Laws and Regulations for Geospatial Professionals

Mature Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), or "motes," are the missing link in modern intelligence and ISR operations. This article argues the intelligence community's failure to adopt this mature technology is a critical strategic lapse , creating a "static-data trap". Discover why the problem isn't the technology but institutional lag , and explore a framework for integrating WSNs with COTS GEOINT platforms to finally achieve continuous, real-time situational awareness.

The post Overture Maps Foundation Names William Mortenson as New Executive Director appeared first on Overture Maps Foundation.

From October 14-16, the STAC and Zarr communities came together at ESA ESRIN in Frascati, Italy, for the first-ever STAC sprint in Europe focused on advancing cloud-native multidimensional geospatial data. After three intensive days of collaborative development, we’re excited to share what we accomplished and what we hope to be the path forward for STAC-Zarr integration. Participants gathered at ESA ESRIN for the first European STAC sprint A Community Comes Together Twenty-six developers from across Europe and beyond converged on ESA’s facility in Frascati, representing a remarkable cross-section of the geospatial data community. Organizations including ESA, CEDA, DLR, EODC, Eurac Research, CloudFerro, Terradue, Element 84, Development Seed, DKRZ, Tilebox, and many others brought their unique perspectives and expertise to hammer out how multidimensional data should be represented in STAC. What made this sprint particularly powerful was the convergence of two communities, STAC and...

An astounding and outstanding 3D model of Sutro Tower in San Francisco has been released by Vincent Woo.  Sutro Tower in 3D is a fully interactive representation of the city’s 977-foot (298-meter) tall radio and television transmission tower. The model was created using thousands of aerial images of the tower, all captured by UAV / drone. […]

Day two of the 30 day map challenege is lines! A few weeks ago I wrote a post about stream traversal with SedonaDB. For day two I’ll do this with the river system for Gaspereau Lake (starting at the mouth of the beautiful Gaspereau River!). For anybody not familiar with the Gaspereau River, it features excellent wineries and the best tubing this side of any line you draw. Let’s get to it! # pip install "apache-sedona[db]" import sedona.db sd = sedona.db.connect() sd.options.interactive = True Let’s get ourselves some data! I’ll use the same GeoParquet as in the last post, but while in the last post I downloaded it using curl, I’ve since realized that SedonaDB can load it straight from the http url in a few seconds. I’ll augment the segments right out of the gate with the start/end points…the feature code list I had to iterate on a bit because the Gaspereau River system has a few fun hydrological components I hadn’t spotted in the last post (notably: canals, flumes, dams, and coastal...

AR/XR and maps

Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation

Day one of the 30 day map challenege is points! One of the datasets I use all the time in testing is named ns-water_point from GeoArrow Data. When I made this test data I didn’t think very hard about it…the Nova Scotia Geospatial Data Directory has a hydrological section and I spent the better part of a decade there working on lakes…it seemed like fun! Other than a few sanity checks I never really looked at the data, though, even though I read in the points one all the time as an example because it’s the smallest. Day one of the 30 day map challenege seemed like a good time to resolve this. What is ns-water_point, anyway!? Let’s roll. I’ll be using SedonaDB, so let’s load it: # pip install "apache-sedona[db]" import sedona.db sd = sedona.db.connect() sd.options.interactive = True Next, let’s get the GeoParquet url from the GeoArrow Data page: url = "https://github.com/geoarrow/geoarrow-data/releases/download/v0.2.0/ns-water_water-point_geo.parquet" Next I’ll read it in as a view....

The conversation around Looking for better ways to convert between QGIS VectorLayer and (Geo)DataFrame is continuing over at https://fosstodon.org/@underdarkGIS/115442614331293320 What I’ve learned so far: Exciting times for spatial data science tooling 🤩

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) proudly names Keith Ryden, Software Development Director at Esri, as the recipient of the 2025 Kenneth D. Gardels Award. With over two decades of contributions to OGC, Keith’s leadership in open standards—spanning Simple Features, GeoPackage, and I3S—has shaped the foundation of modern geospatial interoperability and cross-industry collaboration. The post OGC Honors Keith Ryden with 2025 Gardels Award appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.

Keith Ryden, recipient of the 2025 Kenneth D. Gardels Award, reflects on his journey shaping OGC standards—from Simple Features to modern APIs—and the power of collaboration that drives global interoperability in geospatial data and technology. The post Keith Ryden on collaboration, interoperability, and the evolution of open geospatial standards appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.

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A 2023 heatwave killed nearly all of Florida’s main reef-building corals, leaving the reef functionally extinct. The post Florida’s Primary Reef-Building Corals are ‘Functionally Extinct’ appeared first on Geography Realm.

The SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) specification provides a common structure for describing and cataloging spatiotemporal assets. The post OGC Announces Publication of the SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog Community Standards appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.

Once again, FOSS4G North America is bringing together the people shaping the future of open-source geospatial technology. This year, it takes place November 3–5 at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, Virginia, just a few miles from the centers of federal decision-making where open data, open tools, and open collaboration appear to be increasingly at risk. … Continue reading You Should Attend FOSS4G North America →

A hydraulic engineer by training, Nicolas Godet has been working at ISL Ingénierie for just over seven years and holds the position of hydraulic project manager (flood risk, hydraulic structure...

Connecting at FOSS4G Global and North America

I’ve been trying to write more as I get into this “New Life” thing since January. I’m not a developer. There was a time I did give it a go and it wasn’t my thing. I can write small programs that scratch an itch but they aren’t for mass consumption. I have found a large […] The post The TN 911 Project – The Garage. appeared first on North River Geographic Systems Inc.

Plugin developers who want to use (Geo)Pandas-based functionality in their plugins regularly face the challenge of converting QGIS vector layers to (Geo)DataFrames. There is currently no built-in convenience function. In Trajectools, so far, I have been performing the conversion manually, looping through all features and taking care of tricky column types, such as datetimes and …Read More

Apparently the key to better podcasting is IPAs

An example workflow for vector geospatial data science The post Building a Geospatial Lakehouse with Open Source and Databricks appeared first on Towards Data Science.

New OGC API Standard supports interoperable retrieval and querying of geospatial data across Discrete Global Grid Reference Systems. The post OGC Membership Approves OGC API – Discrete Global Grid Systems – Part 1: Core as an Official OGC Standard  appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.

Tracking Developments in AI Laws and Regulations For Geospatial Professionals

Utilities field operations keep critical infrastructure running, often under dangerous conditions, but they’re burdened with outdated, fragmented tech systems never designed for the field. The patchwork of disconnected apps and processes creates inefficiencies, risks, and unnecessary friction. It’s time for utilities to adopt a true field-first platform that empowers workers and supports modern operational demands. La entrada Utilities field operations deserve better than Frankentech se publicó primero en Fulcrum.

We just all decided to pretend it is.

Central Place Theory is a way to understand why cities and towns are where they are. Walter Christaller developed this theory in the 1930s. The post What Is Central Place Theory? appeared first on GIS Geography.

I said last year I was going to cut back on conferences and forgot about that in the lead up to January. So far this year there’s been three conferences I’ve attended. I’ve got another 2 plus one speaking engagement and then I’m done for a bit. Of course that leaves me wondering about next […] The post Solitude of the Traveling Pants appeared first on North River Geographic Systems Inc.

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The **Live Stream Gauge Map** is a free, interactive web application that visualizes real-time stream gauge data from thousands of monitoring stations worldwide. This tool provides instant access to current water levels, flow rates, and flood status information, helping users make informed decisions about water-related safety and activities.

It made me sad. I’m working on a project involving 911 data and it’s made me do quite a bit of thinking. The short story on this is it’s not in Tennessee. I’m taking data in it’s raw form and shoving it into that state’s NG911 format. So I have about half of it “pre-written” […] The post I edited ArcPy Code appeared first on North River Geographic Systems Inc.

When and where? Geomob London took place at 6:00 PM on Wednesday the 22nd of October, 2025 at Geovation Hub at (Sutton Yard, 65 Goswell Rd, London EC1V 7EN) Summary Thread Post by @[email protected] View on Mastodon Agenda Our format for the evening will be as it always has been: doors open at 18:00, set up and general mingling at 18:30 we begin the talks with a very brief introduction Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10-15 minutes. After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions. We vote - using Feature Upvote - for the best speaker. The winner will receive a SplashMap and unending glory (see the full list of all past winners). We head to a nearby pub for discussion and #geobeers paid for by the sponsors. The speakers: Joe Leach, Unique property reference numbers, a very British love affair Rain Wu, Maps as desires James Cheshire, The Library of Lost Maps Nigel...

Satellite technology has revolutionized our ability to detect and monitor fires, volcanic activity, and thermal anomalies across the globe. Our VIIRS Thermal Hotspots Map provides real-time access to thermal detection data from NASA and NOAA satellites, offering unprecedented visibility into active fire locations, intensity measurements, and heat sources worldwide.

The transition to clean energy transportation is accelerating, with millions of Americans now driving electric vehicles, hybrid cars, and alternative fuel vehicles. Our Alternative Fuel Stations Locator provides a comprehensive, interactive map of EV charging stations, hydrogen fueling stations, compressed natural gas (CNG) stations, and other alternative fuel locations across the United States

Severe weather strikes without warning, affecting millions of Americans each year. Our NOAA Storm Reports Interactive Map provides real-time access to official severe weather reports from the National Weather Service, helping you track tornadoes, large hail, and damaging wind events across the United States as they're reported.

PLUS: a new way to measure the full impact of droughts, a foundation model for describing the Earth, and more.

Wildfires pose an increasing threat across the United States, with thousands of incidents occurring annually. Our US Wildfire Timeline Map provides real-time wildfire tracking, leveraging official data from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) to help you monitor active fires, understand fire perimeters, and access critical incident information.

In this episode of Project Geospatial, host Joe Calamari sits down with Mollie Martin from Privateer Space — a trailblazer in the geospatial intelligence industry. Mollie shares her journey from Deloitte Ventures to leading Privateer’s go-to-market strategy, helping bridge the gap between space data, analytics, and real-world business insights. Privateer Space is building an open, extensible geospatial intelligence platform that merges orbital and Earth observation data into powerful business-ready insights. With a focus on sustainability and accessibility, Privateer enables organizations to understand and act on what’s happening — both in orbit and on Earth. Highlights: 🛰️ How Privateer’s Wayfinder platform tracks satellites and debris for space sustainability 🔄 The integration of Orbital Insight and Privateer’s shift to commercial geospatial analytics 🧩 Breaking down organizational silos and democratizing geospatial insights 🔄 How Privateer differentiates from satellite...

Interactive Magnetic Declination Calculator: Click Any Location to See True North vs Magnetic North vs Grid North Experience the Difference Between Three Norths Through Real-Time Map Interaction Stop reading confusing explanations about magnetic declination and grid convergence—see them for yourself. Our interactive magnetic north calculator transforms abstract angular concepts into visual, tangible arrows you can...

Free Interactive Cartesian Coordinate System Explorer Visualize, Learn, and Master Coordinate Geometry with Our Browser-Based Math Tool Discover the power of coordinate geometry with our free interactive Cartesian coordinate system explorer. Whether you’re a student learning about coordinate planes, a teacher creating visual demonstrations, or a professional working with spatial mathematics, this browser-based tool provides...

The post From Isolated Tools to Shared Innovation: Inside the Sprint Accelerating Fields of The World (FTW) appeared first on Taylor Geospatial Engine.

Esri IMGIS 2025 centers on resilience, sustainability, and the growing role of AI in GIS to connect planning, operations, and field execution. Across sessions on digital twins, field mobility, and data integration, the message remains clear: real progress depends on accurate, timely field data. As an Esri partner, Fulcrum shares that focus, helping teams keep GIS systems current through connected, field-first workflows that complement ArcGIS Pro and the ArcGIS Utility Network. La entrada From AI to field data: what’s driving conversation at Esri IMGIS 2025 se publicó primero en Fulcrum.

Old-school GIS tools like ArcGIS, MapInfo, and QGIS are powerful but limited to experts. Web Geospatial Intelligence platforms such as Mapidea bring geography to everyone, turning static maps into continuous business insight. It’s not about replacing GIS — it’s about freeing experts and empowering the whole organization.

Ever wondered how your phone knows you’re at Starbucks and not the cafe next door? Dive into the world of WGS-84, the invisible global grid that powers your GPS. Discover why this Cold War-era system is still the king of coordinates, how it's constantly updated to centimeter-level accuracy, and how it stacks up against alternatives like ITRF and NAD83. Uncover the secret language of location that silently runs our world.

Geospatial Intelligence is no longer a future promise — it’s a present advantage. Mapidea and partners NielsenIQ, NOS, and LTPlabs show how geography, data, and analytics merge to drive smarter Retail & FMCG decisions, from strategy and expansion to marketing and performance.

Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation

I mentioned in my previous post that, at a previous career stop, I built open-source support into our IT lifecycle. Specifically, we used QGIS. The primary reason we made that choice is that we were a Mac shop. It’s true we could have run ArcGIS Pro inside Parallels, but I didn’t see the need to … Continue reading Supporting Open Source: A Case Study →

Welcome to GeoAI Unpacked! I am Ali Ahmadalipour and in this blog, I share insights and deep dives in geospatial AI, focusing on business opportunities and industry challenges.

Systems like T-Kartor Iris METOC bring atmospheric science to the tactical edge, turning raw data into actionable, human-centered intelligence.

By rethinking how we share information, we turn intelligence into real-world impact, building systems that react to crises and help us anticipate & respond together.

You are already using open-source. I’ve said that time and again to various audiences. The most committed Microsoft and Esri users will immediately balk, but it’s easy to knock the objections down. Azure? Linux abounds. Esri? GDAL under the hood. And what does the “Py” in ArcPy stand for? Oh yeah, Python, the open-source programming … Continue reading Unless… →

I’m an obvious fan of GeoParquet and SedonaDB and it should be no surprise that I worked (still working!) pretty hard making sure SedonaDB could take advantage of all GeoParquet had to offer. This post talks about one of those things: lazy reads (or if you’re a databse nut, “pruning”). Basically, GeoParquet was designed to allow traditional GIS software to take advantage of a decade plus of heavy investment in the Parquet format and the software that reads and writes it. Two spot examples are that (1) software that reads traditional GIS formats is not particularly good at splitting the work up so that all the cores on your computer are put to good use and (2) most formats are not particularly good at being plonked onto a web server and have sections of them selectively queried1 (which can often save data producers from standing up a 24/7 web service). FlatGeoBuf, of course, is the shining example of being great at being plonked onto a web server in this way and it’s great as long as...

The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.5.4. This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta1, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+. To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.12+ is needed. SFCGAL 1.4+ is needed to enable postgis_sfcgal support. To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 1.5+ is needed. 3.5.4 source download md5 NEWS PDF docs: en This release is a bug fix release that includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.5.3.

Turning science into insight you can use.

mrnf.gouv.qc.ca/ministere/cartes-information-geographique/repertoire-services-web-donnees-geographiques

PLUS: Why crop classification models travel better than expected, making earthquake response planning more efficient, and more

Looking at GIS jobs

We’ve long thought that we’re onto something big here at Overture. And now the rest of the world does, too. I’m pleased to announce that Fast Company has recognized the... The post Open Collaboration Wins: Overture Named to Fast Company’s 2025 Next Big Things in Tech appeared first on Overture Maps Foundation.

Keeping geospatial professionals informed on the legal and policy issues that will impact GeoAI

A single source of truth gives field and office teams shared access to real-time, reliable data across all field operations. This blog outlines the four core requirements for building one: a centralized geospatial foundation, live and offline access, seamless system integration, and workflows that teams can adapt themselves. The right field inspection app plays a critical role in capturing and syncing high-quality data directly from the field during site inspections. La entrada How to build a single source of truth for your field operations using a field inspection app se publicó primero en Fulcrum.

Ten years ago today I registered this domain. It was my final week on the job where I’d been for over a decade. There were giant unknowns ahead in the form of a new job, working from home, and a baby on the way. What a time. Things have gone wonderfully these last ten years …

How many housing units are within a 1-mile radius of a given location? 5-miles? Use Site Analysis tools to count the number of housing units by census block as of 2020 and 2024. Use the use the VDA (Visual Data … Continue reading →

A little while back I showed you how to make trippy AI-inspired isometric contour diagram things in ArcGIS Pro using terrain elevation data from Living Atlas. Many of you took the challenge and created amazing maps of your own! Here’s an update to that how-to, with a simplified process and a new focus area! The sea floor! …

Ownership and sovereignty of geospatial data is a key concern of our times and a topic we frequently address in this blog space. Jonathan Murphy has written what I consider to be the most important and thoughtful essay about digital sovereignty of our times, here: https://gogeomatics.ca/canada-can-no-longer-pretend-digital-sovereignty-isnt-at-risk/ Jonathan is the CEO, President, and Founder of GoGeomatics […]

QGIS comes bundled with a simplified version of the Natural Earth Countries shapefile that is suitable for quick map-making. The layer can be loaded into your canvas by typing the keyword world in the coordinates bar. While this is useful, there is no single political map of the world that is accepted by every country […]

Virtual Access, Python Improvements, and Zarr Summit

The last time I preprocessed the whole GeoLife dataset, I loaded it into PostGIS. Today, I want to share a new workflow that creates a (Geo)Parquet file and that is much faster. The dataset (GeoLife) “This GPS trajectory dataset was collected in (Microsoft Research Asia) Geolife project by 182 users in a period of over …Read More

In 2020, centenarians (people of age 100 or more) accounted for just 2 out of 10,000 people. Centenarians in the U.S. increased by 50% from 53,364 in 2010 to 80,139 in 2020. The graphic shows patterns of centenarians in the … Continue reading →

An Upgrade You Can't Ignore......

As part of the GeoAI and Deep Learning Symposium at the 2026 AAG Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California we have a call for papers for sessions entitled "Geosimulation and Its Emerging Directions with AI"Call for Papers:Simulating past, present, and future events can empower humans to understand the composition and interactions in complex systems and explain their emergence and evolution from bottom up. In practice, geosimulations constitute a powerful tool in engaging different stakeholders, exploring what-if scenarios, and evaluating alternative policy outcomes.We invite interdisciplinary works for the exploration and understanding of complex social and environmental processes by means of computer simulation. We focus on all aspects of simulation and agent societies, including multi-agent systems, agent-based modeling, microsimulation, artificial intelligence (AI) agents, and the integration of Generative AI with simulation.As GenAI is impacting all aspects of our lives, we are...

Yesterday I read Sylvain Lesage’s post Parquet with GEOMETRY type is not GeoParquet and started writing a reply for Linkedin but it ended up a bit too long to just be a comment, so I thought I’d just post it here as a blog. Overall it’s a great write-up and I appreciate that Sylvain took the time to share his understandings, and that he’s been diving deep to be able to support the geospatial + Parquet ecosystem. And most all of it is right on, but I wanted to provide some more context, and one tweak. The only thing that I think is ‘off’ in the post is the timeline that says GeoParquet 1.1 was ‘published three months after the introduction of GEOMETRY and GEOGRAPHY in Parquet’. GeoParquet 1.1 was June 19th of 2024, while the geospatial types landed in Parquet core in March of 2025. The original PARQUET-2471 discussion started about 1 month before the 1.1.0 release. And the main topic for the core GeoParquet group members after the 1.1.0 release was to help ensure that Parquet and...

PLUS: the hidden heat threat to coastal ecosystems, and predicting water quality with AI

Reimagining Canada’s Spatial Access Measures with GeoParquet and DuckDB-WASM

Following the earlier announcement that QGIS is moving to Qt 6 and launching QGIS 4.0, we want to share an… Read more Update on QGIS 4.0 Release Schedule and LTR Plans

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Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation

The Rise of the GIS Professional Community

Here is a map created in ArcGIS Online using Imagery and Terrain layers available in Living Atlas. Here’s how you can make it: If you’d like a straight up recipe to go along with this video, I’ve got you covered! Remember, the elevation image service is subscriber content, so it’s not for public-facing applications where …

Last week I had the pleasure of being a guest on a Cloud Native Geospatial webinar with my colleagues Jia Yu and Matt Forrest where we talked SedonaDB. In the webinar Matt demoed a fantastic blog post comparing a real-world workflow on SedonaDB, DuckDB, and PostGIS. In preparation, I came up with a few examples and only a small bit ended up making it to the live demo. Here’s the full version! The gist of the post: let’s use SedonaDB’s top-notch (if I do say so myself) Arrow interop to ingest some totally bonkers real-world data and write it to nice clean GeoParquet. Let’s get started: SedonaDB can be instealled with pip: pip install "apache-sedona[db]" We’ll create the handle to our session (sd) and turn on interactive mode to auto-print results (handy when not running queries against remote data!). import sedona.db sd = sedona.db.connect() sd.options.interactive = True Now let’s get into the problem a little. In 2012 I got a job as a Project Coordinator at a small environmental...

Stephanie May is a geographic technologist and cartographer based in Seattle, Washington. In addition to being a founding member of CNG’s Editorial Board, she serves on the board of the MapLibre Organization, an open source ecosystem for webmapping, and is the Principal of Liminal Maps. 1. What geospatial trend or tool excites you right now? I’m energized by how much easier it has gotten to build, host, and embed cloud-enabled web maps. A few technologies stand out: PMTiles allow for serverless hosting from anywhere that supports HTTP range requests, which means you can build a map in a GitHub repo and host it via GitHub Pages, or for larger projects shift to a cloud storage bucket. Pair with Protomaps for a full map solution: extract a region in PMTiles format paired with a stylesheet and all the other assets you need to embed a map in your project site or app via MapLibre, or customize it in a huge variety of ways, such as mixing in other sources (e.g. OpenStreetMap US just...

Keeping geospatial professionals informed on the legal and policy issues that will impact GeoAI

In Canada, we have an unfenced backyard and need to combine AI with satellites to solve a series of key geographic, political, sovereignty, and climate-related problems.

Geography as an interdisciplinary binding agent

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The Global Index: Redefining Mapping and Geospatial Analysis

Tell Us About Yourself Hi, I’m Jan Paul Miene. I’m currently completing my Master’s degree in Geodata Technology at the Technical University of Würzburg/Schweinfurt in Germany. My background is in geovisualisation, and I’ve always been fascinated by the intersection of data, geography, and design. What I enjoy most about cartography is that maps have the […] The post Maps and Mappers of the 2025 Calendar – Jan-Paul Meine – September appeared first on GeoHipster.

I just wrote a guest blog post for the Esri Young Professionals Network (I know, I’m neither young, nor professional) about my job at Esri (UX design, cartography, and education), what I did before that, and then I carelessly toss around some advice. If that sounds like a 3 minute read that you’re interested in, …

The Open Geospatial Consortium names Ed Parsons as Board Chair, with Prof. Dr. Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse as Vice Chair to drive global geospatial innovation. The post Ed Parsons Named Chair of OGC Board of Directors appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.

Rocket Lab, a US-based launch services and space systems company, has announced an expansion of its partnership with Japanese SAR provider Synspective. The 10-satellite launch extension comes a year and […] The post Rocket Lab, Synspective to Launch 10 More StriX Satellites appeared first on Geospatial World.

PLUS: Where shared rivers are most likely to spark conflict, mapping the hidden value of urban voids and more.

I have no problem with vibe coding. Yes, you can make bad code with it, and quite easily. The worst way to vibe code is to issue a monolithic prompt like “Build a word processor with the features of Microsoft Word.” But using techniques like chain-of-thought or plan-and-solve prompting in an iterative manner can yield … Continue reading Vibing Adjacencies →

When and where? Geomob Edinburgh was held at 6:30pm (doors open at 6pm) on Tuesday, September 30th, 2025 at the office of Esri UK: Floor 2, Quartermile Three, 10 Nightingale Way, EH3 9EG Edinburgh Google Maps, OpenStreetMap Summary Thread Post by @[email protected] View on Mastodon Agenda Our format for the evening will be: doors open at 18:00, set up and general mingling at 18:30 we begin the talks with a very brief introduction Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10 minutes. After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions. Matthew will show us the diorama / physical model of Fort William his team made! We head to a nearby pub for discussion and #geobeers sponsored by OpenCage, Esri. The speakers: Noon van der Silk, Is this the worst school crossing in Edinburgh? Peter Creasey, Raytracing large Scottish Lidar datasets Matthew Akerman, Esri UK, Building a topographically correct diorama We are always...

This article issues a compelling challenge to the community: to collaboratively forge an open-source successor to the vital HIFLD portal. We present a conceptual solution, not as a finished blueprint, but as a compass to guide a collective journey forward. Join the critical conversation on building a resilient, community-owned digital commons for national infrastructure data, reclaiming our shared responsibility in the wake of a crucial public resource going dark. This is a call to action for mappers, developers, emergency managers, and all stakeholders to define the future of accessible, authoritative geospatial data.

with geovibes!

Today's interconnected world faces mounting challenges such as food security monitoring, supply chain transparency, climate impact assessment, and sustainable development tracking. The post Fields of the World: Building AI and ML Infrastructure for Global Field Boundaries appeared first on Taylor Geospatial Engine.

Articles, encouragements, and warnings about AI (Artificial Intelligence) in GIS are, as many of us in the geospatial industry knew they would, are appearing at an increasing pace. If you only have time this week to read one of these articles, I encourage you to make it the one by Eric Pimpler. Why? First, through […]

As challenges such as accelerating urbanization, traffic congestion and data privacy continue to rise, so too does the need for more innovative transportation solutions. TomTom, a leader in location technology, […] The post How maps and traffic data deliver actionable insights for smarter cities appeared first on Geospatial World.

Using ESA’s new Sentinel-1 Zarr format for time series flood analysis.

In a time of deep fakes, how can the Earth observation community push back against artificial representations of Planetary events?

Look beyond the technology

In this episode Chris and Krishna talk a little about their career paths, reply to some questions from listeners about Episode 1 concerning embeddings, and profess their undying love for Google Earth Engine.

Last Wednesday the Apache Sedona project announced SedonaDB. There’s also a great post on the Whereobots blog that has a bit more context, or if you’re like me and you just want to see the code you can do that too. I’ve been a sparse blog poster ever since I (1) got a job and (2) had kids, but if you’ve been vaguely following over the past few years you’ll notice that I mostly have written about what happens when spatial data gets a little too big to be comfortable for the standard R and Python tools to handle (mostly sf and geopandas). By “too big to be comfortable” I mean anything where the key part of your iteration takes more than 10 seconds, which is roughly the amount of time the average person is willing to wait before trying to do something else. The blog posts and the sofware I worked on over the past few years were cool but never solved anything: I basically found some great workarounds that people could implement if they were willing to write a pile of low-level R, C, or...

.. The United States 119th Congress is in session from Jan 3, 2025 to Jan 3, 2027. This post is focused on the demographic change of the 119th Congressional Districts from the 2020 (Census 2020) to 2023 (ACS 2024) by … Continue reading →

When and where? Geomob Berlin took place at 18:00 on Thursday the 25th of September, 2025 in the office of Bettermile at Oranienstr. 183 (Aufgang B), 10999 Berlin (Google Maps, OpenStreetMap). The nearest station is Kottbusser Tor. Summary Thread Post by @[email protected] View on Mastodon Agenda Our format for the evening will be as it always has been: doors open at 18:00, set up and general mingling at 18:30 we begin the talks with a very brief introduction Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10-15 minutes. After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions. We vote - using Feature Upvote - for the best speaker. The winner will receive a SplashMap and unending glory (see the full list of all past winners). We head to a nearby pub for discussion and #geobeers paid for by the sponsors. The speakers: Michael Cruickshank, Anthropocene Analytics: Leveraging geospatial data and complex network...

Uncover the future of Earth observation with Project Orbion, a groundbreaking European initiative revolutionizing how we understand our planet. This in-depth article explores how a powerful consortium is merging cutting-edge satellite technology—combining all-weather Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) with high-resolution optical imagery—to create unparalleled "Synthetic Realities" and dynamic digital twins. Learn how Orbion is poised to transform sectors from urban planning and disaster management to defense and maritime safety, offering real-time, comprehensive insights into our world. Discover the innovations driving the surging digital twin market and the pivotal role of AI in bridging human interaction with vast planetary data.

The Best Practice builds upon OGC’s 30-plus years of modeling experience to ensure interoperability for data encoded using JSON. The post OGC Publishes Best Practice for UML to JSON Encoding Rules appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.

PLUS: The hidden impact of urban design on our health, Public R&D is making Europe’s regions more unequal and more.

FOSS4G North America in DC

A short video with Sparkgeo's CTO, Dustin Sampson, on vibe coding for fast proofs of concept.

Janelle Daigle holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Geography and a Masters of Science degree in Geoinformatics. She began her integration of GIS and space weather during her graduate studies at Millersville University where she participated in Millersville’s SWEN (Space Weather and the Environment) program. Her Masters thesis focused on utilizing geospatial technology to assess the […] The post I didn’t set out seeking to get into the geospatial field, it sort of found me. appeared first on GeoHipster.

In conversation with Mr. Eric DesRoche, Director, Infrastructure Business Strategy, AEC Design, Autodesk, where he talks about the adoption of Digital Twin and its role in critical infrastructure, major opportunities […] The post We’re going through a digital transformation in the AEC industry appeared first on Geospatial World.

In our ongoing series on geospatial raster data formats, Julia Signell and I have been exploring the finer points of array data storage. Throughout our research, we’ve found that chunking – breaking a large dataset down into smaller pieces for individual storage and retrieval – is universally relevant regardless of data format. Chunking, as we’ve seen, is an absolutely necessary strategy for making large datasets usable, but in the cloud era, it has become something tyrannical, making data access efficiency strictly tied to chunk alignment. Diverging from an access pattern aligning with the dataset’s chunking scheme and compounding inefficiencies will cripple data access at scale. Pretend, for example, we are an official in Chico, a city in the central valley of California near the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, who wants to examine changes in monthly average maximum temperatures in the city over the years 2010 to 2020 to understand possible increases in air conditioner usage. Say...

Finding a narrative for the opportunity of geospatial.

Geo for Good is Google’s annual conference focused on their geospatial and cloud offerings. The 2025 edition of the summit was hosted at both New York and Singapore. I was glad to take part in the Geo for Good 2025 Summit at Singapore that took place from Sept 8-11, 2025 at the Google Singapore office. […]

This plenary panel from AEC Forum 2025, moderated by Ananyaa Narain (Vice President – Consulting, Geospatial World), explored how the integration of geospatial, BIM, and digital twin technologies is transforming […] The post Geospatial + BIM + Digital Twins: Enabling Connected Infrastructure Systems | AEC Forum 2025 appeared first on Geospatial World.

Oslandia is pleased to announce the release of the QGIS plugin: QSunPotential, a tool for assessing the solar potential of roofs developed by Oslandia in collaboration with CRAIG (Auvergne Rhône...

A return to worldbuilding

When and where? Geomob Netherlands took place in Eindhoven on the evening of Thursday, September 18th, 2025 at the office of HERE: Kennedyplein 222, 5611 ZT Eindhoven - Maps: HERE, OpenStreetMap, Google Maps Agenda Doors open at 16:30, set up and general mingling Talks begin at 17:00 with a very brief introduction Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10-15 minutes. After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions. After the speeches, we vote for the best speaker. The winner will receive the best speaker prize and unending glory (see the full list of all past winners). Discussion and #award and #geobeers paid for by the sponsors The speakers: Dean Carstens, Why does HERE support GeoMob, a warm welcome! Joost Gevaert, Geotechnical Data = 3D Vector Data Prof Hans van der Kwast, Digital Sovereignty and open source software Daniel Escobar Valdivieso, Creating a Playground for Innovation through Digital Twin of the...

PLUS: examining plane crashes using satellites, predicting water quality with explainable AI, and more.

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

A meditation on the craft of coding

Keeping geospatial professionals informed on the legal and policy issues that will impact GeoAI

Explore the dawn of Quantum-Geospatial Intelligence (Quantum GEOINT), a new era catalyzed by IonQ's landmark acquisition of Capella Space. This report dissects the fusion of quantum computing and Earth observation, detailing how technologies like Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) are creating unbreachable data security from orbit. Discover how quantum principles of superposition, entanglement, and interference are set to revolutionize geospatial analysis through advanced optimization for logistics and disaster response, quantum machine learning (QML) for satellite imagery, and high-fidelity climate simulations. We map the emerging ecosystem of key players, from IonQ and D-Wave to GDIT, and provide a forward-looking assessment of the challenges and strategic imperatives for navigating this transformative frontier

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

The following data source on the Tableau Public site invites data users to “Explore these sample data sets, data sources, and web data connectors to get started on your next visualization project. Download a data set and connect to it from Tableau to start creating. Data sets may be available in English only.” https://public.tableau.com/app/learn/sample-data I […]

This year, Sparkgeo turned 15. To celebrate, our annual meet up was held in Prince George, British Columbia, the place where it all began in 2010. As a remote team, face-to-face time matters, and it’s especially important that the things we do together are fun. This year was a chance to reflect on our roots […] The post 15 Years of Sparkgeo: Maps, Adventure, and Endurance appeared first on Sparkgeo.

Explore the future of 3D geospatial innovation as charted at the Cesium Developer Conference in Philadelphia. This comprehensive recap covers groundbreaking advancements in open standards like 3D Tiles and glTF, the transformative impact of AI and Gaussian Splatting on reality capture, and the widespread adoption of digital twins in industries ranging from AEC and defense to climate resilience. Discover how Cesium's ecosystem—from CesiumJS and the Cesium ion cloud platform to powerful runtime plugins for Unreal Engine—is empowering over 400 innovators worldwide to build a more connected and intelligent virtual world

Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation

At AEC Forum 2025, Tapan Mozumdar, Senior Vice President, The Global Network for Zero, unpacks the real challenges and opportunities of digitalization in construction. He highlights why interoperability in BIM […] The post Interoperability, BIM & Digital Twins: The Road to Net Zero Infrastructure | AEC Forum 2025 appeared first on Geospatial World.

I've heard geospatial professionals describe GIS as Google Maps. But is this really true? We compare Google Maps vs other GIS software. The post Is Google Maps Really a GIS Software? appeared first on GIS Geography.

PLUS: improving air quality forecasting, new migration data from Facebook, and more.

Yes, we spoke about embeddings

Aligned with our theme of this blog of “be critical of the data,” consider the following recent fascinating story:  An artist wheeled 99 smartphones around in a wagon to create fake traffic jams on Google Maps.  An artist pulled 99 smartphones around Berlin in a little red wagon, in order to track how the phones […]

Wenn man sich mit Daten-Themen auseinandersetzt, ist „Datenräume“ schon einige Zeit ein geflügeltes Wort. Was die aktuellen Entwicklungen im Thema sind, habe ich am Swiss Data Spaces Forum in Rotkreuz mit anderen Interessierten diskutiert. Quelle Header-Bild: Swiss Data Alliance Datenräume Letzten Dienstag traf sich die Schweizer Daten-Community in Rotkreuz zum diesjährigen «Swiss Data Spaces Forum». …

Sometimes things happen at a slow burn. One thing I’ve been trying to do in what spare time I have is resurrect the QGIS-US group. It’s starting. I’ve reached the point now where emails/virtual hangouts are about to start happening. So I made a google form and in general I’m just trying to figure out […] The post QGIS-US User Group appeared first on North River Geographic Systems Inc.

At AEC Forum 2025, Satish MV, Executive Committee Member & Advisor to CMD, Larsen & Toubro, explores how digital technologies are redefining construction and infrastructure worldwide. From automated generative design […] The post Digital Engineering at L&T: The Power of BIM, AI & Smart Construction | AEC Forum 2025 appeared first on Geospatial World.

Yet another great tutorial by: Akshay UpadhyayQGIS Server - Configuration and Deploying QGIS Project - 

Chris and Krishna discuss their experiences working with geospatial embeddings, search and remote sensing in general, and how they think through problems.

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

For two decades, the Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data (HIFLD) Open portal was the bedrock of U.S. disaster response and community planning—a free, authoritative map of the nation's most critical assets. Now, it's gone. This in-depth article explores the profound impact of the recent shutdown of HIFLD Open, from its origins in the wake of 9/11 to its vital role in responding to hurricanes and wildfires. Discover what made this curated government data uniquely powerful for emergency managers and researchers, and why its disappearance leaves a critical void that commercial and crowdsourced maps cannot fill. We examine the consequences of this decision for national resilience and the uncertain future of open data in America.

Reasons and technical explanations for the redesign of QChat, the system for chatting with peers in QGIS.

GIS Merges Into the Matrix

Many small and mid-sized organizations find technology modernization daunting due to costs, complexity, and skill shortages. However, a strategic, step-by-step approach focusing on business goals and small, high-impact wins can ease the process. Embracing gradual changes and leveraging expert guidance helps unlock new efficiencies and competitive advantages.

In the world of geospatial technology, two powerful currents shape our digital maps: the polished, enterprise-ready ecosystems of proprietary software like Esri's ArcGIS and the passionate, community-driven innovation of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). This is not a story of opposition, but of a complex, thriving balance. From corporate giants optimizing global logistics to volunteer armies mapping disaster zones in real-time to save lives, both models are fundamental to our modern world.   This article delves into the heart of this dynamic, exploring the philosophies that divide and the open standards that unite these two worlds. We deconstruct the powerful FOSS4G stack—featuring titans like QGIS and PostGIS—and examine the sustainable business models that prove "free" software is a viable, enterprise-grade choice.   More than just code, we uncover the soul of the movement: the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) and the global community that...

At AEC Forum 2025, Eric DesRoche, Director – Infrastructure Business Strategy, AEC Design, Autodesk, shares powerful insights into the global shifts shaping the AEC industry. From India’s rapid rise in […] The post AI, BIM & India’s Infrastructure Boom: The Future of AEC | AEC Forum 2025 appeared first on Geospatial World.

Keeping geospatial professionals informed on the legal and policy issues that will impact GeoAI

Disasters are becoming more frequent, more intense, and more costly. From cyclones and floods to record-breaking heatwaves, the threat to global infrastructure is real—and growing. At AEC Forum 2025, Amit […] The post Resilient Infrastructure in an Age of Disasters | AEC Forum 2025 appeared first on Geospatial World.

Geography & AI

Welcome to GeoAI Unpacked! I am Ali Ahmadalipour and in this blog, I share insights and deep dives in geospatial AI, focusing on business opportunities and industry challenges.

At AEC Forum 2025, Maj. Gen. Sameer Srivastava, AVSM, VSM, Additional Director General, Land Works and Environment, Indian Army, shares how the Army is reimagining infrastructure for the future. From […] The post Indian Army’s Future-Ready Infrastructure: Resilient, Sustainable & Strategic | AEC Forum 2025 appeared first on Geospatial World.

PLUS: New nightlights dataset, identifying rural tourism sites and more.

The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.6.0! Best Served with PostgreSQL 18 Beta3 and recently released GEOS 3.14.0. This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta3, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+. To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.14+ is needed. To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 2.2.0+ is needed. 3.6.0 source download md5 NEWS HTML Online en ja sv fr zh_Hans PDF docs: en ja, sv, zh_Hans, fr Cheat Sheets: postgis: en ja sv fr zh_Hans postgis_raster: en ja sv fr zh_Hans postgis_topology: en ja sv fr zh_Hans postgis_sfcgal: en ja sv fr zh_Hans address standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder: en ja sv fr zh_Hans This release includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.5.3 and new features.

stac-map makes exploring STAC GeoParquet as simple as zooming around a map.

Topoprint now supports creating relief maps as RoundRects (rounded rectangles) alongside traditional disc shapes. Backend optimizations have accelerated 3D model processing significantly: a model that once took up to 10 minutes now completes in less than three minutes, complete with a progress bar update to keep users informed. Additionally, the Topodisc Designer web app has been revamped for mobile devices, making interaction more intuitive on the small screen.

From the inky blackness at the edge of space, a slender silhouette patrols the upper atmosphere, a silent sentinel against the gentle curvature of the Earth. This is the domain of the Lockheed U-2, an aircraft known by the mythical moniker "Dragon Lady". For nearly seven decades, from the iciest depths of the Cold War to the complex surveillance demands of the 21st century, this visionary aircraft has been a constant, often unseen, factor in global geopolitics. Born from a desperate need to peer behind the Iron Curtain, the U-2 was a high-stakes gamble. Its story is one of groundbreaking technological leaps forged in secrecy at Lockheed's legendary Skunk Works, but it is equally a story of profound human endeavor. Discover the incredible skill and courage required of its pilots, who flew solo for hours at over 70,000 feet, navigating the razor-thin margin of the "coffin corner" while sealed inside an early spacesuit. Go behind the scenes of the U-2's most...

Things to Learn Before Others in GIS (and Why they Matter) Life in GIS The field of Geospatial Development is vast and diving in without the right learning order can quickly turn... The post Things to Learn Before Others in GIS (and Why they Matter) appeared first on Life in GIS published by Wanjohi Kibui

GIS Dissolves into the Matrix

High on a remote mountaintop, you spot a metallic glint set in the bedrock: a weathered brass disk stamped with cryptic words and a perfect triangle. What is this object? It's a geodetic survey marker, a physical anchor from a two-century-long scientific odyssey to measure and map a continent. This is the story of how a network of brass and sweat, laid down with grueling labor and uncompromising precision, formed the invisible framework of our modern world. Discover the audacious vision of Ferdinand Hassler, the brutal life of a survey party, and the elegant science of triangulation that transformed an unmapped frontier into a tangible nation. But in an age of GPS, are these markers mere relics? Explore the paradox of why these "silent sentinels" are more critical than ever, anchoring our virtual, satellite-driven age to the solid ground beneath our feet.

PLUS: Using generative AI for urban planning, and sensor-agnostic cloud detection

Finding the right balance between Running-the-business (RTB) and Changing-the-business (CTB) can be challenging. This post explains that if RTB tasks are kept to a minimum, Scrum can be effective. However, if those tasks increase, adopting a hybrid or Kanban system can significantly help maintain smooth workflows and achieve operational excellence.

Spatialty emphasizes a modern GIS approach centered on automation, accessibility, and education, transforming challenges into opportunities and enhancing organizational decision-making through geospatial intelligence.

Continuing my thoughts on deep horizontals, looking at AI and Geospatial economics. Another point of comparison is the use of consumer tools in enterprise workflows.

Overture is collaborating with the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA), which recently joined the Linux Foundation and Overture as a member, to solve a long-standing challenge in the travel industry: data interoperability. For years, the travel sector has struggled to standardize location data for hotels, attractions, and other points of interest across a complex ecosystem of providers. The post Overture and the OpenTravel Alliance: Enabling the Future of Travel with Open Data appeared first on Overture Maps Foundation.

AI adoption is facing the same problems that Geospatial has been struggling with. Services-driven products are one solution, MIT, A16Z, and OpenAI all agree.

The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.6.0rc2! Best Served with PostgreSQL 18 Beta3 and recently released GEOS 3.14.0. This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta3, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+. To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.14+ is needed. To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 2.2.0+ is needed. 3.6.0rc2 source download md5 NEWS HTML Online en ja sv fr zh_Hans PDF docs: en ja, sv, zh_Hans, fr Cheat Sheets: postgis: en ja sv fr zh_Hans postgis_raster: en ja sv fr zh_Hans postgis_topology: en ja sv fr zh_Hans postgis_sfcgal: en ja sv fr zh_Hans address standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder: en ja sv fr zh_Hans This release is a beta of a major release, it includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.5.3 and new features.

Use Python, GeoPandas, Tropycal, and Plotly Express to map the number of hurricane encounters per county over the past 50 years. The post Where Hurricanes Hit Hardest: A County-Level Analysis with Python appeared first on Towards Data Science.

WorldPop interview

Maps, like all great designs, are not just about looks, but how they help us understand and engage with the world we live in.

PLUS: How the weather is affecting marriages, falling global ocean productivity, and more.

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

Im ersten und zweiten Teil dieser Mini-Blogserie habe ich gezeigt, woher GNSS-Daten (umgangssprachlich GPS-Daten) stammen und wie sich diese in spezialisierten Tracking-Studien gezielt erfassen lassen. Im heutigen und letzten Teil widmen wir uns nun einer Anwendung, die den Nutzen solcher Daten greifbar macht. Ich zeige, wie sich der Einfluss von Hitze auf fussläufige Erreichbarkeiten quantifizieren …

The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.6.0rc1! Best Served with PostgreSQL 18 Beta3 and soon to be released GEOS 3.14. This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta3, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+. To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.14+ is needed. To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 2.2.0+ is needed. 3.6.0rc1 source download md5 NEWS HTML Online en ja sv fr zh_Hans PDF docs: en ja, sv, zh_Hans, fr Cheat Sheets: postgis: en ja sv fr zh_Hans postgis_raster: en ja sv fr zh_Hans postgis_topology: en ja sv fr zh_Hans postgis_sfcgal: en ja sv fr zh_Hans address standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder: en ja sv fr zh_Hans This release is a beta of a major release, it includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.5.3 and new features.

Welcome to GeoAI Unpacked! I am Ali Ahmadalipour and in this blog, I share insights and deep dives in geospatial AI, focusing on business opportunities and industry challenges.

Tell Us About Yourself Hi, I’m Aaron Koelker. I was introduced to GIS while pursuing an Environmental Science degree and quickly became hooked on its unique blend of problem solving, storytelling, and visual design. I then spent eight years with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection providing enterprise GIS support and working on a wide variety of mappy […] The post Maps and Mappers of the 2025 Calendar – Aaron Koelker – July appeared first on GeoHipster.

The GIS landscape is changing once again, and this time it’s the familiar Concurrent Use (CU) license model that’s being phased out. Esri…

With reference to the source 'Compiling SAGA on Linux'.https://sourceforge.net/p/saga-gis/wiki/Compiling%20SAGA%20on%20Linux/You can also simply run these modules in QGIS but you would miss out on some excellent advantages such as having multiple map windows synchronized and a simple interface.Current 'Debian/Ubuntu' libraries only go up to version 9.2.0. This will install the latest version (currently 9.10.0).1. ~$ sudo apt install libwxgtk3.2-dev libgdal-dev libproj-dev libpq-dev libpdal-dev libopencv-dev libhpdf-dev unixodbc-dev(You may see this error:) 'E: Unable to locate package libpdal-dev'  this does not prevent continuation of compilation process.2. ~$ sudo apt-get install g++ cmake cmake-qt-gui make libtool git3. ~$ sudo apt install libwxgtk3.2-dev4. ~$ sudo apt install libcurl4-openssl-dev5. ~$ sudo apt install g++ make cmake git swig python3 python3-dev python-dev-is-python36. ~$ sudo mkdir /home/devel7. ~$ cd /home/devel8. ~$ sudo git clone...

PLUS: How AI is speeding up map digitisation, and new data processing methods from NASA

A Journey of Growth: NLT’s Evolving Role at TUgis New Light Technologies (NLT) is proud to have served as the Platinum Sponsor of the 2025 Maryland GIS Conference (TUgis 2025). Our journey with TUgis has been one of significant growth and deepening commitment. Over the years, we have evolved from presenters and lower-tier sponsors to becoming a leading sponsor in 2025. This progression underscores our dedication to the geospatial community and our continuous efforts to advance geospatial solutions.

NIQ’s Oliver Pape explains how NIQ’s strategic partnership with Mapidea transforms market and consumer data into powerful, actionable insights. By uniting NIQ’s datasets with Mapidea’s geospatial intelligence platform, clients gain faster, clearer decision-making capabilities—unlocking new opportunities for growth and competitive advantage.

Every couple of years, sales organizations brace for the big territory reorganization: costly consultants, months of meetings, anxious reps, and a shiny “new map” that’s already ageing when it launches.  At Mapidea, we’ve seen this across industries—and we know there’s a better way. Continuous Sales Territory Optimization uses a geospatial intelligence system to track territory performance in real time, assess the impact of changes, and make small, frequent adjustments collaboratively with the people who know the field best.  It’s faster, less expensive, and far more effective. Why wait years for the next reorg when you can optimize today? 

It’s weird to say “Time for the 7 month check-in” but there I stood at the doctors office waiting for my 7 month evaluation. Long story short – I’ve got some form of Heart Disease. I say some form because people have said a half dozen things around me and they all resolve around that […] The post Time for the 7 Month Check-in appeared first on North River Geographic Systems Inc.

CNG is the place where geospatial data users create the future together. To make the share of knowledge between those data users even smoother, we’ve refined our process for getting blog posts onto cloudnativegeo.org. Whether you want to share a deep-dive technical tutorial, highlight lessons learned from a recent project, or explore ways to strengthen our community, this updated approach makes it simple to propose, write, and publish. The following information can also be found at CONTRIBUTING.md. What we’re looking for Evergreen topics - We are always open to content about new ways of using geospatial data, case studies that show the benefits of using cloud-native approaches, technical tutorials, open-source tools, best practices in geospatial data management, and tools that help data users share, access, and work with geospatial data more effectively. Current priorities - This year, we are also interested in blog posts that address the following common community challenges that...

This week Sue, Jesse, and Frank have a conversation about Geography, disciplines, where we are, and where we were.

Don't Compete with Big Embeddings

I hardly ever do Mergin Maps blog posts. I need to do more. So I’ve been mapping random things in Chattanooga for OSM – which puts me out with my Bad Elf GPS and Mergin Maps. I don’t do nearly enough field work these days. It sort of scratches an itch. It’s fun. I’m probably […] The post Sketching in Mergin Maps appeared first on North River Geographic Systems Inc.

Build better QGIS plugins with custom dialogs and the Processing framework.

Each month, we’re highlighting the community leaders who volunteer their expertise to guide CNG’s direction. Our Editorial Board Spotlight series features a different board member sharing their perspectives on geospatial trends and tools, what’s capturing their attention through reading or their current work, and the challenges they believe our community should focus on. 1. What geospatial trend or tool excites you right now? I’m particularly excited about the growing convergence of geospatial data and AI, especially through open-source tools that lower the barrier to entry. Tools like the Segment Anything Model (SAM), combined with geospatial wrappers such as segment-geospatial and GeoAI, are enabling rapid experimentation in image segmentation and classification workflows. These tools empower researchers and practitioners to apply cutting-edge vision models to Earth observation data with minimal friction. In addition, the emergence of geospatial foundation models—large, pretrained...

Iris is designed to meet the realities of defense & high-security operations, segmented environments, varying security levels, and strict governance.

In a previous post we talked about the potential of Generative AI for urban modeling, keeping with this theme at the 11th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2), Na Jiang, Boyu Wang and myself had a poster entitled  Agent-based Models with Large Language Models: Two Modeling Examples. In this poster and extended abstract we detail how LLMs can help with many aspects of agent-based modeling development. If this sounds of interest, below you can see the abstract, the poster and the full referece and link to the extended abstract .Abstract:Large language models (LLMs) play an important role in AI-powered code assistants such as code completion, debugging, and documentation. Such models can be further fine-tuned on smaller amount of data for specific tasks, often with the improvement of performance compared to generic LLMs. However, such fine-tuning techniques are seldomly used in generating sophisticated agent-based models (ABMs), because they are often...

Obstore solves the friction we kept hitting in cloud-native workflows.

It’s that time of year! We’re excited to issue the call for maps for contributions for the 2026 GeoHipster calendar. Entries are subject to these rules and guidelines for entry are listed below. So, send us your maps! (The deadline is 2025-10-23.) Guidelines: I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to […] The post 2026 Calendar Submissions appeared first on GeoHipster.

Joseph Elfelt is a software developer in the geo world as a result of a life-long interest in maps and self-teaching. His interest in maps began as a child looking at his father’s collection of USGS topographic maps for a large part of Minnesota. After college, Joseph moved to Seattle and went to work for […] The post I curate a list of 5,000+ ArcGIS server addresses at all levels of USA government. appeared first on GeoHipster.

It’s been a summer full of side projects here. Which is a very good sign — I used to do many, many side projects, but for the last couple of years, poor health has left me with reduced energy, and my output dropped off significantly. It’s nice to feel inspired again, in so many directions … Continue reading A Sketch of Isle Royale →

Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation

Mike Long, Co-Founder of Spatialty, won the 2025 Esri SAG Award for his innovative contributions at Austin's CapMetro transit agency. His leadership in developing a geospatial platform integrated various operational systems, enabling automated data flows and enhancing real-time data access. This work improves transit operations and long-term planning efficiency.

A 'simple' web map to follow an adventure

Today we are excited to announce the release of stac-fastapi-indexed! stac-fastapi-indexed is an implementation of the STAC API specification. Like several similar projects, it draws on the indispensable stac-fastapi package. This project implements a new approach to data management to reduce hosting overheads. STAC and STAC API The STAC and STAC API specifications have proven […] The post Introducing stac-fastapi-indexed: Low Overhead STAC Metadata Support appeared first on Sparkgeo.

Tell Us About YourselfI’m Qianyi Cao, with a background in Geographic Information Science and currently part of the Erasmus Mundus MSc in Cartography program across TU Munich, TU Vienna, and TU Dresden. My academic path blends map design, geospatial science, and cross-cultural storytelling. I’m passionate about using cartography as a bridge — one that connects […] The post Maps and Mappers of the 2025 Calendar – June – Cao Qianyi appeared first on GeoHipster.

Running together at CNG Conference 2025 On the last day of CNG Conference, we held a facilitated discussion to identify what our community needs to thrive. As Chris Holmes noted in his opening keynote, the geospatial field has reached a pivotal moment. We have more data, better tools, and greater computational power than ever before. The question now is how we use these resources to address real-world challenges. The six themes below emerged from our discussions and will shape our collective work in the coming year. These challenges are deeply interconnected. Progress in one area often enables progress in others. And with AI rapidly changing the landscape, we need to stay adaptable and collaborative. We invite governments, funders, educators, enterprises, and entrepreneurs to join our community in this ongoing effort. Geospatial education isn’t helping people get good jobs The problem Workforce and talent development surfaced as a top priority from the discussion. There’s a clear...

What Properties Should Geospatial Embeddings Have?

Im ersten Teil dieser Mini-Blogserie habe ich gezeigt, woher GNSS-Daten (umgangssprachlich GPS-Daten) stammen und wie sich diese in spezialisierten Tracking-Studien gezielt erfassen lassen. Heute nehmen wir solch eine Studie genauer unter die Lupe und zeigen, wie sich mit moderner Tracking-Technologie und passenden Befragungen Verhaltensexperimente durchführen lassen, die komplexe Fragen der Verkehrs- und Stadtplanung beantworten. Die …

Why using geography continuously across your business is essential. Democratizing geospatial intelligence empowers every department to make smarter, faster decisions and unlocks lasting competitive advantage.

A personal letter to BI and data leaders on why geography must become a core dimension in analytics. It's not just a map—it’s the missing link in your data stack.

Combine NielsenIQ’s market data with Mapidea’s geospatial intelligence to empower retail & FMCG teams with continuous, actionable insights driving smarter decisions & growth.

The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.6.0beta1! Best Served with PostgreSQL 18 Beta2 and soon to be released GEOS 3.14. This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta2, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+. To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.14+ is needed. To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 2.2.0+ is needed. 3.6.0beta1 source download md5 NEWS HTML Online en ja sv fr zh_Hans PDF docs: en ja, sv, zh_Hans, fr Cheat Sheets: postgis: en ja sv fr zh_Hans postgis_raster: en ja sv fr zh_Hans postgis_topology: en ja sv fr zh_Hans postgis_sfcgal: en ja sv fr zh_Hans address standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder: en ja sv fr zh_Hans This release is a beta of a major release, it includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.5.3 and new features.

In the past we have written about how one can study urban shrinkage with a specific emphasis on Detroit from both an agent-based modeling perspective and also from analyzing newspapers through natural language processing  Keeping with the theme of Detroit and urban shrinkage we (Xiaoliang Meng, Yichun Xie, Junyi Wu, Heather Khan Welsh,  Shi Zeng and myself) have a new paper entitled "Examining spatial expansion and stemming strategies of urban shrinkage: evidence from Detroit, USA" which was recently published in npj Urban Sustainability. In this paper we introduce a method for studying urban shrinkage by constructing multi-scale spatial structures based on urban network connectivity which we call gravity-networked spatial interaction zones-based spatial panel modeling or GSIZs-Spanel for short. We demonstrate this method by exploring the spatial processes and scopes of past urban shrinkage in Detroit between 2000 and 2020.  If this sounds of interest, below you can read the abstract...

Landsat imagery and NDVI are used to monitor vegetation change, from invasive grass spread in rangelands to early stress detection in coastal marshes. The post Using Landsat and NDVI to Map Vegetation Change appeared first on Geography Realm.

Discover how our natural language interface prototype has the potential to make satellite imagery accessible to everyone. By translating plain English queries into structured STAC queries, we're simplifying access to valuable Earth observation data. Learn how our system uses NLP, serverless architecture, and geospatial standards to search for satellite images The post Making Satellite Data Searchable with Natural Language appeared first on Sparkgeo.

Many of you attended our webinar “3D: a new dimension!” Vincent Picavet was on the mic : 3D challenges in 2025: digital twins, publishing data on the web, sharing data,...

Do you deal with sensitive geospatial data ? Are you concerned by cybersecurity threats ? Oslandia and partners ( e.g. OPENGIS.ch) launched the « Security Project for QGIS » :...

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

Visualizing historical tornado trends The post How to Overlay a Heatmap on a Real Map with Python appeared first on Towards Data Science.

A scatter gun of Geospatial & EO reflections from two weeks in Europe.

 Directly access your Kobocollect data inside QGIS. 

Photo: ESA/J. Mai (source) Recently the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Living Planet Symposium (LPS) was held in Vienna, Austria. This was likely the world’s largest gathering of the Earth Observation community. The LPS website claims there there were 6500+ registered participants and 4200+ presentations & posters in 250+ sessions, but those are conservative numbers… I counted 4428 presentations & posters in 453 sessions. Also it says there were 2300 “Children at the School Activities”, and I can confirm there were lots of kids at the conference (and on the metro). Awesome to see! I attended LPS on behalf of Radiant Earth and the Cloud-Native Geospatial (CNG) Forum. I was there to learn how CNG specs and tools are being adopted by the Earth observation community and to help build awareness. Given the size of the conference (it had 30 separate content tracks!), my first challenge was to determine what content would be presented where and at what time, in order to plan out where I...

Where is the question, but how? Geospatial is at a tipping point; this GEOFESTO is a philosophy for our community’s growth.

Ohne harte Fakten bleibt jeder Veloweg ein Bauchentscheid und jede Taktverdichtung ein Ratespiel. GNSS-Tracking, besser bekannt als GPS-Tracking, schliesst diese Wissenslücke, indem es Bewegungsmuster in hoher räumlich-zeitlicher Auflösung liefert. Dieser Beitrag zeigt, welche Datenquellen es gibt, welche Technik dahintersteckt und wie eine Tracking-Studie geplant und durchgeführt werden kann. Daten sind das Grundgerüst jeder Verkehrs- und …

EOPF 101 is your guide to cloud-native Sentinel workflows.

and it makes me uncomfortable.

A global dataset of 700 mud volcanoes was recently published by geologists from Sapienza University. The post GIS Data: Shallow Sea Mud Volcanoes appeared first on Geography Realm.

Iris is about unlocking the value of what you already have. Built on open source and proprietary tools, Iris enforces open standards and promotes integration.

FAO’s global dataset maps access to towns and cities of all sizes within reasonable travel times, identifying patterns of urban interconnectedness. The post Explore the City-Regions Dataset from FAO appeared first on Geography Realm.

London made it a priority to create a environmentally friendly city where the pedestrian comes first. Our role was to help build the tools to make that possible.

Researchers mapped 540 million years of sea level change, showing major short-term shifts during ice ages driven by Earth's orbital cycles. The post Mapping Short-term Sea Level Changes Over 540 Million Years appeared first on Geography Realm.

von Laurin Bertozzi (sieber&partners), Daniela Herzig (EBP Schweiz), Patrick Saxer (EBP Schweiz) Workshop-Inhalte Im Workshop 3 BIM in der Bauausführung – Informationsbedürfnisse und veränderte Möglichkeiten haben wir uns folgendem Inhalt gewidmet:Die Bauausführung ist ein komplexes Zusammenspiel zwischen Bauherr:innen, Unternehmer:innen und Planer:innen – drei zentralen Akteur:innen mit jeweils unterschiedlichen Informationsbedürfnissen und -verantwortlichkeiten. Im Zuge der fortschreitenden …

von Claus Maier (EBP) & Philipp Dohmen (QAECY) 30 Teilnehmende, eine Frage: Wie verwandeln wir vorhandene Daten in nutzbares Wissen für bessere Entscheidungen? Die Anwesenden schilderten ihr gemeinsames Problem: Unmengen von Daten liegen verstreut in Modellen und Ablagen vor. Doch wie können sie sinnvoll erschlossen und genutzt werden? Aus diesem Grund stiess das Thema des …

Groundwater stored over many years is a significant contributor to streamflow in Western United States mountains according to a published study. The post Water Can Take Years to Seep out of Mountains appeared first on Geography Realm.

DMVGIS Website launch: An Excellent Resource to drive and facilitate collaboration, coordination, and awareness of GIS in the DMV region. New Light Technologies (NLT) is thrilled to launch the DMVGIS website, your new online platform for the geospatial community in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia region. This website is designed to be a central hub for DMVGIS, offering a handy resource for GIS information, data, and events. It will also help facilitate professional networking, participant collaboration, and information sharing. Whether you're looking for the latest GIS news or details on upcoming events, this website will serve as the nexus of activity for our regional geospatial community.

Bubbles created by the movement of waves can influence how much carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean. The post Study Models How the Behavior of Waves Affects Blue Carbon Storage appeared first on Geography Realm.

Presentation and feedback from the QGIS-fr Users Meeting in Avignon, last June.

GIS Is Disappearing and Nobody’s Talking About It Life in GIS “GIS is disappearing”. Not because it’s dying or becoming irrelevant, but because it’s becoming invisible, embedded and essential.... The post GIS Is Disappearing and Nobody’s Talking About It appeared first on Life in GIS published by Wanjohi Kibui

Notes and experiments from our latest wanderings in geospatial tech, GeoAI, and open data.

When Data is Easy, Geospatial Will Change Everything Geospatial technologies are transforming how we model the world, plan infrastructure, monitor change, and make decisions. But for that transformation to be realized at scale, one foundational element must be addressed: access to data. At Sparkgeo, we believe that improving access to geospatial data is essential for […] The post The Industry Data Access Survey appeared first on Sparkgeo.

This is a guest post by Guilhem Allaman. Mid-June, the French-speaking QGIS Users Meeting was held in Avignon, Southern France – a… Read more Presentation and feedback from the QGIS-fr Users Meeting in Avignon

In the current issue of Environment and Planning B, we (Boyu Wang, Na Jiang and myself) have a new editorial entitled "Generative AI and Urban Modeling". The premise of this editorial is that Generative AI (GenAI) is impacting all aspects of our daily lives and as such has we were wondering how will it impact urban modeling? For example, in the editorial we discuss how  GenAI could speed up the overall urban modeling process. To demonstrate this we show how ChatGPT (and its built-in coding interface Canvas) can take published papers and build agent-based models from them (one being of an abstract space and another being spatially explicit). However, while model building is time consuming task, another challenge modelers face is how to incorporate decision making within them. To this end we also discuss how large language models (LLMs) have the potential to help with  agent-decision making in the form of generating  agent-personas or scheduling agent activities. We conclude the...

Stephanie Long, co-founder of Spatialty, has been recognized as Faculty Leader of the Year for 2025 at Austin Community College. This honor acknowledges her outstanding leadership in geospatial education, curriculum development, and mentorship. At Spatialty, she enhances consulting by providing tailored training and simplifying complex technology for clients.

After a long development cycle, Giro3D 0.43 is available. The Globe entity We were talking about it in a previous article, the main feature of this release is of course...

How Much Does it Cost to Make a Map?

Terradepth, led by CTO Andrew Lunstead, focuses on helping people make better decisions about the ocean, an environment less understood than the surface of Mars due to data collection challenges. Their approach involves both developing high-endurance autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for massive data gathering and the sensor-agnostic Absolute Ocean data platform . This platform, built on CesiumJS, provides an intuitive, world-view interface for managing and visualizing current and historical undersea surveys. Terradepth supports critical sectors like offshore energy, resource management, and defense. While accommodating data from any source, Terradepth has consolidated its cloud operations within AWS, including GovCloud for enhanced security. A significant innovation is leveraging edge computing with Absolute Ocean to drastically reduce the "scan to decision" time from months to mere hours, greatly enhancing the speed of critical operations

Before it was HIFLD, it was briefly FGDWG. Before that, it was a nameless thing in its infancy. In those early days, it bounced around between conference rooms in Norfolk, Dahlgren, and Chantilly. I was fortunate enough to be in the rooms where it was born and took shape.  I was a contractor supporting an … Continue reading HIFLD Open Is Dead*, Long Live HIFLD →

NatureServe has developed an updated 30-meter hexagon map of regional ecosystems in the contiguous United States and adjacent areas. The post High Resolution Ecosystem Map of the Contiguous United States and Adjacent Areas appeared first on Geography Realm.

I have just gotten back from attending the 19th International Conference on Computational Urban Planning and Urban Management (CUPUM) in London and thought I would  share the two papers we presented at the conference. The first paper was with Qingqing Chen and Linda See and was entitled "Using New Sources of Data for Urban Climate Modeling Generated through MLLMs on Street View Imagery. "As the title might suggest, this paper was about how one can leverage multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) to extract information on building height, age and function from street level photographs. We demonstrate this using street view images from Mapillary and than ask ChatGPT to estimate the building height, age and function and compare the results to authoritative data sources. If this sounds of interest, below you can see the abstract to the paper, some if the figures (i.e., the work flow and prompts) while the results can be seen in the attached paper (see the link below). Abstract:Urban...

It was amazing attending the Living Planet Symposium last week (23–27 June 2025) in Vienna.

The time since I’ve last posted has been quite busy. I’ve completely recovered from my previous eye issues and have been able to start traveling again. In fact, I’m writing this post from a hotel room. In addition to my consulting work at Cercana, I took on a role as the CTO of Photometrics AI, … Continue reading Geospatial, AI/ML, and Infrastructure →

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

This blog post outlines the process of creating multi-color 3D prints using the Bambu Lab X1 Carbon printer and the Topoprint software. I explain how to prepare multiple STL files for distinct landscape features, using OrcaSlicer for effective slicing. The final print, requiring extensive filament changes, showcases the Landwasserviadukt.

The QGISUC2025 team has done an awesome job recording and editing the conference presentations. All “presentation” type talks where the presenter has accepted to be published are now available in a dedicated list on the QGIS Youtube channel. I also had the pleasure of presenting our Trajectools plugin and you can see this talk here: …Read More

 If your concerned about sharing QGIS projects on the web there are many options apart from the 'qgis2web' plugin. This just utilises a docker image containing a demo project.Share your QGIS projects with QGIS Server • Gispo

Today, Overture Maps Foundation announced the general availability of the Global Entity Reference System (GERS). GERS provides common, open, accessible IDs for geospatial entities like buildings, places, and roads, making... The post Understanding Overture’s Global Entity Reference System appeared first on Overture Maps Foundation.

The post Introducing Bridge Files appeared first on Overture Maps Foundation.

Unique IDs make it easier and cheaper to attach data to geospatial entities, such as buildings, streets, places, etc. SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—June 25, 2025 — The Overture Maps Foundation, a collaborative... The post Overture Maps Launches GERS, a Global Standard for Interoperable Geospatial IDs, to Drive Data Interoperability appeared first on Overture Maps Foundation.

How Precisely’s Data Link program connects data from leading providers via unique ID systems, including GERS, to eliminate the “conflation tax” and unlock instant access to enriched location intelligence Precisely,... The post Precisely Accelerates Data Integration with Overture GERS IDs appeared first on Overture Maps Foundation.

Lake Chapala was formed at the intersection of three grabens. The post Lake Chapala: a Tectonic Lake at Mexico’s Triple-graben Intersection appeared first on Geography Realm.

When someone proposes an idea to you, smile and assure them that you understand (yes ...). Express your enthusiasm about it (... yes ...) with an even bigger smile. Then, offer to enhance and extend their great idea (... and ...). You can compare this creativity technique to rubber duck debugging, but always remember that you should not replace a human with an LLM.

Summary thread Post by @[email protected] View on Mastodon When and where? Geomob Edinburgh was held at 6:30pm (doors open at 6pm) on Tuesday, June 24th, 2025 at room 1.26 in Paterson’s Land, The University of Edinburgh Holyrood Campus (Google / OSM) Thank you to The Community Access to Rooms project for providing this space for us, free of cost! This event is part of The Data Lab’s Geospatial Month - other events listed here. Agenda Our format for the evening will be: doors open at 18:00, set up and general mingling at 18:30 we begin the talks with a very brief introduction Each speaker will have slides and speak for 10 minutes. After each talk there will be time for 2-3 questions. We head to a nearby pub for discussion and #geobeers sponsored by OpenCage, Esri and on this special occasion also by Avineon Tensing. The speakers: Laura Munoz, Putting Marketing on the Map: My journey as a marketer in the geospatial edtech...

Should you map influence areas using distance or time? From retail site selection to public service planning, the way you define "reach" matters. In this article, we break down the difference between radial buffers and isochrones—when to use each, and why choosing the right method can dramatically improve the precision of your location-based decisions. Read now to avoid the most common mistake in spatial analysis.

Discover how combining market intelligence from NielsenIQ with geospatial analytics is helping retailers identify opportunities, outsmart competition, and move faster.

Mapidea partners with NielsenIQ to bring together powerful market data and geospatial intelligence—helping businesses make smarter, location-based decisions.

Please Look at the Data

This is a slightly different post to normal, in the sense its not really about papers but my take on agent-based modeling, urban analytics and the growth of Artificial Intelligence impacting both. First up, while I was in Santa Fe last October for the 2024 International Conference of the Computational Social Science Society of the Americas  I was interviewed by John Cordier from Epistemix for their Flux Podcast which resulted in this "From Micro-Behaviors to Macro-Patterns: Exploring Agent-Based Models with Andrew Crooks. Rather than me trying to sum it up I will just quote from the podcast episode "In this episode of The Flux, host John Cordier sits down with Andrew Crooks ..... They dive into the world of agent-based modeling (ABM) - what it is, why it matters, and how it helps us simulate and better understand human behavior in complex systems. From simulating traffic jams to modeling social influence on vaccine uptake, Andrew shares how data, geography, and synthetic populations...

Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation

  Open source geospatial 3D innovation has just reached another important milestone, thanks to a Cesium Ecosystem Grant for a new 3D globe view in QGIS. This is the second grant that the team of North Road and Lutra Consulting received from Cesium, and we’re proud of what we’ve delivered for our QGIS users. The new 3D globe will be available to all in QGIS v.3.44. This was an extremely interesting project to undertake, as it required a heavy research and experimentation process by our developers. There’s many potential approaches for implementing a large-scale, 3D globe, and each have their advantages and trade-offs. We were very lucky to have insight from Cesium’s Kevin Ring to advise us at the start […]

https://www.arxiv.org/abs/2506.04106

Landsat's Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) measures the Earth's surface temperature by focusing on the infrared part of the light spectrum. The post Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) on Landsat appeared first on GIS Geography.

eoAPI is catching on. Here’s what we’ve learned and what we’re building next.

Credits: Pixabay (Pixabay Content License) The Importance of Compliance A geographic data layer must comply with many rules and constraints. For example: Geometric Topological Arbitrary rules – no angles smaller...

Waymo Scaling, Waymo Insights

Read about how the Amazon once flowed east to west and how the strength of Hurricane Isaac once change the course of the Mississippi river. The post Rivers that Flow Backwards appeared first on Geography Realm.

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

I’ve got into a bit of a habit of writing occasional posts with links to interesting things I’ve found (probably because it’s a relatively easy blog post to write). This is another of those posts – this time, written in June 2025. So, let’s get on with some links: Why COUNT(*) can be slow in […]

The QGIS International User Conference 2025 happened in Norrköping, Sweden from 2-3 June 2025. I have been to the previous conferences in 2024, 2023 and 2019 and always look forward to the annual event. The conference keeps getting bigger and this year it attracted a diverse audience of 300+ participants from around the globe. This […]

Join us at ESA Living Planet Symposium 2025 to build, explore, and reimagine EO workflows together.

The way we observe our planet from orbit is undergoing a seismic shift, moving beyond the limitations of traditional satellite tasking to embrace a future of intelligent, interconnected Earth observation. This revolution is powered by the synergy of "virtual constellations" – diverse networks of coordinated sensors – and sophisticated "tipping and cueing" workflows, where broad-area monitoring by some assets automatically directs high-resolution satellites to points of critical interest. Underpinning this entire evolution is the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence, which not only automates the detection of subtle changes and orchestrates complex tasking but also distills vast streams of imagery into actionable insights, promising a more transparent, responsive, and understandable world.

In this interview from the 2025 GEOINT Symposium, Adam Simmons of Project Geospatial speaks with Phill Thomas from Innovate. Phill discusses his career path, starting at Accenture and moving into federal government work. He introduces Innovate as a woman-owned small business headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, with a history primarily in federal civilian and commercial sectors. Innovate is now excited about bringing their solutions to the Intel community. Phill details Innovate's evolution, including their decision in 2012 to focus intensely on the Salesforce and Esri platforms, becoming "an inch wide and a mile deep". He highlights their extensive experience with over a thousand Esri deployments and over 800 Salesforce deployments, their gold level partnership with Esri, numerous specialty certifications, and the presence of Salesforce certified architects. This deep expertise allows them to build reusable component repositories for efficiency. Phill shares that GEOINT 2025 is...

Adam Simmons interviews Yuval Lorig, VP R&D at Asterra, at the GEOINT 2025 conference. Yuval shares his background in physical geography and the geospatial industry. They delve into Asterra's work, which utilizes satellite data, particularly SAR, to monitor critical infrastructure like dams, levies, and canals, in addition to their traditional focus on water leaks. Yuval discusses the company's expansion into APIs, a SAS platform called EO 2.0, their global reach across over 70 countries, and their focus on improving technology accuracy and developing in-house AI models.Highlights• Interview with Yuval Lorig, VP R&D at Asterra.• Astera focuses on monitoring critical infrastructure (dams, levies, canals) and the water industry.• They utilize satellite data, specifically SAR, for subsurface penetration to gain insights.• Expanding their offering to include APIs and a SAS platform (EO 2.0).• Customer base is now global, working in more than 70 countries with almost a thousand projects.•...

Adam Simmons of Project Geospatial speaks with Burt Wagner, a Data Architect at Broadcom, during the GEOINT 2025 Symposium. Burt, with 25 years supporting the US intelligence community and federal law enforcement, discusses Broadcom's lesser-known big data solutions. While Broadcom is widely known for semiconductors and acquiring VMware, Burt highlights their significant data products, including Gemfire and Greenplum databases. He explains how Greenplum, based on PostgreSQL, provides massive scalability (up to tens of petabytes) for analyzing geospatial data, overcoming PostgreSQL's limitations. The conversation also covers Broadcom's Unified Data Management (UDM) solution, which includes capabilities for crossing network security boundaries and operating in environments with denied, delayed, intermittent, and latent communications. UDM facilitates bringing edge data centrally for detailed analysis and building AI/ML models that can then be exported for use on small edge...

Adam Simmons interviews Craig Brower from Unseenlabs US at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium. Craig discusses Unseenlabs' capability to provide satellite-based RF (Radio Frequency) data for monitoring and tracking, which is integrated into customer workflows for rapid tasking and delivery. He highlights the ongoing need to educate the community about RF data and SIGINT-type sources, noting that many, including traditional imagery analysts, may be unfamiliar with it. Craig describes their data as simple "dots on a map" where status changes indicate behavior, such as a vessel turning off its AIS. He mentions that Unseenlabs is unique in being a profitable company, recently secured a large investment to build 20 new satellites and next-generation birds, and currently has 16 satellites on orbit.Highlights• Interview with Craig Brower from Unseenlabs US.• Provides satellite-based RF (Radio Frequency) data for monitoring and tracking.• Data is integrated into customer workflows for quick tasking...

Adam Simmons of Project Geospatial interviews Dan DeGennaro (CTO), Bryan Cosme (CEO & Co-founder), and Brian Buttaccio (COO) of Trevity at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium. Bryan shares his background, including experience in the Marine Corps specializing in geospatial, which informs Trevity's focus. Dan, a physicist turned coder, focuses on AI, Augmentation, and integrating capabilities into analyst workflows. All of them discuss Trevity's mission to increase analyst productivity, believing they can nearly double it. They highlight their new software, Inkwell, which addresses the challenge of managing vast amounts of geospatial data. Inkwell allows for targeted data scraping and, crucially, enables analysts to interact with and filter data using natural language. This helps analysts quickly find and understand relevant data within an area of interest.Highlights• Trevity's founders have a background in the Marine Corps specializing in geospatial intelligence.• Trevity aims to significantly...

Mats Palsson, CEO of T Kartor Group, shares his journey from engineering to finding his passion in geospatial and maps. He introduces T Kartor Group, founded 40 years ago, which specializes in map and information management solutions based on the principle that maps represent information assets with a position. T Kartor provides solutions for major cities, defense organizations, and public safety sectors in Europe and the US. Palsson mentions T Kartor has significant operations in St. Louis and Sweden. He explains that "making maps" for them involves managing information and tailoring its presentation for diverse end-users, such as military personnel and public transport systems. The company has evolved to focus on information management with a cartographic element. Recent developments include providing customers with dashboards to monitor how their information is used. Palsson discusses the significant industry changes driven by the tremendous amount of data from satellites and...

Adam Simmons of Project Geospatial interviews Geoffrey King, Vice President of Strategy at Greater St. Louis Inc. (GSL), at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium. Geoffrey discusses GSL's role in growing and strengthening the geospatial cluster in St. Louis through the GeoFutures Initiative. He explains GSL's various functions, including business attraction, downtown revitalization, and supporting small and diverse businesses. Geoffrey highlights NGA as a key anchor institution for the region's geospatial growth. He talks about GSL's presence at GEOINT for over five years, showcasing St. Louis's assets to attract talent and investment. He notes that St. Louis is hosting GEOINT for the third time this year and will host again in 2029, emphasizing the significant effort invested in the 2025 event. GSL aims to collaborate with partners and connect different sectors and communities to maximize the economic impact of geospatial growth in the region.Highlights• Geoffrey King of Greater St. Louis Inc....

Adam Simmons interviews Tim Klawa of Figure Eight Federal at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium. Tim discusses the critical importance of data validity for training effective AI programs, particularly for users like warfighters and operators. He emphasizes that understanding the attributes and relevance of training data to specific mission needs is essential for building confidence in the resulting AI models. Tim mentions that Figure Eight Federal's technology, including their enterprise data labeling platform Artemis and their Hydra AI platform for situational awareness and decision support, helps address this challenge. He notes that they will be demonstrating their capabilities at Amazon's booth.Highlights• Interview with Tim Klawa of Figure Eight Federal.• Emphasizes the importance of data validity for AI programs.• Understanding data set attributes and alignment with mission needs is crucial for AI confidence.• Discusses Figure Eight Federal's technology platforms.• Artemis platform is...

Adam Simmons of Project Geospatial speaks with Billy Sokol and Brent Perry of Progress Federal during the GEOINT 2025 Symposium. Brent, with a background in full stack engineering and data analytics for defense and IC customers, highlights geospatial as one of the top ways to visualize intelligence. They introduce Progress Federal, a business unit within Progress Software that includes the capabilities of the acquired company MarkLogic. They explain that MarkLogic's history spans diverse industries and government, focusing on a multi-modal database that can aggregate data from multiple systems, regardless of format. This database is designed to operate at immense scale and also to scale down to a laptop for use in hostile environments with denied, delayed, intermittent, or latent communications. They emphasize the importance of being agile due to the rapid rate of change in user expectations and technology in the market.Highlights• Progress Federal is a business unit of Progress...

Guy De Carufel, CEO of Cognitive Space, shares his background as an aerospace engineer from NASA and Firefly. He introduces Cognitive Space as an AI software company dedicated to making the most effective use of space leveraging assets. De Carufel explains his motivation for starting the company was to apply modern AI to automate space operations, addressing the manual methods previously used. He describes their product focused on mission management for ground systems, which automates the process of generating effective schedules from mission priorities and integrates with C2 systems. Cognitive Space uses AI to orchestrate proliferated satellite systems, diverse sensors, and different organizations (national, commercial, allied). He also mentions their Sentient Earth product for aggregating data and providing predictive capacity analytics. Their primary customers manage constellations, including government and commercial entities. De Carufel highlights Cognitive Space's focus on...

Adam Simmons of Project Geospatial interviews Nicole Sullivan from Gateway Geospatial Group at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium in St. Louis. Nicole proudly states that Gateway Geospatial Group is St. Louis born and bred. She shares some of the company's capabilities and interests, including their work with low-cost mesh networks for data collection. A key area of focus is performing near real-time AI/ML on the data collected via their mesh network. They are also interested in the challenges related to different data formats. Nicole encourages attendees and viewers to visit their booth or website to learn more and share ideas.Highlights• Nicole Sullivan represents Gateway Geospatial Group at GEOINT 2025.• Gateway Geospatial Group is a company based in St. Louis.• They work with low-cost mesh networks for data collection.• A key capability is performing near real-time AI/ML on collected data.• The company is interested in exploring ideas related to their technology and addressing challenges...

Adam Simmons speaks with Will Clapperton from GDIT at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium. Will highlights GDIT's focus on supporting tactical missions with advanced technology. He provides an example of their innovative work using VR/AR technology for post-damage assessment scenarios. This allows users to immerse themselves in a virtual landscape containing geospatial data, identify areas needing attention like damaged infrastructure, plan subsequent steps, and share that critical information with other responders. Will stresses that GDIT's involvement goes deep into everyday missions, far beyond traditional IT support, and emphasizes their passion for working close to the tactical edge. He also offers advice to young professionals entering the field, encouraging technologists to prioritize understanding and addressing tactical mission needs.Highlights• Interview with Will Clapperton from GDIT.• GDIT focuses on supporting tactical missions with technology.• Discusses the use of VR/AR...

Adam Simmons speaks with John True and Andy Dearing from Cultivation Capital at GEOINT 2025, gaining insights from their perspective as investment professionals in the geospatial sector. They offer advice to startups attending GEOINT, emphasizing the importance of developing dual-use technology applicable to both government and commercial markets rather than focusing solely on federal contracts. They highlight that they look for companies that are genuinely solving problems for the customer base, particularly addressing the challenge of data overload and analyst shortages, potentially leveraging AI and machine learning. They discuss monitoring exit strategies in the market, like SPACs, and the increasing value of data for internal processing by larger companies to build solutions. John and Andy are proud of Cultivation Capital's foundation built on the experience of former geospatial operators, which allows them to offer unique insight and support to entrepreneurs.Highlights•...

Susan Moreira from Axiologic Solutions discusses her company's role as an Intel integrator specializing in system, data, and cyber security engineering for complex intelligence systems. She explains their support for geospatial data across customers like NGA and DIA, including managing the Mars program and improving analytic workflows. Moreira highlights their "mission ready" approach, working directly with analysts and operators to translate requirements. Axiologic Solutions is involved with AI efforts, supporting Project Maven and prototype development, focusing on successfully integrating AI with constrained resources and accelerating Authority to Operate (ATO) processes. Other supported efforts include the common data fabric and DIA's data hub. Cyber security is a key focus, integrated from the project's beginning, offering advisory services and researching future challenges like quantum engineering for security. Moreira shares what Axiologic hopes to achieve at GEOINT, such as...

Today marks the final, quiet farewell to Landsat 7, a satellite that has tirelessly served as humanity's eye on Earth for over a quarter-century. Its incredible 2.5 million images have not only documented our planet's vital pulse – from receding glaciers to changing forests – but have also empowered countless discoveries and deepened our understanding of our world. As it drifts into its final, silent orbit, we honor its unparalleled service and the dedication of the countless individuals who guided its mission, ensuring its legacy of environmental insight endures.

As drones become a staple in modern industries—from infrastructure inspection and agriculture to public safety and energy—the demand for skilled drone professionals is growing rapidly. But while the technology continues to soar, a major challenge has emerged: finding qualified drone talent. Why the Demand is Exploding Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are no longer […] The post The Rise of Drone Talent – Why Companies are Racing to Recruit UAV Professionals appeared first on GeoSearch.

A light exploration into organizing stac-geoparquet

Chris Holmes giving the opening keynote at CNG Conference Well, we did it. The Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum (CNG) community came together on April 30-May 2 for our first in-person conference in Snowbird, Utah–and honestly? It was something special. For 2.5 packed days, we welcomed around 250 attendees from over 100 organizations, spanning cloud service providers, government and nonprofit agencies, academic institutions, and private sector companies. People flew in from across the globe, with participants joining from countries including Australia, Argentina, Japan, South Korea, Germany, France, and more – all ready to learn and share what it takes to build geospatial workflows for the cloud. Who showed up? Our attendees largely consisted of highly technical, skilled data practitioners, including software engineers, data scientists, and geospatial developers. Here’s a breakdown of who was in the room: 45%: Senior technical professionals (software engineers, geospatial developers,...

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

An interactive map that brings wildfire progression and wind conditions into focus.

Last week, Switzerland’s Birchgletscher collapsed and caused a major rock avalanches, altering the landscape and burying the village of Blatten. With the data of the federal Rapid Mapping service and the help of individual experts, a first open post-event elevation model was made available. I used the model to create pre- and post-event visualizations and prints at a local scale.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly redrawing the boundaries of the geospatial industry, unlocking powerful new insights and efficiencies at an unprecedented scale. Yet, beneath the veneer of technological marvel and the often-touted narrative of 'AI augmentation,' a more profound and unsettling transformation is underway for its workforce. This investigation delves into the stark realities of how AI and machine learning are not just reshaping, but in many cases, actively replacing traditional geospatial roles, forcing a critical reevaluation of skills, careers, and the very future of human expertise in mapping and understanding our world. As the AI wave crests, the line between assistant and successor is becoming increasingly, and for some, alarmingly, clear.

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Explore how homophily—our tendency to bond with similar others—shapes customer behavior and risk. Discover how geospatial analysis of homophily patterns reveals opportunities in marketing, sales, and fraud detection across industries.

Discover how our partnership with IQGEO and Mapidea's geospatial intelligence can help telecom operators find growth opportunities, improve operational efficiency, and drive innovation. Dive into data-driven business cases for network planning, marketing, and more!

Tell Us About YourselfMy name is Antonia Blankenberg. Alongside being a drummer with the fantastic TBL8 Brass, I’m a Lead Consultant in Utilities with Esri Ireland and I’ve been working in GIS for 6 years now. I’ve always been interested in geography, but I only first came across GIS during my undergraduate degree. I was […] The post Maps and Mappers of the 2025 Calendar – May – Antonia Blankenberg appeared first on GeoHipster.

The current version of GIS can be seen as a 1.0 model—built in an era when computers were in their infancy, and storage and processing power were both limited and prohibitively expensive.

Reflecting on Another Event Facilitating Regional Collaboration, Share, and Advancement of Geospatial Innovation in the DMV The DMV GIS Day 2025: Midpoint Meetup, held on April 30, 2025, served as an engaging follow-up to the successful DMV GIS Day 2024. This virtual event convened a vibrant geospatial community to highlight the significant impact of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the innovative advancements shaping progress throughout the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) region. 

 For anyone not familiar. I can recommend this for general GIS stuff.GeoGPT

Keeping geospatial professionals informed on the legal and policy issues that will impact GeoAI.

If you're technically inclined, consider using Borg, Vorta, and rsync.net for encrypted remote backups. If that feels a bit too complex, Arq Backup might be a simpler option for you.

Topoprint has introduced three significant updates to its service for creating 3D mini-reliefs, or Topodiscs, of Swiss locations: bridges with arches, an easy-to-use Topodisc designer and an automated printing-as-a-service option.

Wie wir für den Kanton Graubünden komplexe Daten nutzerfreundlich aufbereiteten – und dabei auf das richtige Tool setzten. Im Auftrag des Kantons Graubünden analysierten wir, wie sich der Tourismus auf die regionale Wertschöpfung und Beschäftigung auswirkt – kantonsweit sowie in einzelnen Regionen. Grundlage bildeten drei Befragungen mit über 30’000 Personen, Daten des Bundesamtes für Statistik …

New Light Technologies Inc. (NLT) is honored to serve as a Platinum Sponsor of the 10th annual Innovation Summit for Preparedness & Resilience (InSPIRE), taking place May 28–29, 2025, at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Organized by the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG) Foundation, InSPIRE brings together leaders from across the public and private sectors to advance the role of geospatial technology in public safety and disaster resilience.This year’s summit is especially significant as it looks back at the 20 years since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, recognizing the transformative role these devastating events played in shaping today’s emergency management practices. Many of the professionals attending and organizing InSPIRE 2025 were directly involved in the response to those historic storms.

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

Immer wieder wird im Geschäftskontext über Datenqualität gesprochen. Leider oft genug ziemlich unscharf. Nachdem ich im ersten Blogpost dieser informellen Serie auf den Begriff der Datenqualität generell eingegangen bin, möchte ich nun etwas hineinzoomen auf die Beschreibung der Datenqualität. Ich tue das anhand eines breit etablierten Standards. Aber erst ein Kürzest-Recap von Teil 1: Wieso …

TLDR; After 10²¹ FLOPs and 500 B patches, IBM’s TerraMind beats a supervised U‑Net by just +2 mIoU on PANGAEA; losing on 5/9 tasks, most other GFMs do worse.

Gentle readers, I have just wrapped up a fun side project that will be of great interest to a very small number of you. The result of one of the most technically demanding efforts of my career, I am very pleased to share it with you. Most of you will wonder what this place is, … Continue reading Planetfall →

The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.6.0alpha1! Best Served with PostgreSQL 18 Beta1 and GEOS 3.13.1. This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta1, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+. To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.12+ is needed. To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 2.1.0+ is needed. 3.6.0alpha1 source download md5 NEWS HTML Online en ja fr zh_Hans PDF docs: en ja, zh_Hans, fr Cheat Sheets: postgis: en ja fr zh_Hans postgis_raster: en ja fr zh_Hans postgis_topology: en ja fr zh_Hans postgis_sfcgal: en ja fr zh_Hans address standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder: en ja fr zh_Hans This release is an alpha of a major release, it includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.5.3 and new features.

The latest releases of MovingPandas and Trajectools come with many “under the hood” changes that aim to make your movement analytics faster: Let’s have a look at some example performance measurements! Example 1: MovingPandas ValueChangeSplitter The ValueChangeSplitter splits trajectories when it detects a value change in the specified column. This is useful, for example, to …Read More

The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.5.3. This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta1, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+. To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.12+ is needed. SFCGAL 1.4+ is needed to enable postgis_sfcgal support. To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 1.5+ is needed. 3.5.3 source download md5 NEWS PDF docs: en HTML Online en ja fr zh_Hans Cheat Sheets: postgis: en ja fr zh_Hans postgis_raster: en ja fr zh_Hans postgis_topology: en ja fr zh_Hans postgis_sfcgal: en ja fr zh_Hans address standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder: en ja fr zh_Hans This release is a bug fix release that includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.5.1.

Introduction In this post, we’ll explore an experimental project — not something built for practical use, rather for exploring some technology and techniques. The goal is to create an immersive, cube-shaped map visualization using web tools and Python backend services. Specifically, we’ll use: Imagine standing inside a cube where every wall is a piece of […] The post Building a Virtual Map Cube with FastAPI and Marzipano appeared first on Sparkgeo.

A step closer to spatial AI with geospatial processing with Fabric The post The Geospatial Capabilities of Microsoft Fabric and ESRI GeoAnalytics, Demonstrated appeared first on Towards Data Science.

Today marks my first day at Fotokite, a Zurich-based company that designs and manufactures actively tethered UAVs forpublic safety and emergency response. I’ll be leading the application engineering team and am excited to help build a great company with an innovative product.

As the man said, “Life moves pretty fast.” At the start of the year, I had a planned eye surgery that sidelined me for a couple of weeks and then kept me somewhat limited after that. During that recovery, I was further sidelined by a respiratory illness. Five days after getting the all-clear from my … Continue reading Happy New Year to Me →

In the past month of April, there were 28 new plugins published in the QGIS plugin repository. Here follows the… Read more Plugin Update – April, 2025

Friends, you might remember that, last year, I wrote to you about how I was finally able to see a dream I’d had for many years come true: bringing together a bunch of map creators onto a single website. I had hoped that this would only be the beginning of our cooperation with each other. … Continue reading Map of the Month: An Experiment →

A month ago, a news headline about a landslide near Kelowna caught our attention, not just for its tragic impact, but for the question it raised: Was this slope destabilized by last season’s wildfires? We’ve since had a chance to explore the event more closely. Our satellite-based analysis suggests that wildfire-related landscape changes likely played […] The post When Fire Sets the Stage for Landslides: Understanding Through Satellite Risk Analysis appeared first on Sparkgeo.

One of our goals at CNG is to create a larger and more diverse community of geospatial data practitioners. While tremendous progress is being made to make geospatial data easier to access and use in the cloud, we know that there are many people in need of training and educational opportunities to benefit from this progress. To this end, we are starting to experiment with issuing badges to recognize individuals who have completed cloud-native geospatial trainings. We have started by partnering with thriveGEO, a training and technical consulting company based in Germany. In April 2025, thriveGEO gave its first Cloud-Native Geospatial 101 training course and we have issued CNG Badges to course participants. CNG Badges use the Open Badges Specification which allows us to give people a verifiable digital credential that asserts they have completed a CNG-approved training course. By maintaining a vendor-neutral view of the geospatial technology landscape, we seek to establish CNG Badges as...

In the past we have explored how social media can be used to delineate earthquakes, study human-wildlife interactions, understand urban morphology, urban smells or  locating wildfires among many other things. Keeping with the last topic (i.e., locating things), in a new paper published in GeoJournal entitled "Crowdsourcing dust storms in the United States utilizing social media data," Stuart Evans, Festus Adegbola and myself explore how we can use X (formerly Twitter) and Flickr  to source observations of windblown dust. As such the paper demonstrates how social media data can act as supplementary source for dust events monitoring and captures the seasonal trends of such events. Furthermore, the paper highlights the potential of using crowdsourced data for the often overlooked field of dust monitoring that has substantial health and economic impacts. If this sounds of interest, below we provide the abstract to the paper along with some figures which showcase our methodology and...

Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation

Geospatial technology is no longer just for scientists and surveyors—it's a powerful business tool that can benefit almost every industry.

Location intelligence is becoming increasingly central to enterprise analytics, with organizations in sectors such as retail, logistics, and financial services integrating geospatial data into decision-making systems. A 2016 McKinsey report projected that data-driven decision-making could generate trillions in economic value, with location data playing a key role in operational and strategic improvements (Manyika et al., […]

Tell Us About Yourself I’m a cartographer, geospatial scientist and educator in the San Francisco Bay Area. I work on the mapping team at the California Coastal Commision. On the side, I teach GIS courses at the University of San Francisco and help run BayGeo, a local non-profit organization focused on GIS education and training. My past […] The post Maps and Mappers of the 2025 Calendar – April – Cameron Denny appeared first on GeoHipster.

How the EO Community Went from Adopting AI to Driving Its Future

Identify spatial gaps in the urban pharmacy network suitable for the installation of new pharmacies, while adhering to legal requirements on minimum distance between establishments, using geospatial tools such as OSMnx and NetworkX. The post Pharmacy Placement in Urban Spain appeared first on Towards Data Science.

Geospatial Intelligence is quickly becoming a game-changer in Pharma. As more companies adopt spatial analytics to optimize sales, marketing, and territory planning, those who delay risk falling behind. This article explores how geography adds critical context to business data — and why now is the time to make it part of your data strategy.

Join New Light Technologies at the 2025 New Mexico APCO GIS Conference to explore cutting-edge solutions in public safety and geospatial innovation.

UAV mapping has changed how we do aerial surveying. With drones, we can now map areas quickly, accurately, and in a cost effective way. The post UAV Mapping for Aerial Surveying appeared first on GIS Geography.

A new way to query geospatial metadata without the overhead.

At the "Calgary 11," Tee referenced "spatial thinking" as a key future workforce attribute. In an age of AI, why is simply being able to think so important?

When most people hear “geospatial,” they immediately think of maps. But in many advanced applications, maps never enter the picture at all. Instead, geospatial data becomes a powerful input to machine learning workflows, unlocking insights and automation in ways that don’t require a single visual. At its core, geospatial data is structured around location—coordinates, areas, […]

Why Building Geospatial Web Apps is a Game of Trade-offs Life in GIS When I first got into geospatial web app development, I thought the biggest hurdle would just be getting... The post Why Building Geospatial Web Apps is a Game of Trade-offs appeared first on Life in GIS published by Wanjohi Kibui

In today’s AI-driven and geospatially enabled world, data is an organization’s most valuable asset — yet it is often treated as an afterthought until issues arise. Poor data quality, incomplete metadata, and inconsistent governance can quickly derail even the most sophisticated projects. At Cercana, we believe that data stewardship must be intentional, continuous, strategic, and […]

Immer wieder wird im Geschäftskontext über Datenqualität gesprochen. Aktuell wird Datenqualität in Diskussionen häufig mit anderen Themen verwoben: Autorität im Sinn von «authoritativeness», Offizialität, Entstehungskontext, Governance-Modelle, Rechtssicherheit, «foi publique» etc. Das sind wichtige weitere Themen rund um Daten. Und diese können im Einzelnen die Erkenntnistiefe erhöhen, aber es lohnt sich meines Erachtens, zuerst die Begrifflichkeiten …

What is FedGeoDay? FedGeoDay is a single-track conference dedicated to federal use-cases of open geospatial ecosystems. The open ecosystems have a wide variety of uses and forms, but largely include anything designed around open data, open source software, and open standards. The main event is a one day commitment and is followed by a day […]

OK I will admit it took me longer than I had planned to finish this up.  Life got in the way.  But now I think is a good time to finish up the series and move on to another. In … Continue reading →

It’s all hot air until AI takes your job. In the geospatial community of practice, AI tools are making an increasingly big impact. We can choose to flip the table, or take the win.

Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation

We are extremely pleased to announce the six funded proposals for our 2025 QGIS.ORG grant programme. Funding for the programme… Read more QGIS Grant Programme 2025 Results

Telcos are sitting on a goldmine of spatial data—but most of it is locked behind technical tools and inaccessible to the majority of the organization. Operational GIS is critical but not enough. To win, telcos must democratize Geospatial Intelligence across departments, empowering thousands of users to make smarter decisions, faster.

A sampling of Cercana's favorite parts of FedGeoDay 2025.

The present moment is the only reality. Embrace it fully, and you will discover true contentment.

Our team will be in Snowbird to talk all things cloud-native.

Readers might of noticed that recently we have been exploring the use of street view images to explore cities or how we can utilize geosocial media to understand the form of function of cities, but one thing we have not explored is the role of smell and how it shapes peoples perceptions of urban spaces. However, in a new paper recently published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers with Qingqing Chen, Ate Poorthuis we do just that. The paper is entitled "Mapping the Invisible: Decoding Perceived Urban Smells Through Geosocial Media in New York City" In the paper we use text mining techniques to tease out smell related information from over 56 million geolocated tweets which are then assigned to specific small categories (e.g., nature, food, waste) resulting in a new smellscape map for New York city. If this sounds of interest, below you can read the abstract to our paper, see our workflow and resulting smellscape map. While the the analysis steps, along with the...

Cercana Systems is excited to share that our entire team will be in attendance at FedGeoDay 2025! This is a great opportunity to meet with us face-to-face and learn more about our capabilities and the work we do. The event is happening April 22, 2025 at the Department of Interior’s Yates Auditorium in Washington, D.C.  […]

The Mysteries of the Official QGIS Server Docker Image

An open letter to event organizers.

Exciting times are ahead for the QGIS project! We’re thrilled to share some major updates coming to the QGIS platform over the next few months. These changes are part of a long-planned technical migration that will bring new possibilities and ensure QGIS stays modern, fast, and future-ready.

In today’s fast-paced professional world, it’s easy for young professionals to assume that hard work alone will get them ahead. While grinding at the desk and delivering results matters, relying solely on your work to speak for itself may leave you overlooked in a competitive field. Getting out of the office and into local conferences, […]

At its core, wayfinding is about understanding our position in relation to a place and planning effective routes.

Keeping geospatial professionals informed on the legal and policy issues that will impact GeoAI.

Though it’s been about a week since we sent it out there, I just recalled that I haven’t alerted all of you to the 2025 edition of the freelance cartographer survey that Aly Ollivierre and I conduct. Due to popular demand, we are going to try conducting it annually, rather than biennially. This survey is … Continue reading 2025 AFC Freelancer Survey →

Friends, I’m excited to share that I have just completed a world physical map, in my new asymmetric monstrosity projection. It’s free to download, or if you want to buy a 30″ × 20″ print, you can also do that (and I will be pleasantly surprised). If you download it and print it yourself, I … Continue reading A Usefully Useless Projection →

BIM, or Building Information Modeling, is a smart way to design buildings. It creates virtual 3D models about the its materials and systems. The post BIM – Building Information Modeling appeared first on GIS Geography.

This is a link to my presentation given at the 2025 GISSIG Conference in Rochester, NY

Keeping geospatial professionals informed on the legal and policy issues that will impact GeoAI.

In the last couple of months a total of 57 new plugins were published in the QGIS plugin repository. Highlights… Read more Plugin Update – February to March, 2025

Keeping geospatial professionals informed on the legal and policy issues that will impact GeoAI.

Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation

We’re excited to announce that New Light Technologies (NLT) is once again a proud sponsor of FedGeoDay, happening April 22, 2025, in Washington, D.C. at the American Red Cross Building – DOI Yates Auditorium.

Building your own AI assistant can be a powerful learning experience — especially when you decide to stop.

I was today years old when I realised you can stream a COG into QGIS.

CapMetro's recent feature in an Esri case study highlights their development of a cloud-based geospatial infrastructure. Key efforts include automating data pipelines and migrating to Azure, aimed at enhancing operational efficiency and providing real-time spatial data for better decision-making in transit services.

We are excited to announce the DMV GIS Day 2025: Midpoint Meetup, a follow up to the inaugural DMV GIS Day 2024.  This is where the dynamic geospatial community of the Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) region comes together to showcase the history, latest innovations, applications, and trends in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This half-day event highlights the diverse ecosystem of GIS professionals, organizations, and enthusiasts working to solve real-world challenges using cutting-edge geospatial technologies in our community.

Keeping geospatial professionals informed on the legal and policy issues that will impact GeoAI.

TGE hosted a workshop to begin the second phase of our collaboration on AI for Earth Observation and Field Boundaries. Learn how to get involved. The post AI for Satellite Imagery: Fields of the World Phase 2 Begins appeared first on Taylor Geospatial Engine.

NLT at the 2025 North Carolina GIS Conference From March 18-21, 2025, Winston-Salem, North Carolina held its annual NC GIS conference, a dynamic gathering of state, local government, academic, and industry professionals dedicated to leveraging GIS for real-world solutions. New Light Technologies (NLT) proudly participated as a platinum exhibitor and Herb Stout award sponsor, making their first appearance and engaging deeply with the incredible North Carolina GIS community, demonstrating their latest geospatial innovations and strengthening collaborative partnerships for mission success.

Unveiling the Drive Behind New Light Technologies' Bold Move New Light Technologies (NLT) has long been a beacon of innovation in the realms of technology, geospatial science, and data solutions. However, the company is now poised to illuminate a new path by venturing into the lighting industry. This strategic pivot seems both unexpected and ingenious, rooted in the convergence of brand perception and market demand. Over the years, NLT has been inundated with inquiries about lighting solutions, from LED retrofits to smart lighting systems, and even decorative fixtures. This surge in interest highlighted an intriguing opportunity: the potential to expand their brand into an industry closely aligned with their name and ethos.

For years, St.

Coral restoration and the realities of tech in climate fieldwork

As the AAG has just wrapped up I thought I would write brief (well actually quite long) post on the talks that I was involved with at the conference. These talks would not have been possible without the many great students and colleagues who I have been collaborating with over time. Below you will find a brief summary of the talks and if any sound interesting, please reach out and we can give you more details. First up (in order in which they were presented) was "Utilizing Streetview Images for Mapping Building Attributes with ChatGPT" with Qingqing Chen and Linda See. In this talk we discussed how multimodal Large Language Models are giving us a new way to study cities, in the sense, lowering the boundary for information extraction. Using ChatGPT and street view images from Mapillary as an example, we showed how one can extract building age, usage (e.g., commercial, mixed use, residential) and estimate building height  which could all be used to inform urban climate models which...

Keeping geospatial professionals informed on the legal and policy issues that will impact GeoAI.

At the end of yesterday’s TimeGPT for mobility post, we concluded that TimeGPT’s trainingset probably included a copy of the popular BikeNYC timeseries dataset and that, therefore, we were not looking at a fair comparison. Naturally, it’s hard to find mobility timeseries datasets online that haven’t been widely disseminated and therefore may have slipped past …Read More

Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation

In this post, you will learn how to work with the Open Buildings 2.5D Temporal data and download it for many useful downstream applications, such as Visibility Analysis, Population Modeling, and 3D Visualization. Google has two important large-scale AI-derived open building datasets: We will cover a Google Earth Engine workflow to process this data to […]

tldr; Maybe. Preliminary results certainly are impressive. Introduction Crowd and flow predictions have been very popular topics in mobility data science. Traditional forecasting methods rely on classic machine learning models like ARIMA, later followed by deep learning approaches such as ST-ResNet. More recently, foundation models for timeseries forecasting, such as TimeGPT, Chronos, and LagLlama have …Read More

I recently gave a careers talk to students at Solent University, and through that I got to know a MSc student there who had previous GIS experience and was now doing a Data Analytics and AI MSc course. Her GIS experience was mostly in the ESRI stack (ArcGIS and related tools) and she was keen […]

Data drives decisions, but where that data comes from—or converges—can be the key differentiator. By weaving geospatial analytics into your everyday workflows, you unlock the ability to detect trends, spot opportunities, and handle obstacles more proactively.

Last year we put out a call for abstracts for presentations for our sessions Geosimulations for Addressing Societal Challenges. The session description is as follows: There is an urgent need for research that promotes sustainability in an era of societal challenges ranging from climate change, population growth, aging and wellbeing to that of pandemics. These need to be directly fed into policy. We, as a Geosimulation community, have the skills and knowledge to use the latest theory, models and evidence to make a positive and disruptive impact. These include agent-based modeling, microsimulation and increasingly, machine learning methods. However, there are several key questions that we need to address which we seek to cover in this session. For example, What do we need to be able to contribute to policy in a more direct and timely manner? What new or existing research approaches are needed? How can we make sure they are robust enough to be used in decision making? How can...

Keeping geospatial professionals informed on the legal and policy issues that will impact GeoAI.

Where Game Recognizes Game

Introduction New Light Technologies team member, Douglas Rose, recently attended the annual Earthquake Summit, a premier event that brings together hundreds of professionals to explore the latest insights on earthquake risks, preparedness strategies, and recovery planning in the Midwest. Featuring expert-led sessions on best practices in earthquake response, transportation resilience, healthcare readiness, communication strategies, and utility impacts, the summit provided invaluable knowledge for communities and organizations striving to enhance their disaster preparedness. With a diverse lineup of speakers and sessions, this free event also offered professional development opportunities, reinforcing its role as a crucial gathering for those dedicated to seismic resilience.

Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation

Those of you who know me, know that I am a proud Penn State alumnus with a degree in geography.

Satellite Earth observation is at a crossroads, balancing national defense priorities, environmental monitoring, and commercial innovation. As competition intensifies and AI-driven analytics reshape the industry, the sector faces key challenges: pricing models, regulatory shifts, and the push for actionable intelligence over raw imagery. With market consolidation on the horizon, the future of Earth observation lies in the ability to extract value from data while navigating geopolitical and technological disruptions. 🚀

What scientists have discovered about our planet.

GNSS vs GPS: GNSS is an umbrella for multiple navigational satellites. Under this umbrella, GPS, along with other systems, finds its place. The post GNSS vs GPS: What’s the Difference? appeared first on GIS Geography.

I did a post a while back which was just a lot of links to things I found interesting, mostly in the geospatial/data/programming sphere. Since then I’ve collected a lot more links – so here are some of them. The theme, such as there is, seems to be ‘this would have really helped me about […]

Notes and experiments from our latest wanderings in geospatial tech, GeoAI, and open data.

GIS 2.0: How Geography, Technology, and Connectedness Will Transform Our World

First attempt to come with a weekly GeoRoundup.

The Marine Corps instills a leadership philosophy rooted in decisiveness, adaptability, and integrity.

As always, this post is very delayed – apologies. In fact, I was encouraged to write this by a friend who I see at PyData Southampton (Hi, if you’re reading this!). I mentioned my talk in passing to her, and she asked if I’d blogged about it yet. I admitted that I hadn’t, and promised […]

Happy 314 Day, St. Louis!

Geospatial technology is the modern expression of geography, encompassing geographic information systems, remote sensing, and surveying technology. “Geospatial technology” is a convenient catch-all term for anything with a location component. The problem is that geography is quite literally everywhere, and modern geospatial technology is, in fact, changing everything.

Whether you are a parent who happens to be a geospatial veteran or want to help educate the next generation, check out these ideas to help the next generation develop integral geospatial skills and understanding.

For a proper Pi Day celebration in Postgres, Paul shows off a proof for CIRCULARSTRING.

Cloud-Native Geospatial is quietly revolutionizing geospatial data

A few weeks ago, I posed a simple yet thought-provoking question to the geospatial community on LinkedIn, one that many found difficult to answer, including myself:

In the past I have blogged about disasters, but mainly from a social media or agent-based modeling perspective. However, after the devastating wildfires that impacted parts of Los Angeles County earlier this year led me to wonder how resilient are cities to such events? Or more generally, what role could urban analytics play on the various stages of disaster management (i.e., preparation, response, recovery, and mitigation), or how can data, models, and methods at the disposal of researchers be leveraged to better prepare us for future disasters and be linked to policy?If these questions sound of interest, I encourage you to go and read  a short editorial that I recently published in Environment and Planning B entitled "Cities and Disasters: What can Urban Analytics Do?"Full referece: Crooks, A.T. (2024), Cities and Disasters: What can Urban Analytics Do?, Environment and Planning B, 52(3): 523-526. (pdf)

In today’s post, we (that is, Gaspard Merten from Universite Libre de Bruxelles and yours truly) are going to dive deep into how to analyze public transport data, using both schedule and real time information. This collaboration has been made possible by the EMERALDS project. Previously, I already shared news about GTFS algorithms for Trajectools that …Read More

Simple facts about the new Cloud-Native Geospatial hype.

OK, it has been a while since the last time I published this data, but I have a valid excuse. The most striking feature of the 2024 chart is the zero’ing out of IBM’s piece of the pie. Big Blue, which once billed the government $107M in a year, has been reduced to a billing rate of less than $5M per year over the last two years. Everything else feels more or less the same. After seven years of NDP government, the overall trajectory of outsourcing growth has beeen flattened, but in no way reversed. It is a smaller proportion of overall spend, but the substantial change wrought by the Campbell Liberal government starting around 2005 has been durable – BC IT has a huge outsourced component still. The initial surge in smaller local companies after 2017 stalled out by 2021 and had been flat since. The most consistent grower is now CGI, which entered the Victoria market around 2005 and has grown to $60M/year in billings with consistent year-over-year increases.

Ten years of using uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs or ‘drones’) for different mapping projects — scientific, educational, and commercial —…Continue reading on Spatial Data Science »

Back to entry 1 I recently “celebrated” my “cancerversary”, the one-year mark since my GI doctor phoned me up and said the fateful words – “you have cancer”. At that moment, my universe shrank down immensely. All the external stuff, job, professional relationships, volunteerism, just kind of fell away, I had no mental space for it. It was just me and my immediate family and the many, many unknowns. My experience since then has included two major physical insults. The “curative” surgery that removed most of my rectum, and the associated c.difficle infection that brutally wrecked my GI tract. The insults really knocked me back. Moving around the house involved effort. Meals would lead to stomach pain and long sessions on the toilet. Runs were replaced with walks and then shorter walks. A trip to the cafe became my gold standard for “getting out”. Now, I am immensely “better” than I was this summer. But I am still a very long way from the physical condition I was before (which was...

The GRASS GIS 8.4.1 release provides more than 80 improvements and fixes with respect to the release 8.4.0. Enjoy! The post GRASS GIS 8.4.1 released appeared first on Markus Neteler Consulting.

We are pleased to announce that the minutes from the QGIS.ORG Annual General Meeting (AGM) 2024 are now available for… Read more QGIS.ORG Annual General Meeting 2024 – Minutes Now Available

While traditional images are taken from directly above, oblique imagery captures them at an angle. Learn more about oblique images. The post What Is Oblique Imagery? appeared first on GIS Geography.

Store data in JSON format in PostgreSQL, consult it... and all this using INSEE french census data as an example.

We are delighted to announce a special track on “Integrating Large-Language Models and Geospatial Foundation Models to Enhance Spatial Reasoning in ABMs” as part of the Social Simulation Conference 2025, 25th to 29th August 2025 at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. Full conference details can be found at the end of this email.Abstract for the Special Track: Recent developments in the use of large language models (LLMs) offer exciting opportunities to control agent behaviour in potentially more realistic and nuanced ways than has previously been possible. However, an LLM-backed agent can only interface with their surroundings through text prompts, which is severely limiting. The integration of large language models (LLMs) and geospatial foundation models (GFMs) presents an exciting opportunity to use AI techniques to advance agent-based modelling for spatial applications, potentially allowing for agents with more comprehensive behavioural realism, as well as an improved...

The Trajectools repository is migrating from GitHub to Codeberg. The new home for Trajectools is: ➡️ https://codeberg.org/movingpandas/trajectools The GitHub repo remains as a writable mirror, for now, but the issue tracking is only active on Codeberg. Why the move? I am working on moving my projects to European infrastructure that better aligns with my values. …Read More

FOSS4G:BG: Open GIS conference is coming early in March as a local FOSS4G event in Bulgaria organized by the QGIS.bg community. The event will span in two days, having a day with workshops with deep dive in different topics and a second day with conference presentations.

Introduction Geospatial data volumes and complexity are growing due to diverse sources, such as GPS, satellite imagery, and sensor data. Traditional geospatial processing methods face challenges, including scalability, handling various formats, and ensuring data consistency. The medallion architecture offers a layered approach to data management, improving data processing, reliability, and scalability. While the medallion architecture […]

Around this time last year, we made a pivotal decision, GEO261 needed a true headquarters, a space that reflected not just where we worked, but who we were evolving.

Demon Dialogues is a collection of comics which serves as a Handbook for Living with Your Inner Critic

Thoughts on duplicating data with modern tooling and STAC

The post explores an SQL query using DuckDB and OvertureMaps data to extract, filter, and visualize pizza places in Switzerland. All these steps can be done in one line, and the generated map of Swiss pizza places can be viewed immediately using PMTiles.

A funny thing happened when I wrote up my 2025 book list – a lot of the books were parts of pairings. And I started wondering what other pairings I had read that were memorable. So here’s another list! Wicked, Gregory Maguire and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum You wouldn’t know it to look at me (or would you?) but I am a person who has read all 14 books of the original L. Frank Baum Oz series. From “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” to “Glinda of Oz” and all in between. As… that kind of person, I was truly tickled to pick up “Wicked” a couple years ago and take in not only the invented back-story of the Wicked Witch of the West (Elphaba), but also all the references to the Oz world that Maguire builds into his narrative. “Wicked” is the best kind of reimagining, one that manages a completely fresh story, but without tearing down the original source material on the way. Maguire clearly is also… that kind of person, and he treats Oz with respect while building a totally fresh...

Introduction When combining open-source GIS tools with the ArcGIS ecosystem, there are a handful of challenges one can encounter. The compatibility of data formats, issues with interoperability, tool chain fragmentation, and performance at scale come to mind quickly. However, the use of the open-source Python library GeoPandas can be an effective way of working around […]

Safe Software highlighted CapMetro's Geospatial Program in a success story, showcasing the integration of FME and ArcGIS to enhance transit operations, planning, and performance management. Their comprehensive GIS platform automates workflows and utilizes real-time data, ensuring decision-makers have access to vital information.

We are thrilled to announce the release of Iris 2.10, our most powerful and feature-rich update yet.

The Swiss Rooftop Explorer is a cloud-native web app that retrieves Swiss building roof heights without a GIS server. Using PMTiles, Geoparquet, and DuckDB-WASM, it enables fast, low-maintenance geospatial queries. This post explores the data pipeline and its benefits of cloud-optimized formats, and how static files can replace traditional GIS infrastructure.

Profound changes are on the horizon.

GIS supports various ways to explore spatial relationships. Among these, fishnets stand out for their utility in spatial analysis. The post Fishnets in GIS: An Overview appeared first on GIS Geography.

Literacy skills, are essential for enabling students to develop their geographical understanding and being able to communicate this, both in writing and verbally. In order for students to be able to develop their literacy skills and become confident with reading, writing, speaking and listening, to enable communication and geographical understanding, vocabulary plays a key role.Continue reading "The Importance of Vocabulary Learning in the Geography Classroom"

may the odds be ever in your favor

Demystifying cloud-native geospatial formats through illustrated storytelling.

Use Tailscale to build your own gated community (a.k.a. VPN) within the public internet: bypass geo-blocking, remotely control your smart home, and quickly provide services as a developer.

Time should be a first-class citizen in geospatial. In many ways, measuring change might always have been geospatial's killer app. But are we giving time enough structured attention?

Learn about our plan for Phase 2 of the AI for Earth Observation and Field Boundaries Initiative and how to get involved. The post Join TGE in Phase 2 of AI for Earth Observation and Field Boundaries appeared first on Taylor Geospatial Engine.

Seven months ago, we issued A Call to Action for the Data Community to break down geospatial data silos and make GIS a core part of analytics. Today, we’re thrilled to announce two major developments that bring this vision closer to reality: The Parquet specification has officially adopted geospatial guidance, enabling native storage of GEOMETRY and GEOGRAPHY types Iceberg 3 now includes GEOMETRY and GEOGRAPHY as part of its official specification Now both Parquet and Iceberg support columns of type GEOMETRY or GEOGRAPHY just like INT32, INT64, FLOAT32, etc. columns! Yay! This is a landmark achievement for geospatial data! 🎉 A Community Achievement First, a heartfelt thank you to everyone who contributed to this effort—engineers, early adopters, and advocates who pushed for geospatial data to be treated as a first-class citizen. This milestone wasn’t achieved overnight; it took years of collaboration across organizations and ecosystems. From the early days of GeoParquet 1.0...

The GRASS GIS 8.4.1RC1 release provides more than 70 improvements and fixes with respect to the release 8.4.0. Please support us in testing this release candidate. The post GRASS GIS 8.4.1RC1 released appeared first on Markus Neteler Consulting.

Well-designed geospatial tools help decision-makers absorb information quickly, improve situational awareness, and enhance user experiences.

Courtesy of Wyvern

Installing the most widely used open-source GIS software on the most popular Linux distribution should be straightforward, yet it often raises questions and even problems. This guide walks you through the process so you can refer back to it whenever needed.

Use Spliit App (open-source, web-app, mobile app) for an easy way to track and split expenses with a group.

The post Innovation Bridge 2024 Wrapped: A collaboration to build a global dataset using AI and satellite imagery appeared first on Taylor Geospatial Engine.

For PostGIS Day this year I researched a little into one of my favourite topics, the history of relational databases. I feel like in general we do not pay a lot of attention to history in software development. To quote Yoda, “All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing.” Anyways, this year I took on the topic of the early history of spatial databases in particular. There was a lot going on in the ’90s in the field, and in many ways PostGIS was a late entrant, even though it gobbled up a lot of the user base eventually.

This blog post was first published on Chris’ personal blog on February 9, 2025 and is being cross posted here. Have you benefitted from Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF’s? SpatioTemporal Asset Catalogs? Zarr, COPC or GeoParquet? Not just the formats, but the whole ecosystem of tools and data around it? Well I’d like to present you with an incredibly easy opportunity to ‘pay it forward’ and help build and expand the movement. And all you have to do is attend a conference! One that should be a totally awesome experience, the first in-person CNG Conference, from April 30th to May 2nd. I have big dreams for this conference, as my hope is that it can expand in the next few years to become a truly vendor-neutral gathering for anyone working in and around geospatial data. To be one of those conferences that has the critical mass where you know ‘everyone’ you want to talk to will be there. In North America there’s really only two options for this: Esri UC and GeoINT. Both are incredible events, but...

Paul shows you how to access raster data stored in the cloud or object storage for PostGIS using cloud optimized GeoTIFF (aka COG) files. He also includes some functions for working with raster elevation.

Photo by fabio on UnsplashContinue reading on Spatial Data Science »

In previous posts we have noted how one can explore urban issues through newspapers, while at the same time we have used social media to explore trends in vaccinations. In a recently published paper in PLOS Digital Health entitled "From print to perspective: A mixed-method analysis of the convergence and divergence of COVID-19 topics in newspapers and interviews" with Qingqing Chen, Adam Sullivan, Jennifer Surtees, Laurene Tumiel-Berhalter and myself, we thought we would explore how COVID-19 was reported in newspapers and how this varied from interviews. The rationale behind this was that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to diverse experiences influenced by public health measures like lockdowns and social distancing. To explore these dynamics, we introduce a novel ’big-thick’ data approach that integrates extensive U.S. newspaper data with detailed interviews. By employing natural language processing (NLP) and geoparsing techniques, we identify key topics related to the pandemic and...

Introduction The geospatial industry has seen significant transformation with the rise of open-source solutions. Tools like QGIS, PostGIS, OpenLayers, and GDAL have provided alternatives to proprietary GIS software, providing cost-effective, customizable, and community-driven mapping and spatial analysis capabilities. While open-source GIS thrives on collaboration and accessibility, it still operates within a competitive landscape influenced by […]

Cloud-Native Geospatial represents a significant shift in how geospatial data is processed, stored, and analyzed. This approach offers GIS Professionals greater scalability, allowing them to handle massive datasets without relying on traditional and often limited on-premise infrastructure. Additionally, the cloud-native approach enhances collaboration by enabling multiple users to access and work on shared datasets in real-time, regardless of their physical location, helping to eliminate data silos. This level of accessibility and flexibility empowers GIS professionals to deliver faster results, streamline workflows, and adapt to the growing demands of modern geospatial applications. What is Cloud-Native Geospatial? Cloud-native geospatial refers to the practice of leveraging cloud-based technologies and architectures to handle geospatial data in the cloud, ideally without migrating it between heavy/purpose-built storage and file formats. This approach focuses on scalability,...

XTools Pro is a special add-on for ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro. It’s mostly a tool for GIS analysis. But it has a fair share of productivity tools. The post 7 Best Features of XTools Pro appeared first on GIS Geography.

Following up on my last post, I wanted to share some more details about the experience of using AI tools to code a plugin for QGIS, one that has seen some reasonable success, with over 2000 downloads in the past couple of months. My hope is to inspire others to make their own QGIS plugins and other geospatial tools, as I think more people doing AI-assisted coding has the potential to accelerate the momentum of the open source ecosystem. Cursor & QGIS — awesome together :) Can you really code a QGIS plug-in just using AI tools? Before we dig in I want to give everyone who is not a coder some encouragement to jump in and try things out. The quick answer is yes! You can code a QGIS plug-in even if you’re not a software developer. I’m sure you’ve seen the videos of people building cool things with AI tools, but it can still be hard to actually dive into it. For me the most important thing is to have a real problem you’re trying to solve. I could never follow those tutorials about...

The post discusses AI hallucination - when AI generates incorrect information. It explores two main problems: user frustration with incorrect outputs and uncertainty about managing these errors long-term. Using a geodetic network analogy, it explains how AI errors can propagate like measurement errors in surveying, suggesting we need better frameworks for detecting and managing hallucinations.

Slides and links for my February 2025 Pangeo Showcase talk

I have been watching the codification of spatial data types into GeoParquet and now GeoIceberg with some interest, since the work is near and dear to my heart. Writing a disk serialization for PostGIS is basically an act of format standardization – albeit a standard with only one consumer – and many of the same issues that the Parquet and Iceberg implementations are thinking about are ones I dealt with too. Here is an easy one: if you are going to use well-known binary for your serialiation (as GeoPackage, and GeoParquet do) you have to wrestle with the fact that the ISO/OGC standard for WKB does not describe a standard way to represent empty geometries. Empty geometries come up frequently in the OGC/ISO standards, and they are simple to generate in real operations – just subtract a big thing from a small thing. SELECT ST_AsText(ST_Difference( 'POLYGON((0 0, 1 0, 1 1, 0 1, 0 0))', 'POLYGON((-1 -1, 3 -1, 3 3, -1 3, -1 -1))' )) If you have a data set and are running...

Last month I released my first QGIS plug-in, and promised I’d write an in-depth post about it. I’ll give an overview and dig into some of the motivations, and then I’ll put the details of my experience of coding with AI in its own follow up post. Background I’ve been a long time QGIS user, though am very far from an expert — I mostly open different files and visualize them. I’ve never been able to afford an Esri license, so it’s QGIS all the way for me. And I’ve always loved the plugin ecosystem: the fact that many people worldwide are adding all kinds of functionality so that anyone can customize it to their needs is just awesome, and a testament to the power of open source. There’s still things Esri can do better, but we’re now at the point where there’s a lot of things QGIS can do better. I also recently have ‘become a coder’ again, thanks to the power of AI tools. I’ll dive into more of the experience in my next post, but it meant that I could tackle something like a new QGIS...

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into geospatial technology is fundamentally reshaping industries, from urban development and environmental conservation to logistics and disaster relief. With businesses increasingly adopting AI-powered geospatial solutions,  the need for professionals who can harness these tools is higher than ever. To stay ahead, hiring teams must grasp the evolving landscape and […] The post AI and Geospatial Technology: Transforming Hiring and Workforce Solutions appeared first on GeoSearch.

What is Strategic Planning and Why Does it Matter? Strategic planning is one of the most important things you can do for your organization. It helps you not only paint the picture of where you want your organization to be in the future, but also draws the roadmap for how you’re going to get there.  […]

In previous posts, we have written how large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can be used in various urban analytical applications. We have kept exploring this potential especially with respect to citizen science applications. To this end we have just published a new paper in iScience, entitled "New Directions in Mapping the Earth’s Surface with Citizen Science and Generative AI". In the paper, lead by Linda See, we discuss how multi-modal LLMs (MLLMs) which are like LMMs but can take different forms of inputs (e.g., text, images, video) and output multi-modal information (e.g., take an image and output a description) could be leveraged to enhance citizen science land cover/land use mapping campaigns. If this sounds of interest, below you can read the abstract to the paper, see some of the figures we use to build our argument, while at the bottom of the post you can see the full reference and a link to the actual paper.Abstract: As more satellite imagery has become openly...

I know it’s short notice, but I wanted to let you all know that I’m doing a livestream tomorrow. It’s been well over 2½ years since my last one. I’ll be covering a few monochrome maps I made for an upcoming book. Please come on by to ask questions, offer feedback, and share your thoughts … Continue reading Going Live →

Let us explore the world of TenserflowContinue reading on Spatial Data Science »

When maps understand what you mean, not just what you click

A goal for me this year is to ‘ship more’, so in the spirit of releasing early and often I wanted to share a little new project I got going this past weekend. See https://github.com/cholmes/geoparquet-tools. It’s a collection of utilities for things I often want to do but that aren’t trivial out of the box with DuckDB. It started focused on just checking GeoParquet files for ‘best practices’, which I’ve been working on writing up in this pull request, as I realized that lots of people are publishing awesome data as GeoParquet but don’t always pick the best options (and the tools don’t always set the best defaults). So it can check compression, if there’s a bbox column, and row group size. It also attempts to check if a file is spatially ordered, but I’m not sure if it works across different types of approaches. It does seem to work with Hilbert curves generated from DuckDB. I do need to refine the row group reporting a bit — I think the row group size in bytes is more important...

The post Tech Fellow Update: Exploring Field Boundary Data with LLMs appeared first on Taylor Geospatial Engine.

DuckDB continues to be my go to tool for geospatial processing, after I discovered it over a year ago. Since that time its functionality has continued to expand, and as of version 1.1 it reads and writes GeoParquet natively, as long as you have the spatial extension installed. LOAD spatial; CREATE TABLE fields AS (SELECT * from 'https://data.source.coop/kerner-lab/fields-of-the-world-cambodia/boundaries_cambodia_2021.parquet'); COPY fields TO 'cambodia-fields.parquet'; Be sure to always run LOAD spatial; or the table won’t get a geometry column, it will just create blobs. If you see errors or your output data is just Parquet and not GeoParquet that’s likely the source of your problems. I often forget to add it at the beginning of my sessions — perhaps there is some nice way to configure DuckDB to always load it, but I don’t know it (yet). I also do recommend that you always use zstd compression, as it generally results in at least 20% smaller files, and its speed is comparable to...

Transforming data into valuable insights.

Part 2Continue reading on Spatial Data Science »

Drought conditions in the lead-up to the 2025 L.A. fires

Let us have a look.Continue reading on Spatial Data Science »

Every coordinate tells a story; geofencing lets us bring those stories to life within defined boundariesContinue reading on Spatial Data Science »

Die GRASS GIS-Community würdigt die langjährigen Beiträge von Roger Bivand zur Entwicklung des rgrass-Pakets. The post Großer Dank an Roger Bivand! appeared first on Markus Neteler Consulting.

The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.5.2. This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 17, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+. To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.12+ is needed. SFCGAL 1.4+ is needed to enable postgis_sfcgal support. To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 1.5+ is needed. 3.5.2 source download md5 NEWS PDF docs: en ja, fr, zh_Hans HTML Online en ja fr zh_Hans Cheat Sheets: postgis: en ja fr zh_Hans postgis_raster: en ja fr zh_Hans postgis_topology: en ja fr zh_Hans postgis_sfcgal: en ja fr zh_Hans address standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder: en ja fr zh_Hans This release is a bug fix release that includes bug fixes since PostGIS 3.5.1.

In this experiment I used AI to automate architecture documentation by testing Aider (an AI coding assistant). After just 5 minutes and 5 prompts, I generated a decent C4 diagram for a Streamlit web application. While not perfect, this experiment shows the promising future of AI-assisted documentation.

Tasks for the weekend.Continue reading on Spatial Data Science »

Whether you're a student charting your career path or a professional looking to pivot into a new industry, there are numerous ways to gain the knowledge and skills needed to thrive in Geospatial.

Modernizing the geospatial industry is critical.

"Playground" by Richard Powers explores the interplay of technological ambition and environmental concerns, highlighting tensions between progress and preservation through diverse characters on a remote island.

Precipitation in the US corn belt

If Google won't, I will.

Understanding your data’s coordinates is the first step to turning spatial information into actionable insights.Continue reading on Spatial Data Science »

In 2025, research on the web involves using ChatGPT for specific technical queries while considering sources and environmental impact, as Google's search has become less efficient.

Another post over break! This one also comes from a student’s suggestion on how to use Weather data in the form of gridded NetCDFs. This is a common format of the weather data provided by NOAA. The data are set up as a time-stacked set of rasters or spacetime cubes. The downloads have multiple years’ […]

This article describes "star-collector," a tool for automatically publishing web favorites using GitHub Actions and AI-generated titles, leveraging transformers for title creation from Mastodon posts.

One of the most fun parts of being involved in GeoParquet is that I get to hear about all the amazing tools that people are writing to scale geospatial analysis above and beyond what the stack I’m familiar with can handle. GeoPandas (Python) and sf (R) are great tools but the struggle to scale as you approach the available memory on your laptop. On the other hand, Arrow, DuckDB, Polars, DataFusion, and the other new fangled databases struggle to efficiently handle spatial joins (although perhaps by the time I’m done writing this post or by the time you are reading it, this will have changed!). Apache Sedona sits at the intersection of these technologies, joining PostGIS as a go-to tool to reach for as data gets big and you need the streaming capabilities of a database alongside index-assisted spatial-aware joins. Instead of extending PostgreSQL, Sedona extends Spark and has embraced newer/faster file formats like GeoParquet. If you are familiar with Spark, using Sedona is probably...

I did a lot of reading last year, a lot, perhaps because I had a lot of down time. I tend to read before going to sleep, and recovery from surgery and other things means I go to bed early and then fill the time between bed and sleep with books. Books, books, and more books. To be totally precise, I read books on a Kindle, which allows me to read in the middle of the night in the dark with the back light. Also to read from any position, since all books are the same, light weight when consumed via an e-reader. I am a full e-reader convert. Anyway, I’ve had means, motive and opportunity, and I read a tonne. Some of it was bad, some of it was good, some of it was memorable, some not. Of the 50 or so books I read last year, here are ten that made me go “yes, that was good and memorable”. Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver I used to read Booker Prize winners, but I found the match to my taste was hit-and-miss. The Pullitzer Prize nominees list, on the other hand, has given me piles...