Fingerlakes Region Map with Pin
Michael Ross
GIS/SIG President
GIS Coordinator, City of Rochester
Department of Information Technology
185 Exchange Blvd, Rochester, NY 14614
ph: (585) 428-6103
Please see the calendar for regional meetings.
Directions Magazine Article – GIS/SIG 21st Annual Conference
Article in Directions Magazine 7/18/2012 by Rich Quodomine
GIS/SIG 21st Annual Conference, April 24, 2012
By: Carol Goodman Zollweg, Chair, Communications Committee, NYS GIS Association
As usual, the 21st annual GIS/SIG Conference was a success. Starting with the keynote speaker, throughout the many informative sessions, and spiced from geojeopardy and door prizes, the conference was valuable to all. In this article, I summarize the parts of the conference that I was able to attend.
Jen Ziemke, Ph.D,co-director of the International Network of Crisis Mappers, delivered the keynote speech about crisis mapping. She explained how people collaborated in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti to improve the road maps, enabling rescue crews to find people. She emphasized how we are linked by time and space and that interdisciplinary collaboration helps to analyze data in new and interesting ways.
Dan Allen, MRB Group, spoke during the mobile technology session about creating GIS applications for mobile phones. Creating GIS applications for these devices is a way to allow many people to use GIS without the specialized equipment that was needed in the past. He informed us that ArcGIS 10.1 will support cloud services that enable one to share maps and data easily, allowing for simple and quick viewing and editing.
Dave Marley, Bergmann Associates, continued the mobile technology session by discussing custom iPhone applications. He explained that custom iPhone applications improves the user experience and customizes the workflow for a particular application. iPhone applications are particularly useful to users unfamiliar with GIS, for example, citizens using a 311 application.
Lindsey Drum, Bergmann Associates, demonstrated how to link SketchUp with ArcScene. This enables 3D visualization in a GIS, one of the hottest growth areas in the field. Lindsey gave a very detailed demonstration on how to accomplish this.
Mark Scott, ESRI, highlighted some of the new features expected in ArcGIS 10.1. These include enhanced capabilities for data sharing, new spatial analyst tools, new GPS tools, and the ability to geotag photos. It also includes more support for LiDAR, tools for measuring height from imagery, and location information in videos (e.g. for coordination of video of car movement and movement of a point on a map). For custom applications, ESRI introduces ArcGIS Runtime. This will make custom applications simple to deploy with no installation required.
ArcGIS 10.1 will be the last version to support VBA. Map documents that currently include VBA code will work as expected but there will be no development tools for new VBA (no VBA SDK). After ArcGIS 10.1 VBA will no longer be supported and tool development will need to move to the Python scripting language.
ArcGIS Server 10.1 will run on 64 bit machines only, all communication will be done through REST endpoint services and will be able to read 10.0 services.