The on line and off line media have been having a bit of a field day with Miss South Carolina’s answer to a question about the lack of geographic literacy in the US. It is hard to do her answer to the question justice, but click on the video below to get the full effect.

Miss Teen USA 2007 - South Carolina answers a question

For a geographic tour of Miss South Carolina’s response check out Billdozer’s entertaining dataset on GeoCommons. If you add it as a layer in MyMaps you can click through and see where “The Iraq” and “The Asian Countries” are located.

The whole episode is pretty hilarious, but I think there is a real opportunity here to offer Miss South Carolina and others challenged by geographic dyslexia a ray of hope. Having gone through undergrad and grad geography classes I’ll be the first to admit they are pretty dry. Even when I was teaching Geography 101 to college freshmen it was a challenge to be more entertaining than the greek gossip page in the university paper. I usually solved this by throwing a nerf ball at the distracted ones, but I am getting off the point.

Back in the day (1997) the best shot we had at multimedia entertainment was the selection of National Geographic videos in the library. There are only so many times you can show the half naked Yanamamo tribe smoking hallucinogenic roots (the green snot side affect is just freaky), and half the kids still have no clue the video is shot in the Amazon rain forest or that it is located in Brasil. There just were not that many tools to make geography exciting, and lets face the Miss South Carolinas of the world are going to need something to distract them from the new hat Lindsay Lohan is wearing in rehab long enough to learn geography.

Fast forward to 2007 and I think we have a much better arsenal of tools to save the geographic dyslexics and prevent and future Miss South Carolinas from being lampooned. The sheer fact that Google Earth has been downloaded 250 million times is testament that you can make geography exciting and interesting. Users are not just passively looking at maps but also actively creating maps with over 1 million created with Microsoft Collections and 50,000 on Platial. Will the growing popularity of the GeoWeb result in decrease in geographic dyslexia? Maybe Google, Yahoo and Microsoft can start a foundation where for only the cost of a cup of coffee you could teach a vapid young teenage American the location of the USA on a map. I am pretty sure Sally Struthers is available. To kick it off we are donating a map to help educate beauty pageant participants on their national geography - behold the number winners of the Miss USA by state.

If you would like to learn more about Miss USA winners by state you can find the dataset on GeoCommons or look at the source on Wikipedia.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Crack Down on the Blood Sport

In case you hadn’t heard enough about the high profile case of Michael Vick, the professional football star who is facing criminal dog fighting charges, he’s back on the front page after the NFL announced his suspension from the league yesterday. While some of us may tire of hearing about a foolish and cruel celebrity, all of the attention seems to be doing some good in combating the dog fighting rings. Law enforcement is increasingly cracking down on participants in the illegal blood sport. Based on the data compiled by pet-abuse.com, 47 dog fighting charges had been made from January 2007 through June 2007. Since Vick’s indictment on July 17th, pet-abuse.com has reported 22 allegations (the Humane Society claims 25 on its site). That’s roughly a three fold increase in cases per month.

Political Fallout

With the 2008 election on the horizon, every opportunity to get an edge is being seized by both parties. Now the Democrats are trying to link House Republicans to Michael Vick’s actions by pointing to their voting on the Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act (on March 25, 2007 the House overwhelmingly passed the bill, and soon after the President signed it into law. This legislation upgrades penalties for illegal transportation of fighting dogs—one of the crimes Vick has been charged with—from misdemeanor to felony penalties). The Dems are calling attention to the fact that thirty seven Republicans voted against the bill, and only two Democrats. Most opponents defend their vote by saying they oppose more federal regulations on states.

Whether or not you think it’s a stretch to say the opposing politicians “gave a free pass” to dog fighters, it would be interesting to look at a map of dog fighting incidents and see how it compares to a map of where the opposition votes came from.

Here are the nay votes mapped:

And here is a map of dog fighting incidents from January 2007 through June 2007 by county:

While dog fighting seems more prevalent in the South and Midwest, the votes in opposition to the bill are regionally diverse.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Recently I had an editorial forwarded to me from Environment and Planning B titled “Just another private public partnership? Possible constraints on scientific information in virtual map browsers”, authored by Francis Harvey of the University of Leicester (those with access can find the article here). Environment and Planning B is an academic journal focused on the science of solving spatial problems including GIS approaches. It also happens to be a journal where, as academics, we were fortunate to be published a few times. The editorial article claims that by embracing the GeoWeb, “Academics may forever lose the possibility to access and publish data without corporate consent. What Faustian bargain do we enter into when we use these amazing possibilities offered by virtual earth software?”

The great thing about blogging is you can provide a rebuttal to an article instantly and this piece definitely gave me plenty of cause to do so. Editorial pieces in academic journals are often meant to inspire discussion in the community and Dr. Harvey’s piece properly motivated me to respond. To be completely honest part of the motivation is the article specifically calls out GeoCommons as part of the corporate devilry that will steal away academics right to access data unfettered. As an academic that does sting a bit, but there are larger issues in the article that should be addressed.

First let’s hit the specific complaint. Dr. Harvey took a quote from the GeoCommons terms of use and highlighted it as something that would prevent academics from accessing data and result in a Faustian deal with us the FortiusOne Devil incarnate. The irony is that all the data in GeoCommons falls under a “Creative Commons with Attribution 3.0 license”. To quote the Creative Commons page, “This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution.” This is the same license that Wikipedia and OpenStreetMaps use by way of example.

There is a clause in our terms of service covering the possibility of GeoCommons one day also having licensed data from a third party that would not fall under Creative Commons because it would need to reflect the terms of use from that third party - “Certain information and content may be provided by third party licensors”. This is the example that Dr. Harvey quotes from which is completely non sequitor and purely serves to validate a false argument. Dr Harvey states, “Generally we need to remember that, except for the use of these software applications and GIS data for personal use or within fair-use provisions, any use requires the permission of the software provider and possibly the data provider.” He then goes on to say that the “newly announced GeoCommons Terms of Service” have the following restrictions on use to validate his statement that you need permission to use any data in GeoCommons. This is blatantly false and a highly misleading construction on Dr. Harvey’s part.

Our terms of use clearly state that the data uploaded into GeoCommons falls under Creative Commons and you cannot grab the quote he did without reading that. Not to mention every data set on the site has posted under it the fact it falls under a Creative Commons license. I find it disingenuous to post a quote in a highly reputable journal stating we restrict the use of data and are denying open access of it to the public. That is the exact opposite of the mission we had in launching GeoCommons and the reason we chose the Creative Commons with attribution license (much to our lawyers chagrin), which has made over 2000 datasets with over 38,000 attributes available to the public.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 8% [?]

One of our core missions at FortiusOne is to enable many more people to explore, create, and share maps – to democratize geospatial capabilities. Even in government markets, which have been big users of GIS tools, the expense and technical sophistication required often cause bottlenecks in the preparation of maps. Government customers are also facing critical challenges in making information from the field accessible throughout their organizations – increasing collective intelligence from the edges of the network.

We have teamed with Lockheed Martin to leverage our intelligent mapping services to address these problems in government markets. Lockheed has a long history in the geospatial space and has been very progressive in embracing advanced Web 2.0 technologies such as Intelligent Mapping and Wikis.

I thought it might be helpful to provide an example of the kinds of problems we are addressing with Lockheed. Let’s take a fictitious scenario of a military operation dealing with terrorist attacks in Iraq. Suppose I'm Sergeant Gorman and I've uploaded data on a spree of attacks that my patrol collected over the past week.

A GIS analyst at headquarters, in reviewing my data along with historical data from the last three years, notices a pattern of increasing Shia activity around Samarra and sends an alert to field units. The alert prompts me to scan for data on attacks tagged Shia and Samarra, where I find a photo from a previous attack that shows one of the locals we had suspected of being a Shia ring leader.

I post a geo-blog noting that this individual has been suspected of coordinating attacks in my sector. A flurry of responses from other patrol leaders indicates that the same individual has been seen in proximity of other attacks. A GIS analyst at headquarters validates the findings and generates a command report, which results in the order to apprehend the suspect. On our next patrol into Samarra, we locate him and discover a complex cell of terrorist Shia activity in the area.

While the account above is completely fictional, hopefully it conveys the power of democratizing geospatial information throughout an entire organization. The same principles apply to a variety of other environments, such as disaster response, homeland security, and intelligence, where enabling the entire organization to explore, create, and share geospatial information can enhance mission effectiveness. We are excited about the partnership with Lockheed Martin to bring these capabilities to market.

Popularity: 18% [?]

IED Attacks in Iraq

Is the U.S. winning the war in Iraq? The Bush Administration continues to say yes. Most recently, they are touting a drop in U.S. fatalities in Iraq, stating that American deaths in the war-torn country in July were at their lowest levels since last November and sectarian violence (ignoring the horrific massacre of last Tuesday) has declined.

Others are more skeptical. Some point out that car and truck bombings are not included in the administration’s tabulations of violence in Iraq and therefore, the reports coming out of the government show inflated success. There also concerns about the proliferated use of Improvised Explosive Devices(IEDs) by insurgents, and the toll they are having on U.S. troups and other innocent people in Iraq.

Wikipedia defines an IED as a “device placed or fabricated in an improvised manner incorporating destructive, lethal, noxious, pyrotechnic, or incendiary chemicals and designed to destroy, incapacitate, harass, or distract. It may incorporate military stores, but is normally devised from nonmilitary components.” Typically, they are cobbled together using a hodgepodge of everyday gadgets, such as remote controls, mobile phones, pagers and garage door openers. Despite their often benign appearance, the impact of a detonated IED can be very powerful and deadly.

The statistics on IED attacks in Iraq illuminate the extent of the problem.

Newsweek reports that in 2004 roughly 1 in 3 soldiers was affected by IED attacks; Now, the numbers are 4 out of 5.

Time Magazine states that 48.5 of all U.S. fatalities in Iraq have resulted from IEDs

The Iraq Coalition Casualty Count has an interesting graphic on their website highlighting the steady climb in IED attacks against coalition forces following the fall of Saddam.

And there are numerous accounts reported in the news nearly everyday of Iraqis as victims of the deadly device.

Mapping the Changing IED Terror Landscape

So, where are IED attacks being carried out and how has this landscape changed over time? To answer this question, three heat maps were generated showing concentrations of IED attacks in Iraq for the years: 2004, 2005 and 2006. The data was extracted from the National Counter Terrorism Center World Wide Incident Tracking database and includes attacks against all nationalities; not, just Americans.

2004 IED Attacks

2005 IED Attacks

2006 IED Attacks

The graphics are revealing. In 2004 and 2005 attacks were fairly concentrated, occurring largely in the metropolitan area of Baghad and points north; the brightest spots on the views highlight these hotspots. Over time, the attacks show a mestastisizing pattern: a diffusion of attacks pushing further and filling in north and south of Baghad.

What Does the Future Hold? Pentagon officials say they have spent 6 billion dollars in trying to combat IEDs and new technologies are being deployed in the field to thwart attacks. It will be interesting to see if at years end, with 2007 data mapped, whether these efforts can help to quell the problem or if the problem continues to fester.

Popularity: 11% [?]