On June 3^rd Apache Corporation reported that a pipeline ruptured and caught fire at its Varanus Island gas processing and transportation hub. The plant is located off the coast of Western Australia, and is responsible for one third of the state’s gas supply. Thankfully no one was injured and the 153 people on the island were evacuated safely. On the other hand this event is having a significant impact on the economy, and has left officials scrambling to alleviate the situation.

Many of Western Australia’s businesses have been left shorthanded in the energy department as a result, and are prioritizing their energy use, even cutting operations as a whole. Western Australia is responsible for producing a third of the nation’s exports, which brings this into the international economy. Let’s just put another one in the books for the energy crisis.

With so much emphasis being placed on energy, I decided to take a look at what kind of energy datasets can be found on Finder! Everything from Power Plant Emissions in India to Central Iraq Pipelines can already be found in Finder!

Here are some links to some of the Australian/Energy specific datasets available on Finder!

Operating Renewable Energy Plants

Accredited Renewable Energy Sites

Operating Fossil Fuel Plants

As we deal with the current energy situation worldwide, I just wanted to acknowledge the wealth of spatial data that pertains to the different aspects regarding Energy overall.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Andrew Turner had a great post a few days ago asking the question “is Google Maps GIS?” Lots of insightful discussion ensued with questions around what is the definition of GIS and has the term itself outlived its usefulness.

In response to Andrew’s post, many folks argued that GoogleMaps/Earth is a GIS. Folks on the GIS side feel strongly it is not. Mike Hickey the President of MapInfo stated , “”the explosion of Neogeography is driving awareness [and] collaborative data consolidation [but it] isn’t GIS.”

The truth is likely somewhere between the two, but I think the more important point is that the gap between the two is shrinking at an incredibly rapid pace. I’d predict in the next few years there will be little that differentiates the GeoWeb from GIS other than the names identified with their past like ESRI, Google, Microsoft, MapInfo etc.

In many ways the landscape for GIS today is not much different than it was for statistics several years back. When I learned statistics we had to crank through command line programs like Stata, R and SAS. Today you can do the majority of the basic statistic functions in Excel or other spreadsheet applications. If you want to do hardcore stats you can still go back to the professional packages, but for the vast majority of people it is overkill and scares away users unnecessarily.

We are seeing much the same progression with GIS and the GeoWeb. More and more of the functionality that was traditionally associated with GIS will be ported over the GeoWeb in an easier to use framework that leverages the power of an interconnected Web. That is where the statistics analogy breaks down – it was based on an easy to use desktop app versus a hard to use desktop app. In the GIS/GeoWeb landscape there is the additional variable of being connected to the Web through the Internet.

This, I think, is where the GeoWeb will have its greatest advantage. It is built from the ground up to leverage the power of the Web. Versus GIS which is unfortunately saddled with trying to make the Web work their legacy desktop applications and client server systems. Web efficiencies I believe will push GIS into “the cloud” (as much as we make fun of the term – “puffy little Internet clouds”). The question is who is going to make it happen?

1) start ups like WeoGeo, CloudMade, Mapufacture or
2) Google
3) Microsoft or
4) ESRI?

While I think the start ups will drive innovation I think at the end of the day it will be Google who makes it happen.

Why would Google want to do such a thing? It is an advertising company after all. Their mission is to organize the worlds information. Quoting Mike Jones from a talk in India, “most geospatial data today is locked away in workstations managed by proprietary software.” Jones’ vision is to have “all” geospatial information available to the world and indexed in a way that it can be accessed by those who need it (hence the Google geoindex – not well received by GIS users).” If the things standing between you and the data is “proprietary software” why not offer the software in the cloud and the data will reside there as well. That would seem the shortest path making the public data in that equation accessible.

In conclusion I believe this means we are in for a lot more convergence and there will be no debate in regards to the question “is Google Maps GIS?”

Popularity: 15% [?]

Unless you have been living in a cave for the past couple months, you are well aware of the rising price of gas. The rising costs have affected many aspects of daily life for Americans from car buying to vacation plans. One area that has seen a big change is in the way Americans are using public transportation.

The amount of trips taken on public transportation in the past year has increased dramatically. Recently the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) came out with their 2008 1st quarter ridership statistics.

Throughout major cities across the country ridership on public transportation was recorded and compared to rates from 2007. From the report a few conclusions can be seen:

• 2.6 billion trips were taken in the first three months of 2008 (about 85 million more than the first quarter of 2007).
• During the first quarter of 2008 public transportation in the USA rose by 3.3%.
• Increases were seen in light rail (10.3%), commuter rail (5.7%), heavy rail (4.4%), and bus ridership (2.0%).

I produced a dataset in Finder! that visually displays ridership data across the country. “American Public Transportation Association, Public Transit Ridership Statistics, USA, 1st Quarter 2008 & 2007“.

This dataset gives you the ability to go to a number of major urban centers across the country and see if public transportation ridership has increased. It is also very interesting to compare the rates of increase to current gas level prices across the country. “Retail Gas Prices By State, May 27th, 2008”.

In the state of Michigan the regular price of gas was $2.89 a gallon in July. A year later the price is now at $4.10. This is a substantial increase of 41.9% and is one of the highest increases of any state in the nation. To save money many natives of Michigan have decided to turn to public transportation as a way to survive escalating fuel prices. The chart below shows public transportation agencies ridership increases from last year throughout major cities in Michigan.

These cities are well above the national average of a 3.3% increase in ridership. It seems to be very apparent that the strong increase in gas prices is causing more people to turn to public transportation and less people to pay extraordinary prices at the pump.

As a nation we are finding new ways to handle the rise of gas prices. The cost to commute has raised greatly and driving to work in a car is being replaced by the use of public transportation. By using public transportation people are discovering cheaper and more energy efficient traveling methods.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Jessica Wyland of Spatial Sustain and V1 Magazine discusses the role of GIS when measuring carbon footprints. Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) scientists are using GIS to measure ‘carbon-rich biomass in heavily wooded areas to indicate the effect that deforestation and land use have on rising carbon levels in our atmosphere.’ Through GIS, the researchers are able to study and review changes and use maps to model the effects of different future land-use and carbon-related decisions.

GIS Blog discusses the ability of people to recognize maps made with GIS and the improvements needed for the quality of maps. One of the problems was “users of the maps (be it clients, project managers, creators) don’t value cartography. The savings of quickly producing a map outweighs excellent cartography.”

GISuser reports that through the partnership of Reutech Radar Systems and 3D Laser Mapping, field mapping robots are able to make intelligent decisions in virtual real time. The advanced laser scanning system supplies the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa with research into intelligent field robotics for studies relating to perception, mobility and navigation.

Mapping is officially taking new heights in the health sector. According to the Mapufacture blog, an article, entitled The Great Health Mashup provides the benefits of combining and visualizing numerous geospatial data streams together to help with awareness and decision making. Other reports, such as HealthMap, provide a global disease alert map.

Popularity: 7% [?]