Vertical Aerial Photography Environment Agency Released [Open Data]

High Resolution Vertical Aerial photography for England has been released as Open Data from the Environment Agency.

High Resolutions range from 50cm to 10cm (Orthorectified)

Downloaded SU46NE.zip (Newbury) Image showing Vodafone HQ at 20cm Resolution 

"Vertical aerial photography is an airborne mapping technique, which measures reflected light in the red, green, blue and near infra-red spectrum. Images of the ground are captured at resolutions between 10cm and 50cm, and ortho-rectified using simultaneous LIDAR and GPS to a high spatial accuracy. The Environment Agency has been capturing vertical aerial photography data regularly since 2006. As of May 2016 we have 750 discrete individual surveys covering approximately 29,000km2, each ranging in coverage from a few square kilometres to hundreds of square kilometres. Historic data are available for some areas where we have carried out repeat surveys. Photography can be captured in all survey conditions, including incident response where it is used to derive flood outlines.

The photography is supplied as a raster dataset in ECW (enhanced compressed wavelet) format as either a true colour (RGB), near infra-red (NIR) or a 4-band (RGBN) dataset. The data are presented as tiles in British National Grid OSGB 1936 projections. Attribution statement: © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2016. All rights reserved."


Note all Aerial Imagery is in British National Grid (OSGB36) and in ECW format. 
QGIS will open this without plugins (on Windows only) Mac and Linux GIS users need to do more workarounds.

To download your area of Interest.
http://environment.data.gov.uk/ds/survey/index.jsp#/survey
(click on the map and scroll to the bottom of the list past lidar to find the links and file sizes)

Geologic Map of Alaska

Geologic Map of Alaska

"A new digital geologic map of Alaska released January 5th provides land users, managers and scientists geologic information for the evaluation of land use "

More than 750 references were used in creating the map, some as old as 1908 and others as new as 2015

source:
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=4430#.Vow6pvkrKUk


Link to map (pdf)
http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3340/sim3340_sheet1.pdf

Environment Agency Lidar Opendata Released

Environment Agency Lidar Opendata Released

 

Formats/Resolutions available:

LIDAR Composite Digital Surface Model at 1m spatial resolution  
LIDAR Composite Digital Surface Model at 2m spatial resolution  
LIDAR Composite Digital Surface Model at 50cm spatial resolution  
LIDAR Composite Digital Terrain Model at 1m spatial resolution  
LIDAR Composite Digital Terrain Model at 2m spatial resolution  
LIDAR Composite Digital Terrain Model at 50cm spatial resolution 


Mapping and Download Lidar from
http://www.geostore.com/environment-agency/survey.html#/

Noise Map (High Speed 2 Rail Impact)

Noise Map (High Speed 2 Rail Impact)

 

A nice visualization of the impact of potential Noise traveling around the new High Speed Link (known as HS2)

The project to create a faster link from London to Birmingham by rail then expanding to the north of England and to Scotland at later dates.

Noise contours — The contours are based on computer modelling of the equivalent continuous sound level (LpAeq,T) from HS2 during the daytime. They are assessed in 5dB steps down to 40dB. Peak noise levels would be higher, at up to 95dB at 25m from the centre of the tracks. Concerns have been expressed that this means a slightly wider area than shown would perceive noise from HS2 than indicated by these contours.
These contours do not take into account other noise, such as noise from adjacent roads. While that means overall noise levels would be higher where there are other noise sources, noise from HS2 would be less conspicuous compared to places where background noise levels are low. These contours assume trains passing at 360km/h where the design speed allows this, although normally they will operate at 330km/h unless catching up time when running late. Although the contours are shown only for phase 1, they assume the full phase 2 pattern of services of up to 18 trains per hour.

The Map (use full screen) and source on this post
http://hs2maps.com/operational_map.html?lon=-0.77053&lat=51.77025&zoom=15

Info on HS2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2

New Ordnance Survey OpenMap (Open Data) Released

New Ordnance Survey OpenMap (Open Data) Released

OpenRoads

"OS Open Roads is a connected road network for Great Britain. It contains all classified roads (such as motorways and A & B roads) as well as officially named unclassified roads"

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/products/os-open-roads.html 
Scale 1:15 000 to 1:30 000

OpenRivers

OS Open Rivers is a generalised open water network showing the flow and the locations of rivers, streams, lakes and canals across the whole of Great Britain.

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/products/os-open-rivers.html

Scale
1:15 000 to 1:30 000

Open Map Local (Beta)

This is probably the best full dataset you can get without cost in Great Britain!


This is probably the best full dataset you can get without cost in Great Britain!

"The most detailed street-level open data vector mapping product available, OS Open Map – Local is a great backdrop over which to display and analyse your data."

Thematic layers, including buildings, roads, sites, railways, hydrology, coastline, woodland and cartographic text.

Scale
1:3,000 to 1:20,000

All data is available to download from

https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/opendatadownload/products.html


All images from Ordnance Survey 
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/

Many many thank you's to  Ordnance Survey for open this data up for all users a very good move for Opendata in Great Britain.

QGIS on Raspberry Pi 2

QGIS on Raspberry Pi 2

Asking what is a raspberry pi? then go to 
http://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-2-model-b/

(This is work in progress)

Current QGIS 2.2 but working on updating to  QGIS 2.8.1
Call this testing...

Hardware:
Raspberry Pi
MicroSD Class 10 (16GB)

Operating System
raspuntu arm7 compiled
from [direct link] http://lucario.info/archive/raspuntu-tjc-2015-02-16.zip

This was based on this install guide (for windows with access to sd card writer)
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-get-ubuntu-desktop-on-the-raspberry-pi-2/

QGIS
http://www2.qgis.org/en/site/

see
http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/116320/how-to-install-gdal-and-qgis-on-a-raspberry-pi
note QGIS is much faster on raspberry pi 2


Why is this so important?
This can be a very cheap way to get GIS into schools across the world.

Cost $35 raspberry pi
with keyboard,mouse
cables HDMI, Cat5 Ethernet and SD card. 

**Tested headless (no mouse or keyboard after install) using normal remote desktop on a laptop running windows 8.1 on a local network (gigabyte LAN)- remote desktop works fine with wifi (g/n)

Working on speeding up processing, load time...etc.

Google Earth Pro now Free

Google Earth Pro now Free

30th January 2015
"Starting today, even more people will be able to access Google Earth Pro: we're making it available for free" 

Google Earth Pro builds on the amazing functionality of Google Earth with even more powerful tools. Some of the most compelling features of Earth Pro include:

• Advanced Measurements: Measure parking lots and land developments with polygon area measure, or determine affected radius with circle measure.
• High-resolution printing: Print Images up to 4800x3200 px resolution.
• Exclusive Pro data layers: Demographics, parcels, and traffic count.
• Spreadsheet Import: Ingest up to 2500 addresses at a time, assigning placemarks and style templates in bulk.
• GIS import: Visualize ESRI shapefiles (.shp) and MapInfo (.tab) files.

Sign up Key (required for Pro Services at no cost today)
https://geoauth.google.com/gev0/free_trial.html


Official Source
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2015/01/google-earth-pro-is-now-free.html

Check My Flood Risk Map

The Check My Flood Risk map from ShootHill is designed to increase awareness among the public of the likelihood of flooding from rivers or the sea, and to encourage people living and working in these areas to find out more and take appropriate action.

 






The map shows the Environment Agency's assessment of the likelihood of flooding from rivers and the sea across England. The information is based on the presence and effect of all flood defences, predicted flood levels, and ground levels. The data is available here under Open Government Licence V2.

Please Note: This map is intended as a general guide only. It uses open data api's, which is distributed by the Environment Agency for England.

Put a English Postcode (example SW1 1AA) and 
Categories of:

High Risk Area
Medium Risk Area
Low Risk Area
Very Low Risk Area
will appear.

* Data is for England only.

Explore a collection of historical maps of Bath

Explore a collection of historical maps of Bath

Maps ranging from 1572 to 1942 in a nice interactive way


http://nadnerb.co.uk/HistoryMap/


source:http://blog.nadnerb.co.uk/?page_id=115

Ordnance Survey Minecraft [Version 2] map of Great Britain [Video]

Ordnance Survey Minecraft map of Great Britain

Video by Leigh Dodds

Ordnance Survey Minecraft data is available from 

http://download.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/minecraft/OSGB.zip (1GB File!)

OS have created GB Minecraft 2, a Minecraft® world made with digital map products – freely available as OS OpenData™

Some Locations to start from

Southampton Water --- X = 17900 Y = 100 Z = 47800

London -------------- X = 21000 Y = 100 Z = 45000

Mt Snowdon ---------- X = 10438 Y = 200 Z = 37823

Outer Hebrides ------ X = 5700 Y = 100 Z = 14700

Shetland Islands ---- X = 17900 Y = 100 Z = 6350

Poole Harbour ------- X = 16100 Y = 100 Z = 48500

Weymouth ------------ X = 14700 Y = 100 Z = 48900

Foulness Essex------- X = 24000 Y = 100 Z = 44300

Lake Windermere------ X = 13600 Y = 100 Z = 32000

Ordnance Survey ----- X = 17492 Y = 100 Z = 47380 

Official Video

A ramble through Snowdonia in GB Minecraft 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2S8uQY2-oM

An Online Easy Translator for GIS Data

An Online Easy Translator for GIS Data

The Easy Translator is available as a free web service, for immediately translating data into your required format and coordinate system.

All  these formats for source and 
output are supported:
AutoCAD (DWG/DXF)
CSV
GeoJSON
GML
GPX
DGN (v7)
MapInfo (TAB)
KML
ESRI (Shapefile) 

Output Coordinates:
WGS84
WGS84 (GeoCentric)
Mercator Projection
Robinson Projection
Spherical Mercator

The tool is available here:
http://demos.fmeserver.com/easytranslator/index.html

 

GIS Stack Exchange 2014 Community Moderator Election

GIS Stack Exchange 2014 Community Moderator Election

update 18th August 2014.

 Phase 2 - Election is now in Finished...

The 2014 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

1. Nomination phase - 6 candiates
2. Election phase - Finished 27th August 2014

Results are 

http://meta.gis.stackexchange.com/questions/3742/2014-community-moderator-election-results?cb=1

Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.

Please visit the official election page at
http://gis.stackexchange.com/election
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them on meta:


Questionnaire to all candidates 
http://meta.gis.stackexchange.com/questions/3728/2014-moderator-election-qa-questionnaire

Vote here
http://gis.stackexchange.com/election?cb=1

Questions

2014 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection

 GIS SE Election Chat

http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/16352/2014-gis-stack-exchange-election

Global Wind Animation ESRI JS API

 Wind Animation Map ESRI JS API

 

Clean visualisation of Wind Currents across the world

 http://esri.github.io/wind-js/

 data source:[US National Weather Service - NCEP(WMC]

http://esri.github.io/wind-js/gfs.json

 

 

QGIS Ordnance Survey Opendata Cartographic Styles

QGIS Ordnance Survey Opendata Styles

Ordnance Survey have released Style Sheets for their #opendata including ESRI (ArcGIS) and Quantum GIS (QGIS) style sheets.

Most strikingly for the Vector Map District Product that is one of the best full Great Britain datasets everyone can download from

https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/
opendatadownload/products.html

Nice looking vector data in QGIS using Vector Map District Data from 
Ordnance Survey Opendata.
(Yes motorways in the UK are blue....)
But you can change that if you want.


You can download the stylesheets from

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/resources/carto-design/
cartographic-stylesheets.html

And Charley Glynn sent me a twitter message that these stylesheets and associated files are available on github here:.

https://github.com/OrdnanceSurvey/OS-VectorMap-District-stylesheets/tree/master/ESRI%20Shapefile%20stylesheets/
QGIS%20stylesheets%20(QML)/Full%20Colour%20style

Couple of notes before the quick guide to help you get going...

Install the font provide first - see quick guide below.

The shapefiles have a classification field that is truncated (shapefile truncates field names) but if change to CLASSIFICA it will work. See this screenshot.

Quick Guide

1. Fork or download the contents of this repository

2. Copy the font file 'OS_VMDistrict.otf' into your systems font directory (on Windows machines this is (C:\Windows\Fonts)

Your machine may require a restart for QGIS to recognise this new font

3. Load your OS VectorMap District ESRI Shapefile data into QGIS

4. Double click on a layer to access the 'Layer Properties' window > click on 'Load Style...' > navigate to the directory containing the QML files (those ending .qml) > select the QML file that corresponds to that layer > click 'Open' > click 'OK'

Repeat step 4 for all layers

5. Although every feature is styled, for use as a contextual map we recommend the following layer order and visibility:

Recommended viewing the map between 1:10,000 and 1:25,000 for maximum legibility

I have even reprojected the data to Web Mercator and got the Bing Aerial Imagery as a background.

Just styles need reversing on a dark background, this uses the Openlayers plugin, the only restriction is making the imagery transparent to 'fade' the imagery down then less contrasting colours can be applied to the background.

The only addition I made was adding the OS Vector Contours from the OS 50 Terrain Dataset - just for a bit more details in the rural areas of England.

Overall it is well worth downloading the styles and playing around with QGIS and the styles.