Wednesday 28 January 2009

ShareGeo Launched

A new geospatial data sharing facility has been released today which enables Digmap users to find and share geospatial datasets.


ShareGeo forms part of the EDINA Digimap suite of services and is accessible from the Digimap Collections main page in the 'Find and Share' section. It is free for all Digimap users to use.

Use ShareGeo to contribute your own (derived or user-generated) geospatial datasets, or to download datasets which are already there for your research, teaching or personal use.

Have you created a geospatial dataset for your dissertation? Do you use them in your teaching? Do you think they would be interesting/useful to others? If so, contribute them to ShareGeo and they will be accessible for download by other Digimap users*.

Geospatial datasets in a number of formats (raster, vector and tabular) can be contributed for anywhere in the world. A minimal amount of metadata is required for each dataset. Access ShareGeo by logging in to Digimap (http://edina.ac.uk/digimap) and then either follow the link on the Collections page to ShareGeo or click on the following link: http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/sharegeo/

Help and further information is available at: http://edina.ac.uk/projects/sharegeo/Help/help.shtml We would welcome comments and feedback sent to us at edina@ed.ac.uk Alternatively you can use the form within ShareGeo at: http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/sharegeo/feedback

*Licensing restrictions may apply to some datasets. If, for example, a dataset is derived from Ordnance Survey data, only Digimap users registered for Digimap's Ordnance Survey Collection will be able to access it. Specific licence restrictions may apply to individual datasets and these must be adhered to.

Monday 26 January 2009

Obituary: Peter Burrough

Peter Burrough, one of the founding fathers of GIS research, died in Leiden on 9th January 2009.

Peter Burrough is recognised for his for seminal work, Principles of GIS for land resources management. Published in 1986, the book introduced the essential technical tasks of GIS applications such as spatial data capture, storage, and output, and the development of the analytical models that were needed to exploit the full potential of this new technology. The book became an instrumental resource for soil scientists as well as geographers, surveyors, social scientists, urban planners and students in these fields. As a result many became interested in the newly developing GIS field.

Peter Burrough is also recognised for his important contributions to the creation of both AGILE (the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe) and to EUROGI (EURopean Umbrella Organisation for Geographic Information) at a critical point in its development.

In January 2007, his role as a founding father of GIS research was internationally recognised in a special issue of the International Journal of Geographic Information Science on Advances in the spatio-temporal modelling of environment and landscapes. This was edited by two of his former colleagues at Utrecht University and the co-author of the second edition of his classic work, Rachael McDonnell.

Tuesday 20 January 2009

NEW! Geospatial data sharing service

EDINA have implemented a new geospatial data sharing facility called ShareGeo. It forms part of the Digimap Collections suite of services.


It is intended that ShareGeo will be accessible to all Digimap users at the beginning of February, however we are providing early access to it for readers of the Digimap blog (details of how to access it are below).

Please feel free to browse and download any datasets that are already there. If you have any geospatial datasets, we would ask you to contribute these to ShareGeo. ShareGeo is free to use for all registered Digimap users.

ShareGeo can be accessed after logging in to Digimap, using the following liks.

  • First login to Digimap at: http://edina.ac.uk/digimap You will see a greyed out link to ShareGeo.

  • The visible link is not active, so you will need to go to ShareGeo by entering the following link in your browser: http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/sharegeo/ (Note: Once the facility is accessible to all, there will be a link on the Digimap Collections page to take you directly to ShareGeo)
Help and further information is available at: http://edina.ac.uk/projects/sharegeo/Help/help.shtml We would welcome comments and feedback sent to us at edina@ed.ac.uk Alternatively you can use the form within ShareGeo at: http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/sharegeo/feedback

If you need help or advice regading ShareGeo please do not hesitate to contact us.

Monday 12 January 2009

12 January - full access restored

Following a hardware failure during routine maintenance, access to all Digimap Collections and facilities has been restored. Apologies for the inconvenience caused by this incident.

Saturday 10 January 2009

10 January - Digimap Now Available

Access to the Digimap service was restored around 7pm last night (Friday 9 January) following a recent hardware failure. However, the MasterMap Download facility remains unavailable and will do so until Monday 12 January.

The available services have not yet been fully tested, so it is possible that you may find some elements not fully functional. If you encounter any failures, please report these to the EDINA Helpdesk on edina@ed.ac.uk; they will be dealt with on Monday 12 January.

Friday 9 January 2009

9 January - update

Following yesterday's scheduled maintenance, Digimap remains unavailable today owing to an unexpected hardware problem which could not have been predicted. Engineers are currently working on some diagnostic tests to establish the extent of the problem.

In diagnosing the problem there are a number of tasks to be performed, each one of which may or may not offer a solution. It is therefore not possible to predict how long it will take to reach a solution.

The full Digimap service will not be available today, Friday 9 January or on the morning of Saturday 10 January. Our next opportunity to provide an update on progress will be around 2pm on Saturday 10 January. Further to that, updates will not be available until Monday 12 January.

Again, EDINA apologises for the inconvenience this causes.

9 January: Digimap unavailable

Yesterday, a significant upgrade was scheduled for the service machines which host Digimap. The upgrade should have been completed by around 5.30 pm. However, unforseen problems with the upgrade have meant that Digimap remains unavailable today, Friday 9 January. Our last update yesterday was at 6.45pm.

Engineers are currently having to acquire and install a new piece of hardware in order to fix the problems which arose yesterday. As yet we do not know how long this will take, nor do we know when the next progress update will be delivered. When we have further information on an estimated time for restoring access to Digimap, this information will be posted here and on the Digimap login page.

EDINA apologises for the inconvenience the service unavailability causes.

Wednesday 7 January 2009

Review of geo-spatial services for the ESRC

EDINA has received the following message regarding a survey being conducted by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which we believe will be of great interest to you.

EDINA believes that this survey will influence the development and availability of services offering geospatial resources to the academic community. If you or your colleagues make use of, or have in the past made use of, geospatial data or resources (maps, satellite data, statistical data, census information etc), we would strongly urge you to complete the survey.

We would also be grateful if you would pass on a link to this page to colleagues who may not see it. Note the closing date of the survey is 31 January 2009.

The following text is from the researchers conducting the survey, and gives some useful background:

In support of the National Strategy for Data Resources for Research in the Social Sciences, the Economic and Social Research Council has commissioned a review of the current availability of, access to, and future needs for geo-spatial data services by the research community. These are broadly defined and include not only the data necessary to map and analyse data with a spatial dimension, but also resources which broaden the range of spatial research undertaken and enhance the ability of researchers to undertake spatial analysis.

To assist us with this review, would you please spare a few minutes to complete a short web-based survey concerned with the awareness and use of geo-spatial resources by researchers and their opinions about new areas for development via ESRC investment. Please note that we are interested in your opinions even if you are not currently undertaking research with a spatial or geographical dimension.

Any information you provide will be used purely for statistical purposes in order to plan future services. This survey will remain confidential and any published results will not identify individuals.

The survey should take 5 to 10 minutes to complete and will remain openuntil 31 January 2009.

Link to:
Geo-Spatial Resources and Services Survey


Many thanks for taking the time to complete this survey.

Peter Elias, Anne Green and David Owen,
Institute for Employment Research,
University of Warwick,
Coventry CV4 7AL.

NB: If you want further information about this review or wish tocontribute your views/opinions in a more detailed fashion, please emailthe researchers directly:
Peter.Elias@warwick.ac.uk
Anne.Green@warwick.ac.uk
D.W.Owen@warwick.ac.uk

Monday 5 January 2009

Reminder: Digimap Training in January

Places are still available for Digimap training in Newcastle on 20 - 22 January 2009. Further details can be found on the EDINA website.

You can register online for this event here.

EDINA would also like to wish you a happy new year.