Every year, the Texas Natural Resource Information System (TNRIS) hosts Texas GIS Forum, a conference dedicated to bringing GIS professionals together from all over Texas to share their applications of GIS technology.

The Columbia Center was represented at the conference by Johnny Brown, Charles Ashton, Dr. Darrel McDonald, Jason Raines, and Shane Diaz. As usual, the conference proved to be a great opportunity for networking. “It was great because we got to tell a lot of people about the Columbia Center,” Diaz said. “We had lots of good comments about our response to hurricane Ike.”

In addition, Dr. McDonald presented on Wide Area Damage Assessment using GPS technology, and Columbia Center System member Kevin Mulligan presented a session entitled “Mapping the Usable Lifetime of the Ogallala Aquifer in Texas.” Both sessions were well received.

Conference attendees were all abuzz over Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and an application of its possibilities using new table-top touch-screen technology called Microsoft Surface. Microsoft Surface is demonstrated in the video below:

GIS organizations have the opportunity to set up a presence at the conference, and this year the Columbia Center set up a large booth which showcased various mapping projects and allowed attendees to chat with Columbia Center employees. A slideshow which represented the various facets of the Columbia Center’s mission was played at the booth, and the same slideshow can be viewed below:



We enjoyed the conference and look forward to experiencing it again next year!

The Columbia Center has released a tool for the residents of Nacogdoches County that makes finding your polling place a snap. Follow these simple steps, and you won’t have to lose sleep over where to vote on Tuesday, November 4th.

Step 1
Click on this link: Nacogdoches County Election Precincts

Step 2
Click on the “Search Roads” link on the upper-left of the screen, type in the name of your road, and click “Find.”

Once you have your search results, right-click where it says “Full Road Name” and choose “Zoom to.”

After the map zooms, you should see your street highlighted in light blue, and there should be a precinct number visible. Take note of this precinct number.

Step 3
Click on the “Search Polling Places” link on the upper-left of the screen, select your precinct number from the drop-down list, and click “Find.”

Once you have your search results, right-click where it says “Polling Places” and choose “Zoom to Selected Features.”

After the map zooms, you should see a red push-pin over your polling place.

Please note that sometimes a road can be in more than one precinct, so your final authority on where to vote is your voter registration card. If you can’t locate this card, please call the Nacogdoches County Elections Office at 936-560-7825. Don’t forget to exercise your right to vote in this historic election!

Though the clouds have all dissipated weeks ago, the damage wrought by Hurricane Ike still lingers. As of the 2nd of October, 300 people are still missing along the coast of Texas, and insured loss estimates range from 6 to 25 billion dollars. In light of this, especially against the backdrop of our country’s financial woes, it’s hard to see a silver lining.

What gives hope, however, is that thanks to technological advancements such as computer storm modeling and the tireless public servants who assisted before, during, and after the storm, the loss of life due to Ike is exponentially less than it was in the aftermath of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900.

The Columbia Center’s involvement in this disaster was a foregone conclusion. Our mission mandates that we provide up-to-date geospatial information for emergency response. Our involvement started on September 4th, over a week before Ike made landfall. We began compiling weather data and presenting them in the form of “weather mashups,” which are snapshots of the storm forecast at the time. These mashups were distributed via a mailing list to emergency response personnel throughout the state.

We also presented what are called “base maps” of every Texas county in the projected path of the storm. As a service to Nacogdoches residents and sheltered evacuees, we created “hospitality maps” which showed the location of every shelter, church, and restaurant within city limits. Aside from making these maps available through our website, we printed and distributed these maps to shelters around town.

Hospitality Maps
Restaurants	Businesses	Churches

On Thursday the 11th (3 days before the storm made landfall), we established a presence in Nacogdoches’ Emergency Operations Center where we provided weather updates and traffic flow information via highway cameras. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, we also made available web applications for reporting road closures and fuel shortages.

Once the winds died down and the storm finally passed, the Columbia Center’s response kicked into high gear. On the Sunday after the storm we received a call through TNRIS requesting GIS assistance to Galveston County. On that same day we dispatched a team composed of Jason Grogan (our lead in GPS field-work) as well as Johnny Brown and Jason Raines (two of our top GIS applications experts) to Galveston County. Soon afterwards our team was joined by Abdiel Quesada (a GIS graduate student from our sister Center at The University of Texas at El Paso), Beni Patel (a member of the GIS Corps), Lani Cabico (an employee of Brooks City-Base in San Antonio), and SSGT Kari Page of the Texas State Guard. Eventually our presence in Galveston also included a server, several workstations, and a plotter provided by ESRI.

While at Galveston, we aided in search and rescue operations by providing maps and imagery captured before and after the storm. Our services included identifying chemical spills, demarcating new vegetation lines, and providing an area wide damage assessment for every identifiable structure (approximately 100,000) in Galveston County.

While our people were busy in Galveston County, we continued the work here in Nacogdoches, supporting damage assessment and recovery operations for both the City and the County. We also provided maps to the Red Cross and FEMA for many East Texas Counties.

“Our biggest challenge in emergency response is in making sure our resources are fully utilized”, said PR Blackwell, Director of the Columbia Center. “Getting [our services] out has traditionally been a problem. People just aren’t aware of all the resources we have to bring to the table.”

The Columbia Center’s philosophy is to work from the bottom up, starting with local jurisdictions where state and federal resources are sometimes lacking.

“During Ike we were able to help in Galveston County when they were unable to get an immediate relief from other agencies. This is exactly where we want to be.”

In December of 1976, the United States government began launching spy satellites named KH-11's (the "KH" standing for "Key Hole") with the capability of transmitting data digitally back to Earth. Ever since then, novelists and screen writers have played with the idea that at any point in time a silent, 28,000 pound machine that is so high above the ground so as to be invisible to the naked eye is watching us.

In 2001 a company named Keyhole, Inc named itself in homage to these satellites, and over the next four years, Keyhole, inc developed a software application which, after the company was acquired by Google, became known to the rest of the world as Google Earth. Despite Google's heavy branding of their product, an important vestige of Keyhole, inc remains: the Keyhole Markup Language, more commonly referred to as KML.

At this year's ESRI International User Conference, KML was a kind of buzzword (buzz acronym?). As ESRI promotes its suite of GIS software applications, it frequently touts the ability to import or export geospatial data to or from KML. ESRI has wisely refrained from appearing to compete with Google Earth or Microsoft's Virtual Earth. Instead ESRI has adopted a strategy of cooperation. Ever since the release of ArcGIS Server 9.3, ESRI has provided training on publishing KML services with ArcGIS for consumption by Google Earth. On July 29th, ESRI announced its collaboration with Microsoft by providing ArcGIS users with Virtual Earth's imagery content.



This strategy of opening up standards and sharing information across multiple platforms is a welcome alternative to previous business models. As a gesture of good faith, Google relinquished control over KML, handing it off to the Open Geospatial Consortium to be maintained and extended.

It's an exciting time for the field of GIS. And who knows? Maybe the world has found an international language for describing itself in the form of KML.

Under the Web 2.0 paradigm, it seems the phrase “dog eat dog” has taken on a new connotation. Back when the law of the jungle ruled the business world, “dog eat dog” meant kill or be killed. But the concepts of the past are, well, passé. We no longer engage in hostile takeovers, we collaborate. We no longer compete, we consume each other’s services. There is a difference between a dark jungle and a thriving ecosystem.

One example of this new way of thinking can be found on the upper right-hand corner of your screen. The map visible under the “weather” column heading is the result of the Columbia Center consuming a web service provided by the Herald Tribune called IbisEye, which in turn consumes Google Maps in order to display its data. Dog eat dog indeed!

IbisEye’s mission is “to bridge the gap between the technical world of meteorology and the common man.” They accomplish this by providing “mountains of real-time weather and tropical storm data; a system to estimate a storm’s threat to property and population in its path; a system to exchange damage reports; and an encyclopedic storehouse of hurricane history.” At the time of writing this article, IbisEye has been tracking the progress of Hurricane Bertha.

When any major storm or hurricane pops up, IbisEye automatically centers on the storm and follows it throughout the course of its existence. Feel free to click on the IbisEye map to the right and enjoy a full screen version of the tool. Historic storm information can be viewed on the IbisEye site itself. The Columbia Center is excited about making IbisEye accessible via its website, and will continue to research new ways to keep our users informed about the world around them.

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