Friday, October 31st, 2008
New technologies are enabling environmental planners to collaborate and communicate in more effective ways. The Virtual Environmental Planning Project is a EU programme Interreg IIIB NWE and Department for Communities and Local Government (UK) effort that was completed in 2008. The project resulted in technologies that support public participation in the planning consultation process through
Friday, October 24th, 2008
The Atlas of Sustainability Indicators for Coastal Municipalities of the State of Rio de Janeiro has been developed in order to publish the results of the analysis of 40 sustainability indicators, within the six ecodevelopment dimensions proposed by Ignacy Sachs (spatial, cultural, economical, ecological, social and political), as to the 34 coastal municipalities of the
Thursday, October 16th, 2008
In Zhejiang province in the southern part of the Yangtze River Delta on the southeast coast of China, the Surveying and Mapping Bureau of Zhejiang contributed to the completion of digital line graphs covering the entire 101,800-square-kilometer province. All together, 17 maps in scales of 1:250000, 330 maps in scales of 1:50000, 4,107 maps in
Friday, October 10th, 2008
In Sweden most of the 290 municipalities used to have their own local coordinate systems. The national geodata is stored and distributed in a separate national system. This difference has created problems over time when attempting to share and collaborate at both local and national levels based on each set of geoinformation. Sweden is now
Saturday, October 4th, 2008
Focusing on the Baltic Sea Region the project “ASTRA – Developing Policies and Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change in the Baltic Sea Region” assessed the regional impacts of climate change impacts and developed adequate adaptation strategies and policy recommendations together with relevant stakeholders. The ASTRA consortium consisted of research institutes, regional and local planning authorities
Friday, September 19th, 2008
In the most densely populated area of the Netherlands, the city of Amsterdam undertook the monumental challenge of designing a community for 45,000 inhabitants on 495 hectares of nonexistent land. Creating a new landmass by reclaiming seven islands from dredged sand in IJmeer, a lake on Amsterdam’s east side, residents with a fondness for waterfront
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
Motivation speaker Daniel Burrus spoke at the Intergraph Conference a few years ago. He said: “Time is the currency of the 90s”. If that was the case then it is certainly the case now. So how do you make time? The answer is simple. It comes from an old quality mantra: ‘do it right the
Saturday, August 16th, 2008
In our last installment on “Sustainable Urban Environments”, we discussed challenges and opportunities which the AEC industry will face in order to create sustainable urban environments amid aging infrastructure, with a workforce constrained by demographic and skill shifts, and in response to client pressure for highly productive and cost-effective results. Next we look at emerging
Monday, August 4th, 2008
The requirements on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have originally been focused on data capturing and mapping functionalities. Current analyses state very clearly, that 80% of all technical business processes are related with geospatial questions. That’s why an intelligent Pipeline Integrity Management System (PIMS) is more than reasonable for pipeline operators, and we introduce a GIS
Thursday, July 31st, 2008
Cicilia Friberg and Per Olsson work as surveyors for the Stenungsunds community in Sweden. In only 50 years Stenungsund has changed from a quiet summer resort into a regional business centre. The population today is four times what it used to be. With this constant expansion it is up to the local surveying department to
