Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
SmartGeometry 2009 was held in San Francisco, California during March 27 – April 1. It included a workshop, a public Alumni Summit and a public Conference and Reception. An audience of students and professionals from around the world attended this year’s event. Focusing upon intelligent computational design, SmartGeometry 2009 is an opportunity to learn, share
Saturday, March 28th, 2009
Are spatial data infrastructure (SDI) worthwhile? A survey was made of users for a Geoportal in Spain recently. The feedback results were tabulated for 80 users (65 Catalans) of the Geoportal IDEC and its services provides an important glimpse into the value of SDI.
Sunday, March 15th, 2009
Cities are evolving systems. We have little understanding of their behaviour. We know that they are highly dynamic, in that they face changing environments and inputs, and adapt to these changes. Over a longer historical period, cities have always successfully adapted to changing environmental conditions and thus have been extremely resilient. From 1100 to 1800,
Monday, March 9th, 2009
Advances in tracking and location technologies are enabling new application development. These applications can be found in environmental, utility, transport and other industrial applications. Many new approaches are being developed for more personal and local use and these applications include in-store location, hospitals, airports and inside buildings. In this column Steven Feldman takes a look
Sunday, March 1st, 2009
Consumption of natural land for settlements, industry and transport infrastructure proceeds with an alarming pace in Europe and disagrees with the stagnating population. Every three years we lose a surface area equivalent to the size of Luxemburg. Structural Funds of the EU have been held partially responsible for the ill-development. In order to obtain an
Sunday, March 1st, 2009
America’s first-ever climate change president, Barack Obama is making substantial changes in the way we approach energy, the environment, and our economy. These changes will impact how we manage where our energy comes from (the supply side) and how we use it (the demand side). This will not only affect the future of our economy
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
Pour a glass of water out of a kitchen tap throughout the Canterbury region of New Zealand and chances are you’ll be staring at what many consider the finest drinking water in the world. Cool, clear and untouched, it’s originated in the mountains of the Southern Alps, travelled across the Canterbury Plains in the large
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
When the Spicycles project was launched in 2006, cycling was not the ‘hot’ mode of transport that it has become today. As project partners, we wanted to gather experience related to specific areas of cycling policy. We were keen to explore how key elements such as communication and awareness raising, and the building of local
Saturday, February 14th, 2009
Transportation networks are highly spatial in nature and dependent upon a high level of planning in their design, operation and maintenance. Accordingly, they are well suited to geographical information systems (GIS) tools. While we tend to think of transport networks in a continuous fashion, primarily to get us from Point A to Point B, these
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
As many of you are well aware, Google finally launched the much anticipated Google Ocean, extending the coverage of their virtual globe to the 70 percent of the earth that is covered by water. Since the ocean has an enormous impact on our climate, our ability to feed ourselves, and ultimately on our survival as
