GIS and Remote Sensing Tools, Tips and more ..

Follow these steps to set up the open source cloud based GIS mapping system. 1. Create an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account. You can find instructions for this step in the EC2 Getting Started Guide. 3. Create an Amazon EC2 instance. Instructions are also in the EC2 Getting Started Guide. When choosing an AMI make sure you choose a Windows server with IIS (and ASP.NET) already installed. 4. Connect to your Windows EC2 instance and install GeoServer. You can download GeoServer here . There are multiple setups available. Use the Windows installer. The instructions for the install are here . 5. Copy GIS data and configure map layers. The GeoServer user's manual will guide you through the steps of configuring GeoServer. 6. Start GeoServer on the EC2 instance server. 7. Seed the layers in GeoWebCache on the server. Instructions for this are here . Note that jpeg tiles are smaller than png and the default for base layers. Also png are better quality and will always be used fo...

Books Pro Cons It provides solid guide to how geospatial analysis work, particularly with respect to GIS. The book emphasizes conceptual workflows and with basic math which is helpful for creating own code and also getting an understanding of what's happening under the hood in contemporary GIS. It is better to have an update because lots of changes in GIS software over last five years. This book is for typical GIS user aspiring to design good maps. It is illustrating GIS map software and throughout with map samples in color which is especially useful for those who has little prior training or experience in map making. This is acceptable book for beginners but very little information of advanced users. It hardly touches on advanced cartographic representations. This book explains the computational geometry and algorithms concisely and very readable. It emphasis on describing algori...

One of my client’s requirements was to create and open source geospatial DBMS to hold utilities and city shape files. As looking through the internet, I found PostGIS is an open source software program that adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database.  As project reference, I choose PostGIS in Action , as project accomplished successfully I realized  my judgment was excellent. PostGIS in Action is a very comprehensive introduction to PostGIS for developers of all levels of experience. Basically it is split into 3 parts: Part 1- Nice and slow startup with PostGIS. You can skip this section if you have prior knowledge about any kinds of spatial databases and geometry data types. Part 2- Put PostGIS in work. It contains technical details on proximity analysis, geocoding addresses, manipulating polygons and lines, and scaling and rotating geometries as well as efficient queries and how to tune your database and selectio...

An interactive maps shows the influences of landscapes in rural health using ExtJs,GeoExt,Openlayers,Geoserver,PHP,Jquery, JavaScript, and other opensource tools. Check it out

The Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence at South Dakota State University developed a web based West Nile virus (WNV) mapping application using Geosever, Openlayers, PostGIS,GeoWebCache, Jquery, Google visualization APIs, and, other open source technologies. This application allows users to pan, and zoom to visualize historical WNV patterns while using a slider bar to navigate through time. Users can click on counties to see -county level time-series graphs, case counts, and total population. The application also supports changing choropleth transparencies, choropleth classifications, and map backgrounds. Methods: A. OpenGeo tools: i.     Open layers ii.    Geoserver iii.   WebGeoCache iv.   PostGIS B. Google APIs i.       Google Maps API ii.      Google Charting API C.      HTML5 These are frequently refereed to as HTML5 technologies. Javascript HTML Canvas ...

From last couples of week, I have been involving to develop a interactive web interface for West Nile virus incidence dissemination across the conterminous US from 1999-2011. The image on the right shows one of my accomplishment using Geoserver,Openlayers,jQuery, PostgreGIS,and Google API. The project is about to launch online, then I will post a complete link of the project to let you guys play around it. Click to visit: Web application I am willing to help any one who is stuck with web maps/visualization and also seek constructive criticism on web stuffs.

map.events.register('click', map, function (e) { //alert(map.getExtent().toBBOX()); x1=parseInt(e.xy.x); y1=parseInt(e.xy.y);     var url = layerhost       + "?REQUEST=GetFeatureInfo"       + "&EXCEPTIONS=application/vnd.ogc.se_xml"       + "&BBOX=" + map.getExtent().toBBOX()       + "&X=" + x1       + "&Y=" + y1       + "&INFO_FORMAT=text/html"       + "&QUERY_LAYERS=" + layername       + "&LAYERS="+layername       + "&FEATURE_COUNT=50"       + "&SRS=EPSG:900913"       + "&STYLES="       + "&WIDTH=" + map.size.w       + "&HEIGHT=" + map.size.h;     window.open(url,       "getfeatureinfo",       "location=10,status=10,scrollbars=1,width=600,height=150"     ); ...

For my recent project, I have to display county wise time series data of disease pattern in web map for the conterminous United States for 20 years. In addition, I have to use Google maps as base layer and should overlay images on the top of it.  The concept sounds easy, and it was also similar with choropleth or thematic mapping . However, it should be in the Web 2.0. I tried to figure out what are the possible ways to achieve this, I tried and few of them. Here I am going to share the pros and cons of these methods in a real quick and dirty style. Choropleth with GFT 1) Google Fusion Tables Pros: Easy, No understanding of computer programming needed. Upload small or large data sets from spreadsheets or CSV files. Visualize your data on maps, timelines and charts. Pick who can access your data; hide parts of your data if needed. Merge data from multiple tables. Cons: Not much flexible and you can’t tweaks easily according to your needs.  Choropleth with Car...