The MapScaping Podcast - GIS, Geospatial, Remote Sensing, earth observation and digital geography

Navigating the World of Geospatial Standards

Warning! this podcast episode is not as boring as it sounds!

 

While geospatial standards are boring on purpose ... this episode is not .-

If you woke up this morning wanting to listen to a boring podcast episode about geospatial standards this is not for you! 

 

Scott Simmons ( OGC’s Chief Standards Officer ) 

https://www.ogc.org/about/team/scott-simmons/

helps us understand what a Geopose is and how it might be used, why we need GeoRSS, and something called SensorThings!  

 

You will also learn about the PubSub standard for the syndication of spatial data and why streaming data is not always the answer.

 

We also discover what the most boring geospatial standard is and when the shapefile "might" die. 

 

All in all, this is a light-hearted look at a very serious topic and I hope you enjoy it! 

 

What to know more about the Open Geospatial Consortium? this is a good place to start! https://mapscaping.com/podcast/the-open-geospatial-consortium/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making Money With Geospatial Content

It sounds like a clickbait title, right? And to be fair I am trying to capture your attention but this is not clickbait in the sense that the title makes a promise that the episode lives up to! 

This is not a “get-rich-quick-scheme” its a story about someone like us who is earning money by using his geospatial skills to teach others.

Konrad Hafen is a hydrologist with the USGS and runs two websites and a youtube channel, he is a geospatial content creator who makes money from ads and from selling online courses. 

 

 Websites

https://geospatialschool.com/

https://opensourceoptions.com/

Youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/@opensourceoptions

Each episode I publish has some sort of editorial intent, the intent of this episode is to show you a real-life example of someone like us who is using their geospatial knowledge if a different way. 

Not because I think this is for everyone! But because I think the more examples we are exposed to of people doing something different the more options we might see in our own lives. 

We don’t have to take advantage of these opportunities but there is some comfort in knowing that they are there. That we are not stuck.

 

If you listen to this episode and what to learn more about making money with geospatial content, Konrad and I will host a free webinar ( if we get enough interest! )  where we teach you the basics. Sign up here https://geospatialschool.com/webinar/

Distributing Geospatial Data

Distributing Geospatial Data - Every wondered why you might what to do this? Or maybe you understand the why but are unsure about the how? 

Perhaps you have heard people talk about partitioning data or sharding data, you might have heard some of these terms used in the context of enterprise-scale geospatial systems and parallel processing and thought … Wow … that sounds daunting!

This podcast episode is meant to be a soft introduction to the world of distributed geospatial databases and some of the concepts surrounding them.

 

Along the way, you will be introduced to something called Apache Sedona which is a cluster computing system for processing large-scale spatial data, and hear the surprising stat that 97% of enterprise data remains unused! … perhaps because of the lack of context?

 

You can connect with Mo Sarwat on 

Twitter https://twitter.com/MoSarwat

Or at https://mosarwat.org/

During the conversation, we mention PostgreSQL and PostGIS a few times which are topics that we have covered in previous podcast episodes

 

Servicing Dynamic Vector Tiles from PostGIS

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/dynamic-vector-tiles-straight-from-the-database/

 

An introduction to PostgreSQL

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/postgresql-an-open-source-geospatial-database-for-gis-practitioners/

 

Spatial SQL

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/spatial-sql-gis-without-the-gis/

Toward the end of the conversation, we touch on the idea of cloud-native geospatial formats, and if you are interested in understanding this concept you might find these two previous episodes helpful

 

Cloud Optimized Point Clouds

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/cloud-optimized-point-clouds/

 

Cloud Native Geospatial

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/cloud-native-geospatial/

 

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to reach out! I would love to hear from you

Geospatial Support for the UN World Food Programme

So you might be wondering why the United Nations World Food Programme needs a geospatial support unit. Let me give you a brief overview, 

 

Basically, they curate and maintain global datasets that they use to model the risk of sudden-onset disasters than might lead to a food security risk. They use this model to send out early warnings to at-risk communities and help with the response when disasters happen. 

 

Of course, there is more to it ...

 

But I will let Rohini Sampoornam Swaminathan ( The head of the Geospatial Support Unit at the UN World Food Programme)  explain it in more detail.

 

The Hunger Map

https://hungermap.wfp.org/

 

BeforeAfterMap OSM Before-After Maps is an online tool that allows anyone to easily compare how a particular area looked in terms of OpenStreetMap (OSM) data at two different years, side by side, and get a visual insight into mapping contributions over time.

https://beforeafter.baato.io/

 

 

 

 

Aerial Imagery: The State Of The Art

Personally, I don't feel like aerial imagery gets the attention it deserves! So I invited Michael Bewley - Senior Director of AI Systems at Nearmap back on the podcast to help bring us up to speed on the state of the art of capturing, processing, and building a business around aerial imagery.

If you don’t care about aerial imagery, think of this as a story about turning unstructured data into structured data into insights and building a business around that.

 

You can connect with Micheal on Twitter and LinkedIn

https://twitter.com/michaelbewley

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelbewley/

 

Listen out for the following highlights

• It's not a camera it's an imaging system!
• Detecting change is not hard, detecting meaningful change is hard
• Are human abilities still a good benchmark for AI systems? 
• How to determine if an AI system is a prototype or production ready

 

Previous Interview with Michael Bewley

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/collecting-and-processing-aerial-imagery-at-scale/

 

Stratospheric Balloons As Remote Sensing Platforms

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/cube-satellites-of-the-stratosphere/

 

The technology stack and the cultural stack

This episode covers a wide range of topics from the role of geospatial in systems thinking - representing natural systems in location systems and how we can apply the technology behind virtual worlds to the real world.

During this conversation, it became clear to me that technology should be used in service of culture and not the other way around. I think in terms of geospatial we have an interesting opportunity to have an outsized impact if we can just figure out how to market it! 

 

I often think about problems as being either technological or cultural and it seems to me that technology generally moves faster than culture. Although I am sure we can all think of some great examples of huge cultural shifts that have happened in response to short-term emergencies in the past few years. 

 

Culture seems to react to technology as opposed to driving technology. I think if we were all better at marketing we could change this. 

 

Connect with Ingo Simonis

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ingosimonis/

 

Previous Episodes featuring the Open Geospatial Consortium

 

The Open Geospatial Consortium

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/the-open-geospatial-consortium/

 

Open Geospatial standards - shared standards to solve shared problems

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/open-geospatial-standards-shared-standards-to-solve-shared-problems/

ChronoCards - Building a Business on ArcGIS Pro

My guest on the show today is Mike. Today Mike is the founder of a software startup called ChroneChards, but he started as a cartographer for an adventure race and Patagonia.

So he has come a long way.

A couple of other really interesting points about Mike.

He is a self-taught software developer and he is a self-taught businessman.

The reason why I mentioned this means that if he can teach himself these things, then you can do it too.

And as you'll discover later on in the episode, all you have to do is to get really, really comfortable with uncertainty.

 

You can connect with Mike here https://chrono.cards/

or on Twitter https://twitter.com/get_ChronoCards

 

It's probably worth riffing on this idea of uncertainty just for a minute. 

 

I think this is one thing that we all have in common. There'll be something about our lives, professional or private that we are uncertain about. 

I've had the pleasure over the last three, four, or five years of talking with a few different people that have overcome a lot of uncertainty. 

People that are self-taught software developers like Mike, people that have started their own GIS geospatial consultancies, and build their own businesses around their skills, none of those people have overcome uncertainty.

None of those people are now immune to uncertainty!

They have simply learned to live with it. 

So as someone who has experienced and continues to experience a lot of uncertainty, these stories have really helped me they've really had a positive impact. It's been great to know that other people go through this too. 

So here are some links to those episodes and hopefully, they will inspire you as well. 

From GIS Analyst to Software Engineer

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/from-gis-analyst-to-software-engineer/

Starting your own geospatial consultancy 

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/starting-your-own-geospatial-consultancy/

Self-employment in the GIS / Geospatial industry 

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/self-employment-in-the-gis-geospatial-industry/

Being self-employed in the earth observation sector

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/being-self-employed-in-the-earth-observation-sector/

Mid-career change

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/mid-career-change/

I quit my job

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/i-quit-my-job/

 

Geospatial Consulting - As A Business And A Career

If 80% of all data has a spatial component why do we need to approach mature and emerging markets differently? 

With everyone racing to democratize location technology why is GIS still a valuable skill? 

What are consultancies looking for when they hire geospatial consultants?

 

Answers to these questions and much more in this episode where we focus on geospatial consulting, as a business and career path. 

 

Todd Slind - VP of Technology at Locana.co

Connect with Todd on Twitter or LinkedIn 

 

Recommended Podcast Episodes 

The Business of Web Maps

Building a web-based mapping tool into a business

A Business Built on Open-Source GIS

Being A Graduate Geospatial Consultant

Hiring and Being Hired for Geospatial Jobs

Getting Where You Want To Go In Your Geospatial Career

 

 

 

How Google Calculates Your Location

FROM THE ARCHIVE!

 

Calculating the location of your mobile device ( the blue dot ) is not as straightforward as you might imagine. It involves databases of wifi hotspots, 3D city models, IMU's, GNSS, your proximity to cell towers, and maybe something called visual positioning.

Ed Parsons - Googles Geospatial Technologist explains 

 

previous podcast episode that you might enjoy!

SATELLITE-BASED AUGMENTATION SYSTEM - A BASE STATION IN THE SKY

POSITIONING AS A SERVICE AND THE ROLE OF SMARTPHONES IN THE FUTURE OF GEOLOCATION

USING THE GEOMAGNETIC FIELD OF BUILDINGS TO NAVIGATE INDOORS

HYPER-ACCURATE INDOOR LOCATION

NAVIGATING THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF GNSS

 

Happy to connect with you on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielodonohue/

Or Twitter https://twitter.com/MapScaping

 

Reduce and Reverse Tropical Forest Loss With NICFI

Tropical forests are large sources of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, due to deforestation. They could instead be a big part of the climate solution. 

Through Norway’s International Climate & Forests Initiative (NICFI), users can now access high-resolution, analysis-ready mosaics of the world’s tropics in order to help reduce and reverse the loss of tropical forests, combat climate change, conserve biodiversity, and facilitate sustainable development for noncommercial uses.

 

MapComplete

https://mapcomplete.osm.be

 

NICFI - Through Norway’s International Climate & Forests Initiative

https://www.nicfi.no/

 

Planet NICFI

https://www.planet.com/nicfi/