future | Mapsys.info (2) Mapsys.info

The future of the World Trade Center

We’ve shown you the past and the present of the World Trade Center area, and now it’s time for a look at the future.

Modeled by Patrick Griffin, and found in the Google 3D Warehouse, this model is an excellent look at what the future holds. As with the original WTC buildings, these are best viewed if you right-click and “hide” some of the matching buildings that are currently under construction.

Also of note is the stunning “Transportation Hub”, which will be build on the east side of the plaza. While there isn’t a model that I could find for Google Earth, you can preview a model of it that was created by user “Fish” in the 3D Warehouse.

Google Earth is showing projections of forest dynamics

While Google Earth is often used to show past and present conditions on Earth, it’s rarely used to see the future. We’ve seen cool sites like the Blue Marble 3000 and the University of Corsica’s ForeFire, but most focus on showing what we know about right now rather than showing what could happen in the future.

That brings me to Michael Gerzon and his neat idea to use Google Earth to show projections of forest dynamics, both in terms of tree growth and the spread of potential forest fires.

On his site, you can run a few sample demos to see how things work. It’s not using real GIS data at this point, but it’s a neat demonstration and I think it’s the first I’ve seen that shows tree growth in an area.

Expanding the idea out, there are some fun possibilities. For example, you could show what an area would look like after xx years of tree growth, maybe in a new housing development. Combined with 3D buildings, it could be very powerful.

LBS and Fusion Tables and Vector Tiling

Another week has passed and we are all still alive and kicking. Humanity never fails to surprise me. Anyway, Geo

continues to roll on and keep us excited.

Skyhook Wireless and Sony are hooking up to give the next generation PSP some location capabilities. Good news for Skyhook, but aren’t devices like the PSP and Nintendo DS on their way out? I guess we’ll see this summer when everyone is playing the latest EA games on their iOS devices.
Work with R? Check out RStudio! IDEs are usually hit and miss with me but this has enough awesome to warrant a download. (HT: PHXGeo)
Protected Maps in Google Fusion Tables? Yes please! 2011 may be the year of Google Fusion Tables
Google Maps labels look better, but why? Justin again analyses how Google does this and compares it to Bing and Yahoo!. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you’ve got to be following Justin’s blog!
IBM puts out a weird blog series on the “The Case Against Google Maps in IBM Cognos Reports” (parts two and three). To me I’m left wondering where the content is on that case to use Esri map services. They sum it up this way, “In solid Boolean logic: NOT Cognos BI AND Google Maps.” Say whaaat?
Lastly, Matt Kenny brings us the awesome that is TileStache. Seriously now, why are we still using WxS and Esri ArcGIS Services?

Read Matt’s blog and get cracking. Bonus points for rolling TileMill and TileStache together!

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