Maureen showcased the LARSE database which includes records of images, GIS coverages and photos. It was started by Doug Oetter as an internal tool to track of LARSE data. Yang recently created a searchable web-based tool for the database. Maureen is now the database maintainer.
If you want access to the database, you need to register on the LARSE homepage from which you can request a password. Maureen showed us examples of how to search the database by various parameters (e.g. sensor, path/row, date, keyword, etc.) The database includes everything that LARSE has, including some information of image quality, processing notes. SQL Server is the back-end database.
The image catalog is open to researchers in the college or collaborators, but probably not to people outside the university. Ken noted the similarity to Kuiipo Walsh's metadata collection for Virtual Oregon (a metadata clearinghouse). Theresa was going to connect Maureen and Kuiipo.
Griff Jay (original member of Erdas Imagine) came to talk about early days of ERDAS. He had a number of anecdotes about the early history of ERDAS and why ERDAS is where it is today. In 1980, Griff was the 3rd programmer at ERDAS, which sprung out of a research group at Georgia Tech. At the time, Griff believes that Georgia Tech was the best in the nation at the confluence of all GIS-related skills (eg. remote sensing, software development, etc.). ERDAS got its first big break with the Alaska Geochemical Modeling System, when they won the contract over other established GIS vendors such as ESRI. Also, during the mid-80's, ERDAS gave its software away to universities which made it very successsful. They understood that grad students would be taking these skills out into the marketplace.
Griff noted that ERDAS had a special group of developers which had the cumulative skills to create a successful software project. There were a number of good stories about the individuals at ERDAS, for whom Griff had much respect. As he tells it, nothing is worth a damn until version 3.0 or 3.1. ERDAS reached that pinnacle at version 6.0. At this point, Jay thought that ERDAS "owned the world" of GIS and probably should have ended up owning ESRI. However, at a critical junction, ERDAS transitioned from Fortran to C and subsequently lost four years of development. This was coupled with the company shutting down their production department, which made them lose critical in-house testing of their own software. So why was ESRI successful when others was not? ESRI was built on a sound object model that they stuck with. Then they salvaged the functionality of ERDAS into ESRI (the "Microsoft" of GIS).
Griff has seen GIS go from topics in journals to lab science to a few developers to products to omnipresnent commodity. He noted that GIS came out of the world of landscape architecture (which included OSU/EPA's own Denis White). With this experience, he has thought about creating successful geospatial software and brought a write paper on how software projects ought to be organized.
Theresa will be training ArcGIS Modules 1 & 2, mostly for USFS employees. But she also opened it up for partners. February 23-27 8 am - 5 pm, Richardson 203.
Theresa will be doing a mini-seminar on Tips and Tricks for ArcGIS. If you have ideas on a good date, let Theresa know; otherwise scheduled for the spring
Possibility of another ArcSDE/ArcIMS tutorial from Theresa
Mid-Willamette Valley Users Group meeting Feb. 17, 1-4 pm, LBCC
Conservation GIS meeting in Portland, Feb. 26. Ken mentioned the existence of the international chapter of conservation GIS, SCGIS. There is a possibility of setting up an Oregon chapter of SCGIS. Next meeting agenda will be involved with goals of the chapter (Kai Snyder), GIS implementation options, and web mapping pesticides of GMOs using ArcGIS (John Gabriel - Alsea Geospatial).
Terralyn reported that since last time that keywords were of no importance to our installation. Still an ongoing research topic
Ken, Theresa, Keith and Matt formed a small working group on ways of working with attribute tables with ArcIMS. Theresa talked with a contact in San Diego who might have some inside help at ESRI on how to deal with our problem. She is waiting to hear back. ESRI-L had no help other than other folks who wanted to know how to do it. Ken reported on the initial problem from Randy Johnson, a forest geneticist from FSL. He wanted to have a web-based application which would show potential seed source areas based on climate information. Oregon Climate Service (OCS) has an employee named Matt Doggett who is developing a similar application. He initially started working with ArcIMS but had little luck and has now transitioned to GRASS, MapServer and Apache to serve the data. Ken will send out the link to this site and Matt might come over to showcase his software. There was a general discussion about the shortcomings of ArcIMS and the possibility of looking at MapServer as an alternative.
While Sharon is in Colorado, Theresa, Ken and Matt will be handling the coordination of the meetings.
Dave Hockman-Wert will be presenting his research next month, along possibly with Matt Doggett.