Spatial Data Management Group Meeting Notes December 18, 2008

Snacks: Patti
Note taker: Dave Hockman-Wert
Facilitator: Terralyn
Attending: Kuuipo, Dave, Terralyn, Keith, Theresa, Matt, Ray, Kelly

Meeting Agenda:

Meetings:
  • PDX GIS Server User Group meeting – January 6, 2009; Portland, Good speaker, “use case” discussion
    Training:
  • Adobe Illustrator – Kelly agreed to put something together on this. (Reminder) Avenza MapPublisher and other software apps work with Illustrator and/or Photoshop; they are able to retain geographic aspects of maps. Cool layering in Photoshop – from NW ESRI User Group presentation
  • What's new in 9.3 Theresa will present a 1-2 hour thing in the lab, sometime in January/February, with Kelly's help.
    Data

    Storage issues – how to deal with TB of data? Can get 1 TB external drive for $170. How do you backup, keep safe, offsite storage, etc.? Network costs are $2/GB/year. So 1 TB would be $2000/year. Keith is going to set up a system for his shop that will involve having backup external hard drives that he takes off-site and swaps out periodically. Terralyn points out that the time involved in managing this kind of approach (and the cost of that time) should be considered, because it’s shifting administrative IT work to each group.

    Library is talking about hiring a Data Librarian, so they may be able to figure out ways of saving old data formats, best practices for storage, etc.

    HJ Andrews LiDAR data is being housed at T:\groups\hja_lidar (read-only directory). If people want access to the directory and/or to add other LiDAR data, contact Theresa.

    Software:
  • Image Server is installed on the COF network now. If someone wants to try it out, contact Terralyn.
  • Java platform for ArcGIS Server is also set up.
  • Library is installing the GIS Portal Toolkit; it has been taking three weeks, and still isn’t finished. Not an easy process!
  • Plethora of browsers now (incl. Google Chrome), with different types of programming needed for each browser. VMware Player is free software that can allow you to test code in different browsers. W3C Validators can assess your website code to make sure it will work well, that links are good, etc. Xenu Link Sleuth can find broken links as well.
  • Student ESRI contest?
  • Matt found a new Python module that can connect well to ODBC. Contact him for more info.
    Round Table
  • Ray – They’ve always been working at large extents, but lately have been shrinking to smaller grid sizes, such as 4 km2 grids for fire forecasting for the continental U.S. In some areas, they’ve even gone to 80-m grids in smaller extents. Chris Daly is putting together a tool for them to help in their modeling.
  • Matt – Landsat archive is up and running. link
  • Dave – Bozeman training trip, for Bob Gresswell’s grad students, on GIS and streams/fish
  • Kuuipo – Oregon Imagery Explorer has the statewide 2005 orthoimagery (DOQs) available in Oregon Lambert (compressed 9:1). Will have clipped counties that people can download.
    Next Meeting January 22, 2009
  • Spearker: Library (Marc Rempel) may demo the GIS Portal Toolkit (postponed until February)
  • Treats: Kelly
  • Notes: Matt
  • Facilitator: Keith