Updates to an agenda and speakers will be posted here as they become available.

This year’s focus, Using GIS to Improve our Communities, is a free event open to the public.

As the flyer states, “The purpose of this event is to bring together specialized GIS professionals and community members helping address urgent community needs. This conference will share the latest technology and build networks to understand and improve efforts that help our communities.”

For more information, see the UC Merced Website or download the Event PDF.

Article Link: Using GIS to Enhance Programs Serving Emancipated Youth Leaving Foster Care

Foster youth are at risk of poor adult outcomes. Research on the role of mentoring relationships for this population suggests the value of strategies that increase their access to adult sources of support, both while in foster care and as they reach adulthood. We conducted semi-structured, individual qualitative interviews with 23 former foster youth ages 18–25 regarding their relationships with supportive non-parental adults. We sought to identify factors that influence the formation, quality, and duration of these relationships and to develop testable hypotheses for intervention strategies. Findings suggest several themes related to relationship formation with non-parental adults, including barriers (e.g., youth’s fears of being hurt) and facilitators (e.g., patience from the adult). Distinct themes were also identified relating to the ongoing development and longevity of these relationships. Youth also described multiple types of support and positive contributions to their development. Proposed intervention strategies include systematic incorporation of important non-parental adults into transition planning, enhanced training and matching procedures within formal mentoring programs, assistance for youth to strengthen their interpersonal awareness and skills, and the targeting of specific periods of need when linking youth to sources of adult support. Recommended research includes the development, pilot-testing, and evaluation of proposed strategies.

While there is a cost associated to the paper, their pricing appears to be reasonable depending on the use.

Image Credit: Waynesboro Virginia GIS

(Featured Image Credit Above)

The deadline for application is March 30, 2012 (PAST)

Congratulations to the 4 people who received a grant from our chapter.  We look forward to seeing you at CalGIS!

Mono County recently upgraded the face of its GIS with a new public facing web portal and series of web applications. The web portal (http://gis.mono.ca.gov) features a re-themed version of the old GIS portal, and includes better access to web applications, digital maps, GIS data, and more information about our GIS program. The site was built using Drupal, which is an open source CMS that allows for easy update and maintenance, and great look and feel for the user.

Of particular interest within the site are the host of applications that Mono County offers to the general public, namely the Parcel Information System, Polling Place Locator, and Property Rental Inquiry tools.

The 3.0 version of Mono County’s Parcel Information System reflects a complete redesign, with the intention of making the application easier to use and improve its performance. The search functionality has been streamlined allowing users to search for any type of Tax Parcel or its owner through focused searches that target individual fields, or across all information in the database. The map has also been optimized and converted into a ‘cache’ which allows for it to render much more quickly and show appropriate information depending on the scale it is being viewed at. The application can be seen at http://gis.mono.ca.gov/ParcelViewer.

Following the 2010 County Redistricting effort, a number of our constituents moved from one Supervisor District or Voting Precinct to another. Since these changes have caused a lot of confusion, Mono County built the Polling Place Locator to help our constituents determine what District & Precinct they belong to, and determine where their polling place is. Users can enter an address, parcel number, or complex name  (or pick their location from a map) and be presented with a set of result candidates and ultimately information about their District and Precinct. The application can be seen at http://gis.mono.ca.gov/Elections

Transient Occupancy Tax is a significant source of revenue for the Town of Mammoth Lakes, and is tied to the nightly rental of hotel rooms, condo units, and certain single family homes.  Though the tax must be paid to the Town for every night that the unit/room/home is rented, not every property in town is eligible for such type of rental (some zones & districts only allow rentals of 30+ days due to zoning codes).

As the Town has ramped up their enforcement and tracking of TOT, they were interested in providing their constituents with some tools to determine whether they could legally rent their space or not. Similar to the Polling Place Locator, this application allows a user to enter an address, parcel number or complex name and determine whether or not their particular property is able to be rented. The application can be seen at http://gis.mono.ca.gov/TOT.

I decided to pursue a mostly for current and long-term professional development, with the hope that I could rapidly use my education within my current profession.  My experience working with GIS is about 9 years working with ArcView and ArcMap on a daily basis.  Working for a local government has given me the opportunity to work with GIS every day, but only gives me limited opportunities to use GIS as a research and analysis tool.

Turning to online education was necessary due to balancing education with my full-time job, and the lack of nearby educational opportunities.  I did look into available programs at Fresno and Bakersfield college campuses but did not have any success in finding on-line programs there.  Further searching resulted in a few online universities, including Penn State and USC.  I ultimately chose Penn State based on a friend’s referral of the program, school name recognition, and relative affordability of the program. (approx. $8,000 total tuition).  Also, for those interested in someday pursuing a Masters in GIS, the post baccalaureate certificate classes can be counted towards the degree.

Students who have no or little prior experience with GIS will begin to learn the basics, but the content gets challenging quickly.  Fortunately, there are several resources available for getting more help.  The course instructor and teaching assistants are very approachable by email (Penn State has email, forums, and chat rooms as part of its course management system. )  Students can post and respond to posts if they have any questions.  The students come from a broad range of backgrounds – many work for federal and state agencies, in environmental or biological fields.

The three required courses provide you a solid foundation in GIS fundamentals and data analysis.  The first course focus more on understanding GIS, map projections, and available data – very little hand-on GIS work is entailed.  The balance of the courses entails GIS problem solving, database building, and more.  Most projects can be completed individually, though some projects and finals require teamwork.  GEOG 484, the third class in the series, included an engaging final project where teams created data layers from a scanned copy of a 19^th century Sanborn Map.

The best thing I can say about the program is that there is an abundance of further reading, websites to explore, and additional exercises to further your education as you go through the courses, if you are able to invest the time.  You can learn the content by investing the minimum 8 to 10 hours a week, but can also go much further if you have the time to invest.

Accessing the online course management system and online text is easy for anyone who is computer literate.  At the beginning of the course, you are sent a one-year trial version of ArcView 10 to install on your computer.  I was able to run GIS on my Mac computer by installing Parallels Desktop and Windows 7, and only experienced a few glitches.  Fortunately, all of the online texts were recently updated to be compatible with ArcGIS 10 and Windows 7.  Students also have access to the school’s online library, though I never utilized this service while enrolled.

For more information here is the program’s website:

Penn State Certificate Information

Brandon Smith, AICP

Senior Planner, City of Visalia

From: CalGIS Conference Committee

Hello fellow geospatial professionals!

We are about two months away from our 2012 conference here in Sacramento and we have compiled a quality program with great topics, compelling speakers, and opportunities to share knowledge with each other in a professionally stimulating environment. I am looking forward to catching up with people I haven’t seen in a while, making new connections, and building the strength of our community. We, as the California  geospatial community, have collaborated over the past 18 years to build a strong cadre of professionals and programs across the state that rivals any in the country. That being said, we still have a long way to go to enable better access to data, free flow of information between agencies, and a leverage stronger connections to the private/consulting sector.

I encourage everyone to be in attendance April 11-13^th at the Sheraton Grand Hotel. Check out the program online along with the pre-conference training opportunities from our Gold Sponsor esri. I want to thank ALL of our sponsors, many for continued support and welcome to the new sponsors, without which we would not be able to put on this event. I encourage any firms or agencies that haven’t sponsored yet to do so. You will have direct access to the best in the business!

Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to read this. Please contact me with any questions or comments and I will see all of you soon!

http://www.urisa.org/calgis/info/

Dan Henderson, PMP, CFM, GISP

2012 CalGIS Conference Chair

Back in 2009, Google released this new style imagery for San Jose and San Diego, California. Google continued to slowly rollout additional cities.

As for the updated Bakersfield imagery, Google publishes a KML file with imagery updates. It appears the Kern County imagery was updated on August 15, 2011.

While the new imagery may have been a result of private industry paying for it, I think it’s exciting to have this updated imagery in Central California.

To find out when imagery has been updated, open the KML file in Google Earth, then either zoom to the area of interest, or turn on the dates in the layer list on the left-hand side.

And while the previous 2010, one-foot imagery was also great quality, it’s hard not to look at the two side-by-side and not like the oblique option.

Below is the Bakersfield Downtown Bank of America building. The Google oblique image on the right shows the additional feature of panning in all four directions to view the building.

In fact, at the recent Bakersfield GIS User’s Group Meeting, Dave Peck from Pictometry mentioned that while GIS users may traditionally be used to orthographic imagery, end users will more than likely prefer the oblique imagery style.

It’s also easy to see the advantages of additional spatial informational available from oblique vs. orthographic imagery.

With 45-degree angles, measurement tools can be used to find height and other spatial attributes.

What I think could really be exciting is using this imagery to create 3D Google SketchUp models of the City of Bakersfield, especially with the ability to pan views.

And for those that have access to the 2010 imagery via a GIS, it offers a great way to compare timeframes; the 2010 imagery was flown in May and June 2010.

Overall I think it’s pretty cool how powerful Google Maps has become with its ability to combine local knowledge with some of the best aerial imagery and make it available to everyone.

Speakers:

David Peck from Pictometry discussed oblique imagery and uses for many different business functions.  Contact Dave at david dot peck @ pictometry dot com.

Jeff Orton spoke about the mobile GIS efforts at Paramount Citrus.  This link is to a guide to connect your Arcgis server services to the iPad of Android app from ESRI  Document

We also discussed Chapter meetings and the CalGIS Conference in April.

Next BUG meeting May 24, 2012