Depiction Blog » Free Data

Apple starts using OpenStreetMap in Iphoto

Richard — Fri, 04 May 2012 02:10:57 +0000

Apple switched from Google Maps to OpenStreetMap a few months ago. Depiction has been using OpenStreetMap for several years. OpenStreetMap is a crowd sourced map of the world.

Check out this article about Apple’s switch.

Mer enn kartlegging

Timothy — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 21:02:06 +0000

Google Translate tells me that means ‘more than mapping’ in Norwegian, and hopefully it’s right.

The Depiction 1.3.3 Release Candidate became available this week, and one of the new features added is Quickstart data for Norway–two different topographic maps and a hydrographic map. If you use 1.3.3 to create a new depiction in Norway, you’ll see these new options

You may ask, why Norway? As nice a country as it is, this wasn’t an idea that came out of our own heads–a Norwegian user used the Depiction support forum to point us to a set of data services provided by the Norwegian Mapping Authority.

Quickstart data consists of publicly available data from governments and other organizations–and if you know of data that is being made available that you think we should take advantage of, let us know, either in the Depiction support forum or right here.

In the meantime, if you’d like to explore Norway a little further, download Depiction 1.3.3 and take a look!

International elevation data available from Quickstart

Timothy — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 21:45:38 +0000

Some of Depiction’s coolest simulation features make use of elevation data–floods, runoff, antennas and more. In the USA, we’re blessed with excellent elevation data available both from Depiction’s Quickstart and, in higher resolutions, as a download from the USGS.

Things have been a bit tougher elsewhere in the world–the ASTER-GDEM data is useful, but its distribution license means we can’t make it available as a Quickstart source.

But thanks to the good folks here, we are now able to make 90-meter data available through Quickstart for many countries. Specifically, you will find it if you create a depiction in any of these countries:

Canada
Australia
United Kingdom
Germany
Denmark
Norway
Romania
Mexico
Peru
Argentina
South Korea
India
Malaysia
United Arab Emirates

Be warned, 90-meter data means that it is based on measurements taken at 90-meter intervals, so this data is very rough and not very pretty. It also is going to make small-scale simulations even less accurate. However, we do think that it is better than nothing for a variety of purposes, and hope our users around the world are able to make good use of it.

Would you like this 90-meter data available for another country? Let us know!

National Preparedness Month: LANL uses Depiction

hurricane — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 08:00:45 +0000

National Preparedness Month is observed each September in the US. It’s a time when Americans take simple steps to prepare for the unknown. Depiction is partaking in this year’s event by featuring Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and how they use Depiction to prepare for such events as wild fire, potential security threats and scenarios on chemical leaks.

This webinar is free to attend! Alan Woodward, EOC Planning Sections Chief at LANL, will highlight several tabletop exercises, scenario simulations and take questions from attendees. This webinar is great for individuals, organizations and companies interested in preparedness planning and consequence assessment. Alan comments that LANL uses Depiction for its “ease of use, flat learning curve, professionalism and fast in-field collaboration capability”.

Attendees will learn how Depiction can be used to create simulations and facilitate ‘in the moment’ cooperation whether for a national laboratory, your neighborhood, fire department, police department, local government organizations or emergency field teams.

Alan Woodward joins us as our guest presenter September 22nd at 10:30am PST. He has worked in the Emergency Operations Division for 10 years as an analyst, emergency planner, and Section chief with over thirteen years experience developing geographic information systems (GIS) and GIS products. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Washington State University (in Physics) and a Master of Science degree from Oklahoma State University (in Plant and Soil Sciences). Currently, he is focused on developing GIS applications for emergency responders that can be used in an EOC or at the site of an emergency.

Also joining in to field questions and provide additional information are Rachel Hixson, Dave McClard and Bill Purtymun.

Rachel Hixson is a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialist with a Master of Arts degree in Geography from Arizona State University. She is helping to develop the GIS capabilities of LANL’s Emergency Operations Center. She has also been working on reverse plume modeling for a national bio-surveillance program at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for three years.

Dave McClard works in the EO-EM Group as an Emergency Manager. Current responsibilities: Focus on response management, Emergency Operations Center (EOC) operability, planning and preparedness activities, communication operations, aviation operations, and wildland fire operations. Dave began emergency management work in 1986 as a search and rescue (SAR) pilot and search and rescue trainer. His last five years were spent as the State Emergency Services Director and squadron commander for an auxiliary of the United States Air Force.

Bill Purtymun originally became involved in emergency management as a Firefighter III/ EMT Paramedic. He graduated from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology with a BS in Geology. He has been employed at Los Alamos National Laboratory since 1989, initially as a Site Safety Officer for a non-reactor nuclear facility. In the mid 1990’s he became a LANL Emergency Manager and Incident Commander for the Emergency Operations Division. For the past several years he has worked in Hazard and Consequence Assessment at the LANL Emergency Operations Center. In his spare time he volunteers with the local ski and mountain bike patrol and is a Nationally Registered Paramedic. He is currently working on his masters in Emergency Management through Arizona State University.

Join us on September 22nd at 10:30am PST to learn more about how your organization can be better prepared, cross collaborate more efficiently and benefit from the Depiction software platform.

“The Full-Rip Nine”

Timothy — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 19:59:44 +0000

Thanks to Carol Dunn and King 5 News, I spent the morning reading this remarkable article by Bruce Barcott on the potential for a massive earthquake in the Cascadia subduction zone. He outlines, in dramatic fashion, potential effects from a 9.0 quake that runs up and down the coast of the Pacific Northwest. (You can learn more about these risks, in a more visual medium, from the excellent documentary Cascadia: The Hidden Fire).

Since the Depiction offices are located right in the midst of the region, this is obviously fairly important to us here, both personally and professionally. And as Carol pointed out on Twitter, “Reading is a good start, but action is the way to reduce harm.”

FEMA has some excellent advice on that score here. You should also build a disaster plan–and Depiction is a particularly good tool for doing that visually.

One of the hazards Barcott mentions is “liquefaction”:

In Seattle and Portland, the strong shaking begins to induce liquefaction, a process in which the sandy soil that portions of both cities are built on turns into a thick, slurry-like liquid. Parts of Portland rest atop sediment laid down by the Willamette River, and Seattle’s waterfront sits on tidal flats overtopped by loose fill. In a quake, this unconsolidated fill loses its ability to support heavy structures.

The downtown areas aren’t the only places at risk from liquefaction, though. I put together a depiction that includes liquefaction risk for much of the Puget sound region (7.15 mb). There are many large areas, but also pockets of risk scattered all across the region. (This isn’t the only hazard you should be watching for–see Barcott’s discussion of unreinforced-masonry buildings as well–but it’s a place to start.) If you don’t have Depiction, you can explore the above file with the Depiction free reader.

If you do have Depiction, the Washington state liquefaction data I used in the depiction is available here in shapefile format (54.8 mb)(just unzip it all into a folder and add the .SHP file to your depiction). Oregon doesn’t have that information quite as readily available, but they do have a predicted tsunami inundation line (13.4 mb)

The UN’s Global Risk Data Platform also has useful information, some of which is included in the above depiction. You can access it by putting this link into the Web services pane (select WMS, then click “Show content”).

Mapping Hurricane Irene

Timothy — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 23:52:30 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hurricane Irene is bearing down on the US East Coast, and there a lot of places around the Web where you can track its progress. If you need something that will still be available offline, or you want to be able to integrate your own data along with information about the hurricane, then Depiction is the tool for you. The above video goes over the steps for bringing in the latest satellite imagery and path predictions for Irene.

Here’s a quick overview:

Create a new depiction that encompasses most or all of the US East Coast. Don’t worry about the warning about the depiction size–just don’t try to bring in road networks or elevation at this level.
Go to the add menu, select Web Services, and then select WMS from the dropdown menu.
Put this URL in the text bar and click Show Content: http://nowcoast.noaa.gov/wms/com.esri.wms.Esrimap/obs
In the Content list, scroll down to the GOES Visible Image. Select that, choose Auto-detect from the element list and click Add.
This will load the latest satellite image of the region into your depictio and put it into a revealer.
You will probably want to size your revealer to cover your entire region, then turn its transparency up to the maximum and lock it in place.
To get the latest hurricane projections, go to http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gis/ and click on the “Hurricane IRENE .shp” link to download a zip file.
Unzip the file to your computer, then, one at a time, drag and drop the files that end in “5day_pgn.shp”, “5day_lin.shp” and “5day_pts.shp”, adding each of them as ‘Auto-detect’.
These will bring in the projected path, the ‘cone of uncertainty’ and key points along the path.
If you want to use the hurricane icon for the points that I used in the video, it’s available in the Homeland Security Natural Events icon pack–or you can use any other image you may have or want.
Key properties for the points are DATEBL, which gives the time for the projection, TCDVLP, or what type of storm is projected to be present at the time (hurricane vs. major hurricane vs. tropical storm, etc.), SSNUM which, I believe, refers to the category (or strength) of the hurricane, and MAXWIND, which gives the highest projected 1-minute average wind at that point.

Three New Tutorial Videos

Timothy — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:28:00 +0000

The tireless Kim Buike has put together three new tutorial videos that are really excellent–if you own the software, you really should take the time to watch these, as it will enhance your understanding of the software even if you’ve used it for a while. If you don’t own Depiction, you should still take a look–they give a good demonstration of Depiction’s powerful capabilities.

First up is “Depiction Elements Explained,” which goes through the different types of elements that make up a depiction.

“Route Elements Explained” gives a great overview of the way Depiction route elements function.

Finally, “Elevation Data Retrieval” outlines how you can easily retrieve high resolution elevation data from the USGS website and import it into Depiction.

New NAIP imagery coming

Timothy — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:29:50 +0000

Later this week, a new Depiction update will be available. In addition to a few bug fixes, this version will also give access to new NAIP imagery–the updates to that source are newer, better colors and in some cases higher resolution as well. I thought I’d give a quick preview of what is coming.

Old NAIP imagery:

New NAIP imagery:

The older imagery had some things going for it, but to my eye the new stuff is much more pleasant to look at (not to mention more recent and more accurate!).

Resources from today’s Red Cross Webinar

Timothy — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 18:06:23 +0000

Here are the various online resources that we discussed in the webinar today:

Thanks to everyone who attended!

UPDATE: You can now download the video from the webinar (a 122 MB WMV file). We will have a streaming version up soon.

Flood safety resources

Timothy — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:21:21 +0000

Today we had a great Flood Safety Awareness Week webinar with Carol Dunn, and she mentioned several great resources for flood preparedness that we wanted to share here:

And there’s also the Depiction Preparedness Add-on Pack, which Mike demoed at the end of the webinar, and which adds over 30 new elements to help create emergency plans, as well as new Quickstart data sources with information about past disasters.

You can also download video of the webinar. We have streaming video up now as well. (Note–Carol would like to clarify that, though she was described as a shelter manager, she was actually a shelter supervisor, which is different.)