Category Archives: Spatial IT/GIS
What Is Esri?
Over the last few years we (at xyHt) have discussed Esri as an industry-leading GIS many times, but what is it? What is ArcMap, ArcGIS Pro, or any of the other things with “Arc” names? The truth is a little confusing, but at the same time a little clever. In this blog I hope to demystify...
Seen at Intergeo
xyHt staff were out in force at the world’s largest geospatial conference in Frankfurt in October, and here’s what we saw of special interest. Riegl’s Big 4-0 Riegl celebrated its 40th anniversary at Intergeo. Pictured here are Jim Van Rens and Dr. Riegl, the company’s founder. New Vector Extraction in 3D Extraction of useful information...
GIS in K-12
Above: Middle school students collect macroinvertebrates in Rocky Mountain National Park. The data will be mapped and analyzed using a GIS. Credit: Joseph Kerski. Where did you first learn about GIS? Was it in a course at a university or a community college? Were you an undergraduate or graduate student? Was it at a conference,...
Interview with Esri’s Ben Flanagan
Ever wonder who makes those maps you see in the newspaper? Ben has made maps for the Telegraph, the Guardian, and BBC News, and best of all (to me) he’s from the UK! Ben is like a ninja—not many people know about him but those that do are avid fans of his work. It was...
3D Cities from a Single System
Above: This screenshot is of CityMapper output. A look at the hybrid airborne system that combines lidar with oblique and nadir imagery. Over the last five years I’ve built and used a lot of 3D GIS and BIM models. Almost all of this has required the capture of stereo imagery and oblique imagery and a...
Creating Album Covers with GIS—or Drawing Elevation as Vector Lines
In July 2014, a developer and neocartographer from Scotland created the “Joy Divionesque 3D Map.” This began a four-year onslaught of maps that replicate the style of the iconic Joy Division album cover, “Unknown Pleasures.” How does it work? Essentially the elevation is taken from an underlying terrain or digital surface map as points, which...
