Last August, a car with a complicated camera rig mounted on its roof spent two-and-a-half weeks patrolling the county [Columbia County, GA], covering more than 1,130 miles and 2,500 sections of road. Its goal, to provide an accurate portrait of Columbia County in three dimension. Called Earthmine, it’s the same technology that recently touched down on Mars with NASA’s Curiosity rover.
The early adopter county paid a discounted $75,000 for the work and already has 60 people in the county using the application and its data. The outlay of cash has already saved the the county as much, say officials. I noted this work earlier this year (APB coverage).
A map [Google MyMap] by the Washington Office on Latin America’s (WOLA) Border Fact Check project shows that despite criticisms, the closing of seven US Border Patrol stations is unlikely to affect any drug smuggling or human trafficking activity along the southern US border.
The argument is that the seven stations are more than 100 miles from a border (Mexican or Canadian) and are unlikely to have much impact. The closings will save $1.3 million which could be reallocated to other geographies for enforcement.
Schmidt calls himself a “geo-geek,” somebody who is enthusiastic about geography and the technology that creates maps and analysis using diverse sets of data.
While Schmidt is comfortable with terminology like “spatial data,” “pictometry” and “thematic mapping,” he is attuned to members of the public who might not be.
Eric Schmidt leads the GIS team at Douglas County, NV which is profiled in the local paper. You can test the public GIS offerings to see if they are attuned the non-GIS user. There is growing evidence that "pictometry" is for better or worse becoming a generic term in our industry. It's name of a company: Pictometry.
