The GeoUpdate

As the news began to spread of the Red River's record-setting crest level, the first order of the day was to help get the word out to as many as possible. This was especially true in Fargo, North Dakota's most populus city, with 92,000 residents living in the vicinity of the Red River. For many Fargoans, the need for timely, flood-related geographical information, including shelter locations, evacuated neighborhoods, and official news was paramount. Radio Fargo-Moorehead, owners of several of Fargo's TV and radio stations, worked to develop a My Map that was embedded across its network of Fargo-area station websites, including: KFGO.com, BOB95FM.com, ROCK102online.com, MOJO104.com, Y94.com, and 740thefan.com. 

Through the collaborative editing properties of My Map, this map was jointly kept updated over the course of the flood, the changes being instantly reflected on the Radio-Fargo station websites. After only 72 hours, the number of map visits from Fargoans, Moorheaders, and others from across the country exceeded 250,000. These resources will continue to evolve as this situation continues to change.

View KFGO - Red River Flood 2009 in a larger map

View the KFGO Fargo MyMap

We have also published a Google Earth Layer (kmz) with more GIS-related information for the flood response. This layer will be updated with additional data, including imagery, as it becomes available. To view the layer in Google Earth, download the KML file found here.

Posted by Phil Dixon, Geospatial Business Product Manager; and Pete Giencke, GIS Data Engineer

As reported by our friends at the All Points Blog

Frank James at the Chicago Tribune's Washington Bureau blog offers a transcript of John King (CNN political correspondent) interviewing David Plouffe, President Obama's campaign manager on Sunday.

He introduces the discussion this way: "The interview demonstrates two things. Plouffe remains in campaign mode and King will take any excuse to use his electronic wonder map."

Also of note, King's description and use of CNN's photosynth.

KING: I want to bring you in, David Plouffe, before we say good-bye, this is the magical moment. We put this together from thousands of submissions of individual photographs. This is our photosynth, as we call it, of the inauguration, and it's a collage, essentially. It's multi-dimensional. You can go around, you can come closer, you can go farther away from the inauguration. I want you to show me where David Plouffe was on inauguration day. If I can get this to come back out a little bit. Sometimes it's a little fussy. There we go.

Show me where David Plouffe, the perch you had. You managed the campaign. You're the architect of the successful victory. Where do you get to sit on inauguration day?

PLOUFFE: Well, we were fortunate enough, my wife and I, to sit just a couple of rows behind the Gores and the Clintons, right in this area.

KING: Right up here.

PLOUFFE: Right in this area. And it was a remarkable sight, not to just be on the podium, obviously, but to be able to also have that vantage point of the wonderful mall and the millions of Americans who were gathering in a real spirit of unity and a belief that they have a stake in the future of their country. So it was -- it was a magical moment.

As reported by our friends at the All Points Blog

Update 1/24/09: The CBO report cited by all the media outlets below was not a report. Further, it was not a complete analysis and was based on an older version of the stimulus proposal. So, best for all bets to be off until the official report is released.

Controversial CBO Report On Stimulus Turns Out Not To Exist
- Huffington Post

"The CBO report looked at a -- only a portion of the legislation and looked at that portion of the legislation before it began the committee process that Jake was talking about -- a snapshot in time that's long past." - White House Press Secretary Gibbs
- Transcript from White House Briefing (Friday)

Thanks to Sean Gillies for keeping an eye on me and my sources.

--- original post 1/21/09 ----

That's the title of the article in The Washington Times.

Key points:

About $26 billion, just 9 percent, of President Obama's proposed $274 billion stimulus effort aimed at infrastructure will be spent by Sept. 30, the end of fiscal 2009. That's according to the Congressional Budget Office, the agency that analyzes tax and spending proposals for Congress.

Further, less than half of the $30 billion in highway construction spending sought by House Democrats would get into the nation's spending pipeline in the next four years per the AP.

via Twitter (@bentleysystems, retweeted by @geothinkers)

More sources (all ultimately cite CBO): Washington Post, AP

As reported by our friends at the All Points Blog

What if "a collaborative grassroots coalition" came together to develop a proposition "that advances a business case applicable to the entire geospatial and environmental business sector." What if the resulting paper represented "(although unofficially) the consensus view of a collaboration between small, mid-sized, and large corporate entities, the non-profit sector, the open source GIS software community, as well as Municipal, County, Regional, and State Government Agencies who produce and rely upon the Nation’s critical geospatial and environmental data resources."

Then you'd have: "A Concept for American Recovery and Reinvestment, NSDI 2.0: Powering our National Economy, Renewing our Infrastructure, Protecting our Environment" (pdf). The document provides a "how to" of sorts of a National GIS. In fact, the paper states that it fits perfectly with that idea."...it is important to note that an NSDI 2.0 network complements proposals for a National GIS. In fact, NSDI 2.0 has the potential to be the ‘always on’, community-powered dial-tone for a National GIS."

That dial-tone idea sounds familiar to me from my consulting work with OGC. And, it was ex-OCGer Jeff Harrison, now CEO of the Carbon Project, who sent me the press release about this effort. The authors, including Mr. Harrison are listed (without affiliation since the views are connected to the people, not their organizations or any professional organizations or standards bodies on which they serve) are noted in the document and from my quick look do represent the various communities above.

At the proposal's website, NSDI2.net you can read the document and "Make yourself heard." I expected I'd be able to leave comments, via the latter link, but instead was taken to an app to find my Senators and Representatives.