Want to see where Photovoltaic (PV) Solar Systems have been installed?  There is a new initiative from the DOE to do just that.  I hope it will help us with our LA County Solar Map – http://solarmap.lacounty.gov

Here is the site: http://openpv.nrel.gov/

It has some pretty cool mapping and analytical tools for the cost of solar over the years, here: http://openpv.nrel.gov/visualization/index But it is only aggregated to a state level, so we need more details.

Here is the full release:

DOE and NREL Announce Open PV Mapping Project

October 26, 2009

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced the beta release of the Open PV Mapping Project. The Open PV Mapping Project is a collaborative effort between government, industry, and the public that will develop a comprehensive database of photovoltaic (PV) installation data for the United States. The project is the largest installation database with over 50,000 entries.

The project will provide a Web-based resource for users to easily understand the current status and past progress of the PV industry from the data that show current and recent trends of the PV market. Additionally, users may add their own PV installation data, browse PV data entered by others, and view statistics. Moving forward, NREL will add additional data and use this information to drive further analysis of market growth.

Full story

October 27th, 2009 | Category: Announcements, GIS Data | Leave a comment

This is a fairly major resolution of this case – it concerns GIS practitioners and governments maintaining GIS data across California.

Santa Clara County Releases Its Geodata
September 16, 2009

After a three year legal battle, Santa Clara County finally provided a copy of its GIS parcel basemap data to the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) in compliance with California’s Public Record Act (PRA).  Decisions from both the California Superior Court and the California Court of Appeal clearly affirmed that public agencies must provide their geodata in accordance with the PRA (California Government Codes §6250-6259).  Generally, agencies can not charge a requestor of their geodata more than the direct cost of duplication, and they can not restrict how a requestor can use or redistribute the data.  Santa Clara County had been selling its geodata for $ 158,000; the cost CFAC finally paid was $ 3.10 per disk, plus shipping.
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September 22nd, 2009 | Category: GIS Data, News | Leave a comment

I have downloaded and projected all current fire perimeters from August 28 – September 2nd – they are in Zone V in a single directory.

All Station Fire Perimiters (as of September 2, 07:02) – zip file

September 2nd, 2009 | Category: Fire, GIS Data | Leave a comment

Hello – here is a recent fire perimeter from this morning.

• 090109_0631_station.zip

Also wanted to pass along a description of the process on how they are created from Tim Smith of LA County Fire.

Thanks Tim – I also wanted to pass along my appreciation for all of the hard work your team is doing.

Fire Perimeter updating …

I am sending this email to let you know that fire perimeters are obtained in 12 hour operational periods. They must be proofed by the situation leaders at the incident for accuracy before anything is published. Even if we could obtain them via satellite or other means the information still must be approved by the appropriate staff on the incident. The perimeters that we get from the GIS Professionals on the incident are final approved versions. It is very important that we use the perimeters that these people have approved. On the Station Fire the GIS team is composed of Federal, State and Local professionals, with the Federal Government in the lead role. The Federal Government also takes the lead role on information gathering that is why everything is published to the Federal site first.

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September 1st, 2009 | Category: Fire, GIS Data | Leave a comment

Attached below are a set of GIS shapefiles that have been zipped up for use.

NOTE!  These are provided AS IS.  They are used for planning purposes by the fire department, and are not intended to show the fire perimeters at a specific time.  They will provide a useful guide, but I am putting them here as a service, and if you have questions about them, hold them until  the fire is done – I will not burden the fire fighters with requests at this time.

I will also begin putting them up on this site as we receive them.

For users of the LA County Repository – we’ll begin to load them into the Repository.

• September 1, 2009 – Station Fire Perimeter
• August 31, 2009 – Station Fire Perimeter
• August 30, 2009 – Morris and Station Fire Perimeters
• August 29, 2009 – Morris and Station Fire Perimeters

August 31st, 2009 | Category: Fire, GIS Data | Leave a comment

Here is the perimeter for August 30th at midnight: ca_station_20090830_0025_z5 (zip file)

August 30th, 2009 | Category: Fire, GIS Data | Leave a comment

Thomas Guide - better than MapQuest

Quick picture from Joel Myhre – thanks Joel!

For those of you born in LA, the Thomas Guide is a standard.  We all had a few of them.  The picture, to me, is so indicative of where we are all heading right now with our technology.  At the same time, there is nothing like having a good map in your hands!

Question – how many of you still have Thomas Guides in your cars?

July 8th, 2009 | Category: Announcements, GIS Data, News | Leave a comment

From Carol Ostergren and Drew Decker of the USGS

Dear colleagues,

USGS is generating these new maps for only a few states in 2009 – including California.  Production in California is not yet complete but maps in the northern part of the state are now available for download through the USGS Store.  The Store website was recently updated and offers easy access to the maps.  There is also a “map locator” tool that allows you to find maps by address or place name.  Visit the Store at: store.usgs.gov. There are also several CA sample maps available via FTP here: ftp://ftpext.usgs.gov/pub/wr/ca/san.diego/ddecker/

The free TerraGo Plugin will give you more advanced functionality – you can get it from this link: GeoPDF Toolbar (.exe file)

see more below:
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July 2nd, 2009 | Category: Announcements, GIS Data | Leave a comment

John Arnstein from my office linked me to a post about the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) releasing its 2002 Cancer Risk Data.  The report shows maps by County, and he was interested in getting more granular.  So I went to the EPA’s site and was able to download an Access database containing information by Census Tract.  I then did some manipulation to pull out LA County and create a map of total risk by Census Tract.

LA County Cancer Map

Appears that Freeways seem to be the big drivers.  Here are some resources for making and checking this out yourself!

• LA County Total Risk Map (PDF format)
• Cancer Risk by Census Tract (shapefiles)
• Southern California Cancer Risk (Google Earth KMZ)
• Southern California Plant Locations impacting Air Toxicities (Google Earth KMZ)

To look at the source, methodology, and download more data, here is the EPA’s website.

June 24th, 2009 | Category: Announcements, Case Studies, GIS Data | Leave a comment