Imagery for Manitoba

Do you sometimes (or always) switch from the map view to the satellite / photography backdrop when using Bing Maps, Google Maps or Esri online products? I do because I like the extra information conveyed with pictures.

Long before the Google, Microsoft and Esri online products were around Manitoba was collecting and creating a photo mosaic backdrop for Manitoba.  Although in those days, it was primarily for GIS and CADD desktop users.

The first round of what many people referred to as digital ortho imagery – or DOI - was flown in the 1990s.  The geographic coverage was southern Manitoba – primarily targeted at the agricultural area, although scope expanded into the Interlake, Whiteshell and Duck Mountains.  The photos were black and white and collected at a 2 meter resolution. 

The imagery turned out to be one of the most important and frequently used GIS datasets that Manitoba has produced.  The usefulness of the imagery also changed the thinking of many hard-core GIS purists, who were convinced that the imagery program was a waste of money and that topographic mapping was the way to continue.

In 2005 a consortium of Manitoba Government Departments, Agriculture Canada (PFRA) and Manitoba Hydro was formed to organize, fund and capture a second round of imagery.  Later Louisiana Pacific also contributed to the program.  The first year of capture was 2007 and the program ended in 2013.  The geographic area was similar to that captured in the 1990s.  The imagery was collected in both color and black & white at 50cm resolution.

The ortho images were made available to the public on the Manitoba Land Initiative (MLI) site.  (Not all imagery is on the MLI because of space limitations.) In addition, Manitoba created an agreement to provide the data to Google so that the information was available in Google Earth and Google Maps.  For a while it was common to see Manitoba credited when zooming around Manitoba in Google products.   Lately, it is less common to see Manitoba credited as Google replaces the Manitoba imagery with more recently collected sources from Landsat, DigitalGlobe, etc.

More than two years ago, in January 2012 (my New Year’s wishesblog), I asked for a new imagery program and stated that: “A Provincial Image strategy that includes the North needs to be developed.”  The last round of imagery is getting old – some of it is 7 years old.

Should Manitoba undertake the cost and effort to embark on a new round of imagery collection?  Should there be an ongoing imagery collection program?  Should the program include the North and the remote areas of Manitoba?  Or, should we rely on the imagery provided by Google, Esri and Bing?

MGUG Wins Award of Excellence

This year at the Esri Canada User conference, MGUG won the Esri Canada Award of Excellence. The award was given out by Scott Labonte, Senior Account Executive and Alex Miller, President. The award is in recognition of the significant role that MGUG plays in the GIS community.

Current MGUG president, Tony Viveiros, accepted the award on behalf of all of the MGUG volunteers, past and present. Past presidents Suzanne Houlind, John Teillet, Grant Wiseman and Richard Lebedynski accompanied Tony on stage.

It somehow seems fitting that MGUG should receive an award on that stage. It was at the Esri User Conference in October 2006 that MGUG was first officially announced to the world. Esri gave MGUG a few minutes of time to describe the organization, our vision and to give out membership forms for people to fill out. MGUG received its first 70 membership applications (other than board members) from that conference.

After accepting the award, Tony Viveiros gave a short presentation on MGUG, describing some of its many accomplishments.

Congratulations to all of the hard working MGUG volunteers that have contributed to MGUG’s success over the years. You are all deserving of this award.

MGUG 2013 Conference is Coming

It’s time to mark your calendars again. The Manitoba GIS Users Group (MGUG) 2013 Conference is October 2nd at the Victoria Inn Hotel & Convention Centre.

The conference keynote presentation will be delivered by Steve Coast, founder of OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Principal Architect at Microsoft's Bing Mobile. Once again TECTERRA has stepped up as the conference keynote sponsor.

Steve will discuss OpenStreetMaps past, present and future and provide insights into Microsoft's mapping strategy. It will be interesting to hear Steve’s comments on crowdsourcing and its influence on mapping.

The MGUG annual conference is the premier GIS event in Manitoba. Last year, the event was heavily advertised and nearly 500 people attended the conference. This year MGUG seems to be taking a different approach to conference advertising. It seems that there are fewer mass emails and the MGUG web-site doesn’t have the “GeoDrive to 500” that was used as a publicly announced goal for success in 2011 and 2012. Also by this time last year, both CBC and Shaw TV were part of the advertising campaign in addition to some key sponsors and a partial agenda (three key speakers, a Geomatics panel discussion with six GIS movers and shakers). My advice to MGUG is to release a bit more of the agenda now and more as it firms up.

Regardless of the advertising approach taken by MGUG this year, the MGUG Conference is the best GIS event of the year and a must attend for those in the geospatial industry. I can guarantee that there will be some excellent presentations and the opportunities for networking in the geospatial field are unmatched.

MGUG 2012 is a Success!

The second Manitoba GIS Users Group’s (MGUG) all-day conference was last week on Tuesday September 25, 2012.  Now that it is over, it’s time for a review.

The conference was a fabulous success and the organizers deserve all of the congratulations we can give them.  MGUG made their goal of 500 conference attendees.  The Victoria Inn was an improved venue over last year and had more of a “conference” feel to it.  Last year in my post conference review, I suggested that there was too much separation between the exhibitor floor and the food and refreshments.  Problem solved!  This year, they were within the same room.

Following up on last year’s success, the exhibitor’s floor was once more an amazing assortment of booths and exhibits.   My recommendation for next year:  Allow for poster papers.  With MGUG’s ongoing support of education, the poster paper section could include an educational poster paper section with award for a winner, in addition to any poster papers that business wanted to display.

The conference got off to a great start with an excellent keynote from  Ed Parsons of Google.  Ed was a superb speaker with an interesting message about where Google was and where it was going.  He entertained and dazzled the crowd.   As a Sci-Fi fan, I enjoyed his many subtle or not too subtle Sci-Fi references in his presentation.  Who is next?  Ed Parsons is a tough act to follow, but MGUG has accepted the challenge of continuously improving.

The Presentations were once again well done and diverse.  Fred Meier (Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship) reported the many positive accomplishments from GeoManitoba.  It was good to hear about GeoManitoba, because one of the criticisms of GeoManitoba is its lack of communication.  More than one person commented to me that they have looked up GeoManitoba on the Government web-site and found nothing.  MGUG abandoned the lightning presentations this conference.

The quality of the Panel Discussion at the end of the day was not a surprise to me.  Knowing Greg Carlson, Rob Gerry and David Enns as I do, I expected strong thoughtful responses to each question. Perhaps the only disappointment was the lack of controversy, with everyone agreeing on everything.

Congratulations once again MGUG.  How will you top this year’s conference?

MGUG Conference 2012

The big MGUG Conference is scheduled for September 25, 2012.  This is the second full one-day conference that MGUG has organized.  Last year, the conference headliner was Microsoft and the conference was held at Celebrations Dinner Theatre.   This was a breakthrough event for MGUG, with attendance in the 350 range.

This year the conference headliner is Google, with Ed Parsons giving the keynote.  The attendance is already near 350 with three weeks to go before the event, so it looks like success is nearly guaranteed.

In addition to Google, there are some local heavy hitters speaking including the President and CEO of Manitoba Hydro and the Deputy Minister of Conservation.  Dr. Mohamed Abousalem the CEO of TECTERRA is also on the agenda, and he is always worth listening to.

The Geomatics panel discussion at the end of the day has potential to be extremely interesting.  Representatives from all walks of Geomatics will be together with representatives from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, GeoManitoba, Manitoba Hydro, the City of Winnipeg, the University of Winnipeg and private industry.  David Enns and Rob Gerry are long-time colleagues of mine and both are former MGUG board members - I can vouch for their extensive knowledge of the industry.

Once again, we are looking forward to a great GIS conference.  For more information go to the MGUG web site www.mgug.ca

Manitoba Road Network

One of the most fundamental datasets in any province or state is a road network.  This key feature is used for reference, navigation and routing.

Currently no single organization in Manitoba has overall responsibility for managing and maintaining the complete digital version of a Manitoba Road Network (MRN).  Various components are maintained in a piecemeal fashion and some components are not maintained at all.  Natural Resources Canada, the creators of the National Road Network, produced the Manitoba portion of the National Road Network (NRN).  NRCan does not have a mandate to maintain this network and unfortunately the geometry of the NRN is already becoming dated.  Other organizations, such as Manitoba Hydro and the Medical Transportation Coordination Centre are maintaining road networks for their internal operational needs.

In recognition of the need for this important dataset GeoManitoba and Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation have begun a project to establish a Manitoba Road Network.  The purpose of the MRN project is to establish a program to develop and maintain a representation of a continuous, accurate, and spatially-referenced centerline for all non-restricted roads in Manitoba.

The objectives of the project include consulting with stakeholders and defining the MRN requirements and establishing partnerships.  Development of the MRN will include establishing a governance, ownership and oversight model to ensure the network’s ongoing upkeep.

A successful MRN project will have the following benefits:

• Overall ownership and responsibility as well as ownership and responsibility for individual pieces will be clearly established and documented
• Manitoba will have a road network that is complete and current with a maintenance plan to keep it current going forward
• Public Safety will be enhanced by improved 911 emergency vehicle dispatch
• Improved management of emergencies by Emergency Measures Organizations such as EMO, Manitoba Health, Manitoba Agriculture and Food Initiatives, etc.
• Partnerships will be established with Federal and Provincial government agencies, crown corporations and private industry which will decrease the burden on any one organization and will pave the way for improved data sharing.  
• Creation of the MRN will reduce the duplication of effort and cost that is currently expended by various organizations to independently obtain or create a road network for their own needs. 
• Improved dispatch of gas, transmission line and emergency service by utility organizations such as Manitoba Hydro.

Let's hope this project is a success.  We need this critical dataset.

2012 Esri Canada User Conference

For GIS people, the Place to be this Wednesday, May 30, 2012 is the Fort Garry Hotel for the annual Esri Canada User Conference.  This conference is an annual event in Winnipeg for the last 15 years (or so).

The conference follows the same formula, year after year, starting with corporate news and new product information and demos from Esri Canada President Alex Miller and Esri technical experts.  Hearing what is new and what is coming always creates a buzz at the coffee and lunch breaks.  This is a great opportunity to see Esri’s latest technology and their vision for the future.  Even if you are not an Esri GIS user, the conference provides wonderful insight into the future and trends of GIS from the market leader.

Following Alex are the Award of Excellence, Education shout out and user presentations.  This year the user presentations from Rob Gerry, Jim Boyd & Tony Viveiros and others look extremely interesting.  Since there are two tracks, it may be tough picking which one to go see.  Personally, I am looking forward to the ArcGIS for SharePoint Technical Session.

For me, the best part of the conference is the fabulous networking with other GISers.  Every year the Esri User Conference is one of the best gathering places for GIS people in Manitoba.

The 2012 Esri Canada User Conference should be an excellent program that is well worth the time and entrance fee.

For more information go to the Esri Canada User Conferences section on the Esri Canada web site.