Announcement of FIG Foundation Grants and Scholarships

The FIG Foundation will be providing scholarships of up to 4,000 euros to PhD students.

Applicants shall:
1. be studying for a PhD degree and registered solely in a surveying/geomatics academic programme that teaches surveying in a country listed by the World Bank as a low-income, lower-middle or upper-middle income economy,
2. must have had a paper accepted by a peer reviewed international journal based on their doctoral research project; applicants should be the lead author, and the paper should be co-authored with their supervisor,
3. should not have submitted their final thesis at the application deadline.

Applications will be judged on the quality of the application and need. In the event that two excellent applications are judged to be of equal quality, applications from low-income and lower-middle income countries will be preferred.

Applications are to be sent to fig (at) fig (dot) net with "FIG Foundation PhD Scholarship Application" shown in the Subject Line.

Complete details can be found at: www.fig.net/figfoundation

Deadline: November 1, 2012

Information on the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for 2013 Now Online

If you are interested in applying for the National Science Foundation's (NSF) 2013 Graduate Research Fellowship Program, please visit the NSF website:

http://www.nsfgrfp.org/

This fellowship provides three years of support, a $30,000 annual stipend, opportunities for international research and profession development, and TeraGrid Supercomputer access.

Please keep these deadlines for different disciplines in mind if you are applying:

• November 13, 2012: Engineering; Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering; Materials Research
• November 14, 2012: Mathematical Sciences; Chemistry; Physics and Astronomy
• November 16, 2012: Social Sciences; Psychology; STEM Education and Learning
• November 19, 2012: Life Sciences; Geosciences

If you have any questions, please e-mail info (at) nsfgrfp (dot) org directly.

Esri Announces Imagery Grant Program

The Esri and PCI Natural Resources Imagery Grant Program fosters innovative approaches to solving natural resources management problems by using GIS, image processing, and remote-sensing technologies.  Projects that emphasize fusion between radar and optical sensor imagery will be given preference in the review and selection process. Projects must establish increased efficiencies, productivity, or accuracy in detecting and analyzing land-cover change using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery from RADARSAT-2 and RapidEye 5m multispectral imagery.

Twenty organizations will be awarded GIS and imagery software, training, satellite and aerial image processing, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery, and multispectral imagery valued at $2,000,000.

Grant Award
Natural Resources Imagery Grant awards are valued at $100,000 each and include the following:

•     Esri GIS software and training
•     PCI Geomatics software tools for processing and analyzing imagery in GIS
•     MDA RADARSAT-2 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery
•     RapidEye 5m multispectral imagery

Eligibility Requirements
Eligible organizations include all types of companies, educational institutions, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), state and regional governments, or tribal governments in the United States.

Candidate organizations must have the following:

•     An established GIS or imagery program.
•     Existing geospatial infrastructure including suitable hardware, software, and databases.
•     Ability to communicate an understanding of the imagery and GIS technologies used.

Project Requirements
To qualify, the proposed project must meet these requirements:

•     Include objectives to measure land-use change
•     Access information from remotely sensed images beyond the visible spectrum
•     Move the organization forward using both GIS and imagery technologies

Additional consideration will be given to projects that develop data and applications for enhancing decision support, extending GIS throughout the enterprise, and improving the operational use of imagery.

Please review Common Questions for more details.

The Esri and PCI Natural Resources Imagery Grant application deadline is November 16, 2012.

CrisisMappersUK announce their deployment for the London Olympics 2012

CrisisMappersUK will provide real time situation awareness to public, services and security personnel during the London Olympics 2012.

CrisisMappersUK was founded in June 2012 by Justine MacKinnon and Francesca De Florio. The non-profit organization is the UK and only branch of Crisis Mappers.

During the “London Olympics 2012: Situational Awareness Deployment”, volunteers will collate and distribute real time information to the general public, services and security personnel, to support situation awareness and facilitate rapid reaction in case of an emergency. CrisisMappersUK will collate and distribute data using an open source information collection, visualization and interactive mapping tool platform. The mapping tool platform, an open source website generated from Ushahidi, was successfully tested in June 2012 during the Isle of Wight festival and helped people stranded on the island to reach accommodation, information, food and clean clothing.

CrisisMappersUK will lead the project in collaboration with members of the the WHO-curated Virtual Interdisciplinary Advisory Group for mass gatherings (VIAG).

CrisisMappersUK is currently recruiting volunteers through the online registration form to filter and collate information.

Crisis Mappers is a global organisation leveraging mobile & web-based applications, participatory maps & crowdsourced event data, aerial & satellite imagery, geospatial platforms, advanced visualization, live simulation, and computational & statistical models to power effective early warning for rapid response to humanitarian and events emergencies.

The VIAG is an informal network of experts in mass gatherings public health and related fields that provides support to host countries in the planning and operation of mass gatherings, as well as the operational and response aspects of public health and health security. VIAG members, in consultation with the WHO mass gathering team in Geneva and London, are beta testing both secure and open resources that can be a useful, free desktop and Android/iPhone-iPad capable platform to field baseline common operational data and annotations.

CrisisMappersUK is looking for volunteers to collate and organise data received from social media and other channels on the CrisisMappersUK platform to make it available to the general public, emergency services and other stakeholders involved in public security and safety. These stakeholders will be able to freely access this data which will facilitate and speed up situational awareness and rapid reaction in case of an incident or emergency.

See website above to submit application. No experience necessary.

ASPRS - Quarterly GISD Conference Call - August 3, 2012

GIS Division Meeting
Quarterly GISD Conference Call

Date: August 3rd 2012
Time: 12:00 pm EDT

Dial in Information: (712) 432-0175, Pass code 1022039#.

Agenda:
· Progress Report of the 2013 Plan.
·Summary of activities from the volunteers that staffed the ASPRS booth at ESRI conference.

Special Sessions

Spring 2013 (Baltimore)
o Geo-statistics (Special Session & Workshop) § Dr Melissa Rura § Dr Pierre Goovaerts § David Alvarez
o Location Based Services (LBS) session. § Dr Bandana Kar
o Big Data (Joint session with D&I committee) § David Alvarez
Fall 2013 (San Antonio)
o Disaster management/Response § Judd Muskat

Workshops /Webinar
o   A Soils/Hydrology TBD – David Alvarez
o   Geo-statistics  (Dr Pierre Goovaerts)
o   Web-Mapping  (TBD – Possible Dr. Tsou)

Other Activities
·Looking for volunteers to assist the lead (Dr Bill Hazelton) on the development of the document “the Best practices or guidelines on Datums”.
·Looking for volunteers that would represent the GISD and participate with other divisions or committees  (Lidar, Remote Sensing/Climate Change, D&I)
·Call for papers for the Special PE&RS Issue on Disaster Management Response is out.
·Looking for volunteers to assist with the judging of the awards that the GIS Division is responsible (ESRI Best paper, SAIC ….)

Ideas – Suggestions

Supporting Documents: The call for abstracts for the different sessions and the workshop descriptions are located in the link: https://docs.google.com/folder/d/.
Abstracts for the Special Sessions are due August 20.

Hope you can join us!

Thanks.

David Alvarez
GIS Division Director
davidalvarez76 (at) gmail (dot) com

Matthew D. Dunbar, PhD
GIS Assistant Division Director
mddunbar (at) uw (dot) edu

ASPRS - RSAD - Monthly Teleconference

Remote Sensing Application Division

Monthly Teleconference
30 July from 4:15 - 5:15 pm EST.

The Remote Sensing Application Division respectfully requests your participation in the newly-established monthly teleconference.  Scheduled for the last Monday of the month, we will begin meeting 30 July from 4:15-5:15 EST.

Preliminary agenda:
1)    RSAD Climate Change Committee Report
2)    Suggestions for 2013 Spring Conference  Special Sessions and Hot Topics
3)    Student involvement for academic credit
4)    Future RSAD activities
5)    Expanding RSAD involvement

Final agenda will be posted on the RSAD Web page: http://www.asprs.org/RSAD-Division.html
Phone bridge information:
USA Toll Free Number : 866-700-5166
Participant Passcode: 2453047

Mark your calendar and I look forward to hearing your input!

Thanks.

POC and host Dave Szymanski, Director RSAD
Szymanski_David (at) bah (dot) com

Event for the 40 years of Landsat

Here at Virginia Tech we will have a local event to commemorate the 40th year anniversary of Landsat. There will be a public viewing during the NASA/USGS press conference at McBryde Hall, room 136 at 11 am this Monday, July 23. Some free food and drinks will be provided.

Ioannis Kokkinidis
President of the Southwest Virginia ASPRS