Darren Wiens of SparkGeo demonstrates an AI-driven approach to generating audio descriptions for interactive web maps. The overall process is simple yet effective:
Convert the current map view to an image.
Upload the image to OpenAI’s API to return a text description of the images.
Upload the text description to OpenAI’s API to receive the audio of the text description.
It’s one example of how new generative AI technologies can be put to good use. It is simply impossible for humans to provide alt-text for large interactive maps and AI is the one (the only?) way to make textual descriptions of maps scalable.
This looks like an interesting event: Element84 are hosting a three-hour workshop on user-centred design with a specific focus on geospatial applications:
Join us for a comprehensive 3-hour experience tailored for UX Designers delving into geospatial patterns, Frontend Developers honing essential UX design skills, as well as Leaders and Management keen to understand the profound impact of effective design on geospatial workflows. Immerse yourself in geospatial patterns, tackle hands-on design challenges, and absorb essential UX principles meticulously crafted to meet the specific demands of the geospatial sector. Whether you’re looking to seamlessly integrate geospatial patterns into your design mockups, enhance your understanding of how users will interact with your software, or understand the value of a targeted design process, this workshop ensures you depart with practical skills for creating useful and impactful geospatial applications.
The workshop is scheduled for 19 March. Tickets are 75USD.
Placemark is the map editor software-as-a-service that I built for several years. It’s a website where you can import, create, edit, export, publish, and visualize geospatial data.
You can serve PMTiles directly from a cloud object storage but in some cases, you want to control who accesses data and how often—and you need a server for that. Craig Kochis wrote up two examples of how to serve PMTiles using a NodeJS server application from a co-located file and S3.
I tried to estimate the cost of hosting Protomaps on AWS before; now there’s a handy tool for that. Based on monthly tile requests you can compare the cost of hosting Protomaps on AWS or Cloudflare with the cost of using maps from Google or hosted map-tile providers.
A webinar on cloud-native geospatial technologies and their applications in the pacific region features four speakers:
Wei Ji Leong of Development Seed introduces cloud-optimised data formats for geospatial data, focussing on imaging, multi-dimensional data cubes, point clouds and vector data.
Alex Leith of Auspatious talked through the history of Digital Earth platforms, and how cloud-native spatial data have shaped and influenced their development.
Leo Ghignone from the University of Tasmania explained how IMOS, the Integrated Marine Observing System, use cloud-optimised data to support oceanographic research around the Great Barrier Reef.
Fang Yuan of Frontier SI shared a perspective from application developers who used cloud-native data to implement scalable and performant geospatial solutions.
collection-transaction is a new STAC extension proposing an API for managing STAC collections and providing a clean REST interface for managing collection metadata:
POST to create,
PATCH or PUT to update, and
DELETE to delete an item.
stac-fastapi’s transaction extension already supports collection management, but its implementation is inconsistent with transactions API for items. collection-transaction will align both APIs and provide a consistent standard for managing STAC metadata.
Brian Timoney contemplates why talented GIS professionals seek employment in other areas, tracing the problem to broad scoped roles and lower pay compared to similar roles in other industries.
Even discounting the vagaries of job titles, the skew in the distribution of GIS Analyst salaries is notable because it implies a stagnant middle grinding away while effectively blocking the ability of new entrants to rapidly ascend the wage scale as you’d find in more “normal” distributions
I have no numbers to back this up, but my gut feeling is that most GIS Analysts work in civil service. Salaries in civil service are tightly regulated; you don’t just negotiate a higher pay unless your department has a role in a higher salary band and you land that job. That might explain why we’re seeing this skew towards lower salaries and the limited upward mobility.
That said, Brian’s point is correct: GIS-specific roles are often too broadly scoped and underpaid.
The very popular SatSummit is back next year on the 16 and 17 May, as always in Washington DC.
SatSummit convenes leaders in the satellite industry and experts in global development for 2 days of presentations and in-depth conversations on solving the world’s most critical development challenges with satellite data.
At this point, the organisers are looking for sponsors; if you have a couple of bucks to spare, consider sponsoring one of the few events that usually assembles a truly diverse set of speakers. The call for session proposals and registration have not yet been announced.