Events

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Africa GIS2005: World Wind Africa: African GIS accessible to all

Posted by Maurizio on 21 Nov 2005 | Tagged as: Events, Maps, NASA WorldWind, Virtual Globes

This is the title of our contribution to AfricaGIS 2005. The paper was co-authored by Patrick Hogan, the NASA LT World Wind project manager and attracted positive response by the African community. A number of African countries have expressed an interest in a customized World Wind country version.

You can view the paper by clicking here!

More information on the World Wind Africa initiative can be found at

WORLD WIND AFRICA link

AfricaGIS 2005: Beyond Talk: Geo-information working for Africa

Posted by Maurizio on 21 Nov 2005 | Tagged as: Events, Maps, NASA WorldWind, Virtual Globes

Over over 600 delegates and exhibitors from various parts of the World converged on the CSIR International Convention Center in Pretoria (Tshwane - South Africa) to attend the biennial continental GIS conference. One week (31 October to 4 November 2005) during which government, industry and international institutions met to assess the situation, look at new ideas and identify a way forward.

Madmappers was there to listen and learn how “things” are working out and what the future will bring us. And to present to an international audience the World Wind Africa initiative in association with NASA LT.

You can find more on our AfricaGIS2005 page

NASA WorldWind in South African schools

Posted by Maurizio on 03 Oct 2005 | Tagged as: Events, Maps, NASA WorldWind, Satellite Imagery, Virtual Globes

In occasion of the World Space Week (4-10 October 2005) WorldWind South Africa was introduced in South African schools.

WorldWind South Africa splash

This electronic atlas of Southern Africa fruit of the collaboration of  MadMappers, NASA, the SA Department of Science and Technology and coordinated by the SA Space Organization.

The launch in Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town was attended by Frank Frank Kuehnel (NASA Learning Technologies) who also gave a preview of of the Moon in 3D. In fact World Wind not only allows you to view the Earth in 3D, but also brings the universe to a desktop PC and is thus ideal in the creation of a “space culture”. In Frank’s own words the South African version simply showed how big the potential is for other people to step in and contribute! I think this opens a new paradigm of data distribution.

Mark Doherty from ESA ESRIN (the European Space Agency Centre for Earth Observation) was highly interested in MadMappers’ World Wind South Africa as a medium to bring ESA data to Africa. Mark extended an open invitation for MadMappers to present the project at ESA ESRIN headquarters in Frascati, Italy.

… will we ever be able to afford the trip? …

WorldWind is an open source 3D interactive world viewer created by NASA’s Learning Technologies project and released in mid-2004. It is now developed by NASA staff and open source community developers.

Blue Marble Next Generation: View of Africa

Essentialy WorldWind is a 3D “desk globe” which allows any user to zoom from outer space into any place on Earth. By simply using the mouse, the user is able to rotate the Earth or zoom closer to any point on the surface. WorldWind leverages satellite imagery and elevation data to allow users to experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if they were really there, virtually visiting any place in the world. In actual fact WorldWind is truly an interplanetary tool capable of visualizing “other worlds” such as the Moon, Mars, Venus and Jupiter and then go on to explore the far reaches of the universe itself.

MadMappers’ aim is to offer African users an open source customable platform on which to display spatial information relative to their country. World Wind Africa servers will eventually supply a wide selection of data, ranging from topological maps to vector data, from aerial photography and very high resolution imagery to DEMs.

Special thanks to the Free Earth Fundation and the World Wind Community (in particular to Nowak, f0urtyfive and Bull_[UK]) for making this project possible.

Downloads

NASA World Wind Version 1.3.5 (May 12, 2006)
(58,8 MB download)

World Wind South Africa ADD-ON

MadMappers site goes public

Posted by Maurizio on 01 Feb 2005 | Tagged as: Events, GIS software, Maps, Satellite Imagery

After a long development period www.madmappers.com goes live!
We are indeed disappointed for not having been able to secure a sponsored data server.
Many prospective sponsors have panicked as soon as they realized that the amount of download data would run in the order of hundreds of Gibabytes.
Hopefully by going live we will be able to spread our plea for one or more sponsored server.
We are particularly disappointed because we have been granted web distribution rights for South African data: we had planned to release for free download the topographic series scale 1:250k (70 maps) and 1:50k (over 2000 maps).
This would have been a first for the African continent and put MadMappers on the global map, next to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Our motto is “African GIS accessible to all”: isn’t out there anyone who shares this vision and does not wish to receive global exposure by associating its name with this ambitious project?
Until further notice www.madmappers.com will supply data on media only (i.e. CD or DVD) and only in exceptional circumstances by controlled download.We would like to extend a particulat thanks to Louis Cretier (Turin, Italy; mail: clovis@libero.it): he has dedicated many months of volunteer work in developing the Meltemi map search and management system which, in our humble opinion, is superb both for provider and user. For this project Louis had to develop from scratch many innovative ways to do “web things” so that web users (i.e. ourselves) could become “web providers” without knowing how.
Without Louis the MadMappers project would have never been.

Lot of work has still to be done both on the website and on loading of data.  For an overview of the currently available MM collection click here. As we write we have 12651 maps in archive!
to most recent

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