MadMappers

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

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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.

You can find more on our AfricaGIS2005 page

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

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.

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

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For the past 5 months the website has been remarkably quiet. Those who are close to the MM community know that this has been because MadMappers’ commitments have grown to such an extent that we have had little time for the website.

This is actually not correct: for financial reasons first (too much traffic!) and technical reasons later we have had to move (and set-up) our servers 3 times in the last 5 months, so in reality we have spent lot of our time learning to do ourselves all sorts of “web stuff” we knew nothing about.

And then … we spent lot of energies in many different projects which will come to some concrete results in the next few weeks. We are very excited on the future, great things are on the pipeline and we will try to update you one project at the time in the next few days. A few keywords to keep you wondering: AfricaTopo, WorldWindAfrica, Space, AfricaGIS2005, UNO ….

As some of you might have noticed that the MadMappers’ forum has been moved on Yahoo!

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MadMappers/

and it now consists of 122 members. We receive an enormous amount of mails at info@madmappers.com and it would help us immensely if some of the “how do I …” would be directed to the forum.

Finally we would like to thank many MadMappers who have actively helped in the past months, in particular Hans, Peter, Duncan and Christian.

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AfricaTopo is a Mad project aimed at creating a 20m contour map of the African continent for use as a background map on a GPS. The project is well under way and the first step has now reached completion: South Africa.

The mapset includes 20m contour lines, elevation points, trig beacons, rivers, water areas and coastline. The set is compiled transparent so that it can be used in conjunction with other GPS maps e.g. overlaid on road maps on the GPS. More information can be found at

http://www.madmappers.com/AfricaTopo/AfricaTopo1.htm

As a bonus we have included on the AfricaTopo CD the latest version (ver.1,32) of NASA World Wind free 3D interactive map of the Globe with the plug-in for your GPS.

We thank the Chief Directorate of Surveys & Mapping of South Africa for providing the data thus making this first step possible and all their staff, Sue and Raoul in particular, for being extremely patient and helpful. It is remarkable how much passion for GIS and mapmaking can be found at CD:SM, it is rare to meet someone who has fun at work!

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