Joyce Gross is our most avid VTM photography buffs. Here are two new VTM reshoots for our viewing pleasure. Her original post here.

She says: This was the first VTM photo site I've found that required a hike to get there. Not only was the photo not taken from a road, but it was not taken from a trail. The hike from my car to the site was a little over a mile, but it felt like more. It was all uphill, and we didn't really know where we were going. The first 2/3 of the hike was along a narrow, rocky road (image below). The last third of the hike involved somewhat random wandering over rocks and around bushes towards a view we hoped to see but weren't sure exactly where it was. My Garmin GPS, and Gaia GPS on my iPad, were my friends on this hike, helping us get to the photo location and, especially, helping us get back. Thanks Joyce!

Joyce's photograph

Joyce's photograph of French Lake

I spoke yesterday at the CEGA-DIME* co-sponsored event: Measuring Development: Energy & Environment.  This was a terrific day of interesting talks, thoughtful conversations and great networking.

This workshop brought together engineers, social scientists, donors, and practitioners to discuss the use of novel measurement tools--including sensors, sensor networks, microsatellite imaging, and other remote sensing technologies--in energy and environment research. 

I presented an "ignite" talk on some of our mapping work and talked about the idea of "Spatial Data Science". There were a number of highlights. Matt Hancher from Google gave a great overview of Google Earth Engine and asked: "What if the micro-satellite imagery revolution works. What will you do with the data?” Great and timely question. Big Spatial Data workshop to the rescue! We heard from people at the Energy Institute at Haas who are looking at smart sensors, iButtons and billing networks to understand energy usage around the world; Ronald Cohen from the Climate Readiness Institute spoke; there was tons of discussion about low earth orbit micro-satellites from Skybox and the Spire company (they monitor AIS beacons on ships yet they also can still find them as they move back and forth through fishing zones and turn off their beacons); there was a great idea from Tony Vodacek from RIT on the need to develop “a remote sensing playbook”: What are the sensors, resolutions, bands that are needed for a particular task?. David Lobell from Stanford highlighted some of his great work in remote sensing of crop yields; and Sol Hsiang from the Goldman School outlined his fascinating work on natural disasters, economies and violence.

Background: Technologies for measuring the adoption and impact of development interventions have seen substantial innovation over the past several years—examples include the use of microsatellite data for mapping weather patterns and agricultural yields, sensors for tracking behavior change, smart meters for recording real-time energy use, continuous emissions monitoring systems for measuring particulate matter, and platforms for smartphone- and tablet-based survey data collection. At the same time, network protocols for data management, visualization, and analysis have drastically improved.

*CEGA =UC Berkeley's Center for Effective Global Action; DIME = World Bank's Development Impact Evaluation Initiative

The UC Berkeley Graduate 
Certificate 
in
 Geographic 
Information 
Science 
and
 Technology
 (GIST)
 has been approved, and is up and running. This certificate will provide
 an 
academic
 structure 
for 
an 
interdisciplinary 
exchange 
of
 ideas 
around
 geospatial
 information 
and 
analysis.

Certificate
 students 
will
 not 
only
 participate 
in
 a 
cutting‐edge 
program 
and
 receive
 explicit
 recognition
 of 
specialization 
in
 GIST
 by 
virtue 
of
 the
 Graduate
 Certificate 
but
 will 
be
 well
 positioned
 to
compete
 for
the
 most
 desirable 
jobs 
in 
geospatial
t echnology,
 both 
in
 academia
 and 
in 
industry.

Requirements include at
 least 
three 
courses, 
or 
a
 total
 of
 90 
hours
 of
 instruction, 
and
 earn 
a
 minimum 
grade
 of
 B, and participate in a GIST Roundtable (such as the geolunch series from the GIF). The full proposal detailing requirements can be found below. Please note that acceptable courses will be updated as new courses are offered. 

For more information, please click here.

NOTE: THIS CERTIFICATE IS FOR CURRENTLY ENROLLED GRADUATE STUDENTS AT UC BERKELEY. It is not a professional GIS certificate for non-students.