Spatial Miscellany » Geography

Wayne Rooney to buy father ArcGIS for Christmas?

Rob — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 10:08:05 +0000

Last week news broke that Wayne Rooney Senior had been arrested on grounds of involvement in a betting scam. This story wasn’t just about daft footballers and bags of money, this story was really one of Geography! In an attempt to better understand what happened, I mapped this story from the Daily Mirror using ArcGIS.com.

A bunch of guys from Liverpool decided to bet notable sums of money on the sending off of a Motherwell FC player. In the 83rd minute of the game, Steve Jennings had an argument with the referee and was sent off. Steve used to live in Liverpool, once playing for the mighty Tranmere Rovers before retiring to Motherwell in the Scottish Premier League. Steve’s sending off resulted in some hefty pay outs for the bookies, not unusual perhaps… until we map them:

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Mapping the payouts show a number of payouts in Liverpool, some 200 miles south of Fir Park (home to Motherwell FC). Now if this was Man United, whose fans do actually live more than 200 miles from Old Trafford – no bother, however, this isn’t Manchester United, this isn’t even an English League club, this is Motherwell FC.

Idiots. Or do we just need to get them a copy of ArcGIS?

The Value of GIS

Rob — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 09:26:22 +0000

Last month the National Audit Office (NAO) shared their findings from a review of value for money delivered by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) £40 Million investment in GIS. For every £4 spent on GIS, Defra delivers a £1 return on investment – ouch.

It’s worth casting an eye on the findings from the NAO, especially if you are in the process of drafting or updating your Geo Information strategy. The review suggests the existing strategy is technology heavy, and it’s hard to pass further comment with no exposure to the strategy or its implementation.

The key ‘finding’ in the report is familiar to all who work with GI – how do you quantify the value of GIS? It’s not tangible, it supports better decision-making, it’s a platform supporting the work of other departments, all of this is true, but frustratingly it doesn’t cut the mustard when it comes to establishing return on investment.

Executive Summary (PDF)
Full Report (PDF)
Methodology (PDF)

Here and There – a horizonless projection in Manhattan

Rob — Fri, 22 May 2009 22:27:47 +0000

It’s probably closer to art, than the maths of geodesy, but wouldn’t it look great on an iPhone navigating the streets of New York?

Here and There – a horizonless projection in Manhattan – the work of Schulze & Webb, a creative design agency based in London.

Going Local with a Crowd…

Rob — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:55:10 +0000

One thing that often frustrates me when working with a map is the absence of meaningful neighbourhoods. For example, try finding ‘Marchmont’ in Edinburgh, Scotland using Google Maps. You might find ‘Marchmont Road’ but that only gives an indication as to the area that the people of Edinburgh consider to be ‘Marchmont’ the neighbourhood.

A novel approach has been taken to resolve this and similar problems using Flickr’s 90 million geotagged photographs: The Shape of Alpha.

A handy demonstration of the API has been developed by Tom Talyor. A good example of the power of crowd sourced datasets.

It’s the Geography, Stupid…

Rob — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 08:54:42 +0000

Today America votes; drawing to a close another epic, media fuelled, billion dollar US presidential race. As always geography has played its role…

Earlier in the summer Ed Parsons noted the recruitment of a GIS analyst for the Obama campaign…

On the campaign trial John McCain struggled with the Iraq-Pakistan border…

A slip of tongue, or a clue to future foreign policy? Kevin Burke has noted similar geography hiccups from Barack Obama.

Of course long before November 4th, geography and GIS are at work carving the outcome of the election, the folks over at WhyTuesday have posted a clip to YouTube raising awareness of ReDistricting and the dark art of Gerrymandering…