NATO NC3 Agency has awarded the GIS Data Preparation Contract to TENET supported by Galdos Systems Inc. and IIC Technologies Inc in Canada. The project involves the generation of a wide range of geospatial data models compliant with some of the latest spatial open information standards from OGC and ISO and the conversion of many terabytes of vector, raster and gridded data. A large proportion of NATO’s paper holdings of maps and charts will also be digitized and converted to the same set of open standards. The objective is to create an open and shareable map database as part of NATO core GIS infrastructure withinz the Alliance. At the forefront of these open standards are the two key encodings of GML and GMLJP2 to provide effective encoding for Raster and Coverage data.
www.galdosinc.com

The Joint Inspection Committee (JIC) of Nepal-China borders have agreed to further work out on incompatibilities of new data of boundary markers with data of old map attached in the 1979 protocol. The Nepalese and Chinese offi cials and experts discussed on improving GIS of Nepal-China boundary in December last year. The meeting decided to hold the fifth JIC meeting in China in April next year. www.gorkhapatra.org.np

The Department of Information Technology has decided to digitise the maps of Chandigarh. The new digitised maps will also include the Phase-III sectors which are sectors 48 to 56, Modern Housing Complex, Manimajra, Sector 38 West etc. A GIS will be prepared on the Estate Office and the soft copy map along with the database will be hosted on the National Informatics Centre (NIC) Headquarters server at New Delhi, which will be further published on web portal of Chandigarh Administration.
http://cities.expressindia.com

The OGC recently became a member of the www Consortium, (W3C, www.w3.org) a standards organization that develops interoperable technologies (specifi cations, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential.
www.opengeospatial.org

Infoterra Ltd has been appointed to provide technical assistance to the Government of Vietnam in the development of a proposal for the first phase of the Vietnam Land Administration Project (VLAP) Appointed by SIDA/The Swedish Embassy in Hanoi, Infoterra’s team will work in close co-operation with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE) and other Government of Vietnam agencies. www.infoterra.co.uk

Jeddah needs a network of monorails has been the recommendation of a study conducted by the Faculty of Environmental Design of King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah. The main objective of the study was to fi nd a mechanism for planning and operating a railway network in the city. www.khaleejtimes.com

Beginning the next fi nancial year, the Department of Land Reforms under the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, will launch a Comprehensive Modernisation of Land Records (CMLR) that will make all land records in the country online by the end of 11th Five-year plan. Under the scheme, all records for land and all other immovable properties would be computerised using aerial survey and digital mapping.
www.indianexpress.com

China’s market share of most domestically produced software accounts only about 5 percent in such fields as operating system, database, and offi ce software while domestic GIS software is over 35 percent, outshining all others, thus having broken the monopoly of foreign software in that field.

Open Geospatial Consortium Inc. (OGC) will launch an Interoperability Experiment on Geospatial linking. This Experiment will test methods for linking attribute data to those data records’ geospatial representations (typically stored as digital maps) when both data and geospatial representations are stored at separate locations on the Internet. The experiment is expected to validate the functions of Web services specified in the “Geospatially Linked Data Access Service (GDAS)” and “Geospatial Linking Service (GLS)”. The initiators of the Interoperability Experiment are: Natural Resources Canada (Geoconnections), University of Nottingham, Safe Software Inc., and Graphical Data Capture Ltd. Other organizations are encouraged to participate in or sign on as observers for this Interoperability Experiment.

This Arabian GIS software was developed by an Arabian developer’s team, independent of commercial software packages containing most of features of conventional GIS softwares like View and Edit shape files, build new layer, add existing layer, remove layers, swap layers, save layer, edit data table, modify table structure, edit map features, drawing new features, GPS, 3D, etc.
www.smartwebonline.com.