Traditional landowners in north west Queensland, Australia will soon be recording and mapping their own cultural heritage sites under a new arrangement with the State Government. The Mt Isa-based Mitakoodi-Juhnjlar aboriginal people will be the first to be taught the technical skills needed to gather their own data. They will be learning skills on using GPS programs and secondly being able to record those results onto software which will then go to offi cial authorities for insertion into the official maps.
www.abc.net.au

An on-line street map of the city Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia and surrounding areas is now available, to assist tourists and locals alike to locate places of interests or business premises as well as find out local events. The website, www. kkmap.com/streetmap, developed by a local GIS/IT solution provider, Menggaris IT Sdn Bhd, gives detailed information for every building and road with an easy interface for all to use. The map is based on data approved by the national Mapping and Survey Department. The website, the first in the State, provides the opportunity for advertisers to promote their products and services to a wider audience.
www.dailyexpress.com.my

The government of Vietnam has approved a request by the Ministry of Post and Telematics (MPT), the General Statistics Offi ce (GSO) and the municipal People’s Committees of Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Danang to borrow $93.7 million from the World Bank to launch the e-government project. Of the total, Hanoi will have the largest loan package of $35 million, which it will use to push the project in 12 districts. Three local state offices comprising the Departments of Information Technology, and Planning and Investment, and the People’s
Committee Offi ce, will use the loan package to promote information technology and design the municipal e-government process and basic exchange portals. Hanoi authorities aim to offer at least three-to-five G2B (government-to-business) services including a GIS and online services to at least 15 per cent of its residents, as well as encouraging 35 per cent of small- and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) to use ICT. www.vneconomy.com.vn

Staff and students at several education institutions across U.K. are to be given free access to highly detailed Ordnance Survey digital mapping from this month. It is available through the online service, Digimap, provided by EDINA – a datacentre based at the University of Edinburgh and funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).Digimap allows users to view, print and download maps of any location in Great Britain at a series of pre-defined scales. www.publictechnology.net

Scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center in U.S. are producing a highresolution “National Biomass and Carbon Dataset” for the year 2000
(NBCD2000), the fi rst ever inventory of its kind. Through a combination of NASA satellite datasets, topographic survey data, land use/land cover
data, and extensive forest inventory data collected by the U.S. Forest Service, this “millennium” dataset will serve as an invaluable baseline for carbon stock assessment and flux modeling in the U.S. Funding for this project is provided by NASA’s Terrestrial Ecology Program for a habitable Earth, seeking to conserve and sustain forests, soils, water, and energy by demonstrating their value to human health and economic
prosperity. The Center sponsors initiatives in the Amazon, the Arctic, Africa, Russia, and North America.
www.eurekalert.org

Upgrades to county fl ood maps in U.S. have prompted lending institutions to require many of their customers to purchase fl ood insurance for the first time. Homeowners contend the added cost of such insurance is the only thing rising that threatens their well-being. The reason more people are being required to purchase flood insurance is flood maps, which indicate the areas of town that could see dangerously high water levels, were recently modified as part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) flood map modernization program. The goal of the program is to create a more accurate digital product that will improve floodplain management across the country. www.seacoastonline.com

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