Santa Barbara, Calif. has a long history of fires—from the destructive blazes that were sparked by the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake to more recent wildfires in heavily populated San Diego, San Bernardino, and Los Angeles counties. In 2007, the state endured one of its most damaging forest fires in history: the Zaca fire.
Zero Carbon House is a project to deliver a low energy house. It is located on the Shetland Islands in northern UK. The project has been gaining much attention and much support. Plans have been developed to include solar and wind generation and a unique horticultural area as well. Vector1Media asked Michael Rea, the owner of the property to share his story about Zero Carbon House. The following is his personal account and description of the project.
Written by Joseph K. Berry, Jorge A. Delgado and Rajiv Khosla
To many, Precision Farming seems like an oxymoron. With mud up to the axles and 400 acres left to plough, precision seems worlds away. Yet site-specific management makes sense to an exponentially growing number of farmers. And production agriculture is at the cutting edge of geotechnology applications through mapping and analyzing the inherent variability in field conditions and linking the derived spatial relationships to management action.
Implementing
new software can be like a leap in the dark. You have to have faith
that the team will pick it up quickly or else productivity will dip.
But, let’s face it, nobody is ever very enthusiastic about learning
something new when they are under pressure. You might be prescient
enough to see what is needed – but it can be an uphill struggle to
get others to buy into what they see as a major upheaval.
The
term Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is described in Nebert’s SDI
Cookbook as “the relevant base collection of technologies,
policies and institutional arrangements that facilitate the
availability of and access to spatial data.” [1]
These infrastructures provide a basis for the evaluation and
application of spatial data for users and providers across all
sectors, including the general public. But is the IT community prepared for SDI?
Santa Barbara, Calif. has a long history of fires—from the destructive blazes that were sparked by the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake to more recent wildfires in heavily populated San Diego, San Bernardino, and Los Angeles counties. In 2007, the state endured one of its most damaging forest fires in history: the Zaca fire.
Zero Carbon House is a project to deliver a low energy house. It is located on the Shetland Islands in northern UK. The project has been gaining much attention and much support. Plans have been developed to include solar and wind generation and a unique horticultural area as well. Vector1Media asked Michael Rea, the owner of the property to share his story about Zero Carbon House. The following is his personal account and description of the project.
To many, Precision Farming seems like an oxymoron. With mud up to the axles and 400 acres left to plough, precision seems worlds away. Yet site-specific management makes sense to an exponentially growing number of farmers. And production agriculture is at the cutting edge of geotechnology applications through mapping and analyzing the inherent variability in field conditions and linking the derived spatial relationships to management action.
Implementing
new software can be like a leap in the dark. You have to have faith
that the team will pick it up quickly or else productivity will dip.
The
term Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is described in Nebert’s SDI
Cookbook as “the relevant base collection of technologies,
policies and institutional arrangements that facilitate the
availability of and access to spatial data.” [1]
These infrastructures provide a basis for the evaluation and
application of spatial data for users and providers across all
sectors, including the general public. But is the IT community prepared for SDI?