Spatially Enabled
The SAL Portal & Blog
Recently in SAL…
The end of January saw an increasing influx of staff and students return from their summer fieldwork and holidays, so its been a bit quiet on the blog but very busy in SAL!
Most notably over the last couple of weeks we have:
- Taken delivery of some more COWs, bringing our herd to 9
- Refreshed several computers in the TOL (Spatial Research Lab), only TOL11 to go and the lab will be full of shiny new computers
- Updated several sections of the SAL Portal – see below for details
- Done a lot of back-end work on the systems that help us to support the applied spatial science research projects – which will make it easier for us to keep track of all of you
- Helped to develop a (we think!) fun mini-lecture on the dangers of drop-bears and developing a field work plan for identifying the hunting grounds of this dangerous creature.
Spatial Data Management in Research Projects
Research is tricky. If we knew in advance that something was going to work, it’s probably debatable whether it is ‘research’ in a sense that really matters for your thesis. I mention this because, for most students, they are going to create a lot of different data files in the process of finding out what ‘works’ for their project. This post is about why you want to spend some time thinking about, and
managing, your spatial data as you travel through your candidacy.
If you are already on the journey, have a look at your spatial data. Go on, we’ll wait for you…
Done?
OK, be honest, did you see any files with a name like:
final_Final_reallyFinal_ThisIsIt_iMeanIt_2.shp?
(I swear I didn’t make this one up!)
What about “output22” or some variant of “this_one”?
This week in SAL
The big news this week is that our (currently small) herd of COWs had their first teaching experience today. By all reports, they behaved beautifully!
Several members of the School have suggested to me that using their asset numbers to distinguish them is BORING. So one of the challenges as our herd grows is going to be naming them. Read More
Why Cite Spatial Data?
Like any resource that you use in your research, you need to cite the sources of spatial data too. Creating, maintaining, and making spatial data available for others is a resource intensive activity – as I am sure you have realised if you’ve ever been into the field to collect data for yourself!
The good news is, it’s pretty easy to get these citations right.
This week in SAL
The School is in the process of acquiring a herd of COWs for use in the new Science Teaching Facility. As you can see from the picture, they are not ready for general use yet…
Who was Toni O’Neill?
I occasionally get asked who our postgraduate spatial research lab is named after and why we call it the TOL. If you were wondering…
Welcome to the SAL Tech Blog
This blog is an experiment for 2015.
If it works, we’ll try to keep it up 😉
artist: Samantha Hill
Spatially Enabled 