I have embedded below the slides from Mike Goodchild’s excellent keynote at the GISRUK 2010 Conference.  In addition to Mike’s contribution many of the other speakers have uploaded their GISRUK slides here. You can also download all the extended abstracts from the conference. I am really pleased that the organisers have encouraged the dissemination of abstracts/ presentations beyond the conference delegates because they serve to increase the impact and awareness of the what is already a very well-attended event. Next year GISRUK is being hosted by the University of Portsmouth.

Here is the high resolution version of my GISRUK 2010 poster (link). I have also uploaded the extended abstract that accompanies the poster (link) for those wanting more detail.

Last week I entered the UCL Postgraduate Poster Competition. I managed a respectable second place in the Arts and Humanities category. Congratulations to Geography’s Jess Durkota for winning the category. Jon Reades from the Bartlett and CASA won his category so congratulations to him. You can download a full size pdf of my entry here.

On Tuesday last week three of us (links to Ollie and Dan) from UCL Geography headed up to the Scottish Highlands for the day. We got the Caledonian Sleeper train up and back. We hiked up a couple of Munros just south of Tulloch. You can find the route here. As the day wore on we noticed an approaching weather front but we had no idea it was going to dump 80cm of snow in 24 hours (BBC News). It was my first trip to the Highlands and I think I have used up all my luck with the weather already!

An interesting TED Talk from Eric Sanderson about how he and his team recreated the area of New York City before it became urbanised. It looks like most of the work was done with a GIS (ArcGIS 9.x by the looks of things). The video seeks to convey the impact that we have had on our environment. What resonated with me, however, was the power of GIS in an investigative or hind-casting context rather than the contemporary/ forecasting roles it is most often used for.

The recent earthquake in Haiti is probably the worst natural disaster seen in recent years. Such circumstances provide some of the most important applications of GIS. The charity MapAction has already deployed people to the area to supplement the other organisations contributing to the aid. One of the most powerful tools in this context are satellite images that provide a quick and effective means of assessing damage. Digital Globe have released a number of free images of Port au Prince in Haiti. When compared to Google Maps imagery from before the earthquake the devastation can be clearly seen.

ESRI have just announced that their latest beta release (ArcGIS 9.4) has been renamed to ArcGIS 10. You can here Jack Dangermond‘s reasons for this here. We, as an ESRI Development Centre, are part of the ArcGIS 10 beta program and couldn’t agree with this decision more. ArcGIS 10 has an entirely different feel to the 9. releases, but perhaps the greatest change for its users is the move towards Python and away from VBA in ArcObjects and the geoprocessing toolbox. ArcGIS 10′s scheduled release is before the 2010 User’s Conference in July.

I thought that this advert from the Humble Oil Company (now Exxon) provides an appropriate way to mark this week’s Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. It was published in a 1962 edition of Life Magazine and was re-discovered by the Grist.org website.

A plug for my PhD Upgrade presentation tomorrow. It starts at 5 and will be in the basement lecture theatre of UCL’s 1-19  Torrington Place. I will be talking about my research into the geography of Great British surnames. You find the full overview of my talk here.