Geo-Slope has released update 7.11 for Geo-Studio. This updated comes on the heals of a significant update in April, 7.10. This update fixes some bugs found in the 7.10 update. Click here for the full list. Download it here.
The Pittsburgh area has 49 active landslides or retaining wall failures in 29 neighborhoods according to a Pittsburgh Public Works Department survey. The estimated cost to fix 24 of those issues effecting public land is $7.4 million, which the City doesn’t have. Story source: Pittsburgh Live by way of Geology.com. (Map by BOB NEWELL/TRIBUNE-REVIEW)
[Updated May 30, 2008] I forgot to publish this post to the front page, whoops! The two links still have excellent information. In particular, Dave’s Landslide Blog has coverage of the many landslide lakes and the efforts to breach some of them. [/Update]
The latest numbers according to AFP, Worldwide News Agency, is 71,000 dead, missing or buried and over 5 million homeless. There were many victims that were buried by landslides and rockfall. In the past few days 200 rescue workers have been buried by mudslides.
For more coverage on landslides related to the earthquake, I recommend Dave’s Landslide Blog. Geology.com also has very comprehensive coverage as well. (AFP Photo)
The Association of State Dam Safety Officials publishes monthly news items related to levee and dam safety and associated projects. Their April news items were just published this week and there are several interesting items. Read on for more info.
In this long awaited second article in the series, I will dive into the meat of the VBA programming language, including code containers, data types, variables, math operators, built-in functions, flow control, and even debugging.. In the end, you should be able to code some fairly complex things including custom worksheet functions that you can use in your spreadsheet just like a regular formula. Also in this article I give you a sample spreadsheet with some useful utilities that you can use right away.
The O’Reilly Where 2.0 conference just wrapped up last week in Burlingame, CA. It is a big deal for developers, geographers, GIS developers, GPS equipment manufacturers and anyone else interested in location web services, GIS, mashups, and the so-called Geoweb. There were two presentations by some high profile players that may be of interest to the readers of GeoPrac.net. I have video versions of both after the break.
First, a presentation titled "State of the GeoWeb" given by Google Earth and Maps Director, John Hanke with some help from Jack Dangemond of ESRI. I think it gives you some interesting insights into the direction things are headed, particularly with some of the upcoming releases of ESRI GIS software and the interplay between location data that people have been producing for some time now and new ways of tapping into it using the web. Kind of a long presentation at around 30 minutes.
Second, Geoff Zeiss of Autodesk, Inc. (makers of AutoCad etc.) gives a presentation titled "Convergence of Architectural and Engineering Design and Location Technology". It deals with bridging the information created by different disciplines such as engineers, architects, trades and contractors into something more productive and usable using techniques such as 3D visualization and simulation. Length is approximately 15 minutes.
I’m a little behind with this one, regular readers might know why, but here are the top content items of the first three months of 2008 (as of 4/3/08 actually). They are in order of normalized hits (number of page impressions per day) with the total number of page impressions listed in parenthesis. There were a few near the top of the list that I was a little surprised to see and you might notice some funny math, but I didn’t bother to hand edit things. Click through for the whole list.
From ENR:
The San Diego County Water Authority board of directors last week certified the environmental impact report to raise San Vicente Dam by 117 ft.
The $568-million project, to be built on top of the existing San Vicente Dam in Lakeside, will expand the reservoir to hold an additional 52,000 acre-ft of water for use during emergencies and another 100,000 acre-ft of water to supplement imported supplies during dry periods.
The Dam will be constructed of roller compacted concrete and will reportedly be the largest dam raising ever performed in the US and the largest using roller compacted concrete in the world. (Photo by O’Connor Construction Management, Inc.)
Since Friday May 2, the Chaiten Volcano in Chile has been erupting steam and ash in a most spectacular fashion for the first time since 7400 BC. The column of ash and steam rose over 17 km high and drifted over the Andes Mountains into Argentina and over the Atlantic. The terrestrial and aerial/satelite imagery of this event is amazing and frightening. Geology.com has an excellent page covering the latest info on the Chaiten eruption.
There is concern now that the energy of the volcano has leveled off and a collapse of the ash column could happen at any time creating a pyroclastic flow of super-heated ash and vapors much like the one that buried Pompei. The photo at the left is of a lightning storm interacting with the dust and steam from the erruption, it looks like armageddon! (Photo by Carlos Gutierrez / UPV / Landov)
The regular news media as well as the geo-blogosphere are all abuzz about Monday’s 7.9 magnitude earthquake in central China. Official death toll is at 12,000 right now and that’s in Sichuan Province alone. My guess is that number will swell substantially in the coming days. If you haven’t seen photos and video yet, they are absolutely gut-wrenching. My heart and prayers go out to the victims of this disaster. (Photo by Liu Hai, AP)
Several geo-bloggers have posts about the earthquake. Harold Asmis of Ontario-GeoFish describes the earthquake as a "big valley-thrust earthquake" or what he calls the "Fist of God". Dave’s Landslide Blog has started compiling reports of landslides related to the earthquake in this landslide prone region of China. And here is the USGS info on the earthquake.
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