On May 11th we held our annual conference at Brookhaven National Lab. We had four very informative sessions. Jim Daly from Suffolk County IT explained how their Suffolk iMap web mapping application has matured. He expressed that in the future they may move into a Java/HTML 5 setup. This seemed to be a widely accepted choice as the use of Java and HTML 5 allows for cross platform development and seems to be future proof.
Mark Yedlin, Director of Simulation Modeling Services for Greenman-Pedersen, Inc. gave a presentation on Traffic Modeling in lower Manhattan. This presentation was very interesting because of the vast amounts of data that was captured and how it was then massaged into a usable format. The main focus was on getting New York City busses through the financial district in a more expedient manner. The model included bike traffic, pedestrian traffic, car and truck traffic, traffic signalling etc.
Bill Timmins from GIS Services spoke about the digital pen and other devices. The Capturex Digital Pen looked interesting. It uses a dot matrix that is printed on the paper to figure out where it is. This tool has many useful applications that he showed us in his presentation. Bill explained how he has extensive experience dealing with clients in municipal environments.
Michael Naughton from the Town of Huntington Highway Department spoke about how his department used GIS/GPS technology to manage resources during Tropical Storm Irene.
The event kicked of at 9:45am and ended at around 3pm. There were over 50 people in attendance and they warmly welcomed each speaker. There were vendors from various companies in the hall showing GIS/GPS tools and software.
