Saving Lives with GPS
Don Cooke of TeleAtlas gave a short history of geodata over the last 40 years, then talked about the importance of geodata in disaster response scenarios. He showed us one of the tomtom dashboard navigation boxes that rescue personnel and police officers used to navigate flooded waterways during the weeks following Katrina.
Don also wins the award for the best slide of the Where 2.0 conference. Being a self-confessed nerd, Don’s the type of guy who has a GPS device with him at all times. He told a story about attending a wedding in Thailand. After the ceremony, the wedding party was traveling back to their hotel on a bus when the bus collided with a truck, flipped, and ended up on the side of the road. Don was GPS tracing at the time, so he plugged the trace into Google Earth. His slide showed a rural country road in Thailand with the path of the bus superimposed on top of it. You could plainly see where the bus flipped onto its side and slid across the street. Don also plotted 10-second intervals along the path so you could see how long it took him to climb out of the bus.
One of his other pet projects is called “The Wandering Cat.” Don strapped a GPS locator to his cat for a day, then plotted the data on a map of his neighborhood to see a trace of the cat’s daily rounds. He also showed us how to cut large patterns into a lawn by following a pre-programmed route while driving a riding mower.
He’s collected some of these projects into his book, Fun with GPS.
