All posts by Nicholas Duggan FRGS Cgeog (GIS)

What’s within a 30-minute Walk – Revisited

I recently had reason to be in London for a short meeting and walked past London Bridge, looked at the sky around me, and thought, “I wonder how accurate that map I made last year is?” I was fortunate to have my camera phone with me so that I could take a few pictures. The...

What Is Esri?

Over the last few years we (at xyHt) have discussed Esri as an industry-leading GIS many times, but what is it? What is ArcMap, ArcGIS Pro, or any of the other things with “Arc” names? The truth is a little confusing, but at the same time a little clever. In this blog I hope to demystify...

Ben Flanagan

Interview with Esri’s Ben Flanagan

Ever wonder who makes those maps you see in the newspaper? Ben has made maps for the Telegraph, the Guardian, and BBC News, and best of all (to me) he’s from the UK! Ben is like a ninja—not many people know about him but those that do are avid fans of his work. It was...

3D Cities from a Single System

Above: This screenshot is of CityMapper output. A look at the hybrid airborne system that combines lidar with oblique and nadir imagery. Over the last five years I’ve built and used a lot of 3D GIS and BIM models. Almost all of this has required the capture of stereo imagery and oblique imagery and a...

Creating Album Covers with GIS—or Drawing Elevation as Vector Lines

In July 2014, a developer and neocartographer from Scotland created the “Joy Divionesque 3D Map.” This began a four-year onslaught of maps that replicate the style of the iconic Joy Division album cover, “Unknown Pleasures.” How does it work? Essentially the elevation is taken from an underlying terrain or digital surface map as points, which...

Living Atlas

Interview with Esri’s John Nelson

A few years ago, John Nelson was relatively unknown in the public eye, but in the last year he has gained attention through work he’s been doing with Esri GIS software. Who would have thought you could recreate the Lord of the Rings maps or simulate paper or watercolors using Esri GIS? Theses are just...