Residents may have seen a distinctive white car, fitted with advanced imaging and sensory gadgetry, on its journey to create the next generation of Hong Kong maps.

As it travels up and down the city’s streets, it records the three-dimensional shapes of buildings ranging from the iconic Convention & Exhibition Centre to the Customs Headquarters Building, and even primary school campuses.

The vehicle, dubbed the Mobile Mapping System, is one of the latest technologies used by the Lands Department to survey the city.

Five pieces of equipment work in concert to collect detailed information for the 3D City Map - a core component of the digital infrastructure underpinning Hong Kong’s smart city development.

A high-resolution camera on top of the vehicle captures 360-degree images and a 3D laser scanner collects spatial measurements. An inertial navigation system and a global navigation satellite system receiver provide precise positioning.

Lands Department Assistant Land Surveyor Charlie Hung said one of the biggest advantages of this system is its ability to quickly and efficiently acquire data, which can be used to enrich 3D models and enhance existing maps.

“We can enhance the attributed information of our basic map. For example, the lamppost number, the building name or the street number.”

Drones are also used to map the city, she added. However, air surveying may not be suitable for collecting data from ground level. This is where the Mobile Mapping System vehicle comes into play.

Better data

The 3D City Map is part of the 3D Digital Map Development, which aims to contribute to an innovative, sustainable and smart Hong Kong.

Compared with traditional maps, the 3D City Map can provide more accurate and abundantly better spatial data.

The map will cover the entire city by 2023, serving as a handy tool for analysis and planning, according to Lands Department Land Surveyor Ben Fan.

He said: “Based on the 3D digital map, we can develop various kinds of applications such as land administration, environmental assessment, town planning and also transport and engineering studies.”

The latest transport infrastructures such as the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the Central-Wan Chai Bypass and the Heung Yuen Wai Highway have also been scanned.

In the next stage of the 3D Digital Map Development, the department will create the 3D Indoor Map. As a start, data from 150 buildings in Kowloon East will be collected first before extending to other buildings in the city.

The last stage 3D models of objects such as trees and lampposts for city modelling will be produced.

A former Disney World employee who now trains teachers outside Wichita, Kan., aims to give professional learning “elements of surprise and delight.”

Dear Editor,The United States' debt is some US$25 trillion. This debt grew by US$1 trillion in 35 days (April 1 to May 5). The US will likely not be able to permanently stop quantitative easing (money creation). This level of debt is similar to the US debt after World War II, but the US is no longer the factory of the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Value-Based Payments (VBP), health care’s new magic, “silver bullet” that will solve all our fraud problems. Last month, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a press release entitled, “HHS Proposes Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute Reforms to Support Value-Based and [...]

The post Fighting fraud in the new world of Value-Based Payments appeared first on Government Data Connection.

This is the 24th installment of The Rationalist, my column for the Times of India.

Back in the last decade, I was a cricket journalist for a few years. Then, around 12 years ago, I quit. I was jaded as hell. Every game seemed like déjà vu, nothing new, just another round on the treadmill. Although I would remember her fondly, I thought me and cricket were done.

And then I fell in love again. Cricket has changed in the last few years in glorious ways. There have been new ways of thinking about the game. There have been new ways of playing the game. Every season, new kinds of drama form, new nuances spring up into sight. This is true even of what had once seemed the dullest form of the game, one-day cricket. We are entering into a brave new world, and the team leading us there is England. No matter what happens in the World Cup final today – a single game involves a huge amount of luck – this England side are extraordinary. They are the bridge between eras, leading us into a Golden Age of Cricket.

I know that sounds hyperbolic, so let me stun you further by saying that I give the IPL credit for this. And now, having woken up you up with such a jolt on this lovely Sunday morning, let me explain.

Twenty20 cricket changed the game in two fundamental ways. Both ended up changing one-day cricket. The first was strategy.

When the first T20 games took place, teams applied an ODI template to innings-building: pinch-hit, build, slog. But this was not an optimal approach. In ODIs, teams have 11 players over 50 overs. In T20s, they have 11 players over 20 overs. The equation between resources and constraints is different. This means that the cost of a wicket goes down, and the cost of a dot ball goes up. Critically, it means that the value of aggression rises. A team need not follow the ODI template. In some instances, attacking for all 20 overs – or as I call it, ‘frontloading’ – may be optimal.

West Indies won the T20 World Cup in 2016 by doing just this, and England played similarly. And some sides began to realise was that they had been underestimating the value of aggression in one-day cricket as well.

The second fundamental way in which T20 cricket changed cricket was in terms of skills. The IPL and other leagues brought big money into the game. This changed incentives for budding cricketers. Relatively few people break into Test or ODI cricket, and play for their countries. A much wider pool can aspire to play T20 cricket – which also provides much more money. So it makes sense to spend the hundreds of hours you are in the nets honing T20 skills rather than Test match skills. Go to any nets practice, and you will find many more kids practising innovative aggressive strokes than playing the forward defensive.

As a result, batsmen today have a wider array of attacking strokes than earlier generations. Because every run counts more in T20 cricket, the standard of fielding has also shot up. And bowlers have also reacted to this by expanding their arsenal of tricks. Everyone has had to lift their game.

In one-day cricket, thus, two things have happened. One, there is better strategic understanding about the value of aggression. Two, batsmen are better equipped to act on the aggressive imperative. The game has continued to evolve.

Bowlers have reacted to this with greater aggression on their part, and this ongoing dialogue has been fascinating. The cricket writer Gideon Haigh once told me on my podcast that the 2015 World Cup featured a battle between T20 batting and Test match bowling.

This England team is the high watermark so far. Their aggression does not come from slogging. They bat with a combination of intent and skills that allows them to coast at 6-an-over, without needing to take too many risks. In normal conditions, thus, they can coast to 300 – any hitting they do beyond that is the bonus that takes them to 350 or 400. It’s a whole new level, illustrated by the fact that at one point a few days ago, they had seven consecutive scores of 300 to their name. Look at their scores over the last few years, in fact, and it is clear that this is the greatest batting side in the history of one-day cricket – by a margin.

There have been stumbles in this World Cup, but in the bigger picture, those are outliers. If England have a bad day in the final and New Zealand play their A-game, England might even lose today. But if Captain Morgan’s men play their A-game, they will coast to victory. New Zealand does not have those gears. No other team in the world does – for now.

But one day, they will all have to learn to play like this.

© 2007 IndiaUncut.com. All rights reserved.
India Uncut * The IU Blog * Rave Out * Extrowords * Workoutable * Linkastic

This is the 24th installment of The Rationalist, my column for the Times of India.

Back in the last decade, I was a cricket journalist for a few years. Then, around 12 years ago, I quit. I was jaded as hell. Every game seemed like déjà vu, nothing new, just another round on the treadmill. Although I would remember her fondly, I thought me and cricket were done.

And then I fell in love again. Cricket has changed in the last few years in glorious ways. There have been new ways of thinking about the game. There have been new ways of playing the game. Every season, new kinds of drama form, new nuances spring up into sight. This is true even of what had once seemed the dullest form of the game, one-day cricket. We are entering into a brave new world, and the team leading us there is England. No matter what happens in the World Cup final today – a single game involves a huge amount of luck – this England side are extraordinary. They are the bridge between eras, leading us into a Golden Age of Cricket.

I know that sounds hyperbolic, so let me stun you further by saying that I give the IPL credit for this. And now, having woken up you up with such a jolt on this lovely Sunday morning, let me explain.

Twenty20 cricket changed the game in two fundamental ways. Both ended up changing one-day cricket. The first was strategy.

When the first T20 games took place, teams applied an ODI template to innings-building: pinch-hit, build, slog. But this was not an optimal approach. In ODIs, teams have 11 players over 50 overs. In T20s, they have 11 players over 20 overs. The equation between resources and constraints is different. This means that the cost of a wicket goes down, and the cost of a dot ball goes up. Critically, it means that the value of aggression rises. A team need not follow the ODI template. In some instances, attacking for all 20 overs – or as I call it, ‘frontloading’ – may be optimal.

West Indies won the T20 World Cup in 2016 by doing just this, and England played similarly. And some sides began to realise was that they had been underestimating the value of aggression in one-day cricket as well.

The second fundamental way in which T20 cricket changed cricket was in terms of skills. The IPL and other leagues brought big money into the game. This changed incentives for budding cricketers. Relatively few people break into Test or ODI cricket, and play for their countries. A much wider pool can aspire to play T20 cricket – which also provides much more money. So it makes sense to spend the hundreds of hours you are in the nets honing T20 skills rather than Test match skills. Go to any nets practice, and you will find many more kids practising innovative aggressive strokes than playing the forward defensive.

As a result, batsmen today have a wider array of attacking strokes than earlier generations. Because every run counts more in T20 cricket, the standard of fielding has also shot up. And bowlers have also reacted to this by expanding their arsenal of tricks. Everyone has had to lift their game.

In one-day cricket, thus, two things have happened. One, there is better strategic understanding about the value of aggression. Two, batsmen are better equipped to act on the aggressive imperative. The game has continued to evolve.

Bowlers have reacted to this with greater aggression on their part, and this ongoing dialogue has been fascinating. The cricket writer Gideon Haigh once told me on my podcast that the 2015 World Cup featured a battle between T20 batting and Test match bowling.

This England team is the high watermark so far. Their aggression does not come from slogging. They bat with a combination of intent and skills that allows them to coast at 6-an-over, without needing to take too many risks. In normal conditions, thus, they can coast to 300 – any hitting they do beyond that is the bonus that takes them to 350 or 400. It’s a whole new level, illustrated by the fact that at one point a few days ago, they had seven consecutive scores of 300 to their name. Look at their scores over the last few years, in fact, and it is clear that this is the greatest batting side in the history of one-day cricket – by a margin.

There have been stumbles in this World Cup, but in the bigger picture, those are outliers. If England have a bad day in the final and New Zealand play their A-game, England might even lose today. But if Captain Morgan’s men play their A-game, they will coast to victory. New Zealand does not have those gears. No other team in the world does – for now.

But one day, they will all have to learn to play like this.

The India Uncut Blog © 2010 Amit Varma. All rights reserved.
Follow me on Twitter.

• The 3DEXPERIENCE Platform combines modeling, simulation, data science, artificial intelligence and collaboration in the virtual world to achieve sustainable innovation in life sciences • Dassault Systèmes, together with Medidata Solutions, will lead the digital transformation of life sciences in the age of personalized medicine and patient-centric experience • Connecting the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform with Medidata’s Clinical Trial platform connects the dots between research, development,...

VELIZY-VILLACOUBLAY, France — November 13th, 2019 — Dassault Systèmes (Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) is holding a Life Sciences Day for analysts and investors, today, Wednesday, November 13th, 2019 starting at 09.00 am ET in New York. The event includes presentations by the senior executive management team. The sessions are being webcast live and will be available for replay by accessing https://investor.3ds.com/events/event-details/life-sciences-day. Bernard Charlès, Dassault Systèmes’ Vice...

The World Bank indicated in its new report "Building Competitive Green Industries: The Climate and Clean Technology Opportunity for Developing Countries" that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries are set to undergo significant growth and create more jobs in the field of clean technology. Anabel Gonzalez, senior director for the World Bank's Global Practice on Trade and Competitiveness, said developing home-grown clean-tech industries will help developing countries more effectively increase the adoption of low-cost clean energy and drive sustainable economic development.

...

Savio Carvalho is a Global Campaign Leader at Greenpeace International. Twitter: @savioconnects

 
And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it
                                                                                                               ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

The post Why the International Day of Multilateralism Must Start a New World Order appeared first on Inter Press Service.

LONDON: Major social advances have often emerged from the depths of disaster: the Black Death brought an end to serfdom, and Britain’s welfare state emerged from the ruins of World War II. As the coronavirus outbreak took hold, many governments brought in policies previously dismissed as...

The “Equal Earth” projection shows the true area of continents such as Africa without greatly distorting their shapes and is already being adopted by NASA

Due to COVID-19, what we think of as traditional funerals are unable take place in Saskatchewan, and it's taking a toll on those who have lost loved ones.

AFL and NRL players begin to get used to the "weird" sensation of playing matches inside empty stadiums as both competitions step up measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

There is going to be a time in the not too distant future, when the fuller picture of the healthcare impacts of COVID-19 come into sharper focus. When that happens, it is not likely to be pretty. In large part, … Continue reading →

Let that sink in for a second: Over a period of 18 hours and 40 minutes on September 29th, Muhammed Yousuf Jamil, a Lance Naik (Lance Corporal) in the Pakistani Army singlehandedly

Considering going solar? Consider what SunPower is up to right now. Demand Better Solar™. Ask for SunPower.

A supercell thunderstorm in Argentina delivered shockingly huge hailstones to the heavily populated city of Villa Carlos Paz.

Considering going solar? Consider what SunPower is up to right now. Demand Better Solar™. Ask for SunPower.

The 20-year-old demonstrated that he had made another great stride after breaking his own pole vault world record by clearing 6.18m at the Indoor Grand Prix in Glasgow on Saturday.

DEREK LAWRENSON IN LOS ANGELES: Imagine having a local rapper chanting rhymes to a sizeable crowd as you prepare to play to the par three 16th at the Genesis Invitational pro-am. 

EXCLUSIVE BY NIK SIMON: New World Rugby vice-chairman Bernard Laporte has pleaded with Agustin Pichot not to walk away from the sport after his 28-23 election defeat.

SPECIAL REPORT: On the Welsh beat Wayne Pivac, the ex-Auckland copper on the streets in the 1980s, is unlikely to feel the pressure his old day-job brought against Italy.

Dewey Library - HC79.I55 L435 2018

Dewey Library - HT1523.L285 2019

Lawler, Edward E., III, author

Dewey Library - HF5549.5.D37 B733 2018

Sequel to Grammy-nominated bestseller Under the Big Black Sun, continuing the up-close and personal account of the L.A. punk scene, with 50 rare photos.

Rotch Library - HT153.N49 2019

Rotch Library - NA1053.P552 A4 2019