LiDAR data from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is now available for the entire Twin Cities metro area!  LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) data is collected by airplanes equipped with special equipment which shoot laser light beams at the ground.  By measuring how quickly the light beams are reflected back from the ground the equipment is…

Today the 2013 FOSS4G North America Conference Committee announced that the 2013 FOSS4G North America Conference (FOSS4G-NA) will take place May 22-24 at the Marriott City Center in Minneapolis, MN.  FOSS4G brings together public and private-sector stakeholders, innovators and developers who are at the forefront of free and open source software for geospatial applications. FOSS4G-NA…

In conjunction with Arborwell and HostGIS, Flat Rock has deployed a version of MapFeeder to manage a tree inventory for the City of Berkeley, CA.  The city boasts over 50,000 trees and keeping them healthy is very important as they have a large and vibrant urban forestry program. Highlights of the application are the ability to view…

Second Harvest Heartland is running its summer food service program “Kids Eat Free” again this summer. Teaming with the Minnesota Department of Education, their goal is to fill kids nutritional gap during the summer months. Flat Rock created a Google Maps application to help people find the nearest location to their home offering this program…

The Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership (WCEP) was organized in 1999 as a joint effort between various government agencies (state and federal) and non-profits to restore a self-sustaining migratory population Whooping Cranes in eastern North America.  In order to assess the success of the project and to deal with issues in a timely fashion it was…

The Line magazine has published a story on how Flat Rock Geo was founded.  The Line  is an online magazine dedicated to telling stories of the new economy, covering topics from business, the ‘best places’ to work and play.

On May 22, 2011 a tornado touched down in the Twin Cities, tearing a destructive path through the City of Fridley.  Flat Rock Geographics (formerly GIS Rangers) has been meeting the city’s GIS needs for over 10 years. When the city called upon us to help assess and map the damage, we choose to deploy a mobile…

We are thrilled to announce the merger of Northstar Geographics and GIS Rangers into a single new company – Flat Rock Geographics, LLC. So why the change?  Northstar Geographics and GIS Rangers have been tossing each other work for the last couple of years.  As we worked more and more closely, it became apparent that…

A recent Star Tribute article highlighted the fantastic community GIS that St. Paul’s District 7 “Frogtown” neighborhood has created. Over the years Tait Danielson Castillo, executive director of the Frogtown Neighborhood Association has used many student interns to create simple maps for the neighborhood using ESRI desktop software.  However, as is often the case there was no continuity…

While writing this blog my wife said to me, “Isn’t it too late to write about that conference in Denver?”. My boss — who paid my way to FOSS4G — felt the sam way. He would have liked to have seen this come out a bit sooner. I contend that waiting a few weeks, letting…

RMB Environmental Laboratories (RMB) in Detroit Lakes, MN, works with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) to provide free water quality reports on many lakes throughout the state. Along with a laboratory analysis of each lake’s amount of phosphorus and chlorophyll-a, other observations such as water clarity, water levels, rainfall amounts and recreational suitability are also documented.

Where 2.0 Conference Santa Clara, CA April 19-21 The Business of Location No booth this year but Paul will be at the workshops and the full conference. Tweet him at @northstargis if you want to talk GIS, location intelligence, or about his mapFeeder and Geocruncher projects.

Enterprise Strategies for Location Intelligence Chicago, March 30-31 North America’s first location intelligence conference will address the needs of and challenges faced by companies selling to enterprise. Visit the Flat Rock Geographics booth and learn more about GeoCruncher and how it can help your business become more geographically intelligent.

Open Source GIS Workshop Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources Toronto, March 28-29 Managing Geospatial Metadata with GeoNetwork Open Source Flat Rock Geographics Principal Consultant, Paul Wickman will be teaching a workshop on using GeoNetwork Open Source for for managing geospatial metadata.

BI2011 Conference, Las Vegas, March 15-18 The most important event of the year for professionals that use and support SAP® solutions for reporting, business intelligence, and data management. Paul Wickman and Flat Rock Geographics will be at the Claricent, Inc. booth (a BI2011 Silver Sponsor) to unveil their new joint project, the GeoCruncher geospatial analytics…

Peter Fleck will be joining Flat Rock Geographics, LLC in March as a GIS programmer. Peter will be our first official employee! Peter worked at the University of Minnesota from 2001 until 2008 as a web applications developer for the Cancer Research Center. He helped in implementing a complete overhaul of the Cancer Center’s web…

Flat Rock Geographics, LLC was involved in a Science Museum of Minnesota archeology dig last summer. The archeological excavation is taking place in Dakota County’s Spring Lake Park Reserve as part of a six-month research project. When finished in September, scientists expect to have a better understanding of the Mississippi River’s importance to the people…

After spending several years working alone out of my home office, I recently decided to rejoin the daylight of the living. Last week I began working at CoCo in downtown St. Paul, which takes its name from its mission as a coworking and collabortive space. The Minneapoilis Star Tribute recently did a story on CoCo,…

We are thrilled to begin our next project with the International Crane Foundation (ICF). Maybe you’ve read about or seen pictures of ultralight airplanes leading Whooping Cranes on their annual migration. This year we will be extending ICF’s mapFeeder application to support this migration from Florida to Wisconsin and back again! For the first time…