Tom, That's a pretty nice use case and one I've thought of coming from a Bioelectronics/Biomechanics educational background.
I think a lot more people would be using PostGIS if they saw it as a tool set of tools for visualizing and analyzing space, instead of "a toolset for GIS" The GIS word seems to be a turn-off for a lot of people who have spatial problems to solve but don't think of themselves as GIS practioners. I much prefer the term "Spatial" than GIS because it really focuses on what I think makes PostGIS great - "A tool for analyzing space" Thanks, Regina > -----Original Message----- > From: postgis-users [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf > Of Tom Kazimiers > Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2018 3:16 PM > To: PostGIS Users Discussion <[email protected]> > Cc: 'PostGIS Development Discussion' <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [postgis-users] PostGIS case usages > > Hi Regina, > > It might not really fit the book, because it's not exactly GIS, but our > PostGIS > use case is certainly an interesting one as well: As a software engineer at > the > Howard Hughes Medical Institute, I work on a collaborative neuron > reconstruction and analysis software called CATMAID [1] [2] (screenshot: [3]), > which is used for neuroscience research. We use PostGIS to represent neurons > in a 3D space. They consist of 3D points that reference their parent nodes or > are the root [=soma of neuron] if they have no parent). Together with > synapses, point clouds and TIN meshes for modeling compartments in a > dataset, they model the spatial aspects of our neuroscience world. Users > create those neuron reconstructions manually in a collaborative fashion plus > segmentation programs can be used as additional data source. Using its > spatial indices, PostGIS helps us to quickly query neurons in a particular > field > of view. The space of a single project contains sometimes 100s of millions of > interconnected individual points. We also do bounding box intersection > queries between neurons and compartment meshes, which then refine in the > front-end by doing more precise intersection tests. > > This software is used by quite a few research labs and as far as I know they > all > do their own hosting with a dedicated server and this is what we do as well. > The reason being mainly that wth larger datasets, we benefit from machines > with a lot of RAM (>256G), fast SSD/NVMe drives and many CPUs as well as > fast local data access for e.g. image data. > > Thanks so much for making PostGIS work well in non-GIS contexts too---it > makes my live much easier! Looking forward to the book! > > Cheers, > Tom > > [1] https://www.catmaid.org > [2] https://github.com/catmaid/CATMAID > [3] https://twitter.com/tomkazimiers/status/1057657843174772737 > > On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 01:05:52PM -0400, Regina Obe wrote: > >Hey all. So we've been in talks with our editor about having a 3rd > >Edition of PostGIS hopefully to be released around the same time as PostGIS > 3.0. > > > >I think they are more or less sold on the idea except they did ask > >about current market share and usage. > > > >Part of the reason for that is our previous editions focused a lot on > >"How do I use this function or do this weird sounding thing that only > >GIS people can make sense of" instead of "How do I do this real world > thing" > > > >So one of the thoughts was having our table of contents be more like > >"How do I do this with PostGIS" in somewhat laymen terms that most > >people can relate to - like Political Districting, Real Estate analysis > >(walk scores, elevation measurements to determine viablility of > >building on a plot of > >land) > > without scaring people off with "real world things" they can't relate > >to or in overly techy terms. > > > >Also since the 2nd Edition (which was in 2015 super ancient now since > >the New shiny version at the time was 2.1 and 2.1 is not even supported > >anymore). > >Other major thing changed is a lot of people are deploying PostGIS on > >cloud offerings like Amazon RDS, Microsoft Azure, and Google PostgreSQL > >for Cloud so we plan to cover a bit about some things relevant in those > >that may not be relevant when deploying on your own server. > > > >That said, if people can respond with what things they are currently > >using PostGIS for and also what hosting they are using for PostGIS, > >that would be helpful for us to get a better idea of focus points. > > > >It'd be great if you posted on the list, but if you are shy or need > >your usage anonymized, you can write directly to me. > > > >Thanks, > >Regina > > > >_______________________________________________ > >postgis-users mailing list > >[email protected] > >https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users > _______________________________________________ > postgis-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users _______________________________________________ postgis-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users
