MalaGIS

Sharing GIS Technologies, Resources and News.

Within a week of the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in North America, an international scandal broke out in the stands. On June 11, after the South Korean team defeated the Czech Republic 2-0 at the Guadalajara Stadium, Korean influencer Ino Cat was recording a celebration video in the stands. In the frame, a man wearing a green Mexico jersey behind her pulled his eyes sideways, making a "slanted-eye" gesture. The video quickly went viral on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Ino Cat captioned it: "You come all the way to the World Cup... and face racism."

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For applications such as digital twins, urban simulation, and low-altitude economy route planning, displaying realistic street views or 3D environments traditionally relies on oblique photography, LiDAR point clouds, or manual modeling. These processes are time-consuming, costly, and many areas lack even basic 3D base maps. Recently, AMAP CV Lab launched an intriguing online tool called ABot Earth Studio, which claims to convert planar satellite images directly into navigable 3D spaces. I’ve tried it out and would like to share an overview.

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8848.86 — what comes to mind when you hear this number? That’s right, the height of Mount Everest. But why does this figure keep changing from what you remember? Recently, a surveying documentary titled 8848.86 held its preview screening in Lhasa and officially kicked off nationwide cinema promotion. We haven’t found any screening information in Wuhan yet, so we’ve gathered some material to give you a sneak peek.

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When working on marine GIS projects, we often need to find public data — nearshore bathymetry and topography, ocean current and wave forecasts, satellite remote sensing imagery, in-situ observations from marine stations... In the past, such data were scattered across various maritime institutions, making them time-consuming and laborious to locate, with inconsistent formats. On World Ocean Day 2026 (June 8), the Ministry of Natural Resources released the "Second Batch of Open and Shared Marine Data Catalog", and the data products listed have been simultaneously made available on the National Marine Big Data Service Platform (Ocean Cloud). Today, we recommend this easy-to-use national-level marine data download platform.

About the National Marine Big Data Service Platform (Ocean Cloud)

The National Marine Big Data Service Platform, also known as Ocean Cloud, is a national-level online marine data service platform organized by the Ministry of Natural Resources and constructed and operated by the National Marine Data and Information Service. Its official website is:

https://oceancloud.nmdis.org.cn/home

First launched on World Ocean Day (June 8, 2024), the platform is China's first national-level marine big data service platform. It integrates multi-source data resources including the national global ocean stereoscopic observation network, maritime departments, and research institutes, providing one-stop services such as data search, online preview, free download, on-request access, online computation and analysis, and product customization. The data originates from national marine observation surveys and operational production systems. The data are clearly categorized, covering everything from nearshore observations to global ocean hydrography, meteorology, bathymetry, and satellite remote sensing, basically meeting the needs of common marine GIS projects.

Platform data are continuously updated. The "Second Batch of Open and Shared Marine Data Catalog" released on June 8 adds, on the basis of the first batch's 37 products, updated 2024–2025 China marine observation standard datasets, integrated global ocean hydro-meteorological and bathymetric/topographic datasets, and ten new global ocean 3D temperature-salinity, current, wave, air temperature, and pressure fusion datasets, as well as seven global ocean hydro-meteorological statistical analysis products. According to the Ministry of Natural Resources, since the release of the first catalog in 2024, the platform has provided data services to over one hundred users more than 600,000 times, totaling over 100 TB and more than 600 million records — a substantial volume.

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Recently, while (pretending to) study seriously by watching short videos, I often came across information about Xiaomi Maps. A popular speculation is that Xiaomi's nationwide road testing of the Yu9 is not just for vehicle validation but also for data collection. It sounded quite plausible. So I decided to verify it. Due to my limited connections and possible product confidentiality, I could not obtain substantial inside information. However, I have organized the publicly available information I could find.

PS: Additional information is welcome.

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In early June 2026, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) officially released the OGC Features and Geometries JSON standard, commonly known as JSON-FG, as document number 21-045r1, version 1.0.0. After a quick review of the OGC standard details, the gist is that it addresses some capability gaps in GeoJSON, further expands GeoJSON's application scenarios, unifies specifications, and reduces private attributes. If you work with WebGIS, OGC APIs, or vector data exchange tools, you can follow along to understand what JSON-FG adds and assess whether your existing projects need to support it.

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GeoServer is an open-source map server under OSGeo, playing a core role in WebGIS systems for spatial data publishing and OGC standard services. Whether it is classic services like WMS, WFS, WCS, or integration with data sources such as PostGIS, Shapefile, and GeoTIFF, GeoServer remains a common choice in many domestic government, land, emergency, and other industry projects.

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QGIS is one of the most widely used open-source desktop GIS applications globally. Vector editing, spatial analysis, cartographic output, the Processing toolchain, and 3D views are all high-frequency capabilities in daily production. On May 29, 2026, the QGIS project released two maintenance versions on the same day: 4.0.3 and 3.44.11, targeting the new QGIS 4 mainline and the 3.44 long-term support branch respectively. Based on the commit history in the GitHub Releases, this article summarizes the key updates. Both versions focus on stability fixes and experience polishing, making them suitable for teams running production projects to evaluate upgrades.

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CesiumJS is one of the core engines for 3D earth and 3D map development on the web. It is widely used in photorealistic 3D, oblique photography, BIM, and other scenarios, and serves as the "standard client" for the 3D Tiles ecosystem. On June 1, 2026, the Cesium team released CesiumJS 1.142, focusing on large-scale data rendering performance, the integration of vector tiles with 3D Tiles, and improvements to the low-level BufferPrimitive rendering capabilities. Here is an introduction based on the official Releases.

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From May 27 to 29, the 24th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 16th Beijing Municipal People's Congress was held. At the meeting, the Beijing Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation Regulations (Draft) (hereinafter referred to as the "Draft Regulations") was submitted for deliberation. The draft consists of 8 chapters and 66 articles, and intends to replace the Beijing Surveying and Mapping Regulations enacted in 2003 through an "abolish the old and establish the new" approach.

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