GeoSpatial Systems – Metaknowledge Mashup

Dan Rickman

GeoSpatial SG

Agenda

What are GIS

What is GeoSpatial Data

Data management issues

Neo-Geography

Standards

Current and future developments

What are GeoSpatial Systems?

Known as Geographic Information Systems, Spatial Information Systems

Enables capture, modelling, storage, retrieval, sharing, manipulation and analysis of geographically referenced data

Not CAD! Database is at the heart – as is “attribute” data

Model developing – perhaps GeoSpatial data better seen as “attribute” of alphanumeric business information

Presentation does not have to be map-based in all cases

Key element is spatial indexing – uses different techniques to alphanumeric indexing

What is Geospatial Information? - 1

Spatial data which relates to the surface of the Earth

Geodetic reference system as base e.g. WGS84 used for Global Positioning System (Earth as an ellipsoid), Latitude and Longitude (Earth as a sphere)

Ordnance Survey (GB) define National Grid – projection onto flat surface – NB: OS(NI) use Irish grid

Spatial relationships – defined around concept of neighbourhood – relates to two “laws” of geography:

• Most things influence most other things in some way• Nearby things are usually more similar than things

which are far apart

What is Geospatial Information? - 2

Unstructured – spaghetti data

Topology – information structured as networks, polygons

GeoSpatial information requires metadata – e.g. minimal information such as map projection used

GeoSpatial information may also temporal modelling – e.g. farm subsidies vary as utilisation and legislation change

Field-based model versus object-based model of space, e.g. rainfall versus buildings on which rain falls

GeoSpatial information requires ontology

– What is the “real world”, how classifiedRelates to semantics

Where used? Examples

Central government – DEFRA, ODPM, Land Registry, ONS

Local government – planning, highways authorities

Utilities – physical and logical network

Insurance – flood plains

Health – epidemiology

Travel, multi-modal route planning

More widespread use – addresses, postcode based data against regional boundaries, infrastructure (“geographies” used to divide country, catchment area)

Fiat boundaries verus “bona fide” boundaries – what is “real world” how do we structure it?

Structured geo-databaseParadigm shift?

Relational Database

(Attribute data)

SpatialData

(proprietary format)

ERP

CRM

Real

Tim

e/Engineering

System

s

Spatially extended RDBMS-Complex data types for spatial data

-Computational geometry-Spatial indexing

-DDL and DML extensions

Networks and Topology

Routing

Connectivity

Explicit spatial relationships

Can be complex - one way,

- restricted turn

- average speed

…

Terrain and 3D

Line of sight

Radio Propagation

Flood

Water Pressure

Temporal

Time as a dimension

or measure

How things change

over time

GIS

Geospatial data modelling

Field-based model versus object-based model

Geographic Information Systems are object-based in practice

Most common field based information, e.g. Digital Elevation Model (line of sight applications), attached to objects

Objects rely on field-based model, i.e. spatial co-ordinates

Initiatives such as Digital National Framework encourage organisations to structure data on references to objects, not re-capture and duplicate data

GeoSpatial equivalent of “referential integrity”

Nevertheless duplication, lack of (referential) integrity is common place and hard to eradicate

Digital National Framework

Capture information once and use many timesBenefits:

– avoid cost of duplicate data capture– benefit through 3rd party data maintenance (i.e. avoid cost of maintaining one's own

data)– benefit of improved data management especially where COU is used to identify area of

change (which can then be used to focus and improve maintenance of non-spatial business object data, as appropriate)

Capture at the highest resolution possibleBenefit:

– avoid re-capture later on– improve potential for data interoperability

Publish lower resolutions from this data - if required– avoids data recapture

Use existing proven standards– provides framework, avoids costs of "re-inventing the wheel" NB: sort of benefit one

would expect from a strategy!

In search of the BLPU

Basic Land and Property Unit “Holy grail” of industry – no Da Vinci code produced yet!Example of Ordnance Survey Master Map (OSMM):"St Mary's football stadium, Southampton" is one objectTypical detached house and its plot of land, likewiseComplex entities such as "Southampton railway station" are defined in terms multiple objects: one for the main building, several for the platforms, one more for pedestrian bridge over the tracks. (NB: See Wikipedia article on TOID)Defining the candidate BLPU, their lifecycles and their attribute data and verifying that these are meaningful/practicable from the wide variety of business processes which apply to the BLPU and the aggregate entities which are created from them Dependencies so that data sets are based on the BLPU wherever possible limited by business use, e.g. field use change quite different from a tenant/owner perspective

Evolution of geographic information

1950 2010

paperrecords

digital

records

databaserecords

paper mapping

digital mapping

geographicinformation

1970 1990

Raster map data

Scanned ortho-rectified map or map-based data – metadata is co-ordinates, projection, extent

For example Google Maps/Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth

Traditionally stored outside the database as external files, analogous to vector data storage, e.g. Oracle 10g GeoRaster

Data stored as BLOBs, metadata required regarding number of bytes per pixel, compression algorithms and so on

Benefits limited as “intelligence” in map requires interpretation

Still limited progress on map-based pattern recognition – there are semi-automated solutions from companies such as Laser-Scan

Benefits of integration

Geo-spatial data mining

– Spatial links– Shipman example

VisualisationProvide new ways of linking data

– Avoid capturing data e.g. DNF– Maintenance of data

Lower costs of integration and delivery at front-endBack-end integration still an issue – dataReduce endless data cleaning – as part of information management strategyReduce data maintenance costsImprove data in business – does this matter?

Geospatial - Drivers

Awareness

Current use of data

Front end integration – Mashups

Back end – Database

Data providers

– Ordnance Survey– Developing middle/large scale market– Open source data– Free our data

EDRM

Electronic document and records management

Increase usage in local/central government due to Freedom of Information act

Contain potentially significant geospatial data

Most common example is address

Requires capture of appropriate metadata or appropriate pattern recognition to identify addresses

Requires gazetteers to provide reference to spatial co-ordinates

NB: most familiar gazetteer – list of streets in AtoZ maps

DfES Web Mashup

www.schoolmap.org.uk

Costs

Hardware – no special hardware requiredNetwork – bandwidth generally adequateSoftware – Increasingly delivered through “thin” clientsSOA – promise of mashups (WMS/WFS, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft), GeoRSSDevelopment skills – limited specialist skills requiredData

– Still expensive– Complex– Requires re-engineering/data management– “Boring” issue – drivers often hidden in BAU

Standards

GeoSpatial widely used – in database technology, web-based systems and developing IS architecture.Organisations already exist -BCS must be relevant

• Open GeoSpatial Consortium - http://www.opengeospatial.org/

• ISO TC211 (GI/Geomatics) - http://www.isotc211.org/• BSI Committee for GI (http://www.gistandards.org.uk/) • Association for Geographic Information (http://

www.agi.org.uk) A topic for parliamentarians (EU e.g. INSPIRE http://inspire.jrc.it/ & Westminster e.g. GI Panel http://www.gipanel.org.uk/gipanel/ Already an issue for business – significant investmentNeeds to be a credible BCS specialist groupProvide voice for BCS in GeoSpatial issuesPublic policy - Free our data?

Web 2.0 – interactive integrated information

GSG: WHY

Benefits for BCS– Embracing part of cultural change within IS/IT/IM

• Microsoft, Google and Oracle significant investment and developments

• Prominence in “Web 2.0” sites, e.g. www.platial.com (“Collaborative atlas”)

• Enabling technologies/architecture such as SOA

• Seen as being relevant

– BCS recovering lost ground

• GIS SG previously existed

– No vendor tie in – no conflict of interest

• BCS recruitment mechanism for potential BCS members

GSG: WHY

How we address GeoSpatial issues?– Vendor, academic, end user/ business experience– Survey and consensus of Group Members

How do we convey this message ?– Meetings minimum once a quarter, but ideally every 6 weeks.– A positive effort to hold meetings in the nations & regions.– Contribution to discussions, events (representation).– Web site communication– Email bulletins– Press

Summary

Geospatial now becoming mainstream

Significant developments in market, e.g. Pitney Bowes purchase of MapInfo, increasing demand for linking BI with GIS

Neo-Geography and wider awareness drive use of geospatial data

However data availability and quality are key issues, implications of this not always well understood

Metadata and catalogue standards exist not always integrated with wider standards and not always well implemented or implemented at all …