inr 150 / us$ e c i r your geospatial industry …...p r i c e: inr 150 / us$ 15 subscriber’s...

Pric

e:IN

R 1

50

/ U

S$ 1

5

Sub

scrib

er’s

copy

. Not

for

Sal

e

YOUR GEOSPATIAL INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

R.N

.I N

o -

UP

EN

G/2

01

0/3

41

53

www.geospatialworld.net

JUNE 2011 VOL 01 ISSUE 11

GIS

Go to www.iFlyUltraCam.com to learn more.

UltraCam Eagle. Covering ground like never before.

UltraCam Eagle

In the disaster response, defense, intelligence, agriculture and security arenas,

Convert Your Raw Data Into Actionable Intelligence.

Geospatial World I June 2011

Geospatial WorldGIS Development Pvt. Ltd.A - 145, Sector - 63, Noida, India Tel + 91-120-4612500 Fax +91-120-4612555 / 666

DISCLAIMERGeospatial World does not necessarily subscribe to the viewsexpressed in the publication. All views expressed in this issue arethose of the contributors. Geospatial World is not responsible for anyloss to anyone due to the information provided.

OWNER, PUBLISHER & PRINTER Sanjay Kumar PRINTING ATM. P. Printers B - 220, Phase-II, Noida - 201 301, Gautam Budh Nagar(UP) INDIA PUBLICATION ADDRESS A - 92, Sector - 52, GautamBudh Nagar, Noida, India

Inside...

PRICE: INR 150/US$ 15

CHAIRMAN M P Narayanan

PUBLISHER Sanjay Kumar

PUBLICATIONS TEAMManaging Editor Prof. Arup DasguptaEditor - Europe Prof. Ian DowmanEditor - Latin America (Honorary) Tania Maria SausenSr. Associate Editor (Honorary) Dr. Hrishikesh SamantDirector Publications NirajExecutive Editor Bhanu RekhaAssistant Editors Deepali Roy, Aditi BhanSub-Editor Anand Kashyap

DESIGN TEAMSr. Creative Designer Deepak Kumar Graphic Designer Manoj Kumar Singh

CIRCULATION TEAMCirculation Manager Priyanka Ujwal, Vijay Kumar Singh

07 Editorial 12 News 49 Picture This 53 Events

INTERVIEWS

Ola Rollen, President & CEO, Hexagon AB

‘3D is the way forward for GIS industry’

Dr. Paul Cheung, Director of the United Nations Statistics Division

(UNSD)

‘GGIM can address global issues’

ARTICLE

Empowering the GI community

Prof. Martien Molenaar, Faculty for Geo-Information Science and EarthObservation (ITC), Twente University

22

46

50

5

Advisory Board

Abbas Rajabifard President,GSDI Association

Jack DangermondPresident, Esri

Shailesh Nayak SecretaryMinistry of Earth SciencesGovernment of India

Mark ReichardtPresident and CEOOpen Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Aida Opoku Mensah Director - ICT DivisionUN Economic Commission for Africa

Josef StroblDirector, Centre for Geoinformatics,University of Salzburg, Austria

Vanessa Lawrence CBDirector General and CEO,Ordnance Survey, UK

Matthew M O'ConnellPresident and CEO GeoEye

Bryn FosburghVice PresidentExecutive Committee Member, Trimble

Juergen DoldCEO, Leica Geosystems

Preetha PulusaniChairman and CEO DeepTarget Inc.

Derek Clarke Chief Director-Survey and Mapping and National Geospatial InformationDepartment of Land Affairs, South Africa

Kamal K SinghChairman and CEORolta Group

31

Tech Lead

Location

is personal!

Bhanu Rekha,Executive EditorGeospatial World

40

FIRST PERSON

Professor D. R. Fraser Taylor

The young blood of geomatics

8 Geospatial World I June 2011

Trimble is well-known for applying its positioning technology and exper tise to achieve productivity gains for its

clients in survey, construction, agriculture and asset management. In 2007, Trimble began transferring this compe-

tency to the geospatial field with the confidence that it could create customer value by applying a similar approach

to the converging workflows in land survey, GIS and aerial mapping. Since then, Trimble has sought out and

acquired an impressive collection of key geospatial technologies with the ultimate objective of harmonising them

within well-defined, industry-specific solutions. Today, Trimble is engaged with its clients globally, delivering

end-to-end geospatial solutions that address real-world challenges while continually refining its ambitious outlook

to keep pace with the rapidly evolving geospatial industry.

8

ADVERTORIAL

TRIMBLE'S GEOSPATIAL MISSION

"We want to make it easy for anyone needing to qualifyand measure their environment, especially as it changesover time. To make this happen, we have invested inleading edge sensors, high performance image andpoint cloud processing software as well as unique infor-mation extraction capabilities.

Our sensors may be put on aircraft, helicopters, trains,vans, cars, boats, carts or an ever smaller fleet of vehicles to virtually sense change anywhere; be it corrosion of a building, tree growth under power lines,evaluating fire damage or in any number of other scenarios. However, we don't stop with designing lead-ing sensors: we address the entire information creationprocess. Once imagery or point clouds have captured thestatus quo, Trimble software workflows process spatialdata into sharp and reliable data sets that are bothpleasing to the eye and highly functional. Unique

automated capabilities allow users to precisely measureimage objects and associated systems, connecting new-ly won geo-information together with the intelligencecompiled within GIS, CAD, BIM and web-based systems.

Our vision is to make the most recent geospatial information useful and available to everyone. We want totake the technical complexity 'backstage' and makequantifying and measuring one's current environmentas great an experience as watching a movie or enjoying aconcert.

We put all of our creative energy into making it easy tosee and measure the changes in one's environment."

- Ralph HumbergDirector of Strategic Marketing,

Trimble GeoSpatial Division

Positioned For A GeoSpatial Future

9Geospatial World I June 2011

TRIMBLE’S GEOSPATIAL

SOLUTION LINEUP

Trimble's solution portfo-lio has been designed toput geospatial informa-tion to work. Mobile sensors on the land, inthe air or indoors capturegeo-referenced imagesand point clouds that are then exploited using production-scale featureextraction, resulting inhigh fidelity models thatincrease business pro-ductivity and improvedecision-making. Thesuite of specialised tech-nologies is designed toflexibly adapt to a varietyof industry specific solution scenarios for adiverse community ofTrimble clients.

Aerial Sensors and SoftwareTrimble combines medi-um format cameras withflight management andgeoreferencing (TrimbleDSS) as well as laserscanning (Trimble Harri-er) in a variety of combi-

nations to offer a widearray of products withinthe aerial sensor market.By combining imagingand laser scanning withdirect georeferencing,geospatial data can bedelivered more rapidly,which ultimately resultsin saving time and cuttingproject costs. Direct georeferencing producesan accurate relationshipbetween airborne imagedata and the terrain itrepresents by employing aGNSS assisted inertialnavigation system todetermine the exact position and orientation ofan airborne sensor at themoment of data capture.This allows each imagepixel to be exactly positioned and accurately represented as a groundpoint and thus eliminatesthe need for traditionalground-based measure-ments. This, in turn, facilitates fast delivery ofhighly accurate mapping-grade image results.

Example: Rapid Mapping of

Hurricane Damage

The United States'National Oceanic andAtmospheric Administra-tion (NOAA) collected poststorm imagery inresponse to Hurricane Ike (2008), using both the Trimble 439 DigitalSensor System (DSS) and the Trimble 439 DualCam DSS. Over 5,500coloured aerial imageswere taken of the hardesthit areas in Texas and

Louisiana after HurricaneIke made landfall. Theseimages, made available to emergency personnel and the public on theNOAA/NGS website within 24 hours of acquisition, were georeferenced from post processed POS AV GPS-Aided Inertial Navigation Solutionparameters and ortho-rectified using integrated Trimble software.

image courtesy of NOAA National Geodetic Society(Hurricane Ike – washed out bridge)

Trimble DSS

Figure 2: Upper left: RGB; upper right: nDSM; lower left: basic land cover;lower right: generalizeed results

Figure 1: map sheet sample (top) andcorresponding classification result (bottom)

Example: Urban Planning

A recent urban planning project in Austria sought to build sound-wave propagation models for traffic noise over anarea of more than 20,000 sq km. The creation of such a model would be completely unviable and cost prohibitive tocreate manually. However, an application was developed using Trimble's Inpho and eCognition® software packages,which could automatically detect and quantify changes in forests, buildings and water bodies using aerial laserscanning and orthophotos. With measured accuracy ratings above 94%, the final information workflow was not onlymore productive than other methods but it was also the only cost effective solution identified.

Trimble Inpho software precisely applies rigorous mathematical modellingto photogrammetry and digital surface and terrain modelling. Processessuch as aerial triangulation, bundle block adjustment, ortho-rectificationand orthophoto mosaicking are combined with point cloud creation, filtering, editing, visualisation and quality control, to deliver a completesuite of functionality. The resulting high-quality geo-data is then eitherutilised as a data product or provided as standardised input for furtherfeature extraction and geo-information creation.

The 2010 acquisition of eCognition represented a significant step for-ward for Trimble's geospatial portfolio. Its ability to automatically extractaccurate geo-information from any kind of remote sensing data plays akey role in realising Trimble's geospatial technology vision. The softwareintegrates and analyses geospatial data within a powerful infrastructurethat includes 64-bit processing and true enterprise scale distributedproduction environments to generate accurate GIS-ready information.

IMAGE PROCESSING SOFTWARE AND FEATURE EXTRACTION

>>


link on Facebook from the IEEE Communications Society asks, "Is the Web what youmake of it?" about a Google Chrome commercial which features a music video by Lady Gaga. This little cameo sums up the status of the information society today. It is

personal and the boundaries between social and professional elements and interactions areblurred. The geospatial world is treading the same path.

Our lead article on location illustrates how technology is going all out to provide the individualwith the best navigation service. This not only involves moving from point A to point B in geographical space but also within a geographical object likea mall. Ola Rollen, in our lead interview, emphasises theimportance of 3D for precisely the same reason - the needfor better navigation in three dimensions which includesbuildings. It is not just about malls. It is also about findingyour way out in an emergency like a fire or a terrorist attack.

Along with better navigation also comes the danger of loss ofprivacy. As a chilling expose of loss of privacy, we have therecent news that iPhone users' positional data was inadver-tently stored in the device and is accessible to Apple, asRollen points out, social networking sites like Facebook areending up owning our private information for free as userspour in their likes and dislikes and other personal informa-tion including location. It is amazing to know that 51 percentof LBS users are on Foursquare as users find it useful to telltheir family where they are and to find friends in their imme-diate vicinity. Apparently the need to announce one's locationscores over the need for privacy. The nearness of a friend is areassurance given the uncertainty of the world we live in.

Whatever the reason, the convergence of social networksand the personalisation of location information has given rise to a unique form of social decision making which is actually reducing the absolute power of the politicians, according toRollen. Individuals form social groups and are able to influence decisions including spatialplanning decisions. One of the major applications of such activism is in the field of disastermanagement where individuals on the spot can give a much better assessment of the groundreality than any amount of imagery and spatial models.

Fraser Taylor sums it up succinctly in his 'First Person' feature where he says, "Location-basedanalysis and description, location-based organisational data, analysis of data and presentationof data are absolutely vital to understanding many problems at all scales, from global to local.There is a real contribution to be made by people who understand the power of location datawithin the ICT framework." Therefore, location is what you make of it.

EditorSpeak


Location is what you make of it

A

Prof. Arup Dasgupta

Managing [email protected]

Trimble is a global company with a wide product range that is used in over 100 countries around the world.Employees in more than 21 countries, coupled with a highly capable network of dealers and disstribution partnersserve and support its customers. Trimble's GeoSpatial Division primarily operatess from its sites in Westminster,Colorado in the USA, Toronto and Montreal in Canada as well as Stutttgart and Munich in Germany.

For more information concerning Trimble GeoSpatial,log on to www.trimble.com/geospatial

Land Mobile Sensors andSoftwareThe Trimble MX8 is a premium mobile spatialimaging system that couples high-perform-ance geospatial referenc-ing sensors includingGNSS receivers, an inertial measurement unit and a distance measurement instru-ment, with high resolutiondigital cameras and highspeed, high accuracylaser scanners.

All of these systems

are managed by Trimbleintegration subsystemsand control software.Bundled with this offeringis the Trimble Tridentworkflow software, which is designed tomanage this diverse spatial data and automate the creation of information for keymapping and surveyprocesses including surface models, roadwaysigns, utility poles, breaklines, clearances,and more.

Indoor Sensorsand SoftwareThe TrimbleIndoor Mobile Map-ping Solution (TIMMS)fuses technologies forcapturing spatial data ofindoor and other GNSSdenied areas of all sizesand locations. It providesboth laser scanning andspherical video of a facili-ty, which enables the cre-ation of accurate, real-liferepresentations of interiorspaces and all of theircontents. Every object in

the interior space, includ-ing desks, chairs, stairsand doors appear in theplan. The maps createdare geo-located, whichmeans that the real worldpositions of each area ofthe building and its con-tents are known and areavailable for utilisationwithin the building infor-mation management(BIM) systems.

Geospatial World I June 2011 11

High density point cloud data gathered with Trimble MX8 anddisplayed in Trident

Typical surveydeliverable of surfacemodel (DTM andBreaklines) in Trident

Trimble MX8Mobile SpatialImaging System

NEWS

NIGER

Rainwatch for

farmers

Climate researchers AondoverTarhule and Peter J. Lamb fromUniversity of Oklahoma (OU) devel-oped a prototype geographic infor-mation system, Rainwatch.

Their research was funded byNational Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration (NOAA). Rainwatchaims to address the needs of WestAfrican farmers. It monitors mon-soon rainfall and tracks seasonal

rainfall attributes. This informationis crucial because sub-SaharanAfrica depends more strongly anddirectly on rainfall than any otherregion on Earth.

A severe drought in 2009 causedmany to face acute hunger while in2010 the area experienced itswettest year since 1964. Rainwatchautomates and streamlines key aspects of rainfall data management, processing and visualisation.


EGYPT

EgyptSat-2 indefinitely postponed

The National Authority for RemoteSensing and Space Sciences (NARSS)has indefinitely postponed the sched-uled 2013 launch of the MisrSat-2/EgyptSat-2 research satellite.NARSS neither gave any specific rea-son for the postponement norannounced a new launch date. How-

ever, in a press statement, Director Ayman said 60 percent of EgyptSat-2'shardware will be home-made. It will be equipped with advanced microscopicand photographing technologies coping with development requirements intourism, population, agriculture and industrial fields.

UGANDA

FlexiCadastre as national mining cadastre

Spatial Dimension announced that FlexiCadastre has been selected as thenation's new mining cadastre and registry system. It is an enterprise solutiondesigned, developed and supported by Spatial Dimension. According to thecompany’s press statement, the new system will improve transparency andsecurity of tenure, increase accessibility of information to private sectorinvestors including small-scale miners and ensure standardisation and uni-formity of mineral licensing procedures.

SUDAN

Google all set to map new country

Following the January referendum,in which nearly 99 percent of voterschose independence, Googleannounced that it is gearing up tomap the world’s newest country:The Republic of South Sudan,which is expected to take shapelater this year.

Google is teaming with the WorldBank, Sudan Institute, Voices forSudan, The Enough Project andother organisations—as well as 70 members of the Sudanese Diaspora—to map South Sudan.

The Niger River....almost dried up.

UN curious about

g-practices in polls

As Egypt prepares for a transition todemocracy, United Nations Develop-ment Programme has invited Elec-tion Commission of India (ECI) for ameeting in Cairo. Discussions will beheld to provide help to countries inthe Arab region, including Egypt andTunisia, in holding elections. Accord-ing to S Y Quraishi, Chief ElectionCommissioner of India, Egyptiansare keen to know about the use ofSMS, GIS and GPS by ECI to track theelections and also about indelibleink. Quraishi suggested Egypt shoulddevelop its own Electronic Voting

Machine. "We can help with technol-ogy and the know-how," he said.

Space commerce

continues

Continuing with its commerciallaunch of foreign satellites, IndianSpace Research Organisation (ISRO)has lined up the launch of SPOT 6, aFrench image capturing satellite,next year, according to PS Veer-araghavan, Director, Vikram Sarab-hai Space Centre (VSSC), a unit ofISRO. SPOT (Satellite Pour l'observa-tion de la Terre) is a high-resolution,optical imaging, earth observationsatellite system.

Currently SPOT 5 is operationaland is expected to be withdrawn bythe end of 2013. Due to the costeffectiveness of ISRO’s launch vehi-cles, many countries prefer to launchtheir satellites in India, said Veer-araghavan. In the next five years,ISRO plans to launch one ASTROSAT,which is a low cost version of HubbleTelescope, one GPS navigation satel-lite and a special satellite that canprovide Internet services, informedthe VSSC director.

JAPAN

Adieu DAICHI

DAICHI, an earth-observing satellite,is dead in orbit, Japan AerospaceExploration Agency (JAXA)announced. DAICHI, formally known as the Advanced LandObserving Satellite (ALOS), unexpectedly powered down for reasons that remain murky.

The satellite was an all-purposeearth surveyor, tasked with helpingmap the planet, scout for resourcesand measure changes in land cover.During its five-year life, it snappedabout 6.5 million images of the planet from an altitude of about 435 miles (700 kilometres), accordingto JAXA.


Central GIS organisation soon

The Indian NationalGIS Organisation willbe set up within ayear, Hindustan Timesreported. It aims tohave a real-time lookat development projects, such as road construction ordrinking water facilities, across thecountry. The body will

help ministries such as environment, water resources, urban and ruraldevelopment to integrate satellite-based technology with the infrastructurecreation process. Shailesh Nayak, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences isheading a committee of experts to prepare the framework of National GISbody. It will be set up in public-private partnership mode.

INDIA

PHILIPPINES

ICT chief proposes

unified GIS

Ivan John Uy, Chairman, PhilippineCommission on ICT (CICT), proposedthat government agencies shouldcome up with a unified GIS. He said,“Government departments are usingtheir own GIS, they are getting budgets for it. If budgets are puttogether and we come up with a single GIS then it would be simplifiedand information would be easilyshared.”

He envisioned that through thisway, geospatial information would be available to different governmentsectors for effective decision-mak-ing. It would streamline public services and bring about cost savings.

SINGAPORE

DLR reaches Asia

Nanyang Technological University(NTU) and German Aerospace Centre(DLR) signed an agreement to facili-tate collaboration in different jointresearches.

They include satellite and guidednavigation, remote sensing and signal processing and unmannedaerial vehicles.

DLR Executive Board Member Professor Rolf Henke said NTUwould contribute to research and development competencies andengineering expertise to assist in the joint research, development and design of advanced aeronauticaland satellite systems and sub-systems.

14 Geospatial World I June 2011

CHINA

Satellite to predict earthquakes

As part of the proposed earthquake monitoring network, the country willlaunch China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES) in 2014. It aims todetect electromagnetic anomalies in the atmosphere. The satellite has

been in develop-ment since 2003and is the firstspaced-basedcomponent of thenetwork. Its datawill be correlatedwith data fromground-basedmonitoring sys-tems. The countryalso hopes tolaunch two moresatellites by 2017

and begin predicting earthquakes from 2020. It has been working withother countries, including Italy, Russia and the Ukraine, that have theirown seismo-electromagnetic systems.

Yushu, China in 2010

THAILAND

NSDI to empower g-governance

Thai government laid down plans to launch ThaiSDI, country’s NationalSpatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) website by 2012. National Committeeon Geo-Information has appointed Geo-Informatics and Space Technolo-gy Development Agency (GISTDA) to host the NSDI portal.

Dr. Chaowalit Silapathong, Director of the Geo-Informatics office at GISTDAsaid the website will act as a repositoryof metadata generated by data producers. It will gradually provideservices such as access to metadata ofthe Fundamental Geographic DataSet (FGDS) as well as oth-er spatial data in thecountry.


BOLIVIA

Megaquake threat to

the nation

Bolivia may face a magnitude 8.9megaquake, 125 times stronger thanpreviously calculated, according astudy published in Nature Geo-science. This study is based on theanalysis of GPS data from the east-ern flank of the mountain chain. It

shows a buildup of stress consistentwith a maximum magnitude of 8.7 to8.9, said Benjamin Brooks, a geo-physicist at the University of Hawaii,Manoa and lead author of the study.

RUSSIA

Sweden to join

GLONASS

Russian Prime Minister VladimirPutin invited Sweden to increase itscooperation on GLONASS satellitenavigation system, during his visit to

Stockholm, Sweden. Both countriesagreed to jointly use ground facilitiesto gather information for operatingtheir own orbital objects and those ofthird countries. They will also coop-erate within a Russian spaceresearch project to monitor theEarth's polar regions. The projectenvisions using a new satellite clus-ter, called Arktika, to provide environ-mental monitoring data for accurateweather forecasts and to aid nationalsocio-economic development. Theproject is scheduled to begin operat-ing in 2015. The cost of the project isestimated at USD 1.23 billion.

SWITZERLAND

UN acknowledges

disaster preparedness

The cities of San Francisco (Philip-pines), Santa Fe (Argentina), and Dis-trict of North Vancouver (Canada),won the United Nations-SasakawaAward for Disaster Risk Reduction.San Francisco, a small coastal cityprone to typhoons, won USD 25,000,and was chosen for its innovative useof the Purok system. One of two citiesreceiving USD 12,500 was Santa Fe.The District of North Vancouverreceived USD 12,500. It got a GISWebsite, where one can access map-ping, census, land, environmental,zoning, building and other valuableinformation.

Other winners included the city ofBhubaneswar (India), and the Earth-quake Reconstruction and Rehabili-tation Authority, ERRA, an initiative ofthe Pakistan Government with sup-port from the United Nations HumanSettlements Programme (UN-Habitat).

BELGIUM

‘Geolocation data is personal data’

Geolocation data should be classified as personal data, concluded theEuropean (EU) data protection working party, because it can easily be

used to identify individuals. The Article29 Working Party, a group of

European privacy authorities,said that such data is personaland that permission for col-lecting it cannot be gainedthrough general terms andconditions; rather, peoplemust explicitly agree for theirdata to be used for a specifiedpurpose.

The Party noted that thisdata is being used by com-

panies to sell a variety oflocation-based servic-

es, such as maps andnavigation, aug-

mented realityand local

advertising.


UK

OS maps for the colour blind

Ordnance Survey (OS)has introduced colourpalette. It aims tomake colour mapsaccessible especiallyfor people with colourvision deficiency(CVD).

CVD is an inability tosee certain colours; itaffects approximatelyone in 12 men and onein 100 women in theUK and can make the

traditional colours used for maps virtually indistin-guishable.

OS is working with the Royal National Institute ofBlind People (RNIB) to incorporate the new colourpalette in its products. Among the first expected tobenefit from the new innovation will be customers ofOS Vector Map Local.

New leader for disaster charter

For the next six months, Britain will chair the Interna-tional Charter on Space and Major Disasters. It willlead the international effort that coordinates the acqui-sition of satellite pictures whenever there is a naturaldisaster.

Although the charter can call on data from some 30satellites, Algeria, China, Nigeria, Turkey and the UK inparticular have together created a system specificallydesigned to respond to disasters. Normally, only acharter member can put the system into operation.But during the British leadership, it has been agreedthat any country can now draw upon the data providedby the system.

With the default style

With CVD style applied.

Senior executives undervalue GIS

About 77 percent of IT professionals surveyed by Esri Australia saidtheir senior management do not have good understanding of GIStechnologies. The survey found GIS was used by a specialised work-force and was usually confined to a dedicated team. More than 80per cent of the respondents said GIS was the sole domain of thatdepartment. A vast majority of participants said their GIS platforms were either not integrated at all with other enter-prise systems or were only partially integrated. Esri Australia consulted its 400 local customers for the survey. The sur-vey concluded that if integrated and executed well, GIS can deliver significant cost savings and benefits. One example isQueensland energy supplier Energex's rollout of Esri, which identified about USD 500 million in new assets.

TomTom may sell users' data

TomTom may sell GPS data of its customers' journeys to the country’s road authorities and private companies. However, the company was recently forced to apologise when that same data was used by Dutch authorities to setspeed traps. Now, the company told The Australian Financial Review that although the company intends to never selldata in that way, it could not rule out such activity in Australia.

Chris Kearney, VP of marketing, said that the company hopes to sell its data to organisations such as the Road Traffic Authority and VicRoads in the second half of this year.

Applications____________

‘Earth has 657 more

islands’

Earth has 657 more barrier islandsthan previously thought, announcedtwo geologists, Orrin Pilkey andMatthew Stutz. They conducted aglobal survey of barrier islands usingsatellite images, topographical mapsand navigational charts. Their studyhas been published in the currentissue of the Journal of CoastalResearch. Pilkey is the James B.Duke Professor Emeritus of Geologyat Duke University’s Nicholas Schoolof the Environment. Stutz is anassistant professor of geosciences atMeredith College. Their discovery

includes islands off the coast ofColumbia, Brazil, Siberia, Alaska andCanada’s Arctic. A previous survey in2001 had pegged the number of bar-rier islands at 1,492.

The previous survey was conduct-ed without the help of satelliteimages. The 2,149 barrier islands arefound along all the continents exceptAntarctica. Seventy-four per cent ofthem are in the northern hemi-sphere.

Probe B reaffirms

Einstein's predictions

NASA's Gravity Probe B (GP-B) mis-sion confirmed two key predictionsderived from Albert Einstein's gener-al theory of relativity.

One prediction, the geodetic effect,has it that time and space arewarped around a gravitational body;the other, frame-dragging, concerns

the effect of rotating objects onspace-time. The findings are onlinein the journal Physical Review Letters. The experiment, launched in 2004, used four ultra-precise gyroscopes to measure the hypothe-sised geodetic effect and frame-dragging.

GP-B determined both effects withunprecedented precision by pointingat a single star, IM Pegasi, while in apolar orbit around Earth. If gravitydid not affect space and time, GP-B'sgyroscopes would point in the samedirection forever while in orbit. But inconfirmation of Einstein's theories,the gyroscopes experienced measur-able, minute changes in the directionof their spin, while Earth's gravitypulled at them.

Business______________

Trimble on

acquisition spree

Trimble has made two major acqui-sitions. It acquired seismic surveysoftware provider Dynamic SurveySolutions and a provider of print anddigital maps for outdoor enthusiastsMyTopo. Financial terms were notdisclosed.

The acquisition of Dynamic Surveyis expected to expand Trimble'spresence in the seismic surveyindustry. The business will be report-ed as part of Trimble's Engineeringand Construction segment. On theother hand, the acquisition ofMyTopo will expand Trimble's abilityto offer unique map content and newoutdoor-centric products. It will alsoenhance its mobile apps—TrimbleOutdoors, AllSport GPS, GeocacheNavigator, Cabela's Recon Hunt andBackpacker GPS Trails.


Policy_____________________________________

Forum to discuss privacy issues

The Federal CommunicationsCommission (FCC) announced a"public education forum" on priva-cy issues. FCC has invited the tele-com industry, smartphone operat-ing system suppliers, privacygroups and academia to partici-pate in the forum. It has also invit-ed privacy experts from the Feder-al Trade Commission (FTC). "Thisis the first time FCC has taken acomprehensive look at location-based services and privacy," said Ruth Milkman, FCC's wireless bureauchief. Earlier, the FTC took a lead in scrutinising how targeted online ads -- built around mining and analysing data to create online profiles of con-sumers -- can erode personal privacy. The forum will be held on June 28in Washington D.C.

DigitalGlobe, DLR

team up

DigitalGlobe collaborated with Ger-man Aerospace Center (DLR) and 3DRealityMaps, a German company, toprovide a new range of high quality3D data products. 3D RealityMapswill use the data, captured on anongoing basis by DigitalGlobe's fleetof earth imaging satellites andprocessed into 3D data by DLR, tocreate high-definition 3D maps oflarge-scale natural landmarks andother major tourist destinationsworldwide. The maps are accessedand navigated using the company's3D navigation software. As a firstdemonstration of their combinedcapabilities, the joint group createdone of the most detailed and accurate3D maps of Mt. Everest. One canexperience ‘3D Everest’ at www.ever-est3D.de.

Esri offers Landsat

data

Working in close collaboration withthe US Department of the Interior(DOI), Esri introduced Landsat imageservices. These services provideaccess to almost four decades' worthof Global Land Survey (GLS) Landsatdata developed by the National Aero-nautics and Space Administration(NASA) and DOI's US Geological Sur-vey. Esri provides access to the fullmultispectral, multi-temporal Land-sat data for free on ArcGIS Online asdynamic image services. At 30-metrespatial resolution, Landsat imagery issuitable for mapping regional trendsin climate change, agriculture,wildlife habitat, forestry, regionalplanning, coastal zones and nationalsecurity.


Miscellaneous________________________________

Data.gov turning towards cloud

The White House added new features to Data.gov in an effort to transformthe site from a data repository to a cloud-based platform for creating newapplications and services. New features for the public, developers and fed-eral agencies are available as part of the Data.gov Next Generation. Thenext-generation website includes a new data catalogue that can bebrowsed and searched by topic. Now, agencies can upload data from theirown systems to the Data.gov cloud platform, link it in real time to datastored in their own networks, or federate data from their own sites. Oncepeople locate data, there are tools allowing them to visualise the datathrough charts and maps or disseminate the information by quick links tosocial-networking websites.

Stylebook acknowledges ‘geo’

The 2011 AP Stylebook includ-ed 20 new social media termslike end user, geolocation, geo-tagging, link shortener, streamand unfollow, according to atweet by Associated Press (AP).It can be considered an end tothe never-ending questionwhen it comes to “geolocation”:to hyphenate or not to hyphen-ate? Among the many newentries in the 2011 edition are cellphone and smartphone as single wordsand email without the hyphen. AP added ‘link shortner’ as two words. APeditors wrote the definition for ‘end user’: "A phrase commonly referred toby technology developers when imagining the audience for an application,software or hardware."

NOAA, Agulhas Current sign agreement

Representatives from NOAA and the Agulhas-Somali Currents LargeMarine Ecosystem (ASCLME) formalised an agreement. It aims to helpAfrican and Indian Ocean states better manage their ocean ecosystemsand resources. The collaboration will support the collection of much-needed data and provide NOAA with shiptime from the region to improveweather forecasts and provide climate information. This agreement alsofills the remaining gap of the Tropical Moored Buoy Array so that it spansthe Pacific, Atlantic and now Indian oceans. During the past three years, apartnership and collaborative understanding has been growing in thisregion between NOAA and the ASCLME Project, which is funded by theGlobal Environment Facility (GEF) and the United Nations DevelopmentProgramme (UNDP).


ARGENTINA

UNLP partners with NASA

National University of La Plata (UNLP) partnered withNASA and Dassault Systems Solutions to developAquaries-SAC-D, an earth-observation satellite. UNLPused Dassault Systemes solutions to design, develop,test and manage two of the seven major instrumentsthat make up the SAC-D Aquarius project. SAC-Dresulted from an international partnership betweenArgentine, French and US companies. The partnershipincludes the US National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration, Goddard Space Flight Center, JetPropulsion Center, Dassault Systemes and Argentina'sNational Commission for Space Activities. The partner-ship was hailed as the first collaboration of its kind,mainly because of NASA's decision to outsource someof the key work.

BRAZIL

Google to amend maps

Google agreed to amend its map of Rio de Janeiro aftercity officials said it gave too much prominence to Fave-las. Favelas are sprawling shanty towns. When viewed

in a large-scale format, themaps of Rio pinpoint several ofRio's more than 600 Favelas,including some of the lesswell-known ones. Meanwhile,Globo reported that theirlabelling on the map and theabsence of wealthier districtsand tourist sites gave a badimpression of the city. It is notthe first time Google has runinto trouble over its mapping

service. In November 2010, Costa Rica said Google hadfuelled a border row with its neighbour Nicaragua.Google apologised and revised its map.

Courtesy: GeoEye


Talk of the year and the most

disruptive personality on the

geospatial scenario today,

Ola Rollen, President and CEO,

Hexagon AB, has brought in new

set of rules to (re)define the

geospatial ecosystem and created

a new pitched equilibrium for

the industry.

With a significant stake in the

geospatial industry and a great

vision to take it further, Ola has

given a new direction and today it

is quite appropriate to say

that the fate of geospatial industry

depends heavily on the success

of Hexagon...

INTERVIEW I Ola Rollen

'3D is

the way

forward

for GIS

industry'

22

It has been almost a year since theacquisition of Intergraph. How hasthe last one year been for HexagonGroup?

It has been a very good year. We haveset the records on all financialparameters. Also, since we didn'tactually buy Intergraph till the begin-ning of Nov 2010, it has been about sixmonths rather than a year since theacquisition. But all in all, we are quitepleased. We published our first quar-ter results for 2011 two weeks ago andthey were received very well from thefinancial community.

Congratulations. However, thereseems to be some confusionamongst the distributors and part-ners oof the constituent companies ofHexagon with regard to the future oftheir relationship. Your commentt?

I do realise there is a bit of uncertain-ty, primarily for Erdas distributors. Idon't see the traditional Intergraphdistributors being particularly wor-ried, simply because there aren't thatmany. Intergraph has had a directmodel. Erdas however has had a distributor model. I don't think theyshould be concerned because ourplanning ensures that there will beplenty of opportunities for everyoneselling Hexagon products.

It is true that there are a lot ofopportunities. But let's take an exam-ple of a user looking at purchasing acamera. You have two distributorsselling cameras, one for LeicaGeosystems and one for Intergraph. Auser might need to know which cam-era is more suitable for their kind ofapplication. In such a scenario, if thedistributors are not sure about therelationship, they don't push forwardthe right kind of information at times.

We have completely merged the

two camera businesses. I don't thinkthere is any conflict between the twoproduct offerings. Against such abackground, if a distributor doesn'tpush forward the right kind of infor-mation, it could be possible that he isnot educated enough about the differ-ent products. Let us take the instanceof ADS 80 camera and DMC camera. Ithink they have their own marketpositions. We have ironed out most ofthe conflict areas. I think they arecoming together nicely. We usuallyallow a year for this to happen and weare six months in the process.

We are still looking at how ErdasImagine can be integrated into Geo-Media. Imagine was built on top of anEsri product. Historically, we wouldnever try to integrate Imagine withGeoMedia. But that obviously needsto happen in the next few months.Hopefully, we can launch the newGeoMedia version which will have thefeatures and the functionality ofErdas products by 2012. This year istoo early.

After having organised all the prod-ucts of Hexagon companies, how doyou see the positioning of HeexagonGroup in the geospatial industry?

I think we're in there and there isplenty for Hexagon to do. We are never satisfied with our position; wealways think that we can improve further. We do have the tools and thetoolbooks within the company todayto develop the kind of tools we seeare necessary for the future. In certain areas, we have product gapsand technology gaps. But if you lookthrough the Hexagon organisation, I would say we are already 90 percentcomplete.

Do you think large conglomerates like

Hexagon or Trimble can serve usersas efficiently as smaller ccompaniesand give individual attention theyexpect?

First of all, I would like to clarify thatwe are not a very big company. It istrue that sales-wise and turnover-wise we are EUR 2.2-2.3 bn (USD 3.2bn). In those terms, we are a fairlylarge company. But if you compare usto Google and Microsoft, companiesthat you have to accept are players inthis industry, our resources are notreally adequate to do what we need todo in the geospatial arena. Oneshould regard us and our peers inthis industry as defending the busi-ness against these large companies.Because they will eventually eat awaythe added value of traditional mapcreator, surveyor or cartographer. Wehave already seen a large chunk ofthe market disappear with the launchof Google Earth.

That's interesting but the model isdifferent. Google addresses individu-als or small companies whiile you gothrough mapping companies. Itneeds an integrated approach withcompanies like Hexagon woorkingclosely with smaller companies todefend the industry. Your comment?

We get very little income from theGoogle Earths and so on, but theyhave great impact on our customers'


We are looking at waysto integrate ErdasImagine into GeoMedia.We will launch the newGeoMedia vversion withadded features andfunctionality of Erdasproducts by 2012

businesses. So we think in terms ofdirecting our customers towards abetter future where they don't have tocompete head-on with Google. Webelieve in dynamic GIS, as opposed tostatic GIS.

I do believe that accuracy is thefuture as it was in the past. One canonly survive by providing very accu-rate data. But a shift will come in thenumber ofupdates.We

need faster tools to measure veryprecisely and also update on a morefrequent basis. That's where thefuture lies for professional GIS com-panies.

Google spans the entire earth. Andyou can't update the entire earthevery month, every week or every dayif you so wish. But we try to developtools where you can, in a very costefficient manner, update the smaller

geospatial surface. And then, ifyou are a professional map-

ping company and usethose tools, you can defi-

nitely compete in yourlocal market. That'sthe kind of market we

try to drive towards.

Hexagon 2011, has thetheme - Building

Smarter World. What isyour vision to build a

smarter planet??

We need to start with aglobal outlook and under-stand what the futureholds for all of us. The

shift in economic poweris driving everything.

So far, we have hada very vertical

world, where 600million people have

consumed 95 percentof the global production

or global resources. I amobviously referring toWestern Europe and NorthAmerica. In the last 10years, we have seen theemerging markets of Asiagrow their economic power.By 2020, economists expect

China to supersede America as thelargest economy on this planet. Weare seeing a big shift in global eco-nomic consumption, with probably abillion people joining the global mid-dle classes in the next 10-15 years.

In order for this to happen, we asa society need to consume ourresources in a much more clever way.We need to explore oil, minerals, gas,electricity, water, power and so on ina much more economic way thanwhat we have been doing so far. Wealso need more clever infrastructureand more efficient utilities. On top ofthat, we have a growing concern forsecurity and public safety which areconnected to GIS. I see professionalGIS going strong in these areas.

What are Hexagon's plans in playingthis role?

We can only do it by launching newproducts. Take mining for example.We are designing cleverer miningrefinery plants. We are active in fleetmanagement, ie, monitoring all thevehicles in an open pit mine. That'swhere we see GIS being an integralpart of the product offering. A miningcompany needs an updated GIS mod-el of its open pit mine. It probablyneeds to be updated every 24 hours.And that GIS model, or lets call it dig-ital terrain model, because its 3D thatthey need it, would be used as a basisto guide all the vehicles in that mine.Let's take the example of Coal Indiawith whom we worked. Some of CoalIndia's mines have up to 600 vehiclesmoving about in the mine at the sametime. They need to explore coalassets in a more efficient way whilereducing pollution and wastage.

We have talked about combining

24

GIS will merge with CAD’’

“


GIS analytical tools using featureextraction to analyse crops. This canbe followed by using Leica Geosys-tems' machine control assets toguide machines to perform certainfunctions on the field where onelocates deficiencies, be it water, put-ting more fertiliser on the crop and soon, to improve productivity per squaremetre. There are many such applica-tions which can combine GIS with ourother in-house technologies, toreduce waste and improve productivi-ty. By doing this, we can support themigration of people living under poorconditions to reach middle class con-ditions. That is the driver. The bigdriver in the next 30-40 years in theglobal economy will be the growth ofmiddle class.

Geospatial technology is getting inte-grated with several end-userdomains, be it construction, enggi-neering or IT. What, according to you,will be the trend in the technology -will it get merged wwith otherdomains, or will it stand alone?

I think GIS will merge with CAD. Letme illustrate. We have installed pub-lic safety systems in large cities,where we control, for example, move-ment of police cars using GPS on aGIS map. The dispatch facility can, inreal time, see the location of allpolice cars in that city. As one calls911 or any other emergency number,the caller's geospatial position willappear on that map. And then theycan coordinate what police car orambulance goes to that address.

It will not stop there. As societiesbecome increasingly complex, therewill be need for the same functionali-ties inside buildings. The GIS in thisapplication needs to be scalable, sothat you can drill into a building and

see what's going on there. Think ofskyscrapers that are coming up allacross the globe. In an unfortunatecircumstance that one of these largeskyscrapers catches fire, there wouldbe smoke everywhere inside thebuilding and thousands of peoplewould be trapped on these floors.How would the firefighters find themand help them out? The interiors ofthese large buildings need to be doc-umented so that one can use them tonavigate in real time to help andassist people. This is a typical appli-cation where even one-time use cansave thousands of people's lives andrealise its value. This is what I meanby dynamic GIS. You need very precisemodelling combined with actualmotion. In this case, you would proba-bly need scanning, or specificallylaser scanning to scan the building,interior of the building, and then put itin a sort of CAD model.

While GIS might get merged withCAD, there is more frequent usage ofthe term geospatial.

I think we should call it 3D and notgeospatial, because that's what it isall about. To be able to describe andmeasure the reality in 3 dimensionsis the future. There is so much information in the third dimension.We need seamless zooming in andzooming out functionality from sub-millimetre accuracy up to maybe metre accuracy and that ishow I look at this market. I basicallyhave accuracy on the X-axis and thesize of the object you want to describeon the Y-axis. We call it the funnel,because the more precise youbecome the smaller the object youmeasure and describe. But, we feelthat GIS is one integral part in a sys-tem of information systems that basi-

cally go from nanometres up tometres in accuracy.

There is clearly a move towards merg-ers and conglomerates in the indus-try. Do you think smaller companieswill have a role to play in the future?

There is always space for small com-panies. While the smaller companiesneed to continue to improve theirproduct offerings, there is also a need to specialise on one or two keyproducts and provide somethingunique. For example, if you try to do aGoogle Maps, you won't survive. Business is all about finding a nichewhere you can survive as an organisation and deliver value to yourcustomers. The market is opening upa huge opportunity for GIS profes-sionals because the world is movingfrom 2D to 3D. It is an exponentialmovement because the number ofmaps that need to be interpreted ifthere is a third dimension is enor-mous. And, within this expansionthere will be room for clever individu-als and organisations to survive.Large companies will not be able tospan over all the opportunities. Whilethe larger companies take more andmore of the volume market, thesmaller companies need to look for opportunities in the high end.


We should call thisindustry 3D and notgeospatial, becausethat's what it is allabout. To be able todescribe and measurereality in 3 dimensionsis the future

One of the concerns for geospatial

industry is that it has not been market-

ed well, to the politicaal, economic and

administrative leadership. What role

can a company like Hexagon play in

raising the profile of this industry?

The industry needs to move on. Itcan't hang on to just GIS and mapswithout evolving and adding value.For example, large scale city planningwould not require GIS and can beaccomplished by using Google Earth.As long as people dwell in the pastand not move on to carve out a greatfuture for themselves, the profile ofthis industry cannot be raised. But,we will raise the profile of Hexagon'send user market by talking about 3Dapplications, which is something thatGoogle can't do. People will be willingto listen to that because we havesolutions for a different set of prob-

lems compared to what theGIS market did in the

past. One can

always useGIS forcadastre.Authoritiesdealingwith

cadastre don't trust Google Earthbecause it's not precise enough. Sothere will always be a niche for sur-veyors doing cadastral work. For allthe commercial applications on top ofthat, one will have to start using otherwords like digital terrain models, 3Detc.

You have talked about nano-metre toa metre resolution data. But, higherthe resolutions, greater thhe risk ofprivacy infringement. There is a seri-ous debate among legislators in theUS and elsewherre to protect users’right to privacy. Do you think restric-tions on the content will affect theinddustry adversely?

I think the legislators are not insync with time. For example, look atthe various social networking sites. Ifyou are on Facebook, you have signedaway your privacy. Facebook ownsanything you publish there. And youhave around 2 billion Facebook usersaround the globe. So, we are gettingmore and more used by exposing ourprivate lives in a very delicate way onpublic and social media on the inter-net. I think we areentering a new erawhere everything isbecoming muchmore public.

Do you think thereis a need for com-panies to gettogether and tryto educate andput forwardsomee kind of athoughtprocess onthis?

Companies do not have resourcesto sit in committees until they gener-ate money and I am a firm believer inthat. It is a waste of time. But, if youcompare the number of decisionsactually taken by politicians vis-à-visthose taken by other decision mak-ers, I think politicians' power haseroded over time. I am once againtalking about how these social net-works and internet have enabled peo-ple to take decisions in a differentway compared to what would havebeen the case 20-30 years ago.

Do we foresee Hexagon becomingmore solution centric?

We definitely will be much moresolution centric and I think a goodanalogy of that is Apple. Apple created iPad, which is a bleak copy ofa computer unless you fill it withapps. They created a new businessmodel where you have a platform thatallows you to deal with various typesof solutions and services that differ-ent kinds of customers will be inter-ested in using. For example, youcould be a golf enthusiast and thereis an app for golf. While there are dif-ferent apps, the platform remains thesame.

That is the future for Hexagon,where we can create an infrastruc-ture and then different companies canbuild upon that infrastructure to gen-erate their own businesses. That isthe way forward around the globe.

So, do we foresee capacity beingadded to Hexagon in the form of asolution company?

Yes.

26

If you try to do aGoogle Maps, youwon't survive.Business is all aboutfinding a niche whereyou can survive as anorganisation anddeliver value toyour customers

Next acquisition will be a solution company

’’

“



Keeping customer experience as the top priority, DigitalGlobe addressedsome of the common problems encountered by the remote sensing usercommunity: computing time, data access, storage and licensing.

DigitalGlobe I Advertorial

27

WorldView-2 is revolutionising

imagery, information and insight

FLORIDA NATURAL IMAGE FLORIDA FALSE COLOUR IMAGE

With a world-classsatellite constellationand innovativeproducts and solutions,DigitalGlobe iss the leaderin commercial remotesensing. Even beforethe launch of the firstsub-meter commerciaalsatellite in 2001,DigitalGlobe hadbeen at the forefront oftechnological and productinnovatioon in the satelliteimagery industry. Now,almost 20 years later,DigitalGlobe continuesto lead thhe way with asuperior track record,industry-leading technolo-gy and capabilities, alongwith advannced imagery,information andmission-critical insightproducts. And there'smore… WorldView-3satellite will be launchedin 2014.


Leveraging the highercomputing power ofgraphical processingunits used in 3-D gaming, DigitalGlobecreated a High Perfor-mance Computer (HPC)environment that hassuccessfully demon-strated performanceimprovements anywherefrom 7 to 400 times, for a variety of image processing tasks. Thisallows DigitalGlobe toefficiently process onebillion sq km of imageryper year. Further, DigitalGlobe is leverag-ing advances in comput-ing, cloud infrastructureand Open Geospatial

Consortium (OGC) compliant web servicesto ensure that its usersacross the globe canaccess rich informationcontent, with latenciesin seconds. DigitalGlobecloud services were anatural evolution ofhosting relevant dataacross various datanodes around the globe,to ensure efficientaccess to imagery aswell as improved customer experience inany GIS software. DigitalGlobe has adopted flexible datalicensing models thatensure multi-users andmulti-organisations canshare information.

The WorldView series ofsatellites, with ControlMoment Gyros (CMG)technology, is the mostagile commercial satellite systems inexistence today. Theconstellation can collectover 1.2 million sq km ofimagery per day and canimage the same placeon earth within 1-2days. After the installa-tion of additional globalreceiving stations in2012, DigitalGlobe willset a new precedence innear real-time communication with its satellites. Further,these satellites aredesigned to collectstereo imagery that can

be used to produce elevation models ofunprecedented accuracyacross the globe. WorldView-2, with its 8 multi-spectral bands,allows DigitalGlobe toensure innovation in remote sensingindustry.

In the foundation layer for mapping, DigitalGlobe has successfully engineeredthe positional accuracyof its satellites from 17metres CE90 to betterthan 4 metres CE90.DigitalGlobe is investingin additional processingcapabilities that willallow an unprecedentedaccuracy level.

INFORMATION

While building on the foundation of best-in-class imagery, DigitalGlobe is transforming imageryinto information andinsight, aiding its cus-tomers with geospatialknowledge and provid-ing information for mis-sion-critical decisionmaking. While imageryprovides rich content for mapping, informationproducts will allow thecustomers to start integrating imagery andinformation into theirwork flows, extractingkey data, putting thedata into context and

enabling them to solvecomplex problems.

8-Band Improves MappingThe convergence ofimagery and mappingdomains provides a keytransition for informa-tion products. Whilemaps are compositionsof various geospatiallayers, imagery is anintegral part of the nextgeneration digital maps.Primary components ofmaps include featurescale and associatedspatial accuracy.

However, with DigitalGlobe's imageryspatial accuracies, endusers can create mapsof scales from 1:2000 to1:50,000. The elevationmodels from its constellation can beused to create contoursat 5-10 metre postingsfor large areas. Similar-ly, based on availabilityof high-quality elevationmodels (DEMs) andground control, userscan extract mappingfeatures such as roads,railroads, village andtown boundaries, waterbodies, wetlands, coastlines and more.Features can be digitised by visual interpretation and all ofthe information layerscreate a map compos-ite. DigitalGlobe is

After the installation

of additional global

receiving stations in

2012, DigitalGlobe

will set a new prece-

dence in near real-

time communicationn

with its satellites.

Further, these

satellites are

designed to collect

stereo imagery that

can be used to

produce elevation

models of

unprecedented

accuracy across

the globe.

”

“


developing innovativetechnologies that leverage its global collection capacity incombination with highspatial accuracies, toallow its end users tocreate high qualitymaps. DigitalGlobe's 8-band technology isthe stepping stone inthe automation of various information features that can beused for mapping. DigitalGlobe is currentlyworking on technolo-gies that will standard-ise the data and willallow end users toextract relevant information effectively.Various information

products derived fromimagery include:change detection, landuse/land cover, cropclassification, forestclass/species extractionand more. DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 systemwas designed to automate extraction ofvarious information layers. The 8 multi-spectral bands willallow for three distinctadvantages: betterinformation accuracy, ahigh level of detail andunique feature extrac-tion. Several user studies have shown that 8-band imagery is consistently yielding

anywhere from 15% to30% higher accuracy ascompared to traditional4-bands.

Using WorldView-2's 8-band capabilities, acase study in Malaysiademonstrated the abilityto extract tree specieswith a high degree ofaccuracy. In anothercase, 8-band remotesensing was used toextract tree health and age using WorldView-2's uniquered edge and yellowbands. Eight-band technology also allowsthe extraction of uniquefeatures such asCyanobacteria, a

harmful algae that canaffect human health.These bacteria can beidentified by theirunique response in theyellow band of WorldView-2. The additional spectralbands on WorldView-2yield accuracies thatminimise manual editing time and enablecomplete automation ofinformation products,providing the customerswith immediate returnon investment onimagery.

INSIGHT

Insight empowers endusers with informeddecision-making byproviding completeproblem-solving solu-tions while integratingimagery and informa-tion into their work-flows. During a wildfireevent in the UnitedStates, DigitalGlobe'sFirstLook informationproduct captured aclear image of theimpacted area and wasalso able to process andget the imagery into thehands of the end userswithin hours of collec-tion. To transform thisinto an informationproduct, DigitalGlobeused its automatedchange detection algorithms to map theextent of the fire. Toconvert the imagery and

IMAGE NATURAL LULC FALSE

informationinto insight, DigitalGlobeused its richimagelibrary, which is arepository of imagerycollected over severalyears, and located all ofthe structures from thepre-event imagery inthe vicinity of the fire.

The use ofexisting parcel datamade it possible to

pinpoint the addressesaffected by the fire. Thisinsight allowed the endusers to gain valuableinformation on the sta-tus of their homes. Thisanalysis was performed

in a geospatial environ-ment using disparategeospatial technologiesincluding image processing, analysis,and GIS. DigitalGlobe isdeveloping insight products that will provide mission-criticalanswers for its customers.

DigitalGlobe is continuously looking toinnovate by investing in new technologies for satellites, sensors, telescopes, new instruments, computingplatforms, data miningalgorithms and datadistribution platforms tostay on the cutting edgeof the remote sensingtechnology. DigitalGlobeis also leveraging theemerging trends inmobile computing tech-nologies with speedsthat will enable imageryand information prod-ucts to be accessible atthe finger tips of its customers.


For more information on the powerof 8-band, please log on towww.digitalglobe.com or come visit usat ESRI User Conference, Booth #1901.

www.digitalglobe.com I [email protected]

HawaiiFALSE COLOUR

IMAGE

DigitalGlobe

is developing

insight products

that will provide

mission-critical

answers for its

custoomers

From very early days, human beings have looked atthe sky for two things - to know the approximatetime and approximate location. These two things

go with us wherever we go. Relatively recent develop-ments like mobilisation of the Internet, wireless tech-nologies, GPS/GNSS and the rise of smartphone,increasingly oblige us to reconsider the relation betweenthe Web and the social realm. Computing is now off thedesktop and into the world. More and more people havemobile access to the Internet on the street, in the park, ina shopping mall and are reorienting themselves in a geo-graphical way. This shift enforces the importance of'being somewhere', as the accessible digital data adaptsitself to the geographical location of the user.

STATE OF LOCATION TECHNOLOGY

SPACE

GPS in smartphones - Originally designed fordefence applications, GPS has gotten much broad-er coverage in consumer application in the lasttwo decades; and that's today the anchor formost of the location systems worldwide. OtherGNSS systems like GLONASS, Galileo and Com-pass are expected to increase the coverageworldwide. On the other end, smartphone isalready the Swiss knife of the digital age - aquick flick of the finger can transform it into acamcorder, Web browser, gaming device or amusic player, doing away the need to carry individ-ual gadgets. Smartphone is beginning to displaceanother stand-alone device - the GPS receiver - as a

convenient way for drivers to get directions to unknowndestinations. Leading PND manufacturers like Garminand Tom Tom have released their smartphone versions tostay afloat in the market. Buoyant over the sales ofmobile versions, Garmin registered 20% revenueincrease in the first quarter of 2011 as compared to 2010.In contrast, ABI Research portrayeda grim future forPNDs in arecent

TECH LEAD I Bhanu Rekha


Location is personal!

REMEMBER THE MARAUDER'S MAP THAT HARRY POTTER RELIGIOUSLY USED AT HOGWARTS TO CHECK

ON EVERY CLASSROOOM, EVERY HALLWAY, EVERY CORNER OF THE CASTLE, TO IDENTIFY AND TRACK THE

MOVEMENTS OF EVERY INMATE IIN REAL TIME? IF YOU BRUSHED IT ASIDE AS ANOTHER FANTASY GIZMO

OF THE FAMED WIZARDRY SCHOOL, ITS TIMME TO SIT UP AND TAKE STOCK OF THE REALITY! LOCATION

TECHNOLOGY IS ALREADY THERE AND IS PROMISING MOORE!! HERE'S A LOW DOWN ON THE TRENDS IN

LOCATION TECHNOLOGY AND WHAT TO EXPECT IN THE NEAR FUTURE....

31

study. Over-inflated shipments generated by ‘price wars’have created a false impression of market strength, thereport said and added that cellular navigation and telem-atics market is forecast to reach over 500 million sub-scribers/downloads in 2016. Live traffic updates thatcome along with these versions are adding value to thedrivers to optimise their routes and save time.In the US, more than 40 percent of allsmartphone owners use their mobiledevices to get turn-by-turn direc-tions, according to data fromCompete, a Web analyticsfirm. For iPhone users,the figure is even high-er, at about 80 percent.

Indoor location - The accuracy of GPS/GNSS cannot beguaranteed in urban and indoor environments and emer-gency operators were the first to experience this limita-tion. GPS then evolved into A-GPS, or Assisted GPS, whichused the device's GPS chip and cellular network. Howev-er, A-GPS was not available for commercial LBS servicesdue to the cost of the operator's network. As a result, Wi-Fi geolocation became an alternative technology. Forexample, 75% of iPhone devices use Wi-Fi geolocationand not GPS to locate the device.

Wi-Fi location enables 20 m accuracy where Wi-Fiaccess points exist. Bluetooth is the micro-level technolo-gy that is being deployed inside malls, etc., so bluetoothenabled phones can leverage the services. RFID is prom-ising, but often, phones don't have RFID chips/tags inthem.

Several such technologies are being pitched aspanaceas, but most industry experts believe that a hybridof multiple location technologies like Wi-Fi, bluetooth,RFID and locating sensor technologies like accelerome-ters, gyroscopes, MEMS will provide ubiquitous and accu-rate indoor positioning. One such hybrid technique that istalked about is the triangulation of RFID, Wi-Fi and NearField Communication (NFC). However, the success ofthese applications will depend on the pervasive availabili-ty of the location technologies that enable them. "Indoorlocation, though currently expensive, is already used insome applications with high potential cost savings (forexample, tracking wafers at semiconductor fabricationplants) or high criticality (like hospitals). As in many othermobile technologies, consumer applications of indoorlocation will be the area that drives the price down andgets the technologies into mainstream acceptance. Oncethat happens, it's not an exaggeration to state that theimpact on enterprise mobile applications will be at leastas large as the impact we saw with GPS," says Tristian E.Lacroix of indoorlbs.com.

Indoor Mapping - Just as giant companies likeNavteq, TeleAtlas, Google and Microsoft

have meticulously mapped the out-doors, a growing number of com-

panies are creating Internetand mobile guides to

malls, downtownwalkways, big airports

and other indoor places


Cou

rtes

y: B

erg

Insi

ght;

Nov

embe

r 201

0

Annual shipments of GPS-enabled handsets (Worldwide 2008-2014)

Cou

rtes

y: B

erg

Insi

ght;

Nov

embe

r 201

0

Active mobile turn-by-turn navigation users (Worldwide 2009-2015)

32

where people congregate. Aspeople spend 80-90% of theirtime indoors, indoor mappingadds lot of value and has apotential to be big LBS market.This is a huge undertaking, giv-en the vast amounts of indoorspace waiting to be plotted andentered into navigation databas-es, but significant progress isbeing made. However, indoornavigation isn't without prob-lems. Indoor-mapping sites andapps often depend onGPS/GNSS technology, whichtends to be less dependableindoors. Related technologieslike triangulation using cell-phone towers and Wi-Fihotspots, can be similarlyimprecise and/or outdated. Toavoid these issues, companiesare pursuing photo stitching and tone mapping tech-niques for 2D indoor mapping, buoyant with billions ofreal world photographs shared on applications like Face-book, Picasa, Flickr and Color.

Geospatial major Trimble has gone a step ahead inoptimally using a fusion of technologies for capturingspatial data of indoor and other GPS/GNSS denied areasof all sizes and locations. It provides both LiDAR andspherical video of a facility, enabling the creation of accu-rate, real-life representations (maps, models) of interiorspaces and all of its contents. The maps created are geo-located, meaning that the real world positions of eacharea of the building and its contents are known. Google,Nokia and Bing are other big players foraying into indoormapping domain.

NFC and indoor navigation - Advances in technologieslike near field communication (NFC) are enabling accu-rate and affordable indoor navigation. Through a series ofNFC tags placed at strategic points around a building orcomplex, visitors using their NFC-enabled phone with anembedded indoor navigation application can easily findtheir way around an unfamiliar indoor environment.

On entering a building, a visitor checks in by tappingtheir phone to an entry tag and inputs details of the loca-

tion within the building they want to get to, for example aroom number. A layout of the building is then downloadedto the NFC Internal app on the visitor's phone and thisthen also calculates the best way to get to their destina-tion - in much the same way as an outdoor satellite navigation system would. The system could also be integrated with a phone's internal GPS facility, allowingusers to plot their route to a specific point in a buildingfrom any location.

One of the biggest problems for indoor navigation isthe lack of indoor mapping standards. In a road network,it is clear where paths lead but building interiors mayneed more attention, especially large open areas. Also,there are no standards to represent characteristics spe-cific to indoor spaces. Rooms, stairs, elevators, and exitsare some that come immediately to mind.

Augmented reality and location - Combining realimages with archival material, simulations, text overlaysor other media, augmented reality-as its name implies-takes what's really there and adds to it. When implement-ed on a mobile device, the technology uses location datafrom the phone's GPS/GNSS receiver and orientationinformation from its compass to superimpose data on thescreen image generated by the phone camera. Pointing


Tech

Lea

d

When implemented on a mobile device, augmented reality technology uses location data from the phone'sGPS/GNSS receiver and orientation information from its compass


your phone camera at a restau-rant could bring up an overlay ofits menu or online reviews. Point-ing at a store could summoncoupons and weekly specials.Analysts say augmented realitycould become a killer app forsmartphones because it perfectlyexploits their greatest asset:location-specific mobility.

Touted as the Holy Grail formarketers, media and advertisingcompanies are trying out thisemerging technology in combina-tion with LBS, which they see as apromising new way to deliver con-tent and marketing. Layar, aDutch company is pioneering thisinnovation with Layar RealityBrowser and its early adoptersinclude National Geographic, theRolling Stones and Italy's Culture Ministry. Recently,Layar announced that it's making its platform available toall developers of iOS apps, opening the door for a lot moreinnovation.

Sensor based positioning - Sensor based positioning iscatching up like wildfire. Inertial sensors like accelerom-eters, gyroscopes and magnetometers are being deployedin mobile devices which allow relative positioning from aknown initial position. Also, inertial positioning can beused to complement other indoor positioning systems.For example, 3D-motion climbing up a staircase, stepsand floor changes can easily be detected in vertical posi-tion. According to Tristian, gyroscopes will become ubiq-uitous in smartphones because gyros can support newuser interface modes, perform indoor navigation andenable augmented-reality applications that overlay infor-mation about a target when a phone's digital camera ispointed at it.

According to a new study from IMS Research, themarket for gyroscopes in mobile handsets is forecast togrow by 150% between 2010 and 2011. The firm forecaststhat annual shipments of gyroscopes in mobile handsetswill increase to over 200 million by 2014, capturing overone third of the smartphone market.

The 6 axis motion sensing gyroscopes and accelerom-

eters make more sophisticateduse cases possible as well.Motion sensors will play a role inindoor navigation in places; thepresence of an accelerometerand gyroscope would allow adevice to effectively sense peo-ple's steps and their direction.The hope among market playersis to provide accurate locationdata within 1 meter. The marketis still years from developing thealgorithms required to accuratelyprocess or the maps detailedenough to utilise the sensor data,but there is obviously enormousinterest in the topic, says Tristian.

APPLICATIONS

Location Based ServicesOne of the most powerful ways to personalise mobileservices is location enablement. A location-based servicedraws on location information of the user to provide traf-fic information, track the fleet, emergency services or tolook up price comparisons for nearby stores. Though LBSis in vogue for a while now, the recent surge in smart-phone apps and social media that use location informa-tion is boosting the LBS market. According to ABIResearch, the market for wireless location-based appli-cations is expected to reach $ 14.5 billion in 2014.

Identifying the trends for 2011, leading mobile LBSprovider Telmap indicates that driving and navigation willget enriched with road and driving related informationfrom the local community - speed cameras, police traps,traffic jams, road closures and road incidents. On anotherfront, tracking is out and sharing is in. Users prefer toshare their location than allow others to know where theyare all the time.

As quality mapping is the basis for LBS, manyproviders are turning to free, user-generated maps whichmay not be up to the task for all LBS. Waze is a fine exam-ple for this. Cross referencing and verifications betweenmore sources are being used to guarantee quality leveland timeliness of information. As LBS activity is reachinga new crescendo, most of the major brands are consider-ing mobile as an integral part of their advertising cam-

34

paigns. Slowly but surely, location-based services aregoing beyond navigation, to serve all of users' day-to-dayneeds while out-and-about.

Mobile and its relationship with location-based servic-es is becoming a larger part of Google's overall strategy.Disclosing Google's plans, Marissa Mayer, Vice Presidentof Location and Local Services says, "Our strategy is tofocus on three areas: exploration and discovery, interac-tivity, and new perspectives. By making it easier to discov-er new places, interact with them and glean new informa-tion from that interactivity, we hope to take location serv-ices to the next level."

The next paradigm for LBS is in providing indoor loca-tion services. According to Strategy Analytics, 70% of cel-lular calls and 80% of data connections originate fromindoors. Companies are adopting innovative approachesto enable indoor LBS. While Nokia indoor navigationrelies on positioning beacons resulting in 30 cm accuracy,Insiteo uses Wi-Fi infrastructure and special algorithmsto process the Wi-Fi signal captured by the phone.Nokia/Navteq already has indoor maps of malls and air-ports, hence, indoor location and navigation is a naturalprogression for the company. Developers believe NFC hasthe potential to be the socially-aware champion for loca-tion services and enable micro-location and indoor LBSon a mass scale.

Location Enabled ServicesWith easy access, location is the hottest tech trend now.Apple developed the first location-enabled application andtoday, there is a proliferation of location enabled services

and applications - ranging from fun apps to utility apps.Today, location is personal and apps are mainstream.Here's a slice of a few popular location-enabled apps andservices:

Foursquare et al - 2010 has been the year of check-ins.Users arrived at a venue and checked-in with Foursquareto let family and friends know about their whereaboutsand find acquaintances in the vicinity. According to anestimate, Foursquare is the most used location-basedapp and grew from 500,000 users in March 2010 to 5 mil-lion users in December 2010. According to Dennis Crow-ley, Co-founder of Foursquare, "With apps becomingmainstream and GPS being available on mobiles, locationof people is now known in real time a la Marauder's Mapin Harry Potter series."

Other location-based apps like Loopt, Yelp, WHEREand Gowalla are investigating ways to not just let usersknow when their friends are nearby, but also the offersavailable in their areas. While there is a peaking demandfor such apps, SimpleGeo is cashing on it by making iteasy for developers in creating location-aware applica-tions. Skyhook's publicly available Core Engine SDKallows developers to quickly and easily start location-enabling their applications on the platform of their choice.

GeoIQ - GeoIQ is a software based data management,visualisation and analysis platform providing collabora-tive, browser-based data analysis tools for use by bothtechnical and non-technical users. GeoIQ enables organi-sations to take quick and intelligent data-driven decisionswith no cumbersome training. Refusing to use the word


Source: Socialwayne.com &TheLBMA.com

Most Popular Location-Based Application

foursquare51%

With apps becoming mainstream

and GPS being available on

mobiles, location of people is

now known in real time

- Dennis Crowley

Co-founder, Foursquare

GIS for his product, Andrew Turner, CTO, GeoIQ says,"This is a user-centric approach. We are providinggeospatial visualisation and analysis capabilities to peo-ple who are not geospatial experts.They don't have to worry aboutterms like points, polygons shape-files etc."

GeoCommons - GeoCommonsenables users to find, use andshare geographic data and maps.One can easily create rich interac-tive visualisations to solve prob-lems without any experience ofusing traditional mapping tools.

Waze - Taking location innovation astep ahead, Waze - a social mobileapplication, provides free turn-by-turn navigation based on the liveconditions of the road. This app is100% powered by users and pro-vides real time map and trafficinformation based on the wisdom of the crowd. One justneeds to join the community of drivers in their area andfeed in live conditions on the road. The more one drives,the better it gets with goodies and gifts.

Factual - Factual creates large scale, constantly evolvingaggregated data on thousands of topics. It takes a newapproach in creating, maintaining, managing and perpet-uating large datasets and its users are its partners in pro-liferating data. According to Tyler Bell, Director of Prod-ucts, "Factual is taking lot of established big dataapproaches and specific local geoknowledge, combinesthem together to produce global coverage of businessesand PoIs. It has information about 35 million businessesand PoIs in 35 countries across the world.

SECURITY AND PRIVACY

The news about Apple's iOS4 collecting user's locationinformation sent already wary location users into a tizzy.The ability to locate the position of a user has both prosand cons. According to a survey, about 80% of global con-sumers are concerned about unauthorised access to per-sonal information and 55% of people using LBS are con-cerned about loss of privacy.

While technology evolves at a rapid pace opening newavenues and possibilities, law makers around the worldare finding it hard to catch up. In the USA, the Federal

Trade Commission, in its report,"Protecting consumer privacy in anera of rapid change," explicitlystates that precise geolocationinformation is sensitive and shouldbe subject to greater protection. InEurope, privacy is consideredsacrosanct and Google Street Viewwitnessed severe backlash. Earlier,Facebook, AT&T and Verizon toohave attracted bad press and lawsuits for poor security of personalinformation of their users.

Today, location-aware smart-phones collect enormous amountsof data about where people go andwhat they do. This information canbe aggregated with other informa-tion to determine 'who they are'with precision and accuracy. Often,

location information is more precise than most personaldata because users generally cannot lie about their loca-tion. The level of available detail and the potential securi-ty and privacy risks associated with it will only increasewith time, compounding concerns about issues like 'cyberstalking' and Fourth Amendment privacy rights.

Pointing out issues with data handling practices,Francoise Gilbert, Founder, IT Law Group says, "Lack oftransparency, failure to meet privacy promises, individualprofiling and tracking and lack of appropriate informationsecurity measures are just but a few pressing issues."Incidentally, these issues don't apply only to firms thatdeal with geolocation. As company databases connectcustomers, employees and vendors to specific locations,most of the companies come under this purview. To avoidlaw suits, Nicole Ozer, Technology and Civil Liberties Pol-icy Director, American Civil Liberties Union of NorthernCalifornia, suggests a few good practices for companiesto adopt through out their lifecycles. She says, "Compa-nies should begin to identify and protect geolocation datathey collect/use if it could be associated with an individ-ual. They should keep the users informed. This will givethem the ability to understand how they will be impactedand provide proper disclosures. It is also important to


Tech

Lea

d


safeguard user data from possible security threats." With a raft of new regulations in the offing in the US

and elsewhere in the world, Kevin Pomfret, ExecutiveDirector, Centre for Spatial Law and Policy, says, "Indus-try should initiate a detailed, fully informed discussionwith law makers about location's complexity and potentialif they wish to avoid suffering the ill effects of 'the law ofunintended consequences'."

Notions of privacy are rooted in culture and vary dra-matically from one nation to the next. Says Kevin, "Asnational governments develop policies that are appropri-ate for their own legal systems and cultural mores, MNCsneed to develop business models that mesh with thosepolicies." Anticipating more technological invasion, it isimportant for the industry to start addressing issues likeintellectual property rights and various kinds of potentialliability

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Cheaper devices, greater demand: The prognosis forlocation industry to penetrate further is quite strong asthe cost of embedding location data in portable electronicdevices is very low. According to a recent research by BergInsight, global shipments of GPS/GNSS-enabledGSM/WCDMA handsets increased almost by 97 percent in2010 to 295 million units. Growing at a compound annualgrowth rate (CAGR) of 28.8 percent, shipments are fore-casted to reach 940 million units in 2015.

Hybrid solutions: To ensure greater accuracy, technolo-gists are combining several location and connectivityfunctionalities in one chipset. Hybrid solutions combiningAGPS and Wi-Fi are already popular. There are a number of refinements to make the combined CellID / Wi-Fi and GPS work better. "This fusion architecture is being designed to - first, provide location everywhere, and second, provide quality of service based on the application and the context in which location is beingused," says Kanwar Chadha, Founder, SiRF & CMO, CSR Plc.

Better access: Access to map data and value-added serv-ices using these map data is getting cheaper and eventu-ally will be freely available. Major service providers likeGoogle, Nokia and Apple already provide access free ofcost, and they increasingly focus on location as a corebusiness construct.

Context is the crux: With several location enabled apps,the focus is now to enrich user experience by creatingcontext to location. Dennis Crowly of Foursquare says,"Twitter is like 'present tense' service but the real storycan be built with the history of it. The challenge to tech-nologists is to create social context, to be able to tell peo-ple where they need to go and that is of utmost interest."Enumerating this aspect, Mok Oh, Chief Innovation Offi-cer, WHERE Inc says that there was a time when 'where'function was :

Where x, y, z represented the coordinates on earth andt is time. But today, location is associated with severalother attributes and contexts and it is best described as :

Turning to proliferating location enabled applications,Jack Dangermond says, "Social media and real timefeeds are part of real time maps. They are creating inter-esting opportunities and challenges at the same time.The future of GIS will be strong in providing a platform formaps and apps."Multimedia content: After enabling loca-tion and adding lot of context to it, developers are lookingto create multimedia content with audio and video enable-ment. To enrich this experience, apps are being mademore interactive as well.

CONCLUSION

Location is penetrating everywhere and Web and apps arenot the only ways. It is also getting into enterprise appli-cations. "You don't have to go and buy a GIS for that. Youjust buy Oracle Business Intelligence Suite EnterpriseEdition Plus (OBIEE) or IBM's Cognos and they havegeospatial capability. You don't have to link it to your GIS.You can geocode and people won't even know," says GeoffZeiss, Technology Evangelist, Autodesk. Signing off, Kan-war succinctly puts it, "Ultimately, you don't have to worryabout location because it will be embedded in almosteverything we do."

Bhanu RekhaExecutive Editor, [email protected]

No matter what challenges you face. Nomatter what opportunities await you.Trimble is dedicated to helping youestablish and secure a pathway to yourcontinued success.

Whether your version of success meansfewer hours in the field or finding newmarket opportunity, the answer lies incomplete surveying solutions that youcan trust.

Get the most from every day and everychallenge. Total solutions give you thefreedom to Collect, Share & Deliver withworkflows that make the most sense foryour business.

© 2011, Trimble Navigation Limited. All rights reserved. Trimble and the Globe & Triangle logo is a trademark of Trimble Navigation Limited, registered in the United States and in other countries. Trimble Access is a trademark of Trimble Navigation Limited. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. SUR-190-GIS

COLLECT SHARE DELIVER

How do you measure success?

SUCCESS FOUND HERE

Find Your Success

at Trimble booths in

AfricaGEO 2011

Southeast Asia Survey

Congress 2011

40

FIRST PERSON I Professor D. R. Fraser Taylor

The young

blood of

geomatics

The young

blood of

geomatics


Prof. D. R. Fraser TaylorDistinguished Research Professor - International Affairs Geography and Environmental Studies Director, Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre Carleton University, Canada

Iam a Canadian born in Scotland. I have alwayshad an interest in looking at development fromthe bottom up and not the top down. I value

ideas that come from local people as they providean important insight into reality. I pursuedresearch that allowed me to get to the grassrootsof the problem, as opposed to looking at thingsfrom top down. I did my PhD in Kenya on ruraldevelopment on one of the districts. I lived in anisolated area and was an education officer for thegovernment, teaching in rural schools. There wereno academic funds available for field work so Icombined my job with my research on how peopleperceive development in that part of the world. Ilearnt Swahili language, which I speak as well as Ispeak English. I spent a year at the Institute ofEducation and the School of Oriental and AfricanStudies at the University of London.

USE OF MAPS

One of the techniques to understand complex rela-tionships is through maps and spatial analysis. Istarted using maps from a very early age - as ameans to an end, not an end in itself; as a means ofunderstanding; as a means of analysing and as ameans of communicating the results of thoseanalyses. People in the geomatics field understandthe geomatics side of it. People working in interna-tional development, understand the internationaldevelopment issues. I sit in the middle, with knowl-edge of the problem areas and the techniques thatcan be used. For example, you draw a map. Then

you take a piece oftransparent paperand you draw an over-lay. Then you putanother overlay ontop of that, looking forspatial relationships.After three overlays,you cannot see any-thing because thereare too many lines.Therefore very earlyon, I got involved withcomputer mappingbecause they promisethe possibility ofstacking variables ontop of each other andfinding the relationship between and among vari-ables. In many ways, what we did at that time was20-30 years ahead of time. I produced the firstcomputer atlas of Kenya in 1970. We used 3Dimages and developed 3D techniques. But I wasnot doing 3D images of the terrain but of things likepoverty, wealth and health. Visualisation helpedme understand the realities in ways that othertechniques did not. These approaches are in voguenow but the concepts, ideas and applications are,in my case, decades old.

Another thing I discovered very early on wasthat the theories taught at the universities do notalways fit in with the facts. Like any good student,you learn your theory, you go out in the field and tryand apply it. If your results do not fit into the theo-ry, you automatically assume that your results arewrong, whereas very often that is not the case.Sometimes, theory can be wrong.

LOCAL WISDOM

Local people may not be educated in a formalsense, but they are wise. Drawing on their wisdomhelps one understand more than simply usingexpert approach. I was once on the coast of Kenyadoing research in the 70s. A large soil mappingproject was underway in the district. Curious locals


FFii rr

ss ttpp

eerr ss

oonn

Univ ofLondon,Institute ofEducationHockeyTeam1960, DRF Taylor(centre,sitting) wasthe captain

With eldest daughter Cathy in Kenya, 1962

wanted to know what was happeningaround and I explained them in detail. Tomy surprise, one of the villagers picked upa stick, drew a map of the region in thesand and designated particular areas suit-able for specific crops. In half-an-hour, heproduced the soil map of the region. WhenI compared his observations to the resultsof the project, I saw a strong correlationbetween the two. Had local people beenconsulted before initiating the project,millions of dollars and lot of time couldhave been saved.

This is how I started off engaging myself with real lifesituations. Professorship and universities came muchlater. That phase has been an important basis for boththe way I think now and the kinds of things I do now.There is continuity in my work over time based on thisexperience.

INTEREST IN GEOGRAPHY

My interest in geography came from curiosity, observa-tion and the realisation that one has to take a holisticapproach to understand better. This was a time wheneverybody was specialising. I am inherently suspiciousabout specialisation. Modern specialisation has reacheda stage where it is like a group of archaeologists. Eachone is digging down into his or her particular hole andfinding all kinds of information which is thrown up on to

the surface. But the specialist who ismissing is the one at the top who picks upvarious pieces and creates a big picture.That is what I see a geographer doing. Fora long time, I was swimming against thetide, because everybody insisted that Ispecialise. My argument was that life isnot about specialisation. Life is aboutunderstanding the holistic nature of theenvironment - qualitative, quantitative,historical, cultural and environmental.Geography gives me the opportunity to

pursue that kind of study without having the constraintsof having to do other things. For example, I am suspiciousof reductionist science, particularly in our field. If GI Sci-ence becomes too reductionist, we will lose. I understandthe value of using a scientific approach and no doubt it isimportant.

To me, a scientific approach is necessary but not suf-ficient. It has to be enhanced by looking at qualitative andcontextual issues and understanding that all geospatialanalysis is conditioned by the country or region in which itis applied. If one do not understand the reality of the con-text, science will be less valuable in terms of its utility andapplication on an ongoing basis. Technology has changedand continues to change rapidly giving us more opportu-nities to do things in different ways. But the basic ideasand concepts remain the same. One has to be groundedin his/her approach to things in order to effectively use

geographic information in modernsociety.

CYBER CARTOGRAPHY

My current work is on Inuit and abo-riginal people in northern Canada.We are enabling people build cybercartographic atlases. We havedeveloped a software called'Nunalit' which means community.The software allows people whohave little knowledge of geographicinformation processing to inputtheir information in whichever formthey want - whether it is an Inuitelder talking about his experiencesor whether it is an Inuit huntershowing his trails. We are building


ISCGM Meeting Osaka, with Japanese school children

One of the

major problems

in our field is

that we talk

in a language

people don't

understand


atlases which are communi-ty based and communityowned.

Cyber cartography is aconcept I introduced in 1997.It is a technique that uses allfive senses. My basic argu-ment is, if we, as humanbeings, experience our sur-roundings using sight,sound, taste, smell andtouch, why can't we producemaps using all these sens-es. This was first broughthome to me when I wasworking with the CanadianNational Institute of theBlind to create new forms ofmaps for the blind. We wentout on a field excursion. As Itried to describe the envi-ronment around, one of theblind people with me said, "Ican smell it. I can smell dif-ferent things. Why don't you produce maps that use sens-es other than sight?" That lead me to start working on atechnique that could do this.

Multi-sensory representation is one element of cybercartography. Another is related to different learningstyles. Some people learn verbally, some people like tolisten to commentary; some look at graphs, others lookat text, others at tables and yet others look at statistics.Cyber cartography presents information in all of theseforms. Another element of cyber cartography is interac-tivity. It is very important that people interact and createthings themselves as that engages people. Cartographyhas moved from supply-driven mode to demand-drivenmode. We are taking it one step further so that peopleactually create their own maps.

Most of my recent work is on cyber cartography andits applications. Of late, there is lot of discussion overcrowd sourcing and volunteered geographic information.I have been doing this for 40-50 years now, though I didnot call it by that name. What we are now doing is creat-ing a method, a framework, in which this information cansit. In our work with the Inuit, we can take scientificknowledge of climate change and Arctic environmental

change, combine it withlocal knowledge of Arcticenvironmental change, andpresent them in innovativeways.

EVOLVING SDI’S

While I am involved in theseactivities, I am alsoinvolved in SDIs. The con-cept of SDI needs tochange. In my view, thoseproducing an SDI shouldfirst determine the nationalneeds and the key prob-lems - whether it is health,education, rural develop-ment, or something else.This varies from nation tonation. They should thenprovide structures thathelp to address thosequestions. And then pro-vide infrastructures that

help to address these questions. SDI's must be createdand driven by use. There is no real virtue in producingdata for the sake of producing data. It becomes an impos-sible task and you end up rigidly trying to follow a pattern.You are simply recreating the old problems in a new form.One of the major problems in our field is that we talk in alanguage people don't understand.

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

AND CARTOGRAPHY

My career has had two strands - international develop-ment and cartography. People often wonder how thesetwo things exist together. I have written a lot on interna-tional development, while I continue to write on geomat-ics and cartography. People do not normally see the rela-tionship between these two disciplines. But if you thinkabout my interests in applications, my earlier work oninternational development is application driven. I usecartography in geographical information processing tounderstand developmental problems. As far as my latestwork is concerned, we have developed much of our owntechnology and we are developing new technology all thetime. Because we could not buy off-the-shelf products to

Briefing Canadian PM Jean Chretien during his first visit to China onusing the National Economic Atlas of China, for which DRF Taylor wasenglish language editor


do the things we wanted to do, we had to create themourselves.

Today, I am simply working on different applications. Icontinue to use the technology and the approach tounderstand, analyse and present information in innova-tive ways which increases the understanding of basicsocio-economic problems. I am not doing as much workon international development as I used to do when I wasphysically located in Africa but I work extensively withMexico, China and India. I am also involved in the UnitedNations initiative on Global Geographical InformationManagement (GGIM) whose objective is to effectivelymerge geospatial and statistical data. This is an impor-tant initiative.

OPEN SOURCE

I am a strong supporter of the concept of open sourceand also of open specifications. I think open source has agreat potential in countries that cannot afford expensivesoftware but are rich in human capacity. Developing opensource allows people to use human capital instead of thescarce physical capital to move ahead. I also believe inopen data, I think it is very important that data be shared.I have been very active in the movement to increase datasharing. Data sharing is even more important if locationis going to play an important role in life.

The other thing that I am actively involved in is thearchiving and preservation of geospatial data. In the lastquarter of the 20th century, we lost huge amounts of spa-tial data and some of it has disappeared forever. It ismuch easier to find maps from the 16th century of someareas still preserved than it is to get digital databases ofmaps from the year 2000. The situation is getting worse

now, not better. Preservation and archiving are differentfrom backup; backup is not preservation and archiving.

WORK AND BEYOND

I do occasional pieces of consulting, mostly to support mystudents and staff. I am responsible for them as individu-als and that is challenging because it is not easy to keepthe money coming. For example, the Geomatics and Car-tographic Research Centre at Carleton University, which Idirect is totally funded by soft money from research proj-ects. I do not receive a salary. The funding goes to staffand graduate students.

I have a deep interest in sports. I play tennis regular-ly. I used to play lot of field hockey. I have played againstIndia at one point in Kenya. My family is very supportiveand important to what I do. I find sports to be a good wayto relax. I also play bridge with my wife who is quite goodat it. I also find listening to music and watching TV to berelaxing. I read a lot. I always read before I go to bed on awide range of topics. I particularly like historical fiction. Idon't do anything that I am not enthusiastic about.

Time management is very important for me. What isnow called multi-tasking is a skill I have always had. Ihave likened it to the Chinese jugglers who have a skillwith plates. Probably, that is the way I work in terms ofkeeping many things going at the same time but I man-age my time. I usually try to go straight to the heart ofwhat needs to be done. I analyse and react to situationsquickly. Experience helps in these matters. I have a lot ofenergy and it is important to keep oneself in good shape.It is also important to have very good support team. I haveboth, a supportive family and helpful staff.

FOR GEOMATICS ENTHUSIASTS

Don't be driven by technology. Use technology as a meansto an end, not an end in itself. If one is driven by technol-ogy, one is not likely to make the kind of contribution tosociety that he/she would if they see the technology in thelight of the applications of that technology. Location-based analysis and description, location-based organisa-tional data, analysis of data and presentation of data areabsolutely vital to understanding many problems at allscales, from global to local. There is a real contribution tobe made by people who understand the power of loca-tional data within the ICT framework. One ought to have agoal and a vision of where one wants to go and why andhow this technology can help in that goal.

At the Taj Mahal, India


What is Global Geospatial Informa-tion Management (GGIM)? Why do weneed GGIM?

We are living in a world wheremany of our problems are of a globalnature, such as climate change, natu-ral disasters, population displace-ment and economic crises. Coordi-nated efforts at all levels are requiredto solve these problems. We firmlybelieve that high quality informationand analyses are a prerequisite forgood policy making. That's wheregeospatial information has emergedas a major contributor. Decision mak-

ers require location-based informa-tion for everything, be it during disas-ter relief operations or setting theagenda for development work;geospatial information forms the cruxof their decisions. It is this need thathas made it essential to have a globalconsultation mechanism to addresscritical management issues concern-ing geospatial information.

There is currently no multilateral,inter-governmental mechanism thatcan bring together countries andinternational organisations to discussand set the agenda for the manage-

ment of global geospatial informationand promote its use. We need a glob-al body that will serve as the apex,decision-making entity of the globalgeospatial information community.The United Nations hopes to build onits many regional activities and helpthe member states to establish aneffective mechanism to make deci-sions on GGIM issues.

What are thee advantages of settingup such a global mechanism?

Establishing a formal frameworkwould help member states develop

INTERVIEW I Dr. Paul Cheung

GGIM can address

global issues

strategies for effective managementof geospatial information and buildcapacities in this field. Sharing com-mon standards and practices, pro-moting international cooperation andcoordinating policy approaches aresome of the other important advan-tages. In future, the success inaddressing the global challenges willdepend greatly on the accessibilityand quality of location-based infor-mation and also on the ways to man-age and share essential data.

A global mechanism, under theauspices of the United Nations, wouldhelp in increasing readiness andcapability for an effective response tothe needs and also in creating aware-ness among politicians and decision-makers about the powerful analyticalpotential of geospatial information.

What are the challenges involved inthis process?

Nowadays, most countries usegeospatial information for nationalpolicy formulation; yet coordinationamong them is an exception ratherthan a rule. In fact, there are bothtechnical and policy challengesinvolved in bringing about coordina-tion among the countries. Access toand sharing of data, interoperability,standards, privacy, national security,licensing of datasets and public-pri-vate partnerships are issues thatneed to be addressed. One way toaddress these is by establishing anew global mechanism, which willlink all regional cartographic confer-ences and serve as an apex body ofthe global geospatial informationcommunity.

What gaps have been identified inthe manageement of geospatial infor-

mation at the global level?

Right now, there is no commonmechanism to facilitate setting up ofglobal norms on geospatial informa-tion. Our member states have strong-ly recommended creating this mecha-nism; for example, a UN multilateralconsultative process, which will coor-dinate the ongoing work among vari-ous agencies in the geospatial sector.Without such a global coordinatingmechanism, the risk of further frag-mentation is very high; and this willgreatly hamper the development ofnational spatial infrastructure and thecoordinated use of geospatial infor-mation globally.

The UN recognised the impor-tance of cartography and maps toglobal activities way back in 1948.Since then, it has done a great deal ofwork in the field of cartography, stan-dardisation of geographical namesand the deployment of GIS technolo-gy. However, much remains to bedone. The advances in technologyhave vastly improved the availabilityof geospatial data and their potentialintegration withother types ofdata. We need totake advantage ofthis and enhancethe access andflow of geospatialand other typesof information.Building thisinformation infra-structure mustbe a shared goalamong all the countries.

You talked about UN activities in thefieeld of cartography and the stan-dardisation of geographical names.

Can you elaborate on that?

As I said, UN recognised theirimportance way back in 1948. Sincethen, it has been promoting betterunderstanding of cartography, geo-graphical names and geospatialinformation through internationalcooperation and the organisation ofconferences, publications, trainingcourses and technical projects.

It all started with the Economicand Social Council (ECOSOC) adoptinga resolution recognising the impor-tance of mapping to global activitiesand the benefits of coordinating car-tographic services of the UnitedNations and its member states. Sev-eral resolutions passed during thelater years led to the establishmentof regional cartographic conferences- the United Nations Regional Carto-graphic Conference for Asia and thePacific (UNRCC-AP), the UnitedNations Regional Cartographic Con-ference for the Americas (UNRCC-A)and the United Nations Regional Car-tographic Conference for Africa. TheUnited Nations Regional Cartographic

Conference forAfrica was laterreplaced by theCommittee onDevelopmentInformation, Sci-ence and Tech-nology (CODIST)and its sub-com-mittee on geo-informationcalled CODIST-Geo. These con-

ferences constitute an importantregional mechanism to exchangeinformation among national mappingand surveying authorities and theinternational scientific organisations


active in addressing common issuesaffecting the work of national map-ping organisations. These regionalconferences reaffirm the need forcooperation on geospatial informationand led to the establishment of thePermanent Committee on GIS Infra-structure for Asia and the Pacific(PCGIAP) and the Permanent Com-mittee on Spatial Data Infrastructurefor the Americas (PC-IDEA).

In Africa, CODIST-Geo is concen-trating on the development of SpatialData Infrastructure (SDI) through theinventory of existing SDIs, the devel-opment of a metadata profile forAfrica and human capacity-buildingactivities.

Similarly, the UN Group of Expertson Geographical Names (UNGEGN)has worked on a world-wide basis toaddress issues pertaining to the stan-dardisation of geographical names.

The United Nations Conference on theStandardisation of GeographicalNames, which is the parent body ofUNGEGN, is convened every fiveyears.

What kind of support does the UNprovide to inter-governmentalgeospatial activities?

The UN Department of Economicand Social Affairs, through its Statis-tics Division, serves as the secretariatfor the implementation of the UN res-olutions on geospatial information.Besides organising conferences topromote the use of geospatial infor-mation, it has also managed to devel-op methodological guidelines, train-ing courses and technical assistancefor the use of geospatial tools in sup-port of census activities in developingcountries.

There is also the UN CartographicSection (UNCS), which comes underthe Department of Field Support(DFS). It provides cartographic andgeospatial information services to theUN Security Council and the UN Sec-retariat including all UN field mis-sions. UNCS maintains primarygeospatial data layers as a digitalbase map at global level at a smallscale (1:1 million).

The United Nations Office for theOuter Space Affairs (UNOOSA) pro-motes international cooperation inthe peaceful uses of outer spacethrough the United Nations Commit-tee of the Peaceful Uses of OuterSpace (COPUOS), maintains interna-tional space law through the UnitedNations Register of Objects Launchedinto Outer Space and brings togethermember states through internationalworkshops, training courses and pilotprojects on space sciences to benefitthe developing nations via the United

Nations Platform for Space-basedInformation for Disaster Managementand Emergency Response (UN-SPI-DER).

Some regional commissions arealso active in the area. ECE and ECAhave active programmes and workinggroups on a variety of interesting top-ics. UN Secretariat entities, as well asUN funds and programmes organisea variety of activities promoting theuse of geospatial information. Theseactivities are coordinated by the Unit-ed Nations Geospatial InformationWorking Group (UNGIWG).

The report on GGIM has proposedthat a committee of experts be estab-lished similar to that of the UN Com-mittee of Experts on GeographicalNames. Can you tell us about the pro-posed committee, its composition,functions and aims?

The proposed committee, ifapproved, will consist of experts fromall member states with experts frominternational organisations asobservers. The members will bedrawn from fields of surveying, geog-raphy, cartography and mapping,remote sensing, land and geographicinformation systems and its relatedfields. The committee will meetannually and report to the Economicand Social Council. It will be support-ed by the UN Statistics Division of theDepartment of Economic and SocialAffairs and the Cartographic Sectionof the Department of Field Support.

The basic aim is to provide a glob-al forum for discussion wider thanwhat is currently being offered by theUN regional cartographic confer-ences. The committee will play aleadership role in setting the agendafor the management of globalgeospatial information.


Dr. Paul CheungDirector, United Nations Statistics Division

Department of Economic and Social Affairs

GeospatialWorld I June 2011 49

A gust of lifeContrary to its barrenand lifeless character,the desert sand can at times prove to be a life-supporting element in the mostunexpected areas.

As dust and sand fromthe Algerian SaharaDesert blows acrossthe Atlantic Ocean, itcarries with itself a lotof nutrients, includingnitrogen, phosphorusand iron, which act as afertiliser and stimulatethe production of massive planktonblooms.

Sandstorms are verycommon over theSahara, and large concentrations of thedust can be found inthe tropical Atlantic andthe Caribbean. The blueand green swirls in theimage show planktonblooms in the Atlantic. While some types of plankton are individuallymicroscopic, the chlorophyll they use for photosynthesis collectively tints the colour of the surrounding oceanwaters.

Image courtesy: ESA

The rapid development of earth observation andgeoinformation (EO&GI) has made them essentialinstruments for the management of spatial

processes that affect the sustainable development of ourliving environment. The management of these processesrequires decision making power at different administra-tive and political levels, which has worldwide conse-quences for organisations in the EO&GI sector.

The awareness that these processes are of a supra-national and even a global scale implies that worldwideefforts are required to deal with these scientific prob-lems. Moreover, the globalisation of the economy implies

the development of global delivery chains for productsand services. Partners in these chains must have a com-mon understanding of the specifications and conditionsfor products and service delivery.

For the provision of geodata, the emphasis has shift-ed over the last thirty years from data collection to datahandling, processing, dissemination and use. While therole of the end user in data specifications has grown con-siderably, the involvement of professionals from otherdisciplines than the traditional surveyors has changedthe character of the geoinformation domain.

Users are no longer satisfied with standard data as


CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT I Prof. Martien Molenaar

Empowering

the GI community

Empowering

the GI community

51

defined by surveyors and the validity of the basic assump-tion of "collect once - use many times" is in doubt nowthat tools and systems for ad-hoc, special purpose datacollection are available. This development has struck atthe very roots of the traditional mapping agencies andalso on some of the basic assumptions that were tradi-tionally seen as fundamental for the developments ofSDI's.

Issues facing GI providers

Presently, the fast development of EO&GI technologyrequires a time horizon of 3 to 5 years for investments inhardware while the concepts for information products andservices have to be adjusted every 5 to 8 years. Conse-quently, GI-providers and users must adjust their geo-ICTarchitectures continuously, which has important techno-logical, organisational and institutional consequences, asdisplayed by Figure 1.

While the technological aspects concern the develop-ment and application of concepts for spatial data model-ling, information extraction from image data as well asthe processing, analysis, dissemination, presentation anduse of geospatial data, the organisational and institution-al aspects concern the development and implementationconcepts for the structuring, organisation, managementand institutional arrangements of processes for geospa-tial data production and the provision and use of geoinfor-mation services.

New business and geo-ICT environments are emerg-ing within the modern evolving information society, whichforce GI-providers to develop new business strategies.These require scenario studies anticipating the opportu-nities of new technology and new geodata infrastructures(GDIs). Hence, permanent capacity development of entireorganisations is required so that "lifelong learning" doesnot only apply to professionals, but also to their organisa-tions.

Governance and GI

The modern technology, the changing role of governmentand the globalisation of the economy have a fundamentalimpact on the development of GDIs. Governments have aregulatory role with respect to information provision,which requires them to facilitate the development ofinfrastructure through which geoinformation is provided.But, the important question is that should they also beproviders, or even producers? Clearly, the development ofGDIs is not only the responsibility of the public sector butthe growth of GDIs is possible only through public-privateinteractions, which implies that a strong private sectorand thus a private industry is a prerequisite for sustain-able GDIs.

Governments also have a direct interest in the use ofgeoinformation, which is indispensable for the manage-ment of our living environment and resources. Govern-ments have an important role in the context of the inter-national agendas and treaties for the sustainable devel-opment of our planet. Geoinformation is a prerequisite forgood governance at all aggregation levels, including thesupra or international levels. The fact that almost allhuman activities have a spatial footprint leads us to theconclusion that "good governance requires good geo-information".

Capacity development for EO and

geo-ICT sector

Capacity development should be given a high priority byorganisations which are looking to introduce new workingmethods and procedures that ultimately result in struc-tural adjustments of their geo-ICT architecture. Capacitydevelopment programmes should help the internationalearth observation and geo-ICT sector to understand howtechnological, institutional and market developmentslead to new geo-information products and services.

Therefore, capacity development does not only con-cern technology oriented professionals but also staffs

Figure 1. Strategic alignment model. After (Henderson et al, 1992)



that should be able to formulate geo-ICT strategies tosecure their institutional position and mandates in thisfield and also to sustain their relevance.

A profound knowledge of technological trends shouldtherefore be complemented with a deep insight in the rolethat geoinformation plays in the context of spatial policyand decision making.

Globalisation and changing conditions

for capacity development

Until a few decades ago, our view of the world was simple.There were rich countries in the north and poor countriesin the south. (This implied a new definition of North andSouth, in which Australia and New Zealand happen to benorthern countries!) The northern countries wererequired to help the southern countries with their eco-nomic development. Figure 2 displays the GDP density per sq km. It showsregions of high economic activity and regions with muchless economic activity, which proves that there is nolonger a clear north south division.

The illustration makes it clear that the strong eco-nomic regions are distributed over the globe and throughtheir connections they form the global economy. But,there are large regions hardly connected to these net-works.

Thus we can say that the north and south are nolonger synonymous with the rich and poor. Moreover, wecan no longer say that countries are rich or poor as therecan be large differences within the countries.

Development of global educational

services for capacity development

The globalisation of the economy is affecting the world ofhigher education and capacity development is no longer anorth-south issue. Universities all over the world haveformed partnerships for research and education. Themodern ICT opens new scenarios for the provision ofinternational education services. Traditionally, we had theinstitute oriented approach where a cohort of studentsenters a university, enrols in a programme and they get adegree when they finish it. The fact that the programme isoffered by a particular university or institute determinesthe setting.

However, the scenario has changed a lot now and universities form consortia, which offer education programmes based on their collective expertise. Studentsenrol in such a programme and visit different universitiesfor different parts of the programme. This is a programmeoriented approach because the content and structure ofthe programme determines the setting here, rather thanthe culture of a particular university.

Modern ICT provides facilities for e-delivery of educa-tional services that are no longer location dependent. Whytravel far if you can access these services through yourlaptop? Students might only visit the partners of a consor-tium for short workshops and seminars.

For capacity development, we may expect that mid-career professionals will search the web to upgrade theirknowledge. They generally have a clear idea of what theyneed and that is not necessarily a complete educationalprogramme. They would rather look for special coursesor educational modules.

Through e-shopping, they find these and follow different distance courses and design their own pro-gramme for upgrading their knowledge. They may finallycollect sufficient credit points to fulfil the requirementsfor a degree. But who can issue a degree in this case?Here is an interesting and urgent task for organisationslike FIG, ISPRS and ICA to initiate the discussion on life-long learning and professional accreditation. Requirements and constraints should be formulated forassigning degrees for such cases.

Prof. Martien MolenaarFaculty for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC)Twente University (UT)Enschede, the Netherlands

Figure 2. GDP per sq km

Cou

rtes

y: w

ww

.visu

aliz

inge

cono

mic

s.co

m/

GDP per square kilometre$ 0-499$ 500 - 1,099$ 1,100 - 2,999$ 3,000 - 8,099$ 8,100 - 21,199$ 22,000 - 59,999$ 60,000 - 162,999$ 163,000 - 546,000,000No Data

GDP Density


JUNE 2011

June 6 - 9Hexagon 2011

Orlando, UShttp://www.hexagonconference.com

June 7 - 9Nigeria Oil & Gas Technol-

ogy 2011

Lagos, Nigeriahttp://www.cwcnogtech.com/

June 8 - 10The British Cartographic

Society Annual Symposium

2011

Stockport, United Kingdomhttp://www.cartography.org.uk/default.asp?contentID=581

June 8 - 11Insights 2011

Las Vegas, UShttp://www.insights2011.com/

June 9

Open GIS Seminar

Namur, Belgiumhttp://www.gim.be/ewcm/ewcm.nsf/_/A8DC4B789365220DC125788E0034AC63

June 102nd International Rail GIS

Summit

Paris, Francehttp://events.esri.com/info/index.cfm?fuseaction=showSeminar&shownum-ber=14600

June 13 - 152nd International Map-

Window GIS and DotSpa-

tial Conference 2011

San Diego, UShttp://www.mapwindow.org/confer-ence/2011/

June 14Navteq Developer Day

Berlin, Germanyhttp://www.nn4d.com/site/global/mar-ket/developerday/p_devday.jsp

June 14 - 15GeoIntelligence Asia 2011

New Delhi, Indiahttp://www.gisdevelopment.net/geointel-ligenceasia/

June 14 - 15Forum on Earth

Observations

Washington, DC, UShttp://www.forumoneo5.com/

June 14 - 17MundoGEO Connect

São Paulo, Brazil http://mundogeoconnect.com/en/

June 16Open Source Geospatial:

Open for Research, Open

for Business, Open for

Government

Lancaster, UKhttp://www.agi.org.uk/northern-group-events/

June 19 - 25SGEM 2011Albena, Bulgaria http://www.sgem.org/

June 19 - 26Geospatial Technology

Summer Camp

Washington, UShttp://gis.washcoll.edu/summercamp.php

June 21Third Open Source GIS UK

Conference - OSGIS 2011

Nottingham, UKhttp://cgs.nottingham.ac.uk/~osgis11/os_home.html

June 22 - 23South African Geospatial

Forum

Johannesburg South Africa http://sageospatialforum.org

June 24 - 26The 19th International

Conference on

GeoInformatics

Shanghai, China http://goo.gl/P1EI7

June 26 - 30MAPPS Summer Confer-

ence

New York, UShttp://www.mapps.org/events/index.cfm

June 27 - 30GIS In Public Health

Atlanta, UShttp://www.urisa.org/2011health

June 27 - July 1INSPIRE Conference 2011

Edinburgh, Scotlandhttp://goo.gl/bOhZc

June 28 - 29ISEPP: GIS and Remote

Sensing Applications

Izmir, Turkeyhttp://www.cevkorconferences.com/

JULY 2011

July 3 - 825th International Carto-

graphic Conference

Paris, Francehttp://www.icc2011.fr/

July 5 - 9GI Forum 2011

Salzburg, Austriahttp://www.gi-forum.org

July 7 - 12Survey Summit

San Diego, US http://www.surveysummit.com

July 11 - 15Esri International User

Conference

San Diego, US http://www.esri.com/uc

July 15 - 17State Of The Map Europe

2011

Vienna, Austriahttps://sotm-eu.org/

July 18 - 22European Survey Research

Association Conference

Basel Area, Switzerlandhttp://surveymethodology.eu/conferences/

July 21GIS in Housing

Associations

Manchester, UKhttp://www.agi.org.uk/northern-group-events/

July 24 - 29IGARSS 2011

Vancouver, Canadahttp://www.igarss11.org/

July 28 - 30Remote Sensing, Natural

Hazards, and Environmen-

tal Change Conference

Singaporehttp://www.crisp.nus.edu.sg/conferences/RSNHEC/index.html

July 29-30International Conference

on Health GIS

New Delhi, Indiahttp://www.e-geoinfo.net/git4ndm2010/

AUGUST 2011

August 1 - 72011 National Conference

on Geographic Education

Portland, UShttp://www.ncge.org/

August 15 - 20AGSE 2011

Nairobi, Kenyahttp://applied-geoinformatics.org/

August 17 -19Latin American Geospatial

Forum

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil http://www.lagf.org/

August 17 - 19ISPRS York 2011

York, UKhttp://isprsyork2011.webplus.net/

August 23 - 257th International Sympo-

sium on Digital Earth

Perth, Australiahttp://www.isde7.net/

August 30 - 31Nordic Remote Sensing

Days

Akershus, Norwayhttp://www.nordicrsdays2011.no

For more information visithttp://di.leica-geosystems.com

www.leica-geosystems.com

Leica RCD30 SeriesBecause good things come in small packages

A lot can be said about the new Leica RCD30 medium format camera:

Multispectral, co-registered RGBN imagery from a single camera head

Forward and lateral mechanical motion compensation

Ruggedized and thermal stabilized lens system

Modular concept for standalone, multi-head and LiDAR configuration

Lightweight and compact design

And there are many more. But why not keep it simple?

The new Leica RCD30 is truly setting new standards in what you and

your customers can expect from medium format airborne imaging.

100941_Leica_RCD_Ad_7_75x10_25inch.indd 1 20.4.2011 12:04:09 Uhr

Latin America Geospatial Forum17 - 19 August, 2011, Rio de Janeiro, Brazilwww.lagf.org

Organiser

Innovative Ideas Coming Your WayInnovative Your WayIdeas ComingDemystifying Technology.......

Asia Geospatial Forum (Former Map Asia)17 - 19 October, 2011, Jakarta, Indonesiawww.asiageospatialforum.org

ATIAPS LO FE O

G R

A UI

MSA

Demystifying Technology.......

Africa Geospatial Forum (Former Map Africa)6 - 8 September, 2011, Nairobi, Kenya

http://africageospatialforum.org

India Geospatial Forum (Former Map India)7 - 9 February, 2012, Epicentre, Gurgaon, India

inr 150 / us$ e c i r your geospatial industry …...p r i c e: inr 150 / us$ 15 subscriber’s...

Documents