A majority of my business is geographic information systems. I've used the technology to build real time traffic sites, transit information sites, urban planning systems, urban lands management systems and homeland security applications. When GoogleMaps came on the scene, with its open API and aerial photography, suddenly the world started thinking geospatially. Everyone wanted to map everything.

Techcrunch compared the various mapping sites and came up with some nice metrics to judge who is currently leading the pack. What's missing, though, is the analysis piece, but more on that in a second.

People in the GIS world have had mixed opinions about on-line services. My take is that these services are causing a sea change in people's relationship to spatial information. Data's hidden spatial elements are coming to the forefront. This was noted today by Bubba in Scobelizer when he said:

Being candid - I had never thought much about maps until the last 6 months, but now I'm blown away by what is out there and eager to see what is to come. I'm really glad there are so many passionate cartographer out there! FWIW, my favorite map related thing is going by birds eye tourism to see shamu and the like.

For years people in GIS have had to explain in detail why spatial analysis and data representation is so powerful. You can fit a great deal of information into a map and have it expressed in an intuitive and rapidly comprehensible form. Each year ESRI publishes a book of maps created using ESRI software by its worldwide network of users. They are often visually stunning and graphically elegant.

From a User Interface perspective, the map is a gold mine. You an quickly and intuitively locate objects that require action or oversight. You can quickly change data displayed within the same UI. You can easily and seamlessly interact with non-map elements. The low hanging fruit here is asset management, but the same technology is used to manage the power grid, roadway traffic, and the supply chain for large retailers or manufacturers.

Which brings me to the missing element in the mapping technologies reviewed on Techcrunch. They are visualization tools only. Go to the ESRI site and start looking through the functionality provided through their systems. They've been doing this for over 20 years and have a robust and mature set of features for spatial analysis.

Yes, Zillow can use Windows Live Local for their presentation layer - but underneath is some heavy processing not done by the mapping engine.

This is important because real geoprocessing requires careful forethought of database construction. A well designed geodatabase includes topological information necessary to facilitiate elegant analysis. This depth of thought is not necessary for a mashup, where the only link needs to be between the mapped object and it's latitutde and longitude.

For people playing with the APIs, the love affair with merely being able to locate something on a map will be short lived. They will begin to demand more geoprocessing power in the API. As that happens, some very interesting products should start to come out of Microsoft, Google, and the rest.


Technorati Tags: ESRI, GIS, googlemaps, windows, windows live, windows local,

Does eminent domain apply to the ether?

South Florida has installed a network of highway cameras to monitor conditions before, during and after hurricanes (although they can be used as regular traffic cameras at any time).

The system will be used to monitor storm evacuations but may prove more useful after a "hurricane event," Santana said.
"Getting out is the easy part," Santana said. "This will feed back information on the conditions there so we have a better idea when people can start coming back."

This seems to me a clever and extremely valuable use of ITS. There is, however, one interesting side problem: "The ITS system uses a wireless system to transmit its digital images from the towers to the monitoring center in Miami-Dade County." Turns out, the system may be putting at least one local service provider out of business by effectively expropriating the airwaves.

Meanwhile, Digital Sail, a wireless Internet provider based in Marathon, was knocked off line at 9 a.m. Thursday by interference, and remains off, said Digital Sail president Michael Ford. He suspects the ITS system is the cause.
"We may be knocked off for good," Ford said. "If this persists, we're out of business because of the interference."

The agency in charge of the cameras disavows any fault; but Digital Sail's owner says that the agency is encroaching on frequencies reserved for private use, rather than using those assigned to government purposes. The company is requesting a new frequency, but it could be out of business before the lengthy appeal process is complete.

An emerging technology will inevitably produce dislocations, but we certainly want to be wary of causing distress to citizens, or to businesses and their clients, unless absolutely necessary, and even then taking steps to minimize the damage.