The Global Geospatial Magazine · BVR Mohan Reddy Chairman and Managing Director, Infotech Enterprises Ltd., India David Maguire Director, Products, Solutions and International, ESRI,

JANUARY 2008 VOL 12 ISSUE 1Th

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RNI 68561/18/6/98/ISSN 0971-9377 UP/BR-343/2008Subscriber’s copy. Not for Sale

Looking Forward...

40 Status of GIS in Africa

44 Status of GIS in Europe

48 Geospatial Initiatives in Israel

54 Geo-information in the Age of Instant Access

58 Geospatial Technologytakes centre stage

10 - 13 FEBRUARY, 2009, HYDERABAD, INDIA

AFRICA I AMERICAS I ASIA I AUSTRALIA I EUROPE www.GISdevelopment.net

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COLUMNS

Editorial 05

Annual News roundup 06

Tech Horizon 64

Events 66

ARTICLES

30 Usage of OGC Standards

in Indonesia, Thailand andMalaysiaThe current standing of the use of OGCstandards in the development of NSDI andsimilar projects…Dr. Markus Lupp

36 Geoinformatics in 2008:Convergence bringing exciting opportunities Exciting opportunities in the GeospatialIndustry as a result of convergence in busi-ness models, technological innovations,social requirements and more…Dr. David Hastings

40 Status of GIS in Africa The use of GIS by government departments

in the execution of their functions…Dr. Derek Clarke

44 Status of GIS in Europe: Opportunities and Challenges Overview of Geospatial industry in Europe

with respect to GNSS, SDI, etc.,…Prof. Dr. Josef Strobl

48 Geospatial Initiatives inIsrael Objectives of the Survey of Israel's National

Geospatial Portal…Dr. Haim Srebro

52 Public Private Partnership in Middle East Implementation of PPP model in the Middle

East…Fernando Pizzuti

54 Geo-information in theAge of Instant AccessVarious application, product inititaives and

their regional usage overview…Dr.-Ing. Phisan Santitamnont

58 Geospatial Technologytakes center stageTaking stock of technological developments

in 2007… Joseph R. Francica

3

President M P Narayanan Editor in Chief Ravi Gupta Managing Editor Maneesh Prasad Publisher Sanjay Kumar

Editorial Team: Honorary Advisor Prof. Arup Dasgupta Sr. Associate Editor (Honorary) Dr. Hrishikesh Samant Associate Editor Dr. Satyaprakash Assistant Editor Saurabh Mishra, Anamika Das Sr. Sub Editor Harsha VardhanSub Editor Gaurav Sharma

Sales and Marketing: Regional Managers Middle East Swati Grover North America Annu Negi South East Asia Pacific Sunil Ahuja Regional Sales Managers Europe Niraj South Asia Prashant Joshi Dy. Managers Sales Middle EastSharmishtha Seth South Asia Anupam Sah, Vivek Rawat South East Asia Pacific Kavitha Seras Marketing Co-ordinatorMegha Datta Sales Co-ordinator Uma Shankar Pandey

Design Team: Sr. Creative Designer Deepak Kumar, Prashant K Sarkar Assistant Graphic Designer Manoj Kumar Singh

Circulation Team: Arpita Majumder, Vijay Kumar Singh

Software Development Group: Team Leader Kumar Vikram Team Member Viral Pandey

Portal Team: Product Manager Shivani Lal Dy. Manager Anshu Garg Team Member Anjali Srivastava

Advisory BoardDato’ Dr. Abdul Kadir bin Taib

Deputy Director General of Survey and Mapping, Malaysia

Aki A. Yamaura Sr. Vice President, Asuka DBJ Partners, Japan

Amitabha Pande Secretary, Inter-State Council, Government of India

Bhupinder Singh Sr. Vice President, Bentley Systems Inc., USA

Bob Morris President, Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging,USA

BVR Mohan ReddyChairman and Managing Director, Infotech Enterprises Ltd., India

David Maguire Director, Products, Solutions and International, ESRI, USA

Frank Warmerdam President, OSGeo, USA

Prof. Ian Dowman President, ISPRS, UK

Prof. Josef Strobl Director, Centre for Geoinformatics, University of Salzburg, Austria

Kamal K Singh Chairman and CEO, Rolta Group of Companies, India

Prof. Karl Harmsen Director, UNU-INRA

Marc Tremblay Vice President, Commercial Business Unit, DigitialGlobe, USA

Mark Reichardt President and Chief Operating Officer, OGC, USA

Prof. Martien Molenaar Rector, ITC, The Netherlands

Matthew O’Connell CEO, GeoEye, USA

Prof. Michael Blakemore Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of Durham, UK

Dr. Milan Konecny President, International Cartographic Association,Czech Republic

Er. Mohammed Abdulla Al-Zaffin Director, GIS Centre, Dubai Municipality, UAE

Dr. Prithvish Nag Director, NATMO, India

Rajesh C. Mathur President, ESRI India

Robert M Samborski Excutive Director, Gita, USA

Prof. Stig EnemarkPresident, FIG, Denmark

Prof. V. S RamamurthyChairman, IIT, Delhi, India

G I S D E V E L O P M E N T | D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 Vo l . 1 1 I s s u e 1 2

GIS Development is intended for those interested and involved in GISrelated activities. It is hoped that it will serve to foster a growing net-work by keeping the community up-to-date on many activities in thiswide and varied field. Your involvement in providing relevant informationis essential to the success of this endeavour.

GIS Development does not necessarily subscribe to the viewsexpressed in the publication. All views expressed in this issue are thoseof the contributors. It is not responsible for any loss to anyone due tothe information provided.

GIS Development Pvt. Ltd. Printed and Published by Sanjay Kumar.Press M. P. Printers B-220, Phase-II, Noida, GautambudhNagar (UP) INDIA Publication Address P-82, Sector-11, Gautambudh Nagar, Noida, India Editor Ravi Gupta

In this issue...

ABOUT THE COVER...

The perspective of authors from different regionshave been depicted where they see the newertechnologies being developed for better growth ofthe geospatial industry in the times to come. We alllook forward to this!

OFFICESIndiaGIS Development Pvt. Ltd. A-145, Sector - 63, Noida, INDIATel: +91-120-4260800 to 808 Fax: +91-120-4260823-24

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Email: [email protected]

John Naughton a control engineer -cum-journalist in his KeynoteAddress at UK Marketing Society in

FFebruary, 2006 talked about our transformingworld. He started with a Latin phrase - "terrafirma" or solid earth, which may give animpression to an individual that the groundon which he is standing is quite firm. But ageophysicist knows that the ground on whichwe are standing is shifting, continously.

The ability to sense change also dependsupon where you are with respect to the refer-ence plane!

The change has always been subtle.Although on a Year-On-Year basis perhaps thechange detection would not have been soexplosive as compared to what it appears in adecade or two. At no point of time we felt wewere undergoing a revolutionary change inthe way we communicate, access informationand conduct our business. But we have a markshift from early nineties to present day inmany of our activities .

Looking into what has changed between 1stJan 2007 and 31st Dec 2007: we had launch ofradar imaging satellites and optical remotesensing imageries became better. We hadlarge acquisitions and some big money wereexchanged with merger & acquisitions. Themainstream giants were talking about moreand more aerial photographs of cities aroundthe world. With the giants in the geospatialboxing ring, there would be availability ofmore and more funds for the research leadingto some exciting products in days to come.

A milestone has been crossed by the geospa-tial community with the commercial largescale availability of the maps in mobilephones. It is now common to find an 'Off-The-Shelf' mobile phone with satellite navigationsoftware. And it is not just N95, iPhone(for nothaving GPS) or Android, making waves today,but we are going to see a deluge of similarproducts, applications and platforms in daysto come. We are also quite sure it is not justgoing to stop with street routing. It is matterof time before the entire topographical map issqueezed into the pocket phone and bundledwith sundry location-based applications.

There is little doubt, that in the 'Mobile War' GPS will Rock! And so will the geospatialapplications.

Although for many regions of the world,street and other important land marks dataare not available in ready to use manner, butthis is not stopping cell phone companiesfrom integrating the Google Maps in cellphones to start with.

Let us cherish this moment in geospatial his-tory when we are moving into the revolutionphase.

With best wishes for the New Year 2008

5G I S D E V E L O P M E N T | J A N U A RY 2 0 0 8 Vo l . 1 2 I s s u e 1

“”

The winds of change

Maneesh PrasadManaging Editor & Chief Operating [email protected]

From Editor’s Desk

Acquisitions'ACQUIRE AND EVOLVE' SEEMS TO BE

THE MANTRA OF THE 2007 GEOSPA-TIAL INDUSTRY. THE COMPANY WITH

A BUSY SHOPPING LIST WAS LEICA

GEOSPATIAL GEOSYSTEMS INC. AND

ITS PARENT COMPANY, SWEDEN-BASED HEXAGON.

Leica goes shopping...Hexagon entered into an agreementto acquire all outstanding shares ofthe Indian company Elcome Tech-nologies Pvt. Ltd. Elcome Technologies

is a distributor and systems integratorof products and solutions for cus-tomers in the field of positioning, nav-igation, alignment, measurementsand surveying using various tech-nologies such as optical and GPSbased equipment, aerial photogram-metry, GIS and mapping, constructionand mining machine control, portablecoordinate measuring machines(CMM), laser scanning, and weathermeteorology. The company will befully consolidated as of 1 January 2008and will immediately contribute toHexagon's earnings. Following the acquisition of Elcome

Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Leica Geosys-tems Geospatial Imaging announcedthe opening of Leica GeosystemsGeospatial Imaging India Private Lim-ited, with its headquarters in Gurgaon(New Delhi), India.

Earlier this year, LGGI acquired all

outstanding shares of IONIC Software,a geospatial software company head-quartered in Liege, Belgium, as well asall the shares of the related Americancompany IONIC Enterprise.

LGGI also acquired the technologyassets of Acquis, a provider of web-based data editing software for OracleSpatial. Leica Geosystems will use thistechnology to provide enterprisefunctionality on the Oracle Spatialdatabase.

Another company whos assets wereacquired by Leica was Earth ResourceMapping Ltd (ER Mapper), a geospa-tial software company headquarteredin Australia.

All the above acquisitions weremade for an undisclosed amount.

Trimble acquires INPHOTrimble acquired privately-held ININ-

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News 2007: Annual Roundup

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Business

G I S D E V E L O P M E N T

Rolta acquires Orion TechnologyBuzz in the Indian Geospatial market was created by Rolta India Ltd. as it signed an agreement to acquire Orion Technology, a Canadian software and integration company specializing in enterprise web-GIS solutions. While the deal size was not disclosed, Rolta expects to generate around USD 100 million over the next three to five years by integrating the acquired technologies. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rolta, Orion will continue its operations under the same name from its headquarters in Canada, and will be managed and operated by the management team that is currently in place. This acquisition enables Rolta to own technologies for taking its GIS offerings to the next level.

The year 2007 was eventful for Geospatial industry. In our annual news roundup for the year 2007, we have importantdevelopments mentioned here. We are quite sure some of these developments would have long term implications onGeospatial Industry like polarisation of Geospatial Industry, Technology convergence etc.

We do look forward to you views on this annual news roundup and possible indication to any particular development whichyou feel would have an ampact on our Geospatial Industry in years to come. - GIS Development Team

J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 8

Yearly News 6-19.qxp 1/4/2008 3:52 PM Page 6

PHO GmbH of Stuttgart, Germany in anall-cash transaction. INPHO is a leaderin photogrammetry and digital surfacemodeling for aerial surveying, map-ping and remote sensing applications.Financial terms were not disclosed.Johannes Saile, Managing Director ofINPHO, and his staff will join Trimbleand operate as a wholly-owned sub-sidiary. The acquisition of INPHOsphotogrammetry and LIDAR softwareprocessing technologies augmentTrimble's existing ground-based posi-tioning solutions to enable users tocapture, extract, and analyze layers ofaccurate air-to-ground data toincrease productivity.

AAMHatch announcesacquisition of AfricanAerial Mapping Co.AAMHatch announced the acquisi-tion of AOC Geomatics at the MapAfrica 2007 conference. In Africa,AAMHatch will continue to use theAOC brand. "By bringing the experi-ence of AOC into the AAMHatchGroup we now have a permanentpresence in one of the world's fastestdeveloping regions. This acquisitionrepresents a long term investment inthe sustainable development of theAfrican content for the benefit of all",says Brian Nicholls, AAMHatch's Gen-eral Manager. "This purchase contin-ues our approach of investing in thebest available people and mappingtechnologies to complement the widerange of existing geospatial productsand expertise that we offer."

ESRI Holdingsacquires Helyx SIS LtdESRI Holdings, a group of companiesincluding ESRI (UK) and ESRI Ireland,has acquired Helyx SIS Ltd, a specialistdefence consultancy, strengthening

the group's position in the Defenceand National Security markets.

Helyx provides highly focused con-sultancy, research and infrastructureservices for a range of defence andsecurity customers, offering inde-pendent technical and project advicein the areas of MoD research, capabili-ty management and programme sup-port. Brig Nick Rigby (retd.), Non-exec-utive Director, ESRI (UK) said, "Theacquisition will help ESRI (UK) extendits reach into related specialist sectorssuch as central government andpolice which are realising the poten-tial of GIS to provide new levels ofsophisticated analysis of their data."

Autodesk takes overHanna StrategiesAutodesk, Inc. signed an agreement toacquire Hanna Strategies, an engineering services firm that offerssoftware development with centers inShanghai, China, Atlanta, Georgia andPune, India. In 2006, Autodesk purchased an ownership interest inHanna Strategies and is now acquiring the remaining ownership.Terms of the transaction were not dis-closed. Autodesk and Hanna Strate-gies have worked closely together forthe last five years on the developmentof Autodesk design software productsthat serve the manufacturing andbuilding and construction markets.This acquisition will increaseAutodesk's investment in developingsolutions for Digital Prototyping,Building Information Modeling (BIM)and 3D and 2D solutions.

Pixxures Inc. now partof XeDAR Corp. XeDAR Corporation, provider of complex data management and security solutions company,

announced that it has acquiredPixxures, Inc., a provider of aerial photographic mapping products andservices, direct-digital orthophotogra-phy, planimetric and topographicmapping, vector alignment, and GISproducts and services via the Internet.

According to CEO, Hugh WilliamsonIII, "by adding Pixxures to our growingportfolio of companies, we are execut-ing our plan of building XeDAR intoan information assurance andgeospatial products and services company.”

MapInfo merges withPitney BowesSince the acquisition of MapInfo Corp.by Pitney Bowes Inc., the name Map-Info has remained - somewhat - underthe new name Pitney Bowes MapInfo,headquartered at MapInfo's oldoffices in North Greenbush. With theannouncement of combining Group 1Software with the Pitney Bowes Map-Info unit also was announced that itwould take on a new name, PitneyBowes Software.

For years the success of tech startupswere openly measured against Map-Info. So the latest chapter in the Map-Info story is important in what itmeans to the local economy. To put itin perspective, the Pitney Bowesacquisition of MapInfo merited foursentences. Considering the climate formergers and acquisitions, what hap-pened with MapInfo is not surprisingnews. It was an ideal candidate forpurchase and its biggest shareholdershad been calling for it to be sold formonths. The one constant in business,after all, is change. Entrepreneursgenerally have a strategy from thestart to go public or sell out. It is thenature of business. People build com-panies with an exit plan.

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GeoWeb 2.0

API and Mashups We have been talking all this yearsabout the releaseas of APIs in theGeospatial domain and variousmashups being created or experi-mented. The boasting part is that 48%of APIs being used are from GoogleMaps and 40% of Mashups being cre-ated are having the MAP component(Source:ProgrammableWeb.com).

ESRI ArcWeb Services REST API is

useful for integrating mapping func-tionality and GIS content into brows-er, desktop, mobile, and server appli-cations. This API offers developers aneasy alternative to using SOAP-styleWeb services for building mapcentric,decision-making applications.

The features in the ArcWeb ServicesREST API include:

• Control for multiple layers of map data

• Access to tiled map data sources

• Ability to automatically manage mapprojections

ArcWeb Services is hosted by ESRIand also includes APIs for SOAP,JavaScript, and Java Micro Edition(Java ME) as well as extensive geo-graphic content.

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Laser scanning is one of the areas in the Geo-enabled Infrastrucutreand Plant segments which is getting popular day-by-day. During2007, we saw the new equipments:

• Trimble VX Spatial Station - January 2007• Leica ScanStation 2 - July 2007 • Topcon GLS-1000 - October 2007

Trimbles VX Spatial Station was announced during January 2007,combines optical, 3D scanning and video capabilities to measureobjects in 3D to produce 2D and 3D data sets for spatial imagingprojects. The prime features of Trimble VX Spatial Station include

• Patented Trimble MagDrive servos, which spin the instrumentwith speed and agility-more than 100 degrees per second for ultra-smooth control for precision pointing.

• Trimble VISION technology, that includes a data overlay fea-ture which enables users to view positioning data over a video display of the job site. Userscan see in real-time what features have been measured before leaving a job site, givingthem confidence that all required points have been measured, which reduces the poten-tial for rework and duplication.

• This also comes with a choice of data collection software, including the Trimble SurveyController, Survey Pro or Trimble Survey Manager Software.

Announced in July 2007, Leica ScanStation 2 as a successor to the already existing"ScanStation" class of scanner. The key fetures of this instrument are:

• The maximum instantaneous scan speed of around 50,000 points/second, the highestin the industry for pulsed scanners.

• Reduced the minimum point-to-point spacing of less than 1 mm apart, for higher-defi-nition surveys

• This is accompanied by Leica Cyclone v5.8 software for operating ScanStation 2.

Topcon GLS-1000, announced the Topcon GLS-1000 which handles likea total station but delivers a total scanning solution. As the office soft-

ware that process the scanning data are becoming efficient in var-ious processes like loading loads of data, registering the data,

georeferencing etc, and their features are steadilyexpanding. Tough low end scanners are available at

affordable prices, the limitations incapabilities have restricted theiruse. According to an article byGeoff Jacobs in Professional Sur-veyor, Leica Geosystems in Profes-sional Surveyor, the prices ofLaser scanners and related soft-ware tend to remain on a higherside especially for high defini-

tion scanners.

Laser Scanning Boom!


Trimble VX Spatial Station

Leica ScanStation 2

Topcon GLS-1000

8

ESRI ArcWeb Services REST API


Another release by ESRI is the AdobeFlex based mapping API, for goingbeyond simple maps and directionsby building Web 2.0-style applica-tions. ESRI hosts two APIs that are

based on Adobe Flex 2: the ArcWebServices Flex API beta and the ArcWebServices JavaScript API. The ArcWebServices Flex API provides full controlover all the mapping functionalityand layers of geographic content viaMacromedia XML (MXML) andActionScript. The API is now availablefor evaluation as a public beta.

On May 29, MapQuest announcedthe beta launch of a new API forAdobe ActionScript. The latest APIoption within MapQuest's AdvantageAPI, allows developers to use a toolsetwith the added benefits of Action-Script 3.0. MapQuest’s API for Action-Script allows developers with extend-ed capabilities in MapQuest platformwithcompelling, complex animationsand graphics or quickly rendered mul-titudes of custom points, lines andshapes to display points of interest(POIs), routes or physical boundaries.

The Garmin Communicator PluginAPI is an exciting new software program that transfers data betweenwebsites and Garmin GPS Devices.The API allows developers to integrate the Communicator Plugin into anywebsite. Some notable API Featuresinclude:

• Auto-detection of devices connectedto a computer

• Read tracks, routes and waypointsfrom supported recreational, fitness andnavigation devices

• Write tracks, routes and waypoints tosupported recreational, fitness and nav-igation devices

• Read fitness data from supported fit-ness devices

And the important and interesting

of all is OS OpenSpace, a free Ord-nance Survey service that allows youto embed Ordnance Survey maps cov-ering England, Scotland and Wales inyour web applications using theJavascript API. OS OpenSpace allowsyou to add markers, lines and poly-gons on top of Ordnance Survey maps,and also search for place names withour gazetteer. The API is for non-com-mercial use only and the range of Ord-nance Survey digital products thatavailable through this service are:

• outline of Great Britain

• overview of Great Britain

• MiniScale®

• 1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster

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G I S D E V E L O P M E N T 9

Open SourceQuantum GIS: The bug fixrelease added improve-ments to the 0.8 codebase.

Geoserver: With a primaryfocus to provide a com-plete solution for servingspatial data, version 1.5.0makes the rasters availableas a Web Map Service, butalso through the Web Cov-erage Service specification,which gives access to theraw data, not just the finalimage.

The WCS passes all OGCCompliance tests. Othernotable improvements forthis release include easieradding of data through theweb admin tools, bettersupport for Google EarthKML, performance andscalability improvements.

GRASS GIS: The releasefixes a number of bugs dis-covered in the 6.2.2 sourcecode. Besides bug fixes it

also includes a number ofnew message translationsand updates for the helppages and projection data-base.

MapGuide Open Source:The release of MapGuideOpen Source 1.1.0 con-tains many bug fixes aswell as the followingnotable enhancements:

• FDO 3.2 API support:MapGuide now sup-ports the latest FDOAPI

• Direct KML support:allows layers styled inMapGuide to be dis-played as layers inGoogle Earth

Opticks: Ball Aerospace &Technologies Corp.launched Opticks, the com-pany's first open sourcesoftware project designedto enable detailed analysisof remote sensing data.Opticks is used by scien-tists and analysts within theDepartment of DefenseIntelligence Community to

analyze remote sensingdata and produce action-able intelligence. Thoughthere are no significantreleases in the Open-Source software, Optickscan be considered as amajor one.

In another Open Sourceinitative, Autodesk, Inc.announced in September,its plans to donate coordi-nate system and map pro-jection technology to thegeospatial open sourcecommunity.

The software, acquiredfrom Mentor Software andits founder Norm Olsen, willhelp users to more easilysupport geographic coordi-nate conversions and allowaccurate and precisegeospatial analysis. Thetechnology is presentlyembedded in Autodesk'sown software products,including AutoCAD Map3D and AutodeskMapGuide Enterprise, andis used many organizationsworldwide.

OPEN & FREE SOFTWARE!

MapQuest API for Adobe ActionScript

Garmin Communicator Plugin API


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• 1:50 000 Scale Colour Raster

• OS Street View®

However, imagery is not availablewithin OS OpenSpace. The service iscurrently running as a closed alphatest service. The service and websitewill be available for open registrationin early 2008. The initative looksprime as in the generation of FREEDATA, we have been pondering overthe question of the relevance of map-ping agencies; and once again theBritish Survey agency has shown theworld an answer through this movethat "The wise older Tortoise can stillbe a part of this Rabbit race" and thisis the message probably the agency

wants to send to the rest of its col-leagues all over the world.

Other notable releases are ImageryAPI Getmapping imagery and Map24AJAX API 2 from Germany based Map-solute.

So, as we are getting more and moreAPIs, this is enabling developers tobring out unique Mashups aimed atbusiness, fun, leisure and more.

US based Zenoss, Inc., has added adirect integration with Google Mapsthat makes real-time, geographicalvisualization of the health of distrib-uted IT infrastructure availablethrough Zenoss Core, its free, opensource software product. Zenoss Core2.1 Beta enables users to integrateGoogle Maps into their Zenoss Dash-board for advanced plotting of dis-parate centres providing real time,visual availability and performancemonitoring. Google Maps integrationalso enables monitoring of networkconnectivity among multiple centresand colour-coded alerting.

An important move from GoogleMaps came in August that freed theBloggers and webmasters from theAPI knot. All of this by mere copyingand pasting a snippet of HTML. Thismeans users no longer need an APIkey or knowledge of Java Script to puta Google Map on their website or blog.

Free my (DATA/APPS)We in the Geospatial world have beenalways asking this question to oneanother "Should the data be free?"And no one might be able to answerfrom the commercial segment at onemoment of time, but they can nolonger stand firm on that, because ofthe Free (data/application) revolution.

Though there is a gain too, the dataproviders too with the applicationslike NASA World Wind, Google Earth,Microsoft Virtual Earth have provid-

ed; but more than that they havebroke the data chains. Now more andmore softwares, applications and add-ons are popping out for web as well asmobile platforms on the same lineswhich not only provide certain sets ofdata for viewing, but also provide aplatform for the users to creat newdata such as Point of Interst (POI)/ andeven data sets in some cases. And theapplication Leica Titan has gone astep-ahead by adopting P2P conceptfor data sharing between varioususers through Instant MessagingInterface.

API Company Release Data Type Tags

ESRI ArcWebServices RESTAPI

ESRI 16 April 200790 day evaluation

mapping

API for Adobe®ActionScript

MapQuest 30 May 2007 FreeAdobe,mapping

CommunicatorPlugin API

Garmin13 December2007

Free gps, mobile

Imagery API Getmapping16 August2007

NAmobile,mapping

Map24 AJAX mapSOLUTE 10 Free mapping

API 2.0September2007

Commercial

OpenSpaceOrdnance Sur-vey

13 December2007

Free mapping

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Google Maps in Zenoss Dashboard

Map24 AJAX API 2


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In the products under this categorywe have:

ESRI ArcGIS Explorer using whichusers can leverage data, services, andapplications on the Web by connect-ing to user's own ArcGIS services orthose published by others. This appli-cation will help the users to extendthe capabilities of Web-based servicesby fusing them with user's own local

data. The data for ArcGIS Explorer isprovided through ArcGIS Online,which is currently in beta version.ArcGIS Online gives access to high-resolution premium imagery whichincludes a mosaic of 1 m resolutionaerial imagery for the United Statesand satellite imagery of the world at500 m and 15 m resolutions.

Leica launched Leica TITAN andLeica TITAN Network at Where 2.0conference held at San Jose, Califor-nia. Similar to online social networkconcepts, users will be able to create,publish and share a geospatial'MyWorld' which contains richgeospatial content authored by a user.

The primary driver behind LeicaTITAN is to build a community of

organizations and users that want tomaintain rights to their geospatialdata, while simultaneously offeringother users within the community theability to discover, access and visual-ize the data in a secure environment.

TITAN comes with an interactive 3Dgateway that provides a contentforum to view, access, communicateand share geospatial data with users

from around the world. terra IMS released geoXtract, a desk-

top application that provides userswith an easy way to integrate exist-ing data in a variety of formats withGoogle Maps and Google Earth.

geoXtract eliminates the need forusers to do any programming or man-ual data processing to generate aGoogle Map that displays a user'sdata. An essential and unique advan-tage of geoXtract is that it allowsusers to save their data processingconfiguration as a project, therebyenabling users to easily recreate andupdate their maps whenever theirdata changes.

While softwares like this are provid-ing means to use, create or share

Geospatial content, the concept called'Crowdsourcing' is taking strong roots.Under this concept the digital mapcontent is created by the people them-selves.

• TomTom Map Share is the first com-mercial implementation of user-gener-ated map content technology directlyon a Personal Navigation Device (PND)in which the map corrections or POIadditions can be input on the device on

the fly and instantly uploadedand shared with the rest of theTomTom Map Share communi-ty.

• Netharlands based AND(Automotive Navigation Data)has recently made available anonline digital map which canbe modified by all users basedon Web 2.0 technology, allow-ing AND to produce mapsmore quickly and at a lowercost.

• The Wiki City project, run byMIT's SENSEable City Labo-ratory, aims to apply wiki tech-nology to the map-makingprocess. The project's ultimateproduct will permit anyone toupload content to a map andutilize Semantic Web principlesto cross search multiple layersof information.

Although the concept of "Crowd-sourcing" is helping the communityto get upto date POIs or map data,once the data is uploaded to the appli-cation/ community becomes a part ofthe companies' data.

This has evolved as a good businessmodel for companies like Google andTomTom, which relies on user generated content to regularly updatethe enormous digital data they arepossessing.

But the issue of quality and reliability of data will still haunt, asthe data in most of the cases is createdby ammature mappers. Also the question of who finally holds the data also remains a main question.

ESRI ArcGIS Explorer


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SPACE RACETHE EARTH OBSERVATION (EO) SECTOR WITNESSED THE LAUNCH OF

MANY REMOTE SENSING SATELLITES

THAT WILL PROVIDE VOLUMES OF

IMAGE DATA.

FOLLOWING ARE THE REMOTE SENS-ING PROGRAMMES IN PUBLIC AND PRI-VATE, EITHER LAUNCHED, DELAYED OR

IN DEVELOPMENT STAGE.

THE YEAR WITNESSED PARTNERSHIPS

AND POLICY AMENDMENTS ATREGION-AL AND TRANS-CONTINENTAL LEVEL.

Launched

WorldView- 1One of the most awaited launches ofthe season was the launch of Digital-Globe's WorldView- 1, next- genera-tion high resolution satellite capableof providing sub metre spatial resolu-tion (0.5 m) imagery. The satellitedelivered its first sample set of high-

resolution images on October 15, 2007.On, November 26, 2007, DigitalGlobeannounced that WorldView-1 hascompleted its commissioning and isdelivering imagery to NationalGeospatial-Intelligence Agency's(NGA) NextView program.

Lapan - TubsatThe first Indonesian-built video sur-veillance satellite, Lapan - Tubsat, wassuccessfully placed in the orbit. Thesatellite was launched on January 10,

2007 from the Satish Dhawan SpaceCenter in Sriharikota, using a PolarSatellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C7 rock-et. The cameras have a resolution of 5meters and 200 meters, respectively.

CARTOSAT 2CARTOSAT-2, the twelfth in the IndianRemote Sensing (IRS) satellite series, isan advanced remote sensing satellitecapable of providing scene-specificspot imagery. CARTOSAT-2 was suc-cessfully launched on January 10 fromSatish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC)SHAR, Sriharikota.

It carries a Panchromatic camera(PAN) to provide imageries with aspatial resolution of better than onemetre and a swath of 9.6 km. Thesatellite can be steered up to 45 degalong as well as across the track. OnJanuary 11, the first imagery fromCARTOSAT- 2 were recieved.

EgyptSat-1EgyptSat-1 is Egypt's first Earth Obser-vation Satellite is aimed to supportdevelopment in the fields of construc-tion, cultivation and fighting deserti-fication. It carried two sensors: aninfrared imaging sensor and a high

resolution multi-spectral imager. It isthe first satellite from Egypt in aseries of satellites for scientificresearch and remote sensing applica-tions.

RADARSAT-2RADARSAT-2,Canada's com-mercial Synthet-ic Aperture Radar(SAR) satellitewas launchedfrom theBaikonur Cos-modrome onDecember 14, ona Soyuz launchvehicle. RADARSAT-2 is the product ofpartnership between the CanadianSpace Agency (CSA) and MacDonaldDettwiler and Associates Ltd (MDA).

TerraSAR-XThe German radar satellite TerraSAR-X was successfully launched on June15, 2007 from the Russian Cosmod-rome in Baikonur. With its activeantenna, the satellite will record high-quality X-band radar images of theentire planet whilst circling Earth in apolar orbit at an altitude of 514 kilo-metres. The launch is a significantmilestone in the implementation of apublic-private-partnership (PPP)between the German Aerospace Cen-tre (DLR) and Infoterra's parent com-pany Astrium GmbH.

13G I S D E V E L O P M E N T

DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-1 Image of Houston, USA

Lapan-Tubsat: First Indonesian video surveillance satellite

EgyptSat-1: Assembling Egypt’s first EO satellite

RADARSAT-2 prior launch



Delayed

THEOSThailand's first satellite for surveyingnatural resources, THEOS (Thailand

Earth Observation Systems), was orig-inally due to launch in October fromYasni, Russia, but was postponed dueto delays in other launches. Costing200 million USD, the THEOS projectwas initiated in 2004.

RazakSatThe year-end launch of RazakSAT,Malaysia's second low-orbit micro-satellite from Kwajalein in the Mar-

shall Islands, has been postponed. The40 million USD RazakSAT capable ofcapturing aerial images of the earth at2.5-metre resolution or higher, hasbeen slotted for launch in the firstquarter of 2008, using SpaceX’s Falcon1 rocket from the Marshall Islands inthe Pacific Ocean.

In Making...

GeoEye-1GeoEye is nearing the launch of Geo-Eye-1, slated for late first quarter orearly second quarter 2008. The satel-lite will be able to discern objects on -the ground 0.41-meter and will beable to locate an object that size towithin about nine feet of its true loca-tion on the surface of the globe with-out ground control points.

Dubaisat-1The Emirates Institute for AdvancedScience and Technology (EIAST)announced the development of UAE'sfirst research satellite, Dubaisat-1. Thecurrent phase includes the design anddevelopment of the prototypes forthe equipment and tools that will bemounted on the satellite.

Oceansat-2Oceansat-2 to be launched in 2008will play an important role in fore-casting the onset of monsoon and itssubsequent advancement over theIndian peninsula. The mission willinvolve a total estimated cost of 32million USD with a foreign exchangecomponent of 21 million USD.Oceansat-2 satellite will have anOcean Colour Monitor which will helpidentify potential areas for fishery.

CARTOSAT-2AIndia will also launch its first dedicat-ed military reconnaissance satelliteCARTOSAT-2A in 2008 . CARTOSAT-2Awith a single panchromatic cameracapable of providing scene specificspot imageries for cartographic appli-cations, will have high agility withcapability to steer along and acrossthe track up to +45 degrees. It will be

placed in a sun-synchronous polarorbit at an altitude of 630 km. It willhave a revisit period of 4 days, whichcan be improved to one day with suit-able orbit manoeuvres. The panchro-matic camera is designed to providebetter than 1 m spatial resolutionimageries with a swath of 10 km.

EarthCAREUnder ESA's EarthCARE mission,experts from different parts of theworld met in May to discuss prepara-tions for a mission that is beingimplemented with the cooperation of

JAXA (Japanese Aerospace Explo-ration Agency) and NICT (JapaneseNational Institute of Information andCommunications Technology) toaddress the need for a better under-standing of earth's climate by observ-ing the interactions between clouds,aerosols and solar radiation regulateclimate.

UK DMC- 2DMC International Imaging, a UKcompany that supplies satelliteimagery products plans to launch ahigh-resolution optical imaging satel-lite named UK DMC-2 in 2008 to pro-vide continuous Continent-levelimaging with direct downlink of datato customer's ground stations. The 120kg, UK DMC-2 will be a low cost EarthObservation (EO) satellite, carrying a22 meter resolution multispectral

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THEOS- Fighting for Space

Artist’s rendering: ESA’s EarthCARE satellite

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RazakSAT


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DMC imager with an ultra-wide660km imaging swath. The enhancedmicro-satellite will be able to imagecontinuously while broadcasting datain real-time to licensed ground sta-tions. UK DMC-2 will be launched intothe existing international DisasterMonitoring Constellation (DMC) withDeimos-1, built by Surrey SatelliteTechnology Ltd (SSTL) for DeimosImaging SL, Spain.

Policy and Partnerships

US- Canada initiativeThe U.S. Geological Survey and Natur-al Resources Canada have launched ahigh-tech satellite mapping initiativethat can better monitor changes inthe combined land cover of twonations. The agreement involves adynamic land-cover monitoring sys-tem for all of North America and thedevelopment of permafrost modellingapplications. There are also futureprojects planned for longer-term col-laboration on the development ofradar applications. The land-cover mapping initiativewill be useful to both countries, forthe tri-national (including Mexico)Commission for Environmental Coop-eration, as well as for internationalinitiatives jointly undertaken bymembers of the Group on EarthObservations (GEO). One of manyexamples of how unified North Amer-ican land-cover mapping may be usedis in monitoring wildfire risk acrossnational borders.

Europe and Russia: Space collaborationThe Head of the Federal Space Agencyof the Russian Federation (Roscos-mos), Anatoly Perminov, ESA Director

General, Jean-Jacques Dor-dain, and European Com-mission Director GeneralHeinz Zourek met on March22, 2007 at Roscosmos inMoscow within the frame-work of the Tripartite SpaceDialogue between the Euro-pean Commission, ESA and Roscos-mos. The work plans that stemmedfrom this meeting highlight actions inthe area of Earth observation, satellitenavigation and space communica-tion. In the area of Earth observation,for instance, the parties engaged insetting up a specific data exchangemechanism; in the field of satellitenavigation, compatibility and inter-operability between Russian andEuropean systems will be addressedand, concerning space communica-tions, the parties agreed to promoteapplications reaching out to otherentities that are not necessarilyinvolved in space. Following theagreement with ESA, Surrey SatelliteTechnology Ltd (SSTL) has signed anorder with the Federal State UnitaryEnterprise - The Russian Research andProduction Enterprise Pan-RussianResearch Institute for Electromechan-ics (FSUE NPP VNIIEM) and Radio-export of Russia for the supply ofsatellite platform equipment andservices for KANOPUS Low Earth Orbit(LEO) Earth observation spacecraft.

ISRO invites Private Sector ISRO will step up outsourcing ofworks related to satellite and rocketbuilding to the private sector, whichin the long run could churn out over-all systems as the organisation focus-es on R&D. Department of Space (DoS)has associated more than 500 small,medium and large scale industries

and so far transferred 279 technolo-gies to industries for commercialisa-tion and undertaken 270 consultan-cies in various fields.

Chinese Space plan and initiativesChina's State Council approved thecountry's 11th five-year plan on spacedevelopment in May. Chinese VicePremier Zeng Peiyan stressed that the11th five-year period (2006-2010) iskey to China's space development.China should give priority to amanned space flight, lunar explo-ration, new launch vehicle, high reso-lution earth observation.

Japan focuses on Disaster Manage-mentWith the launch of Advanced LandObserving Satellite called “Daichi”(ALOS) last year, Japan AerospaceExploration Agency (JAXA) has a par-ticular focus in developing a disastermanagement support system. “JAXA initiative in this regard is Sen-tinel Asia, a rapid response systemusing satellite data and images”. Sentinel Asia involves 19 nations and52 establishments to establish a disaster management system that isuser-friendly to help combat naturaldisaster” said Kaoru Mamiya, Vice President, JAXA, when he out-lined his country’s long-term spaceplans at the 23rd National Space Symposium produced by the SpaceFoundation. N

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Alert centres!IN RESPONSE TO THE NATURAL DISAS-TERS AROUND THE GLOBE, THERE HAS

BEEN INITIATIVES TAKEN BY VARIOUS

ORGANISATIONS TO OPEN ALERT CEN-TRES FOR MONITORING AND MANAGE-MENT OF THESE DISASTERS, TO HELP

PROTECT PEOPLE AND RESOURCES.SOME OF THE INTIATIVES HAVE BEEN

INCLUDED IN THIS SECTION

India's Tsunami Early WarningCentre up and runningThe National Early Warning Systemfor Tsunami and Storm Surges in theIndian Ocean was dedicated to thenation by Minister of Earth Sciences

Shri. Kapil Sibal in October 2007.Recognising the imperative to put inplace an Early Warning System formitigation of Oceanogenic Disastersthat cause severe threat to nearly 400million of India's population that livein the coastal belt and further drivenby the national calamity due to theIndian Ocean Tsunami of December26, 2004, the Ministry of Earth Sci-ences (MoES) had taken up theresponsibility of establishing theNational Tsunami Early Warning Sys-tem. The Warning System has beenestablished by MoES as the nodal min-istry at a cost of Rs.125 Crore in collab-

oration with Department of Scienceand Technology (DST), Department ofSpace (DOS) and the Council of Scien-tific and Industrial Research (CSIR).The National Tsunami Early WarningCentre has been set up at INCOIS,Hyderabad.

The reliability of the system wastested when the 8.2 magnitude earth-quake in the southern Sumatra regiontriggered tsunami alerts in variousadjoining countries, including India.The tsunami warning centre swunginto action and issued red alert in thenext 13 minutes, which was down-graded to orange in less than twohours. INCOIS, in association withTata Consultancy Services, has gener-ated simulations of possible 550 sce-narios of triggering of tsunami aftermassive earthquakes.

The Indian Forest FireResponse andAssessment SystemHaving seen the devastation of theCalifornia forests due to fires, theIndian government has put in placethe Indian Forest Fire Response andAssessment System (INFFRAS) hasbeen established under the DecisionSupport Center, (DSC), under DisasterManage Support Programme, to facili-tate forest fire management. INFFRAS

integrates multi sensor satellite datawith Geo Informatics System (GIS)

data bases to address forest fire man-agement relevant to pre, during andpost fire scenarios.

INFFRAS provides near real time,daily, day time and night time activeforest fire alerts during the fire season(Feb and June). Fire alerts are preparedusing satellite data from the MODISsensors aboard the Terra and Aquaplatforms (for daytime observations),as well as the Operational LinescanSystem (OLS) on the Defense Meteoro-logical Satellite Program (DMSP) satel-lites (for night time observations). Thefire alerts report only active forestfires observed by these satellites. Thisinformation is available to the userson a no-cost basis.

Japan offers GlobalRainfall Map in NearReal TimeCoincidingwith thetenthanniversaryof the Tropi-cal RainfallMeasuringMission(TRMM), theEarth Obser-vationResearch Center (EORC) of the JapanAerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)has started to release image data of ahigh-resolution global precipitationdistribution map in quasi real time(about four hours after observations)on the Internet. The map is composedby the EORC using acquired data byearth observation satellites includingthe TRMM. The image data is updatedevery hour, and can also be represent-ed as an animated image of precipita-tion distribution over the last 24 hours.

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National Tsunami Early Warning System at Hyderabad

Sample Data showing Forest Wildfires over India

JAXA’s Quasi-time Rainfall Map portal




Tech Socials Technology getsSocial…Google Earth hopes its highlydetailed, 3-D satellite images will aidthe process in a new effort to utilizethe full social and educational poten-tial of its images.

In June 2007, Google launchedGoogle Earth Outreach, a programmedesigned to help non-profit organiza-tions to leverage the power of GoogleEarth to illustrate and advocate forthe work that they do through GoogleEarth layers.

John Hanke, Director of GoogleEarth & Maps explained, "Now anyorganization can quickly and easilyannotate Google Earth with pictures,video and information to tell visual,compelling stories of the work they doto over 200 million Google Earthusers."

Cleaner Greener Earth…Continuing its effort to spread aware-ness, Google teamed up with dozensof community action organizations

around the world to coordinate anInternational Cleanup Weekend onOctober 13-14 2007. Originally startedas an internal Google project to

encourage Googlers to cleanup theirlocal beaches, parks, and trails close tohome and to share their progressusing My Maps, the initiative waslaunched publicly in coordinationwith community action organizationsin fifteen countries.

Let there be LIGHT!Non Profitorganisationslike OneChange, Cana-da are usingLocation intel-ligence tech-nology, fromcompanieslike DMTII

Spatial, to better manage their proj-ects like Project Porchlight. ProjectPorchlight promotes energy conser-vation through individual action. Thegoal of the project is to get householdseverywhere to change inefficientincandescent bulb to an energy-effi-cient CFL bulb. The grassroots pro-gram encourages community partici-pation by making it possible for any-one to volunteer to deliver bulbs inhis or her neighbourhood.

Using DMTI's Location Hub AddressPoints, Project Porchlight can pinpointthe location of every single householdwithin a certain boundary area ensur-ing that the right numbers of lightbulbs are made available for volun-teers to deliver.

Project Porchlight is able to carefullytrack where each light bulb goes andmaps that area on their web sitewww.onchange.org to demonstratethe reach of the program as well asthe energy savings for that area.

Save the AnimalsAnimal conservation groups such as

The Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) areutilizing DigitalGlobe's QuickBirdsatellite imagery to make effectiveconservation decisions, based oninformation about the status of chim-panzee habitats and where and howpeople use their land.

With the aid of satellite imagery, JGIhas mapped human structures, farmsand forests to utilize in the develop-ment of a Conservation Action Planand village land use plans in theUSAID funded Greater Gombe Ecosys-tem Program. Satellite imagery isbeing used to map tree canopies forassessing chimpanzee food availabili-ty and feeding behavior.

Dr. Lilian Pintea, Director of Conser-vation Science of JGI said "By provid-ing objective and spatially accuratedata on both chimpanzee habitatsand human land uses, QuickBirdimagery revolutionized the way wecan do applied research and informconservation actions."

Other animals like Tigers in India,Elephants in both Africa and India,even Penguins in Antarctica haveencouraged researchers from bothgovernment and non- governmentagencies to use remote sensing andGIS technologies to monitor theirmovements and habitats. N

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Switch to CFL bulbs

Indian Tea Garden participating in the Cleanup weekend

Google Earth image of Gombe National Park

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DataStandards OGC PrincipalMembershipBentley Systems, Leica GeospatialGeosystems Inc., Microsoft and Roltajoined Open Geospatial Consortium,Inc. (OGC) as the Principal Member in2007. Principal Members have com-plete authority over the specificationrelease and adoption process throughtheir voting rights in the PlanningCommittee (PC).

Standards

OGC Standards(revision or updates)OGC announced the release orapproved many standards in itsframework, to eventually have a sys-tem that is interoperable with prod-ucts from other manufactures. Thestandards mentioned herein showtheir latest versions and some of theirfeatures.

SLD & SEI approvedOpenGIS Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD)Implementation Specification (a pro-file of the Web Map Service) and therelated OpenGIS Symbology Encoding(SE) Implementation Specificationwere also approved by the OGC.

Transducer MarkupLanguage 1.0Version 1.0 of the Transducer MarkupLanguage Implementation Specifica-tion ("TML" or "TransducerML") wasapproved on August 8, 2007 by theOGC. Sensor systems have two basicparts - a sensing element and a trans-ducer that converts energy from oneform to another form (usually an elec-

tric signal) that can be interpreted.TML defines the conceptual modeland XML Schema for describing trans-ducers and supporting real-timestreaming of data to and from sensorsystems.

TEAM Engine andCompliance TestLanguage

On 26 June 2007, the OGC adopted anew test suites, test scripts and refer-ence implementations for OpenGISSpecifications. A new TEAM Engine(Test, Evaluation, And MeasurementEngine) and Compliance Test Lan-guage has been adopted as the OGC'sofficial new compliance testing plat-form. These new free tests and testingsoftware enable technology providersto confirm that their products arecompliant with OpenGIS standards.The TEAM Engine, an open source pro-gramme developed by NorthropGrumman, and the test suites and ref-erence implementations, contributedby other OGC members, were amongthe results of the OGC's fourth OGCWeb Services test bed activity.

Geospatial Digital RightsReference ModelOGC on April 10 2007 announced thatit has approved an abstract specifica-tion for the management of digitalrights in the area of geospatial dataand services. The goal of the GeoDRMeffort in the OGC is to make sure thata larger market has access to geospa-tial resources through a well under-stood and common mechanism thatenables more than today's "all ornothing" protection. Motivation forthis effort is the need to overcome the"ownership obstacle to data sharing"in spatial data infrastructure scenarios.

Interoperability

Interoperabilityexperiment on OceanScience by OGCOGC launched an InteroperabilityExperiment on ocean science interop-erability on January 29, 2007. The initiators of the experiment seek participation by other organizationsinterested in interoperability amonginformation systems used in oceanresearch. The Oceans Science Interop-erability Experiment promotes under-standing of various OGC Web Service (OWS) standards now implementedin various portal applications in the Ocean-Observing community,advance interoperability demonstra-tions for Ocean Science applicationareas, and harden software imple-mentations. The final product of theexperiment will be a candidate OGCBest Practices document for thebroader ocean-observing community.The Best Practices document willshow how to use OGC specificationsin marine-specific applications toimprove discovery, access and use of Web-accessible ocean science dataand services. The OGC members act-ing as initiators of the Interoperabili-ty Experiment are:

• Southeastern Universities ResearchAssociation (SURA)

• Texas A&M University - Academy forAdvanced Telecommunications

• The National Centers for AtmosphericResearch (NCAR) (Voting)

• The Monterrey Bay Aquarium andResearch Institute

• GoMOOS (Gulf of Maine OceanObserving System)

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"GIS AS CAREER"Take the Survey and Win

Visit www.GISdevelopment.net/surveyq/survey.htm


AfricaTHE YEAR 2007 FOR GEOSPATIAL

INDUSTRY IN AFRICA HAS SHOWN

INCREASING GROWTH IN THE USE OF

GEOSPATIAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR

VARIOUS PURPOSES, ESPECIALLY

WATER, HEALTH AND RESOURCE

MANAGEMENT.

ESRI EA launchedIndustry leaders like ESRI haveopened a regional office, ESRI EasternAfrica Ltd. (ESRI EA), in response to theevolving needs of the GIS market inthe region.

Nigeria takes leadGeo-information companies in Nigeria have taken a lead to releasevalue data as a product or as a mapping portal, for the planningagencies associated with Oil and GasIndustry, Communications, etc.

Nigerian company, Proxy Logicsreleased updated Nigeria Oil and Gasdatabase. The oil and gas geo-data-base consists of all oil wells, pipelinenetworks, flow stations, and concession maps of the country. ProxyLogics will also release a PollutionInventory for Niger Delta region ofNigeria. This inventory will have alloil spill locations, quantity of spill anddate of spill for every oil spillage inNigeria since 1956.

Another Nigerian company, STL,released 20 m resolution clutter andDEM mapping data for over 35 citiesacross Nigeria. These datasets will become useful to the telecommu-nication and Wireless Industry inNigeria especially in Transmissionand RF Planning.

Third Dimension Technologieslaunched their online mapping service for Nigerians. This website isan online resource for finding andsharing geographic content includingmaps and data.

NIGERIAN SPACE CENTRE

African nations have been investingincreasingly in their space assets, primarily the focus is on Earth Observation, to monitor and manageits resources.

Nigeria has put a major step in

advancing the country's space technology in Africa with PresidentOlusegun Obasanjo commissioningthe Nigerian Space Centre (NSC).

The centre is said to be the first spacecentre in Africa, has a ground controlstation/ network operation centre forcommunications satellites. It housesthe ground receiving station forearth observation satellites; and contains the first phase of the Satellite Design Centre/SatelliteAssembly, Integration and Test Centre.

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Regional


Educating the Authorities Around 30 water authorities from more than 15 African countries gathered in Nairobi,Kenya, from 26 to 30 November 2007, to attend an advanced European Space Agency(ESA) TIGER training course on utilising Earth Observation (EO) technology to over-come water-related problems. The initiative's primary objective is to help African coun-tries overcome problems faced in the collection, analysis and dissemination of waterrelated geo-information by exploiting EO technology. The training course was organisedin collaboration with ITC (International Institute for Geo-Information Science and EarthObservation), the African Water Facility (AWF) of the African Development Bank and theWorld Hydrological Cycle Observing System (WHYCOS), a programme of the UnitedNations' World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

ESA is also currently working with water authorities in Egypt and the Lake Victoria Basinto design, develop and implement EO-based capacities for the operational monitoring ofwater quality in Lake Manzalah and Lake Victoria.

IWAREMA, ZambiaCountries like Zambia have also launched similar projects, IWAREMA (Integrated WaterResource management for Zambia) project, funded through ESA's DUE. Data fromESA's multispectral MERIS (MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) sensor aboardEnvisat was used to create maps depicting existing water resources, suitable dam loca-tions and land cover for water related issues.

GEO-AQUIFER: Algeria, Libya and TunisiaTo fight water situation Algeria, Libya and Tunisia have launched an ambitious water proj-ect called GEO-AQUIFER that will use satellite imagery to support the monitoring andsustainable management of their common, trans-boundary groundwater resources.Recognising the overexploitation of the shared resource called the North-WesternSahara Aquifer System (SASS), these three countries initiated together with the Saharaand Sahel Observatory (OSS) a consultation mechanism at ministerial level. This consul-tation depends on objective, timely, area-wide and consistent information. GEO-AQUIFER will use products and services based on satellite data, such as land-use andland-cover maps, change maps, surface water extent and dynamics, digital terrain mod-els, and derive information on water consumption for irrigation.

Water water everywhere...

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Middle EastGEOSPATIAL INDUSTRY OF MIDDLE

EAST KEPT ITSELF FAIRLY BUSY IN

2007. THE REGION HAS SEEN DEVEL-OPMENTS IN SEGMENTS INCLUDING

MAPPING OF UTILITIES IN MANY OF

ITS CITIES, USE OF GPS AND AERIAL/SATELLITE IMAGING TECHNOLOGY TO

DEVELOP NEWER INFRASTRUCTURE

AND TO MONITOR EXISTING ONES. INITIATIVES HAVE BEEN TAKEN AT

THE GOVERNMENT LEVEL TO HAVE A

SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE AND

ALSO USING THIS TECHNOLOGY

TO IMPROVE MANAGEMENT OF ITS

NATURAL RESOURCES.

Abu Dhabi SDIAbu Dhabi Systems and InformationCommittee launched the Abu DhabiSpatial Data Initiative (AD-SDI) inAugust 2007. The AD-SDI representsanother vital step forward in the gov-ernment's efforts to bring the benefitsof broad-based electronic access to itsservice provision activities. The AD-SDI will coordinate vital data-sharingactivities while leaving primaryresponsibility for development andmaintenance of framework data withspecific custodian agencies. In thisfoundation stage of the initiative, AD-SDI will work with key agencies tofocus on building a Geospatial Portalto host data reference libraries, a dataclearinghouse, and links to the data-hosting agencies. In addition, the AD-SDI will help develop common datacoordination procedures and stan-dards, establish an operational modelfor the new Spatial Data CoordinationCenter (SDCC) and its interactionswith the agencies, and prepare a newstrategic plan that will set the long-term course for subsequent phases ofAD-SDI development.

Mapping the basicsThe Ajman Municipality and theNavayuga Middle East FTZC conclud-ed an agreement for the development

and implementation of the GIS BaseMap project for Ajman. The AJMANGIS will have features as road waterand water body, building (residential,public, etc), vegetation features (trees,groves etc) and utility features (pow-er, water-distribution, etc), contoursand DEM layer, all plots/parcels, otherfeatures (not included in above cate-gories (bill-boards, traffic signals etc),all administrative units and ortho-images from specific aerial surveysand satellite images.

Dubai World Central (DWC), acolossal 140sq kmurban aviationcommunitypresently underconstruction inJebel Ali, has tied-up with DubaiMunicipality's GISdepartment to pro-vide e-mappingtechnology for it tospeed up its con-struction works inSeptember 2007.

Dubai Municipality's e-MAP gate-way will provide GPS coordinates ofall DWC sites. Near-real time aerialand satellite images along with GPScoordinates will enable DWC staffand contractors to minutely identifyutility services, urban land plansand land use blueprints within themassive development centredaround the upcoming Dubai WorldCentral International Airport (JXB),scheduled to be the world's largest.

The GIS department will host allgeographical data for DWC on dedi-cated high performance servers, andallow data access using the latestdata retrieval technology, in addi-tion to providing satellite images.With the current real estate andproperty boom, DWC's real estatedivision will get the most currentinformation for onsite developmentand planning, enabling contractorsto speed up construction activity.


Artist's Rendering: Dubai World Central International Airport (JXB)

Navayuga renewing Ajman Municipality Mapping contract

Managing Infrastructure…


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NATMO- Golden Map ServiceUsing the latest developments in IT,the National Atlas and Thematic Map-ping Organisation (NATMO) announ-ced in February 2007, that it wouldmap the entire country down to thevillage level using spatial technologythrough its Golden Map Service.

NSDIShortly after NATMO's announce-ment, India's National Spatial DataInfrastructure (NSDI) mission alsoreceived a green signal to continuethe work delayed for over two years,due to Ministry of Defence's restric-tions on the 4800 Survey of Indiamaps. The NSDI scheme aims to com-bine the use of GIS, satellite imageryand digital topographic maps withdata on water resources, flooding,rainfall, crop patterns, civic layouts toproduce 3-D digital maps. The NSDIweb-user interface will provide openaccess of the information processedby the project. But further access to itsmetadata, data about data or a cata-loguing system, will be secure.

Delhi State- SDIIn November 2007, Survey of India(SOI), the National Mapping Agencyand Government of Delhi collaborat-

ed for the launchi of Delhi State Spa-tial Data Infrastructure (DSSDI) proj-ect. The project is an outcome of apilot project by Department of Scienceand Technology, government of Indiaon 3D GIS in Chandni Chowk area inDelhi in collaboration with RussianAcademy of Sciences (RAS).

Development of a 3D GIS databasefor NCT of Delhi will be carried out bySurvey of India in respect of all landsand buildings and all under groundutilities within the NCTD. The projectcomprises of two major components,Land Information System (LIS) of NCTof Delhi and Urban Spatial Informa-tion System (USIS).

ROAD Information SystemsNHAI (National Highways Authorityof India) deployed a system called RIS(Road Information System), a Web-based system that integrates a linearreferencing system for tracking thecondition of pavements with geospa-tial data and analysis. It has dataregarding highways on the GoldenQuadrilateral, North-South and East-West corridors. The application pro-vides information on various parame-ters such as National Highway loca-tion details of corridors, waysideamenities, bridge location and details,

corridor environment related infor-mation, toll plaza location and tolldata and construction contractordetails.

HealthGISThe Jansankhya Sthirata Kosh(National Population StabilisationFund) undertook a project for map-ping of existing health facilities in thecountry right up to the district level.An amalgamation of GIS maps andthe Census figures of 2001, the surveygives a picture of each district, its sub-district, prominent towns and urbanareas and the distance of each villagefrom the nearest health centre.

Open source diseasetracking softwareSoftware released by Zyxware Tech-nologies is supporting in the mannerinformation is collected andprocessed for tracking diseases likeChikungunya and Dengue. The soft-ware has been licensed as Free Soft-ware under the GNU General PublicLicense (GPL) on 5th October 2007.Although the software was developedfor the State of Kerala, India, the GNUGPL will allow it to be downloadedand used for free by any other govern-ment in the world. The software isweb based and allows hospitals toreport cases of diseases as soon asthey are registered at the hospital. TheGIS interface uses Google maps topresent the data on a real time basison a map of the state.

Border security… India's Border Security Force (BSF) willbe using remote sensing and digitaltechnologies to improve intelligence,curb infiltration and protect sensitiveinstallations.

IndiaGROWING DEMAND FOR SPATIAL TECHNOLOGIES SUCH AS GIS-BASED MAPS

AND SATELLITE IMAGERY HAVE SECURED ACCEPTANCE FOR GEOSPATIAL

TECHNOLOGY. IT IS NOW LOOKED UPON AS AN EFFECTIVE DECISION-SUPPORT

TOOL THAT CAN BE USED FOR EFFECTIVE PLANNING AND EXECUTION OF VARIOUS

PROJECTS. ALTHOUGH THIS TREND IS STILL NASCENT, A SUBSTANTIAL MARKET

IS EMERGING. A STUDY OF 2006, FOCUSED ON DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF THE

GEOSPATIAL INDUSTRY INCLUDING GEOSPATIAL DATA, SERVICES (REMOTE

SENSING AND SURVEY), SOFTWARE PRODUCTS AND EXPORT OF GEOSPATIAL

APPLICATION SERVICES FROM INDIA, ESTIMATES THE DOMESTIC INDIAN MARKET

OF VALUE USD 412 MILLION BY 2010.

G I S D E V E L O P M E N T22


Kenya's technologyprojects get a boostA team of experts from Google visited Kenya to examine locally built solutionsfor a possible commercialisationor financing of their develop-ment

Mapping Center of Israel tolaunch Geography portalThe portal will provide information about land, outline plans, maps, trips, sites, aerial images, and historical maps

GIIS to help manage IndianelectoratesGIS-based maps to help in accurate identification of theresidents

Satellite data to save DubaibeachesSatellite images regularlyacquired by the GIS Centre ofDubai Municipality along withfield measurements are provingto be good indicators for moni-toring and management of theshoreline

Satellite imagery anndGIS helps PowerGrid (India)to avoid forestsPowerGrid is using satelliteimaging and GIS to avoid takingits transmission lines throughforest covers

Indonesian Department ofHealth to deploy CadcorrpSIS-based GISCadcorp business partner, TIP,will develop system to map andanalyse health facilities and out-breaks of disease

Mapunity to provide trafficGIS for IndiaThe initiative will allow citizensof the capital to check trafficstatus ranging from the time to reach their destinations, alternate route, choked street,bus arrival time and morethrough SMS or on a map onthe net

Chile implements an early redtidee alert systemData will be made accessiblethrough the internet using acombination of technologies thatinclude GIS, interactive maps ofvarious mussel farm sites, listingthe current status of nationalproduction activities

Environmental campaignersutilise Google EarthCampaigners against inappropri-ate mining activities to spreadawareness using Google Earth

New ESRI licensing program forsmmall municipalities and countiesSecuring GIS software will beeasier for governments in theUnited States with populationsof 100,000 or less through theESRI ELA program

Munsys 10 releasedThe Management Console sup-ports a new tree interface allow-ing administrators to easily man-age the database and relatedMunsys applications from a sin-gle user interface

ESRI ArcPad 7.1 Mobile GISsoftware releaseddIn, ArcPad 7.1, object model hasbeen updated to support datarelationship rules and includesimproved data managementtools

Google revamps NZ maps siteGoogle has re-launched itsmaps service in New Zealand,raising the stakes in an alreadycrowded mapping sector

GeoCritical releases GeoCriticalTerror Index ScoreGTIS creates simple to under-stand geographic representa-tions of extensive terrorism data,drawn from government sourcesand analyzed by experiencedcounter-terrorism subject matterexperts

Quova and RSA offer frauddetection integrating IPGeolocation dataLocation Intelligence platformenables online businesses todetermine the geographic loca-tion of their Web visitors

ESRI Tracking Server 1.1releasedThe new version of TrackingServer offers improvements to handling the history oftracked objects, enhancementsto the Tracking Viewer Appletand support for BEA WebLogicand IBM WebSphere configura-tions

MeetaCarta introduces NewsMapservice through Reuters.comMetaCarta NewsMap service isa new hosted service that allowsonline media outlets to displaymaps that show the places men-tioned in their news stories

GeoVector announces newtechnology to enhance localsearchGeoVector technology allowsaccess to images or video bypointing a mobile phone or otherdevice at an object or place

Ball Aerospace launchesOpticks open source softwareOpticks is used by scientists andanalysts within the Departmentof Defense Intelligence Commu-nity to analyze remote sensingdata and produce actionableintelligence

myVR Software updates itss 3Donline streaming solution

myVR Software allows users toquickly generate and distributelarge 3D models at high speedand high resolution over anynetwork even with limited band-width

Osmose introduces Video DataCapture technology to enhanceGIS dataaThe Osmose VDC approachintegrates high-quality audio,video and GPS technology forease-of-use by specially trainedfield technicians

AWhere Inc. to develop ClimateChange Explorer toolMapping software solutiondesigned for deliveringadvanced understanding oflong-term climate forecasts forscreening climate adaptationstrategies and actions highlight-ed links

ESRI announces support forSQL Server 20008ArcGIS 9.3 and SQL Server2008 Spatial integration willbenefit ESRI customers toimprove operational efficiency,data sharing, and public service

TNTmips integrates geotaggedphotos into geospatial analysisPhoto positions can be convert-ed to vector point locations inany coordinate reference systemand exported to other formats

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News

APPLICATIONS

Envisat captures crude oilleak off South KoreaCrude oil from the wrecked146 000-ton tanker, HebeiSpirit, is seen polluting the seaoff South Korea in an imagecaptured by Envisat.

Google announces YannArthus-Bertrand layer inGoogle EarthEarth from Above layer inGoogle Earth features over200 aerial photographs byFrench photographer and envi-ronmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand

24 G I S D E V E L O P M E N T

21

PRODUCTS

First America map to go ondisplayU.S. Library of Congress readiesthe first map to use the name'America' for its public debut,but some researchers are won-dering where in the world themapmaker got his information

ENVI 4.4 releasedNew ENVI software releasefrom ITT introduces automatedtools for image processing

PCI Geomatics releases latestversion off GeomaticaXThe ProSDK version 1.2 offers aflexible development environ-ment and more accessible func-tionality

TatukGIS products supportingOracle Spatial/Locator Data-baseTatukGIS products can now connect directly to the Oracle Spatial database, without the need for any 3rdparty software

Free version of ERDDAS FieldGuide releasedThe ERDAS Field Guide provides background informa-tion on reasons to use GIS andimage processing and explainshow the software manipulatesdata

Safe Software introduces freeFME FDOSafe Software introduces free FME FDO provider forAutoCAD Map 3D 2008 allow-ing quick and easy access tonine key formats

OGC Announces AggregateMembershhip Serves Collaborat-ing EntitiesThe Aggregate Membership willenables collaborating entities tobring their common issues andperspectives into the OGCprocess of developing interoper-ability standards

Intermap Technologies to pro-vide AccuTerra Digital Mapping

Data to MagellanIntermap Technologiesannounced an agreement withMagellan, to provide outdoormap content products for Mag-ellans line of handheld GPSdevices

Pitney Bowes MapInfo AcquiresAustralian-based Software andData ProviderAccording to MapInfo the company will expand interna-tionally with acquisition ofEncom in high-growth naturalresources industry

Futurre Digital Maps will relyon userGenerated content says ABIResearch. A report by ABIresearch says "by 2012 a largepart of all map and POI contentwill be generated by more than50 million active members ofuser communities"

GTAA implements BentleyGeospatial Server and OracleSpatialBentley Geospatial Server andOracle Spatial will help GTAAstreamline workflows and spatialanalyses on airport site andbuilding space in an interopera-ble environment

K Radhakrishnan isVikram Sarabhai Space Centre’snew DirectorRadhakrishnan earlier wasDirector of RRSC and Directorof Budget and Economic Management Analysis of entire

ISRO

TerraGo Technologies getsLatinn American distributorsThe partnership will help TerraGo Technologies to provide comprehensive servicesand local expertise to its customers

Axes Systems toautomate future Swiss MapDerivativesswisstopo selects Axes SystemsGIS cartography solution,axpand, for automated deriva-tion of future maps at variousscales

School children iin UK to designan experiment with MicroSatellitesThrough a contest being organ-ised by the British NationalSpace Centre and Surrey Satel-lite Technology (SSTL) betweenthe ages of 14 and 18 will beprovided an opportunity todesign and launch a micro satellite

OGC Processes AdvanceGEOSS InteroperabilityThe OGC processes contributedto the interoperability achieve-ments announced in the"GEOSS Report on Progress2007" accepted by the MemberNations at the recent EO sum-mit at Cape Town

UN climate conference hearshow EO can helpAt the recent UN climate con-ference ESA showcased at theconference its Kyoto-supportingservices

NGA and Lockheed Martin toimprove delivery of geoospatialdata to usersLockheed Martin is teamed withOne Network Enterprises, whichwill provide supply chain man-agement software and expertiseto the Demand-Based Geospa-tial Intelligence program

Exodus of geologists hampers

mapping project in Philippines"There are only 40 to 50 geolo-gists left in the MGB to contin-ue the Geohazard Mapping proj-ect," said an MGB official

OS free mapss offer gives boostto action on geographyOrdnance Survey's offer of afree map for every year 7 pupilin Great Britain has seenincreased take-up this year,challenging fears of a decline inthe popularity of geography as aschool subject

Geospatial Information impor-tant for Airport Safety, Efficiencyand EnvironmentHigh performance, high preci-sion and 4D dynamic GIS arethe critical components toachieve System Wide Informa-tion Management, turning col-laborative decision making intoreality

ESA and EC take major stepforward in GlobalMonitoring for Environmennt andSecurityESA and European Commissionsigned and agreement to ensuretimely of GMES is the Europeansolution for the needs of citizensin Europe to access reliableinformation on the status oftheir environment.

25J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

BUSINESS

Galileo signal reflectionsused for monitoring wavesand weather at seaAn improved measurement system in space could be used to warn mariners ofstorms and to provide data forglobal climate change models -potentially even to detectTsunamis

GITA adds Intergraph Execu-tive to Board of DirectorsVolker H. Elste, BusinessDevelopment executive inIntergraph Utilities and Com-munications unit, has beenappointed to GITAs board

21

MISCELLANEOUS

Navigation with3D map displayReal 3D navigation - differ-ent from the bird view of a2D map - is pushed hard byTele Atlas, closely followedby its competitor Navteq.For both companies this isan additional layer of infor-mation that can be mone-tized. With the price of theirmap databases decreasingat a rate of almost 10 per-cent a year (www.gpsbusi-nessnews.com), there wasan obvious need to developsuch content.

The first Tele Atlas 3D citymaps was released in July2007, including maps for 50major European cities; addi-tional European, U.S. andAsian cities are scheduledto be released during 2008 .The development of TeleAtlas' 3D city maps is a jointeffort with three other com-panies: the German PIXELand the UK companies AGSand 3DLABS.

Navteq has made avail-able 3D city models for 13cities in Europe and 30cities in North America.

One caveat in creating

digital 3D map material, isthe size of the data. Becauseof this, the new map mate-rial requires a lot more CPUand memory capacity inthe navigational systemsthan the 2D maps. PNDmanufacturers are not

overlyenthusiasticabout equip-ping theirdevices yetagain withfaster CPU'sand more

memory, and most con-sumers also don't want toinvest in new hardware, ontop of the expense of newmap material.

Microsoft acquiresMultimapMicrosoft has acquired Mul-timap though Microsofthas not disclosed how muchit had paid for the privatelyheld business, but bankersestimated that the compa-ny could be worth about£50m.

Multimap will operate asa wholly owned subsidiary

of Microsoft, as part of theVirtual Earth and Searchteams in the Online Ser-vices Group. The acquisi-tion is the latest in a seriesof moves as Microsoft seeksto expand its online servic-es to deliver software, serv-ices, and premium contentand applications to con-sumers and businesses.

For Microsoft the move isanother attempt to keeppace with competitors suchas Google and Nokia, whoare vying to offer variouslocation-based services.Buying Multimap givesMicrosoft a betterrecognised consumer-fac-ing brand and a strongerposition in Europe.

The acquisition givesMicrosoft a powerful newlocation and mapping tech-nology to complementexisting offerings such asVirtual Earth, Live Search,Windows Live services,MSN and the aQuantiveadvertising platform, withfuture integration potentialfor a range of otherMicrosoft products andplatforms.

Galileo mired infunding disputesGalileo has been mired infunding disputes for mostof 2007, following thebreakdown of negotiationswith private sectorinvestors who had beensupposed to provide Euros2.4bn of the constructioncosts. It has recently been

agreed that the missingcash will be found fromunspent farm subsidy cashalready in EU coffers. It hasbeen reported that the con-struction phase will bemanaged by the EuropeanSpace Agency (ESA) whichis not a part of the EU gov-ernment and is having adifferent list of memberstates.

The ESA expects a fast-moving launch programmefrom this point. It expects toput out a request for infor-mation to industry by early2008 and start receivingdeliveries of spacecraft in2009. Planners hope tohave the system globallyoperational in 2013. The EUgovernment, in classicstyle, is still on record asbelieving that Galileo "willbe fully operable in 2008 atthe latest", which showsthat predictions in this areamay occasionally need apinch of salt.

Broadcom getsinto the GPSchip bizThe acquisition of GlobalLocate by Broadcom isanother step in the consoli-dation of the GPS semicon-ductor market. In January2007 CSR bought Nordnavand Cambridge PositioningSystems to add GPS to itsrange of Bluetooth and oth-er RF silicon solutions.

A company so focused onthe mobile device marketas Broadcom was bound to

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26

Navigation


3D City map by Tele Atlas

buy a GPS chip vendor, andwith TomTom as a cus-tomer, Global Locate wasthe most impressive of anumber of start-ups. How-ever, the technology isdeveloping rapidly. GlobalLocate may have a tiny

footprint but it will soonface competition from CSR,which will offer no addi-tional footprint by runningsoftware-based GPS sys-tems on existing Bluetoothsilicon. It will, in addition,offer triangulation as wellas GPS to overcome thedelay in getting GPS fixes inurban surroundings. Thegood news is that a compa-ny with Broadcom's cloutwill assist in reducingprices, which will enableGPS to move from the top

end to mass-marketphones. Born from the integration of the GlobalLocate acquisition Broad-com Corporation hasannounced its first single-chip GPS solution, BCM4750,a single-die CMOS GPSreceiver used for trackingand navigation, primarilyin mobile devices.

TomTom MapShare –clearing up theconfusionSimultaneously with the

introduction of the new GO520 and GO 720, TomTomannounced a entirely newmap improvement technol-ogy: TomTom MapShare.This new piece of softwareenables users to adjust nav-igational maps if they areno longer entirely up-to-date. Those manually madecorrections can also beshared with other users,who will receive updatesthrough the TomTomHOME desktop, all entirelyfree of charge.

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27

In a deal announced on October 1st 2007, Nokia declared itsintention to acquire NAVTEQ for $8.1 billion. Most of theindustry had been waiting for the other shoe to drop afterPND-maker TomTom purchased Tele Atlas, but the majorityhad expected another of the PND makers (Garmin, Magellan),or the big Internet mapping portals (Google, Microsoft) to bethe purchaser. Although the Nokia purchase is initially surpris-ing, it makes good businesssense; ABI Research wasone of the industry-watcherswho had Nokia on a short listof potential suitors. Nokiahas been very clear that it ismoving toward Internet-based services, and hasbeen making acquisitions tosupport its strategy (Loud-eye, Twango, Enpocket,Gate5). Nokia's Internetstrategy is now $8.1 billionclearer. It recently introducedits own PND, and has beenvocal about its intentions.OVI (Internet services brand)is the public face of theseinitiatives, which are not yet very visible in the United Statesbut that will change in the coming years.

Nokia's deal for Navteq could help transform the cell phonemaker into a global powerhouse for navigation services. Com-bined with Nokia's interest in Symbian and its Intellisync mobilebusiness platforms, Navteq's services could make Nokia's

smartphones more attractive to both consumers and the enter-prise. Navteq's technology also could enable Nokia to launch anew class of location-enabled applications for both the con-sumer and enterprise markets, including location-enabled con-tent sharing, mobile asset management, and fleet manage-ment. Finally, this deal gives Nokia leverage over Google,Yahoo and MSN. Navteq supplies some of the mapping infor-

mation for Google Maps.Navteq also supplies map-ping data to Yahoo Maps,MSN Maps and even thatWeb 1.0 standard of naviga-tion, MapQuest.

Now Nokia will control theserelationships and be able todictate to the three power-houses of the desktop Web.Nokia is now a major playeron the desktop Web, too.

Navteq’s stockholdersapproved the merger agree-ment. Shareholders repre-senting over 75 percent of

the issued and outstanding common shares eligible to vote, orover 99 percent of the total votes cast, were in favor of theagreement.

2007 has been about the smartphone, and in particular, onesmartphone: the iPhone. But if Nokia's deal for Navteq is anyindicator, 2008 could be the year of location.

Nokia to acquire NAVTEQ

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BCM4750 Single Chip GPS solution by Broadcom


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It is a pretty common factthat the biggest frustrationpeople have with their GPSdevices is the maps. Ourworld changes rapidly andfrequently, and so far thecycle of mapping the newinformation and gettingthat information out to GPSdevices hasn’t happenedfast enough. Now mappingupdates can be done withTomTom MapShare. Onemight have thought Map-Share would have beenlaunched in co-operationwith TeleAtlas and that theimprovements made to the

maps would be given backto TeleAtlas. But that’s notthe case. MapShare is amajor investment fromTomTom because such asolution needs a complexback-end system to processuser's updates, so it is surethe company is not likely togive back user generatedmap correction for free to

TeleAtlas, and to see hiscompetitors Navman andMio also TeleAtlas cus-tomers - getting the sameinformation. At themoment, TomTom will notbe sharing the informationcollected with any of themap providers. This couldvery well change in thefuture.

SiRF Technologyacquires CentralityCommunicationsSiRF Technology Holdings,Inc. has completed itsacquisition of Centrality

Communications Inc. Thetransaction was closed onAugust 6, 2007. Centralitywas quickly eating marketshare to SiRF in the low endpart of the PND market,where the biggest volumeare today. Instead oflaunching a dangerousprice war, SiRF bought Cen-trality for $283m in cashand stocks. SiRF nowexpects to maintain a pret-ty hegemonic market sharefor GPS chipsets on the PNDsegment. The acquisitionresulted in expansion ofSiRF's engineering capabili-

There are clear signs thatmobile search is maturing, thatusers are ready for it, and thereare ways to monetize it.Although Google, Yahoo andMicrosoft have offered mobilesearch for awhile now, they'vereally begun to step up theirefforts in 2007. In addition,pure-play mobile ad players likeMedio, which launched a PayPer Click (PPC) text ad plat-form for mobile search, havecome to the market with viablemonetization options for mobile.

Of the big three searchengines, Yahoo has a clear leadin mobile. Yahoo expanded thereach of its OneSearch mobilesearch application, making itavailable to more mobile Webusers. OneSearch launched inJanuary with the Yahoo Go forMobile application. Yahoobegan showing PPC text ads inmobile search results in Octo-ber. In February, Yahoo intro-duced display advertising on itsmobile-specific Web sites in 19countries. Yahoo also addedsome publisher services to the

OneSearch platform, includingtools for publishers to submittheir content to the OneSearchindex or Yahoo Mobile MediaDirectory, and to sign up toshow ads on their mobile sitesfrom the new Yahoo Mobile AdNetwork.

The OneSearch platform ismobile search from the groundup, instead of Web searchcrammed into a mobile device.It's been designed to providequick bits of information withminimal click-throughs. It usesmuch of Yahoo's underlyingWeb search technology, butalso applies mobile-specificalgorithms to create an experi-ence tailored to mobile devices.

Google, playing catch-up for achange, announced some newfeatures for Google Mobile,which include mostly the samefare found in Yahoo's One-Search. Google has said thatmobile search is a priority, atleast in Europe. It has beentesting mobile ads for at leastthe last six months in the U.S.,

U.K. and Germany, and forabout a year in Japan.

Microsoft launched Live Searchfor Mobile in February at the3GSM World Congress inBarcelona, releasing v 1.0 of itsclient application for WindowsMobile devices. Featuresinclude category-based localsearching, maps and directions,traffic, contacts list integrationand "SMS a friend." It's acquisi-tion of TellMe boosts its mobilesearch properties with voice-enabled mobile search technol-ogy. Microsoft spin-off ZenZuidebuted a newly developedgraphical browsing user inter-face (UI) for mobile phoneswhich maps the nine numberkeys on a phone to navigationalbookmarks. Microsoft alsodebuted a new mobile Webbrowser, code-named Deepfish,as part of its Microsoft LiveLabs research.

While 2005 and 2006 haveeach been hailed as the "Yearof Mobile," there are increasingsigns that those predictions

finally came true in 2007. Itseems to be a breakthroughyear in Mobile Search now thatthe more established internetbrands have positioned inmobile and are doing majordeals with operators.

28

Mobile Search: Clash of the Titans


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Navigation Search on Mobile

MapShare - interactive map updating

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ties to deliver cost effectiveproducts that will addressthe needs of emerging con-vergence mobile devices inthe portable navigation,automotive, and consumermarkets.

Garmin drops TeleAtlas bid; TomTomwins the fight The navigation device mak-er cedes victory to TomTomin the takeover battle andextends its contract withmapping data supplierNavteq.

Garmin extends through2015 an existing contract tobuy mapping from Navteqthat is being acquired byFinnish mobile-phone giantNokia. Garmin also securedan option to renew theagreement for an addition-al four years.

The move brought an endto a dramatic takeover tus-sle that has shaken the nav-igation business to its coreand fueled surges in thestock prices of takeover tar-gets Navteq and Nether-lands-based Tele Atlas.Though it has lost the bid-ding battle over Tele Atlas,Garmin sure looked like awinner to investors. Italready buys about 98% ofits mapping data fromNavteq, so the extension ofthe current agreement letsit proceed without missingan operational beat.Garmin's plan for acquiringTele Atlas included a transi-tion period that would have

lasted as long as two years. The end of the bidding

war closely follows thedenouement of anotherfight between Garmin andTomTom, this one in thecourts. The companies,which have squabbled overpatents in courts in the U.S.,Britain, and the Nether-lands, jointly announced onNov. 15 that they had set-tled all their outstandinglitigation.

Android:Google's answerto open sourcemobile Over the past year, theindustry eagerly waited forInternet giant to announceits big mobile play. Rumorscirculated that the compa-ny was working on the

Gphone, something thatcould rival the AppleiPhone. Google dispelledthat myth. Companyinstead unveiled a mobilesoftware platform calledAndroid, a free, open-sourceoperating system for a Lin-ux phone that can runmobile Google apps andothers. Google readilyadmits it can't build theplatform on its own. So the

company has partneredwith 33 others to create theOpen Handset Alliance. Thelist includes big names suchas T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel,Intel, Qualcomm, Motorolaand HTC and eBay. Smaller,more specialized compa-nies are also in the group.No mention of Verizon,AT&T, Vodafone, or Nokia(which is pushing its ownOvi development platform).

For Google to succeed, itwill have to offer some-thing other platforms don'thave. So far, the biggest difference is that the plat-form will be open. But thatdoes not require the

handset maker or the oper-ator to deliver an"unlocked"phone that lets the userchoose applications. Opera-tors may want to lock thesephones into specific servic-es, just as they do withphones such as the iPhone,and there's nothing to stopsuch contracts emerging.

The question then arisesas to why is Google doingthis then? Advertising revenue? There are projections of billions ofdollars of advertising revenue from the mobileinternet. Google wants tohover up as much of that asit can.

29

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2007 may have been the year of the GPS, but it sure wasn't theyear of real-time traffic information.

The lure of real-time traffic awareness is nothing short of drivingbliss; your less informed automotive brethren drive straight into a45-minute traffic delay, woefully unaware that they could have tak-en any number of alternate routes and avoided the holdup alto-gether. On the other hand, you have been alerted by your traffic-enabled GPS, and have intelligently avoided the whole mess, arriv-ing at your destination refreshed and on-time! That's the promisebehind real-time traffic data. The reality is that real-time traffic datais rarely "real-time", coverage areas are limited to a select fewcities, and it's pretty unlikely that the GPS will route you around atraffic jam.

It's estimated that real-time traffic information will reach more than83 million subscribers by 2012 (according to ABI Research). Num-bers like that are encouraging, but in order to make traffic informa-tion truly valuable to drivers, three elements will be required i.e.better traffic data collection, shift focus from accident alerts andimproved usability.

There can be little doubt that consumers want real-time trafficinformation, as evidenced by the rapid growth of companies likeINRIX and NAVTEQ/Traffic.com. We're likely still a few years awayfrom traffic data being truly useful, but the technology gap is clos-ing fast, and it won't be long before traffic data is an essentialGPS feature one can't live without.

Disappointment of the year:Real-Time Traffic

Android: Mobile phone operating system

Since the forma-tion of the OpenGeospatial Con-

sortium (OGC) in 1994 its stan-dardisation process had an enor-mous impact on the geospatialindustry all over the world. Thefirst year of OGC's work broughtthe Simple Feature Specificationsthat were the prerequisite for thestorage of geospatial data in rela-tional databases.

This defined a big step forward for allkinds of spatial applications. Next camethe OGC Web Services, their most

prominent ones being Web Map Ser-vice (WMS, access to digital maps) andWeb Feature Service (WFS, access toobject-modelled spatial data).

These services are essential for thedevelopment of interoperable SpatialData Infrastructures (SDI) that arebeing set up in all parts of the world.WMS and WFS allow standardizedaccess to spatial data, yet the first stepof their usage is finding them in thefirst place. For this task Catalogue Services are necessary which are meta-data registries for data and services.WMS, WFS and Catalogue Services(web-based Catalogue Services areabbreviated CS-W) define the basecomponents SDI.

One could say the build-up of SDI hap-pens from two directions, one being thetop-down initiatives that are set up on

the state level to define National Spa-tial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). Besides,OGC standards are taken up by all kindsof projects that can form the base of theNSDI, this is the bottom-up direction.During last years both directions couldbe observed in South-East Asia, show-ing good development chances of SDI.

On international level, there are anumber of initiatives defining require-ments and needs for application ofgeospatial standards.

The most important are the GlobalSpatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) andthe United Nations Spatial Data Infra-structure (UNSDI). In Asian region Digi-tal Asia makes use of the OGC stan-dards WMS, WFS and WCS (Web Cover-age Service, allows access to raster andimage data) for geodata exchange.Another cross-border initiative is

G I S D E V E L O P M E N T30 J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

Regional Overview

Usage of OGC Standards in Indonesia, Thailand & Malaysia

Sentinel Asia, a voluntary initiative for establishing a disaster manage-ment support system for the Asia-Pacif-ic region. Sentinel Asia will use theOGC-based server infrastructure of digital Asia and therefore is anotherexample of a system using WMS, WFSand WCS.

The following article highlights someobservations regarding the uptake ofOGC standards in geospatial projects inIndonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Cov-ering such a large area, the article can-not be (and is not intended to be) com-prehensive in regard to geospatial proj-ects making use of OGC standards, butrather is a spotlight that shows thetrend towards interoperable geospatialweb services.

NATIONAL SDI INITIATIVESAND EXEMPLAR PROJECTSThailand, Malaysia and Indonesia aredeveloping National Spatial Data Infra-structures (NSDI) with a number ofsimilarities but also differences. A simi-larity of the approaches is that all threeinitiatives are using OGC standards tosome degree. Another similarity that isshared with all NSDIs worldwide is thatthe first starting components are ametadata information system ("searchengine") for geospatial data and inter-active maps. Besides these top-downSDI building approaches, all three coun-tries show a number of OGC-standards-based projects. The following examplesonly discuss technical aspects of SDIbuilding. All mentioned SDI initiativesalso have significant non-technicalaspects such as political frameworksand directives for harmonisation ofgeodetic and geodata standards.

INDONESIAThe initiative for an Indonesian NSDIwas formally started in 1993 with its

first develop-ment stepsfocussed ondevelopment ofa national stan-dard exchangeformat, develop-ment of a datadictionary and aweb-basedexample applica-tion. By now aportal of theInfrastrukturData SpasialNasional (IDNS)is available thatis based onGeoNetwork OpenSource (see fig. 2).This web-portal software supports anumber of metadata standards such asCSDGM, ISO 19115 and Dublin Core.Besides, it supports the OGC CatalogueServices interface and the WMS inter-face.

This kind of portal allows access todistributed metadata using catalogueservice interfaces, so a user can find outwhat kind of spatial datasets alreadyexist. It is alsopossible tovisualize thedata, either ina standalonemap viewer oras an integrat-ed one. Such aviewer is ableto display thedata of a cata-logue search,at least if amap service isavailable forthe data atinterest. Theinstance set up

as part of IDSN allows to query a num-ber of catalogue services that were setup already by different Indonesianinstitutions.

Another interesting example of aWMS-based geoportal was (so far as aprototype) developed by SamarindaCity (fig. 3).

This city map portal is much morefocused in its usage and available data.It shows a number of geodata sets of

31G I S D E V E L O P M E N TJ A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

Fig. 1 Clearinghouse of the Indonesian IDSN

”

“Build-up of SDI happens from two directions, one beingthe top-down initiatives thatare set up on the state level todefine NSDI. OGC standardsare taken up by all kinds ofprojects that can form thebase of the NSDI, this is thebottom-up direction

the city and its surrounding. This portalalso was developed using Open Sourcesoftware and is fully WMS-based,which means it uses the three opera-tions defined by the WMS standard(GetCapabilities, GetMap and GetFea-tureInfo) as its internal interfaces. Themap portal is integrated to a highdegree in the overall web portal ofSamarinda.

MALAYSIAAs the Indonesian one, Malaysia's NSDIinitiative - called myGDI - shows as afirst visible output a portal with meta-data query facilities and a web-basedmapviewer (see fig. 3).

This map viewer is not a native WMS-based application but it nonethelesssupports the OGC standard WMS. InFigure 3 a map can be seen that displaysgeodata from the viewer itself com-bined with layers from the OGC-com-pliant DENIS WMS.

The Malaysian geoportal has manymore functionalities than mere webmappings, such as registration andauthentication of users and data down-

load. All screen-shots were takenusing anony-mous access.

Malaysiashows a goodnumber of proj-ects, many ofacademic nature,working withOGC standards.Many of theseprojects evaluatethe usage ofOpen Sourceprojects such asdeegree, UMNMapServer, Map-Builder orGeoServer forSDI building.

THAILANDThaiSDI, as the SDI intiative in Thailandis called, uses OGC standards conceptu-ally to a high degree. The first phase ofThaiSDI - the metadata clearinghouse -implemented the OGC Services WMS,

WFS and Cata-logue Service.The online mapbrowser thatcan be seen inFigure 1 is acompletely OGCWMS basedViewer. In thefigure data fromthe WMS of theportal itself iscombined withdata from anexternal WMS.On the left andright of the GUI,

results of GetCa-pabilities and

GetFeatureInfo-Requests can be seen.The GetCapabilities windows showsthe layers that a WMS offers and allowsto switch these layers on and off (upperleft in the screenshot). The GetFeature-Info window on the right enables usersto see attribute data of geoobjects thatare selected.

Besides this initiative, there is a num-ber of other projects in Thailand thatare working with OGC standards. Manyof these projects are in the context ofdisaster mapping and managementand therefore often have a cross-bordersetting. There also is an increasingnumber of studies about usage of OpenSource software for SDI building. Thesestudies mainly focus on software ableto support OGC WMS and WFS.

SUMMARYThe usage of OGC-standards in Indone-sia, Thailand and Malaysia by now iscomparable with the situation inEurope and North America. All threecountries show well-developed NSDIinitiatives that are technically at least

32 G I S D E V E L O P M E N T J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

Fig. 3 The myGDI MapViewer showing local data combined withthe DENIS WMS

Fig. 2 Geoportal of the City of Samarinda in Eastern Kalimantan

partly based on standards such as WMSand Catalogue Service.

A large number of additional projectsexist on different levels and in acade-mia, these being mainly focussed onWMS. Not surprisingly there still arefew WFS-based applications. The rea-sons for this phenomenon is that WFS-technology is much more complex thanWMS, especially in its regard to inter-operability.

WFS needs well-defined semanticdata models that are then translatedinto GML application schemata. Theprocess of defining and implementingthese data model is long as it requires a

common under-standing of anapplicationdomain by allstakeholders.Examples forsuch GML appli-cation schemasare CityGML thatis developed bymembers of theOGC itself for 3Dcity models(buildings,streets, trees etc.)and a number oflocal (mostlynational) datamodels for differ-ent application

domains such as cadastral data or datafor urban and town planning.

Another application area for WFS isthe creation of gazetteers which areneeded for navigation and queriesusing geographic identifiers. Develop-ment of standardised gazetteers oftenis a step following the setup of Cata-logue Services and WMS instances. A second (or third) step in SDI initia-tives also is the usage of SymbologyEncoding (SE) and Styled Layer Descrip-tor (SLD) for standardization of symbol-ogy rules.

As standardised symbology needswell-defined data models, it might still

take some time until we see the wide-spread use of these specifications.Many of the projects using OGC stan-dards are making use of Open Sourcesoftware, a trend that also can be seenin other parts of the world. One of themain reasons for this effect is that thegeospatial Open Source communityseems to embrace open standards to ahigh degree.

Fig. 4 ThaiGOS portal with added WMS data

”

“Usage of OGC stan-dards in Indonesia,Thailand and Malaysiais comparable withthe situation inEurope and NorthAmerica. All threecountries show well-developed NSDI initia-tives that are basedon standards such asWMS and CatalogueService

Dr. Markus Lupplat/lon, Kupang-NTT, [email protected]

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The geospatial communi-

ty finds itself in exciting

times, as the first decade

of the 21st century advances. Whether

one's interest is in business development

and profit, technological innovation, or

benefits to society, the opportunities for

any individual, public or private organi-

zation to contribute to, and gain from

spatial technologies is unprecedented.

To some degree, this can be consid-ered the result of several convergences:

• towards higher spatial, temporal andspectral resolution of satellite and othersource data;

• towards new collaborative software/product/service development andsupport models (including public-pri-vate and private-private partnerships);

• towards new means of creating anddistributing digital products (and reach-ing large numbers of customers - whoare not always ready to pay large sumsfor products/services); and

• towards new means of obtaining revenue.

Let's look at each of these conver-gences, in turn:

Higher spatial, temporal andspectral resolution of satelliteand other source dataWith the impressive proliferation ofrelatively high resolution satelliteimagery, available gratis throughmaps.google.com, wikimapia.org, mul-timap.com, maps.live.com and otherWeb sources, the average person cannow see what recently cost geoinfor-matics professionals heavily in terms ofhardware, software, and data.

These services have quickly built userawareness of such imagery. They arealso increasing the areas covered by rel-atively high resolution imagery. A fewmonths ago, I found that such imagerywas available for the parts of the CookIslands that I had planned to visit onvacation. I could plan hiking, snorkel-ing and other adventures, and wellimagine the logistics of my vacation.

Several Web mapping services likethese encourage customizations.Indeed, several such customizationshave been done. So anyone has anopportunity to customize a service oftheir own, using these innovations as abasis.

If you have a rural guest house net-work, urban office or hotel location, orwant to help existing or envisionedcustomers with locational services, aframework is available for you. Com-bining this with the other conver-gences offers an exciting opportunityto leverage such technology for one'sown business or service.

New collaborativesoftware/product/servicedevelopment and support models (including public-private and private-privatepartnerships)

BackgroundMuch early Geoinformatics develop-ment was first accomplished in govern-

J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 836 G I S D E V E L O P M E N T

Convergence Bring Exciting OpportunitiesConvergence Bring Exciting Opportunities

Geospatial Trends

mental and academic institutions char-acterized by relatively open policies onusage and enhancement. Many aca-demic institutions and governmentalresearch and development (R&D) labo-ratories separately developed data andsoftware for their internal use. Somesoftware or data by governmentresearchers or academicians wasexchanged freely, though some woundup with copyright claims by their insti-tutions. Some such software packages,or their fundamentals, were commer-cially adopted by entrepreneurs whoplaced copyright claims on resultantproducts.

Many commercial datasets and soft-ware packages were relatively expen-sive, which limited their use resultingin limited revenues for the developers,and impeded technological and busi-ness opportunity in countries depend-ent on such expensive foundations fortheir businesses. In this climate a fewcompanies prospered or at least sur-vived, and perhaps gave dreams ofprosperity to others - but for every suc-cess came many failures.

More recently, software and datadevelopment has bifurcated. With therecent founding of the Open SourceGeospatial Foundation (www.osgeo.org), a critical mass of open-sourcegeoinformatics software developers,integrators, and distribution mecha-nisms is evolving. An increasing num-ber of individuals and businesses havebeen able to make businesses in thebroad open-source environment -where the geoinformatics sector is alsonow beginning to grow. Some govern-ments are considering moving to open-source and creative commons forms ofintellectual property protection, inorder to better stimulate developmen-tal and business climates in theirdomains.

IMPROVEMENTS IN OPPORTUNITIES

THROUGH OPEN-SOURCE

The opportunity for any individual orcompany (small or large), anywherewith an Internet connection, to join aglobalized community of softwaredevelopers, and make a business of it, isa powerful developmental and busi-ness opportunity. However, despitewidespread innovations in Asia andthe Pacific, many firms cling to thehope that they could become the nextMicrosoft or ESRI, just as Microsoft isundergoing a significant shift in itsstrategy to partnering - and is continu-ing to pursue major innovations in spa-tial data management/services with-out a major desktop GIS product, andjust as the open-source environmenthas consolidated under OSGEO to movetoward better integration, distribution,and user service.

Increasing numbers of countries areencouraging open-source softwaredevelopment, as a means of keepingcontrol of their intellectual capital.They realize that, when they make sug-gestions for improvements, or partici-pate in the users meeting, for commer-cial software they have essentially giv-en their intellectual property to thefirm, which may adopt it into theirproducts and lease it back to the user.When governments develop softwarein an open-source environment, theybenefit more directly from their intel-lectual property. When groups of devel-opers and users band together, they aresharing from the work of the communi-ty.

Simultaneously, some governmentshave been working to build knowledgeeconomies, by improving the environ-ment under which knowledge workersthrive. This has included improve-ments in information and communica-tions infrastructure, education and

training, and opening access to oppor-tunities through public-private part-nerships.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for anentrepreneur is whether to join a largecompany, or to remain independent. Inthe open-source community, one cando both. One can participate in globalcommunities of software developers -and thus benefit from the interactionsof a critical mass of like-minded col-leagues. However, the open-sourcecommunity also encourages individualentrepreneurship as part of this globalteam. So, if your interest is in projectionsoftware, data format translators, inte-grating GIS into a hybrid product orservice, the open-source communityencourages you to do so.

At www.osgeo.org there are severalchoices where you can make a name foryourself in virtually any niche youcould be interested in. The communityis small enough for you to make a namefor yourself, while being large enoughto give you some support and peerreview of your ideas and work. Theopen-source community enables you toobtain, and provide, customer supportbeyond that possible with most com-mercial software. With the latter, youpay for support, make your request forsupport, and eventually get an answer.With open-source you go to the discus-sion group or Wiki, and find that some-one has probably already asked your


Some governments are considering moving to open-source and creativecommons forms ofintellectual propertyprotection

”

“

J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

question - with someone else havingalready answered it.

PARTNERSHIP OPPORTUNITIES

If you get an opportunity to partnerwith a government entity on a geospa-tial technology development project, Idoubt that that entity would object toyour proposal to do so within the open-source environment - unless that entitywants to own the rights itself, and keepthem from the public. On the otherhand, if you work with a company thatis used to the proprietary model of soft-ware development, you may face achallenge if you propose to go open-source. Yet there are advantages ofgoing open-source. If you successfullyengage with the user community, theywill support each other (yet you canprovide services also, and be paid forthem if you like).

NEW MEANS OF CREATING AND

DISTRIBUTING DIGITAL PRODUCTS

With the Web, software and productsare now increasingly distributedonline. One may also integrate a num-ber of elements developed by othersinto a holistic product, to serve online.For instance, you can combine hotelbooking (in Thailand, for example,r24.org provides a back end to your owntravel agency, should you wish to run

one); bookings for air, rail and bus tick-ets and rental cars; tourism guide mate-rials prepared by yourself or others(such as by linking to wikitravel.org ortripadvisor.com); spatial data fromsources like those mentioned in above(first) Section; and your own enhance-ments to create your own super Web-based travel service.

You can obtain revenue by commis-sions (e.g. with a service as r24.org) orfrom guest house operators, or throughmeans described just below.

NEW MEANS OF OBTAINING REVENUE

If estimates and forecasts are correct, the amount of revenues earnedfrom low-cost click-through revenueearnings for spatial data services like Google maps soon will reach onehundred thousand million US dollarsannually. With vehicles like GoogleAdSense (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSens), "anyone", "anywhere" can pur-sue services that can generate rev-enues, without high subscriptioncharges.

CONCLUSION

As we can see, convergences in techno-logical advances, and in ways of work-ing together, are creating immenseopportunities for developing new prod-ucts and services that are enhanced by

geospatial technology. These caninclude business-to-business services,consumer products, and developmentalservices that bring increased prosperityto the businesses, the middle class andeven the poor.

In the latter case, services that helpbuild markets for rural communities(including education, health, and mar-keting of products or tourism where vil-lagers, not merely outside businessinterests, gain work and revenues) canbecome a win-win situation for all con-cerned.

Most countries have economic centres, and also economic backwaterswhich however have yet unmarketedcultural, historical, or other potentialwealth if they can be brought into theeconomy in a mutually beneficial andsustainable manner. Geospatial tech-nologies, and other information andcommunication technologies, can be anasset in, and an ally to, such efforts.

The views expressed by author are his own and/or of others, but do not necessarily reflect views of the UnitedNations or any of its components.

Dr. David HastingsSpace Technology Applications, UNESCAP,Bangkok, [email protected]

The developmental

needs of Africa are

well known as it

battles to achieve the Millen-

nium Development Goals,

despite the numerous efforts

by national and international

development programmes.

It has also been shown thatgeo-spatial informationplays a significant role indevelopment planning(Clarke, 2007). If this is thecase then what is the contri-bution of geo-spatial infor-mation and the geo-spatialtechnologies towards thedevelopment programmesin Africa? In an attempt toanswer this question a per-spective on the status of GISin Africa is provided. A lookis taken at the status of geo-spatial data, contributingstandards and policies, andhuman and institutional

capacity and arrangements.It is often said that Africa

is poorly mapped, that is,there is a paucity of geo-spa-tial information. Withoutgeo-spatial information it isnot possible to begin to useGIS to analyse developmentneeds and plan projects or tomonitor the impact of devel-opment projects. To deter-mine whether or not Africais indeed poorly mappedtwo projects in the MappingAfrica for Africa initiativehave recently been complet-ed through the auspices ofthe Committee for Develop-ment Information's Sub-committee on Geo-informa-tion (CODI-Geo) - a structureof the UN Economic Com-mission for Africa (UNECA).The first project determined,through a user needs analy-sis, what geo-spatial dataconstitutes the fundamentalgeo-spatial datasets for

Africa. The second projectfollowed the first to thencatalogue the available fun-damental geo-spatialdatasets in Africa - both in-country and external dataholdings.

The geo-spatial datasetsmentioned in Table 1 havebeen determined as the fun-damental geo-spatialdatasets required to support

development in Africa,excluding any socio-eco-nomic datasets such asdemographic data.

The determination of thefundamental geo-spatialdatasets for Africa isground-breaking work andforms the basis of any fur-ther work on the collectionand maintenance of geo-spatial data to support the


Regional Overview

J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

Table 1 Fundamental Geo-spatial Datasets for Africa (Source: CODI-Geo, 2006)

Category Data Theme Dataset

Primary reference Geodetic control networkGeodetic control point; Height datum; Geoid model

Base geography

Rectified imagery Aerial photography; Satellite imagery

HypsographyDigital elevation model; Spot height; Bathymetry

Hydrography Coastline; Natural water bodies

Administration andspatial organisation

BoundariesGovernmental units; Populated places; Enumeration areas

Geographic names Place names; Feature names

Land management unitsLand parcels/cadastre; Land tenure; Street address; Postal/zip code zone; Land use planning zone

Infrastructure

TransportationRoads; Road centerlines; Railways; Airports; Ports

Structures Bridges; Tunnels

Utilities and services Power; Telecommunication

Environmental information

Natural environment Land cover; Soils; Geology

STATUS OF GIS IN AFRICA

development programmesin Africa. These datasetsmust be prioritized in anyprogrammes or projects,whether at national, sub-regional or regional level.

The results of the cata-logue of available funda-mental geo-spatial datasetsin Africa has in part con-firmed the fact that Africa ispoorly mapped, but has alsoshown that in part there is alot of this data available.Much of the data is unreli-able in that it is either out ofdate, having being collectedand mapped by the colonialpowers prior to the countrygaining independence, or isinaccurate. There is also animbalance in the availabilityof different datasets, withsome datasets, such as mainroads and railways, beingcompleted and for othersbeing very poorly represent-ed. Possible reasons for theseresults are that there is nosignificant, if any, program-matic approach to the collec-tion and maintenance of

these datasets at the nation-al level, commercial enter-prises who only collect thosedatasets with commercialvalue to trade with suchdata, and the collection ofdatasets by organisationsthat are not African govern-mental organisations,including donor agencies,who collect the data for aspecific project and do notput in place any plans toeither maintain that data orto hand it over to the rele-vant authority to add to thenational asset of fundamen-tal geo-spatial data. The lackof a programmatic approachto the collection and ongo-ing maintenance of thesefundamental geo-spatialdatasets is indicative of thestate of many of the nation-al mapping organisations(NMO) in Africa, which arepoorly resourced in terms ofhuman resources, budgetsand equipment.

A summary of the extentof available fundamentalgeo-spatial datasets forAfrican countries is given fora selected number ofdatasets in Table 2. Of the 54African countries no contactcould be established in theproject for two countries,namely Angola and WesternSahara. For a further sevencountries only external datasources were indicated, bias-ing the reports for thosecountries.

Figure 1 shows a map ofAfrican countries wheredata on enumerator areas

are available. This result isindicative of the extent forwhich reliable demographicdata is available at the sub-national level - anotherimportant dataset for devel-opment purposes.

In cataloguing the avail-able fundamental geo-spa-tial datasets the metadatafor these datasets was alsocollected. The study revealedthat only five of the 30datasets had completemetadata and 23 datasetshad less than 30% of itsmetadata available. The lackof metadata is of great con-cern for the access to andsharing of geo-spatial dataacross organisations andapplications. More effort isrequired to record the meta-data at the same time as col-lecting the geo-spatial data.The lack of metadata canresult in the duplication ofthe collection of geo-spatialdata because of theunknown quality and relia-bility of that data.

This project highlightedwhat is probably the biggestchallenge in the utilizationof geo-spatial data, namelythe difficulty in knowingwhat data exists and how toaccess it. A lot of time andeffort is wasted due to not

having the knowledge of theexistence of these datasets.The savings that can resultfrom eliminating duplica-tion of data collection can beput to better use.

A gap analysis for eachAfrica country has been pre-pared based on the results ofthe cataloguing project. Eachcountry can use this gapanalysis to prioritise theircollection of fundamentalgeo-spatial data. Interna-tional organisations, includ-ing donor agencies, shouldalso use this gap analysis.

In some instances wherefundamental geo-spatialdatasets are available thereare restriction on accessingand using such data. Insome countries the militaryis the NMO and regard alltopographic data and thegeodetic control network asrestricted. The cost of access-ing and using the funda-


Dataset Available in No. of Countries

Geodetic control points 33

Water bodies 54

Enumerator areas 25

Land use planning zones 31

Land cover 41

There is little evidence in themajority of Africancountries of theuse of GIS by governmentdepartments in the execution oftheir functions

”

“

Table 2. Number of African countries with (selected) fundamental geo-spatialdatasets (Source: CODI-Geo, 2007)

mental geo-spatial data isanother restriction. Dataheld by commercial entitiesmust be purchased at greatcost. A number of NMOshave also adopted a policyof selling their data as ameans to generate funds -similar to the financial mod-els used by NMOs in Europeand the UK. What theseAfrican NMOs forget is thatthe geo-spatial markets inEurope are more mature andthat in their countries themain users of geo-spatialdata are their own govern-ments or consultants con-tracted by their governmentor foreign donor organisa-tions. In a democratic devel-opmental country the fun-damental geo-spatial datashould be collected andmaintained as part of thegovernment's developmen-tal agenda and programmes.

The collection and ongoingmaintenance of geo-spatialdata is problematic in thosecountries which are experi-encing internal conflict.Some areas are inaccessible

to undertake the collectionof geo-spatial data. In theseareas it is necessary to resortto remotely sensed tech-niques, such as satelliteimagery, but these have lim-itations for particulardatasets.

The non-availability ofmodern geo-spatial tech-nologies in most Africancountries is retarding thecollection and maintenanceof geo-spatial data and thesubsequent processing andanalyses of such data to pro-vide the support for devel-opment planning and moni-toring. In turn, the lack ofavailable and accessible geo-spatial information that isreliable and up to date islimiting the full exploitationof these technologies, partic-ularly geographical informa-tion systems (GIS). GIS ismostly proprietary softwareoperating on moderatelypowerful computers. Suchsystems are (in the Africancontext) expensive andfunds are not easily avail-able for the purchase of

these systems. Furthermore,maintenance of the soft-ware and hardware is notavailable within manycountries and it is notuncommon to find comput-ers lying idle because of themaintenance problem. Freeand open source systems arenaturally very appealing toAfrican countries, but howfree is free?

In Africa this must meanlow cost, otherwise it is ofno benefit. The geo-spatialtechnologies must also takeinto account the scarcity ofexpertise in Africa. A furtherfactor to consider is the lackof reliable electrical powersupply in most places, or theabsence thereof once youmove away from the mainurban centres. It is for thesereasons that the technologyused in Africa must beappropriate for the Africansituation. Donor organisa-tions should take note ofthis and not impose tech-nologies that will be under-utilised and eventuallyabandoned because ofmaintenance difficulties.Undoubtedly as capacitybuilding programmes reachmore and more Africansthey will become equippedto make full use of thesetechnologies.

There is little evidence inthe majority of Africancountries of the use of GISby government depart-ments in the execution oftheir functions. GIS is usedmostly by international

organisations or researchgroups for projects of partic-ular interest to themselvesand which are either limitedin scope or are once-off typeprojects. This is not to saythat there are no govern-ment officials who under-stand GIS or the value ofsuch systems, it is just thatmost of them are at thetechnical level without suf-ficient decision-makingpower, there is not a criticalmass of these people, thereis no political support forthese systems, and thereforethere is insufficientresources to acquire and tooperate these systems.

Most of the technologystandards are in place todayand users do not have toworry about these. The stan-dards that still need to beput in place are those relat-ing to data and semantics.These standards are neces-sary to ease the effort ofsharing data and under-standing between organisa-tions and between applica-tions. Many applicationsextend beyond national bor-ders and it is necessary tointegrate datasets acrossnational borders.

A number of African coun-tries have developed variousdata standards but thesemay not be aligned witheach other. The Internation-al Organisation on Stan-dardisation (ISO) and OpenGIS Consortium have devel-oped and are continuing todevelop standards for the


Figure 1. Distribution of available enumerator area datasets(Source: CODI-Geo, 2007)

43G I S D E V E L O P M E N T J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

geo-spatial informationcommunity. CODI-Geo isassisting in this regard byfacilitating the development of keystandards for the Africancontinent.

The metadata standard isone such standard, wherean African profile has beendeveloped, in consultationwith many African coun-tries. Another effort at stan-dardisation is the AfricanReference Project (AFREF)that has the objective of har-monizing the geodetic refer-ence frames across Africa,providing a unique spatialreferencing system acrossAfrica.

National and regional poli-cies are required to mandatethe establishment of SDIsand give direction to SDIactivities. Already a numberof African countries are theproud owners of suchnational policies. To receivethe required recognition forthese policies countries arebeing encouraged by theUNECA to integrate thesepolicies into the nationalinformation and communi-cation (NICI) policies. TheUNECA is assisting countriesto achieve this, such as inRwanda and Swaziland.

Human resources capableof making a difference foran African country in its SDIactivities are a major chal-lenge. There are a number ofindividuals who have thenecessary expertise andwho are championing the

cause of geo-spatial infor-mation and the power of thegeo-spatial technologies, butto be effective there must bea critical mass of expertisein GIS in African countries.The local tertiary academicinstitutions often are unableto provide the people withrequired technological skills.The numbers that can beeducated in this way arelimited. To further compli-cate the situation, many ofthese people do not returnto their home countrybecause of better employ-ment opportunities else-where. For those that doreturn many find them-selves without the institu-tional support to use theirknowledge.

The building of capacitywithin the appropriateorganisations is the highestpriority. Without theresources to undertake thework of developing policies,standards and organisation-al arrangements as well assustainable data collection,African countries will notmake any progress in estab-lishing their NSDIs andexploiting the power of GIS.

NMOs are traditionallyregarded as the organisationresponsible for the collec-tion and maintenance of thefundamental geo-spatialinformation, through thetraditional mapping pro-grammes, and it is taken forgranted that these organisa-tions will be responsible forthe NSDI. This could be a

valid argument. However,many NMOs in Africa are ill-equipped to take the leadrole in establishing theNSDI. The reasons for thisinclude the fact that manyof them are old establish-ments, positioned in centralgovernment and are steepedin tradition. The implica-tions of this are that theseorganisations are structuredin the old style civil servicewith strong bureaucracyand are very slow to change.The organisations are struc-tured for the production of'paper' maps and have notmodernised their proce-dures. Usually these organi-sations are also responsiblefor the cadastral survey ofthe country, which oftenenjoys a higher priority.

Where a country isinvolved in NSDI activity itis often found that the NMOhas modernised and restruc-tured to take advantage ofthe opportunities of themodern geo-spatial tech-nologies. Visionary leader-ship is required to re-inventthese bureaucratic mon-sters.

Politicians and senior man-agement of governmentorganisations lack aware-ness of the value of geo-spa-tial information and theimportance ofNSDI. SDI requiresinter-organisa-tional co-opera-tion, with the con-tributing organi-sations to the SDI

complementing each other.Such an interdependencyorganisational model willonly happen with strongleadership. There should beno power games or strug-gles, with the leaders beingbig enough to remove them-selves from such pettinessand creating the environ-ment for their organisationsto work together.

Without geo-spatial infor-mation there can be noeffective development. It istime for African govern-ments to recognise the factthat fundamental geo-spa-tial information is part ofthe national asset, under-pinning its developmentprogrammes. This informa-tion must be turned intoknowledge, using GIS andother geo-spatial technolo-gies, for the betterment ofAfrica.

To be effectivethere must be acritical mass ofexpertise in GIS.The local academicinstitutions oftenare unable to pro-vide the requiredtechnological skills

”

“

Dr. Derek ClarkeChief Director,Chief Directorate,Surveys & Mapping, South [email protected]

GIS, from a

'geoinforma-

tion perspec-

tive' (availability of data sets) as well as

from a methods, techniques and software

technology perspective, certainly is a

globalized phenomenon. The GIS industry

is mainly based on some global players,

with regional differences in societal

frameworks, and thus policies and opera-

tional practice, limited to a few areas like

cadastre or approval of permits.

Identification of particular Europeanaspects of GIS therefore might be

expected to yield less than excitingresults. GIS is used widely in publicadministration and for the usual arrayof business applications, much like inmany other parts of the world. Thereseems to be a decreasing market shareof European software technologies,even more so in the hardware sector.

There is one particular exception tothe global-business-as-usual view-point, though. Europe is a cluster ofpolitically independent countries, andat the same time is working towardsintegrating into a common economicspace.

This development is driven by thecentralized policy implementationbody of the European Commission,under joint legislative power by theCouncil of Ministers and the EuropeanParliament.

TOWARDS A EUROPEANSPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTUREThe vision of a 'Europe without borders'is making substantial political andpractical progress. This is demonstratedby the expansion of 'Schengen-space'now including 25 European countrieswithout internal border controls.

Paradoxically, the cross-border inte-gration of digital representations ofEuropean spaces seems to be a moredifficult undertaking with only limitedprogress until today. Motivated by the1994 presidential 'Executive Order'launching the US SDI initiatives, ideasfor a European SDI were put forwardfrom 1995 onwards under the 'GI 2000'umbrella.

While GI 2000 did not succeed withsubstantial operational steps towards aEuropean SDI, it certainly created afavorable environment agreeing on theneed for a common GI strategy, andthen infrastructure. From an industryperspective, the parallel 'Public SectorInformation' (PSI) initiative (made amandatory directive in 2003) helpedwith establishing a business view onthe vast public holdings of georefer-enced data.

Initial attempts by the EuropeanCommission aiming at centralized GISdevelopments generated mixed results.GISCO, the 'GIS for the Commission'built by the statistical office Eurostatnever achieved its ambitious aims, andthe interagency Committee on Geo-graphic Information (COGI) was mainlylimited to awareness raising.

Sectoral initiatives like the pioneering'Coordination of Information on theEnvironment' (CORINE), though, deliv-ered some early success stories demon-strating that unified European datasets on themes like land cover could bedeveloped. Similarly, research funding


Regional Overview

STATUS OF GIS IN EUROPEOPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES

45

for integrated European digital roaddatabases helped with establishing astrong European industry position inthis area for example, demonstratedthrough Tele Atlas and Navteq.

Still, the political and practical diffi-culties of merging numerous countriesinto one political entity and into anintegrated economic space left manylessons to be learned, and requiredstarting over again with a modifiedapproach.

INSPIRE'ATIONBased on the successof CORINE includ-ing the estab-lishment of aEuropean Envi-ronmentalAgency, and driv-en by the cross-bor-der requirements for environmentalmonitoring and policies, this currentapproach was strongly promoted bythe European 'ministry' (DirectorateGeneral) for the environment.

The INSPIRE initiative (Infrastructurefor Spatial Information in Europe -http://www.ec-gis.org/inspire/) had togo through a lengthy negotiation pro-cedure but finally in 2007 was turnedinto a directive which makes it manda-tory for EU member countries to imple-ment legislation implementingINSPIRE over a two-year period. Themain aim of INSPIRE is to make avail-able relevant, harmonized and quality-controlled geographic information forthe purpose of formulation, implemen-tation, monitoring and evaluation of ECpolicy-making.

Obviously, this mission now goes farbeyond environmental monitoring andessentially makes INSPIRE the founda-tion for a European SDI, or, more cor-rectly, a European Commission SDI. The

main thrust aims at making geographicdata readily available to European cen-tral government agencies. While thedata harmonization required to achievethis aim certainly will result in sub-stantial benefits for other public andparticularly business uses of Geograph-ic Information, from an industry pointof view even after a full implementa-tion INSPIRE will not primarily servethe more general purposes of an SDI.

Still, the general INSPIRE principlesare a critical step forward for GIS inEurope, emphasizing point like:

• Data are to be collected only once andmaintained at the level (of government)where this can be done best (i.e., notnecessarily at a central agency).

• Spatial data from different sources areto be combined seamlessly and sharedbetween different users and applica-tions.

• Spatial data needed for good gover-nance shall be 'available on conditionsnot restricting its use' (obviously, thisphrasing is a compromise between con-flicting business models).

• Services need to be available for datadiscovery, evaluating its fitness for anintended purpose, and to establish con-ditions applicable for its use.The European GI industry will enjoy

substantial indirect benefits from thecomplex implementation processrequired for INSPIRE. Currently 'imple-mentation rules' are being developed inseveral committees ('drafting teams')responding to input from 'Spatial DataInterest Communities' (SDICs) and'Legally Mandated Organisations'(LMOs). This broad-based participatoryapproach involving many stakeholderswill ultimately contribute to a valuablebody of knowledge and skills importantto the European GIS industry at large.

A first glimpse at INSPIRE outcomes isavailable at the 'EU portal for Geo-graphic Information' (www.inspire-geoportal.eu). Access to a metadata cat-alog, a map client with extensive

search capabilities, and online mapservices demonstrate some aspects ofthe practical value of an integratedEuropean spatial information infra-structure.

THE SPACE SEGMENT The INSPIRE initiative is not the onlypan - European approach defining thecurrent and future state of GIS inEurope. At least two major keywordshave to be mentioned at this point - theGALILEO satellite navigation projectand the Global Monitoring for Environ-ment and Security initiative (GMES)framework.

Galileo recently has been in themedia, unfortunately, for the wrongreasons: Funding difficulties and result-ing delays have eroded some of theoptimism and trust needed for majorinitiatives of this scale. Now this Euro-pean satellite navigation system aim-ing at providing 'a permanent refer-

ence in time and space' again seems tobe on track for deployment.

The prospect of an independent, fullyoperational high quality satellite posi-tioning service is one of the key driversof development initiatives across manyapplication domains, already todaycontributing substantially to cutting-edge work in the GIS industry. GALILEOhas been jointly initiated by the Euro-pean Union and the European SpaceAgency (ESA) and will support users inmany sectors such as transport (vehiclelocation, routing, toll systems, speedcontrol, navigation, etc.), social services(e.g. aid for the disabled or elderly), thecustoms, security and justice systems

G I S D E V E L O P M E N TJ A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

(location of suspects, border controls),public works (geographical informationsystems), search and rescue systems, orleisure and tourism services.

The GMES (www.gmes.info) is aneffort to bring data and informationproviders together with end users,obviously with a focus on environmen-tal and security-critical information.GMES currently is an important sourceof research and development fundingcontributing to GIS in Europe.

One of the starting points for theGMES initiative, and the key commondenominator of 'environment' and'security' is space-based remote sensinginformation. Europe over many yearshas developed a strong remote sensingcapability across different sensor tech-nologies. GMES now aims at bringingthese into operational practice from aspatial monitoring perspective.

GMES is strongly motivated by userrequirements defining the integrationof data from space-based (and in-situ)earth observation capacities. As a firststep pilot operational services ('fasttrack services') are being developed,with emphases on emergencyresponse, land monitoring and marineservices, to be followed by services forother application domains. The relianceon a services infrastructure architec-

ture is in line with the strong relianceon industry cooperation. The GIS indus-try is expected to ultimately implementand operate GMES services, making thisa beacon for future business prospects.

SOFTWARE INDUSTRYWith a few exceptions, recent andongoing consolidation in the GIS soft-ware industry has not exactly strength-ened the European position in the mar-ketplace. Looking beyond the majorglobal players in this field, though, wecan observe and expect major andinteresting contributions to technolo-gies and architectures of the future.

One indicator early on was activemembership in the Open GeospatialConsortium (OGC) and the founding ofOGC Europe. Through strong academicand industry participation Europeanactors were able to first learn, and thencontribute substantially to standardsdevelopments. This development is pri-marily driven by the urgent needs forstandardization for interoperable dis-tributed services as e.g. required by theINSPIRE initiative. Active participationin first standards, and then servicesdevelopment had led to the emergenceof several leading edge startup soft-ware companies. Some are using a pro-prietary software business model, but alarge and growing group of companiesare considered leaders in the opensource communities.

Their important role is clearly visibleat major European geospatial industryexhibits (see www.intergeo.de,www.gi-forum.org) where the FOSScontributions are featured prominentlyand attract extensive interest. This kind

of side-by-side pres-ence isindicativefor the

potential complementary role of differ-ent business models facilitated by theindustry trend towards services-basedinfrastructure. This trend can be consid-ered a precursor for next-generationdistributed infrastructures.

EUROPEAN GI INSTITUTIONS AND ORGANIZATIONSThe broad range of agencies and associ-ations managing 'GIS in Europe' is aninteresting mix of top-down and bot-tom-up approaches, including govern-ment branches as well as academic anduser associations.

A top level view is provided by theEuropean Commission's GI & GIS Portal(www.ec-gis-org) providing access toall GI related activities, projects anddocuments. From an operational per-spective, the EC Joint Research Centrewith its Spatial Data InfrastructuresUnit is one of the key facilitatorsregarding the evolution of SDI services(ec.europa.eu/dgs/jrc/ > sdi.jrc.it)

The European Umbrella Organizationfor Geographic Information(www.EUROGI.org) is an independentNGO drawing its membership fromnational GI organizations and industry.It is acting as a voice for the EuropeanGI community in order to "… ensuregood governance, economic and socialdevelopment, environmental protec-tion and sustainability, and informedpublic participation, the mission is tomaximise the availability and effectiveuse of GI (geographic information)throughout Europe." With an academicfocus, the Association of GeographicInformation Laboratories for Europe(AGILE - plone.itc.nl/agile/) is aiming to"promote academic teaching andresearch on Geographic InformationScience by representing the interests ofthose involved in GI-teaching and

46

”

“There seems to be a decreasingmarket share ofEuropean softwaretechnologies, evenmore so in thehardware sector

J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

research at the national and the Euro-pean level". AGILE membership is basedon academic research units, and one ofits widely recognized activities is anannual research conference (seewww.agile2008.es). Of course numer-ous other organisations serve particu-lar communities, one example beingthe Geographical Information SystemsInternational Group (GISIG -www.gisig.it) which is quite success-fully implementing European-levelprojects in areas like environment,water resources and conservation.Increasingly, the general communityparticipation of GIS experts andresearchers is shifting towards a pan-European level. This is an indicatorof progress in integration, and for the important contribution of variousinstitutions towards borderless Euro-pean GIS.

OPPORTUNITIES? CHALLENGES?Obviously, the European approachtowards creating a common, transna-tional framework for Geographic Infor-mation has led to a particular situationoffering chances to learn for SDI proj-ects anywhere. The long-term projectof European integration gives specialmeaning to the idea of an SDI as a com-mon foundation to achieve a unifiedspace for administration, economy andindividual movement. It is thereforeexpected that European mega-initia-tives like INSPIRE, GMES and the Galileoproject will remain the defining ele-ments for GIS in Europe. The opportuni-ty to make progress based on the needfor an open and interoperable servicesinfrastructure is balanced by the chal-lenges of making this happen in anextremely diverse, segmented, multi-

lingual and historically multifacetedenvironment. Lessons learned, though,likely will contribute to progress world-wide. Whenever there is a dominantplayer in any SDI initiative, results like-ly will be achieved through hierarchicaltop-down processes. In contrast,Europe's diversity and the need for con-sensus-based negotiated decisions arenot an easy route to success, but aremore likely to fully leverage the bene-fits of true 'infrastructure thinking' inthe information society. The broadmovement towards European integra-tion has not always been welcomed byits citizens.

Prof. Dr. Josef StroblDirector, Z_GIS Centre for GeoInformatics Salzburg University & Director, Geographic Information ScienceAustrian Academy of Sciences, [email protected]@oeaw.ac.at

Since 1991 a National GIS

was created by the Survey

of Israel (SOI) to serve the

government ministries and agencies as

well as to support the community of

nation-wide geospatial consumers.

The data source of the National GIS wasbased on triangulated aerial photo-graphs, taken at 40,000 ft altitude,using analytical and digital pho-togrammetry. The current revisioncycle is 3-4 years except roads andorthophoto which are revised annually.

The National GIS of the SOI consists ofa topographic data base including tentopographic layers: orthophoto, eleva-tions, roads, buildings, hydrographicfeatures etc., a cadastral databaseincluding blocks and plans, and a data-base of addresses.

The National GIS infrastructure con-sists of the infrastructure of the Surveyof Israel and many government officesas well as medium and large cities andtowns, utility companies and publicorganizations.

Orthophoto production and data col-lection is carried out by the private sec-tor. This is the main trend, and Israelicompanies provide integrated geospa-tial services for satellite imagery,orthophotography, mapping, GIS,cadastre, visualization tools and more.

The usual mode of cooperationbetween the SOI and the private sectoris that SOI defines the specifications;private companies carry out the data

collection and the staff of the SOI doesquality control and integration of thedata into the National GIS. Then, theSOI provides data and services directlyto the end users.

THE GEOSPATIAL PORTALAround a year ago SOI launchedNational Geospatial Portal (NGP). Thisportal has been developed in coopera-tion with the Inter-agency Committeefor SDI. The portal is already working. Itis part of the e-Government initiativeand will serve simultaneously as ageospatial portal for the public and agovernmental GIS clearing house. Forthe time being it serves the public freeof charge. Following a thorough analy-sis of the options, the decision wasmade to build a geospatial data ware-house at the first stage, in order toimprove the quality control of data.This approach was adopted because ofthe variety of data sources. Though thequality of data covered in the NationalGIS is very good,one cannotassure the quali-ty of uncon-trolled data com-ing from all min-istries and agen-cies; so the inte-grated applica-tions of the sim-ple end web-usermay not meetthe expectedstandards.

Following theresolution of the

Inter-agency Committee with refer-ence to the national geospatial meta-data standard based on ISO19115, thisstandard was adopted for the portal aswell. Meta-data for 400 layers ofgeospatial data has already been pre-pared and is accessible in the system.

The system works quite fast andpassed successfully loading simula-tions. Potential users are exposed to theportal and are very satisfied with it,including the education communityand potential emergency applications.

Main objectivesThe first objective of the portal is toconsolidate, to integrate and distributegeospatial data following the e-Gov-ernment policy of making the dataavailable to the public.

The second objective of the portal is toserve as a clearing house of geospatialdata between governmental officesand thus to save governmental invest-ment and to improve compatibility and


Regional Overview

”

“

Geospatial Initiatives in Israel

The usual mode of cooperationbetween the SOI and the private sector is that SOI defines the specifications; private companiescarry out the data collection andthe staff of the SOI does qualitycontrol and integration of the datainto the National GIS

integrativity between governmentaloffices regarding geospatial and loca-tion based applications.

The expectation is that the exposureof data will also stimulate processes ofimproving the quality and precision ofthe data.

OrganizationA steering committee of the two organ-izations headed by the Director Generalof the Survey of Israel (who chairs theInter-Agency committee) defines thegoals and confirms the planning. Aworking team of the committee definesthe requirements and controls theirachievement while working teams ofthe Survey of Israel are responsible fortheir execution.

The main components of the systemare: data collection, data integration,simple web operational search mecha-nisms, national geospatial meta-data-base, data sharing and data distribu-tion mechanisms and a variety of linksto GIS and mapping web sites.

The architecture of the NGP is basedon servers in the SOI, which operate asa Data Warehouse supporting, viaintranet, internal users of SOI and dis-tributing the data to an identical envi-ronment at the central web site of thegovernment using its services, includ-ing security of data. The governmentsite data is distributed to the variousgovernment offices including webservices and via Fire Wall and the inter-net to the public.

The mode of interaction between theSOI, the government offices and thepublic is as follows (see figure 1): TheSOI collects GIS data of various govern-ment offices and public organizationsusing the coordination of the Inter-Agency Committee for SDI, checks thedata and integrates it into the Geospa-tial Data Warehouse of the Portal. The

public (the web users) can either querythe NGP directly for pure geospatialsubjects, or access via the governmentportal, a portal of a government officefor a complicated issue.

The portal of the government officewill integrate its internal IT and GISdata extracted by the NGP using API(Application Programming Interface),see figure 2.

Data included in the portalThe core of the National Geospatial Por-tal is a Geospatial Data Warehouse thatincludes more than 120 layers ofgeospatial data collected by govern-mental organizations, thirty of whichare from the SOI.

The Portal represents data with greatvariability and richness that enable thesystem to sort the layers under maintopics and the user to extract relevantmetadata. The portal is integrative andthe data includes many topics, such as

basic mapping (roads, buildings,addresses, orthophoto, contours,hydrology, institutes, various scales ofraster topographic layers etc.), layers ofcadastre and planning (blocks, plots,town plans, master plans, landreserves, etc.), tourist information(national resorts, national parks, hikingtrails, forests, woods, parking areas,etc.), administrative boundaries, trans-portation, infrastructure, security andnational emergencies. The portalenables simultaneous presentation ofmultiple layers of information, withhigh cartographic fit, linked to attributeinformation in various formats accord-ing to the spatial entities.

In addition based on the general datain the system, there are engines thatenable links to other databases, thatmight give specific information in special operative applications in the future, for internal governmentalusage.


Fig. 1: The Online Geospatial Configuration

The functionality of the portalAs mentioned above, the portal's concept allows its operation by anyuser, professional, or layman, from var-ious disciplines. With this principle inmind the tools are divided into twosets: standard tools, which are present-ed on the main screen, and advancedtools that are not presented to unskilledusers. In addition, the portal includes anexternal interface to other operationsystems (general and flexible API withparameters). User interface allows sim-ple as well as sophisticated modes ofoperation.

The metadatacomponent inthe geospatialportalThe metadata isan importantcomponent in thegeospatial portal.

The develop-ment of the portalis progressing inaccordance withthe ripening ofthe Israeli nationalgeographic meta-data standard, as

a component of the National GIS stan-dards.

These processes are taking place inSOI as a result of the activities of theInter-Agency Committee for SDI. Thenew metadata standard was approvedand adopted by the committee.

The development of the metadatacomponent is based on ISO 19115, andwas constructed in a way that willenable its direct feeding to ARC CATA-LOG (An ESRI product), but will beobserved (in Hebrew) similarly to otherportal components on commonly usedweb computers/terminals.

All the information in the portal isaccessible to the public, with no limitation or a need of passwords orpermits. The metadata search engine ofthe portal can search through 400 layers of GIS of countrywide coverage,or of national interest, in spite of thefact that the information included inthe portal includes only a quarter ofthese layers.

The rest of the layers are not ready for presentation for various reasons: homeland security, intellectu-al property, privacy and lack of updateddata.

CONCLUDING REMARKSFollowing the current trend, the futureof National Mapping Agencies will bebased on online services both to thegeneral public and to other govern-ment and public organizations. Thisrefers to geodetic services based onsatellite permanent stations (combin-ing GPS, GLONASS and GALILEO) bothfor horizontal and vertical references. Itrefers to coordinate based cadastralframework, databases and computer-ized archives as well as supporting con-trol of cadastral mutations based on thepermanent stations. This refers also togeospatial databases including rectifiedimagery (either from aerial photo-graphs, or satellite images), topograph-ic data, addresses and more. The dataintegrated in GIS should be accessiblethrough the web, through geospatialportals, either free of charge, or selec-tively accessible due to security, or pay-ment policies.

The geospatial data should be accessi-ble to government agencies for integra-tion with the IT infrastructure for inte-grated web services through web por-tals. A special attention should be paidto the use of geospatial information byportals of learning geography for thefull range between kindergartens anduniversity graduates.

These activities should be taken careof by partnership between the govern-ment and the private market. The gov-ernment should define the vision, thegoals, the specifications and supplybudgets if necessary, while the privatesector should be the contractors andsometimes also promote initiatives.

50

”

“A special attentionshould be paid tothe use of geospa-tial information byportals of learninggeography for thefull range betweenkindergartens anduniversity graduates

J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

Fig. 2: A Model of Integration between the National GeospatialPortal and the Organization Portal

Dr. Haim SrebroDirector General, Survey of [email protected]

WWidespread geoinfor-

mation and communi-

cation technologies

across the different fields of society and

economy is a key factor that is boosting

competitiveness, developing information

societies, radically influencing many lev-

els of decision-making.

The transition to a knowledge basedeconomy sets new requirements toevery sector of our society, demandingnew skills, networked practices, andinnovation potential from govern-ments, businesses and services. As gov-ernments offers more online servicesand information to the billions of con-nected people, public awareness anduse are increasing accordingly. Today,it’s difficult to engage discussion ongeospatial activities without hearingcomment and references to GoogleEarth, Microsoft Virtual Earth, satelliteimage availability, hence remote sens-ing, or emerging, new, Net-base servic-es. The Internet is a multi-face technol-ogy that has the ability to transformand bring our traditional daily activi-ties to new and unknown frontiers.Important to the millions of connectedAsian users, internet finally providesan access window to general andgeoinformation, shading lights to apowerful mass-reality and awareness.Bill Gate’s vision statement of thegeospatial Internet: "You will be walk-ing around in downtown London andbe able to see the shops, the stores, seewhat the traffic is like. Walk in a shopand navigate the merchandise. Not in

the flat, 2D interface that we have onthe web today, but in a virtual realitywalkthrough”. The geospatial industryis actively and relentlessly finding andproviding new engineering solutions,tools and application to accomplish thegoal to electronically explore, travel,study, and look at the earth from a vir-tual reality perspective. The world ofgeospatial data provision is changingrapidly with new revolutionary devel-opment of technology, globalization ofmarkets, liberalization of markets, etc.For some of us deeply involved in thegeospatial industry, the exciting elec-tronic transformation has begun, forsome others in the developing coun-tries this transformation is just excit-ing as it is frustrating. In the recenttimes together with, Internet driven,rising awareness we have witnessedthe successful stories of Public-PrivatePartnerships implementation, andhow PPP has revolutionised and re-engineered public sectors operations.This is true for most of the developedcountries. Deep and radical are the dif-ferences with organisational, adminis-trative and economic aspects in eachregion. Generally speaking, it seamsthat there is no doubt that Asianregions should need PPP’s implementa-tion, where we find enormous needs toimprove infrastructures, but it is diffi-cult to generalise Public-Private Part-nership success world wide. In theMiddle East and especially the GCCcountries, governments seem to beactively promoting PPP’s. Followingthe 2nd annual congress Public-PrivatePartnership on Infrastructure Finance

in Dubai, the level of spirit that agen-cies are putting into play pursuing thisscope is truly impressive. However,some fundamental key factors aremissing or unclear - such as willing-ness to the change, policies andprocesses, leadership, managementskills, future road to the transitionalchange etc. Moreover, while we recog-nise needs for privatisation and PPP’s,nearly at all levels of public service wereceive different amount of attentionto each level, based on internal beliefsof precedence. Water, Power, Telecom-munication, Transportation areundoubtedly primary needs. No doubtthat a desalination plant or the con-struction of a new highway needs allthe necessary attention from publicagencies, but related or correlated serv-ices do need the same level of atten-tion. It’s wrong to believe that PPP’s, orBOT’s, more common to this region,need to be implemented to ensure suc-cess and maximising investment andreturns only on multimillion projects.My impression is that one of the sec-tors being penalised by such way ofthinking is the geospatial industry, thisis because it has not been placed in theprimary level of needs, yet.

Together with other authoritarianreports and case studies, the famousISO Bulletin of July 2001, stated that “atleast 80% of public and private deci-

Public Private Partnership in Middle East


Regional Overview

J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

Fernando PizzutiPictometry Middle East, Dubai, [email protected]


sion-making is based on some spatial aspects”. This state-ment startled government organizations urging them todeeply reconsider the value of this industry. In developingcountries, such statements has at least underlined a simpleconcept: geoinformation relevant to our everyday life needsto be organized, searched, used and made available in aneasy to access geospatial context. Question is: what hap-pened to all the promotional or goodwill plans made in thelast ten years for standardization, cadastre, GIS centres,national spatial data infrastructures, training centres etc.?While Asian institutions are still battling to find the route toa feasible change to traditional roles and trying to keep theirmandates intact, continuous population growth is followedby urban development, real estate, transportation, telecom-munication and all of the relevant utilities and services, thatjust can’t wait any longer on the slow pace of change in thepublic sector. Agencies at all levels of government organiza-tions are still the main producers and owners of spatialinformation. Despite decades of constructive criticism, most-ly aimed to improve products and services, the traditionalmonopoly still persists throughout the Asian region. Lack ofcollaboration between governments institutions form thefirst barriers to create knowledge base relationships, whichlater creates barriers for functional partnership with the pri-vate sector to create services that are beyond public sectorscapabilities.

Here, there is an enormous need for collaboration and lotsof constructive partnerships with the same heavy producerof spatial data and innovative solutions - the private sector.In this context, the public and private sector should worktogether to develop opportunities offered by the modernconcepts of information and PPP’s, concentrating on activi-ties that best suit their respective skills. For the public sector,the key skill should lie in developing policies on serviceneeds and requirements, while the private sector shoulddeliver those services at the most efficient cost and withbest returns on investments. Finally it is not the production,nor the procurement, the security of the sensitivity of spatialinformation the impediment of public agencies to alloweffective change and provide better services. The problem isto be found in the willingness of these agencies to “relax” onmonopolies built in a time of steady government financeswith little or no market competition. Understanding, thatthe realisation of geospatial infrastructures, delivery andaccess of geoinformation, derived products and services ispart of a primary need, to catch-up with the future that isalready here.

With the merging of

geo-spatial and

information com-

munication technologies (ICT) into one,

users can access instantaneously, data

for sophisticated processing and distribu-

tion. For example, to enhance their

capacities, businesses in information

services can now use geo-spatial informa-

tion and ICT, which formerly were only

used by geo-spatial specialists. This arti-

cle elaborates such phenomenon.

WIRELESS NETWORK ANDMOBILE PHONE USERS Currently there is an increasingdemand for mobile phones and wire-less gadgets, which are parts andparcels of ICT. One of the most attrac-tive features of mobile phones, isinstant connection to 'always-on' high-speed network e.g., General PacketRadio Service (GPRS), (Enhanced DataGSM Environment (EDGE), and HighSpeed DownLink Packet Access (HSP-DA). The major operating systems formobiles are, Symbian, and "MicrosoftWindow Mobile", with more operatingsystems to follow.

Since June 29, 2007 Apple has beenmarketing its innovative mobile phonewith special features, "multi-touch",intelligent web browsing, and integra-tion of Google Maps, including virtualkeyboard, Wi-Fi. Somehow Thailandhas caught the iPhone fever! Although

Apple iPhone has not yet beenlaunched in this country, iPhone infor-mation via web-board and web sites,and even, specialized iPhone serviceshops are already available.

The latest technology for mobilephones is known as "Androidology".Android is a new operating system formobile phone, free of charge, whichhas been developed from the opensource Linux. Google, the developer ofAndroid, claims that Android can per-form more efficiently than PC, with itsvarious applications, such as spinningglobe and the well-known, GoogleMaps, and "StreetView". StreetViewand its similar applications allow vir-tual walking or driving through citiesstreets, including virtual entry tobuildings.

PANORAMIC VIEW OFSTREETS AND PLACESIn this digital camera era, we can cre-ate panoramic view much easier thanever. Taking contiguous pic-tures and 'stitching' themseamlessly is a matter ofCLICK. We can produce apanoramic view withmosaics of overlapped pho-tos, automatically, and thenproject them onto a spheri-cal surface.

A series of panoramicviews can be lined up with-in an on-line map for view-ing. Years ago the Immer-

sive Media Corp. invented a dodecahe-dron-shaped digital camera systemwith eleven lenses, including, GPS andprocessing hardware, which can bemounted on a Volkswagen Beetle.There are now more than ten suchvehicles in service all over the USA. Theinnovative product from ImmersiveMedia is one of a core features ofGoogle Maps. Now there are competi-tors, such as EveryScape(www.everyscape.com), MapJack(www.mapjack.com), for the USA andJietuSoft (www.city8.com, www.jietu-soft.com), who has developed thepanoramic views of China as shownhere.

ON-LINE MAP SERVICESAND STREET MAPSMap is useful in many ways andshould help somehow cognitive devel-opment. Therefore in some Westerncountries, maps are readily available tothe publics. Thanks to Google and oth-


Geo-information in the Age of Instant Access

Geospatial Trends

using StreetView by Google Maps, USA

Fig. 1 Illustration of two similar panoramic view applications

J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

er internet-based map services, moreand more countries in the World cannow access detailed street maps,including high-resolution satelliteorthomaps.

A new paradigm of GIS, called, "mash-up" map services application, hasaroused immense interest in the inter-net community. Ordinary 'internauts'with some knowledge of JavaScript,but without having any prior experi-ence with GIS or satellite orthomap,could integrate this map service appli-cation into their homepages with afew lines of JavaScript. Popular mapservices are, Yahoo! Maps, GoogleMaps, MapQuest, Multimap with glob-al map coverage and some other serv-ices with USA only map coverage.Mash-up map services can also be inte-

grated seamlessly on top of interactivevirtual globe software packages, e.g.Google Earths, Microsoft Virtual Earth,ESRI ArcGlobe, Leica TITAN, NASAWorldWind, WorldWind JAVA SDK andOSSIM Planet. The latter three pack-ages are full-blown free and opensource software (FOSS) and have highpotential for further extension.

The well-known Ordnance Survey,Great Britain's national mappingagency, has recently introduced "OSOpenSpace", based on this paradigm.The OS OpenSpace is a free mash-upservice that allows users to embed OSmaps covering Britain in their webapplications. The mash-up mappingapplication is operated using, webservices model, JavaScript, JaSON, XMLand other geo-spatial exchange stan-

dards.Electronic street map and

point-of-interest (POI) aremajor components for, in-car navigator, and personalnavigation device (PND).With the increased demandfor map services, there ismore demand for streetmap and POI, stimulatingmore business competitive-ness, e.g. through businessacquisition. Nokia has now

acquired NAVTEQ, one of the worldleading street map suppliers. TomTom,a leading maker of car navigationdevices, has offered to buy shares fromTeleAtlas, who has access Asian roaddatasets. Both NAVTEQ and TeleAtlashave complete Thai street mapdatasets, which are constantly beingupdated. Microsoft has also acquiredMultimap, a UK-based mapping com-pany.

By 2011, ABI Research claimed, mostnavigation systems will be far moresophisticated with incorporation of 3-Dand panoramic view displays (ABIResearch 2007).

At the Thai National Conference onMapping and Geo-Informatics 2007 inBangkok, a paper, "Mash-up OGC andGoogle Maps Services", was presentedby P. Santitamnont and C. Neng-com-ma (2007). This paper describes how tocombine Open Geospatial ConsortiumWeb Services (OWS) and Google Mapsapplication interface (API), to enhancequality map services and contents,simultaneously. The authors explainhow map services quality and contentscan be achieved. The former is byapplying, Google Maps API, multi-reso-lution tiling and caching of orthoim-age, and the latter by instant overlay-ing the user's own data (i.e. features


using "StreetView-like" by JietuSoft, China

Fig. 2 Mash-up of OGC Web Service (OWS) and Google Maps map service

J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

and orthomaps), the moment the pro-gram is invoked using OWS.

In Thailand Metamedia TechnologyCo.,Ltd. has developed the indigenouson-line "LongDo Map" as map servicesfor local consumption. The LongDoMap services have two major sourcesof street data, one from a GIS consult-ing company, Numap Co.,Ltd., and theother from cascaded Google Maps bymashing-up technique. LongDo Mapalso has a J2ME version installable onmobile phone.

Metamedia Technology has appliedthe Longdo Map with a traffic report-ing system. The traffic reporting sys-tem using LongDo map serves real-time traffic information of Bangkokfrom the Thai Intelligent TransportSystem Forum (Thai ITS Forum).

Another interesting feature of Long-do Map is pop-up window of the ThaiGeocoding (TG).

Thai Geocoding is a spatial geocodingscheme developed by ChulalongkornUniversity. The anticipated geocodingstandard makes use of limited Thaigeographic extent and 32-basednumeral encoding to achieve compre-hensive, flexible and compact geocod-ing. The TG will show up immediatelywhen users right-click on the LongDomap. For example, a geographic posi-tion at 100º53'.202, 13º 73'.846 of the

national flag-pole at ChulalongkornUniversity can be, TG:KY5S-A2VLW or,TG:BCPY-CVKZ or, TG:DOM-IRC, withan accuracy of 1-meter, 10-meter and100-meter, respectively. The geocode"TG:DOM-IRC" is easy to remember andkey-in for geo-spatial identification ofChulalongkorn University (Santitam-nont 2007).

Google map service also providesGoogle Maps for Mobile (GMM). Thelatest released of GMM by the end of2007 is version 2, with a simple posi-tioning system, "My Location". "MyLocation" can approximate the positionof a mobile phone, using informationbroadcasted from mobile towers. Theresult of the initial experiment showedposition accuracy within the range of500 meters and just a few kilometers.The accuracy of "My Location" cannot,by any means, compare with that of ahandheld GPS, but at least it is costlessand can also track the user's positionon the GMM. Similar to GMM,Microsoft also provides Virtual Earth"VE" for Mobile as solution.

ORTHOMAP AND PHOTOGRAMMETRYOrthomap is regarded as one of themajor sources for rapid GIS updating.There is a massive production oforthomaps using high-resolution satel-

lite and air-borne digital imageries. Over a century the science and art of

map-making from analogue aerialphotography has been steadily devel-oped. But a decade ago, the 1996 Annu-al Conference of the International Pho-togrammetry and Remote Sensing(ISPRS) in Vienna seemed to mark thebeginning of a digital photogrammet-ric era, as acknowledged by the confer-ence papers of prevalent usage of thedigital photogrammetry.

Since the year 2000, air-borne digitalcameras of, "medium- and large-for-mat" have been increasingly used inmaking orthomap. There is an estimateof about 400 digital camera systems inuse, in the last 5 years, comparing withthe estimated 800 analogue aerialcameras used in the last century(Walker 2007).

Nowadays earth imaging users can


Fig. 4 Illustration of THEOS satellite

Fig. 3 Thai indigenous LongDo map service

J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

Numap street data Cascading Google Maps service


opt for air-borne photography or high-resolution satellite imaging, e.g., SPOT-5, IKONOS, QuickBird, WorldView-1,and more satellite systems beingdeveloped.

Thailand has conducted most ambi-tious and largest coverage mappingproject in Thai history, led by the Min-istry of Agriculture and Cooperative(MoAC). More than 70,000 aerial pho-tographs scale 1:25,000, were takenmostly during the year 2001 to 2003.All the photographs were systemati-cally scanned at 15 micron resolutionand photogrammetrically reproducedto 0.5-meter resolution orthophotosand 5-meter gridded Digital ElevationModel (DEM). The orthophoto projectwas completed in 2007, and is nowready for service. This project is sup-posedly to be largest large-scale pho-togrammetry mapping project in theregion.

The on-going prestigious THai EarthObservation System (THEOS) projectwill be another source providing high-resolution satellites imageries for map-ping. The THEOS satellite will belaunched in beginning of 2008, accord-ing to the latest public announce-ment.THEOS system will orbit roundthe earth at the altitude of 822 kilome-ters and can produce up to 2-meter res-olution imageries.

Although the THEOS system is com-

missioned to a French company fordesign and construction, the satelliteoperation will be totally operated inThailand by the Thai engineers trainedin France.

The THEOS imageries could be ideallysupplement the out-dated orthomaps,scale 1:4,000, produced by the MOAC.THEOS imagery can be geometricallyimproved by taking information fromthe more precise MOAC DEMs andorthophotos, scale 1:4,000.

In the U.S. the earth imaging technol-ogy, by using concepts of oblique pho-tography, has been recently developed.Oblique photography is described inbasic Photogrammetry textbooks butthis concept has never been put intopractice. Pictometry InternationalCorp. makes use of this technology andpatented it. Oblique images of citiesare systematically collected andprocessed. Users, therefore, can havevisual information for easy under-standing of buildings, and their envi-ronments, without having any photointerpretation skills. Pictometry shouldalso be useful for urban safety, townand country planning, includingtourism.

Walker (2007) reported that morethan 70 air-crafts equipped with medi-um-format cameras were flying overmajor populated cities in the States forPictometry International Corp. Therehas been acceptance of 'Pictometry'technology, as for example, Microsoftintegrates this technology into theirVirtual Earth product, and "OrdnanceSurvey has teamed up with BLOMAerofilms Limited to become author-ized resellers of Pictometry data ofGreat Britain" (News released on 28Feb. 2006, OS).

CONCLUSIONThere has been constant development

of mobile phone and wireless gadgetfor instant and easy access to geo-spa-tial information services.

Diversity of mapping applicationscan now enable mobile devices to per-form as effectively and efficiently asdesktop PC. The geo-spatial informa-tion is 3-D rich and has tendency toexpand further, creating a bright con-sumer market.

Quality of on-line mapping applica-tions on devices and web services willbe dramatically improved because ofmash-up techniques, together withcontents integration.

There will be more suppliers of earthimaging for map updating processes,more alternative technologies, e.g.panoramic view, Pictometry, forenriching 3-D geo-spatial data andways of dissemination. Thailandshould learn and understand experi-ences from other countries, in order tochoose and integrate the most appro-priate technology and web services forThailand. Countries should also learnfrom each other for spatial data shar-ing and opportunity for system inter-operability.

Fig. 5 Measurement of Oblique Photo

J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

40.5 meter

The geo-spatial information is 3-D rich and hastendency toexpand further, creating a bright consumer market

”

“

Dr.-Ing. PhisanSantitamnontAssistant Professor, Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, Patumwan, Bangkok, Thailand [email protected]

In 2007, the world awoke to

geospatial technology. From dig-

ital navigation devices to busi-

ness intelligence dashboards (See figure

1), the maps and location-based informa-

tion affected both enterprise solutions

and consumer electronics.

We see the technology being usedeverywhere: Managing telecommuni-cations, mitigating terrorist threats,and locating retail stores as well asfinding the most efficient routes forsupply chain management, dynamicweather analysis for storm modelingand reacting to the consumer demandto locally search for goods and services.Mapping technology is ubiquitous: incars, on your mobile phone and on theweb. And in 2008, that impact will befelt even more.

Nearly forty years after some of thefirst GIS solutions offered by ESRI andIntergraph came to market we are see-ing more companies developing soft-

ware on both existing platforms aswell as application programminginterfaces (APIs) from Google,Microsoft and others, but also on opensource technology. The result is anexplosion of software, mashups, andweb services as well as the adoption ofnew software development strategieslike service oriented architecture (SOA)and Agile, just to name a few.

STATE AND LOCAL GOV-ERNMENT MARKETINGCONTINUES TO EXPANDIn North America, the past year sawcontinued growth in the traditionalmarkets of local and state government.The business of government is intrinsi-cally tied to geographic information.Tax assessment, emergency response,environmental management, urbanplanning, and economic developmentare but a few of the duties of govern-ment agencies that are increasinglyrelying on geospatial technology tohelp them to become more effectiveand cost efficient. It is a natural associ-ation and the public is taking notice as

more information is exposed throughthe internet to allow them to see landparcel information, demographics, andother data that assists economic devel-opment.

GEOSPATIAL DATA WASKEY IN MOVING MARKETSThe location technology section sawincreased market awareness in thearea of data. The companies holdingthe key the world's digital street cen-terline data moved markets. NAVTEQand Tele Atlas stood to benefit from anincreased awareness of geospatialdata. The result, NAVTEQ and TeleAtlas were acquired by Nokia andTomTom, respectively. Sales of person-al navigation devices (PND) soaredwith the likes of Garmin and TomTombenefiting. As such, we came to under-stand just how much geospatial tech-nology was worth. Nokia's offer to buyNAVTEQ was US$8.1 billion or nearly 14times NAVTEQ's 2006 earnings ofUS$581 million. NAVTEQ also acquiredTraffic.com earlier in 2007 for US$177million. Then, last July, TomTomextended an offer of $2.5 billion to buyTele Atlas, a 32% premium over thestock price.

In March, Pitney Bowes acquiredMapInfo for $408 million, or approxi-mately 2.5 times MapInfo's 2006 fiscalrevenues of $165.5 million. The acquisi-tion will eventually result in the inte-gration of MapInfo technology withGroup 1 Software, previously pur-chased by Pitney Bowes (PBI), whichallows the company to stake its claimin the marketing services business. PBIhas the dominant brand in the postalmetering business in North Americaand while this is a shrinking market inthe age of Internet communication, thedirect marketing business is expand-ing. PBI's acquisition of MapInfo, its


Geospatial Trends

J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

GeospatialTechnologyTakes CenterStage


largest purchase ever, will link MapIn-fo's marketing analysis tools withGroup 1's address validation and datacleansing technology to create a loca-tion-based solutions entity. Combinethe "geo" side with PBI's existing mar-keting groups like Imagitas and DigitalCement and PBI's strategy will createstrong linkages between predictiveanalytics, target marketing, site selec-tion, and lifestyle psychographics.

COMMERCIAL INDUSTRYTAKES NOTICEThese acquisitions had an impact onthe broader market. Private industry,previously slow to recognize the valueof "location," is adapting to a new busi-ness climate. Businesses are not onlypushed internally to look at how tomanage supply and demand but tounderstand the new language soft-ware solution providers are using - Alocation intelligent approach. Manybusinesses are finding that they mustrely on location-based information, likethose in the real estate and transporta-tion industries. Some businesses havesucceeded quite well without locationtechnology but that too is changing asconsumer products are exposing morebusiness people to what maps can pro-

vide in visualizing information. Askany businessperson if they have seenGoogle Earth and the answer is clear.This is leading to different questionsabout how to expose customer infor-mation through mapping technology.This is benefiting not only the tradi-tional GIS companies but other, largerinformation technology firms as wellin the enterprise market.

The trickle-down affect to the enter-prise market saw both Oracle andMicrosoft stake an even greater posi-

tion with Oracle offering more integra-tion of their business intelligenceapplications with Oracle Spatial andMicrosoft introducing the next versionof SQL Server with support for geospa-tial data types. With a large percentageof the North American market usingeither of these two relational databas-es to store geospatial data, both arepoised to grow because of these newfeatures and products.

The Google AffectThe influence of Google cannot be

ignored and it is even affecting some ofthe larger information technologycompanies. For example, Oracleannounced that Google Maps for Enter-prise is currently available as a part ofOracle Field Service software. As withother field service applications, themaps are part of the solution that sup-ports routing and scheduling of fieldservice technicians as they make theirdaily rounds to customers. "We're put-ting customers in the context of ageospatial plane," said Guy Waterman,Oracle's Senior Director for ProductManagement. Dispatchers who use thefield service application can locate

mobile personnel to alert them tochanges in scheduling or other needsto reallocate resources. This "enterprisemashup" is significant because it repre-sents an example of how a visualiza-tion tool like Google Maps and a select-ed set of geospatially-enabled applica-tions like Oracle Field Service have noinherent GIS solution as a component.It is a self-contained application thatoffers the user an industry solutionwithout GIS software, as we know it.

Oracle has many applications that

can leverage the Google Maps API aswell as its own MapViewer applicationand either may be offered to many ofOracle's existing users who need toconsume location-based information.According to Oracle's Steve Garth, "Ora-cle Application Server MapViewer is aJ2EE service for rendering maps usingspatial data managed in Oracle Data-base by Oracle Spatial and/or Locator.MapViewer provides services and toolsthat hide the complexity of spatial dataqueries and cartographic rendering,while providing customizable optionsfor more advanced users. MapViewer isdesigned to integrate with Location-Based services and applications, andsupports relevant Open GeospatialConsortium (OGC) standard specifica-tions." All of this contributes to settingup the following situation: Oracle seesdemand from existing customers aswell as internal product groups whowant to use mapping technology. Plus,as Oracle makes huge advances insearch engine technology the result isa near perfect storm that could gener-ate huge market awareness for spatial-ly enabled applications at the enter-prise level.

Fig. 1 Courtesy of Oracle

While ESRI remains a key player in the GIS market and companieslike Caliper and Tacticiancontinuing to offer desk-top mapping software, theNorth American markethas seen others adapt toa changing businessatmosphere

”

“

LOCATION-BASED SERVICES TAKE-OFF INNORTH AMERICAMarket awareness of location-basedservices (LBS) is driving a high adop-tion rate for applications on mobiledevices in North America. Of the $118million in revenue that downloadablemobile applications such as LBS,weather applications, chat/communi-ty, and personal organization toolsgenerated during Q2 2007, LBS repre-sented 51 percent. Networks In Motion(NIM), an LBS navigation publisher forproducts including Verizon Wireless'VZ Navigator, secured a 27 percentshare of carrier revenue from mobileapplications and leads all mobile appli-cation publishers. Unlike buying an"off-board" navigation system like aGarmin or TomTom, "leasing" yournavigation system from a carrier thatuses a solution from NIM or otherscompares quite favorably in cost. Inaddition, the smaller form factor for aphone versus a wider screen naviga-tion device provides some additionalconvenience.

This broad adoption of navigation

services sets the stage for more servic-es that involve location as the keybusiness driver. From location-basedadvertising to social networking, NorthAmerica can expect to be hit with abarrage of new services from which tochoose.

The use of real-time traffic informa-tion is gaining traction among manytravelers. Real-time traffic informationsupports the reduction in fuel costsand helps to avoid traffic tie-ups due tosporting events, major accidents, orsimply the slow downs that may bepredicted on a daily basis. But the pen-etration of this service is verylow...only about 8% of vehicles have in-vehicle systems and most don't have away to accept real-time traffic. This israpidly changing. By the beginning of2008, thirty PND's will offer real-timetraffic as a service. Companies likeINRIX are using probe data to analyzetraffic congestion and support localand state government transportationoperation centers. In addition, havinghistorical data collected throughoutthe country will allow companies likeINRIX to offer predictive traffic infor-mation and wider market coverage.

What's next? With the acquisitions ofNAVTEQ and Tele Atlas there will cer-tainly be more products that will shakeup the market. Writing in DirectionsMagazine, ABI Researcher Mike Ippolitisays that, "Both deals to acquire keymap data suppliers (TomTom-TeleAtlas, and now Nokia-NAVTEQ), werearranged by European companies. Thisis a clear indication of the moreadvanced, and adventurous, state ofEuropean businesses and consumersregarding LBS. There are implicationsfor Handsets, GPS, Telematics, and forthe entire LBS market…Nokia has beenthinking long and hard about a Loca-tion-Based world, has a strategy in

place, and is implementing that strate-gy. Perhaps it caught Google lookingthe other way (at 700MHz spectrum?),and perhaps Garmin has a Plan B, butNokia knows where it is going and is ina big hurry to get there first."

SUMMARYThe GIS market is certainly evolving.There are relatively few companiesthat now focus entirely on providingmapping software and data. With theacquisition of MapInfo earlier in theyear by Pitney Bowes, and the acquisi-tion of Intergraph in 2006 both compa-nies are sure to change their businessmodels and move more into industryspecific services and solutions. WhileESRI remains a key player in the GISmarket and companies like Caliper andTactician continuing to offer desktopmapping software, the North Ameri-can market has seen others adapt to achanging business atmosphere. Someconsulting and service firms are offer-ing open source technology solutionsto clients that are looking only for aselected set of features. And it is stillunclear whether geospatial web serv-ices will offer customers a clear differ-entiator to desktop solutions.

As such, we are likely see a rapidlyevolving market for geospatial solu-tions. We are approaching an intersec-tion of three major ecosystems in GIS,mobile location-based services, andenterprise information technology.This collision will spawn new marketsand solutions that will drive growth in2008.


The location technologysection saw increasedmarket awareness in the area of data. The companies holding thekey the world's digitalstreet centerline datamoved markets. NAVTEQand Tele Atlas stood tobenefit from an increasedawareness of geospatialdata.

”

“

Joseph R. FrancicaEditor-in-chief & Vice Publisher, Directions [email protected]

Sitting in the National DisasterResponse cell, I received an updateon my cellphone from the weatherdepartment about a major hurri-cane striking the SW coast within acouple of hours, which is within fewmiles form the financial capital.

I had to prepare a evacuation planfor the coastal city. As if this wasnot enough, the cellphone beepedagain with another message aboutan earthquake in the central part,close to the business hub. Both thedisaster needed immediate atten-tion towards preparing the evacua-tion plan for the coastal city and therecovery plan for the earthquake hitregion. I logged on to my systemand looked for the possible satellitesavailable above the two regions. Ifound ASWE637, a 0.2m resolutionsatellite, available over the centralpart and ZNTR-HR, recently

launched meteorology cum remotesensing satellite available for thecoastal region, which can also pro-vide 0.1m resolution satellite image,on demand. Both the satellites arenew into the orbit and had demon-strated their capabilities in the lab,but this would be their D-day, whenpeople from my department woulduse the images for their practicalusage.I quickly called two of my best offi-cers, one was playing a game ofsquash and other was in a meetingwith his client. Luckily, both of themwere in the 20 floor building, whichhouses this response cell. We imme-

diately moved to the 19th floor,which has all the data receiving andprocessing capabilities. For want oftime we had to get the processeddata from the satellite. In othertimes, we would have downloadedthe data and processed at our pro-cessing centre. We all logged on tothree different terminals and Jermystarted looking at the ASWE637 dataand Noni looked at ZNTR-HR data.Jermy logged on to the satellite andaccessed the available data. Hefound the data was available for thelast three hours and could be used.He ran the OBPR (Object Based Pat-tern Recognition) algorithm and thecomputer in the satellite processedthe satellite image for the last threehours. The satellite identified thedamaged physical infrastructureand prepared a new image and senta message that the required imageis available for download. Before

downloading theprocessed image, Jermyran the RNV module toconvert the identifiedinfrastructures to vector.By the time, the imagewas downloaded (at aspeed of 1Tbps), the vectormap of the destroyedassets were also prepared.Jermy used the GIS soft-ware available with himand overlaid the new mapwith the archive map ofthe region. The housenumbers and other datawere extracted from thearchived map and wasintegrated with the newmap. This gave an esti-

mate of the extent of the damagesand the number of people affected.Using the recently acquired satelliteimage and the updated vector map,Jermy was able to prepare the disas-ter recovery plan for the region in45minutes and was sent to the reliefcommissioner and the mayor of thecity for further action.

While Jermy was assimilating thedata for the central region, Noniwas busy with the data of thecoastal region. Meanwhile, I loggedinto the department of defence spe-cial service (disaster cell has aauthorised login) and looked for the

available UAVs. There was a UAV at15deg oblique angle from the coastalcity. I requested for a special permis-sion to manoeuvre the UAV and thecamera. While, I waited for the per-mission to be granted, Noni hadalready downloaded the requireddata for the entire coastal regionwith the 'eye of the storm' at thecentre of each of the scene. She pre-pared the map showing the path ofthe hurricane and projected that thehurricane may strike the coastal citywithin 115minutes.

The message was relayed to all themobile service providers, ham radiooperators and hobbyists with arequest that the message be trans-mitted to all the subscribers, with acaution not to panic, but to be pre-pared. Beep, and the message in mymobile was the confirmation of thepermission granted to access theUAV and its data, as per my require-ment. I again logged onto thedepartment of defence website andaccessed the UAV though thereceived authorised login id andpassword. I manoeuvred the UAVvertically to the coastal city throughthe path of the hurricane and oper-ated only the Thermal IR camera,LiDAR and the Z-band frequency ofSAR.

This generated three different mapsnot only for the coastal region butalso for the path of the hurricane. Itried to keep the sensors and cameraof the UAV over the 'eye of thestorm' and kept monitoring itsprogress. A feed from the samemonitoring screen was given to thenational TV broadcasting station,which helped the citizens, actuallywatch the progress of the hurricane.When 35minuts were left for thehurricane to strike the coastalregion, we could see the hurricanegetting weak and changing itscourse due to the low pressure areain the Kings island, 500miles furtherSW of the coastal city. This gave ussome relief, however, the earth-quake hit region demanded our ear-ly attention. I asked Noni to keep aneye on the hurricane and hurried toJermy for possible assistance. Ilogged out of the UAV's manoeuvra-bility menu, not before putting it toits original course and also deacti-vated my login id and password.

Dr. [email protected]

Sensing in 2015!Crystal Ball


Geography is being rede-

fined by technology.

Geography is also becom-

ing ubiquitous. An address is not just a piece

of text; it is a set of directions, a picture, and

a location on a satellite image.

The spatial context is now central toany information system. For example, atelephone user has a number which isalso uniquely associated with anaddress. If the line develops a fault ithas to be localised within a route ofcables, junction boxes and distributionboxes. All these have a spatial context.The fault could be due to a repair crew,trying to locate a leaking water pipe,snapping a cable unknowingly. We seein this example a need to have a spatialdatabase of the telephone cabling sys-tem and the water supply system and aneed for the two independent authori-ties to be able to share their data.

With a conventional GIS using graph-ic elements and a relational databasethe maintenance crew would have tolocate the address from the relationaldatabase to its location on the road lay-er, identify the cable routing, call up thewater authority database to see whererepair works are scheduled, locate theseon the pipeline layer and then do anoverlaying, buffering and proximityanalysis. We would not see thing hap-pening so easily and then too it wouldneed the services of the GIS division tounderstand how to set up the analysis.

SQL databases provide a much moreelegant solution to such problems.Solutions can be found easily by thefield operators themselves withouthaving to call upon the services ofexperts. However, SQL databases werenot meant to be used with graphicaldata. How do you define a road? Youmay say that it is an array of x and yvalues but then so is a polygon repre-senting a park. How does the databasedifferentiate a park from a road? Clear-ly there is a need to define data typesfor such entities. The Open GeospatialConsortium, OGC has defined a stan-dard for Simple Feature Specificationfor SQL and there are implementationsof graphics representation in SQL data-bases like Oracle.

Katmai is the code name for MicrosoftSQL Server 2008. Katmai Spatial offersseveral new data types specific to spa-tial data. SQL Server 2008 provides thegeography data type for geodetic spa-tial data, and thegeometry datatype for planar spa-tial data. Both areimplemented asMicrosoft .NETFramework Com-mon LanguageRuntime (CLR)types, and can beused to store differ-ent kinds of geo-graphical elementssuch as points,lines, and poly-

gons. Both data types provide proper-ties and methods that can be used toperform spatial operations such as cal-culating distances between locationsand finding geographical features thatintersect one another. The geographydata type operates on a geodetic modellike WGS84 and is useful when dealingwith geographic coordinates. Thegeometry data type conforms to theOGS simple feature model and is usedfor data which is referenced to a mapprojection with locally assigned coordi-nates. There does seem to be a bit ofconfusion here because this geometryis nothing but projected geography.There is some discussion on the needfor two separate data types.

Operations like the proximity analy-sis in our example above can be easilydone through a few SQL statements.The size of the CLR types has beenenhanced to be able to handle largepolygons. An adaptive multilevel gridindexing system is included whichhelps in faster retrieval of data. A ques-tion which will arise in a developersmind is how to integrate existing data.Katmai supports GML and Well KnownText and Well Known Binary types asspecified by OGC. More than 70 func-tions and methods will be available for


Tech Horizon

J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

”

“Solutions can be found easily by thefield operators themselves withouthaving to call upon theservices of experts.

KatmaiNew kid on the block

J A N UA R Y 2 0 0 8

manipulating the data. These mainlyconform to the OGC specifications butthere are additional features. However,Microsoft feels that channel partnerscould add more functionalities as thedemand arises. Existing users of ESRIproducts will be pleased to knowthat they are working closelywith Microsoft and plans tosupport the new spatialtype as a standard partof ArcGIS clients viadirect connect andArcGIS Server via theArcSDE gateway. It isnot clear if ultimatelythe system will providea complete standalonetopologically ordered spatialmodel or will still depend on aGIS to provide this functionality.

The most obvious question that arisesin our minds is why it took so manyyears for Microsoft to come out withsuch a product. Microsoft has experi-ence with spatial data through Ter-raServer, MapPoint and Virtual Earth.However, it is only now that they havedecided that the technology is morethan just 'interesting' and needs to betransformed to a product. The other bigquestion is price. The market will lookfor a product with a good price/per-formance ratio, given the fact that thereare priced and open source productsalready available in the market for thelast five years or so. All in all Katmai hasraised a lot of hopes as well as a lot ofquestions. Whatever it may be thegeospatial world is looking forward toseeing the product in its final form. A lotof interest has been generated anddevelopers will soon have a new tool toexamine and incorporate in theirresource kit.

A. R. [email protected]

PARC (Palo Alto Research Center, Inc), was founded in 1970, and is well known forinventions like laser printing, Ethernet, object-oriented programming, ubiquitouscomputing etc. Last September, PARC announced the creation of mobile applica-

tion platform, Magitti. The software codename Magitti, comesfrom two early design concepts: 'Magic Scope' and 'Graffiti

System'.

Magitti, the leisure city guide system will be sold byDai Nippon Printing (DNP), Japan.

DNP has working closely with PARC since 2005 onthis project. Using contextual information such astime of the day or positional information obtainedvia a GPS in the mobile phone, this system woulduse the Artificial Intelligence (AI) based algorithmto forecast or recommend options to the users laid

out across to him as text options or overlayed onmap of the locality.

Magitti is designed to assist in getting "location basedinformation". It will also suggest activities based upon the

local area data, like shopping, dining, banking etc matchingthe consumer's location, his behaviour pattern and time of day.

What differentiates this with other GPS enabled mobile applications, is the Artifi-cial Intelligence.

The application software will mature with the use or in other words, as one usesthis tool, the data base of preferences and habit based upon the time and locationwould start getting populated. Hence over a period of time, it would be able topredict the user behaviour. It will not only use the locationbased services for this, but the text in the SMS and textfrom the voice communication too would be used toanalyse an individuals taste. It will be sitting little close tothe fence dividing the personal privacy and exciting utility.But considering that most of the data would be analysed inthe handset, it may give little comfort to the privacyfreaks. According to those from the media present duringthe demonstration last September at PARC, the interface issimilar to the iPhone but the overall user interface (UI) isnot as cool. On the positive side you can operate this deviceusing one hand only. But one will have to wait and seehow the device interprets the language. For a word canhave different meaning in different context. Also in per-sonal communication one tends to have a relaxedapproach in terms of abbreviations, three letter codes(TLCs) etc.

Although technical specifications about Magittihas not been released, but with the mobile phones becomingincreasingly powerful with sensors, entertainment tools, accelerom-eter, GPS etc. perhaps the AI would make more sense in shorter timespan opening a new domain of powerful personal assistant withintelligence.

The trials are expected to take place early this year and commercialsales would start in 2009 in Japan, thereafter followed by US.

Maneesh Prasad, [email protected]

Magitti: The Intelligent Mobile Platform

Recommendation Server

Infer the activities

Contextual information(location, time) Information such as

retail outlets, events, etc.

Preferenceinformation

Mobileterminal

ConsumerLocal Area

Recommendation

Select the most appropriateInformation

Magitti System Overview

Magitti User Interface


Mag

itti


Planner

January 200814 - 15 January HealthGIS 2008 Bangkok, Thailand

www.e-geoinfo.net/hgis.html

17 - 18 JanuaryESRI Asia Pacific User Conference Tokyo, Japan

www.gis.esri.com/intldist/intlevents_ex.cfm

21 - 24 JanuaryDGI Europe 2008London, UK

www.wbr.co.uk/dgieurope/index.html

21 - 24 JanuarySecond International Conference on Cartography & GIS Sofia, Bulgaria

www.datamap-bg.com/conference2008

27 - 30 JanuaryGIS Ostrava 2008Ostrava, Czech Republic

www.gis2008.com

February 20086 - 8 FebruaryMap India 2008Greater Noida, India

www.mapindia.org

7 - 8 February

Location India 2008 Greater Noida, India

www.location.net.in/india

16 - 17 FebruaryDigital India 2008Hyderabad, India

www.gisindia.in

18 - 20 FebruaryINTERGEO EAST 2008 Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro

www.intergeo-east.com

19 - 21 February Munich Satellite Navigation Summit 2008Munich, Germany

www.munich-satellite-navigation-summit.org

19 - 20 February2008 Indiana GIS ConferenceIndianapolis, USA

www.in.gov/igic/conference/index.html

21 - 22 FebruaryInternational LiDAR Mapping Forum 2008Denver, USA

www.lidarmap.org

25 - 28 February12th Annual GIS / CAMA Technologies ConferenceNew Orleans, USA

www.urisa.org/gis_cama

25 - 29 FebruaryGSDI 10Trinidad and Tobago

www.gsdi.org/gsdi10/index.htm

March 20089 - 12 March GITA’s Geospatial Infrastructure SolutionsConference Washington, USA

www.gita.org/events/annual/31/index.asp

11 - 14 March MicroRad 2008 Florence, Italy

www.microrad2008.org/index.asp

17 - 20 March TUgis 2008 Maryland, USA

www.tugis.towson.edu

April 20085 - 8 AprilSpatial Analysis for Business 2008 Redlands, CA USA

www.spatialconference.org

8 - 10 AprilMap Middle East 2008Dubai, UAE

www.mapmiddleeast.org

15 - 19 AprilAssociation of American Geographers Annual MeetMassachusetts, USA

www.aag.org/annualmeetings

16 - 18 April Remote Sensing - The Synergy of High TechnologiesMoscow, Russia

www.sovzondconference.ru/eng

July 20081 - 4 July Geoinformatics Forum Salzburg(GI_Forum2008) Salzburg,Austria, Europe, Salzburg

www.gi-forum.org

21 - 25 July GeoWeb 2008Vancouver , B.C., Canada

www.geoweb.org

August 20084 - 8 August6th International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechncial Engineering Washington , D.C., USA

www.6icchge2008.org

5 - 7 AugustGEOBIA, 2008 Calgary , Alberta, Canada

www.ucalgary.ca/geobia

19 - 21 AugustMap Asia 2008Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

www.mapasia.org

25 - 26 AugustMap Africa 2008Cape Town, South Africa

www.mapafrica.gisdevelopment.net

September 20088 - 11 SeptemberTenth International Symposium on High Mountain Remote Sensing Cartography Kathmandu, Nepal

www.icimod-gis.net/news/showDetail.php?id=193

October 200829 - 3 October FOSS4G 2008Cape Town , South Africa

www.foss4g2008.org

30 - 2 October INTERGEOBremen, Germany

www.intergeo.de

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Copyright © 2007 Leica Geosystems. All rights reserved. ERDAS IMAGINE is a registered trademark and exclusive property; Stereo Analyst is a registered mark. IMAGINE Enterprise Loader, IMAGINE Enterprise Editor, IMAGINE Easytrace and IMAGINE AutoSync are trademarks. Geospatial Imaging Chain is a trademark, service mark and property of Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging, LLC.

Prof. D. R. F. TaylorDistinguished Research ProfessorCarleton UniversityCanada

8 - 10 April 2008, Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre, Dubai, UAE

THEME

Geospatial Leadership:

Technology Trends and

Best Practices

4th Annual Middle East Conference and Exhibition on Geospatial Information, Technology and Applications

David SchellChief Executive OfficerOpen Geospatial ConsortiumUSA

Prof. Harlan J. OnsrudExecutive DirectorGSDIUSA

Prof. Michael BlakemoreEmeritus Professor of GeographyUniversity of DurhamUK

Dr. Marc TremblayVice President andGeneral Manager - Commercial Business UnitDigital GlobeUSA

Michael E. ShawDirectorPNTUSA

Dr. Derek G. ClarkeChief Director Surveys & MappingDepartment of Land AffairsSouth Africa

Dr. Michael GurberChief Scientist PhotogrammetryMicrosoft PhotogrammetryAustria

Stig EnemarkPresidentFIGDenmark

K R Sridhara MurthiExecutive DirectorAntrix CorporationIndia

Dean P. AngelidesManager International Sales and OperationsESRIUSA

Eng. Mohammed Al ZaffinDirector GIS CentreDubai MunicipalityUAE

Dr. Kunal Dutta RoyVice President (Oil & Gas)Scicom TechnologiesUSA

Cindi SalasManager GISCenterPoint Energy USA

WORKSHOP

Space Law for Decision Makers

REGIONAL SESSIONS

Spatial Data InfrastructureMunicipal GIS

PRE-CONFERENCE TRAININGSpatial Data Infrastructure for Emerging Business Models

GIS for E-Governance

TechnologyPolicy

PLENARY SESSIONS

Best Practices

Knowledge Partners

Organiser

Media Partners

Platinum Sponsors

Government Sponsors

Ajman MunicipalityUAE

United Arab Emirates University

Gold Sponsors Silver Sponsor

Co - Organiser

s®

Land DepartmentGovernment of Dubai, UAE

Military Survey DepartmentUAE

Emirate of Abu DhabiDepartment of Municipal Affairs

Al Ain Municipality

Space Reconnaissance CentreUAE

Co-Sponsor

EXHIBITION

PLENARY SPEAKERS

More than 2500 sq. mtr space of exhibition will provide a platform to the Geospatial Industry to showcase the innovative applications and advancements in the field and a strongnetworking opportunity for business development.

For details please visit: http://www.mapmiddleeast.org/2008/exhibition/whyexhibit.htm

POSTER SESSIONSubmit abstract for poster session

before February 16 2008

www.MapMiddleEast.org

Contact:Map Middle East 2008 Secretariat GIS Development BranchBuilding 4A 505, Dubai Airport Free Zone, P O Box 54664, Dubai, UAEMobile: + 971 50 6400768 / 6400769 Email: [email protected]

Documents

The Global Geospatial Magazine · BVR Mohan Reddy Chairman and Managing Director, Infotech Enterprises Ltd., India David Maguire Director, Products, Solutions and International, ESRI,