Future trends in geospatial information management: the five to ten year vision
Revised draft based on feedback provided following the Second Session of the UN-GGIM Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management
January 2013
The use of geospatial information is increasing rapidly. There is a growing recognition amongst both governments and the private sector that an understanding of location and place is a vital component of effective decision-making. Citizens with no recognised expertise in geospatial information, and who are unlikely to even be familiar with the term, are also increasingly using and interacting with geospatial information; indeed in some cases, they are contributing to its collection – often in an involuntary way.
A number of important technology-driven trends are likely to have a major impact in the coming years, creating previously unimaginable amounts of location-referenced information and questioning our very understanding of what constitutes geospatial information. These developments offer significant opportunities but also present challenges, both in terms of policy and in terms of the law. Meeting these challenges and ensuring that the potential benefits can be realised by all countries will be important in ensuring that the full value of geospatial information can be maximised in the coming five to ten years.
It is recognised that different countries are at very different stages in terms of the development, sophistication and use of their geospatial information infrastructures. There is a risk, inevitably, that not all countries will be in a position to invest in and realise the full potential of geospatial information, for governments, businesses and citizens. International institutions such as the UN have an increasingly important role in helping to minimise this risk, communicating the value and importance of investing in and developing a solid geospatial information base and reducing the prospect of any ‘digital divide’ emerging.
Ensuring that the full value of geospatial information is realised in the coming years will also rely on having the necessary training mechanisms in place. New and changing skills will be required to manage the increasing amount of geospatial information that is likely to be created and to ensure that the maximum value is secured from it.
The number of actors involved in generating, managing and providing geospatial information has increased significantly in the last ten years, and this proliferation will continue and indeed will likely accelerate in the coming five to ten years. The private sector and the public will continue to play a significant role in providing the technologies and information required to maximise the opportunities available. They are likely to provide valuable, and in many cases unique, elements of geospatial information and the technologies and services required to maximise it, in addition to offering a growing understanding of the end-user base for geospatial information.
Governments will continue to have a key role in the provision of geospatial information and be substantial users of geospatial data; however, governments’ role in geospatial information management may well change in the coming five to ten years. Nevertheless, it will continue to be vital. Building bridges between organisations, collaborating with other areas of the geospatial information community and, most importantly, providing complete geospatial frameworks with trusted, authoritative and maintained geospatial information, will be crucial to ensuring that users have access to reliable and trusted geospatial information and have confidence when using it. This information is vital to inform decision-making, from long-term planning to emergency response, and to ensure that the potential benefits of a fully spatially-enabled society are realised
As with all technology-driven sectors, the future is difficult to predict. However, this paper takes the views of a recognised group of experts from a wide range of fields related to the geospatial world, together with valuable contributions from the National Mapping and Cadastral Authorities (NMCAs) and attempts to offer some vision of how this is likely to develop over the next five to ten years. Based on contributions received, trends have been broken down into broad themes covering major aspects of the geospatial world. They are as follows: technology trends, including the future direction of data creation, maintenance and management; legal and policy developments; skills requirements and training mechanisms; the role of the private and volunteered geographic information sectors; and the future role of governments in geospatial data provision and management.
Location-Based Service (LBS)
A Location-Based Service (LBS) is usually a service running on a mobile device that provides facts or recreational information. It employs geolocation to make the facts or entertainment more personal to the user of the application. An example of a typical LBS is one that identifies the location of a device and then discovers the location of restaurants in the immediate vicinity of that location. As LBS become more common, their commercial value will become more readily evident to corporations, who can use them to personalize users’ experiences with location-aware weather, coupons, and advertising. This is already becoming more common, and will only continue to grow in the future.
An LBS begins by gathering a location for the device using one of its available methods, which could be through GPS, the GSM/CDMA Cell ID, or its IP Address, for example. Once it has a location in latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, it can then retrieve whatever additional information it is programmed to receive. This information is then presented to the user, most likely to be interacted with in some fashion.
Some popular examples of LBS are:
- Turn-by-turn navigation to an inputted address
- Notifications regarding traffic congestion or accidents
- Location of nearby businesses, restaurants, or other services
- Social interaction with other people nearby
- Safety applications for tracking members of a family
This list could go on and on, as there are countless things to be done with LBS today. LBS is a large part of geolocation today, but they are not the only services that use geolocation for their functionality.
Source: Holdener (2011). HTML5 Geolocation. O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Mobile Application Development
Mobile computing has changed the way we learn, interact with online services, and manage information. The popularity of handheld devices among people of all ages and cultures has increased the demand for highly interactive and user-friendly mobile apps. The multitude of sensors available on mobile devices such as GPS, ambient light sensing, and accelerometers have broadened the use of mobile apps in various application domains. Mobile apps vary widely, from weather forecasting and managing a patient’s health to providing online education, among many others.
Both students and lecturers of software engineering with a particular focus on mobile app development struggle to find a self-contained guide on how to follow the development life cycle of a mobile app project. In the great majority of these projects, the process generally follows a traditional software development life cycle—namely, setting up a set of requirements and then following an incremental development of the mobile app up to the achievement of acceptable functionality and design.
A mobile app is, however, very different from a desktop application. For instance, mobile apps are expected to run on multiple mobile operating systems, various screen sizes, and diverse technologies. Testing of mobile apps is therefore different from that of desktop applications. Additionally, mobile apps differ in their context of use and may need to take a number of factors into consideration including internet connection availability and speed, computational complexity, memory requirements, battery status, and accessibility features. These factors affect the software life cycle of a mobile app project and therefore more suitable architectures, design patterns, and testing approaches are needed. In practice, students as well as developers use their experience in desktop application development and customize the methodologies and tools to fit the particularities of a mobile app.
Source: Ghita Kouadri Mostefaoui Faisal Tariq (2019). Apps Engineering Design, Development, Security, and Testing. CRC Press.
GIS-Based Success Factors
Besides conducting a comprehensive needs assessment that helps adequately define the user needs and identify the available resources within the NSO and in the country, particularly the funding requirements, we need to consider critical factors to succeed in a full digital GIS-based census program. Chief among these factors are:
- ensuring senior management commitment to developing a long-term digital program;
- building the technical and human capacities required for sustaining the GIS-based systems and databases and setting up an independent unit for cartography and GIS activities within the NSO;
- using technical standards;
- forming a partnership to work together with the NMA and other groups that do things with geospatial information; and
- choosing the appropriate methodology of integration of the new geospatial technologies with the census mapping operations (compatibility).
These factors are revealed by survey-based study findings and lessons learned from country experiences during the last round of censuses in 2010.
See details in Australia Programme Review and the related background paper on Developing a Statistical Geospatial Framework in National Statistical Systems: Survey of Linking Geospatial Information to Statistics—Analysis of Questionnaire Responses (2013), available at https://unstats.un.org/unsd/statcom/44th-session/documents, and the UNSD report on the Results of a Survey on Census Methods Used by Countries in the 2010 Census Round, available at https://unstats.un.org/unsd/censuskb20/KnowledgebaseArticle10696.aspx.
Top five trends in GIS technology
According to Dangermond, the top five trends in GIS technology today are as follows:
- Location as a service
- Advanced analytics
- Big data analytics
- Real-time GIS
- Mobility
Dangermond continues: “The last leap in computing was the shift from the server to the cloud. Software as a service (SaaS) opened a world of opportunities for GIS, as shared map services like the World Imagery basemap are no longer separate from the unique services offered to users. GIS users can share data, collaborate, make mashup maps in the server, and then connect to the cloud.
The next leap in GIS technology and computing is connecting to the vast network of devices providing data in real time. This technology is a revolutionary change and brings great opportunity. The more accessible data is, the more important it will be to understand it. And maps are the visual language for understanding the context of data.”
Excerpt From: Amor Laaribi. “GIS and the 2020 Census.” iBooks.
Esri Geodatabase
“The Esri geodatabase is object-relational and illustrates the object-oriented concepts extension brought to relational-based databases. The subsequent examples will rely on the use of this geodatabase.”
Excerpt From: Amor Laaribi. “GIS and the 2020 Census.” iBooks.
Geocoding
Geocoding (geographically enabling unit records) is defined as the process of finding associated geographic coordinates (expressed in latitude and longitude) from other geographic data for the statistical units, such as street addresses or postal codes. (Geocoding is a way to ensure that the data “knows” where it is.)
In other words, geocoding involves taking location information for these statistical units (such as address) and linking this information to a location coordinate (i.e., x,y,z coordinates) and/or a small geographic area. The geocodes (the location coordinates and geographic areas codes) obtained from this process can be stored directly on the statistical unit record or linked in some way to the record. There is a common misunderstanding between geocoding and georeferencing, so it is important to emphasize that while they are related, they are quite different. Georeferencing is often done, for example, with raster images. Georeferencing is the process of referencing data against a known geospatial coordinate system by matching to known points of reference in the coordinate system so that the data can be analyzed, viewed, and queried with other geographic data.
In the GIS industry, geocoding is synonymous with address matching, which is the process of assigning map coordinate locations to addresses in a database.30 A GIS is capable of doing this by comparing the elements of an address or a table of addresses with the address attributes of a reference dataset—the GIS data layer used as the geographic reference layer (e.g., a city’s street centerlines layer)—to find a match (i.e., to determine whether particular address falls within an address range associated with a feature in the reference).
But the concept of geocoding goes beyond address matching. It covers a continuum of spatial scales: from individual housing units to EA levels, up to higher administrative or national levels. The use of GPS, directly capturing precise data at the level of point locations (latitude and longitude coordinates), allows the coding of centroids, building corners, or building point-of-entry coordinates for a unit such as a block of land, building, or dwelling.
Excerpt From: Amor Laaribi. “GIS and the 2020 Census.” iBooks.
Open
“Many other considerations pertain to “open”: open data, open specifications, open APIs, open source, and, most importantly, open systems that are standards-compliant and interoperable for an open community.”
Excerpt From: Amor Laaribi. “GIS and the 2020 Census.” iBooks.
I’m working!
Development of Web-Based Application for Shapefile Coordinate System Conversion for Malaysia
Elysonia Alim and Shahabuddin Amerudin
Department of Geoinformation, Faculty of Geoinformation and Real Estate, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia
Email: elysoniaalim@gmail.com; shahabuddin@utm.my
KEYWORDS: coordinate system, conversion, shapefile
ABSTRACT: It is difficult to process GIS vector data when they are not aligned with one another. The need for different coordinate systems rose from the fact that some coordinate systems are better fitted to describe the geographical phenomenon occurring in a specific area. However, even commercial software had been proven to have questionable accuracy in coordinate system conversions. The purpose of this study is to develop a web application capable of converting the coordinate system of a GIS data format such as a shapefile for Peninsular Malaysia. The web application named Coordinate Conversion Application (CCA v1.1) was developed using Django 2.0 with Python 3.6 and is capable of five-coordinate transformations namely WGS84 to GDM2000 (forward and backward), WGS84 to MRSO (old) (forward only), MRSO (old) to Cassini (old) (forward and backward). Results obtained were compared with existing software such as GDTS v4.01 and ArcGIS 10.3, and analysis shows that CCA v1.1 has achieved satisfactory accuracy.
Topic: Web GIS Applications
GIS research topics to explore
spatial computing infrastructure,
spatial cognitive assistance,
volunteering geographic information (VGI),
GPS-denied environment,
statistically significant spatiotemporal pattern mining,
mobile economy,
mobile recommender systems,
spatial network routing,
spatial optimization,
web-based GIS (industry perspective),
location-based recommendation systems,
linear anomaly window detection,
intelligent transportation,
GPU-based spatial computing,
spatiotemporal analysis of climate data,
geospatial weather and climate nexus,
spatial statistics,
concepts in spatial statistics,
data science for GIS applications,
3D modeling and analysis,
geometric nearest-neighbor queries,
modelling of spatial relations,
concepts in statistics for spatial and spatiotemporal data,
high-performance computing in GIS,
road network databases and
constraint databases and data mining.
Good Luck for Your Examination
Pembentangan Draft Laporan Akhir Pelan Induk Pembangunan Geospatial Negeri Perak
WHAT A PHD IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT
WHAT A PHD IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT
After having completed a PhD degree myself, and having supervised, co-supervised and examined a number of PhD students over the years, I would like to offer some humble advice and pointers to those aspiring to pursue a PhD degree themselves. I find that many Malaysians misunderstood the purpose of getting a PhD degree and the commitments and sacrifices that it calls for.
A PhD is the highest academic and research degree from a university. I have seen both remarkable successes and disappointing failures amongst students pursuing this academic accolade. It takes more than just brain power to complete a PhD.
A degree by research is very different from a degree by coursework. A course degree whether at the undergraduate or masters level is heavily structured. A student just have to be disciplined and rigorous in following this predetermined structure regimentally, without much creativity required from him or her. Of course, creativity is demanded from the student in completing assignments and projects but the demand is nothing close to what is required for a PhD degree.
The most important prerequisites for pursuing a successful PhD program are passion, inquisitiveness, creativity, discipline, persistence, perseverance and meticulousness (or attention to detail). I did not mention intelligence not because it is not important, but because it is less important than the other attributes I mentioned. At least, it is in my book. Others may feel differently.
Of those many attributes, I consider passion the most important. Some students start out enthusiastically but loses steam halfway through or towards the end. They lack passion or the love of knowledge. Ever heard of the saying, “when the going gets tough, the tough gets going?” Success in a PhD is simply that. The harder it becomes, the harder you will strive. Sometimes, you do not see the light at the end of the tunnel but you still keep looking for it because you know it is there. When you love what you do, failure is not an option.
Some people do PhD for the wrong reasons. Some take up postgraduate because they could not secure a job after their first or second degree. Some do it because the jobs they have taken up require them to acquire a PhD, for e.g. an academic or a research post. These cannot be the sole reason for pursuing a PhD. You cannot force yourself to do a PhD. You must want to do it badly enough. You cannot force yourself to love something; you must love or want something bad enough to force yourself to get it.
The PhD is an academic journey. There will be failures but mainly successes along your way. You may encounter some foes but mainly friends in the same boat as yourself. It always help to be in a group of students to share both your setbacks and achievements. Working alone in a silo is the worst you can do to yourself. There are certain things you want to discuss with your fellow students that you cannot discuss with your supervisor; matters that are either academic or personal.
Your supervisor is your mentor, guide and consultant, not your teacher. He cannot teach you your PhD knowledge, you have to teach yourself through his guidance and wisdom. He is more your friend than he is your master. He does not dictate to you what you must do, he merely points you in the right direction. At the end of your PhD journey, you would have been more knowledgeable on the subject of your research than your supervisor. I have heard of students not being able to complete their PhD because they could not get along or see eye to eye with their supervisor. This is the worst scenario that can happen to you. If you do not have a supervisor you can work with, you will not get your PhD no matter how good you are or how hard you work. So, choose your supervisor well, not just the university you want to do your PhD in. Just a few months back, I met a doctoral graduate who told me that to be supervised by this one professor carries more prestige among his peers in the working world.
A PhD degree needs sacrifices, especially when you are a family person; a wife, mother, husband or dad. Family is always important and should always be your priority. However, you and your family members must be willing to make sacrifices that are necessary. There can be no gain without pain. That is why when you finally get your PhD degree, your family members can even be happier and more proud of you than you yourself, because it is as much their accomplishment as it is yours. Their sacrifices must be duly appreciated.
So what does it mean when you have a Dr. before your name? Does it mean that you are an expert on a certain subject matter? Hardly so, I think. It means that you are both a seeker as well as a generator of knowledge. It means that you have enriched the world and added on to the vast body of knowledge through your PhD contribution. The world has become a slightly better place from the knowledge that you have contributed through your PhD thesis and publications. The world now knows more on a subject than before you completed your PhD. Your work get referred and cited by other researchers in your field, as they absorb your new knowledge to generate new knowledge of their own.
Your PhD is an end that should be justified by its means. The research methodology, the analysis and the interpretation should justify the conclusion. The new knowledge must have been tested and challenged by your peers and rigorously defended by you. It is an accomplishment unequal by any other feat. Once you have obtained a well-deserved PhD degree, you become your own teacher as self-teaching becomes common practice. You are always curious and tends to read a lot, not just on your subject matter but on everything. You will find doing new things, exploring new frontiers and taking up new challenges more scintillating. In other words, it will change your life and your outlooks forever.
I hope I have inspired some of you to pursue a PhD degree if what you read here is what you really want from a PhD. On the other hand, I hope I have also discouraged others who have a misconception of what a PhD degree entails, so that you will not go down the road of failure. A PhD is not for everyone.
You may share this post if you think it would help people you know in deciding whether pursuing a PhD degree is the right path for them to take.
Source: Jamal Hisham Hashim
Understanding Coordinate Systems and Projections for ArcGIS
The future of technology in geoinformation
3-Year PhD Timeline
Who is the Supervisor?
Google Summer of Code Projects: Open Source Geospatial 4 every student
Are you are university student who has solid programming skills, geospatial knowledge and is continuously aiming to become better at developing open source software? Then you are in for a great summer of coding.
This article is about the opportunity to become a better programmer while working on some really popular open source geospatial software. Does this sound interesting? Keep reading.
What is the Google Summer of Code?
In short, taken from the official website “Google Summer of Code is a global program focused on bringing more student developers into open source software development. Students work with an open source organization on a 3 month programming project during their break from school.”[1]
It might not specifically mention geospatial but there is more. As a student interested in the geospatial realm you should have heard of QGIS, GRASS GIS, gvSIG etc. because those are the people who might be your mentors during the summer.
If you want to learn facts and statistics, then you might as well check out their website. [2]
What do you mean by Open Source Geospatial?
In case you haven’t heard about it before, I’m talking The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, abbreviated as OSGeo, “an organisation whose mission is to foster global adoption of open geospatial technology by being an inclusive software foundation devoted to an open philosophy and participatory community driven development”. [3]
OSGeo, is a veteran organisation and through the Google Summer of Code program it offers the opportunity for students to opportunity to get into real open source software development under the mentorship of experienced software engineers.
This way a wonderful merge of geospatial, programming, and open source resulting into a better programmers, better mentors, and better open source software. While at it you will also receive an stipend from Google. I’ll leave it to you to sort out the details.
Above all, this is the chance to stand on the shoulder of giants and put forward your name as a contributor in the open source realm.
Keep in mind, that you should haven’t planned anything serious in the meantime because the rough estimate is about 30 hours for 12 weeks.
So before you actually commit to GSoC think very, very carefully.
You got me, what do I do now?
First, head over to OSGeo Summer of Code Ideas page. [4] Regardless of how good you are, don’t be that student that starts asking admins around for information that already exists. A smart student will check out the recommendations page on how to increase their chances of being selected. This is a great place to find the resources, tips, and channels to get in touch with the communities to discuss your ideas. [5]
It’s not too late sign up for the mailing list to get the latest information. You’ll need it eventually, so the sooner, the better! Another recommendation is to have in mind the deadline for application and so on, therefore make sure you check out the timeline. [6]
Also, remember that from 20th of March until 3rd of April you have to submit your application. Go get in touch with mentors listed about the ideas they are proposed if you haven’t already done that.
If you would like to know what to expect, feel free to read my next article about the experience I had last summer as a GSoC participant under OSGeo umbrella.
Happy coding,
(GSoC ‘16 participant and OSGeo GSoC Admin ‘17)
The power of open source geospatial solutions [Source]
References and useful links:
[1] https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/about/
[2] https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/resources/stats
[3] http://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/about.html
[4] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2017_Ideas
[5] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_Recommendations_for_Students#How_to_increase_your_chances_of_being_selected
[6] https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/how-it-works/#timeline
Source: gogeomatics.ca