Author: Ed Parsons

Categories
GIS opensource Thoughts

OpenStreetMap and Mainstream GIS start dating..

The image below tells us quite a lot about own the GI industry is developing.

OpenStreetmap data and ITN

Click on the image for a full resolution screen-shot of openstreetmap (OSM) data and OS ITN data in Cadcorp‘s SIS desktop GIS, which can now import OSM XML.

What do we have here…

1. Cadcorp a progressive but mainstream GIS vendor supporting open source data!
2. OK, it is Isle of Wight data, where OSM has particularly good coverage, but as one can see community generated open source data is comparable geometrically with “professional” Ordnance Survey data.
3. OSM data lacks the rich attribution of Ordnance Survey (e.g. classification A road, B road, Minor, path etc), which will restrict its use in many applications, but which will still meet the needs of many.

The story the image does not illustrate are the difficult problems of keeping the data current, and completing national coverage, areas which will be future challenges for OSM.

As I have blogged before the “Traditional” GI industry is only slowly beginning to wake up to the potential of community generated geodata, so full marks to Martin Daly and Cadcorp for recognising the potential.

One day very soon, community generated geodata will sit side by side with commercial professionally produced data for many GIS applications – as of today that day is a little closer.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
GIS

The same only different

IGN Office

I visited the IGN Research Department today in Paris, and it was interesting to see the different approaches to solving similar research questions.

For a similar sized organisation, IGN has a much larger Research Dept of 100 people, compared to the 30 at the OS. Much of this research is funded by the French Government as part of the Institutes National role as the centre for geographical expertise.

Where at the OS we try to make use where possible of commercial tools and equipment, IGN build more of their own tools, including their own digital air camera for example, and their own software tools.

I was very impressed by the quality of research work taking place, some very clever algorithms are been developed to extract features automatically from imagery and is a clear area of joint interest with the OS. As this work is publicly funded all work is published and made available to the wider community.

What was very noticeable at IGN was less emphasis to market focused research which is important to the OS, in particular understanding user needs to develop new products and services does not seem to be as important – my guess is that although where share many similar problems to solve, because of the different funding models of our two organisations, the focus is slightly different.

Written and submitted from the lounge at Paris CDG airport, using the Orange wifi broadband internet connection.

Categories
GIS Google Maps

London: A Life in Maps

Newcourt map of London 1658

If you are in London between now and March next year I would recommend a visit to British Library exhibition “London: A life in Maps“.

This is a great treat for anyone who loves maps like the famous Newcourt map of 1658 (above) illustrating London pre the Great Fire. Other maps of great interest include Charles Booth’s map of “Wealth and Poverty” – a early neighbourhood or geodemographic classification layer produced 100 years before GIS.

Full marks to the British Library for making the most of modern mapping techniques, within the exhibition it is possible to see the London maps overlaid onto Google Earth, and on the British Library website there is a Google Maps mash-up indexing a range of the maps.

It is a shame modern OS mapping could not have been more prominent, no doubt some confusion over licensing.. it interesting actually how unimportant OS mapping has been in the development of London, as for much of its history the OS was underfunded and it maps not suitable for urban mapping.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
GIS INSPIRE SDI Thoughts

INSPIRE Day – First impressions

INSPIRE

A number of press releases including those from the Commission, the Finnish Presidency Website and the European Parliament all provide limited detail as to the final text of the INSPIRE directive, which was agreed late yesterday as a result of a formal conciliation process.

Although the actual agreed text of the directive does not appear to be available yet, it appears that organisations like OS will continue to be able to charge for access to data with some restrictions. Organisations supplying spatial data should be able to “to license them to, and/or require payment from, the public authorities or institutions and bodies of the Community”, but such licenses “”must be fully compatible with the general aim of facilitating the sharing of spatial data” and “be kept to the minimum required to ensure the necessary quality and supply of spatial data sets and services together with a reasonable return on investment”.

I would caution anyone reading too much into these early reports, the devil will be in the detail here.. and we should also not forget that INSPIRE is about a lot more than the licensing regime.

From now on the technical experts can get on with drafting the principles around which the infra-structural components that will allow spatial data to be shared can be built- in my mind the really important part of INSPIRE

– the creation of metadata
– the technology of interoperability
– the development of data services
– mechanisms to promote national co-ordination.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
GIS where 2.0

Where 2.0 2007 needs you…

O’Reilly have announced the dates of the 2007 Where 2.0 again in San Jose, but now May 29-30 , no longer clashing with the ESRI UC – The online Call for Participation in itself is interesting reading as a good indicator of the range of topics the “undergound” GI Industry now covers.

Can’t help but think business models are going to be a big talking point – and perhaps some industry consolidation ?

Virtual Earth for the Xbox 360 anyone ?

Categories
GIS opensource Thoughts

MapServer in the Enterprise

This evenings BCS Geospatial presentation by Jonathan Lowe of IBM was a real eye-opener for architects of Enterprise Geospatial systems. Jonathan is working on a large geospatial repository for DEFRA, a major government department.

We are talking about a major project here managing temporal spatial databases containing national coverage of OSMM and hundreds of other business layers in a Oracle Spatial database. As this is an IBM solution the platform is 64-bit AIX and the application server WebSphere.. and here was the challenge –

What is the only web mapping application that will run in a 64-bit JVM – MapServer

Open Source GIS tools really are mainstream ready !!

A great presentation by Jonathan, if ever you want to understand life in Government IT, you can’t go wrong with Jonathan’s choice of Terry Gilliams film Brazil.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
GIS Thoughts

Worldmapper: cartograms online

air travel map

Worldmapper a site devloped by a group of academics led by Danny Dorling is a great example of the power of maps or is this case cartograms to communicate information. With the current interest in global inequalities, a map such as the one above showing air travel delivers a very strong message.

Look at the relative size of the UK, the area represents all those easyJet and Ryanair flights we have grown to love so much…

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
GIS Thoughts

Where small is beautiful..

Today I made the keynote presentation to the Jersey GIS User Conference, organised by Digimap (an Ordnance Survey partner) and the States of Jersey Government, who together are really driving forward the use of Geographic Information.

Jersey

Much like OS Mastermap, Jersey now has a complete intelligent feature based geospatial database, with high levels of currency and consistency. Again like Great Britain, there is an active GPS framework network providing centimetre accuracy positioning.

In contrast to the rest of the UK, Jersey with a single layer of government, has just got on a built a single land and property address database which is widely adopted and has become the standard for government use.

Half of the possible 8000 government employees access the sole corporate geospatial Intranet and on the sister Island of Guernsey the utilities companies are beginning to publish their assets to single password protected website.

None of these things are technically difficult to do, but the contrast with the UK is interesting – this really is the case of the relatively small size of the channel islands and simpler organisational structures making the exploitation of Geographic Information much quicker to deliver benefits.

Written and submitted from the Hotel L’Horizon, Jersey, using the hotels wifi broadband internet connection.

Categories
GIS Thoughts web 2.0

Openspace.. and other mash up catch ups !!

I can’t believe it’s nearly a month since the UK Mash-up event, I have literally not had a chance to stop and catch my thoughts about the event. It was technically interesting and I think it had quite a big impact on some of the OS staff who attended, who for the first time in some cases, were exposed to the “non-professional” GI community.

openspace

OS announced our Openspace project, which hopefully we will be able to release in the near future subject to legal and licensing concerns. The Openstreetmap team demonstrated it’s first commercial application of its data with the Nestoria home finding site, best mash-up of the day was the real time train map developed by Matthew Somerville of mySociety.

As pointed out by Jo much of the afternoon debate facilitated by Peter Cochrane focused on the big topic of business models and data licensing issues. Well I guess my views of licensing are well known, simply put… “somebody has to pay !!”

The business model question is more interesting..

Other thans Google’s clear advertising model of today it is not clear how others will make profits or even cover their costs. I made the point however that this might not be as big a problem as it might seem, successful business models will either emerge or the phenomenon will disappear as an unsustainable activity brought into brief existence by the development of web 2.0 technologies.

These technologies and their impact on how systems are developed, and the close relationships with users established, will survive however… whatever else happens as an industry we can ignore user generated content no longer.

Written and submitted from the City Inn Express, Birmingham, using the hotels free (yes free!!) broadband internet connection.

Categories
Thoughts

A Geography rich Today Programme – vote now !!

The Today programmeBBC Radio 4’s flagship breakfast radio show, the Today Programme is holding a vote, to allow a group of listeners to edit the show on New Years day.

One team of listeners David Lambert, Dan Raven-Ellison and Hannah Bosher are suggesting using Geography to frame the days issues and to understand the impact of “space’ on our lives.

As they say.. ‘The power of history to help explain the present is routinely acknowledged, but the significance of place and space, and geographical scale, far less so. And what about the future? In a crowded, risky world, geographical perspectives help us think intelligently about the future.’

This is the same team behind the “Give Geography is Space” campaign, so get voting now !!