Category: Blog

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INSPIRE SDI

My Talk at the INSPIRE 2011 Conference

I was invited to speak at the annual INSPIRE conference in Edinburgh last month. INSPIRE remember is the European Commission programme supported by national legislation to build a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for European Environmental data. I was asked specifically to address how INSPIRE can foster innovation and “smart growth”.

These are excellent topics to discuss in relation to SDI development, SDI’s I’m afraid are still designed and where built operated almost solely from the perspective of data providers rather than users. INSPIRE is in some ways a victim of this mindset, although there is a clearly defined user in the form of European Commission organisations. Here the issue is one of scope to really maximise the innovative potential INSPIRE, organisations need to gone beyond the strict requirement to make their information available to the Commission and share as widely as possible by adopting the principles of Open Government Data.

Written and submitted from the Google Offices, New York, USA (40.741N, 74.004W)

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Google Earth Google Maps INSPIRE Thoughts

So you want to use Google Earth to…

One of the most common questions people ask me, is “Can we use Google Maps to do xxx” , or “Can I use Google Earth in..” in most cases the answer is usually a resounding “YES”, but there are usually some conditions on use and for some uses the answer I’m afraid is no. For the past few years I have pointed people to the Geo Permissions website, which has been updated to now include a Permission Tool , a wizard interface to take your step by step through the permissions process.

I was at the INSPIRE Conference last week discussing amongst others things the licensing of geospatial data for shared Spatial Data Infrastructure projects, I made the point that increasingly data would be made available via online services and perhaps an additional way of reducing complexity is look at similar tools to explain access via future online services – the key insight.. to be user rather than producer focused !

Written and submitted from the Novotel Hotel Vienna, Austria (48.213N, 16.383E)

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ESRI

A short history of Kingston GIS

Kenneth Field the departing Course Director for the Kingston GIS degree progammes has written a nice short history of the important role played by Kingston University in the development of the GIS industry in the UK.

It’s published as part of esri’s best practice in GIS series and is available to download for free as a pdf here.

Ah Happy Memories..

Written and submitted from the Google Offices, London (51.495N, 0.146W)
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Data Policy Google Maps Thoughts

Evening all, what going on with these crime maps then…

So initially the  moral of this story seems to be, if you are launching a Government website across the mass media, make sure you do the load testing with 100x what you expect.

The real issue is that despite having best intentions and a commitment to transparency, it’s very easy to confuse, mislead and lose credibility with poor crime mapping.

One of the  key positives of UK police website is the availability of the data behind the site which can been downloaded or accessed via a REST based API, secondly and something which few commentators have mentioned a link to local police teams who are ultimately responsible for reducing crime at the local level. Of course one years aggregated data is of little value here, allowing only relative comparisons between locations to be made, the real value will come in the future years when trends are identifiable and hopefully may be linked to local policing initiatives.

Many have commented however on issues with the mapping where the site designers have tried to offer more detail than the previous ward level statistics by moving to reporting the actual location of crimes, as commonly found in American crime maps.

While this is something I personally think should be made available, the map is not actually shown the real locations.

Many crimes are not accurately located in the first place, and because of privacy concerns expressed by the Information Commissioners’ Office some locations have been modified, moved or aggregated so that the points displayed on the map do not actually represent the actual location of the crimes but are indicative of the location.  I think it’s clear that perhaps an American style crime map was intended but what have ended up with is an uncomfortable and misleading compromise.

The fact that the points don’t actually represent the locations of crimes is at one level understandable, but to most people a point on the map represents the location of something, so much of the uproar in the press calling into question the accuracy of the maps can be understood.

However because the underlying data is available, budding data visualisation experts and cartographers can get to work and attempt to produce maps and other visualisations that perhaps better represent the data, already Jonathan Raper’s team at placr have come up with this different visualisation, using a multiresolution grid rather than the less obvious neighbour/street locations.

I hope the Home Office is not put off by the criticism of this first attempt, if Government is really to be more open and make use of the web in tackling complex issues such a crime and the local perception of crime, they must follow the web philosophy of constant iteration and development.

So they must dust themselves down, listen to the criticism, and make the next version better; and the following version even better… but quickly !

Written and submitted from the Google Offices, London (51.495N, 0.146W)

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conference

GeoWeb Conference call for papers

I have not attended the GeoWeb Conference for the past few years, but the annual international conference in Vancouver has been a highlight event in the years I was able make it.

The conference represents an interesting middle ground between the very much industry dominated conference of  Where 2.0 and Location Business Summit and academic conferences where the  focus is on published proceedings.

The GeoWeb 2011 Conference covers the broad area of the convergence of information sharing and geographic technology on the Web and the resulting economic, social and technical impact.

For this years conference I have volunteered to sit on the organising committee and  am leading the stream on Business and Consumer applications, which is inviting  submissions for papers/presentations is the following areas.

  • Information access for investors and smarter investment
  • Crowd-sourced data and its impact on commercial services
  • Standards for information interchange and presentation
  • What everyone else can learn from social media
  • Location sharing and Privacy
  • Smart phones as sensors

Other themes at the event include, Smart Grids and Utilities, Air Traffic Management, Urban Infrastructure and Transportation, Public Safety and Security and Environment and Climate Change.

For details visit the Geoweb CFP page.

Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)

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Android Thoughts

Cultural differences..

This one very rare tweet from Andy Rubin, lead on the Android Programme at Google in 140 characters perfectly embodies the open and geeky culture at Google. This is of course not always initially a great advantage when building consumer facing products, for my non geeks readers

“mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make”

means you can download the source code that is android from the Internet and build your own version without asking google..

If you are missing the context, this tweet appears to me in response to comments made by Steve Jobs of Apple yesterday,  but so far in the history of IT Open always beats Closed…

Written and submitted from the Google Offices, London (51.495N, 0.146W)
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Data Policy Thoughts

The Open Government Licence

Last week in addition to the new more open OS licesning, another in many ways more fundamental new license was introduced with little fanfare, but I would argue it’s impact if widely adopted could be far more important.

The new UK Open Government licence (OGL) developed by the National Archives, is a robust licence developed using Creative Commons like language for the specific purpose of distributing Government data. The OGL will be the become the default licence for UK Crown copyright, replacing the current Click-Use system and the data.gov.uk terms and conditions, and will therefore create a simple and consistent framework for the reuse of Public Sector Information.

The Key elements of the license are that a user may,

  • copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Infomation;
  • adapt the Information;
  • exploit the Information commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application.

There is a attribution clause which requires reference back to the OGL website where it’s possible.

This is a great step forward, we just now need to continue to push public sector bodies to release their information, as one more of the perceived barriers has been removed.

Written and submitted from the T3 BA Lounge (51.469N, 0.460W)
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Google Earth Thoughts

Build your own Liquid Galaxy..

Just beside my office in London is what is known as a “Liquid Galaxy”, a network of computers running big LCD screens giving  you a true panoramic Google Earth experience.
Almost everyone who sees a Liquid Galaxy makes the off hand comment, how do I get one.  Until now we have said, “well is a custom version of Google Earth”, “you need loads of space screens”, “sorry it’s not really possible”..

Today however, we can say sure here are the instructions… check out the Quick Start page.

This it must be said is still quite a challenge, but you don’t have to have eight big LCD screens; a liquid galaxy  set up scales from just  two to dozens of screens.


So if you are looking for a DIY challenge and have the space… get building !

Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)

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AGI Thoughts

A tale of two days in Stratford-upon-Avon

This evening I find myself in Dublin, Ireland looking at my glass of Kilkennys and reflecting on the past two days and the W3G and AGI Geocommunity events in Stratford upon Avon.

Is this glass half full or half empty, is the UK GI industry on the way up, or doomed to go the way of the CD-ROM encyclopedias ?

Depending on your attendance of the conferences in Stratford your answer to this question would be different. Attendees of the  W3G unconference on Tuesday would have experienced considerable energy, lively debate and optimism around the use of open data, free and open software and the potential of “neogeography” ( yes I know is just a label, but you all know what it means) There is huge potential to extend the use of geospatial information  in the UK efficiently and cheaply using the web platforms of today, and for people to create businesses around this new ecosystem.

This optimism survived all the way until about 11am today at the AGI Geocommunity conference and included the excellent upbeat presentation by Andy Hudson-Smith one of the few real innovators in the UK GI industry at the moment. ESRI UK’s presentation really turned optimism into despair once again introducing the tired old whinge that GIS should be a strategic necessity and central to how government works, but it is largely ignored by the powers that be…

Rather than learn the lessons of the last five years and concentrate on creating simple technological solutions that mean real user requirements quickly and cheaply, ESRI put the blame squarely on the GIS industry for not communicating the benefits of GIS and concentrating too much on complex technology.

Maybe somebody should buy Richard Waite, ESRI UK’s MD, a mirror ?

Talk about a contrast, the difference between the two days was extraordinary, and why  two separate days?

Last year the geomob stream brought much of the energy and frankly new people to the AGI event, this year most of the neogeo’s went home before the AGI conference started. This was a mistake, the future of the GI industry, if it is to have a future, is with the poeple who attended the w3g conference, the sooner the AGI realise this fundamental shift in the industry the better.

BTW when was the last time you attended a conference where you were told to Tweet responsibly and to be careful walking using your mobile device ? seriously..

Written and submitted from the Grand Canal Hotel, Dublin (53.338N, 6.237W)

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Fun !! Street VIew

Placeroulette anyone..

As a fun demostration of just how extenive StreetView coverage now is, it’s hard to beat Globe Genie, the product of MIT student Joe McMichael. Try it without the Map display to test just how powerful our ability to identify places from just visual clues is or is not 🙂

Can you tell where this is ?

Written and submitted from the Google Offices, London (51.495N, 0.146W)