Geospatial World December 2013

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DECEMBER 2013 » VOLume 04» ISSUE 05 | ISSN 2277–3134

Where passion meets cutting-edge tech From being an environmental research institute, Esri has grown into a global geospatial player today. With a mission and culture to innovate, it continues to nurture the enterprise segment, enable governments and organisations across the world P. 40

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Inside...

November 2013 • Vol 4 • Issue 4 Special Focus: Health Care

Cover Story: Cartography

52 Healthy, wealthy and GIS

22 Changing maps to map changes

Mushahid M. Khan

Prof Arup Dasgupta

31 How three-dimensional is 3D cartography?

Case Studies 60 Google Search to locate and map flu

Prof Manfred F. Buchroithner

61 GIS revolutionises health service delivery

34 The Atlas of experience Dr Corné P.J.M. van Elzakker

62 Layered maps, real-time data to fight blindness

41 Cartography in the age of location D.R. Fraser Taylor

48 User-centred approach is the key

64 Live by the sea, reap more health benefits

Dr Georg Gartner

65 Alberta rides on CAD & mobile for health care

Interview 44 Michael T. Jones,

Interview

Chief Technology Advocate, Google

68 Scott Ramage, CEO & Chairman, AAM Group 07 Editorial 08 News 16 ProductWatch 72 Picture This 73 Events

Advisory Board

Disclaimer Geospatial World does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in the publication. All views expressed in this issue are those of the contributors. Geospatial World is not responsible for any loss to anyone due to the information provided.

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Aida Opoku Mensah Special Advisor, Post 2015 Development Agenda, UN Economic Commisssion for Africa

Derek Clarke Chief Director-Survey and Mapping & National Geospatial Information, Rural Development & Land Reform, South Africa

CHAIRMAN M P Narayanan

Bryn Fosburgh Barbara Ryan Secretariat Director, Group on Earth Observations

Sector Vice-President, Executive Committee Member, Trimble Navigation

Dorine Burmanje Chair-Executive Board, Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency (Kadaster), The Netherlands

Dawn J. Wright Chief Scientist, Esri

Dr. Hiroshi Murakami

CEO, Bentley Systems

Director-General of Planning Department, Geospatial Information Authority of Japan

Juergen Dold

Kamal K Singh

President Hexagon Geosystems

Chairman and CEO, Rolta Group

Greg Bentley

Prof. Josef Strobl First Vice President, ISPRS

Chair, Department of Geoinformatics, University of Salzburg, Austria

Lisa Campbell

Mark Reichardt

Vice President, Engineering & Infrastructure, Autodesk

President and CEO, Open Geospatial Consortium

Prof. Ian Dowman

Mohd Al Rajhi Matthew O’Connell CEO, Adhoc Holdings

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Geospatial World | November 2013

Stephen Lawler Chief Technology Officer, Bing Maps, Microsoft

Asst Deputy Minister for Land & Surveying, Ministry of Municipal & Rural Affairs, Saudi Arabia

Vanessa Lawrence Dr Swarna Subba Rao Surveyor General of India

Director General and Chief Executive, Ordnance Survey, UK

Publisher Sanjay Kumar

Publications Team Managing Editor Prof. Arup Dasgupta Editor — Building & Energy Geoff Zeiss Editor — Agriculture Mark Noort Editor — Latin America (Honorary) Tania Maria Sausen Editor — Geospatial World Weekly (Hon) Dr. Hrishikesh Samant Executive Editor Bhanu Rekha Deputy Executive Editor Anusuya Datta Product Manager Harsha Vardhan Madiraju Sr Asst Editor Mushahid M Khan Sub-Editor Ridhima Kumar Graphic Designer Debjyoti Mukherjee Circulation Manager Amit Shahi

Tourism services on Bhuvan

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EditorSpeak

Mapping the history of GIS Prof Arup Dasgupta Managing Editor arup@geospatialmedia.net When one is a part of history, the need to document the present for the future seems to be unimportant. The history of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) falls in this category. What is GIS? Today we have settled on the broad term ‘geospatial’ or ‘geomatics’ to net all systems, devices and applications which have anything to do with spatial analysis. But in those early days (the 1960s), the integration of computers and geography was not known as GIS. In the United Kingdom, the frustration of creating an Atlas of Great Britain and Northern Ireland which became out of date even as it was published led B.P. Bickmore to the conclusion that computerisation was the only way to rapidly collect, collate, and analyse data and publish maps. Others who can be termed as pioneers in this field are R. Tomlinson of the Canada Geographical Information System, who overcame the issues of costs and time by adopting a computerised approach for the Canadian Land Inventory; Howard Fisher, who set up the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics; and Jack Dangermond, who worked in the HLCG and later went on to establish the Environmental Systems Research Institute or Esri.

The Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics was the cradle of modern GIS. It pioneered the concept of spatial analysis for environmental, urban planning and landscape design. In fact, the attempt to trace the technological roots of any successful project in the geospatial arena will most likely end up in a product developed here. One

of these is Esri’s ArcGIS, which draws its lineage from SYMAP, GRID and ODYSSEY. SYMAP was the first product of HLCG. Carl Steinitz and D. Sinton of the Harvard Graduate School of Design spliced SYMAP to a raster-based system called GRID to address environment issues. ODYSSEY, a project closest to modern-day GIS, had many of these luminaries in the development team. Nick Chrisman, in his book Charting the Unknown, mentions Angus Hill from the Ontario Department of Land Records, Philip Lewis from the University of Wisconsin and Ian McHarg from the University of Pennsylvania. An interesting side note is that the names associated with GIS, Ian McHarg, Philip Lewis, Howard Fisher and Jack Dangermond, are from the field of landscape architecture.

Marketing of ODYSSEY was beset with problems and the laboratory sadly lost its funding and was dissolved in 1991. However, its success lies in commercial products like ArcGIS, Synercom, Computer Vision and Intergraph, which were promoted by members and carry the genes of SYMAP, ODYSSEY and others. There were failures too and one day these also may be written up as case studies of how not to commercialise advanced technologies. The development of GIS spans 50-odd years and many countries; it is time that a proper historical record is created for future reference.

Geospatial World | December 2013

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Geospatial industry witnessed a spree of acquisitions and mergers, some more valuable and talked about than others. Here’s a look at the top deals of the year.

HERE you go!

The multibillion dollar handshake between Microsoft and Nokia helped the software giant in realising its dream of joining the elite league of devices and services companies like Apple and Google. Post deal, Nokia is getting ready for a transformation from a handset-maker to a mapping company.

Then Nokia CEO Stephen Elop (L) with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (R).

While Elop returned to Microsoft and is said to take over the top job after Ballmer retires, Nokia Chairman Risto Siilasmaa has assumed the role of interim CEO

2013

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FINEPRINT • €5.44 billion ($7.17 billion) the amount of the deal • Microsoft purchases Nokia’s Devices & Services business • Microsoft becomes a strategic licensee of Nokia’s HERE platform • Nokia to provide mapping data services in exchange for annual payments • Microsoft can combine Nokia mapping data with data from other sources Nokia retains NSN, HERE, its CTO Office, and its patent portfolio.

Following are some of the facts related to HERE: • 6,000 full-time staff on the project • 196 countries mapped • 94 countries with auto grade maps • 43 million kilometres of road mapped • 20 billion probes per month (to help track traffic, etc.)

• 2.7 million changes per day • €6 billion spent on the project in the last 6 years

Geospatial World | December 2013

”

Microsoft needs an ‘effective alternative to Google’. There needs to be more than one digital map of the world — Microsoft’s statement in the ‘Strategic Rationale’ for the deal

Hexagon on a shopping spree Hexagon, a master of acquisitions, continued with its M&A strategy and bought eight companies in 2013 to increase its geographic reach and technology prowess.

• Airborne Hydrography: Provider of airborne laser survey systems for hydrographic and topographic surveys. Its portfolio airborne bathymetric LiDAR technology, which provides the equivalent of above-water topographic maps, enabling underwater objects to be detected and deep and shallow waters and coastal zones to be mapped and monitored

• Devex: Mine-management software solutions for open-pit and underground mines

• MANFRA: Brazil-based distributor of Leica Geosystems products • Listech: A software company dedicated to increasing efficiency, accuracy and productivity of professional surveyors and engineers

• Navgeocom: Leica's largest distributor in Russia • New River Kinematics: A US-based specialist in 3D analysis software for portable metrology applications

• a/m/t software: Software company acquired by Intergraph • Geosoft: Specialist in modular cartography, digital photogrammetry and mobile mapping solutions

DG nods to Tomnod

Sometimes it is quicker and cheaper to buy a company that has the technology we need rather than spend a lot of time and develop the new technology required

”

— Ola Rollén, President and CEO, Hexagon, on the group's acquisition strategy

After completing the merger process of GeoEye with itself in early 2013, DigitalGlobe acquired Tomnod in April for an undisclosed sum.

Tomnod is better known for its pioneering work in the field of crowdsourced intelligence.

• Tomnod has been at the forefront of innovation in the field of crowdsourcing of earth observation imagery analysis • The five-person Tomnod team was incorporated into DigitalGlobe’s Longmont headquarters • DigitalGlobe now offers Tomnod’s rapid information capture and validation services directly to customers • Also, DigitalGlobe's in-house analytics team can now use information gathered by Tomnod as a key data source

The acquisition is a significant step towards helping users across our industry to save time, resources and lives

”

— Dr. Walter Scott, Executive Vice President, CTO and Founder, DigitalGlobe

Geospatial World | December 2013

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Trimble adds muscle Continuing with its strategy of expanding and strengthening its reach and expertise by taking over companies that fit into its product portfolio, Trimble acquired eight companies in 2013.

• ALK Technologies: Routing, mapping, mileage and navigation technologies

• Penmap.com: Suite of software solutions • Trade Service: Content acquisition, management, publishing and distribution of product and pricing information used by manufacturers, distributors and contractors in the AEC industry

• Actronic Holdings: Weighing technology and payload information systems for construction, mining and waste markets

• IQ Irrigation: To strengthen Trimble's position in precision farming

• RainWave, Hydro-Engineering: To monitor Trimble's Connected Farm solution and strengthen its water management expertise

We ask ourselves what technology would benefit the users, and if we do not have that, we invent it, buy it or co-develop it. But essentially our goal is to provide customers with technology that adds value to their business

• Asset Forestry: Forestry logistics and optimisation solutions

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Bentley gains software strength With an eye on multi-billion infrastructure projects, Bentley Systems acquired three companies to build on its software strength.

• Char*Pointer Tecnologia: The Brazil-based company's topoGRAPH software helps in high-precision surveying, earthworks, and road and railway design. The deal could help Bentley Systems grab a large share in Brazil govt's multi-billion infrastructure projects, especially road and rail networks

• MOSES: Bought from Ultramarine, the software business will help in complex projects involving transportation and installation of offshore structures

• Engineering Systems: Provider of structural analysis and design software to users in Australia, New Zealand, and S.E. Asia

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”

— Steven W. Berglund, CEO & President, Trimble, on acquisition strategy

Geospatial World | December 2013

The acquisition of Moses will help us to fill the gap of offshore structural simulation and analysis

”

— Greg Bentley, CEO, Bentley Systems

The big ‘G’ has its own Waze Google in June acquired the Israel-based startup Waze Mobiles, developer of a community-based traffic and navigation app called Waze. The app harnesses the power of smartphone users to give real-time updates about traffic situations. Prior to the close-to-billion-dollar deal the Internet was flooded with rumours about other tech giants like Facebook and Apple trying to swallow Waze.

FINEPRINT • $966 million, the amount that Google paid • 13, the number of countries featured on Waze initially • 4 6, the number of countries/territories Google extends Waze incident reports to • Google integrates Google Maps with Waze traffic information Google also acquired the social behaviour startup called Behavio. It collects data from mobile phone sensors to analyse physical location, contacts and other data about an individual’s or community’s activities and environment to monitor trends and then predict behaviour.

We evaluated many options and believe Google is the best partner for Waze, our map editors, area managers, champs and nearly 50 million Wazers globally

”

— Noam Bardin, CEO, Waze

Apple-ied mapping After its mapping fiasco in 2012, Apple went on a damage-control mode. The company focused on acquiring small players in this area to strengthen its portfolio.

WifiSLAM: Offers technology for indoor mapping and social networking apps. Apple paid $20 million for the deal Embark: Offers public transit apps with information of selected cities in Europe and the US

HopStop: Offers public transit data of 500 cities Locationary: Provides edited database of popular restaurants and tourist locations PrimeSense: The Israel-based firm focuses mainly on 3D sensor technology

We're always looking; I think we'll do more of these (acquisitions) in the future. We aren't currently looking at a big one, but we aren't opposed to doing that if it made sense

”

— Tim Cook, CEO, Apple

Geospatial World | December 2013

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Autodesk builds on its software power Continuing with the M&A trend in the design space, Autodesk made four acquisitions during the year.

Allpoint Systems: A software developer for collecting and processing LiDAR point cloud data

Tinkercad: A Web-based 3D modelling tool which allows to create prototype designs Sam: A software suite acquired from Bestech Systems, for loading, analysis and design of bridges

AutoTrack: A software suite from Savoy Computing for vehicle swept path analysis

This is part of our efforts to make it easier for customers to start their design processes with models based on reality

”

— Amar Hanspal, Senior V-P, IPG Product Group, Autodesk, on Allpoint Systems buy

Topcon opts for fresh position Topcon Positioning Group acquired DynaRoad Oy, a construction software company in Helsinki, Finland, and also established the Topcon Helsinki Technology Center

Contractors and designers looking to cut construction costs through design optimisation and better task management now have a strong central source for production management

”

— Ray O’Connor, President & CEO, Topcon, on acquisition of DynaRoad

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Geospatial World | December 2013

TomTom heads for Spain TomTom announced the acquisition of Coordina (Gestion Electronica Logistica, S.L.), the Spanish player in Fleet Management Solutions, based in Barcelona.

• 27,000 is the number of subscriptions TomTom added from Coordina • 300,000 is the number of active installed base of vehicles TomTom achieved with this deal

Also acquired:

• 25,000 is the updated number of customers served by TomTom’s active installed base, the largest customer base in the industry

The acquisition gives us access to a first class team with a similar culture, a broad and strong local sales network and a well-established local service hub

”

— Thomas Schmidt TomTom Business Solutions' Managing Director

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Geospatial industry valued at $270 bn The global geospatial industry brings in $270 billion in annual revenue and companies in the sector pay more than $90 billion in wages each year, according to a report published by Oxera in January. The study is one of the first to consider geo services as an industry in itself, encompassing all digital mapping and location-based services. It is recognised that this industry is growing rapidly, meaning that many of the estimates provided in the report will quickly become underestimates.

$150-$270 billion

$0.5-2.8 billion

Global revenues of geospatial industry per year

Savings from reduced pricing of infrequently bought services and goods

$1.4 trillion

3.5 billion litres

Geospatial industry saves for businesses each year

Petrol saved per year globally

$90 billion

Global cost savings on agricultural irrigation

$8-$22 billion

Geospatial industry pays out in wages

$73 billion

$1.1 billion hours

Industry’s value in the US

Travel time saved per year globally

The growth line heads north Industry reports suggest that the global geospatial industry is going to see better returns in the years to come. Here’s what to expect from the industry

The GIS industry in China is estimated to reach $42 billion by the end of 2013, according to a Ministry of Land and Resources statement. The statement, based on data from the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation, talks about interesting facts about the geospatial industry in China:

Market

CAGR

By when

Global GIS market

9.60%

2016

GNSS installed base

22%

LiDAR market

16.64% 2018

30%

GIS market in BFSI

4.95%

2016

20%

GIS market in the utilities Precision farming market

10.37%

13.36%

Sources: Research & Markets, TechNavio, Markets & Markets

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China g-tech industry’s value at $42 bn

Geospatial World | December 2013

2016

$42 billion Estimated value of geospatial industry in China by the end of 2013 Industry growth from 2012 Forecasted growth over the next couple of years

2016

2018

$81 billion Total annual output likely by 2015

$163 billion Total annual output likely by 2020

23,000 Organisations involved in China’s geospatial industry

European countries opening up on EO policies In August, the European Commission (EC) finally agreed to permit free access to data from its Sentinel series of Earth observation satellites. This aligns the European Commission with a policy already adopted by the European Space Agency (ESA). After a long process of evaluation that included input from the European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC), an association of private-sector providers of earth observation data, the commission concluded that any harm to private-sector satellite operators will be outweighed by the expected growth in value-added services derived from the data.

WorldView-3, DigitalGlobe's next satellite, is scheduled to be launched in mid-2014 and will offer 0.31 metre resolution panchromatic and eight-band multi-spectral imagery

The US Senate Intelligence Committee has approved a legislation allowing US firms to sell higherresolution satellite imagery on the open market. The relaxed imagery-resolution restrictions were recommended in a report detailing the unclassified provisions of the Intelligence Authorization Bill.

The recommendations encouraged the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence to “promptly review” a licensing request from US industry to collect and sell electro-optical imagery with a ground sampling resolution distance of 25 cm, or twice as sharp as the satellite imagery the United States currently allows to be sold on the open market.

According to a statement from the US Senate Intelligence Committee: “The committee is concerned that foreign commercial imagery providers may soon be able to provide imagery at or better than the currently allowed commercial US resolution limit of 0.5 metres.” The report accompanied the 2014 Intelligence Authorization Act (S. 1681), which the committee voted 13-2 to send to the Senate floor. “As foreign firms approach or surpass this level of resolution, current restrictions on US commercial imagery data providers put the United States at a competitive disadvantage...”

European satellite navigation framework In an important multilateral development, the EU Member States’ Permanent Representatives in April endorsed the compromise reached between the Council and the European Parliament in their negotiations on a new financial and governance framework for the European Satellite Navigation Systems (EGNOS and Galileo) for the period covered by the multi-annual financial framework for 2014-2020. The development of applications based on the satellite navigation systems, such as chipsets and receivers, has been added as one of the objectives, with a view to maximising the socioeconomic benefits from the programmes. The commission, which will be responsible for the security of the programmes, will be given the power to lay down high-level objectives in this respect.

Credit: ESA artist's concept by P. Carril

US firms can sell high-res satellite imagery

Sentinel 1A is scheduled for launch in 2014

The German government, meanwhile, put into place a two-step regulatory regime for commercial satellite imagery that subjects proposed sales of the most sensitive data to approval on a case-by-case basis. In response to inquiries about where German policy stood following the announcement that Germany’s TerraSAR-X radar earth observation system would begin marketing 25-centimetre resolution imagery, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) said there was no fixed limit to what may be sold. For imagery with special sensitivity, the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA), must clear each sale.

Geospatial World | December 2013

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NASA, ESA tie up on Sentinel 2, Landsat The European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA have joined hands to ensure that Sentinel-2 and the newly launched Landsat Data Continuity Mission offer compatible data products.

The agreement is aimed at bringing greater benefits to users of images of earth’s land and coastal zones.

A NASA scientist holds one of the three miniature satellites launched in April 2013.

The trio sent “image-data packets” to multiple ground stations on Earth. These images were reconstructed by the Ames Phonesat Team and multiple amateur radio operators around the world.

NASA launches three smartphone satellites NASA has launched three smartphone satellites called "PhoneSats" into the orbit. The lowcost satellites, named Alexander, Graham and Bell, rode to space in April aboard the maiden flight of Orbital Science Corp’s Antares rocket from NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia. NASA engineers kept the total cost of the components for the three prototype satellites in the PhoneSat project between $3,500 and $7,000 by using primarily commercial hardware and keeping the design and mission objectives to a minimum. Using their smartphone cameras, the PhoneSat trio sent the image-data packets to the PhoneSat Team on earth who reconstructed high-resolution photographs from the minute data packets. Amateur radio operators from every continent but Antarctica contributed in capturing the data packets NASA needed to piece together the smartphones' image of Earth from space.

A great year for ISRO On 2 July, the Indian Space Research Organisation successfully launched IRNSS-1A, the first of the seven satellites constituting the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) space segment. IRNSS-1A is designed to provide accurate position information to users in the country as well as the region extending up to 1,500 km. The entire IRNSS constellation of seven satellites is planned to be completed by 2015-16.

On 5 November, ISRO followed up with the launch of the Mars Orbiter Mission. The $75-million ‘Mangalyaan’, is the size of a small car and is meant to make a 300-day journey to study the Martian atmosphere. The success of this mission will make India the first country in Asia, and the fourth in the world, to get to Mars.

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ESA is currently developing the two-satellite Sentinel-2 mission for Europe’s Global Monitoring for Environment and Security initiative. The first satellite is slated for launch in 2014. The mission is dedicated to supplying multispectral, high-resolution optical images for monitoring changes to the landscape, for forestry and agriculture and to support emergency efforts in response to natural and manmade disasters. The pair of Sentinel-2 satellites will deliver high-resolution images globally, providing continuity of SPOT and Landsat-type data.

Geospatial World | December 2013

ISRO in July launched the first of the seven satellites constituting the IRNSS space segment. With the success of this mission, India will become the fifth member of the elite group of nations which already have their own navigation satellite systems in the space.

The year of adieus to the high-soaring birds The year 2013 could well be remembered as the year of bidding adieus to some of the most long-lasting space missions.

29 years, 3 months and 4 days: Time spent in space

Over 150,000: Number of times Landsat 5 orbitted Earth

Over 2.5 million: Number of images of land surface conditions it captured

Landsat 5

RADARSAT-1

On June 5, 2013, the USGS team transmitted the last command to the Landsat 5 satellite, terminating the mission 29 years, 3 months and 4 days after its launch by NASA from Vandenberg Air Force Base on March 1, 1984.

RADARSAT-1 was Canada's first earth observation satellite. It was sent on a mission to monitor environmental changes and the planet's natural resources. On March 29, 2013, it experienced a technical problem which proved to be ‘fatal’

The Landsat 5 mission had been an extraordinary success, providing unprecedented contributions to the global record of land change. The USGS had brought the satellite back from the brink of failure on several occasions, but the recent failure of a gyroscope left no option but to end the mission. For more than quarter of century, Landsat 5 observed our planet changing, including the Kuwaiti oil fires, the Chernobyl disaster, changes in Antarctic ice. Landsat 5 was recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as the longest-operating earth-observing satellite mission.

November 4, 1995: Launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, US 5 years: Design lifetime 24 days: Time it took to cover entire Earth

SPOT 4 SPOT 4, launched on March 24, 1998, was the second generation member of the SPOT Earth observation system designed by CNES, France.

177 months: Time it had been operating for Over 6.8 mn: Images of the earth it acquired January 11, 2013: Operations terminated

360 EO satellites to be launched over the next decade The number of earth observation (EO) satellite launches is expected to more than double over the next decade to 360 satellites. According to a latest research report released by Euroconsult, the emerging markets will be the major contributors to this growth. The report, titled ‘SatelliteBased Earth Observation: Market Prospects to 2022’, says the EO satellites launched by civil government and commercial entities will translate into $35.8 billion in manufacturing revenues over 2013 to 2022. This would mean an 88% increase over the previous decade. Organisations from more than 42 countries are expected to have launched at least a first-generation EO satellite by 2022. In total over 2013-2022, 69% of EO satellites will cost less that $100 million (compared to 56% in the last decade). These satellites may not have higher precision systems but they will assist in advancement of a local space industry in the emerging space nations. The percentage of high-cost ($200 million plus) satellite missions is expected to remain stable at 10% to 11% and thus absolute numbers will also increase. This is in effect creating a polarisation in satellite cost between “higher-end” missions requiring significant R&D to support sensor design for government agency environment monitoring missions (such as from NASA, ESA, JAXA) or precision accuracy commercial satellites (such as from DigitalGlobe or Astrium) and the lower-cost missions.

The report says the EO commercial data market is expected to reach $3.5 billion by 2022. The market in emerging regions like Latin America, Russia & CIS, Asia, and the Middle East will witness steady growth. Defence will remain the first application area. Growth in natural resources monitoring and energy will remain robust due to regional economic growth. Location-based services sector will further foster growth through the thriving demand of data to assist Internet and hand-held devices.

Geospatial World | December 2013

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OLOGY TECHN

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New prototype vehicle to up EO satellites’ accuracy

Outback Rover, a prototype autonomous vehicle developed by Australian scientists, will improve the accuracy of earth observation satellites that are used to provide data to the country’s mining and agricultural industries.

Researchers of the Defence Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) at the University of Michigan have made significant progress with a timing & inertial measurement unit (TIMU) that contains everything needed to aid navigation when GPS is temporarily unavailable. The single chip TIMU prototype contains a six axis IMU (three gyroscopes and three accelerometers) and integrates a highly-accurate master clock into a single miniature system, smaller than the size of a cent. The chip integrates breakthrough devices (clocks, gyroscopes and accelerometers), materials and designs from DARPA’s Micro-Technology for Positioning, Navigation and Timing (Micro-PNT) programme. Three pieces of information are needed to navigate between known points ‘A’ and ‘B’ with precision: orientation, acceleration and time. This new chip integrates state-of-the-art devices that can measure all three simultaneously. The tiny package is 10 cubic millimetre thick. Each of the six microfabricated layers of the TIMU is only 50 microns thick, approximately the thickness of a human hair.

Outback Rover has been developed by researchers at CSIRO, Australia's national science agency. It is helping to calibrate satellites that provide clues to earth's soil condition, mineralogy and vegetation. Accompanied by researchers from Japan, China, Israel and France, CSIRO scientists recently took the rover prototype on a mission to Lake Lefroy — a huge salt lake in remote Western Australia — to see if they could automate the satellite calibration process. This is where they matched the information gathered by satellites against measurements taken on-ground and compared them for accuracy. This process is called vicarious calibration and is undertaken by ground crews who walk in grids or transects, taking measurements with hand-held devices known as spectrometers, as satellites travel overhead. CSIRO’s Dr Alberto Elfes hopes the rover will be able to collect calibration data autonomously and send it wirelessly back to researchers.

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Chip to aid navigation when GPS unavailable

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Sensor for reconnaissance operations Researchers at the US Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center have developed ‘Global Strike Near Real Time Battle Data Assessment (NRT-BDA) System’ which incorporates unattended sensors and a remote warfighter interface to provide timely reporting of conditions during reconnaissance operations. One sensor includes a chemical agent detector similar in shape and size of a two-pound soda can. The sensors have been tested from a P-3 Orion aircraft at 1,000 feet. It is equipped with an accelerometer, which triggers the release of the cap and small parachute. Once it lands, the spring-loaded legs pop open, allowing it to sit up right. The detector is also equipped with a GPS tracking device. This detector, which was a redesign of the Joint Chemical Agent Detector, can feed information to a satellite and then to soldiers manning a warfighter interface as far as a few thousand miles away.

Augmented reality to make life easier for bikers and car drivers Augmented reality-based HUD or heads-up display for drivers remained the buzz word through out the year with Russian startups to handset-manufacturer-turned-mapping enthusiast Nokia, everyone wanting their share of the pie.

Russian-based startup LiveMap announced that it was working on a motorcycle helmet that came with a heads-up display, as well as a microphone to initiate voice commands, and an earpiece to listen for notifications and alerts.

The entire system is integrated into the helmet, so there’s no discomfort when wearing the headgear and having various objects getting in the way. The helmet will have a translucent, colour display that's projected on the visor in the centre of the field of vision, and a custom user interface, English language-only at launch, based on Android.

assisting the startup financially. The company hopes to launch LiveMap in the third quarter of 2014 in the US and Canada, and in Australia and the UK before the end of 2014.

The helmet display includes a light sensor for adjusting image brightness according to external light conditions, as well as an accelerometer, gyroscope, and digital compass for tracking head movements. The Russian government is

In another development, Nokia and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz have joined hands to develop 3D smart maps for self-driving cars.

Nokia HERE agreed to initially provide 3D maps from the Mannheim to Pforzheim route

A camera without a lens!

in Germany. These maps will be used for cars connected to a computing cloud. Nokia said at the Frankfurt Auto Show that connecting cars to a cloud is "one of the biggest opportunities for the automotive industry today."

A number of automobile companies are in the process of developing computer-controlled features for cars. Google too has been working on self-driving cars since 2010.

‘Far Out’ knows your future location

Scientists at Duke University, North Carolina, US have devised a metamaterial that uses microwaves to image objects or scenes in real time. Metamaterials perform hardware compression during image acquisition. By leveraging metamaterials and compressive imaging, the researchers developed a lowprofile aperture capable of microwave imaging without lenses, moving parts, or phase shifters. The innovative aperture allows image compression to be performed on the physical hardware layer rather than in the postprocessing stage. The researchers subsequently developed a device, using thousands of tiny apertures arranged in a strip 40 cm in length, which records images in 2D — one dimension across the strip and the other for depth.

A screenshot from the Far Out mapping software

Researchers from Microsoft and Google have developed a new tracking software that can predict future location of a person. The programme, called ‘Far Out’, is based on statistical research and tracks people using a GPS device and learns their routine. It then makes predictions about where that person will be in future years. It can also incorporate life changes such as a new job, marriage and moving house into the calculation.

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Radar gun to spot illegal GPS jammers In a first, Chronos Technology, a UK-based company, has developed new handheld radar to identify which vehicles are illegally using the GPS signal jammers.

Cambridge Consultants’ technology combines low-cost smartphone components with tailored algorithm for tracking indoor location.

The availability of low-cost smartphone components has enabled a new generation of indoor location devices and applications, with new researches and technologies focusing on further accurate tracking of indoor location. For instance, Cambridge Consultants developed a new technology to accurately detect the location indoors when GPS drops out. Sensors and a custom algorithm determine the location, with an accuracy of approximately 1% of the distance travelled. It uses low-power, low-cost sensors and the device concept is small enough to clip on a belt. It also doesn’t need any existing internal infrastructure.

Until recently a number of devices have been available to law enforcement officers who want to detect jammers. But they only detect the presence of a jammer, not find out where it is. This new device can identify where a jammer-using vehicle is in a multi-storey car park – and can also pinpoint portable devices in drivers' pockets when they have left their cars. Chronos has not revealed how the device works, but it is likely it triangulates signal strength to work out exactly where the 1.5 gigahertz signal that a GPS jammer emits is coming from.

Similarly, ByteLight, a Boston-based company, has developed a technique that uses LED light bulbs for indoor location tracking. Using microchips mounted on LEDs, it causes the LEDs to flicker too fast for the naked eye to see. In doing so it communicates information to a smartphone through its camera lens. The communication between light bulb and smartphone tells the exact indoor location of the person. Its margin of error is less than a metre.

Geospatial World | December 2013

EO sensor hunts explosives A team of scientists in the UK have adapted satellite technology intended for earth observation to create an instrument that can recognise explosives remotely.

The system uses an infrared laser to detect volatile compounds given off by explosives and other dangerous materials. The new explosives detector was created

by Damien Weidmann and his team at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The researchers claim that the flexibility and range of the Active Coherent Laser Spectrometer (ACLaS) makes it ideal for all kinds of hazardous or undercover gaseous-phase sampling, including detecting toxic leaks, chemical-warfare agents, illegal drugs manufacture or highly localised industrial air pollution. The new device has been tested at distances up to 50 metres and gives unambiguous chemical identification and quantification readings in as little as three seconds.

Courtesy: Chronos Technology

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First detailed map of global forest change unveiled Google Earth has helped scientists at the University of Maryland in US in developing an engaging, high-resolution map that shows global forest loss and gain. The map tracks changes in the world’s forests during the years 2000 to 2012. The first such detailed map was created from satellite data and has the ability to zoom in to the high resolution of 30 metres. The team of scientists was led by Prof Matthew Hansen of the University of Maryland. The map highlights great forest losses in Indonesia, Malaysia, Paraguay and Angola, according to a study on the project in the journal Science. Brazil, on the other hand, saw successful reduction in deforestation. The study reveals that the huge South American country, home to most of the Amazon rain forest, reduced forest loss by half between 2003-04 and 2010-11.

‘Javelins’ with GPS to measure Antarctica Scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have dropped 25 javelin-like equipment in the Pine Island Glacier (PIG), one of Antarctica’s biggest and fastestmoving ice streams. These ‘javelins’ contain advanced GPS equipment that allow the BAS to monitor the speed and nature of the ice movement. This will further help in accurately measuring the entire continent.

For the first time, US Geological Survey (USGS) scientists have been successful in mapping the long-term average evapotranspiration rates across the continental United States. It is a crucial tool for water managers and planners because of the huge role evapotranspiration plays in water availability. Evapotranspiration rates are important because the amount of water available for people and ecosystems is the amount of annual precipitation — that is, snow or rain — minus the amount of annual evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration itself is the amount of water lost to the atmosphere from the ground. Much of this loss is the result of the “transpiration” of water by plants.

To produce these maps, USGS scientists Ward Sanford and David Selnick examined Landsat satellite imagery for climate and land-cover data from 1971 to 2000 and streamflow data for more than 800 watersheds for the same time period. This information allowed them to generate a mathematical equation that could be used to more precisely estimate long-term evapotranspiration at any location in the continental United States.

A three-letter word for each location on earth What3words, a London-based startup, has developed a new mapping service which divides the globe into 57 trillion boxes measuring three metres each. It has labelled each area with just three words address to help make finding locations more accurate and memorable. The w3w pin can be moved around the Google Map and can show the code for the precise point where the pin has been placed.

Alternatively, users can search the site for landmarks or addresses to find that location's code. Or three random words can be entered, each separated by a full stop, to find a surprise location. Once a location has been identified, it can be shared via email, Facebook, Twitter or GPS systems.

What3words is available on Web browsers as well through Android and iOS apps. The new service makes it easier to remember than complicated coordinates.

Researchers in January had done initial drop trials of the battery-powered javelins at Scar Inlet on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula.

The darts were dropped from aircraft flying over the region.

They were equipped with parachutes and small ‘ice brake’ fins to lessen the force of their impact with the ice and stop them from driving too deeply. Scientists had released 33 ‘javelins’. A total of 25 survived the violent emplacement and return daily data. BAS expects a two-year lifetime for the devices.

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Courtesy: BAS

Water evapotranspiration rates for US mapped

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A resource on positioning, navigation and beyond Microsoft’s UltraCam Osprey is a new digital aerial system that combines a high performing photogrammetric nadir camera with oblique image capture capabilities. The specifications of this camera are quite impressive — the photogrammetric nadir part of the camera features an almost 12,000 PAN pixels across the flight strip, a RGB colour cone and a NIR cone (pan-sharpen ratio 1:2). This makes the nadir subsystem a high performing photogrammetric camera that delivers sub-pixel accuracy. Additionally, it hosts RGB Bayer pattern cones that collect forward/backward and left/ right oblique images. The centreline of the wing images are tilted by 45 degrees.

Its unique design makes 3D city mapping more efficient and helps build better models with a higher degree of automatisation.

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Reaching unprecedented heights South Australia-based DroneMetrex’s TopoDrone maps at unprecedented 25 mm absolute topographic accuracy in height.

So far, no other manufacturer of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has claimed such an accuracy, neither relative, nor absolute.

TopoDrone-100 is a true photogrammetric mapping system which addresses geometric errors (tip, tilt, yaw, forward and lateral motion, blur) from the start and eliminates them right at the point of capturing the data. The TopoDrones are unmatched for mapping accuracy and can be flown autonomously and manually.

A one-stop mobile mapping solution Leica Geosystems’ Leica Pegasus:One is a one-stop mobile mapping solution from hardware to postprocessing. Dubbed as an ‘enabling’ solution by the company, Pegasus:One captures calibrated imagery and point cloud data and enables processing, visualisation, and interpretation through a single, user-intuitive software platform. It is vehicle independent and comes self-contained in two Pelican cases — simply fly in, map, and fly out. The simplicity of the GUI along with the detailed access to the point cloud makes this platform ideal for all user levels. Its unique design makes 3D city mapping more efficient and helps build better models with a higher degree of automatisation

The highest pixel camera is here The dream of a 100-megapixel camera has finally been turned into reality. The Institute of Optics and Electronics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ IOE3-Kanban camera features a 100-megapixel charge-coupled device (CCD) chip. It is capable of producing images with 10,240 x 10,240 pixels. Moreover, it is small and light, with its widest part measuring only 19.3 cm. Its high sensitivity and high dynamic range (HDR) features makes it ideal for high-resolution imaging in the fields of aerial mapping, city planning, disaster monitoring and intelligent transportation systems.

Scan this: ePrinters for CAD professionals Hewlett Packard’s two new web-connected e-printers HP Designjet T920 and HP Designjet T1500 are creating waves in the CAD industry. Aimed at transforming HP’s Designjet series into ‘information hubs’, Both units feature 30% smaller footprints. These printers can serve the GIS professionals better as they offer both precision-printing and quality in terms of colour gamut.

Designjet T1500, the higher version of the two printers, is loaded with 320 GB hard drive and parallel processing power that enables it to print A1/D size in 21 seconds.

The printer can create lines as thin as 0.07 mm which would go a long way to help GIS professionals.

Accessible mobile mapping Trimble’s MX2 mobile spatial imaging data capture system strives to fill the ‘mapping gap’ that has been a hindrance to effective asset inventory and management. It enables surveyors to enter the world of mobile scanning with a manageable path to achieving return on investment and effective cost per collected point, accelerating projects and offering new capabilities to help win competitive tenders. A precise laser scanner, along with an embedded Trimble-Applanix GNSS/Inertial positioning system, allows geospatial professionals to create the point cloud accuracies necessary for many spatial imaging projects.

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Scanning of underground mines made easy The innovative, on-the-spot Void Scanner Mk3 by Measurement Devices Limited is ideal for underground mine laser surveys. Its improved drive system and faster scan speeds significantly reduce survey times, saves costs, and improves safety for the operators. The real-time acquisition software allows operators to measure, visualise, and compare 360-degree field of view scans of stopes or voids in less than seven minutes from start to finish.

Robotic functionality in total station Sokkia Corporation’s new robotic total station, DX-105AC+, provides a feature-packed solution for one-person operations. The DX robotic solution sets the standard for design, performance and price at the entry level of the robotic total station market. Its 360-degree prism and MESA data controller with MAGNET v2.0 provides a perfect entry-level robotic package. The new DX Auto Tracking Kit comes on a USB memory stick and can be installed on any standard DX unit.

The upgrade can be made easily at any time.

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Fast 3D measurements at your fingertips The smallest and lightest laser scanner in the market - Focus3D by FARO is the ideal tool for indoor and outdoor applications. Focus3D X 330 offers extra long-range (330 m) integrated GPS and the possibility to perform scanning even in bright sunlight. Remote scanning as well as almost limitless scan data sharing via SCENE Webshare Cloud make the laser scanning solution truly mobile.

First multipurpose oblique/3D sensor

Handheld controller for construction industry

Tapping the rapidly growing oblique and 3D sensing market Visual Intelligence unveiled its iOne n-Oblique sensor. The multi-purpose, high-performance sensor allows data collection companies of all sizes to take advantage of the new revenue opportunities related to oblique and 3D imagery. With the iOne n-Oblique, Visual Intelligence provides a solution which is more productive and more accurate than single-purpose solutions that are being marketed for oblique and 3D use.

Topcon Positioning Group has announced the new FC-336 data controller designed specifically for the construction industry. The new feature-rich controller is dust and waterproof (IP68 environmental rating, submerged up to a metre or three feet), has a Windows 6.5 operating system and built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, according to Ray Kerwin, director of global planning­–survey products.

The FC-336 unit also includes languages other than English (Spanish, French and German) and an optional global cellular modem.

Handheld for sub-metre accuracy CHC unveiled the LT400HS GNSS handheld receiver for survey, construction and GIS professionals. The LT400HS is a 120-channel GPS+GLONASS handheld receiver designed to achieve sub-metre SBAS positioning to centimetre accuracy in RTK networks. Bundled with Carlson’s SurvCE software, the LT400HS is a cost-effective GNSS RTK survey solution for survey and construction professionals.Combined with DigiTerra Explorer Mobile GIS software, the LT400HS GNSS handheld offers feature-rich solution for accurate GIS field data collection and maintenance.

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The force that drives smarter decisions Intergraph Geospatial 2013 is the first and only comprehensive solution that connects all geospatial genres, integrating photogrammetry, remote sensing, and GIS into a streamlined system. The united portfolio drives smarter decisions and supports configurable customer workflows. Software maintenance customers can now download their products within this portfolio and exploit the wealth of information contained in multi-source content, share it rapidly (and securely), and deliver it on-demand as reliable and actionable information.

Solution for intelligence community analysts BAE Systems’ GXP WebView, a lightweight, universal Web-based Electronic Light Table (ELT) allows users to find and exploit mission-critical geospatial data using only a Web browser. Integrated with the GXP Xplorer search capability, WebView provides fast, HTML 5 access to imagery of any format, as well as functionality to modify the image, exploit it, and publish the resulting finished product. It delivers on a long-standing requirement for the intelligence community to rapidly add imagery into intelligence reporting and situational awareness products.

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Enhancing information mobility The first version of Bentley Map Mobile debuted in 2013. It empowers infrastructure professionals to share Bentley Map geospatial information with field technicians via Android-based mobile devices. With this App, infrastructure professionals can readily share geospatial data with non-GIS specialists in the field, including installation and maintenance teams, construction and engineering technicians, and inspectors. This enhanced information mobility provides these specialists with continuous, realtime access to up-to-date geospatial information.

Accelerating geoint analysis NVIDIA's GeoInt Accelerator platform provides defence and homeland security analysts with tools that enable faster processing of high-resolution satellite imagery, facial recognition in surveillance video, combat mission planning using GIS data, and object recognition in video collected by drones. It provides developers the opportunity to unleash the power of GPU computing to quickly combine the variety and volume of data sources at the speed needed for mission support, enabling new levels of performance with minimal investment.

Streamlining design and construction processes Autodesk’s BIM 360 Glue extends the BIM process from design to construction by providing all stakeholders access to project information for model coordination and clash detection via desktop, mobile and Web. With BIM 360 Glue, enhanced cloud-based collaboration and mobile access ensure the participation of the entire project team in the coordination process, minimising the coordination cycles and providing teams with tools to view the designs wherever they are located.

Broaden the reach of your spatial info The ArcGIS Explorer Desktop includes new features and enhancements to make it a more powerful tool in an enterprise GIS, including content sharing via ArcGIS Online, tabular information display and new presentation tools. ArcGIS Explorer Desktop is a free GIS viewer that enables the exploration and visualisation of GIS information. The new version allows users to upload GIS content directly to ArcGIS Online accounts, where anyone with Internet access can see it.

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Dip Of Faith: Image of the world’s largest religious congregation, the Maha Kumbh Mela, held in India shows millions of people at the bank of River Ganges taking the holy dip. Multi-coloured tents transform the mudflats into a massive festival campsite.

Rainbow of splitting Earth: The image reveals the changes in water level in western Uganda. The area pictured is part of the Albertine Rift where the Somali Plate is splitting away from the rest of the continent.

Quicker than pizza delivery: Setting a record, DMCii and Spacemetric delivered this satellite image of Rome in just 11 minutes flat.

Mud-pie island: A new island, Zalzala Koh, emerged from the sea after a huge quake struck Pakistan. The 'mud volcano' has sunk 10 feet into the sea since its initial appearance.

Not a cloud in the sky: Google has removed clouds from the satellite imagery found in Google Maps and Google Earth for a clearer view of the planet. This image is of Saudi Arabia.

A giant split: A large iceberg has split away from the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica. The big chunk of floating ice is 21 by 12 miles, or 252 square miles (a bit smaller than Singapore).

6,000-mile-long panorama: NASA captured the world's largest panoramic photo at 6,000 miles long and 120 miles wide. The swath is made up of 56 still images and stretches from northern Russia (image on top) down to South Africa (image at bottom).

The first look: NASA's Landsat 8 transmitted this image of Fort Collins, Colorado, the very first view from the satellite. The satellite was launched on February 11, 2013.

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Corner Office | Greg Bentley

‘Consumerisation is driving in geospatial infrastructure’ Adoption of information mobility in construction has been one of the most significant developments in the past one year and its reach can be further extended with geospatial content to support integrated construction projects, feels Greg Bentley, CEO, Bentley Systems, as he talks of the business and technology trends at the Year in Infrastructure 2013 Conference

The fact that 96% of Bentley Systems is owned by our colleagues enables us to take a long-term view of the business in comparison to our publicly traded peers, whose horizon is typically one quarter at a time. By end of 2013 we see our revenues at $600 million 34

Bentley has registered growth over the last few years. How has this been made possible in the backdrop of recession?

Our growth was a straight line until 2008, at which point our revenues were just over $500 million. However, after the global financial meltdown, there was an interruption since our work involves sustaining infrastructure, and infrastructure investments certainly took a hit during that time. But we are pleased to have stayed the course.

One positive change during those five years has been the increase in the proportion of our company that is owned by our colleagues, which is now 96%. This lets us take a long-term view in comparison to our publicly traded peers, whose horizon is typically a quarter at a time. We think that in these five years we have done the right things to be well situated now for the long term, and by the end of 2013 our revenues should reach $600 million.

At our Year in infrastructure 2013 Conference, there was a greater level of energy and enthusiasm for continued growth in infrastructure investments. It is one of the reasons we are in London for our conference, where, in spite of the prevailing austerity, the government sees the wisdom of infrastructure investment. And the advantage of this invest-

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ment is to the private sector as well — the ‘UK plc’ commercial community of expertise in infrastructure and BIM. At Bentley we prefer saying ‘B/IM’, by which we mean a reach [represented by the slash] to greater depth of information modelling that provides better decisions leading to better performing infrastructure assets [the ‘B’], as well as to greater breadth of information mobility collaboration across the lifecycle of infrastructure, from design to construction to operations [the ‘IM’]. In particular, we want to make sure that the effective strategies that have been identified by this year’s Be Inspired-nominated projects are imparted to the world at large to help everyone gain advantage. Moreover, we want to identify and consider the emerging strategies to help us all extend our reach further.

What are your strategies to give momentum to established markets like the US and Europe in the face of the ongoing slowdown in all spheres of businesses? Also, how do you plan to capture the emerging markets, where there are a lot of very large government-based projects but they do not always encompass geospatial or BIM technologies as part of their policy documentation?

Annually, we update the Bentley Infrastructure 500 ranking of the top owners of infrastructure around the world from both the public and private sectors. In compiling these rankings, we measure the infrastructure value of organisations’ respective tangible fixed assets and net of depreciation etc. Our 2013 update found that two-thirds of the cumulative infrastructure investment was from private-sector owners.

However, public owners are important as well. Examples of recent large public works projects include Crossrail, High Speed Two, and Thames Tideway Tunnel in the UK. The organisations driving these projects all have in mind integration across an impressive depth of information modelling and breadth of collaboration, so much so that they have spelt out standards for each of these goals.

The developing world has the advantage of learning from projects such as these.

For instance, the Crossrail-Bentley BIM Academy, for better asset performance and information mobility, has been visited by experts from many developing countries. Developing countries actually have a chance to leapfrog the learning curve by surpassing [as the UK describes it] ‘Level 1’ B/IM which involves using information modelling for visualisation of design, to go to ‘Level 2’ B/IM for optioneering, as well as collaboration into construction, and then to ‘Level 3’, where they will complete the reach to immersion in information modelling, and in information mobility all the way through to operations. In all cases, we need to include the geospatial context of the project.

computer technology. They have been using spreadsheets, models, and schedules, and these have not been connected. McGraw Hill just introduced a SmartMarket report on information mobility in construction. It surveyed building contractors in the US, and the responses substantiate almost doubledigit cost and schedule savings, and the RoI benefits of a couple of percent — all from the use of apps in the field.

But the magic is in the collaboration servers, to provide [in our terminology] the right mobile i-models that have provenance, ensuring that users have the right data. With

How do you see the adoption of such technologies? Even among private players, the construction sector seems to be slow in adopting this technology.

Bentley started on the design side, and early on I wondered whether those in construction relied much on computing. But I have since learnt you can’t do a construction project well without software contributions.

But construction professionals had long been largely on their own applying Geospatial World | December 2013

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Corner Office | Greg Bentley

Construction projects are integrated projects, whether via design-build joint venturing or public-private partnerships. In such cases, best practices always come to the fore for enhanced RoI, and taking advantage of the geospatial context is always a best practice on any integrated project

an i-model, they can see the data rectified into rows and columns so they can work with quantities in spreadsheets and access databases they are familiar with. Tying all of that together is our big announcement of Bentley’s ProjectWise Construction Work Package Server, an off-the-shelf system for managing the lifecycle of construction work packages that completes the reach for construction information mobility.

Our ProjectWise Dynamic Plot Service addresses the challenge of drawings and paper in the field by creating an intelligent link between paper plots and digital models, shrinking the time required to sync written comments and digital data from days to seconds.

Soon, connected through our Bentley CONNECT cloud environment, users in the field will be able to hold their mobile phones up to anything printed, plotted, or rendered, either on paper or their mobile device screens, to read a QR code. They will then get a green or red signal to indicate, through the Bentley CONNECT cloud back to the source of authority in ProjectWise or AssetWise, whether it is a valid plot that is still current.

The annual global construction sector is estimated about $7 trillion. What according to you is driving such investments in construction and what is the potential of geospatial technology in construction?

Increasingly, construction projects are integrated projects, whether via design-build joint venturing or public-private partnerships, in each case with private investment at stake. In such cases, best practices always come to the fore for enhanced RoI, and taking advantage of the geospatial context is always a best practice on any integrated project.

Information mobility and its reach can be further extended with geospatial content to enhance integrated construction projects.

To construct, we start with the physical world, which we survey. So documentation of the physical world is brought into a virtual

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process of design, from which comes back the design documentation from which to build, historically as 2D drawings. But our apps provide design documentation through 3D models, which can include the 2D drawings in context through an innovation we named hypermodelling.

In the next step, the physical world is 3D, and our virtual world is now represented in 3D documentation, so we can now align the physical world with this. The physical world intrinsically has real-world location or the geospatial element. When our software creates the 3D model and references the 2D documentation in that, the model becomes geo-coordinated.

So when we put together documentation of the physical world in the form of 3D imaging such as laser-scanned point clouds, the 3D virtual documentation aligns the contexts for navigating and then constructs the physical world through the virtual world.

This geospatial aspect for improving and perfecting the alignment of the documentation between the physical and the virtual is, in fact, the key enabler. It is what Level 3 B/IM is all about. For this ‘operational immersion’, you

at the Year in Infrastructure 2013 Conference, almost always the new effective strategies were about modularisation: pre-assembly, dividing the work up around the world, and then bringing modules together on site for a process plant, a mine, or an offshore platform. But that ‘industrialisation’ evolution of construction cannot happen without information mobility by which the models are shared out to and from the supply chain, to make sure it all fits together, physically as well as schematically, when it comes together in the field. And, of course, this ‘coming together on the site’ is, again, a geospatial challenge.

need more than GPS. You need what I refer to as ‘3PS’, for the ‘Z’ axis as well. That entails either provisioning the construction of the asset site with ‘total station’ arrays of sensors from which to provide local 3PS, or else through ubiquitous computing, to capture images from the physical world, which can be indexed into the digital model world to calibrate where you are in real time. You would then be able to take advantage of innovations like virtual excavation to know what is below the street you are standing on — something that would be crucial not only to infrastructure maintainers but also, for example, to first responders in an emergency.

All this information mobility potential is exciting both for construction and operations.

It enables a higher return from the same ‘B/IM’ investment. You mentioned the annual $7 trillion investment in construction, but the major and real enabler for higher RoI is the investment in consumer-driven technologies involving devices and communications, along with software advances that make it possible to apply these information mobility advancements in the ‘industrial’ settings of infrastructure.

In the sessions I have chanced to attend

Apart from the construction and infrastructure verticals which are the other sectors Bentley sees as good business prospects?

According to a new ARC Advisory Group report on market share and revenues, we are pleased that Bentley has been acknowledged as number 1 in electric power generation; mining and metals; electric power transmission, distribution, and communications; water and wastewater distribution; and for EPC [engineering, procurement, and construction] contractors and AEC [architecture, engineering, and construction] sectors.

So these, obviously, are some of the markets with good business potential for us.

In current times we see more challenges in maintaining the existing infrastructure. How is Bentley gearing up to this challenge?

It is a terrific question because the infrastructure investment by just the Bentley Infrastructure 500 top owners this year has reached about $15 trillion, net of depreciation. If we could together improve their return on that investment, look at the magnitude of opportunity for all the rest of our users who serve owners!

What is different and exciting in 2013 in terms of operations is that an owner can now

All infrastructure assets can now have 3D as-operated models.

That provides information mobility opportunities to align, index and reference these intuitively navigable 3D models to their virtual documentation, including their design and analysis

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Corner Office | Greg Bentley

At our Year in Infrastructure 2013 Conference, there was a greater level of energy and enthusiasm for continued growth in infrastructure investments. It was one of the reasons we were in London for our conference, where in spite of the prevailing austerity, the government sees the wisdom of infrastructure investment 38

feasibly have 3D models of infrastructure assets. Today, you can even buy a laser scanner that you can attach to your iPad or iPhone for a few hundred dollars. That, in turn, provides information mobility opportunities to align, index and reference these intuitively navigable 3D models to their virtual documentation, including their design and analysis. This might enable inspections to interactively consider past inspections, and failure modes and effects analysis to improve reliability and resilience.

There are huge opportunities to more safely and efficiently maintain the existing infrastructure. For example, EPCOR Utilities in Alberta, Canada, has implemented our AssetWise Ivara for developing, implementing, and managing reliability improvement strategies for the infrastructure assets which they already geospatially manage with Bentley Systems software. Geo-Edmonton, a consortium of all the utilities in Edmonton, share updated 3D design models of their utility networks, and planned works, every night. The Edmonton utilities have very commendably cooperated in this respect, with geospatial information mobility now increasing public safety.

UK’s Network Rail has rolled out a programme called LADS (Linear Asset Decision System). Based on our Optram software, LADS empowers track superintendents to make maintenance decisions in daily operations.

Bentley has been a great believer in research and development and it usually sets aside a fixed percentage of revenues for R&D. So what new innovations are we likely see in the coming days?

Our benchmark is to reinvest 20% of our revenues into R&D, but that percentage has actually gone up. We have been able and willing to spend more because of the long-term perspective I mentioned earlier.

The Applied Research and Development presentation at our conference demonstrated a number of capabilities, including augmented reality. This provides ways of aligning the physical and digital world to accomplish asset health modelling. For instance, in water systems operations, it is important to

Geospatial World | December 2013

discern where the inevitable [but invisible underground] leaks are occurring, not only to save revenue but to prevent sinkholes. With asset health modelling you take the model that is designed for the network and compare it to what the sensors report are the actual pressures. To make use of the as-measured readings, you begin permuting the design using a genetic algorithm to converge to a different design that would fit the data as to these pressures. It might indicate what was designed as a 10-inch pipe seems to be acting like a 12-inch pipe, and that could mean you have probably found without any digging that there is a leak.

In general, when it comes to R&D, we really do not need to ‘invent’ ourselves, but rather just innovatively advance the application, for infrastructure projects and assets, of inventions flowing from consumer economics [for example, mobile devices becoming portable lasers, and so on]. So, you could say that ‘consumerisation’ is driving, facilitating, enabling, and accelerating ‘industrialisation’ in geospatial infrastructure.

What according to you is the most exciting thing about this industry that has taken place in the past year?

The past year has seen a number of important developments, but one of the most significant has been the adoption of information mobility, by way of apps and servers, in construction. The project teams of some of the construction finalists at our conference made it clear that they would never go back to their old ways of doing things.

Too often the construction industry is characterised as being slow moving, but I do not think that is being fair. These professionals make up their minds and then they are resolute about exploiting process changes. In the industries they serve, we can together contribute to savings in terms of total installed cost; or FW time to production in mining, plant or offshore projects; or in time saved by the citizens in metro projects. These are tremendous sources of value for us in the geospatial community to serve and to share.’

THEME

CONVERGING

Geospatial Trade & Practices

5 - 7 FEBRUARY, 2014 Hyderabad International Convention Centre, Hyderabad, India

R.S. SHARMA Chief Secretary Govt. of Jharkhand

BHUPINDER SINGH Senior Vice President Bentley Systems USA

DR. SHAILESH NAYAK Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences

DR. S. SUBBA RAO

DR. S. AYYAPPAN

P.D. MEENA

Chairman & CEO Rolta Group

Secretary, DARE & Director General, ICAR, Ministry of Agriculture

Additional Secretary Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development

JUERGEN DOLD

K. K. SINGH

STEVEN BERGLUND President & CEO Trimble, USA

DR. L.S. RATHORE Director General India Meteorological Department

DR. V.K. DHADWAL

AMAR HANSPAL*

Surveyor General Survey of India

Director, National Remote Sensing Centre

Senior Vice President Information Modeling Product Autodesk USA

B. N. SHARMA

DR. J.N. SINGH

MAJ GEN (DR.) R. SIVA KUMAR

SUSHIL GUPTA

M. S. NAGAR

Chairman, Central Ground Water Board

Chairman, Expert Appraisal Committee(Mining), Ministry of Environment & Forests

Joint Secretary Ministry of Power

Managing Director Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd

DR. J.P. MISHRA

DR. ANDREAS ULRICH

BARBARA RYAN

JOSEPH PLAPPALLIL J.

Adviser (Agriculture) Planning Commission of India

CTO, RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems, Germany

Secretariat Director Group on Earth Observations Switzerland

Chairman cum Managing Director, Agriculture Insurance Company of India, Ministry of Finance

President, Hexagon Geosystems Switzerland

STEVEN HAGAN

CEO, National Spatial Data Infrastructure

Vice President Server Technologies, Oracle USA

MARK REICHARDT

DR. JOSEF STROBL

President & CEO Open Geospatial Consortium, USA

Director, Department of GeoInformatics University of Salzburg, Austria

*Tentative

STRATEGIC SPONSORS

ASSOCIATE SPONSOR

PLATINUM SPONSOR

GOVERNMENT PARTNERS

GOLD SPONSORS

CO-ORGANISERS

Punjab Remote Sensing Centre

www.indiageospatialforum.org

ORGANISER

Cover Story | Esri

Where passion meets cutting-edge tech From being an environmental research institute, Esri has grown into a global geospatial player today. With a mission and culture to innovate, it continues to nurture the enterprise segment, enable governments and organisations across the world

F

orty three years after they ended, the 1960s remain the most interesting yet controversial decade of the 20th century American history. Martin Luther King Jr and the defining moments of the American Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, a phenomenon called JFK — a young, charismatic President who stole the hearts of the entire nation, The Hippies Movement, the Environmental Movement...

Fact File »» Established: 1969 »» HQ: Redlands, CA, USA »» Revenues: $1.4 bn (2012) »» Employees: 3,000+ »» Offices: 10 regional offices in the USA »» Distributors: 80+ outside the USA »» Partners: 1,800+ across the world

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Geospatial World | December 2013

All these changes and many others had a dramatic impact on altering the nation’s future.

In June 1969, when Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River, a river fouled with industrial waste, caught fire and burned, the American environmental movement was born. The following months saw a sudden spring in the awareness of the environment, discussions on environment versus development and signing of a flurry of environmental laws. For the first time, environment was at the vanguard of a new government ethic.

The happenings spurred Jack Dangermond, a landscape architect and a student at the Harvard Lab, bring rational thinking to this space to better ground the discussions on environmental change and environmental conservation/ protection. Underneath that was a broad and fundamental thought that geography could be the foundation for integrating different kinds of sciences, different kinds of ‘ologies’, and bring geospatial information together so that it could be used for decision making, be it in land use, mining, forestry, natural resources, economic development and others.

“As a student, I was attracted to what the Harvard Lab was doing in the area of spatial analytics. I was inspired to start Esri (Environmental Systems Research Institute) along with

my wife Laura, as an organisation that would apply computational geography for environmental planning and geographic decision making,” recollects Dangermond, who remains the company’s CEO. Today, Esri supports 350,000 organisations worldwide, and is gearing up to enable hundreds of thousands of oth-

ers to scale up their operations and capabilities and solve complex problems. It has 3000+ employees, 10 regional offices in the USA, 80+ distributors outside of USA, 1800+ partners across the world, serves 33 vertical markets with its products and solutions and a leading player in the global geospatial industry.

We do not try to be a great company from financial point of view. Wall Street doesn’t matter to us. What matters to us is seeing neat stuff done to our customers

— JACK

DANGERMOND, CEO & President, Esri

Net worth: $2.5 bn (Forbes, Sept 2013)

#222 in Forbes 400 richest people in America

#554 Forbes billionaires of the world Geospatial World | December 2013

41

Cover Story | Esri 1500

Steady Growth 1,125

1200

1,185

1,400 1,260

900 600 300 0

2009

2010

2011

2012

Indicative figures of revenue in mn $

The Rise and Growth of Esri Starting off as a consulting company to make maps and do analytics using experimental software from Harvard Lab, locating new terrains, coastal zone studies, land-use planning studies, site identification involved just a few of the hundreds of projects the company did over a decade. All through the process, it kept improving its software and methods. A decade of projects and demand for a software product later, Esri began developing one, initially based on open source code but later as a COTS product. This gave birth to ARC/INFO (ArcInfo or now ArcGIS for Desktop Advanced) in 1982.

Esri’s objective was to build a first principles core platform that could be applied to many applications. “It was like SQL

by CARB; it was the development of first principles library of initially vector and later raster geoprocessing functions that could be commercially made available,” says Dangermond.

Esri also developed its own scripting language ARC Macro Language, AML. “People liked the horizontal philosophy because they could customise it for different applications within their own city/company/agency,” reminisces Dangermond. It was initially called a toolbox with a command line — a series of tools that people would configure through scripting languages into applications that supported vertical markets.

Technology advancements in the 1990s, including the availability of faster and cheaper computers, the beginning

1969

1973

Jack and Laura Dangermond start Esri in Redlands, California

First commercially developed statewide GIS for Maryland delivered

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Geospatial World | December 2013

of electronic data publishing, opening up of commercial earth observation industry, and new data capture techniques like the GPS spurred rapid growth of the GIS industry and Esri was quick to take full advantage of it. ArcView, the company’s first desktop solution, opened up a world of possibilities to a whole new group of users. AML for desktops was modified as SML and a set of modules called Arc Objects were marketed for deploying ArcInfo based customised solutions which could work independently. During the late 1990s, Esri re-engineered ARC/INFO to develop a modular and scalable GIS platform that would work both on the desktop and across the enterprise. The result was ArcGIS. In short, five successive rounds of re-development of the core platform through the years, this horizontal technology, which largely focused on project work in the beginning, is today adopted by individuals, departments and by large enterprises alike.

From Strength to Strength With a strong focus on research and innovation, driven by a bunch of passionate and committed professionals, Esri grew from strength to strength, mostly organically. This is in contrast with technology companies acquiring for gaining financial strength and/or diversification. However, Esri has been acquiring small companies for about 20 years now, only to get its hands on interesting technology and advance its thinking or for competent people. It has integrated the acquired companies into the core of its business and in some cases set them up as independent development laboratories. At the same time, Esri has set up other independent laboratories in China, Russia, France, Australia and the USA. Carefully managed growth and zero debt have given Esri stability that is uncommon in today’s volatile business world.

After 40+ years of its founding, Esri continues to be a privately owned company, with majority shares being held by the Dangermonds. It is rooted in the philosophy that private ownership means no stockholders forcing short-term decisions at the expense of long-term objectives. And Dangermond minces no words about it: “We are in this evolving geospatial industry because of the smart people here who are interested in crafting and creating tools that actually work. In that re-

1979 First newsletter titled ‘Newsletter’ hits streets.

Renamed ArcNews in 1987

1981 16 people attend first User Conference

spect, our motivations are different from a typical public company that is into this business. We do not try to make money or be a great company from financial point of view. Wall Street doesn’t matter to us. Quarterly revenues do not matter to us.

What matters to us is seeing neat stuff done to our customers.”

While as a private company, it is not bound to disclose its financials, Esri is known to have weathered several difficult financial situations, including the global slowdown a few years ago when it saw its growth drop to 5.5-6%. Esri claims carefully managed growth and zero debt as its credentials and challenges to compete with all the publicly traded technology companies in geospatial domain. However, in the absence of any disclosed information about its financial standing and leadership hierarchy and succession, a section of the enterprise users are concerned about continued investments of Esri to ensure innovation into cutting edge technology in the long run.

Nurturing Vertical Markets As the GIS market started to mature towards late 1980s and early 1990s, there was greater need to focus on the vertical markets.

Esri began developing teams to address vertical markets but quickly realised that this was not scalable. Esri’s conservative approach towards business and its reluctance to borrow from the market put a limit on its scalability. While Esri could do vertical communications and marketing, it needed partners to be able to build on top of its platform technology for different vertical markets.

Industry managers started helping customers in different domains, using the toolbox to adapt to their areas and finding business partners to develop solutions. For example, in the utilities sector, Esri’s core platform offers a rich array of capabilities that include full map authoring and production, real-time data processing for big data applications, geoservices, such as geocoding and geo-fencing and a wide array of imagery services. Esri’s LiDAR offering is particularly valuable for electric transmission operators. “In this space, we rely heavily on partners to enhance the core offerings with specific work flow oriented applications, such as pipeline integrity management, electric, gas and water design solutions, vegetation management, gas distribution integrity management compliance apps and many, many more,” informs Bill Meehan, Director-Utilities.

1982 Esri enters the software business with ARC/INFO

1986 Proliferation of IBM PCs results in PC ARC/INFO.

Business Lessons in a Nursery!

My father had three acres of probably a 1,000 different types of plants. He was successful in the nursery business because he made sure that there were no weeds; every plant was watered, every plant was pruned and changed pots on time. He was very responsive towards customers. It required our attention 24X7. Running a business is like running a nursery. One has to keep an eye on everything to be successful. The nursery business is diverse; it is living, it is creative, requires marketing etc. It requires several people to work as a team and I learnt the importance of team work there. I learnt that money was very important, because my parents had no money, just as I had no money when I started. I learnt that building up capital reserves and creating a strong financial foundation was very important to run a company.

— Jack Dangermond

Similarly, Esri spent considerable effort in building a technology platform that could be configured to meet the specific in-country legal structure and cadastral needs. This means that as new capabilities are available with core ArcGIS releases, land administration organisations can take advantage of them without costly additional customisation. “The efficiencies and new capabilities that Esri brings to LAS [land administration systems] combined with the partner capabilities, ensure a successful, sustainable LAS implementation,” says Brent Jones, Global Manager, Cadastre/Land Records. Esri partners too spend considerable effort with legal policy and procedures to enable the creation of LAS, SDI, and all supporting policy infrastructure.

Esri has recently started developing vertical templates that help its business partners and also end users to configure its basic COTS platform within different domains like utilities, local govt, forestry, environment, military etc. “The idea of these solution templates is to get customers and partners up and running with no customisation and just a little configuration.

Some customers have deployed production applications in days. These solution templates leverage their investment in

1987

1991

Annual user conference hosted in Palm Springs

Esri releases ArcView for desktop users

Geospatial World | December 2013

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Cover Story | Esri

their core GIS from Esri,” asserts Meehan.

Today, Esri serves 33 verti»» 350,000 organisations cal markets with its products worldwide and solutions. According to »» 200 largest cities in Chris Cappelli, Global Sales the US Director, the verticals of top priority for Esri globally »» More than 7,000 include government, utilities, colleges and universities commercial, energy and »» 2/3 of Fortune 500 natural resources. “Another companies market, which is not actually a »» More than 1mn vertical market but a horidesktops zontal market for us comes with the idea of bringing »» Thousands of Web location and analysis into and enterprise servers other operational systems. It all started with the acquisition of Geoloqi and since then we have moved on to include SAP Business Objects, Cob News, MicroStrategy etc. That is a new market space and people working in this space will probably not be traditional GIS experts,” he explains.

Also, Esri orchestrated a change in its selling strategy recently to maintain competencies in the vertical markets and ensure that its employees across different operating units are hyper-focused on providing best services to the customers. “As a result, we witnessed substantial growth in four-five sectors, specifically utilities, energy, commercial, national government,” adds Cappelli.

Esri Users

Business Philosophy: Customer First A business may choose to serve its stock owners, may choose to serve its employees or it may choose to serve its customers.

In the case of Esri, it chose early on to focus on continued innovation and serving of the customers.

“We are wired as an organisation that serves its customers and by serving them, we get paid and get the opportunity to use the funds to innovate and drive the technology which in turn is provided to them,” underlines Dangermond. Unlike many others in the industry, Esri is blessed with the unique opportunity of starting early on and building its capabilities. In

1994

esri.com launched

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1995 Esri hits 1,000 employee mark

Geospatial World | December 2013

fact, Esri finds a real sense of satisfaction in seeing great minds working at crafting architectures and engineering tools that help its customers.

And when customers vouch for the technology and the benefit accrued out of it, it is even more rewarding. The Bavarian State Forest Administration is one such case in point.

It started using Esri technology in 2000 with 10 users for scientific purposes, but has scaled up its activities hence and now has 1,200 users working on the Bavarian Forest Information System (BayWIS). Christian Simbeck of Bavarian State Forest Administration acknowledges, “We are happy with the support from Esri Germany and Esri Inc. Our solution partner, INTEND of Germany and we share a very close relationship with the sales and technical staff at Esri.”

Serving the customer is an organisational culture at Esri.

“You may do your best job but unless the person for whom you are doing it appreciates it, he/she is never going to pay for it and/or is never coming back to ask for more. We serve our customers for a long term,” says Cappelli, as he explains that all programmes, teams, and activities of the company are sculpted around this fundamental philosophy. “As we get bigger, it gets harder to maintain that. We try to balance as best as possible living through Jack’s mission of transforming the world with GIS.” Customers in fact see it more as a long-term technology

ArcGIS APIs and SDKs help developers in building web and mobile applications that meet specific workflows and provide rich geographic content interaction on any device

1996 MapObjects, Esri’s first foray into component-based software unveiled

1997

User Conference moves to San Diego to accommodate 7,000 users

User Connect

The uniqueness of Esri is its user-centredness. To maintain the userconnect, Esri hosts the popular International User’s Conference every year, which was first held on the Redlands campus in 1981 with 16 attendees. More recently, the User’s Conference has been held in San Diego for the past 10 years. About 15,000 users across industries attend this conference every year, representing nearly every industry sector, government organisation, and NGOs. For five days in one place, this conference provides up to 16 hours of training in Esri software, hundreds of presentations from other GIS users, and opportunities to get specific technical questions answered by Esri staff. The event also includes vendor and map displays from around the world and special interest group meetings that connect users with GIS users from other regions and industry. The abundance of user-to-user communication enriches understanding about real-life GIS experiences, solutions and tips. partner and not just as a vendor. “As long as we are sure and are comforted that Esri’s offerings and development roadmap are in line with our strategic plans, and as long as we continue to experience first class enhancements in the technological tools, stability, capabilities and company support, we will continue to regard this technology as a core to our business,” asserts Yoav Tal, Director for National Spatial Databases and Prof Yaron Felus, Chief Scientist, Survey of Israel, which has been using Esri technology for over two decades now.

About a third of Esri’s business is from enterprise licence agreements and they range from very large organisations to very small. With large enterprises, Esri believes in value-based sale and renewals, and takes pride in 100% renewal rate but with smaller organisations, it tries not to make price as a barrier.

Unique Business Model Unlike many multinational companies which try and reach every country and every culture, Esri operates in a federated system. While it has 11 offices across US and deals with domestic customers directly, Esri chose to invest and work elsewhere in the world through a growing network of diverse and heterogeneous companies as distributors and partners, who help each other and also help local users. In 1988-89, it initiated a business partner programme (over 1,800 partners as on date), collaborating with companies/organisations that built unique and focused applications and provided custom services in different domains. Today, Esri works with Snider

1998

ArcUser begins publication with news, tutorials

Electric in electricity, Telco in telecommunications etc, but for every one of those, there are half a dozen of others like IBM and SAP in the field of business intelligence.

The partner network also brings a wide range of knowledge and expertise and enables technology transfer, sale of products, serve GIS and geospatial education, training and capacity building in the countries of their operation. The beauty of this business model lies in the aspect that for product sale, distributors operate in the designated countries/regions, but for services, the whole world is their business turf. Esri doesn’t have a role to play in this and the distributors/partners are free to operate in countries where there are no conflict of interest.

Companies that work with distributors and partners often encounter the challenge of maintaining credibility, professional ethos and continuity in the translation of its vision. However in Esri’s case, vast majority of its distributors are friends with Dangermond first, bringing the same zeal and passion to the market place. “Distributors and partners are our family. We travel with them, meet customers along with them, train them and take feedback from them,” says Cappelli. The annual Esri User Conference sees partners and distributors congregate along with their users, thus giving the company an opportunity to understand their needs and take feedback on the products and services.

Also, in many cases Esri has direct investment in the distributor/partner company. For instance, Esri India is a JV between NIIT Technologies and Esri Inc, and Dangermond is on

1999

First GIS Day held in alliance with National Geographic

2001

2004

Following 9/11 attacks, Esri aids recovery efforts in NYC, Pentagon

ArcGIS 9 adds development framework and server platform

Geospatial World | December 2013

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Cover Story | Esri

“Users often say Esri is a matchmaker of sorts, connecting various organisations. I would say that is our biggest value proposition vis-à-vis our competition.

— Chris Cappelli Global Sales Director, Esri

the board of directors from day one. “Before we entered into the JV, Jack had extensive discussions with Rajendra Pawar, Chairman and Co-Founder of NIIT Group,” informs Rajesh C. Mathur, Vice-Chairman of Esri India. “We found a strong match of cultures. The values that NIIT stands for, the professional outlook and the strong passion we bring to our work are very similar to the cultural ethos of Esri Inc. Therefore, it was not difficult to create a strong partnership and bonding,” Mathur says, adding that this kind of business model has helped Esri India retain its flexibility, imbibe and evolve local business practices/models with changing technology and serve the local requirements of the users.

The basic value system and the congruence built over the years of working with regular coordination has enabled Esri and its partners work with one mind. In terms of relationship, Esri sees its distributor/partner as an extension of itself and as the face of Esri in the country. Quite often, Esri personnel meet the customers along with the distributor/partner and are active participants in the business deal. The entire ecosystem of Esri acknowledges, operates and thrives on these co-de-

pendencies and in fact is one of the reasons for Esri’s worldwide reach and success. However, this model inherently limits direct connect with users and understanding of their needs and restricts embracing of local best practices.

Also, though distributors share a long-term relationship with Esri, they have not invested much time in understanding and developing expertise in the 30-plus vertical markets the company serves. Acknowledging this as a weakness, Cappelli, however, argues that the primary objective of all the alignments is to provide a clear portfolio with rational prioritisation for each of the vertical markets. “This is an area where we are moving faster to get better. However, we cannot cater to all the 30-plus markets consistently in each of the countries/regions. There are not enough people and there is not enough domain expertise.

Traditionally, we leave it to the partner company and we have seen that as we step back in major markets, we have been able to re-prioritise our people around those markets faster.”

But in an increasingly competitive market, isn’t it worried about losing the market edge to competition? “I have been with Esri for more than 20 years. Our biggest strength is that we have people in the market, who lived and breathed the market for years, and who try to transform the market through the application of our tools,” says Cappelli. “Users often say Esri is a matchmaker of sorts, connecting various organisations. I would say that is our biggest value proposition vis-à-vis our competition. I cannot and will not tell a distributor what to do but can help to influence and shape what they do. This strategy clearly differentiates us from our competitors. We have a partner conference, a distributor meeting and user conference to maintain the connect. We spend time with them at these meetings, understand their experience and challenges, and that becomes part of our global strategy,” he adds.

Going Forward Initiating a second dimension to the organisation, Esri has started verticalising different divisions so that the sales, marketing, education, professional services, technology teams cut across the organisation with not simply vertical marketing but more vertical teams, often called matrix management in classic organisations. To facilitate better communication between the teams, it is creating special teams like social team, web

2005

2007

2010

2012

Esri Developer Network launched

ArcGIS Explorer released

ArcGIS 10 adds tools for users to share and access imagery

ArcGIS Online, a cloud-based mapping system, unveiled

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Geospatial World | December 2013

training team, web support team etc.

On the technology front, Esri has taken a big step with ArcGIS Online. One can simply subscribe to it for an affordable price and have all the data, storage, hardware, software and is simple to use.

ArcGIS online is open, one can plug it into any server that support WMS and WFS services or any raster services which are standard. It has open APIs and one can write apps based on these APIs and access and develop maps on those apps. With a completely different business model, ArcGIS Online is already seeing rapid uptake vis-a-vis the An Esri Story Map incorporates text, multimedia, and interactive functions to tell the JFK saga. traditional software.

Esri Story Maps inform, educate, entertain and inspire people about a wide variety of topics.

As part of software maintenance, Esri Most Story Maps are designated for non-technical audiences has started providing servers to all the desktop users. It is a strong believer of open standards. It has labs around the world. It offers software at deep discounts and started building base maps with community efforts and started actively helps local, regional, and global organisations create GIS connecting companies like DigitalGlobe, RapidEye, SPOT into education programmes. Its GeoMentor Program, for which it the system so that their content is available. However, Esri is very partnered with National Geographic Society, inspires educators clear that it does not want to become a content company. and geoprofessionals to adopt a school, class or club and enable Very recently, Esri launched the ‘Market Place’ and it already the youth develop skills in geographic thinking. Over the years, has a couple of dozens of apps and services that people can Esri donated software to more than 15,000 non-governmental purchase and use. The company is optimistic about this initiaorganisations doing conservation and humanitarian activities tive as many apps are free and open source, and positions this around the world, ranging from global organisations like The as a good will gesture towards partners and developers.

Nature Conservancy to local groups and clubs. “These activities have resulted in the development of a class of people who unBeyond Business derstand what to do with geographic data in a business setting.

Committed to the technology it believes has the potential I am interested in this activity, there is lot of good in that space, to transform the world, Esri spends about 22% of its revenue particularly in conservation globally. Getting people equipped on research and development. This is about 2-2.5 times more to be able to stand up and be peer-to-peer with both private than the research-spend of most technology companies. Esri sector organisations and government institutes is a better way prides it could invest that much in to R&D because it “is not of doing science and technology,” feels Dangermond. a public company”. It is involved in the development and engineering of tools that actually go into its portfolio and after Conclusion having multiple products in its portfolio, it is moving to one In a voyage of 44 years, Esri has seen competing companies product that is licensable and subscribable, usable with serveither approaching it or replicating its methods, driving it furers, cloud and clients, integrated as one system. It is focusing ther to innovate in technology space. With a collection of smart on releasing configurable templates for vertical industries. The people crafting products and solutions to real-world problems, desktop product is expected to take a huge jump next year in a loyal user group and a commitment to serve them, trusted terms of simplicity of use and is likely to transform and make alliances with partners and distributors, carefully managed fithe experience more app-like and Windows-8-like. nances and a vision par excellence that breathes and believes in Esri supports many global communities that are using GIS the power of geography to make a difference to the world, Esri to increase spatial literacy, protect the environment, assist with stands tall in the global geospatial landscape. disaster response, and support humanitarian affairs, with the Bhanu Rekha, Executive Editor aim of making the world a better place. Esri has long supbhanu@geospatialmedia.net ported the widespread use of GIS in classroom and research Geospatial World | December 2013

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Feature | Tourism

Let’s go somewhere anywhere EVERYWHERE It’s an exciting time to travel in this era.

The ubiquity of smartphones and 24X7 connectivity is bringing far-to-reach places closer to a tourist. Armed with destination plans and interactive maps, the nextgeneration traveller is all set to explore the new and old territories on any part of the planet

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Geospatial World | December 2013

W

hen Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in his masterpiece Treasure Island: “I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and I find it hard to believe,” he was simply narrating the adventures of a boy sailing to an unknown island in search of a bounty.

Little he did know, 130 years down the line, his words would turn out to be so prophetic, at least for travellers.

Of course, maps in various forms and a compass have been the must-haves of almost every traveller’s backpack even before and after Stevenson. That was the standard practice almost till 2005, when Google turned the world of mapping on its head with Google Earth and Google Maps.

An explosion in the Internet and smartphone market in the recent years added fuel to the fire. And today, maps play a central role at every step of tourism activities, not only during visits, but also in the planning and preparation stages. Additionally, with tourism coming up as a well-recognised industry on its own, mapping is playing a major role even in tourism marketing and management. No wonder then that even the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) recognised in 2010 that “georeferenced information plays an increasingly important

role for the global travel and tourism sector since the introduction of Google Maps”.

“A decade ago we relied on travel guides to tell us what, where and why. They were written by teams who visited and collected the information. They were good but unreliable,” says Simon Thompson, Director, Commercial Solutions, Esri. Today all of us are virtual tourists who are able to visit the remotest places from our tablets and smartphones. The weathered maps and compass have been replaced by digital maps while apps have taken the place of paper guides.

“The fact that now any individual using the Web can produce a map, publish it and potentially reach an audience of millions is truly groundbreaking,” says Ed Parsons, Geospatial Technologist, Google.

The new-age tools not only help travellers to plan their vacation but also suggest alternatives and provide alerts about interesting places to visit. “Our passive consumption of information has been transformed and now, tourist destinations and places to visit reach out to travellers via georeferenced coupons, social media and digital advertisements,” explains Thompson.

Tourism essentially involves spatial behaviour. “As tourism takes place in space, planning needs to consider spatial

awareness and information. Maps are the most important and efficient tools for this,” says Dr Georg Gartner, President of the International Cartographic Association. Mapping has become the benchmark through which people set their expectations of value and opportunity from tourism. In the words of Michael T. Jones, Google’s Chief Technology Advocate, “Maps have become a personal thing; they are not only about geography but also about restaurants or shops people want to visit. Today, it’s the people, and not the cartographer, asking the questions.”

A conscious tourist gathers necessary information before visiting a certain place. They do not want to miss out on anything, especially if it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. More and more tourists are looking at the ‘Top 10 things to do/see’ lists into tours and activity-based sites and apps. Tapping into this huge opportunity, Google has added onto its basic maps and is continuously redefining the market with things like fully integrated media experiences, 3D views and “come along with me” tour guides, changing the very way people think about tourism. Google Street View provides the virtual tours of parks, historic sites, museums etc. spread across the globe. Others like Microsoft’s Bing Maps, Nokia HERE and TomTom are following suit with expansion of their mapping services and new offerings.

For an unforgettable experience Despite a worldwide economic slowdown, demand for international tourism remained strong throughout the first eight months of 2013, according to the latest UNWTO World Tourism Barometer. Between January and August, the number of international tourists worldwide grew by 5%, driven by strong results in Europe, Asia and the Pacific and the Middle East.

In order to maintain this upward trend, countries have to put their best foot forward to woo the tourists and the application of information technology has developed rapidly.

9%

1 in 11

(direct, indirect & induced)

(direct, indirect & induced)

GDP

Jobs

No tourism ministry website is now complete without a map. While most feature a basic map listing various attractions, budget accommodations, restaurants, photos etc., some countries are going high tech to catch up with the latest trends.

Singapore’s ‘Street Directory’ is one such example. The website allows tourists to search for maps, businesses, products and services and provides a comprehensive building directory of any location on just one click. “Tourists can get complete information of ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘how to’ get to the location by bus, taxi, private car, with the fare and time,” says Irvinia Arumsari, GIS Specialist, Niko Asia, an electronics company. A host of European countries also have interactive sites with map features.

The ‘Amazing Thailand’ app powered by the Tourism Authority of Thailand provides travel information such as destination guides, events and festivals, shopping, food etc.

“The interactive maps provided by the portal and mobile apps are always more influential, impressive and informative for the tourist in comparison to the regular paper maps, and it facilitates his needs to find the attraction or tourist sites and the accommodation services,” says Adnan Al-Jaber, Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities, Tourism information & Research (MAS), Tourism Information Department. The Saudi kingdom is also using Web GIS and mapping apps to encourage tourism.

The state of Perak in Malaysia, rich in tourist attractions, adopted a Web-based GIS approach to raise awareness about the famous icons of the state. “A general Internet search may throw up superficial information, but we want to provide much more about the icons — their location, details and description. We want to add more visual appeal to these icons through geo-tagged information. We want to make the tourism-related information available to the public on the fingertips,” says Dato’ Dr Dolbani Mijan, Director, Perak Town & Country Planning Department, Malaysia.

$1.3 trn in exports

6%

of world’s exports

1.8 bn Global tourists forecast for 2030

Why Tourism Matters Geospatial World | December 2013

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Feature | Tourism

“This also helps travellers make more informed decisions on how to plan their routes,” points out Tarun Harnathka, Director, Products and Operations, Local Search Content and Navigation, South Asia, Nokia HERE Maps. HERE has built 3,700 points of interests (PoIs) under its service which lists historical monuments of India. The PoIs include temples, mosques, tombs, churches, cemeteries, forts, palaces etc.

In Israel, the Ministry of Tourism recently uploaded pictures, detailed information and links to over 300 tourist attractions throughout the country on Google Maps and Google Earth. The ministry has also launched a new user-based online forum, where tourists can post questions and get answers from ministry experts, tour guides, and other users. “This will create a direct link between potential tourists and Israeli tourist bodies, and enable new marketing channels,” notes Shaul Tzemah, Director-General, Israeli Tourism Ministry.

In US, the Pennsylvania state tourism office partnered with Google, NASA, Carnegie Melon University and the National Civil War Museum to create technology within Google Earth that would allow users to take interactive tours of historic sites, monuments and trails within American Civil War sites. This georeferenced content was designed to increase tourism in historic battle sites, like Gettysburg as it allowed users to take interactive museum-like tours of specific battle trails.

Concurs Thompson: “Many of the apps and mapping websites are taking volunteered information and using it to change the business model and customer interaction. OpenStreetMap is an obvious example of the feedback cycle and online sources such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, with their rich APIs, public com-

ments and feedback loops, are increasingly being mashed-up on top of the canvas layer of tourist information.”

Getting lost on a holiday is becoming a thing of the past.

There is a plethora of location services available today which help tourists navigate the world around them and even discover new places. “HERE traffic offers tourists detailed traffic information to get accurate routes and better estimated travel timings. Tourists can drive through the city without even knowing the routes, find public transport stations /stops, addresses, and points of interest, as well as choose from multiple routes and connections,” says Harnathka.

Geospatial technology can also be used to monitor and assess the tourist traffic. Perak town in Malaysia which has some of the oldest rainforests in the world used GIS to increase the tourist flow in the region. “Recently we held a festival for rainforests which witnessed participation from countries such as Azerbaijan, Australia, Singapore, India and so on. Such turnout was facilitated by increased awareness through geospatial information on the Web,” says Dr Mijan.

Immersive reality In a first, the tourism board of the Indian state of Kerala has chosen the virtual world to launch its path-breaking ‘Great Backwaters’ campaign. A separate micro-site has been developed for highlighting the vast network of backwater canals and lakes, the images of which have been taken aerially. “It is a tribute to the millions of travellers across the world who embrace technology everyday for knowing about and visiting their favourite destinations,” noted Suman Billa, Secretary, Kerala Tourism.

International Tourism 2012

International tourist arrival (ITA): 1,035 mn International tourist receipts (ITR): 1,075 bn

Europe ITA: $534 mn (52%) ITR: $458 bn (43%)

Asia & The Pacific ITA: $234 mn (23%) ITR: $324 bn (30%) Middle East ITA: $52 mn (5%) ITR: $47 bn (4%)

Americas ITA: $163 mn (16%) ITR: $213 bn (20%) Share in the world in %

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Africa ITA: $52 mn (5%) ITR: $34 bn (3%)

Source: UNWTO Tourism Highlights, 2013 Edition

The VisitBritain site offers interactive tourist map which guides travellers to exciting cities, historic places rich in heritage, stunning countryside and beautiful coastlines

Riding high on this opportunity, the Archaeological Survey of India recently tied up with Google to put 100 major Indian monuments and sites on its immersive visual walkthroughs.

Taking such pleasures to new heights is the site 3D Mekanlar which offers 360-degree panoramic virtual tours of historic and cultural places. “At first it only had mosques on the website. But as the audience grew and more and more interested they started asking for other places as well,” says Ercan Gigi, founder of the website. Now the website offers (besides religious sites), palaces, museums, inns, baths, castles, towers, old houses, squares, parks, caves, ancient cities, etc and received a traffic of around 1.8 million last year. Though it is a lot different from Google StreetView, it promises the same amount of immersive pleasure to tourists. “The high quality, flawless images in the interactive display makes users feel being in that place,” adds Gigi.

Another interesting feature is Arounder.com from Switzerland-headquartered VRWAY Communication, which has mapped over a hundred top destinations in world and gives interactive information about thousands of attractions and places to see, such as prestigious museums and historical cathedrals, unspoiled natural paradises and UNESCO sites as well as the most luxurious hotels and the finest restaurants all over the world. Selected by Apple among ‘top 10 apps’ in 57 countries, the ArounderTouch App brings virtual reality panoramas directly to smartphones and tablet.

Similarly, reproductions of Tutankhamun’s Tomb and the Lascaux cave in south-west France are very popular among tourists. “These sub-millimetre reproductions are indistinguishable from the real ones and can educate many about the world’s wonders,” says Thompson.

Building for the future Other than basic marketing, developing and sustaining a tourism destination require integration with other sectors as well, such as public transportation, highway infrastructure, culture and terrain. And it is in this planning phase where GIS and other technologies kick in. For example, in the Sumbawa Island in Indonesia, there is a potential location for marine

tourism in the southern part of the island, but since the terrain along the coast is very steep, the local government needs to plan other roads or build a tourism attraction along the middle stretch, reveals Arumsari from Niko Asia.

In Iceland, for instance, a study found that GIS could provide a tool for the allocation of resources between conflicting demands and aid decision makers in planning expansion of tourism in the northern regions of the country, which would in return boost economy in those areas. The northern ecosystems are extremely vulnerable and it is therefore of vital importance for such communities to plan the growth of tourism along sustainable lines in order to secure long‐term economic benefit from tourism. The study, however, noted that despite increased use of GIS in environmental planning and management, the application of GIS to tourism planning was still limited.

George Town, capital of the state of Penang in Malaysia, is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is considered to be the eighth most liveable place in Asia. Managing a World Heritage Site like this requires the stakeholders to think critically. Accordingly, several technologies have been adopted by the George Town World Heritage Inc (GTWHI) for the management, monitoring and promotion of the city as a cultural heritage site. “We have highlighted hotspots in the city which need to be promoted or upgraded with maps. We also did cultural mapping, including tangible and intangible heritage, to highlight the outstanding universal values within the city,” says Muhammad Hijas Sahari, Research Officer, GTWHI. The map not only helped the planners to identify the attractions, accommodations and walking facilities in the area but also the weak points of the city. “Mapping technology helped us in protecting the site by understanding the area and identifying issues in specific places and time to overcome these issues,” explains Sahari.

In cases of marine or ecotourism, suitable management is essential to conserve and maintain the biological richness of the places. GIS combines decision support methodology with powerful visualisation and mapping capabilities which facilitates the creation of land suitability map. “Mapping gives more understanding of the natural sources and this information will Geospatial World | December 2013

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Feature | Tourism

68% search online before they decide where or how to travel

be used as base information for that region’s policy,” says Arumsari.

In US, the federal government’s National Park Service (NPS) has not only mapped 42% likely to use every national park but also their smartphones/ used advanced technologies tablet for travel like geodesign for developing related information the landscape, GPS for protecting the animal reserves and 1 in 4 book their trip remote sensing techniques to via smartphone check on the biodiversity. NPS Source: The 2013 Traveller, Google has also created a complete directory of over 400 national parks across the continent.

The site provides a detailed map of every park and even gives the location of the cultural and historic landmarks near those parks.

Venice, one of the world’s busiest tourist destinations, has adopted an online tool ‘Venice Connected’ to monitor the tourist flow in the city. The innovative tool, for both visitors and local businesses, keeps the prices of public services at low levels and reduces the negative effects of seasonal peaks in the ecologically fragile city. The system is able to estimate the flow of tourists in advance to provide better services, and encourage a better analysis of trends and tourist flows in the city. Furthermore, the tool helps the administration to connect with tourists, mostly through social networks.

Destination managers across the globe are adopting tools like CICtourGUNE which enables them to take decisions that can increase the competitive profile of their destinations. The intelligent platform monitors, measures, analyses and models the flows of visitors to different destinations. It provides an

objective, empirical, real-time geo-referenced data that allows understanding the consumption patterns of destination visitors on the basis of variables such as socio-demographic profiles, weather, etc. This tool takes into consideration factors such as transportation used by the visitors, if the visitors leave the city of arrival to visit other destinations, time spent in these visits, destinations visited, if these are first time visits, time spent in shopping areas, repeating visitors, etc.

The tourism flow model of New Zealand is a Web-based tool that can map travel usage in terms of origin and flow of visitors down to individual road segment level. This can allow for detailed analysis at the regional level based on spend, purpose of visit, and flows of visitors, helping generate data that can be used for other development and planning work. Similarly, in Mexico, a GIS-based system called IRIS is used to store information on tourism and socio-economic variables which allows tourism trends data to be visualised within the GIS alongside other social, economic and environmental datasets.

The social connect and interactive travelogues The emergence of the Internet and social media has also dramatically altered the structure of the travel industry. Travellers are marking the territories they have explored via check-in features offered by the social media. VisitBritain’s Love UK Facebook page has allowed the organisation to develop an extensive platform of social engagement. Moreover, their mobile application is completely consumer generated by listing the top 100 locations of the UK ranked by tourist’s Facebook check-ins. “Social media, tourism blogs, booking sites, integrated with spatial information are essential for today’s backpacker adventure tourists,” underlines Arumsari.

For Dr. Madanmohan Rao, a Bangalore-based social media author, consultant and research project director of the Mobile

Google Street View offers 360 degree views of famous landmarks, museums and even underwater surfaces

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Monday Community, social media and digital technologies are also vital for travellers during the times of emergency. The tragic events of the Westgate Mall terrorist attacks in Kenya have shown how social media [especially Twitter] was used by tourists and locals caught in the attack, as well as by their loved ones, the local police and foreign embassies.

Initiatives like MapStory or Google’s new feature, Tour Builder, allows users to weave narratives through photos, videos, text on a map. It creates a more well-rounded way of telling a story that is definitely more appealing than the average photo slideshow or album. Features like these not only allow tourists to re-construct their past experiences, but also herald the beginning of other tourists’ pre-travel stage in which they can look for inspiration, information and opinions that is critical for their travel decision making.

Similarly, site Panoramic Earth links panoramas taken worldwide to interactive maps. Alongside each picture is local and travel information. The images are contributed by a growing number of photographers providing an encyclopedia of panoramas and information. The resulting tours may be used by the websites of various ministries to encourage tourism.

Apps like PixMeAway, TripIt and Tripcase are considered to be models for the future. PixMeAway, developed by Pixtri OG, a picture-based search engine, offers intuitive travel inspiration and planning to tourists. Travellers can select the photos that appeal the most to them and get destination recommendations based on the photos, your ‘travel type’, and trip requirements. With the idea of “a picture is worth a thousand words”, the platform provides an innovative solution for tourists to enhance their travel planning in an interactive and personalised way. “I send my itinerary and they enrich them with new geographic context — a map of my hotel, the airport terminals, where the car rental centre is, bus routes, train lines and more,” says Thompson from Esri.

What more in future?

The ‘lonely planet’ is becoming a familiar place with technology. If there is so much available today what is it that a tourist can hope for in future?

“I think the user experience will take a huge leap forward and things will get more immersive with 3D. Companies like Microsoft and Google have been increasing imagery coverage through efforts like aerial or streetside,” says Stephen Lawler, Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Bing Maps.

Indeed technologies like Google Glass can really enhance a tourist’s experience. “Imagine, instead of referring to maps and smartphones all the time, simply asking your smart-glasses to guide you in a foreign land,” says Jones.

“The technology would become so pervasive that it becomes a part of you — it will be built in your glasses, on your phone and in your ears.”

Gartner hopes that more augmented reality applications, hybrid applications (electronic paper), extractable electronic displays at smartphones which are weather-proofed, display techniques (displaying the map on whatever appropriate surface is around me) and wearable maps will further shape the tourism industry worldwide. The geo element will be mashed up in each and every offering for tourists and will be able to provide answers and suggestions to questions one has never thought of. “Imagine being able to ask, ‘what is the best experience I can get in three hours or three days in Bangkok?’ and have the answer delivered,” says Thompson.

However, challenges of standardisation and authenticity of such user-created maps will remain issues, warns Gartner.

One can never tell what more exciting is in store for us in the future. A travel in time perhaps! Till then, Bon Voyage!

Ridhima Kumar, Sub-Editor ridhima@geospatialmedia.net

Geospatial World | December 2013

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Tourism | Case Study

Indonesia’s ‘Atlas from Space’ The atlas includes satellite images, aerial photographs, maps along with narratives about 100 most popular tourist spots in the country

Courtsey:www.imagesu.net

for Land Natural Resources Survey, Center for Marine Natural Resources Survey, Center for Basic Mapping of Marine and Aerospace, Center for Atlas and tourism offices from different provinces provided important data for the maps. Experts visited tourist spots and wrote narratives which included all the important information about them.

I

ndonesia comprises of more than 17,000 islands covering 2,027,087 sq km of land area and 3,166,163 sq km of sea territorial waters. Spreading all over the 33 provinces, the beauties of nature can be found in land as well as in sea. These interesting features could foster tourism industry only if they were supported by the availability of sufficient and accurate information about the most popular tourist spots in the country. Therefore, the National Coordinating Agency for Surveys and Mapping of Indonesia (BAKOSURTANAL) took up the task of developing ‘Atlas of Indonesia from Space’.

Preparation This stage involved preparing the list of the most popular tourist places, preparation of a base map, identification (icons) of tourist places on the map, field surveys and sourcing of satellite imageries.

Data collection BAKOSURTANAL sourced satellite images taken by satellites like Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM), Landsat ETM+, Quickbird and IKONOS. Field surveys were done before developing topographic maps. Experts from Center

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Data processing Experts selected the best satellite images and put them together with aerial images, maps and narratives. Satellite imagery processing covered geometric correction, radiometric correction, filtering, fusion, contrast sharpening, and pan sharpening. Geometric correction made imagery coordinate system in accordance with maps coordinate system so that object position visibility could be plotted on maps. Radiometric corrections were done to improve the quality of images. Filtering was done to accentuate the objects and to omit spectral variations. Fusion of band lines was done to generate better contrast.

Contrast sharpening was done to gain clear visualisation between object and its surroundings. Pan sharpening on imagery was done to gain higher spatial resolution. Photos taken by hand-held cameras too needed corrections.

Data compilation Presentation of satellite images, aerial photos and maps were grouped as cartographic content while terrestrial pictures and texts were grouped as non-cartographic content.

Sumatra has 59 images more than the others, while Papua has less images, pictures and maps information. The ‘Atlas from Space’ has been playing a vital role in fostering the tourism industry in Indonesia.

Courtesy: Centre for Atlas & Spatial Planning, Indonesia

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Tourism | Case Study

Saudi Tourism rides on GIS The Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities has developed a Tourism Geographic Information System to develop the sector and extend geospatial capabilities to non-traditional users of GIS

T

he Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities (SCTA) was set up in 2000 to develop and organise the tourism sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As part of its mandate to promote tourism in the Kingdom and take full advantage of the fastevolving trend towards e-tourism, the department launched a Web-based GIS for tourists in 2009. The enterprise tourism GIS includes four applications — Web mapping application (website), internal application (Intranet), mobile solution (iOS & Android) and tourism virtual tours — to build an integrated tourism geographic database for providing information services on the kingdom’s tourism from any place and at any time via the Internet or smart mobiles.

Tourism map app The interactive tourism map (http://tourismmap.scta.gov.sa) provides the public the ability to interact and explore the huge geo-database behind it. The map shows the location of the historical, tourism and cultural sites in the kingdom, in addition to helping the tourists and visitors to search for the nearest accommodation services or the related points of interest to their locations, and how to reach these services by the available navigable roads network and the routing functions.

Internal application An internal application has been developed to manage and maintain the tourism database through the Intranet and Internet by the employees in SCTA and its branches.

Each department has access to the database so they can add required data such as images, statistics, and attributes to control

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and ensure data quality and validity.

Mobile app (tourism navigator) Mobile GIS is the expansion of a GIS out of the office, which enables people using their smartphones to query, analyse, and display geographic information. This will be serving the citizen anywhere either inside or outside the kingdom. The mobile application provides some tourism map functions like searching, routing, nearest location, sharing info, and evaluate the tourism sites. It is compatible with the tablets and is available on Apple Store.

Soon, it will also be available on Google Play.

Virtual tour A 360-degree virtual tour is an exciting firstperson view of an actual location. A premier solution for GIS software analysis, it is the choice of surveyors and professionals around the world for visualising and analysing the relationship between 3D data and geography. A 360-degree virtual tour includes tools and data which can be use to perform state-of-the art analysis on key issues. It works with the maps, giving a 360-degree virtual tour and attribute of objects in a single application. Integrating the 360-degree view with GIS enhances the information platform, enabling creation, visualisation, analysis and presentation of information in a better and more effective manner with the real images. Successful implementation of GIS data promotes importance of information over technology. SCTA’s Tourism Geographic Information System is an excellent example of how tourism can be planned using GIS. It provides access to applications and extends geospatial capabilities to non-traditional users of GIS. Courtesy: SCTA

Special Focus | Auditing

The Handbook

From tracking the distribution of cross-country aid to the flow of black money, use of geospatial technology is fast gaining ground in the audit world. Lack of awareness and the tendency to be secretive about public finances are the only hurdles

O

n December 26, 2004 an earthquake measuring 9.1 on the richer scale in the Indian Ocean set off a series of devastating tsunamis along the coasts, killing over 230,000 people in 14 countries. Indonesia was the hardest hit, followed by Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand.

As more than 100 international agencies joined hands for a $4.5-billion rebuilding effort, a group of supreme audit institutions from the affected countries and from those involved in relief work formed a taskforce to build an audit trail. The results found several gaps in the way funds were being routed, and also pointed to inconsistencies in rebuilding and rehabilitation.

This was the first systematic joint venture between various national audit organisations under the umbrella of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) where geospatial information and technologies were systematically and extensively used. Google Maps and location coordinates were combined with real-time satellite pictures as layers of GIS were created to pinpoint exact location of damages and track the relief and rehabilitation efforts.

The disaster was unprecedented in many ways, including the loss of life and damages, involving the largest number of donors and implementing agencies, and highest amount of aid per affected person. The complexities within the humanitarian aid sector, combined with those of the disaster, led to huge challenges for accountability and transparency of the aid flows.

In addition to making sure that the rehabilitation work happened as planned, it was also important to ensure contributors that the aid indeed went to the right people, says Saskia J. Stuiveling, President, Court of Audit, The Netherlands, who was also the chair of the INTOSAI Tsunami Task Force.

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The power of geo INTOSAI was quick to acknowledge the fact that one of the main lessons from this was the added value of geospatial data for planning, coordination, monitoring, accountability and audit of disaster-related aid. It concluded that “in order to ensure long-term accountability and transparency, geospatial data should be immediately included in the information structure of agencies involved”.

INTOSAI is now urging nations and agencies to use geoinformation and GIS, and in its XXI INCOSAI (its triennial Congress) in October endorsed a set of International Standards for Supreme Audit Institutions (ISSAI) with regard to the use of geospatial information in auditing disaster management and disaster-related aid.

“Geospatial information, provided the images are most recent and their resolution is adequate, can provide valuable and cost-effective information for auditors, especially for selecting projects/areas to be audited on the spot,” says Aidas Palubinskas, Press Officer, European Court of Audit.

Agrees Simon Thompson, Director, Global Commercial Solutions, ESRI: “Understanding where the money flows and how people are connected, and geographical/spatial analysis of all this is the ultimate connector.” Esri has been pioneering the use of geoinformation in audit space and in addition to providing solutions, has tied up with various audit institutions and independent organisations to forward the cause of transparency in public finances and welfare programmes.

Examples of effective use of geospatial technology to audit aid programmes abound, including the United Nations World Food Programme, which uses satellite images and GIS to locate

legislation requires the Member States to make use of GIS techrefugees and plan food distribution. The International Criminal niques like satellite or aerial orthoimagery to carry out land-use Court uses satellite images to locate refugee camps and gather cross-checks to qualify for the EU agriculture aid. The ECA’s evidence on human rights violations. The European Commismandate is also to check if the Member States are indeed using sion’s Directorate-General for Agriculture has successfully used these techniques.

GIS for monitoring agriculture through remote sensing.

Among the others, the Indonesian Supreme Audit Institute Location is the key element in a lot of government poli(BPK) and the Netherlands Court of Audit (NCA) were quick cies. “So if we could combine public finance policy with learners from INTOSAI’s tsunami aid tracking project. Today, geotechnology, it could not only help in implementing a betBPK uses geospatial technology in all phases of its workter policy but also help us know more about the spendings,” flow, and has focus on audit of natural disasters aids, natural underlines Stuiveling. resources and environment & forests in particular. It has even “It is critical for governments, development partners, and created a guidance paper on using geospatial information in civil society to have a clear picture of who is doing what and auditing forestry inventory. “We collaborate with several dewhere,” says Josh Powell, Innovation Team Manager, AidData, a partments dealing with geoinformation such as the National partnership between Development Gateway, College of William Institute of Aeronautics & Space and the Ministry of Forestry and Mary, and Brigham Young University, that delivers informafor geospatial data/information,” says Dr Ali Masykur Musa, tion solutions to people on the frontlines of international develMember, Audit Board, Republic of Indonesia. In addition to opment work. Powell adds that funding information becomes being the source of geospatial data/information, BPK also tremendously valuable when made open to the public and mapcooperates with these entities for training. ping the information to make it interpretable adds to this value.

BPK’s Dutch counterpart set up a knowledge centre in This information can then help to highlight gaps in service deliv2007 to explore how GIS and geospatial data could be used in ery, overlaps in donor activities that could be better coordinated, auditing. Today, geospatial is at the core of NCA’s functions, and location-specific activity information which can be used by as it uses GIS and satellite imagery in projects like tracking the citizens to hold government and donors accountable. flow of Dutch funds for international programmes to combat While national audit institutions have used location-spemoney laundering and terrorist financing. The technology is cific information and GIS for some time now, these have by also used to track social programmes. “By providing a visual far been limited to auditing of natural resources like forestry representation, NCA can account for where money has gone or river water etc. Initiatives in the area of public finance and measure the success of each project. Things become more and welfare have largely been isolated, uncoordinated and explanatory when you have a map,” reiterates Stuiveling. sporadic to say the least. The encouraging aspect, however, is In fact, INTOSAI’s international standard with regard to the importance some audit institutions have begun to attach the use of geospatial information in auditing disaster manageto geospatial technology. ment and disaster-related aid was developed by NCA as vice ECA or the European Court of Audit, which audits the EU chair of the working group. budget, is a regular Stuiveling, user of geospahowever, is not tial information. new to the use of Except for certain GIS benefits all stages of audit geoinformation in military areas, ECA audit work. About has unrestricted ✓ A ssessing risks: GIS can analyse ✓ Conducting the audit: GPS data 20 years ago, as access to all geothe geographic spread of projects and satellite-based maps enables INTOSAI’s Chair spatial information and funds. Remote sensing immediate analysis. of the Global available with the can quickly verify information ✓ Analysing the audit: Analysing Working Group Member States. from the field. large quantities of data is possible on EnvironmenGiving an example ✓ Designing audit: GIS can help and understandable with GIS. tal Auditing, she to illustrate the focus on projects to identify audi✓ Communicating the results: GIS oversaw what importance of contract management risks provides user-friendly visual means could perhaps be geoinformaor audit performance. of communication. termed as the first tion, Palubinskas use of geospatial explains data and that EU Geospatial World | December 2013

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Special Focus | Auditing

Gateway

to develop From of high ment resolutions im ageries, to m Developmen ulti-layered in t Gateway ho tera sts a global in to critical deve formation plat ctive maps, lopment know form for acce ledge, data an projects are ss all ge d resources.

The aid donors and ot ocoded to create virtual fe her stakeholde edback loops between rs. Developm core areas — ent Gateway data visualisat works in thre ion (including development e geospatial di reso stributions of country system urce flows), monitoring an d evaluation s to assist go (including vernments in on their deve monitoring an lopment assi d reporting stance), and geospatial da citizen engage ta and techno ment -- and logy forms th organisation e backbone in works direct each. The ly with 25 coun institutions lik try governmen e the USAID, ts as well as World Bank, to improve th African Devel e availability opment Bank and use of de velopment in formation. technology in cross-country audits. There was large-scale deforestation in the rainforest between Peru and Brazil, and the two governments accused each other. The audit offices of the two countries joined forces to get the real picture. They used maps, aerial imagery and field observations to find that the forest was logged in such a way from both sides of the border that a road cut right through it. The results of this audit could not have been obtained and visualised so clearly without geospatial information, she says.

Examples galore A number of national audit institutions have been using geospatial technology in projects from time to time though they have not made it a part and parcel of their workflow completely. From conducting audits on the accessibility of health services for US military veterans to auditing housing assistance programmes, the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) is a regular user of this technology and even has a dedicated unit for this purpose. Thanks largely to GAO’s active encouragement, audit offices of several states, cities and counties in the US have also taken to using geoinformation. Some like the Marion County Auditor Office have set up a full-fledged GIS website for public use.

In an interesting case, the City of Portland in Oregon used GIS to identify housing units receiving subsidies from mul60

Geospatial World | December 2013

tiple city programmes and mapped their geographic distribution, drawing together information that had not been available previously because city subsidy programmes had never been combined in a single audit. The city has also conducted an interesting audit on various tax measures. The data on the recipients of the tax measures was geocoded with their zip codes. The analysis showed that although individual tax measures were in compliance with the rules and regulations, the accumulation of tax measures by various individuals was not.

The audit therefore saved the city valuable public funds.

The Delaware County Auditor’s GIS office, established in 1994, has received numerous awards for exemplary and innovative use of GIS technology in property taxation as well as other applications. The Auditor’s GIS office is the source of the majority of spatial data specific to the county, including parcels, roads, municipal boundaries, township boundaries, flood plains, census data, topography etc, which can be downloaded for free from its website.

Although there is some good work happening in the US in the use of accurate location and mapping for auditing, a lot of this work is not coordinated and there is not enough tracking of government programmes and citizen welfare, says Nancy K. Di Paolo, Chief, Congressional & Intergovernmental Affairs.

While some attribute it to the general lack of awareness about the specifics and potential of this niche technology, some insiders also feel there is an inherent reluctance among auditors in sharing information, thus making these organisations work in silos.

For instance, the National Audiit Office (NAO) and the Audit Commission in the UK, which audit spendings of the national and local governments, respectively, are also known to be heavy users of GIS and geoinformation. NAO even has a special unit that supports the use of geospatial information, but the exact level of technology adaptation is not clear because there is very little information available on this. Similarly, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in India is known to be using geoinformation and several geospatial techniques — satellite imagery from NRSC to self-developed GIS — for auditing natural resources or even welfare projects, but it is not open to talking about its application in these projects.

Australia is another example with initiatives such as audit of health services to natural resources & forestry. An interesting project was by the Department of Community and Social Inclusion involving housing for Indigenous Australians living in remote communities in South Australia. The staff had to audit

the condition of each of the housing programme’s 1,200 homes — some located thousands of kilometres from the unit’s main office in Adelaide. DCSI turned to GIS to transform the auditing process — from information capture and storage, to publication and reporting. Significant efficiency improvements have been achieved, with the time taken for asset audit process reduced to 10 minutes per dwelling from one hour previously.

A number of smaller countries have also joined the fray.

For instance, NCA is assisting the Control Chamber of Armenia in making use of IT resources and GIS. The audit office in Hungary has received EU subsidy for developing a project aimed at raising ethical standards in its public sector. The specific aim of the project is to produce a GIS-based online ‘integrity risk map’ of the public sector in Hungary. As part of a EU twinning project, NCA is also assisting the Office of the Auditor General in Kosovo to design a system of efficiency audits. It has also been helping the Tunisian Court of Auditors and the Aruban audit office since 2007.

Although there is some good work happening in some countries in the use of accurate location and mapping for auditing, a lot of this is not coordinated and there is not enough tracking of government programmes and citizen welfare created by the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is an excellent initiative in this regard. In keeping with its primary mandate, the website is full of interactive visuals and maps to provide taxpayers with user-friendly tools to track how and where recovery funds are spent, and also an easy way to submit allegations of fraud, waste or abuse of ARRA funds.

Though there is no active collaboration yet with any national agencies for geospatial data, RATB’s accountability division works with the Federal Inspectors General and the Department of Justice to map fraud indicators and such, says Di Paolo. However, while RATB’s mandate has expanded to provide oversight of other types of Federal spending, there is no coordination with welfare agencies in the US or abroad.

“Many of the countries where we work have placed a significant emphasis on transparency and accountability,” points out Powell, whose organisation collaborates with agencies responsible for collecting, reporting, and coordinating aid activities in respective countries. For example, Development

Open spending & transparency With government spending increasingly coming under the lens and effective governance taking centrestage, authorities are moving towards opening funding data and making it freely available on the Web. While this means more transparency, this also means greater audited work involving maps and visualisation. “It is an illusion to think that with one audit office you can picture the truth about reality on all government money streams and policies. But open spending enables the people for whom the money is meant to see how much money is coming their way, what is the meaning of that money and if that really makes a difference,” underlines Stuiveling. Plotting this data in real-time on a map brings transparency to the whole process.

Open access, open aid “Open data funding allows citizens to see what is being The Open.AidData porta l, launched in partners done with their tax money; it also helps prevent fraud, waste hip with the World Bank Institute, provides resources for researche rs or citizens seeking and abuse of this money,” to better understand aid information, and for org anisations that points out Di Paolo. Also, want to make their act ivities more transparent.

Open.AidData gives access to the UCDP/AidD such a system provides ata Geocoding Methodo logy, which can be adapted for use by any complete data to oversight development organizatio n, or to download datasets from developm officials, enabling them to ent banks and learn mo re about related open data initiatives. prioritise work and have more complete audits.

“Consistent and accurate open data eases access to spending information at the federal, state and local levels,” she adds.

The recovery.gov or the Recovery Accountability & Transparency Board (RATB) Geospatial World | December 2013

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Special Focus | Auditing

Gateway worked with the International Economic Cooperation and Coordination Division (IECCD) in the Nepal Ministry of Finance to collect over 21,500 project locations for approximately 600 projects from roughly 30 donors. This dataset covers approximately $6 billion in aid commitments and $3 billion in disbursements, and is publicly available through the ministry’s new Aid Management Platform portal. It also worked with various agencies to add context to the project location information referenced above.

The Uganda Bureau of Statistics is an excellent example of a national agency working closely with the AidData team to contribute valuable geospatial data on poverty rates, literacy, water access, and various other important indicators to the location coding work. The Ugandan government is also evolving a system where its national audit office performs the bulk of the accounting work for the aid provided, thereby reducing the pressure on the government. Similarly, Malawi uses a dynamic mapping tool to track and report on the country’s external funding. Some of the leaders in this effort include Timor-Leste, which is working to map all development finance activities; Kosovo, which was one of the first countries in the world to share aid information via a public portal; and Honduras. adds Powell.

“The legitimacy of what the governments are doing will rise if people think they are taken seriously. It is very important for a democracy to share the data now that the technique is available,” stresses Stuiveling What lies ahead?

In a globalised world of closer international cooperations, the problems faced by national audit bodies are similar in nature.

Public resources are being spent increasingly across na-

tional borders such as on transport projects or conservation, development projects or international disaster aids, making it imperative that national audit institutions join hands to track the whereabouts of funds.

Government audit institutions, Parliaments, and national governments have a common interest to ensure efficient and effective financial management at national or supranational level, according to Dr Josef Moser, former INTOSAI Secretary General. While international cooperation among national audit institutions is expected to create added value for governments, it is also needed in project implementation to avoid gaps in audit coverage. And the common link to all this is location information. So how geared up is the geospatial industry in taking on this challenge?

While lack of awareness among users remains a big issue, the attitude of the geospatial industry itself, which has little to offer in this space, is also a big hurdle, leaving audit organisations to develop their own maps and analyses with help from various sources. Thompson, however, blames the system of information security and chain of custody within government authorities for this. “They want 20th century workflows with 21st century technology and early 20th century rules for data stewardship. That doesn’t work!”

Palubinskas too believes that the geospatial industry is geared up to meet the needs of the audit industry, but resolution and update regularity are big issues.

However, with information moving to cloud, this tendency of data secrecy is likely go away with time. “Think how easy compiling reports for auditing will become — mine the data,

Mapping climate chan

ge The Strauss Center’s Climate Change and African Politica l Stability (CCAPS) programme of the University of Texas, Austin has created a dynamic mapping tool for rese archers, policy makers, journa lists, and citizens to view how climate change impacts vulnerable populations in Africa. Users can visualise any combination of CCAPS data on climate change, conflict, and aid on a map to discover how differe nt forces overlap or intersect. By inte grating the CCAPS research on climate change, along with existing datasets such as topograph ic maps, imagery, and thematic info rmation on conflicts, the ma pping tool provides the most comprehen sive view possible of climate change and security in Africa.

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Geospatial World | December 2013

i Tracking tsunam i-related aid cking systems for tsunam collate using geo, connect disconnected items/incidents/ ideas using location as a steel thread...” adds Thompson.

Stuiveling feels auditors are also not looking outside their normal processes to check new methods. Further, she believes the practice of using geoinformation should not be for infrastructure projects only where geospatial is more or less naturally present. “The government and the geospatial world should work together in other domains like social welfare, deprived areas, neighbourhood projects, environment,” she adds.

Agrees Dr Musa, who also feels that the main focus of geospatial technology should not be in audit but on overseeing public welfare works and projects. While its use in audit work will follow the capacity and maturity of the technology, there is a clear need for auditors to learn more about the geospatial world to optimise its use, he adds. For that, while auditors have to learn from GIS experts, there is also a clear need for exchange of experiences and knowledge among national audit bodies too.

So where is the future headed?

“It is not a structural place in the technique of the auditors to use geospatial techniques, but we must encourage its use so that it becomes a normal tool for them,” stresses Stuiveling.

Relentless advocacy by NCA — within and outside the Netherlands — is just a case in point. In addition to its innovative use in areas like auditing of facility management of educational institutions, real estate management by ministries and public agencies, access to healthcare services, and open geospending for urban areas, NCA is also actively helping several national audit bodies to adapt this technology.

Powell points to the pioneering work that his organisation has accomplished. While Development Gateway is partnering with Esri and has developed a sophisticated GIS server technology to partner country governments at reduced costs, it has been an active developer of geospatial software and tools. “We are also working closely with the Brigham Young University and the

While lack of awareness among users remains a big issue, the attitude of the geospatial industry itself, which has little to offer in this space, is also a big hurdle, leaving audit organisations to develop their own maps and analyses with help from various sources

Various monitoring and tra Service (FTS) of ing the Financial Tracking are in place today, includ nitarian Affairs for Coordination of Huma the United Nations Office by the United ped elo istance Database dev and the Development Ass e database l-tim rea , bal glo a gramme. FTS is Nations Development Pro aid and is international humanitarian that records all reported humanitarian aid ality, sources, and uses of intended to display the tot is. globally and for each cris

University of Texas at Austin, as part of a five-year agreement with the USAID to continue developing new geospatial tools, data and methodologies to enhance the way the development industry uses GIS in resource tracking, monitoring and evaluation, auditing, and citizen engagement,” he explains.

The next step is using these data to understand the results of aid and government spending sub-nationally. For example, education indicators at different time periods can be compared with intervening financing activities. These data can also help auditors to “follow the money” through its various stages of implementation, often through multiple disbursements between donors, government, and NGOs/implementing agencies, to assess whether funding is reaching its intended beneficiaries.

The strength of geospatial technology lies in it as a source of information and collaboration. “The goal should be making people more aware and accountable as we shrink the time from information collection to sharing and analysis. How we can democratise the capture and distribution of data across many people and provide a more complete version of the truth — one that is more singular, timely and holistic?” says Thompson.

And to do that, one has to shift the thinking away from traditional view of GIS/geospatial as software technology — from it being something based on a computer to an enabler, which is available on demand on any device.

Auditors of course are yet to try tools like social media and crowdsourcing. In addition to ease of use and apps, media in all its forms — social, video, photo etc — is expected to be a really big part of the change as geo-social analysis becomes an immensely powerful thing. As Thompson says: “Think of an implication like the Arab Spring.”

Anusuya Datta, Deputy Executive Editor anusuya@geospatialmedia.net Geospatial World | December 2013

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Auditing | Interview

connect

‘Geospatial industry must

with the audit world’

Governments and public auditors will only use new possibilities if they are made to understand what these new techniques could do for them, says Saskia J. Stuiveling, President, Court of Audit, The Netherlands, as she explains how her office is pioneering the use of geospatial information and technology in audit work

Location-based data and other data on a map gives you a better insight as to what and where to look for. Governments should make all policies with a location element in it, and could then combine these with the geo-presentation techniques 64

What is the mandate and mission of the Court of Audit, The Netherlands? How does it collaborate with audit organisations of other countries?

The Court of Audit, The Netherlands, is an independent institution which checks whether the central government’s revenue and expenditure are received and spent correctly, and whether the government policy is implemented as intended. Like all central audit organisations, our mandate is to audit the government’s annual budget execution on a national level.

We collaborate with other national audit organisations under the umbrella of the International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions [INTOSAI], which has 200 members. We have seven regions with regional conferences and a world conference every three years. Between conferences we have intensive contacts in working groups which look into topics that are of interest for the whole audit community. For instance, we have a very active working group on environmental auditing, which focuses on environmental policies of various governments.

The environment doesn’t have fences or borders— water flows regardless of whether it’s Nigerian, Indian or Pakistani. So we send working groups and try to make joint audits.

Geospatial World | December 2013

For instance, we have done one such audit recently in Europe around the Danube river to make one stream of information about how the quality of water was being monitored by different governments in that region.

Geoinformation could help us in these kinds of audits where location is important. Location is the key element in a lot of government policies. So if we could combine public finance public policy with geo technology, it could not only help implement a better policy but also help us know more about the public finance, its regularity and its use. That is why I am interested in combining the two worlds.

How did it all start, the idea of incorporating location in audit work?

The first time I understood the powerful possibilities of integrated information was when I was the chair of the Global Working Group on Environmental Auditing. This was around 20 years ago in Peru. The governments of Peru and neighbouring Brazil both suffered illegal logging in the shared Humboldt forest area and were accusing each other.

So the audits offices in the two countries joined forces. They painstakingly mapped the permissions for legal forestry and reconstructed a map about how the forest should look

from air. Then they took aerial photographs of the forest to map the actual scene. The outcome of the comparison of the theoretical map and the real picture was more than enlightening: the forest was logged in such a way from both sides of the border that a road cut right through it. This was an eye-opener and called for an immediate re-look at the permission granting process for logging.

The results of this audit could not have been obtained and visualised so clearly without making use of geospatial information. So far, we had only seen its implementation in administrative work but this audit was designed to compare the information available with the administration with a totally different set of information.

insight as to what and where to look for. All governments should make all policies with a location element in it, and could then combine these with the geo-presentation techniques.

The Netherlands Audit Court’s another successful project has been one on money laundering.

How did you use geospatial technology for studying something like money laundering?

We made maps out of data available from different courts in the country and checked how many such cases were filed over a period of, say, six years. We found there were a lot of money laundering cases in the northern parts and asked prosecutors about the reasons. We realised no one had ever given a thought to it! The study raised questions about the money trail in those parts or if the police was uniformly vigilant across the country.

How can geo technology be used to audit national programmes?

The key to good governance is sound information. The need for sound information is as old as the world. But the form in which information can be gathered and analysed has dramatically changed. For instance, you have statistics about various illnesses in The Netherlands or the population of the aged and how they are located. Now, you can follow their location and find out if the money meant for the elderly or the ailing is really going to the right people.

This can be used in any project involving distribution for social and health care.

Checking on subsidies, for instance, is a good example where location is used for auditing. Take the example of Baltimore in the USA. There were about 15 different subsidies related to housing in the poorer areas. Auditors so far audited each subsidy separately and found them to be alright. Then came a new auditor who took a map of the area and plotted the recipients by zip code and subsidy by subsidy until he had in the same map all 15 different subsidies. The outcome was again an eye opener for the policymakers: the accumulation of different subsidies for different purposes on but a few zip codes contrary to what the policies where designed for!

When you put location-based data and other data on a map, it gives you a better Geospatial World | December 2013

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The geospatial industry is not reaching out to others and making them understand what all could be done with this innovative technology.

Auditors are also not looking outside their normal processes 66

We also mapped the money flow to developing corporations. Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not know how the money stream over time was distributed to countries. They said they had a policy, and they roughly knew what went to which country, but that data was not fairly reliable. So we plotted all the money on the first-recipient basis for two years. We could see that about one-third of the money directly went to New York and Washington because the World Bank, United Nations, UNDP et al are based there. So the proportion of money going to the multilateral organisations was far bigger compared to the little money streams going to individual countries. That was the first outcome.

There was also a second outcome. The government has what it calls a list of ‘concentration countries’, or real poor countries which need urgent attention. Over the years, the list keeps on changing with new ones being added while the older names are not struck off. Now, you can’t have 17 countries on the concentration list while the 3-billion euro fund is actually going to 42 countries!

That is not the meaning of concentration. Geospatial helped us plot and map the money flow. Things become more explanatory when you have a map.

Which countries have evolved in this aspect?

England is active about open data on spending. The US has very nice Website called recovery.gov where you can follow the money for recovery. Brazil has some active open database with maps. But I don’t think this is enough.

It’s not a structural place in the technique of the auditors to use geospatial techniques and my aim is to bring this technique to the audit world so that they use it as a normal method.

I want governments to use these techniques as part of their workflows. And this shouldn’t be only for infrastructure projects where geospatial is more or less present. The government and the geospatial world should work together in other domains like social welfare, deprived areas, neighbourhood projects, environment...

Do you think this technology is being widely used by auditors across the world?

I don’t think so. And the reason is that the geospatial industry is not reaching out to others and making them understand what all could be done with this innovative technology. Auditors on their part are also not looking outside their normal processes to check out new methods and whether these could improve their existing processes.

It is a double-sided problem; a typical problem of innovation. Innovation tends to be a problem if the people who are innovating do not understand how wonderful their innovations are. They normally tend to club together and close the door to the outside world, which then becomes a problem of the existing culture and existing methods.

How do you advocate this technology to the audit world?

Young people are looking forward to it. Some of them are intrigued because I keep coming back with the same idea. But they do need examples to make the usefulness of this technique vivid and they have to support each other.

Geospatial World | December 2013

So would you say your office is doing this from a pioneering standpoint and it is something unique in its way?

We are pioneering in the audit world. But the technique in the geospatial world is more mature than our use. In that sense we are pioneering, not innovating things. We do not even have a special geo division within the Court of Audit. We hire from outside. But we do have a special group that has the responsibility of coming up with ideas in this area, both within our office as well as others.

What is your message to the geospatial industry?

I would request the geospatial industry to take an interest in the world of public finance and public audit. Governments and public auditors will only use new possibilities and technologies if we are made to understand what this technology could do for them. The geo industry has to reach out to connect their and our worlds.

Executive Space | Google

Google has a history of bringing its consumer tools to the enterprise, says Dan Chu, Senior Product Manager, as he explains Google’s Maps for Business vision From being essentially a consumer geospatial player, Google is getting into enterprise geospatial solutions segment.

Why was this move necessitated?

Google has a long history of bringing consumer products to the enterprise to help people ‘work the way they live’. With Google Maps for Business, we have taken our easyto-use maps tools and bolstered them with the features and security that businesses and organisations need.

Today many people use Google Maps on their smartphones to get real-time location information. This is not only useful to consumers, but also has a lot of business applications. For instance, we have a product called Google Maps Coordinate which is designed for teams. A small business in Queensland called 68

Geospatial World | December 2013

Architectural Windows and Doors is using this product. They install windows and doors in houses across the state and have a team that are often on the road on customer visits. They use Google Maps Coordinate on their smartphones to give the business real-time information about where everyone in the team is.

Many businesses want to be able to collect business information, visualise it on a map and share it across multiple devices because it can help them make better sense of their data. Putting information on a map can help companies boost efficiencies in logistics or enhance sales and marketing campaigns.

For example, Madras Cements, one of the biggest manufacturers of cement in India, wanted to be able to identify patterns across their national network of suppliers and glean

better insights from our reports. They now put all this information on Google Maps and the whole team can access these reports and insights online, using any devices.

Maps API is one of our longest standing products. It enables other developers to use all the information in Google Maps and put that into context for their users. Today, we have over one million active websites and domains using the Maps API. Another product is the Google Maps Engine, which not only uses Google’s geospatial data, but also gives people a way to host their geospatial data on Google’s cloud so they can create beautiful maps and access them from anywhere.

You mentioned Google Maps Engine. How is it different from Google Earth Builder which was launched earlier?

Google Maps Engine is just a rebranding of the Google Earth Builder. It was launched in early 2012 and focuses on making it easy for companies to host all their geospatial data into the cloud so they can access it from anywhere.

Today, we have a bunch of companies that are using Maps Engine and Maps API. For instance, Ergon Energy, a large power company that covers much of Queensland in Australia, is using Google Maps Engine. They collect a lot of imagery which is hosted in the Maps Engine. It helps them identify and predict when trees are growing too close to their power lines so that they can trim them back earlier and have fewer power outages.

Google is also transforming itself from a geospatial data provider into being a solution provider. How do you see these changes?

We are responding to what our users want. For example, Maps API enables developers (both application and website developers) to access the wealth of Google Maps data. They wanted us to host their geospatial data. We launched Maps Engine so they could do that.

We also had demands from people who are not familiar with Java script and Web services. They asked for tools that did not require a technical background of programming skills to use. This led to the idea of

Google Maps Coordinate. The users can simply sign-in and be able to see where their teams are. So it is more about responding to requests and demands from our customers than any deliberation of becoming a solution provider.

Location has become ubiquitous now and plays a vital role in a variety of apps, for example restaurant or real estate apps.

We want to continue to democratise access to geospatial data. This is reason why we launched Google Maps for consumers.

But we also realise there is enterprise value across a number of use cases. We see adoption across a bunch of different verticals like real estate, travel and tourism, oil and gas, utilities, mining, automotive. We are really hoping to extend our solutions to all these sectors. The application does not really matter. Helping businesses visualise their data on a map and make the most of geospatial technology is really the goal here.

What is the geospatial division’s revenue share in Google’s total business?

It is definitely growing but we do not calculate it separately. We are seeing a lot of demand from our customers and we are excited about that.

Which are the user verticals that Google’s geospatial enterprise solutions business is focusing?

We are seeing a lot of adoption within utilities and telecommunication companies. One great example is the Philippines-based Globe Telecom. It has adopted Google Maps Engine and is looking for additional products in our suite to identify service issues to respond to

Location has become ubiquitous now and plays a vital role in a variety of apps. We want to continue to democratise access to geospatial data. This is the reason we launched Google Maps for consumers Geospatial World | December 2013

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Executive Space | Google

customer problems and outages faster. I think that is just one example of an industry where we are seeing a lot of promise. Some of the use cases in telecom are compelling and the business value that it can drive is pretty dramatic.

We want to make it even easier for small and medium businesses to access geospatial technology. For example, the Siam Commercial Bank in Thailand is using Maps API to show the locations of their ATMs. Customers can use their smartphones to find the nearest ATM. A bank may not be the kind of business that comes to your mind when you think of verticals that use geospatial technology, but this kind of information is really important to their customers.

Our enterprise strategy is very much aligned with our consumer strategy. We are focused on making great products for our users — be them consumers or businesses.

Google Maps Coordinate also gives So, our consumer investments continue to real-time business information on expand the coverage and accuracy of our smartphones to field workers mapping data, which is also hugely valuable to our enterprise customers. We continue to build scale in terms of the number of users we can support. We want to give the best of breed products to our developers so that they can build the most amazing geospatial solutions.

We are seeing a broad global adoption of these solutions. It really exciting to see a global interest in the Maps for Business suite of products.

Google has been quietly buying geospatial companies for some time now (eg Waze).

What has been the strategy behind these acquisitions?

We are always looking for ways to enhance

The strategy behind an acquisition like Waze is to look for technologies and companies that have really happy users and that would benefit Google Maps users 70

Geospatial World | December 2013

our products and give more benefits to our users. The strategy behind an acquisition like Waze is to look for technologies and companies that have really happy users and that would benefit Google Maps users. For Waze, it was the great integration benefits around some of the traffic information that we have already used to enhance the Google Maps app. Similarly, we have also integrated some of the Google Search technologies with Waze.

Broadly speaking, we are always looking for new companies to partner with and businesses with skills that could improve our products and benefit users.

Why did Google sell Sketchup then?

One of the strategies for Google is to make sure that we are focused on big bets with high impact. Sketchup was a very successful product. It reached 30 million unique activations in the last year, but it was not really aligned with our core strategy. Trimble saw it as a key element in their company’s future and they wanted to invest in that product. It had a better alignment with Trimble’s strategy rather than Google’s. It was a better fit within Trimble’s suite of products.

What is your opinion about the MicrosoftNokia deal, especially in the light of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer saying that they are looking forward to generate an alternative to Google’s Digital Earth?

I cannot comment on the deal itself but Google always feels that competition is healthy for the ecosystem. It continues to push everyone to innovate faster and ultimately be beneficial for the end user and consumer.

With the rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets, location has become more important than ever.

As more location data is produced, everyone is realising the value of this information.

Mapping technology is improving our lives and helping businesses realise untold efficiencies — this is what excited Google about this technology and why we will continue to invest in it.

Events

March

February

January

Mark Your Calender 2014 January 21-23

January 28-29

January 29-30

Defence Geospatial Intelligence

Geo Utilities Conference 2013

Geodesign Summit

London, UK

London, UK

California, USA

www.wbresearch.com/dgieurope/

www.geospatialutilities.com/

www.geodesignsummit.com

February 5-7

February 9-13

February 10-12

February 11-12

India Geospatial Forum

MAPPS Winter Conference

Esri Federal GIS Conference

UK – GeoInsurance

Hyderabad, India

USA

Washington DC, USA

London, UK

www.indiageospatialforum.org/

www.goo.gl/6zbXnW

www.goo.gl/QRoLtX

www.geospatialinsurance.com

February 17-19

February 19-21

February 25-26

February 26

International LiDAR Mapping Forum

Cloud Computing for DoD & Govt

Ghana Geospatial Forum 2014

Australia - GeoNext

Colorado, USA

Washington DC, USA

Accra, Ghana

Sydney, Australia

www.lidarmap.org/international

www.cloudcomputingevent.com/

www.ghgeospatialforum.org/

www.geonext.com.au/

March 4-8

March 10-13

March 11-12

CONEXPO-CON/AGG

Esri International Developer Summit

GCC Future Rail Summit

USA

USA

Doha, Qatar

www.conexpoconagg.com

www.goo.gl/MB3bkL

www.gccfuturerailsummit.com

home.aspx

Beat

Why OGC standards are the foundation for service-oriented mapping In this new world, geospatial service interface and encoding standards provide the foundation both for convergence and for communication between applications and the cloud

C

artographic information products are increasingly delivered by means of web services.

Requests for a specific cartographic service and the returned responses can be conveyed using networks, platforms and applications other than the Internet and the Web. However, service-oriented cartography usually refers to Web-based mapping applications that utilise remote Web servers to deliver maps to users.

Today, “apps” running on software

in the “cloud” play a central role in providing collections of visual symbols we call “maps”. Computer-spoken navigation instructions can also be considered as service-oriented cartography. The ubiquity of mobile devices requires an extended cartographic presentation that merges indoor/outdoor navigation and visualisation. In this new world, geospatial service interface and encoding standards enable services from different providers to be used together.

OGC standards OGC standards are freely available technical specifications that detail geospatial interfaces or encodings. Software developers use these specifications to build open interfaces and encodings into their products and services.

Some OGC standards are extensions of other standards organisations’ standards. The OGC Geospatial eXtensible Access Control Markup Language, for example, built on the OASIS eXtensible Access Control Markup Language

The OGC City Geography Markup Language Encoding Standard (CityGML): an open data model and XML-based format for the storage and exchange of virtual 3D city models

Courtesy: Thomas Kolbe , Berlin TU

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Geospatial World | December 2013

Courtesy: Thomas Kolbe , Berlin TU

(XACML) standard, supports the declaration and enforcement of geospatial data access rights across jurisdictions.

The OGC KML Standard is an XML language focused on geographic visualisation, including annotation of maps and images. KML was brought into the OGC by Google to be made an open international standard. Some of the other OGC standards are described below: • The OGC Web Map Service (WMS) Interface Standard provides a simple HTTP interface for requesting geo-registered map images from one or more distributed geospatial databases.

• The OGC Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) Interface Standard enables better server performance in applications that involve many simultaneous requests. It returns small pre-generated images or reuses identical previous requests that follow a discrete set of tile matrices.

• The OGC Symbology Encoding Standard (SE) defines an XML language for styling information that can be applied to digital geographic feature and coverage data. SES is independent of any OGC Web Services descriptions and can therefore be used to describe styling information in non-networked systems such as desktop GIS. • The OGC Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD) Profile of the WMS standard

defines an encoding that extends the WMS standard to allow user-defined symbolisation and colouring of geographic feature and coverage data.

• The OGC City Geography Markup Language (CityGML) Encoding Standard is an open data model and XML-based format for the storage and exchange of virtual 3D city models. It allows the reuse of the same data in different application fields.

• Candidate OGC standards for 3D portrayal include the OGC Web 3D Service (W3DS) and Web View Service (WVS) Interface standards.

• The OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) Interface Standard provides rules for standardising inputs and outputs (requests and responses) for geospatial processing services.

The standard also defines how a client can request the execution of a process, and how the output from the process is handled. This can be of interest in service-oriented cartography.

Many specifications are in the process of being advanced toward adoption by the OGC membership as official OGC standards. Some of them are listed below.

Augmented Reality Markup Language (ARML) – The candidate OGC ARML (Augmented Reality Markup Language) Encoding Standard 1.0 is a descriptive, XML based data format, specifically targeted for mobile Augmented Reality (AR) applications.

ARML focuses on mapping georeferenced Points of Interest (POIs) and their metadata, as well as mapping data for the POI content providers publishing the POIs to the AR application.

GeoPackage – The candidate OGC GeoPackage Encoding Standard provides an open, non-proprietary, platform-independent SQLite contain-

er for distribution and direct use of all kinds of geospatial data, including vector features and tile matrix sets.

GeoPackage supports delivery of geospatial application services and associated data in disconnected or limited network connectivity environments where open, sharable geospatial data to support their applications is frequently unavailable.

InDoorGML 1.0 – It aims to provide a common schema framework for interoperability between indoor navigation applications, which cover a wide spectrum of application areas such as indoor LBS, indoor web map services, indoor emergency control, guiding services for visually handicapped persons in indoor space, and indoor robotics.

Moving Object Snapshot – This candidate standard provides a way of describing in simple terms the motion of an object, such as a car driving through city streets or a person walking in a park.

OGC Web Services Context – The candidate OGC Web Services (OWS) Context standard encodes the key elements of a common operating picture: the geographic area, an optional time range, and an ordered series of layers from different services or inline content. This allows a situational awareness view of one user to be passed to other users so that the same picture can be reconstructed.

Rapid technological advances will definitely have implications for cartography. Therefore, cartographic community should participate in the OGC’s consensus process and introduce requirements that will shape future international standards.

Athina Trakas Director, European Services Open Geospatial Consortium atrakas@opengeospatial.org Geospatial World | December 2013

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