JANUAY 2007 VOL 11 ISSUE 1 - Geospatial World€¦ · JANUAY 2007 VOL 11 ISSUE 1 10 SANJAY KUMAR 16...

JANUAY 2007 VOL 11 ISSUE 1

10 SANJAY KUMAR

16 KAPIL SIBAL

18 V S Ramamurthy

20 Josef Strobl

22 David Maguire

24 Geoff Zeiss

28 Christian Heipke

30 Stewart Walker

33 Ian Dowman

35 Kanwar Chadha

36 K R Sridhara Murthy

38 Matthew Connel

40 Michael Blakemore

42 Bob Morris

44 Frank Warmerdam

46 Mark Reichardt

48 Stig Enemark

51 Maj.Gen.Gopal Rao

52 Martien Molenaar

55 Rear Admiral B R Rao

56 Jim Quanci

58 K K Singh

www.gisdevelopment.net

gis-asia-cover.qxp 1/16/2007 10:18 PM

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EDITORIAL 07

8 ADVISORY BOARD

10 GIS DEVELOPMENT - RECAPSanjay Kumar, CEO, GIS Development

GOVERNMENT

16 GIS FOR GROWTHKapil Sibal, Minister of Science and Technology

and Earth Science, Govt. of India

POLICY

18 V S RAMAMURTHYDAE Homi Bhabha Professor, India

GIS

20 PATHWAYS FOR GROWTHJosef Strobl, Centre for Geoinformatics, Austria

22 MAINSTREAM OR SPECIALIST?David Maguire

Director of Products and International ESRI

24 PERSPECTIVE ON GIS AND ITSINCREASING RELEVANCEGeoff Zeiss, Director of Technology, Autodesk

PHOTOGRAMMETRY

28 CHANGING PERSPECTIVE OFAERIAL PHOTOGRAMMETRYChristian Heipke

Institute of Photogrammetry and

GeoInformation, Germany

30 CHANGING PERSPECTIVE OFPHOTOGRAMMETRYStewart Walker, Director of Marketing, BAE Systems

EARTH OBSERVATION

33 IAN DOWMANPresident, ISPRS

LOCATION INTELLIGENCE

35 LOCATION ENABLED ECOSYSTEM: BRINGING BENEFITSOF LOCATION AWARENESS TOMASSESKanwar Chadha, Founder, SiRF Technonology

REMOTE SENSING

36 TRENDS IN SATELLITEREMOTE SENSINGK R Sridhara Murthy, Executive Director,

Antrix Corporation, India

38 MATTHEW CONNELChief Executive Officer, GeoEye

PRICING POLICY

40 GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION:EMERGING BUSINESS MODELSProfessor Michael Blakemore

IDRA Ltd. and University of Durham, UK

ENTERPRISE GIS

42 DESKTOP TO ENTERPRISEBob Morris, President & CEO, Leica Geosystems

Geospatial Imaging, USA

OPEN SOURCE

44 OSGIS RISINGFrank Warmerdam, President, OsGeo

INTEROPERABILITY

46 PERSPECTIVE ON INTEROPERABILITY AND STANDARDS

Mark Reichardt, President

Open Geospatial Consortium Inc.

SURVEYING AND MAPPING

48 RELEVANCE FOR GEOSPATIALCOMMUNITYStig Enemark, President, FIG

51 VIEWSMaj.Gen. M Gopal Rao, Surveyor General of India

CAPACITY BUILDING

52 EDUCATIONAL SERVICECHAINS FOR CAPACITY FOR THEGI-COMMUNITYMartien Molenaar , Rector, ITC

INTERVIEW

55 REAR ADMIRAL B R RAOChief Hydrographer, Government of India

56 JIM QUANCIDirector, Autodesk Developer Network

INDUSTRY

58 K K SINGH CMD, ROLTA Group of Companies

G I S D E V E L O P M E N T: A S I A PA C I F I C | J A N U A RY 2 0 0 7 Vo l . 1 1 I s s u e 1

GIS Development Asia Pacific is intended for thoseinterested and involved in GIS related activities. It ishoped that it will serve to foster a growing networkby keeping the community up to date on many activ-ities in this wide and varied field. Your involvement inproviding relevant information is essential to thesuccess ofthis endeavour.

GIS Development Asia Pacific does not necessarilysubscribe to the views expressed in the publication.All views expressed in this issue are those of thecontributors. It is not responsible for any loss to any-one due to the information provided.

GIS Development Pvt. Ltd. Printed and Published by Sanjay Kumar. PressYashi Media Works Pvt. Ltd. B-88, Okhla Industrial Area,Phase - II, New Delhi - 110 020. India Publication Address P-82,Sector-11, Gautambudh Nagar, Noida, India Editor Ravi Gupta

CORRIGENDUM“In the issue of August 2006, vol.10, issue 8, the Vietnamese news concerning the DITAGIS center is incor-rect. The fact is that the DITAGIS center still exists as amember of the University of Technology (HCMUT). It hasbeen acting continuously under the management of thenew director. The magazine apologies to the DITAGIS cen-ter for the inconvenience.”

36 Trends in Satellite Remote Sensing

PresidentM P Narayanan Editor in ChiefRavi Gupta Managing EditorManeesh Prasad Publisher Sanjay Kumar Honorary AdvisorProf. Arup Dasgupta Sr. Associate Editor (Honorary)Hrishikesh Samant Marketing Co-ordinator Megha Datta Sales Co-ordinatorUma Shankar PandeySr. Graphic Designer Deepak Kumar Assistant Graphic Designer Manoj Kumar Singh Manager - Accounts Yatindar Mohan Srivastava Dy. Manager - AccountsAnju Rawat Registration Co-ordinator Sumit Kumar Circulation Vijay Kumar Singh

Asia Pacific TeamRegional Manager Sunil Ahuja Assistant Editor Saurabh Mishra

South Asia TeamRegional Manager Annu Negi Regional Sales Manager Shivani LalSub Editor Ananya GhoshSub Editor Deepak KB

Middle East TeamRegional Manager Swati Grover Regional Sales Manager Prashant Joshi Manager Sales Sharmishtha Seth Sr. Research Associate Harsha VardhanResearch Associate Neha Arora

EuropeRegional Sales Manager Niraj

Portal TeamSub Editor Dhawal Kumar Sr. Manager (Web Development)Kumar VikramDeputy ManagerKarunesh Kumar MauryaWeb DeveloperAshu Garg, Viral Pandey

Location TeamAssistant EditorAnamika Das Sub-EditorHarpreet Rooprai

Training and Research TeamProgramme Co-ordinatorSatyaprakash Course Co-ordinator Neeraj Budhari Events Vicky Kalra, Albert Ahmed, Rupal Mehta

We invariably over-estimate the 'short term implications' of newtechnologies or developments and grossly underestimate their'long term impact', observed John Naughton.

As an example to substantiate this, he puts across the opinion poll result for a pollstergoing around in Mainz in the year 1468 asking people about the impact of movable typewriter. Just 13 years after it was invented, it had changed things and even the definitionof childhood. It surpassed the purpose for which it was visualised when books were a minority sport reserved for church and aristocracy.

In continuation, we find the same short term over-estimation of technology impact beingrepeated for Internet in the mid 1990s and Location Based Services in the late 90s. After thebursting of the Internet bubble and great disappointment from the 'Killer Application: LBS',we came to face the ground realities of usage. We are now moving ahead to incorporatethem as utilities in our daily life.

In the last few years, we have seen an increased usage of maps and geospatial tools forinfrastructure, urban utility services, environment, disaster management and businessapplications. It is driven by cost and time benefits accrued to the implementing agencies. Ina way, maps and geospatial tools are now becoming a public utility; 'A pragmatic motto', asobserved by Prof Strobl. From databases to software application development components,we have seen most of them gradually incorporating spatial component or support for spatial elements. We are also seeing organizations in the public sector that enable theirproject planning and monitoring in a geospatial manner.

Successful and widespread usage of 'basic innovation' is not dependent on its utility, butits 'critical components' that include the maturity of a tool, the system which will benefitfrom it and its capacity to accept, absorb and benefit from the given tool. Do we have all thecritical components for Geographic Information Technology in place? Whatever be theanswer for this question, it will vary from place to place and region to region. Factors thatwould further encourage the usage of geospatial tools in a state are: awareness amongst thedecision makers; professional associations' activism; government interest and initiatives incontinuously updating policies; human resource availability and development; systemicdevelopment of government capacity particularly at lower part of the pyramid enablingthem to understand and encourage use of geospatial tool at ground level; and recognizingthe relevance of private sector and map culture.

The factors that will have a positive impact on the global geospatial industry are: (1) Internet, which has in store more and more bandwidth for the end user with passing year;(2) Sustained interest amongst the IT giants in providing web based geospatial service.While the business model wherein they make sufficient sustainable money is not clear tome, I wish they find a model soon that will supplement the ad based revenue; (3) GNSS is set to see the Galileo and replenished Glonass in 3-4 years. The satellite positioning and navigation system is going places. From mobile asset management to car navigation; fromconvict tracking to child tracking; they are reaching everywhere. Hopefully they will carrygeospatial tools, along with them. (4) Satellite imagery data explosion, will lead to more andmore data at higher resolution and even better price, which could lead to emergence of applications that are unthinkable today.

Let us look forward to the long term impact of geospatial tools.

7G I S D E V E L O P M E N T: A S I A PA C I F I C | J A N U A RY 2 0 0 7 Vo l . 1 1 I s s u e 1

Advisory BoardDato’ Dr. Abdul Kadir bin Taib, DeputyDirector General of Survey and Mapping,Malaysia | Amitabha Pande, PrincipalResident Commissioner, Government ofPunjab, India | Bob Morris, President, LeicaGeosystems Geospatial Imaging,USA | BVRMohan Reddy, Chairman and ManagingDirector, Infotech Enterprises Ltd., India| David Maguire, Director,Products, Solu-tions and International, ESRI, USA | FrankWarmerdam, President, OSGeo, USA| Prof. Ian Dowman, President, ISPRS, UK |

Prof. Josef Strobl, Director, Centre forGeoinformatics, University of Salzburg, Aus-tria | Kamal K Singh, Chairman and CEO,Rolta Group of Companies, India | Prof.Karl Harmsen, Director, UNU-INRA | MarcTremblay, Vice President, Commercial Business Unit, DigitialGlobe, USA |

Mark Reichardt, President and Chief Operating Officer, OGC, USA | Prof. MartienMolenaar, Rector, ITC, The Netherlands| Matthew O’Connell, CEO, GeoEye, USA| Prof. Michael Blakemore, Emeritus Professor of Geography, University ofDurham, UK | Dr. Milan Konecny, Presi-dent, International Cartographic Associa-tion, Czech Republic | Er. MohammedAbdulla Al-Zaffin, Head of Survey Section,Dubai Municipality, UAE | Dr. PrithvishNag, Director, NATMO, India | Rajesh C.Mathur, President, ESRI India | Dr. StewartWalker, Director of Marketing, BAE Systems,USA | Prof. Stig Enemark, President, FIG, Denmark | Prof. V. S Ramamurthy,Chairman, IIT, Delhi, India

From the Editor’s DeskGeospatial Tools: Long Term Impact

Maneesh [email protected]

“”

Dato’ Dr. Abdul Kadir bin Taib joined the Depart-ment of Survey and Mapping Malaysia as Land Surveyor on 1st April 1978. He is now the DeputyDirector General of Survey and Mapping Malaysia.Dr. Abdul Kadir is also the Deputy Chairman, LandSurveyors Board Peninsular Malaysia. He holds aPh.D in Geomatic Engineering from University ofNew South Wales, Sydney, Australia (1994).

Amitabha Pande is graduate in English literaturefrom St. Stephens College, University of Delhi. Hejoined Indian Administrative Services in 1970s. Mr.Amitabh Pande is presently the Principal ResidentCommissioner, Government of Punjab. Prior to thathe was the Joint Secretary, Department of Scienceand Technology. He has been instrumental in creat-ing awareness about maps and development ofNSDI in India.

Bob Robert Morris began his career in forestrywhere he was responsible for various technical pro-duction and engineering tasks. In 1990 he movedinto product development for surveying, mappingand GIS solutions. He joined Leica Geosystems inNovember 2000 as President of GPS/GIS. Mr. Mor-ris holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Forestryfrom Humboldt State University in Arcata, California.

Dr. Christian Heipke is Professor of photogramme-try and remote sensing and head of institute, Insti-tute of Photogrammetry and GeoInformation (IPI),Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany since 1998.His areas of interest include digital photogrammetryand remote sensing in theory and applications. Hehas been the Chair of ISPRS Working Group on “Automated geo-spatial data acquisition andmapping” since 2004.

Dr. Davvid Maguire is the director of Products, Solu-tions and International and member of the seniormanagement team for Environmental SystemsResearch Institute, Inc. (ESRI). Dr. Maguire hasauthored or co-authored over 70 books and publica-tions on GIS, including the industry recognised Geographical Information Systems. He received hisdoctorate degree in Geography from the Universityof Bristol in 1983, and is a Fellow of the Royal Geo-graphical Society.

Frank Warmerdam is an independent geospatialopen source software developer, and has been working on the GDAL/OGR library for sevenyears. He is also an occasional contributor to manyother open source projects,winner of the first annualSol Katz award, and is currently President ofOSGeo.

Prof. Ian Dowman is Professor of Photogrammetryand Remote Sensing at University College London.His areas of expertise include Mapping production,Remote Sensing and Data capture. His currentresearch involves automatic feature extraction, ter-rain mapping and the geometric fusion of differenttypes of data. Ian Dowman is currently the Presidentof ISPRS.

Prof. Josef Strobl is director of the Centre forGeoinformatics at University of Salzburg and servesas head of the Department of Geographic Informa-tion Science, Austrian Academy of Sciences. He isteaching GIS and related subjects at various univer-sities since 1985. Current research is focused ondigital terrain modelling, spatial analysis and remotesensing methodology and applications, distributedGIS on the Internet and dynamic process modelling.

Kamal K Singh is the Chairman and CEO of RoltaGroup of Companies.He is an engineering graduatewith a Masters in Business Administration. Mr. Singhis a member of the Executive Committee of FICCI,the apex business organisation of India. He is alsomember of various reputed national organisationslike CII, NASSCOM, MAIT, Indo-American Chamberof Commerce and Indo-German Chamber of Commerce.

Prof. Karl HHarmsen was appointed Director of UNU-INRA in February 2006. He served from 2002 - 05as Director of the UN-CSSTEAP in India. He wasRector of ITC, The Netherlands from 1997–2000and was Executive Director (1994-1996) of the West and Central African Programmes with ICRISAT. Dr. Harmsen holds a Ph.D. Degreefrom the Agricultural University, Wageningen, TheNetherlands.

G I S D E V E L O P M E N T : A S I A PA C I F I C J A N UA R Y 2 0 078

Advisory Board

Advisory Board : GIS Development

Mark Reichardt is President and Chief OperatingOfficer for the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.(OGC). He joined OGC after a 20-year career managing geospatial production and technologydevelopment programs within the US Federal Government. His government career included a one year assignment with the Office of the VicePresident, USA.

Prof. Martien Molenaar gained his doctorate in Geo-desy from Delft Technical University. Since 2001 hehas been the rector at ITC, The Netherlands. He isinvolved in international projects and consultingmisions and has lectured in many countries acrossthe world. Professor Molenaar has published morethan 170 scientific publications on geodesy, pho-togrammetry, spatial-data modelling, RS and GIS.

Matthew O’Connell was the CEO of GeoEye’s pred-ecessor, Orbimage from 2001 to 2006. He has overtwenty years of experience in communications man-agement and finance. Mr. O’Connell was also thesenior vice president of Legal and Business Affairsfor Sony Worldwide Networks. He holds a Bachelorof Arts degree from Trinity College and a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia Law School.

Dr. Milan Konecny is the President of InternationalCartographic Association. He is also the AssociateProfessor of Cartography and Geoinformatics at theDepartment of Geography, Faculty of Science,Masaryk University, Czech Republic. He hasauthored over 70 papers in the field of cartographyand geoinformatics.

Er. Mohammed Abdulla Al-Zaffin did M.Sc. in SurveyEngineering (1990-1992) from University of NewBrunswick, Canada. He is the Head of Survey Sec-tion in The Planning & Survey Department of DubaiMunicipality since 1994.

B V R Mohan Reddy is the Founder, Chairman andManaging Director of Infotech Enterprises Limited.Mr. Reddy is a Gold Medalist in Mechanical Engi-neering from Andhra University. He holds a Master'sDegree in Industrial Engineering from Indian Insti-tute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur. He is now theExecutive Council member of NASSCOM, India.

Marc Tremblay is Vice President and General Man-ager of the Commercial Business Unit at Digitial-Globe, a leading provider of geospatial content andassociated web services. The company owns andoperates Quickbird™, the world’s highest resolutioncommercial imaging satellite.

Professor Michael Blakemore is Director (withRoger Longhorn) of IDRA Ltd, an information strategy consultancy, and is Emeritus Professor ofGeography at the University of Durham. He hasinternational research reputation in the managementof geographic information, particularly pricing and dissemination policy.

Dr. Prithvishh Nag is the Director of National Atlas &Thematic Mapping Organisation, India. He is a GoldMedallist from Benaras Hindu University. He hasauthored nearly 109 research papers and 36 books.Till recently, Dr. Nag was the Surveyor General ofIndia. He is the Chairman of National Task Force,National Spatial Data Infrastructure.

Rajesh C. Mathur is the President and Member ofthe Board of NIIT GIS Ltd., a strategic alliancebetween NIIT Ltd. and ESRI, Inc. An Electrical Engi-neer from IIT Delhi, Mr. Mathur has been associatedwith the IT industry for more than 25 years. He isalso the President of Indian Society of Geomatics.

Robert M. Samborski is the Executive Director of theGeospatial Information & Technology Association(GITA). Mr. Samborski’s background encompassesassociation management and private sector consult-ing experience. Mr. Samborski has a Bachelor’sdegree in Psychology from the University of Colorado and a Master’s degree in Public and Inter-national Affairs from Texas Christian University.

Dr. Stewart Walker is Director of Marketing for theGeospatial eXploitation Products business area atBAE Systems in San Diego, California, USA. Educat-ed in geography and geomatics at the universities ofGlasgow, New Brunswick and Bristol and with anMBA from Edinburgh Business School, he taughtphotogrammetry at the University of East Londonfrom 1977 to 1987.

Prof. Stig Enemark is the President of FIG. He haslong standing national and international experiencein consultancy, management and leadership. He wasthe President of DdL (Danish Association of Char-tered Surveyors) from 2003 to 2006. He has been aPracticing Land Surveyor for 10 years.

Prof.. V. S Ramamurthy is presently the Chairman ofIIT, Delhi. From 1995-2006, he was the Secretary tothe Government of India, Department of Scienceand Technology. He holds a PhD in physics fromMadras University. His major research contributionsare in the areas of nuclear fission and heavy ionreaction mechanisms, statistical and thermodynamicproperties of nuclei, physics of atomic and molecularclusters. He has 69 research papers to his credit.

9G I S D E V E L O P M E N T : A S I A PA C I F I CJ A N UA R Y 2 0 07

Necessity is the mother of invention, a phrase that hasbeen very relevant to human life since time imme-

morial. Most of inventions find their origins somewhere inacute need and search for objectivity.

GIS Development - The Geospatial Communication Network,traces its origins to the quest of search for information aboutGeographical Information Systems and its usage in the field ofenvironment by a group of people, who later on formed the Cen-tre for Spatial Database Management and Solutions (CSDMS) in1997 (now known as Centre for Science, Development andMedia Studies). GIS Development, originally a publication ofCSDMS, was primarily an outcome of the acute need of explor-ing information on GIS and when it was realised that nothingmuch is available, we saw an opportunity in itself to develop achannel of information dissemination and communicationwithin GIS community and its users.

Soon came, the first issue of GIS @Development (eight black and whitepages) newsletter focussing on infor-mation in the form of news items onGIS and remote sensing in and aroundIndia. Publication was an initiativethrough which we could create moreawareness about this fascinating tech-nology and encourage its usage in var-ious walks of life. Ground realities

were in total contrast to the ‘potential’ geographic informationand tools had in store. GIS and Remote Sensing were commodi-ties of lab and were seen as something to do with research com-munity. There was not much of awareness about GIS in the pre-mier academic institutions, leave apart the administrators andpolicy makers. It was a challenge to talk with senior officialsabout GIS as most of them did not have much interest, notbecause of lack of interest but more because of lack of aware-ness. And on top of all this, a very much restrictive nature ofmapping policy was in place, which did not allow access to top-ographical information for most part of the country.

Another important step towards developing a communicationnetwork was to organise the seminars, workshops, conferencesand exhibitions. It was not that there were no professional soci-

eties and conferences in thefield of GIS and remote sens-ing in India, but what GISDevelopment focussed on,was to promote the sameamongst growing GI usercommunity and that too innon-conventional sectors like,business, health, telecommu-

nication and infrastructure development. First ever conferencebeing organised by GIS Development was on ‘GIS for Businessand Environmental Planning’ in September 1997 in partnershipwith Department of Business Economics, University of Delhiand was inaugurated by Mr. Saifuddin Soz, the then Minister ofEnvironment and Forests, Government of India. It was veryencouraging to see the active participation of GI User communi-ty in this seminar with about 200 delegates mainly from useragencies and industrial houses. The participation of 200 dele-gates was more significant, since the same week Indian Societyof Geomatics had organised its Annual Convention inDehradun. And off course, most of participants and us were notaware of the same (which fully justified our initiative to have aneffective means of communication and integration of researchcommunity with end users and industry).

Within one year of its existence, GIS Development had estab-lished itself to serve as an important platform for GIS communi-ty to meet, learn, share, interact, network, promote and offcourse debate over the concerns of thecommunity including championingfor conducive and liberal mapping pol-icy. Office Memorandum of July 1998claiming to be a reformed mappingpolicy became a major detriment initself for the industry as before this,there was no stipulated regulationrestricting digital production of maps


GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lathe Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through thment Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Developme

GIS Development – RecapSanjay KumarCEOGIS Development

Media

except for the copy right act. But 1998Order brought a total ban on digitisationby people at large except the nine agen-cies, mainly the major map productionorganisations. GIS Development took it asa challenge to build public opinion tobring in reforms in mapping policy andunshackle the maps to be used by com-mon man in his day-to-day life. A regularcampaign known as ‘Unshackle Maps’was carried out through GIS Develop-ment publication and Map India ’99.Even the theme of Map India ’99 was‘Developing Spatial Information Policy’. Istill have the fond memories of 26thAugust 1999 (a Public Holiday), when lastday of Map India 99 witnessed a fullhouse for a Panel Discussion on MappingPolicy, which began at 9 am and wentuntil 1:30 pm without any break. In fact,discussions were so intense that chair ofthe Panel decided to skip the scheduledtea break and continued the discussions.

GIS Development recognised very soonthat situation with regard to geographicinformation dissemination is no better inthe other countries of Asia. It was verynatural opportunity for GIS Developmentto commit itself to serve the other Asiancountries and create more and moreawareness about potential usage of Geo-graphic Information in these countries.

GIS Development began its internation-al journey as early as within first twoyears of its existence with GIS ForumSouth Asia being organised in Kathman-du in April 1999 in partnership withInternational Centre for IntegratedMountain Development (ICIMOD) andSAARC Secretariat. Second GIS Forum

South Asia was planned in partnershipwith Arthur C Clarke Institute of ModernTechnologies, Sri Lanka, but unfortunate-ly due to political instability and socialunrest in the SAARC region, we could notsustain the initiative, which had offeredwonderful opportunities for regionalcooperation at SAARC region. Recentyears have seen that socio-political situa-tion is improving very fast in the regionand we are evaluating various options tobe able to revive this conference in nearfuture.

By the late 1999 and early 2000, worldwitnessed a boom in the spread of inter-net as a communication platform. GISDevelopment made its network webenabled and on 10th April the www.gis-development.net portal was launched byMrs. Sheila Dikshit, Chief Minister of Del-hi on the occasion of Map India 2000.With launch of the portal, GIS Develop-ment Private Limited was created as aseparate entity in itself, exclusivelyfocussing on promotions of GIS and relat-ed technologies in and around SouthAsia, while CSDMS continued its journeyin the field of research and developmentwith slightly broader coverage of infor-mation and communication technology.We did have an advantage of being basedin India which offered excellent IT talentat relatively low price, enabling us to puthuge amount of existing information andcontent on the web. It was at this point oftime in the year 2000, when we wereapproached by founder of Directionsmagazine for partnership, which couldnot happen due to lack of financialresources at our end. www.gisdevelop-ment.net, the Geospatial Resource Portal,is one of the most popular portals in thefield of GIS and related technologiesworldwide. It could be attributed as thetrue global portal as it has fairly evenlydistributed readership from North Ameri-ca, Europe, Middle East, Asia and thePacific. It has been able to enter into anunderstanding with quite a few interna-

tional organisations, which provides aregular content to the portal and today, ithas over 40000 pages of informationwhich is arranged in various categorieslike country pages, technology section,applications, conferences. It also has avery dynamic news section with a Week-ly newsletter containing top stories of theweek, articles, announcements, confer-ence reports, interviews, perspectivesand an editorial on regular basis.

Year 2000 also brought a very differentdimension to GIS Development, as it gavean opportunity to GIS Development toplay an important role in developingnational mapping policy. After our regu-lar follow ups with the various govern-ment agencies for liberalising map policy,it was in second half of 2000, when GISDevelopment took an initiative to organ-ise a national conference on GeospatialData Infrastructure in partnership withand sponsorship from major stakeholdersof mapping community like Departmentof Science and Technology, Departmentof Space, Ministry of Agriculture, Min-istry of Environment and Forests, Min-istry of Land Resources and industry. Thisconference proved to be a milestone andadopted a resolution recommending fornew map policy and calling for makingall geographic data available in digitalformat using common standards. Beingheavily supported by the GovernmentUser departments, it was taken more seri-ously by the concerned ministries androadmap was set to follow. GIS Develop-ment got an opportunity to contribute inthe policy formulation as it became a


997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997ry Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory

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member of National Task Force on NSDIand also initiated restructuring of Surveyof India. In summary, we began to worktogether with the concerned agenciesfrom the government and industry tomake more conducive policy environ-ment in the field of mapping and GIS inIndia.

We also witnessed that in the begin-ning of year 2001, there was a lot of inter-est shown by international companies inIndia and there was no better platformthan that of Map India and GIS Develop-ment publication for them to promotethemselves in India. We saw more andmore international participation in our

activities. By the mid of 2002 and early2003, we began to expand our activitiesto other countries of Asia with an objec-tive to share our knowledge and expert-ise with neighbourhood. It has been fasci-nating experience working with differentcountries and different cultures and webegan to learn how to make ourselvesmore effective and efficient in those localeconomies. It has been both challengingand encouraging to work in other coun-tries of Asia and help them know aboutwhat all is happening worldwidethrough our publications and confer-ences.

As most of you would agree that Asianmarket has huge potential to grow and soas in the field of GIS as well. Variousefforts and initiatives have been taken topromote GIS and remote sensing in theregion specially by pioneering institu-tions like Asian Association on Remote

Sensing (AARS), Asian Institute of Tech-nology (AIT), and GIS Asia Pacific. It wasat the back of our mind what can we do togrow this market and we began our con-sultations with like-minded organisa-tions including AARS and AIT. We kept onexploring to increase our presence ininternational market and very soon gotan opportunity to introduce ourselves atAsia level through Map Asia series of con-ferences, which was first held in Bangkokin August 2002, followed by KualaLumpur in 2003, Beijing in 2004, Jakartain 2005 and back to Bangkok in 2006.Map Asia conference has been designedkeeping in mind the users and to providea platform for interaction and collabora-tion between the technology developers,systems integrators and the users andalso raise the profile of the GIS in admin-istrative and political circles. It has alsobeen aimed at helping the Asian commu-nity to collaborate amongst themselvesand learn from each other as most ofthese have similar socio-economic envi-ronment and developmental challenges.

Our willingness to learn, innovate andpartnership approach helped us to estab-lish our activities fairly well in Asia andvery soon we became fortunate to have alarge user base supporting and partici-pating regularly in our activities. Ourassociation with survey & mapping andremote sensing agencies and institutionsin the region mainly from India, China,Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei,Singapore, and Japan helped us to raisethe local and regional issues for discus-sion and facilitate regional cooperation in

the field. In the meantime, we saw a wellreputed group of publication (AdamsMedia) closing down its print publicationknown as Geo Asia Pacific and GeoEurope and Business Geographics, whichleft us with two different observations;firstly there is not much of business inGIS print publication and it is gettingtough to sustain such ventures; and secondly we have an opportunity toserve an already developed market inAsia Pacific region. We opted to believe inthe later one and began to invest in cov-ering broad spectrum of information forentire Asia Pacific region and increase ourcirculation and readership in the region.Our editorial team did stories on status ofGIS industry in most important countriesof the region from time to time. A sub-sidiary of GIS Development was set up inSingapore in 2003 to serve the ASEANcountries and to generate more contentfrom the region.

Growing geographical reach and read-ership clubbed with fast developing geo-graphical industry in Asia Pacific region,made us face a very unique and pleasantchallenge i.e. to manage large amount oftechnical articles and stories, news items,view points emerging out the region andalso maintaining interactivity with restof the world and at the same time not let-ting the publication go beyond a particu-lar size to keep it light and effective. Inthe process of covering more and moreinformation from larger geographical ter-ritory of Middle East, South Asia, SouthEast Asia and the Pacific, at some stagewe felt that may be we are not able to dojustice with large geographical territoryby one publication, and in turn, we intro-duced an exclusive edition for MiddleEast region in January 2005. Within ayear, our experiment of separate editionfor Middle East proved to be wise one,making way for exclusive Editions forMalaysia and Africa in the year 2006.

Encouraged by the response of Exclu-sive Edition of GIS Development publica-

J A N UA R Y 2 0 07G I S D E V E L O P M E N T : A S I A PA C I F I C12

GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lathe Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through thment Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Developme

tion in the Middle East (fast growingregion in terms of economic and infra-structure development), we decided toset up our office in Dubai, which is seenas a very attractive location for tourism,and professional work environment. Theregion has attracted talented individualsfrom all over the world, who come towork in various government and privatecompanies.

While working in the region, we weresurprised to know that there exists no GISpublication for the region and almost nomajor conference was designed to caterto the large and fast growing geospatialindustry in Middle East (with exceptionof some specific company user meets andnewsletters). But at the same time, it wasvery exciting to know the keen interest ofleading end user organisations specifical-ly Dubai Municipality, who came for-ward with a very positive approach topartner with us for hosting the first MapMiddle East conference in the year 2005.Soon, many more organisations of theregion extended their hand to build andstrengthen an effective and representa-tive communication network for geospa-tial community of the Middle East. It is very exciting for us to be a part of thegrowing economy and professional envi-ronment in the Middle East.

Our entry to Middle East gave a new

dimension to the organisation and itoffered us an opportunity to work in dif-ferent scale of economy. Middle East,being geographically very uniquely locat-ed between the East and West, GIS Devel-opment attracted global attention withinfirst year of its operation in the region.

It would not be inappropriate, if I saythat the years 2005 and 2006 have beenhighly successful for GIS Development.On one hand, we successfully expandedgeographical reach of our activities inMiddle East and Africa while maintain-ing and further strengthening our servic-es for GIS community in Asia. On the oth-er hand, GIS Development began todevelop ‘The Geospatial Communication

Network’ with global perspective. Withhuge amount of information, experienceand network of relationships in Asia, itwas time for us to integrate the samewith global communication network andprovide an effective connect betweenand amongst various continents. Weintroduced four major initiatives in thisregard. First being the GIS DevelopmentWeekly, An electronic Weekly coveringtop stories, news items, feature articles,interviews, and major announcements(with about 25000 subscribers world-wide); Secondly introduction of GIS Publi-

cation, a monthly electronic publicationcovering top stories and articles beingpublished in various print and onlinepublications in a month (with about12500 subscribers worldwide); Thirdly,creation of a altogether new print publi-cation ‘Location’ designed for Europe andAsia focussing on GNSS and LocationIntelligence; Fourth being the initiative ofMap World Forum, which is an act tofacilitate and complement various stake-holders of the global geospatial commu-nity to get together under one roof towork out a strategy in order to take thisindustry forward and integrate itselfwith the global development and order.

In the last, I would like to acknowledgeand extend sincere gratitude to each and

every memberof this won-derful com-munity ofgeospatial pro-fessionals,technologydevelopers,end users, aca-demia, admin-

istrators and policy makers worldwide.Myself and my colleagues are fortunateto be part of this exciting community andhaving served the same to our totalstrength and integrity.

G I S D E V E L O P M E N T : A S I A PA C I F I CJ A N UA R Y 2 0 07 13

997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997ry Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory

gh the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Throughpment Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Develop-7) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007) GIS Development Through the Memory Lane (1997 - 2007)

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G23203_GIS-Dev-AP_Dec06.indd 1 12/7/06 4:29:8 PM

Q. With the release of National Map Policy last year, how do you

think the scenario has changed?

A GIS is a kind of generic technology that can be used for vari-ous developmental purposes such as disaster management,infrastructure management, etc. It allows the systematic devel-opment by taking into account the existing environment of thearea. It also allows information access to people and stakehold-ers involved in the developmental processes. So, GIS can changethe nature of planning for developmental purposes thatincludes projects as setting up of power plants, traffic and watermanagement, etc.

Q. With the Government of India's thrust on infrastructure, how do

you see the role of mapping agencies like SoI and NATMO?

A Survey of India (SOI) have plans for this sector mainlythrough public private partnerships. The first challenge in sucha process is preparation of maps on scales 1:25,000 , 1:10,000 andeven 1:2,000 with updated information. With high resolutions itis possible to look into minute areas.

If you consider the infrastructure in Delhi with an example oflaying down electric cables connecting houses through cablenetwork or water management or delivery systems, if maps areavailable at scale 1:2000, then the whole process can be formedin a systematic, productive manner.

The present challenge with government is how to get themaps at that level and how to put them into public domain and

user agencies to use maps and then to develop private publicpartnerships in which NGO's and other private enterprises canplay a role.

Q. Does Ministry of Science and Technology have any plans to

promote Indian GIS industry in providing global solutions?

A Absolutely without doubt. This is going to be a new area ofFDI , a new area for foreign exchange earning. First thing is thatthe data has to be collected, then one can think of how to usethat data with public private partnerships. Because it is not soeasy, the Survey Of India cannot move forward directly withouthaving man power and machinery to do all these, especially atnational and international scales. What the government will dois to provide data, set up systems, give necessary guidelines.Then it can allow the industry to move forward. For such animprovement one can consider an example of a project going onin Bangalore.

Q. How beneficial will be the initiatives of MoST as acting patron

to events like Map World Forum to the GeoSpatial community?

A The geospatial community should know what the Ministryof Science and Technology intends to do; what kind of scale ofmaps is needed for public domain; what is there in the publicdomain; what may not be there in the public domain, etc. withreference to security concerns for some parts of India that can-not be mapped or other national interests. We have the Presi-dent's views as the guidelines for an approach whereby creatingVirtual Earth for India for easy access to its citizens in a timebound manner with suitable policies and adequate securitymechanism is planned.

So, Map World Forum is a platform where the government caninform people and industry what it is intending to do and thenbounce the ideas of the industry to meet its expectations tomove forward in the direction of improvement with good rela-tionships.

Q. How did urban planning get benefited from pilot projects like

3D mapping of Chandni Chowk area through latest technology like

laser mapping?


GIS for Growth

Government

Kapil SibalMinister of Science & Technologyand Earth SciencesGovernment of India

GIS is going to be a new area of FDI. Thegovernment will providedata, set up systems,and give necessaryguidelines.

A One such pilot project is successful, itgained attention of stakeholders fromvarious regions and they realized thathow important it is to have 3D mappingfor developmental purposes. With pres-ent pilot project government will paygreater attention to make 3D mapping anorm in the infrastructure developmen-tal projects. Suppose if traffic manage-ment is needed to be maintained effi-ciently, or if there is a heavy rain or ifthere is a flood, the technology can exact-ly inform people which roads are blockedand which roads and areas will be inun-dated and where to move about.

Q. What was the objective of map data

delivery through Internet, if the Internet

license does not allow publishing map data

above 1 million scale?

A All the issues related to high resolu-tions will be addressed as the technologyadvances. Scaling of maps should be doneat high resolution. The Ministry has plansto provide the high resolution maps butfor now it has been started with basicdata collection.

Q. The ministry proposed car navigation

systems during 2004, what is the status of

introducing car navigation systems in

India?

A During 2004 the ministry proposedcar navigation systems. Currently, a hugeportion of the systems development andintegration work is done by subsidiariesof multinationals, which have their soft-ware development centers in India. Theavailability of digitized maps is the basicnecessity in placing car navigation sys-tems. Digital mapping may require aerialsurveying, as terrestrial surveying cannotprovide the level of accuracy is requiredfor such navigation systems. So, it willtake some time in introducing such sys-tems. But the government is definitelygoing to introduce car navigation sys-tems, first in Delhi, and then it will beextended to other cities.

Q. With reference to new map policy, aerial

photography relaxation, formation of

NSDI, how do you foresee the GIS industry

4-5 years down the lane?

A After five years the industry willbecome matured with the administrationrealising value of GIS technology for alldevelopmental purposes. As far as aerialphotography is concerned, the guidelineswill be framed after discussions oversecurity concerns. The data will be col-lected with the collaboration of con-cerned Ministry. The data will be oursand will be allowed to be used the waywe want.

Q. How are the educational institutions,

private industry and government working

together for the development of GIS Indus-

try in India?

A The private industries must informthe government that how they are goingto use GIS in their applications. The pri-vate industry is already aware of theMinistry of Science and Technologyinvolving into MWF. They must alsoinform up to what extent they need helpfrom the Government. Anyway the pri-vate industry is coming for the help ofeducation to people and institutions in agreater way.

Q. Earlier the Ministry undertook Mapping

the Neighbourhood project involving

school children in mapping excercise. Is

there going to be similar projects in future?

A The government has plans to extendNeighbourhood Mapping in the NorthEast part of India, and we expect the pri-vate industries to come and join for theevents. People always get the feeling thatthe government is moving forward to getthe data across the private industry. But,Private industry cannot move forwardwithout the help of the government Inevery phenomenal enterprise privategood is essential but public should be apart of the mission. The public good is

nothing but the private good, and the pri-vate good is nothing other than publicgood. But, the best way to serve isthrough public good. The private industrymust convey to the people that technolo-gy is always for the public welfare.

Q. What is your vision on Science and Tech-

nology for India?

A The Government is trying to fulfill theissues discussed in the 11th Five Year Planwhich focuses on 9% GDP growth. Gov-ernment expects to receive huge invest-ments in the field of science and technol-ogy and human resource development, ifit happens then India can stand alongwith the leading nations in the field ofScience and Technology.

Without achievement in science and technology the development of acountry is not possible. There should alsobe a good relationship in between the Government and private sectors then only a country can move towardsdevelopment.


During 2004 the ministry pro-posed car navi-gation systems.The governmentis definitelygoing to intro-duce car navi-gation systems,first in Delhi,and then to other cities.

Surveying and mapping have always been an integral part ofthe professional tool kit of explorers annd warriors. More recent-ly, they also have been put to use for routine administrationincluding asssessment and collection of land revenues. It is notsurprising that surveying and mapping received high priorityeven in the early years of British rule. Survey of India, thus,came into existence. While the entire country spread over sever-al hundred million hectares has been surveyed and mappedover a period spanning several decades, thanks to the sustainedand dedicated efforts of the cartographic community, the tech-nology of surveying and mapping itself did not go through anymajor changes.

Today, space based remote sensing technology has literallyturned surveying and mapping upside down. Areal photogra-phy has been overtaken by ALTM. GPS has made position deter-mination a child's play, routinely available even in a cell phone.Computing powers and storage technologies have made largescale data storage and analysis routine. Display technologies areimproving everyday with new capabilities like stereo pictures.The communication technologies make it possible to movelarge volumes of data literally across the globe. These develop-ments have not only brought revolutionary changes in the tech-nologies of surveying and mapping but also in the range ofapplications of the survey products. Spatial data today is adevelopment tool in the hands of everyone in every walk of life.

The fast changing technologies also bring into focus the leg-endary disconnect between technologists, end-users and thepolicy makers. The technologists worry more about technolo-

gies than about the user requirements and often resent largescale repetitive assignments. The end-users on the other hand,want magic solutions and are more comfortable with knowntechnologies even if they have been superceded. Often, the userrequirements demand integration of data using multiple tech-nologies and the users have difficulties in bringing the technol-ogists together on the same platform. Often the source of infor-mation on available technological options to the users are otherusers and marketing literature, neither of which is completeand up-to-date. The policy makers are neither technologists norend-users. They always play it safe when it comes to adoptingnew technology. In fact, policy making bodies across the worldhave difficulties in adopting to the fast changing technologies.

How do we respond to this? Cartographers need to bring in thelatest technologies covering all operations of surveying andmapping and prepare data products in communicable forms rel-evant to the security and socio-economic needs of the day. Theyalso have a role in policy making and help to bring together allthe stake holders.

The two new initiatives of Survey of India, the dual series ofmaps and the establishment of National Spatial Data Infrastruc-ture (NSDI), represent two major policy initiatives responding tothe needs of the day. The NSDI is a mechanism that has evolvedafter several rounds of discussions among both national andinternational stakeholders to bring in uniformity, quality con-trol and access to diverse data.

The dual map series is yet another landmark policy decision bythe government. One is well aware of the difficulties in gettingdigital maps under the map policy in vogue. The dual seriesmaps attempt to put at least some of the development maps inpublic domain in digital form after due security clearances.While we do have a long way to go, these are initiatives in theright direction.

We also need to reflect on one recent development, the emer-gence of Open Source maps like 'GoogleMaps' and 'Wikimapia',available on the net. These sites have put digital maps of theentire globe in the hands of the public not only to view but alsoto edit and use. While this has raised some security concerns aswell as opened up an entirely new dimension of 'personalizedmaps'. How do we cope up with these fast changes? I believe thecartographers should continue to upgrade their technical skillsbut should also interact strongly with the user community andthe policy makers on a regular basis so that the best of technolo-gies and data are available to the users.

The cartographic community, therefore, has a unique role.They need to bring in the latest technologies covering all opera-tions of surveying and mapping and prepare data products incommunicable forms relevant to security and socio-economicneeds of the day.


Policy

Prof. V S RamamurthyDAE Homi Bhabha ProfessorIndia

The fast changing technologies also bringinto focus the legendarydisconnect betweentechnologists, end-usersand the policy makers.

Pathways for GrowthAs GIS has been around for many decades, can we really expectmajor innovation, or do we rather lookk at slow, incremental evo-lution? Are we expecting any more than further maturing, withperiodical technology-driven improvements in line with overalldevelopment in ICT?

Or, is there a potential for a broader expansion of geospatialthinking and toolsets into our daily lives, going far beyond theprofessional instruments of traditional ‘mapping disciplines’?Exploring this question requires starting from an assessment ofsome current issues.

It certainly is correct to observe that over the last decade GIShas integrated well with mainstream ICT. This means that GISnow can leverage innovations from the computing industryand apply these for the benefit of its own applications. GISdevelopment can increasingly build on top of established archi-tectures and is in a position to reduce ‘platform infrastructure’development for the benefit of geospatial core functionality.

At the same time, developers are facing the effects of the lawof diminishing returns regarding their efforts: increasinglyhigher levels of complexity, interfacing tasks and reliance ongeneric components (the downside of what was pointed out in the preceding paragraph) and a very diverse range of application demands are leading to ever more complex develop-ment. Read: longer release cycles, less than perfectly reliablesoftware, major interfacing problems and architectural incom-patibilities etc.

All of this translates into a potentially spiralling cost of devel-opment for a somewhat saturated user base. In other words:user revenue is growing at a slower pace than development costdictated by the ever increasing complexity required by users.This discrepancy is exacerbated by many users’ expectationsthat software can be acquired for free, that different businessmodels in the software and consulting industries can somehowmagically reduce the cost of providing advanced GI services.

While there certainly is some truth to all of those observations,the industry follows different strategies for coping with these current trends and to evolve towards tomorrow’s GISfoundations:

FOCUS AND SPECIALIZEWe all (ie, certainly a majority of the computer literate popula-tion) have made the experience that even as an above-averageuser of any standard office software product we use perhaps 5percent of the functionality offered by today’s advanced andmature products. Does this mean that more can 50 percent ofthe market can be satisfied with a product at only five percentthe (development) cost? And, due to greatly reduced complexity,at much higher quality and reliability?

This is the line of thinking followed by a number of alternativesoftware products. KISS (Keep It Small and Simple) is a provenstrategy to avoid bloated and over-specified software. Manyniches and specialized applications are doing well by employing‘their own’ products, and several industries are well advised toexplore this option.

Of course this option is not without problems and may causeenormous difficulties in the long run. Scalability of specializedniche applications typically is very limited, whoever had experi-enced out-growing one’s software and having to completelychange an architecture will be able to tell several less than fun-ny stories. Any change in scope and focus might lead to similareffects. Interfacing with other systems along a value chain or toenable a new workflow requires adherence to continuouslyevolving standards specialized developers rarely have thepotential to take care of this. Plus the staffing issue: out-of-the-mainstream qualifications are more expensive to acquire andmaintain, harder to find and staff will be more reluctant to per-sonally invest into more outlandish skill sets.

GENERIC PLATFORMS AND TOOLSETSWe are slow to acknowledge that there is no such thing as ageospatial industry, just as there are no word processing orspreadsheet industries. All these are powerful and sophisticatedtoolsets employed by very different application domains fol-lowing their respective semantics and business processes.

To support industries working in various application domains(like power and other utilities, cadastral administration, geo-marketing, logistics etc) major vendors are focussing on build-ing powerful and highly scalable generic platforms. Individualapplications supporting workflows and business processes arebuilt from toolsets, frequently integrating with other ICT com-ponents. Enterprise systems like databases, ERP, CRM etc oftenare tightly linked with spatially explicit (“GIS”) components.

With the few remaining major vendors’ GIS architecturesgrowing in functionality and complexity, there might not beenough major customers to go around having the potential, sizeand business to justify ever more new large scale implementa-tions. But of course the advantages of ‘product families’, flexibleand scalable architectures provide potential for supporting


GIS

Josef StroblCentre for Geoinformatics, Salzburg University, Austria

growth paths and homogeneous envi-ronments across entire industries.

STANDARDS-BASED HETEROGENEOUS SYSTEMSSome geoinformatics experts argue thatthe evolution of standards, e.g. from theOpenGIS consortium, has reached a stagewhere these standards define a completearchitecture framework for geospatialapplications. Large portions of traditionalmonolithic systems can therefore bereplaced by best-of-breed components,thereby avoiding the expensive over-heads incurred by large, integrated pro-prietary architectures. While again thereis some merit to this approach, currentimplementations are rather limited. Onthe one hand some optimisation and scal-ing issues are not dealt with in standardsand thus might be left out altogetherfrom heterogeneous, conglomerated sys-tems, on the other hand the overall effortto build and maintain this kind of envi-ronments is anything but minor.

Another key critical aspect clearly is thecomplexity of licensing and businessmodels for mixed systems. System inte-grators are largely on their own whentracking interfacing problems, issues can-not easily be isolated and attached to anyone component. With the exception oflarge-scale Spatial Data Infrastructuresspanning multiple institutions and juris-dictions, heterogeneous environmentslikely will not have a broad appeal.

GIS AS A PUBLIC UTILITY (?)Interestingly, the conveners of the 2007Map World Forum in Hyderabad havemade this claim a programmatic motto ofthe conference. While navigation / posi-tioning services (e.g. GNSS) have beendubbed the ‘fifth utility’ (alongside water,electricity, gas and the telecommunica-tion) years ago, the perspective on GIS asa public utility is rather new.

It could be argued that GIS in itself is anunlikely candidate for a public utility as

average citizens will typically not beinterested in working with GIS. Norshould they, at least if we consider GISfrom an IT systems perspective. Still,online services rendered on the basis ofGIS very much fit the bill of an everydaynecessity widely used by the general pop-ulation.

We of course recognize that public utili-ties serve basic needs in society, that inmany ways they form the backbone offunctioning economies. Utilities are fre-quently considered from a civil infra-structures perspective: providing criticalservices not as a purpose in and of itself,but rather to facilitate processes in busi-ness, society and personal lives.

Infrastructures are sometimes consid-ered part of government responsibilities,either from an operational or regulatoryperspective. As there are facets of naturalmonopolies, it might be difficult to rejectany government role. If we are looking atpublic utilities from an infrastructureperspective, we will notice that thisincludes a substantial portion of today’sGIS operations. Utilities are only justifiedif there is an important benefit for users,typically realized and implemented as amarket. Services based on GIS certainlyare increasingly indispensable if we thinkabout transportation and logistics, hous-ing and other spatial functions, securityand safety as well as environmental qual-ity and simply personal mobility.

GROWING THE MARKETManaging to grow these and other mar-kets into customers for GIS will ultimate-ly justify the cost and effort of buildingSpatial Data Infrastructures and of imple-menting GIS as an (indirect) utility. Spa-tially based services will be used by cus-tomers developing a need optimisedservices in their personal and profession-al lives. (We need to acknowledge,though, that this need is primarily linkedto open societies with individuals leadingmobile lifestyles in a market economy.)

Just as other utilities require certain enduser skills (just think about electric appli-ances or telephony) leveraging a spatialinfrastructure utility requires a skill setfor sensible use in one’s daily life. Tradi-tionally map reading and navigationwere rather professional skills, only in anindividualized society they are becominggeneral skills for everybody. Today, inorder to grow the market for GIS serviceswe need so secure a framework for perva-sive location awareness for everybody.

‘Location awareness’ is a general con-cept for mobile and spatially thinkingindividuals, just like the concept of‘telecommunication’ as such, or ‘energy’required for driving appliances underliesother utilities. Going one step furthertowards more rational applications weenter the idea of ‘Learning to Think Spa-tially’ as outlined in a recent book pub-lished by the National Academies of Sci-ences Press, again one foundation forbuilding the individual mental infra-structure required to make reasonableuse of our Spatial Information Infrastruc-tures. How does this connect with theabove discussed topics? Well, right nowwe are at a crossroads for GIS: either wekeep going as a maturing professionaldiscipline in a saturating market. Or,move on towards using SDI’s as infra-structures for applications serving us asindividuals in our daily lives, our busi-ness workflows and all other aspects insociety. If we want to succeed in solvingsome of the evolutionary problems out-lined above, if we want to move aheadwith the success story of geospatial tech-nologies and services, and if we want to‘put our lives on a map’ for better man-aged societies, we need to start with edu-cation. Education on all levels clearly isthe pathway to create a spatially literatesociety, and location aware actions by‘spatial thinkers’. Growth in GIS primarilyhappens through education, and I amconvinced of that as a GIS researcher aswell as an educator!


Mainstream or Specialist?David J. Maguire

Director of Products andInternational, ESRI

GIS is now a mature, sophisticated and quite abroad field encompassing everything from

mainstream informational technology and businessissues, such as services-oriented architectures, patentlaw and public sector information pricing, to specificgeographic issues, such as scale, projection, and thespatial distribution of geographic phenomena.

Some commentators believe that GIS is just another type ofinformation system, while others are adamant that it is uniqueand worthy of special consideration in its own right. Let usexplore these two perspectives in the context of recent develop-ments in IT and GIS.

The last decade has been a momentous one for many areas ofbusiness, science and technology. The web really has changedmuch of what we do and has pervaded a substantial portion ofour working and personal lives. First our work environmentswere computerized and now the latest trend is the fusion ofcommunications and information technologies in the form ofnew media (integrated sound, video, messaging and eventuallysystem control).

Advances in mobility technologies are being incorporated intothe new information systems. This has been a boom time forgeographic information and processing. The world is finallywaking up to the geographic advantage of organizing assets,events and processes geographically.

Increasingly we are seeing infrastructure (such as roads, rail-roads, buildings and land parcels), combined with features ofinterest (such as the climate, businesses, and landmarks), andgeographic events (such as swap meets, sporting/culturalevents and traffic accidents). Geographic technologies andmethods are slowly working there way into mainstream infor-mation technology.

The major database vendors, IBM and Oracle (and eventuallyMicrosoft), have the ability to manage basic spatial data typesand manipulate then using basic query operators. Mapping hasbeen ‘free’ on the web for over a decade now and the early pio-neers have been joined by MapQuest, Google, Yahoo and

Microsoft. No one expects to pay for basic street maps and forfinding (geocoding) points of interest and routing betweenthem. Most recently, the world has gone 3D with the introduc-tion of geographic exploration systems that allow easy brows-ing of global imagery and associated geographic data sets. Mapsform the basis of in-car navigation systems, many phones havelocational awareness built-in and it seems that we are able totrack almost everything from teenage children, to supertankerscontaining valuable cargo.

Many of the technologies using in these example applicationsare now being released as open source and are freely availableat no cost for many uses. This is a sure sign of the maturity ofthe application domain and the core technologies.

It is clear from all of this that GIS is being embedded in manymainstream applications and that its popularity is rising rapid-ly. It is tempting to think that all the geographic problems havebeen solved, that there is no further need for research and devel-opment, and that we are now into the age of geographic infor-mation exploitation or commodification. In fact, nothing couldbe further from the truth!

Mainstream geographic information applications typicallyfocus on information use, not creation or update. They usuallyconcentrate on basic display and query operations, rather thanmore advanced and complex editing and analysis tasks. Allow-ing a user to select a map tile on server that represents their areaof interest and displaying this quickly in a web browser is a farcry from compiling a high quality geographic database frommulti-source information (field survey, aerial imagery, existingvector data, etc.).

The latter requires that we model complex geographic work-flows, develop advanced geometry manipulation tools, andmanage database integrity and quality. In short, mainstreamapplications work best for relatively simple, well-defined prob-lems that need to be repeated many times. It is much less easyto go mainstream with complex, problems that require a lot ofad hoc data manipulation and analysis.

There are still many challenging areas of GIS that are in theresearch and development phase and it will be some timebefore they break through into the world of everyday use. A few


GIS

examples will serve to illustrate thatmuch remains to be done.

The term ‘representation’ is used todescribe how we model the infinite com-plexity of the real world in the finitecapabilities of a digital information sys-tem; how we select what to include andexclude in our information system. Noteverything in the real world can be repre-sented as simple point, line, and polygonobjects.

How for example do we model phenom-ena that have indeterminate boundariessuch as the economic heartland of south-ern India or the dessert of northernAfrica? How do we deal with multi-scalephenomenon such as a city whose defini-tion changes with scale? How do we rep-resent transient things such as stormsthat are constantly changing in 3D spaceand time?

Although spatial analysis and modelinghave made great strides in recent yearsmuch of it is still a nascent science. Mostof the classical statistical techniques thatwe leant in school (descriptive and infer-ential statistics) either can’t be applieddue to their statistical assumptions ormust be heavily modified when appliedin the geographic context.

The staple technique of describing,explaining and predicting the relation-ship between two or more things of inter-est (regression analysis) does not workwell for geographic phenomena becauseone key assumption is that there is nospatial autocorrelation (spatial pattern)in the variables.

Tobler’s ‘first law’ of geography tells usthat everything is related to everythingelse, but that near things are more relatedthat far things, that is, spatially autocor-relation is widespread.

Fortunately, there are new ways tocompensate for geographic variations inspatial regression analysis. Similar issuesapply to many other areas of spatialanalysis.

The kinds of questions that we often

wish to use GIS to answer usually requireaccess to multiple types of data. Giventhe issues about representation that havealready been discussed and the widearray of geographic data collection meth-ods and devices it is not surprising thatthere are often difficulties in integratingdata from multiple sources. The so-called‘interoperability’ problem has both syn-tactic and semantic dimensions. Syntac-tic interoperability is concerned with thestructural or format aspects of exchang-ing geographic information between sys-tems.

For example, it is relatively straightfor-ward to load the information in an Auto-CAD DXF drawing into an ESRI GIS geo-database by converting from one formatto the other. They more challengingsemantic interoperability problem is toexchange the meaning of the databetween the two system informationmodels. For example, a land parcel in theCAD system couldhave been createdby an engineer todefine theperimeter bound-ary wall of theparcel, whereas inthe GIS a taxassessor usingthis same bound-ary definitioncould be inter-preting it as thelegal extent of theparcel for taxationpurposes. In reali-ty it is possiblethat the twomany be signifi-cantly differentand are certainlynot the samething conceptual-ly and legally.

GIS it seemsthen is both main-

stream and at the same time a specialistfield. Mainstream technology companieshave done a good job of exploiting existing geographic data sources(remember that the vast majority of thedata in Google Earth and Google Mapswas originally collected for other purpos-es) and for popularizing basic geographicdisplay and query applications. Theyhave helped get geographic and GIS intonew areas.

Specialist, advanced GIS companies con-tinue to be the purveyors of data creation,spatial analysis and modeling and pro-duction cartography technology andapplications.

As we continue to advance our under-standing of geography, develop bettertechniques and tools, and as the GIS mar-ket continues to grow we can expect tosee a constant streams of ideas, tools andtechniques moving both ways across themainstream:specialist divide.

J A N UA R Y 2 0 07

GEOSPATIAL HAS JOINED THE IT MAINSTREAM First and foremost the geospatial industry is undergoing anunprecedented transformation because of the widespreadrecognition that geospatial is no longer special and has joinedthe IT mainstream. As just one example, this was the theme ofthe last MapIndia conference in New Delhi last year. What thismeans in reality is that geospatial has become one of the coreenabling technologies that is available to everyone in IT, notjust to GIS specialists. An important example is relational data-base management systems (RDBMSs). RDBMSs used to berestricted to numeric and text data types. Now virtually everyRDBMS including Oracle, PostGIS/PostgeSQL, MySQL, DB2,Informix, (and I expect in the near future, SQL Server) have spa-tial capability, typically spatial data types, a spatial index, andspatial extensions to SQL.

MASS MARKET GEOSPATIALMore people are using spatial data and capabilities in their dayto day life than ever before in the history of GIS, though most ofthem probably wouldn’t recognize what the letters GIS standfor. Well-known examples include MapQuest, Yahoo Maps,Google Earth and Maps, Windows Live Local, A9, and the manymashups that people have built on these platforms. The mostincredible statistic I have heard recently is that Google Earthhad 100 million downloads in its first 12 months. I doubt that

there are that many people on the planet who would recognizewhat the three letters GIS represent.

OPEN SOURCE GEOSPATIAL SOFTWARE HAS MATUREDAnother dimension of this remarkable period in the history ofgeospatial is the maturing of the open source geospatial com-munity. There is a parallel between what happened in theemerging internet phenomenon in the late 90’s and the currentsituation in geospatial industry. In the mid 90’s eight core con-tributors supporting the NCSA HTTP Server, which was animplementation of the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C)HTTP web standard, got together for the purpose of coordinat-ing their changes (called "patches") and formed the originalApache Group, which was at that time little more than a sharedmailing list. The industry, including major IT players like IBMand others, was trying to decide how to develop and supporttheir own proprietary web servers and compete in this arena. In1999, with IBM encouragement, the members of the ApacheGroup formed the Apache Software Foundation, a legal entity,to provide organizational, legal, and financial support for theApache web server. The rest is history. Since then the ApacheHTTP Server has been adopted by IBM and others and is runningon over 70% of the world’s web servers.

There is a similar situation in the web mapping sector. On thefirst hand there are clear signs that web mapping is becomingcommoditized. Open standards create a fertile environment foropen source, and open geospatial standards from the OGC, suchas the Simple Feature Specification for SQL (SFS) and Web Map-ping Service (WMS), have been widely adopted. Secondly, therealready exists a large and active open source geospatial commu-nity around web mapping. For example, many people believethat MapServer, an open source web mapping server, is alreadyrunning 50% of the world’s web mapping servers. Thirdly, thereis a commercially successful geospatial sector providing supportand services that has formed around open source geospatialsoftware. Recently people active in the open source geospatialcommunity decided that the community needed to make somemajor organizational decisions to move to the next stage in the


Perspective on GIS and its Increasing RelevanceGeoff Zeiss

Director of TehcnologyAutodesk

GIS

More people are usingspatial data and capabili-ties in their day to daylife, though most ofthem probably wouldn’t recognize what the letters GIS stand for

development of open source geospatialsoftware. This effort culminated in theformation of the Open Source GeospatialFoundation in March of 2006. The OSGEOcurrently includes MapServer, GRASS,GDAL, GeoServer, Mapguide, and othergeospatial tools and libraries and, analo-gously to the early days of the ApacheFoundation, is supported by a major com-mercial software vendor.

OPEN SPATIAL INTEROPERABILITYAt the 2005 GITA Conference, over 290utilities attending the conference weresurveyed about their GIS usage. Over 60%reported that they were using more thanone GIS. Many also reported that filetranslation was the most common mech-anism for sharing spatial data.

But an interesting phenomenon isoccurring. I already mentioned most ofthe major RDBMSs provide geospatialsupport. In addition all of the majorgeospatial vendors support spatially-enabled RDBMSs. Until recently it wasnot clear if the ability to share data in a

common spatial RDBMS, instead oftranslating files, was being was beingtaken up by users of geospatial data.Now there are clear signs that geospatialinteroperability is becoming a reality. Atthe Oracle Spatial User Group Meeting atlast year’s annual GITA conference twoUS municipalities reported how they hadimplemented multi-vendor interoper-ability based on an open spatially-enabled relational database manage-ment system (RDBMS). This indicates atrend that open spatially-enabled enter-prise solutions are being adopted inmany organizations where interoper-ability between multi-vendor applica-tions and unobstructed access to shareddata are crucial. Geospatially-enabledrelational database management sys-tems provide an open data repositorythat supports collaborative mapping,design and infrastructure managementfor large enterprises. With this open plat-form, for the first time geospatial dataare accessible to geospatial applicationsfrom multiple vendors via standard SQLand ODBC, JDBC and OLEDB. Since spa-tially-enabled RDBMS manages all enter-prise data in a secure, highly availableenvironment, key elements of spatialtechnology can now be used in conjunc-tion with core enterprise business datato improve general operational efficien-cy. This provides a tremendous businessbenefit to government, utility, telecom-munications and other organizations.Organizations can now build solutionsby integrating best-of breed applicationsand solutions from multiple vendors.

WEB 2.0 AND GEOSPATIALTim O’Reilly in his seminal paper “What isWeb 2.0 ?” has identified some of thecharacteristics that distinguish Web 2.0.

Prior to the advent of Web 2.0, the webwas primarily a publishing platform. Akey aspect of Web 2.0 is participation andperhaps the best known example isWikipedia, which is arguably the largest

encyclopedia, available in multiple lan-guages, the world has ever known. Asanother example, open source itself is aWeb 2.0 phenomenon. In Tim O’Reilly’swords, Web 2.0 provides a platform forharnessing the collective intelligence. Wesee web mapping as another arenawhere Web 2.0 is already having a major


impact in the broad consumer world, forexample, Google Maps/Earth, MicrosoftVirtual Earth, and others where mashupsenable users to share data and applica-tions.

Web 2.0 has important implications forinfrastructure management at utilities,telecommunications, and municipal gov-ernment organizations responsible formanaging network infrastructure.

One of the most serious challenges fac-ing organizations responsible for manag-ing network infrastructure, includingwater, waste water, power, gas, telecom-munications, roads, and highways, isincreasing the productivity of the field

force. This challenge has become particu-larly urgent in North America where, as arecent study of the power utility industrydocumented, industry is facing the prob-lem of an aging field force. Within thenext few years half of the field force, withtheir deep knowledge of network facili-ties, will retire to be replaced by young,inexperienced workers. In some sectorsthe situation is dire. I recently chattedwith an employee of an Arizona utility,who said that 50% of the work force at hisfirm is eligible to retire this year. This willrepresent a huge loss of collective intelli-gence. The challenge for organizationsresponsible for network infrastructureover the next few years is to transfer theknowledge about the network infrastruc-ture currently in the heads of experienced(and soon to retire) field workers into theorganization’s collective knowledge base,so that the collective intelligence can beharnessed by all workers, but most criti-cally, younger workers, to improve pro-ductivity in the future. Open source webmapping using Web 2.0 technologies willbe a key technology to make this happen.Of course this will require other technolo-gies such as wireless, city-wide WiFi, 3Gtelephony, and WiMAX, connectivity andnew forem factors for handhelds such asUltra Micro Personal Computers (UMPCs).

TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIPAn important impact of web mappingand associated phenomena such as opensource geospatial, is that as more peoplehave access to geospatial capability, thecost per seat is declining. In infrastructuremanagement in the utility and telecom-munications sectors, for example, tradi-tionally the software was primarily desk-top CAD products, used by engineers anddrafters. As these firms enable other peo-ple in the organizations to access net-work infrastructure data, they are findingthat a viewer or web mapping applica-tion, which may be open source or a freedownload, is more appropriate. The num-

ber of web and viewer users is typicallymuch larger than the number of desktopCAD users so that the per-seat cost isdeclining as the data is shared amongincreasing numbers of users.

BIM/CAD/GIS CONVERGENCETraditionally disciplines such as architec-ture, engineering, and construction, civilengineering, and GIS have been classicinformation silos. Each has maintainedits own island of design applications anddata. This has created a nightmare foremergency planners and responders,urban planners, and others who needimmediate and seamless access to build-ing interior and exterior, road, andgeospatial information.

One of the most exciting things that ishappening in the design software worldis the convergence of architecturaldesign, engineering, land development,civil engineering, construction, andgeospatial disciplines. The goal is toensure that people such as emergencyresponders, project managers, and proj-ect managers have at their finger tips aseamless view of all the design andgeospatial information they require.

The business drivers for this transfor-mative technology advance are produc-tivity and efficiency in the constructionand facilities management industry, andimproving the performance of facilitiesover their full life-cycle. The objective ofbuilding information models (BIM), CAD,and geospatial integration is to develop aframework of interoperability across thelifecycle of building and infrastructureinvestment involving design, construc-tion, and operation.

The most immediate impact ofBIM/CAD/GIS integration will be in theareas of emergency planning andresponse, where immediate and seamlessaccess to infrastructure data inside, out-side, and underneath urban structures iscritical for dealing rapidly and effectivelywith emergency situations.


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Changing Perspective of AerialPhotogrammetryMuch has happened in aerial photogrammetry and remotesensing for topographic mapping tasks over thee last few years. In the sensor domain the most noteworthy developments com-prise the development and successful commercial use of digitalaerial cameras and of laser scanners, the possibility to measureimage orientation parameters directly in the air by means of acombination of GPS and inertial measurement techniques, theavailability of sub-meter imagery from space on a regular basis.As far as the generation of geospatial information from imageryis concerned, a number of trends can be observed:

• a larger degree of automatic processing,

• a closer link to GIS, including update and refinement of existingGIS data bases,

• the largely increased demand for digital imagery and geospatialdata for use in the internet, exemplified by applications such asGoggle Earth and Microsoft’s Virtual Earth.

Without any doubt, the automatic generation of geospatialinformation in conjunction with a closer link to the GIS world isthe most demanding of the mentioned trends, especially if real-time applications such as disaster relief operations are to behandled. Such tasks can only be achieved on the basis of digitalimages, and sometimes need direct height information. There-fore, the development of digital aerial cameras and of laser scan-ners can be seen as pre-runners to solve the mentioned tasks.The focus of this article lies on the automatically producinggeospatial information and describes the scientific backgroundof the field as well as some applications and future directions.

BACKGROUNDPhotogrammetric image processing is divided into two aspects,i.e. the geometric/radiometric image evaluation and imageanalysis. Geometric/radiometric image evaluation comprisesimage orientation, the derivation of geometric surface descrip-tions and orthoprojection. Image analysis contains the extrac-tion and description of three-dimensional objects. When usingdigital images, the borders of geometric/radiometric imageevaluation and image analysis become blurred, mostly because

due to automation the formerly decisive manual measurementeffort has lost much of its significance. Therefore, already duringthe orientation phase a point density can be used, which is suf-ficient for some digital surface models (DSMs).

GEOMETRIC/RADIOMETRIC IMAGE EVALUATIONMethods for the integrated determination of image orientation,DSMs, and orthophotos are as follows.

The components of image orientation are the sensor model, i.e.the mathematical transformation between image space andobject space, and the determination of homologous image prim-itives (mostly image points). As far as the sensor model is con-cerned, the central projection distinguished from line geometry.

In the context of bundle adjustment the central projection istraditionally described by means of collinearity equations. Thedetermination of homologue points is almost exclusively doneby digital image matching. The methods for aerial images andfor the satellite sector are almost fully developed and are avail-able for practical purposes under the term “automatic aerial tri-angulation”. It should be noted that the automatically generat-ed image coordinates of the tie points are often interactivelysupplemented or corrected.

As an alternative to aerial triangulation the direct and inte-grated sensor orientation were thoroughly investigated in thelast decade. In both cases data from GPS receivers and IMUs(inertial measurement units) are used for determination of theelements of exterior orientation. For direct sensor orientationthese data replace tie and (more importantly) also ground con-trol points and thus the entire aerial triangulation. For integrat-ed sensor orientation all information is used in a combinedadjustment.

Like image orientation the derivation of geometric surfacedescriptions from images is based on digital image matching. Ifa digital terrain model (DTM) is to be derived from the DSM,interfering objects (for the terrain these can be buildings, treesetc.) must be recognized and eliminated. At present this task issolved by comparatively simple image processing operators andstatistical methods. As in image orientation, the automatic stepis usually followed by a post-editing phase to eliminate blun-ders and fill in areas in which matching was not successful.

Orthoprojection, the projection of a central perspective imageto a reference surface, mostly a horizontal plane, is a standardtask in photogrammetry: Recently, automatic solutions for so-called “true orthos” have become available. True orthos areorthophotos for which a high quality DSM was used for differ-ential rectification, instead of a traditional DTM, and whereoccluded areas are filled in from neighbouring images. As aresult, for example, roofs and bridges are depicted at their geo-metrically correct position, and building walls are not visible.


Photogrammetry

Christian HeipkeInstitute of Photogrammetryand GeoInformationUniversity of HannoverGermany

IMAGE ANALYSISImage analysis can be defined as theautomatic derivation of an explicit andmeaningful description of the objectscene depicted in the images. For this pur-pose, individual objects such as roads andbuildings must be recognized anddescribed.

In order to set up useful models, geo-metric and radiometric information onthe various objects must be collected andadequately represented. For aerialimagery, the larger the scale of theimages to be analysed and the moredetails are required, the more importantis geometric information, as one moreand more enters the domain of humanactivity, which can be characterised bylinear borders, symmetries, right angles,and other geometric aspects. For smallerresolutions, however, radiometric andspectral attributes dominate, whichexplains the good results of multi-spec-tral classification for satellite images ofcoarser resolution as well as the inferiorresults of the same technique for highresolution satellite and aerial images. Theset up of the object models is a majorproblem of image analysis.

At present, despite significant researcheffort it is still not clear a priori, whichelements of an object and scene descrip-tion need to be taken into account tobuild a useful model. Recently, more andmore statistical methods are used inknowledge acquisition and representa-tion. Presently, these attempts are stillprovisional, however it is obvious that anefficient automatic generation of modelsis a decisive prerequisite for the successof image analysis approach.

Another possibility for introducing apriori knowledge is based on the assump-tion that images are normally analysedfor a certain purpose, pre-defined at leastin its main features. This is, where thementioned link to GIS can help. In GIS, theavailable information is described inobject catalogues, which contain relevant

information for formulating the objectmodels for image analysis. It is some-times also postulated that object modelsfor image analysis should be set up hier-archically in a similar way, as they aredescribed in object catalogues: the upperlevel discerns only coarse context areas,such as settlements, forests, open land-scape, and water bodies, and a refine-ment then follows within the respectivecontext area.

Available GIS data rather than onlydescriptions in feature catalogues mayalso be used as part of the knowledgebase. In this way, the GIS data can also bechecked for correctness and complete-ness. An example is shown in Figure 1,where road data are superimposed withan orthophoto. Roads depicted in greenhave been automatically checked andverified by the developed system; roadsin red were not recognised automaticallyand need to be checked by a human oper-ator. The formal description of data quali-ty is still an open, but important aspectfor this approach.

In recent years, important progress wasmade in image analysis, even though abreakthrough in direction of practicalapplications has not been achieved yet.The present status of image analysis canbe summarized as follows:

• simultaneous use of multiple images,combined with early transition to the threedimensional object space, simultaneoususe of point, line and area informationthrough projective geometry,

• rich modular object modelling encom-passing geometric, radiometric, and spec-tral information,

• simultaneous interpretation of differentdata sources, such as single images andimage sequences with geometric surfacedescriptions and two dimensional maps,

vmodelling of context and completescenes instead of single object classes,

• investigations regarding formulation anduse of uncertain knowledge, for examplebased on graphical models such as Bayesnets, fuzzy logic, and evidence theory toenable automatic evaluation of obtainedresults in terms of self-diagnosis,

APPLICATIONS AND FUTUREDIRECTIONSThe automatic generation of geospatialinformation from images finds a host ofapplications in all areas dealing with thedetermination of three-dimensional coor-dinates from as well as the interpretationof imagery.

The disciplines such as agriculture,forestry city and regional planning 3Dcity modelling disaster Managementhomelands secrity also increasinglymake use of automatic data acquisitionfrom aerial and satellite images. Howev-er, in spite of a large body of successfulresearch in recent years practical applica-tions of fully automatic systems do notseem realistic in foreseeable future. Semi-automatic procedures, however, begin tobe used successfully but Contrary to fullyautomatic methods, semi-automaticmethods needs to integrate the humanoperator into the entire evaluatingprocess to deals with tasks which requiredecisions (e.g. selection of algorithms andparameter control), quality control, andwhere required the correction of interme-diate and final results. It is anticipatedthat these semi-automatic approacheswill be established in practical workwithin next few years.


Fig. 1 Orthophoto with superimposed roadnetwork from a GIS database. Roads depict-ed in green were automatically detected inthe orthophoto and could thus be verified, forroads in red this was not the case; the redroads need to checked by a human operator.

Stewart WalkerDirector of Marketing(Geospatial eXplotationProduct)BAE Systems

Photogrammetry is well known to the readership of GIS Devel-opment as the workhorse for creating annd updating maps andGIS databases. It remains dynamic, however, and its increasingversatility and accessibility increase its value to many users. Wereview several trends, stressing the rapidly channging hardwarefor airborne digital imaging.

AIRBORNE DIGITAL IMAGERSEver since the launch of the Leica ADS40 and the Z/I ImagingDMC at the ISPRS Congress in Amsterdam in 2000, the pho-togrammetric world has been buzzing with excitement thatdigital technology has arrived powerful enough to replace theaerial film camera. These high-end imagers, together with theVexcel UltraCam, have achieved acceptance in the market-place: the three suppliers have sold more than 150 units, atprices well above those of film cameras, and diverse applica-tions are being tackled and deliverables created in sufficientquantities to quell any doubts about teething troubles or resid-ual systematic image errors. Hundreds of film cameras are stillin use, however, and the predominant workflow for map pro-duction remains film photography, chemical processing andscanning, yet we must acknowledge that a “paradigm shift” istaking place and the attractions of simpler, all digital workflowsare considerable despite high initial investments. It appearsthat a given map specification can be met using digital imagerywith a larger pixel size (ground sample distance) than scannedfilm, which compensates for the smaller fields of view of thedigital imagers. The radiometric content is better too, resultingin longer flying seasons and days. Users should expect opera-tions such as automated triangulation and generation of digitalterrain models, which require reliable image matching, to runbetter with digital imagery.

High-end imagers are only part of the bewildering range ofhardware available (table 1). However much the spotlight is onthese, far more units have been sold of the small- and medium-format cameras. Small digital frame cameras feature in eco-nomical, lightweight multiple camera systems, for example theGeoVantage system developed for agricultural monitoring orthe several systems involved in widespread production of off-

the-shelf oblique imagery that has proved unexpectedly popu-lar with emergency services and other users owing to its easyinterpretability – Pictometry now operates more than 70 air-craft! Perhaps 200 medium-format digital frame cameras havebeen sold by suppliers such as Applanix and Rollei, many inte-grated with airborne LIDAR sensors. Color is generally achievedby Bayer interpolation, whereby a matrix of tiny filters is placedover the CCD array, so that each cell receives red, green or blueand the two colors it does not receive are interpolated fromneighboring cells. The largest CCD arrays incorporated in cam-eras remain below 100 megapixels, such as an 85-megapixelsystem from BAE Systems to capture panchromatic imagery forreconnaissance.

The high-performance imagers, therefore, use multiple digitalframe cameras to achieve sufficient coverage. The IntergraphDMC has four 28-megapixel panchromatic cameras pointingslightly obliquely in a star-like shape and acquiring imagessimultaneously, which are used to generate a single, synthetic,central perspective image in software. The Vexcel UltraCamuses an ingenious arrangement of nine arrays capturing in aparticular sequence to generate a single panchromatic image,which has increased from 86 megapixels in the UltraCamD to133 megapixels in the recently introduced UltraCam-X model.Both the DMC and the UltraCam have four, lower resolution,multispectral cameras pointing vertically, the imagery fromwhich is used to colorize the panchromatic image. Also in thisgroup is the DiMAC 2.0 from DIMAC Systems, which has two 39-megapixel cameras with Bayer interpolation, pointing vertical-ly downwards but with their focal planes offset relative to theoptical axes to increase cross-track coverage.

Pushbroom line scanners represent a quite different technolo-gy. Based on linear CCD arrays, they acquire continuous stripimages through the forward motion of the aircraft. Multiplearrays may be placed on the focal plane, to facilitate restitutionof the imagery using the “in-track” geometry, provide stereo-scopic coverage and achieve color. The recent introduction byLeica Geosystems of two new sensor heads for its ADS40 isintriguing (figure 1). These incorporate a novel tetrachroid beamsplitter so that the same strip of terrain is imaged on four multi-


Photogrammetry and LiDAR

Changing Perspective ofPhotogrammetry

spectral arrays that are physically sepa-rated on the focal plane. Moreover, thesensitivity of the multispectral arrays hasbeen quadrupled so that high resolutionimagery can be acquired in less than ideallight conditions. Thus three major per-ceived disadvantages of pushbroom linescanners are dispelled, i.e. fringing causedby imperfect color registration, resolutionlimitations in the multispectral, and colorstereo.

Though software packages developedfor scanned film imagery have requiredrather little enhancement, there havebeen some subtle effects. The sensormodels have required further parametersto fit the digital imagers’ geometries anddeformation patterns. Some special for-mats and imagery with more than eightbits per band have had to be accommo-dated. And very large blocks of small- andmedium-format imagery and theirGPS/IMU metadata must be efficientlyshepherded through photogrammetricprocesses such as triangulation.

Owing to the motion of the aircraft andthe limitations of gyro-stabilized cameramounts, especially in turbulent condi-tions, the ground footprints of the succes-sive lines of the strip images of pushb-room line scanners are criss-crossed andjumbled. Thus the sensor model is a time-dependent one since each line has its

own orientationand the softwaremust perform aninitial rectifica-tion fromGPS/IMU values,resulting in stripimages that canbe viewed andmatched. Trian-gulation thenresults in refinedtrajectories andmore precise rec-tification prior to subsequent stages ofthe photogrammetric workflow. Thisprocess is very demanding and is not astraightforward extension of algorithmsdeveloped purely for frame images, soonly a subset of the available packagesoffers it. Nevertheless, around one thirdof the high-performance imagers sold arepushbroom line scanners. Line-scannerimagery is being successfully used world-wide, from small projects to the massiveUS government projects that brought theADS40 to prominence some years ago.The acceptance of this radically differentapproach, i.e. a line sensor producing longstrip images processed in a softwareworkflow significantly different to thatused for frame images, and the recentappearance of more suppliers of imagers

in this category are remarkable and indi-cates the practicality of the hardware andsoftware, tempered perhaps with a senseof adventure on the part of the users.

LIDARData densities from airborne LIDAR con-tinues to rise, primarily due to increasingpulse and scan rates. New electronics willsoon enable multiple laser pulses to be inthe air at the same time. Accuracyimproves too, due more to advances inGPS/IMU performance than LIDAR per se.Though fully automated software pro-cessing is still elusive, strides have beenmade in both the efficacy of existinginteractive software and in semi-auto-mated classification. As observed earlier,combined airborne systems to acquireboth imagery and LIDAR are becomingthe norm. Software to handle all thisdata, however, is not so straightforward.Photogrammetrically-derived DTMs havefar fewer posts than the billions in someLIDAR projects, so photogrammetric soft-ware such as BAE Systems’ SOCET SET hashad to be redesigned to cope. The result ispowerful: viewing LIDAR point cloudsagainst stereoscopic imagery is ideal forpoint classification and editing; and pho-togrammetric editing tools become avail-able to the LIDAR community. Synergiesemerge between photogrammetric andLIDAR developments in the area of auto-matic recognition and separation of


Fig. 1 Focal plane layouts of the recently introduced SH51 and SH52 sensor heads for LeicaADS40: both are fitted with tetrachroid four-way beam splitter and have multispectral collectionin the nadir for minimum long-track building lean and superior “near true” orthophotos; SH52additionally offers multispectral stereo imagery.

Fig. 2 Very high resolution satellites for the NextView program: GeoEye-1 (left) and WorldView 1 (right).

buildings and trees in DTMs. The currentchallenge is automatic heighting fromcombined LIDAR and imagery: LIDARheights, especially near discontinuitiessuch as the edges of roofs, enable pho-togrammetric matching to make fewergross errors but also to find and matchthe edges for detailed, precise, reliableDTMs.

SATELLITE IMAGERYDespite our emphasis on aerial pho-togrammetry, the huge importance ofsatellites cannot go unmentioned.Today’s one meter imagery from sourcessuch as IKONOS, QuickBird and OrbView-3 was scarcely imaginable when it wassatisfying to discern even a cricketground amongst Landsat’s huge pixels inthe 1970s.

Plans for future satellite imagery aremore intense than ever: a study pub-lished by Forecast International in May2006 suggested that 140 earth imagingsatellites worth $16.3 billion are sched-uled to be launched during the next 10years, with as many as 19 per annum

until 2009.Already there is alarge group ofhigh-resolutionsensors continu-ously acquiringimagery in thesub-five-meterrange, many pro-grammable forboth specific cov-erage and stereo.The NextViewproject, giving riseto GeoEye-1 andWorldView 1/2(figure 2), will pro-vide resolutions of<0.5 m panchro-matic and <2 mmultispectral. Dra-matic too has been

the growth in the number of high-resolu-tion satellites - TES and Cartosat-1 (India);FORMOSAT-2 (Taiwan); BEIJING-1 (China);KOMPSAT-2 (Korea); ALOS and IGS(Japan) - already being operated by mostof the major countries in South and EastAsia. They will be joined soon by Car-tosat-2 (India) and THEOS (Thailand).New satellites will supplement existingand will provide more coverage of specif-ic territories and spectral bands. Pho-togrammetric software must import thisimagery and implement appropriate sen-sor models. The ideal solution is a mathe-matically rigorous combination ofimagery from whichever airborne andsatellite sources the user wishes, all avail-able for geographically precise measure-ment and interpretation within the samemapping project.

MORE ON SOFTWAREAutomation in production photogram-metry requires more research, but cur-rent packages work well, with a blend ofautomated and interactive process: thekey to success lies in optimal integration

of the workflow phases. Though featurecollection and updating remains a pre-dominantly manual process, costs havebeen subdued by global outsourcing andsoftware tools enabling photogram-metrists to work in the GIS environment,i.e. populate and edit a GIS database fromstereo imagery using photogrammetricand GIS tools.

Triangulation is largely automated,orthorectification and mosaicking com-pletely so, but radiometric dodging andbalancing to produce the most aestheti-cally pleasing end product present someremaining hurdles. Overall, however,photogrammetric production is a fullyoperational workflow and it is a measureof the level of refinement that currenttrends highlight issues such as projectmanagement, image archiving and serv-ing, server oriented architecture and webservices, rather than specifically pho-togrammetric aspects.

CONCLUSIONThus photogrammetry is a vibrant disci-pline, undergoing transition fromscanned film to digital imagery, accom-panied by concomitant software exten-sions. Photogrammetric projects arebecoming increasingly capable ofembracing satellite imagery and airborneLIDAR, enabling the user with flexiblesoftware to practice levels of data fusionheretofore impossible or intractable.From local tasks to regional projects, pho-togrammetrists can generate DTMs,image maps, line maps, GIS databases,city models etc.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTThe material in this paper is a synopsis ofseveral presentations and articles pre-pared jointly with Professor GordonPetrie of the University of Glasgow. The author is most grateful to ProfessorPetrie for his cooperation, permission touse this material, and comments on adraft of this paper.


Table. 1 Built-up surfaces class (Southern part of the study area)

Over the past 10 years there have been dramaticchanges within photogrammetry and remote sens-

ing which has driven the use of imagery into new areas.

These changes have been both technical and political. The tech-nical advances include the move to capture and process imagesdigitally; high resolution optical satellites for civilian use;development of laser scanning and synthetic aperture radar;the development of high precision navigation systems linkingGPS with inertial navigation systems; and the development ofGIS and web based distribution of data. All of these develop-ments will continue, and will provide higher quality data toserve more applications. On the political side the pronounce-ments of intergovernmental meetings, starting with UNISPACEIII, followed up by the World Summit on Sustainable develop-ment and the Summits on Earth Observation, which led to theestablishment of the Group on Earth Observation (GEO), havefocussed interest on the use of Earth observation for the benefitof society and led to space agencies and other organisationsworking together to satisfy this objective. During the comingyears we can expect consolidation of these trends. Develop-ments will be highly dependent on the provision of suitabledata, and this will itself depend on political initiatives, whichwe hope will address the Millennium Development Goals, espe-cially the threat of climate change, and the urgent need to pro-

vide the data and the training to enable scientists, public ser-vants and politician to understand the threat and to developways of dealing with it.

Photogrammetry and remote sensing are closely linked toeach other and to the other specialist subjects, such as GIS, geo-desy and web based technology, which are part of geomatics.One of the key developments over the next few years will begreater integration within Geomatics. Photogrammetry, remotesensing and Earth observation are concerned with imagery, butit is the global aspect of these subject, and the new emphasis onbenefits to society, promoted by the Global Earth ObservingSystem of Systems, (GEOSS) which have the highest profile. Thisaspect of remote sensing has a catalytic effect which drives thesubject forward.

On the technical side, there is no doubt that the sensors willdrive the development of new applications. We are promisedmore high resolution optical sensors, both from the commercialsector and from national space agencies. Cartosat -1 and Topsathave have 2.5m pixel size, Cartosat-2 will have 1m pixels. Thecommercial systems from Geoeye and Orbview will have pixelsof less than 0.5m. The high resolution satellites will continue toplay an important role in providing image data for mappingand monitoring; however the use of stereoscopic image datafor generating the third dimension has not developed, ratherother sources of digital terrain models, such as the Shuttle RadarTopography Mission (SRTM), laser scanned data, or existingmapping, has been used.

This has started to change with the advent of ALOS PRISM andCartosat, designed to provide regional and global DEM cover-age. Algorithmic development is necessary to really exploit thistype of data. Another established trend is the use of small satel-lites and of constellations. The use of constellations of satelliteshas already developed through the Disaster Monitoring Con-stellation, the impending launch of RapidEye will combine highspatial resolution with high temporal resolution; and now theSpace Agencies, co-ordinated through CEOS are planning con-stellations to meet the requirements of the GEOSS societal ben-efit areas.

Airborne laser scanning is now an established technique, andthe rapid evolution of scanners is making possible more densedata, obtained from high altitudes. This will lead to moreautomation in the extraction of features and a greater demandfor 3D city models

Optimum use of these different types of data is aided by data fusion and the integration of image processing with GIS. Progress in developing multiscale GIS is essential for this process, and the only way to ensure optimum use of allavailable data.

One important side effect of the maturing of technology is the


Key developments over the next few years will be greaterintegration within Geomatics - such as GIS, Geodesy and Webbased technology

Ian DowmanPresidentInternational Society for Photogrammetry and RemoteSensing

Earth Observation

realisation that resources should bedevoted to understanding the quality ofdata. This is also an important topicwithin GIS, and a lot of work is inprogress on data uncertainly, and onways of presenting this is an understand-able way to users. The CEOS WorkingGroup on Calibration and Validation(WGCV) has been looking at this for manyyears, but the effort necessary for routinecal/val procedures has not been forth-coming. Now, however, more work isbeing done, again spurred by GEOSS.ISPRS has collaborated with CNES to vali-date SPOT 5 HRS data products and withISRO to validate Cartosat-1 data.

In general the development of algo-rithms has kept pace with technology.One notable area has been SAR interfer-ometry, SRTM is one testament to this;but differential IfSAR has made remark-able advances in measuring displace-ment due to earthquakes and subsidence.This trend can be expected to continue as

longer series of data are built up and bet-ter data from TerraSAR X and Tandem Xbecomes available.

The most important developments inthe next few year will come, providingexpectations are met, from political ini-tiatives. There is no doubt that GEO andthe GEOSS programme have the potentialto invigorate Earth observation and bringdata and useful information to end users.Key components of this are the co-ordina-tion of data acquisition, the distributionof data, and the ability of end users toexploit the data.

Co-ordination can only come throughthe good will and best efforts of spaceagencies, IGOs and NGOs. There aremany talking shops, where useful inter-change of information can take place,and important contacts made, but with-out the commitment of resources to actu-ally turn good intentions into data andinformation, no real advances can takeplace. There are good models for this, the

Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) forexample, Global Spatial Data Infrastruc-ture, and the International Steering Com-mittee for Global Mapping. ISPRS isworking with sister organisationsthrough the Joint Board for GeospatialInformation Societies to develop capacitybuilding, so that institutional and indi-vidual end users can obtain the maxi-mum benefits from data.

In summary: there is no reason whytechnical development should not con-tinue, driven by the requirements of endusers and the provision of new and betterdata.

The application of these developmentswill however ultimately depend on thepush provided from decision makers,who recognise the role which geospatialinformation can play in developing socie-ty, generating wealth for society, andhelping to solve some of the problemswhich face society today and will face usin the years to come.

Location Enabled Ecosystem:Bringing Benefits of LocationAwareness to MassesSince early days of human kind we have looked at stars fordetermining time and our location. Invention of watch solvedthe problem of time for masses, now satellite based systems arehelping us solvee the problem of location. As the world becomesmore mobile and less wired, consumers and businesses alikehave begun to turn to satellite based positioning systems (GPS,Galileo, Glonass amongst otherrs) and products to figure outwhere, location-wise, they are.

In our increasingly mobile society, concept of location aware-ness is going to bring a broad range of benefits to the societythrough diverse applications: convenience oriented such asnavigation; safety oriented such as child tracking; productivi-ty enhancing such as logistics management, just to name afew. However, converting the raw information from satellitesignals into something useful for consumers requires signifi-cant investment in location ecosystem.

Just as one does not venture to learn about how a watchfunctions to give time but expects time to be accurate andavailability to be everywhere, such is the expectation of theconsumer for location, available anywhere anytime.

Any new direction we take in society requires the creation ofan ecosystem - be it the government establishing new eco-nomic zones for stimulating economic growth or a businesssetting operations in a new area. An ecosystem of partners

and vendors are required for success of the new venture andLocation Awareness for the Masses is no exception.

A Location Enabled Ecosystem is collaboration amongst part-ners who bring in their collective strengths to create a platformwherein the consumption of location by the masses is simple -Where location awareness becomes second nature to the mass-es. Where the answer to ‘Where are you?’ is already available tothe interrogator. Where ‘content is always linked to context’.Where location becomes the ‘Killer Enabler’.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR LOCATION ENABLED SERVICES?Many industry pundits predict that in the not-too-distantfuture, location will be as ubiquitous as time in the mobile con-sumer and enterprise market. As a key piece of data easily acces-sible to consumer devices, location will be consumed by every-day applications starting, many believe, with search.

Applications that could leverage LBS data include addressbooks, IM lists, photo libraries, internet links, social networkingentries, and localized applications such as traffic and weatherhelpers. In this paradigm, location is an invaluable filter forenhancing and enabling richer user experiences. For example, amobile device could access location for its Push to Talk or Instant

Messaging application to notify users that a “buddy” is in closeproximity, allowing the mobile user to connect with friends orfriends of friends in person when convenient. Another exam-ple: Bloggers could annotate their personal blogs or social net-working applications with a review of a show or a restaurantwhereby like-minded subscribers to the blog would be notifiedon their mobile device if/when they pass by that show orrestaurant. For those scientifically inclined, location forms theother axis of Einstein’s ‘Time Space’ continuum. Today we havegranulized time to the nano seconds, the possibilities are end-less if we granulize location and make it available to the masses.


Location Intelligence

Kanwar ChadhaFounderSiRF Technology

Building Blocks for a Location Enabled Ecosystem

Applications that couldleverage LBS datainclude address books,IM lists, photo libraries,internet links, social net-working entries, andlocalized applications


Remote Sensing

Trends in Satellite Remote SensingThe satellite remote sensing scenario witnessed a greatupheaval over the past one decade and it was dominated by thesuccess of high-resolution satellites, in the commercial domain.

The anchor tenant role of the US Government coupled withthe spurt in demand for such data on a continuous basis due toa changing geopolitical landscape, which had been clouded byconflicts have helped to sustain this activity. The classical mod-el of systematic global coverage cycles for imaging have beenaugmented with limited, AOI (Area Of Interest) coverage withimproved revisit capability, thanks to the highly agile space-craft platforms that permitted diverse modes of imaging suchas ‘push broom’, ‘step and stare’ and ‘paint brush’ modes provid-ing images of high resolution. Another major development inrecent past that helped in meeting the underserved needs forhigh resolution digital elevation models is the successful entryinto operation of along track stereo imaging satellites such asIndia’s Cartosat-1 and Japan’s ALOS.

Turning to lower resolutions, a robust need also continues formedium resolution data, which received some set back in sup-ply side due to the limitation of line-scan corrector’s perform-ance on Landsat-7. However, SPOT system, IRS-1C and 1D satel-lites and Resourcesat-1 continued to address this segment withestablished track record.

Notwithstanding the relatively long planning horizons of thesatellites or related sensor technologies, the prediction of futuretrends is fraught with some risk of over or understatement ofwhat the market is going to be in future. A major reason for thisis the bouncing back of aerial remote sensing segment, rein-forced with new sets of sensors and with the promise ofimproved turn around and cheaper operational costs. The drive

towards creation of mass market for information embeddingimage based inputs and delivery through Internet are otherforces that make predictions difficult. Nevertheless, the satelliteremote sensing activity is going to be highly vibrant in the com-ing years, if the number of new systems which are under plan-ning and development is any indication.

Even while this article is going for print, a state of the art oper-ational satellite Cartosat-2, capable of providing 1 meter resolu-tion images, is undergoing preparation for launch at the India’sSatish Dhawan Space Center, SHAR, at Sriharikota. Cartosat-2will mark the first of the series of very high resolution mappingsatellites of India, with observational features comparable to itspeers across the globe. Cartosat-2 is designed as an agile system,permitting diverse modes of operation and higher revisit capa-bilities than earlier satellites from India. The satellite sensor willprovide a radiometric resolution of 10 bits and its data will bedownlinked in ‘X’ band, thus facilitating many existing stationsaround the globe to be able to downlink data, with minimumadditional investments.

The satellite will also have recording capability onboard, so asto allow imaging of areas not covered by International GroundStations. The International stations will be equipped with avariety of software developed by Indian Space Research Organi-sation such as satellite orbit/attitude data interface, quick lookbrowse, payload programming and data product generationsoftwares. Cartosat-2 along with its predecessors like IKONOS-II,Quikbird, Orbview-3 and EROS-B1 will strengthen the applica-tion scenario worldwide.

The advent of many new satellites in the high-resolutionrange will improve user service levels, besides bringing downcosts. There will also be a trend to realise sub meter systems, asevident from the plans for GeoEye-1 (data of 41 cm GSD) andWordlview-1 of Digital Globe (providing data of 47 cm GSD) andsuch future satellites from India, Europe and others. Public pri-vate partnerships will be a trend to be watched in this area.

The Advanced Wide Field Sensor on ResourceSat has led atrend to provide very wide coverage with improved resolution.Usefulness of this approach has been vindicated by growingdemand for such data in a variety of resource managementapplications which need both seasonal currency of data andcoverage of large areas.

Agricultural inventory and production forecasts are exampleof such an application. Such needs will be addressed in future byconstellations of small satellites, with improved sensor technol-ogy. Rapid Eye constellation from Europe will provide largercoverage combined with fairly high resolution.

It is noteworthy that there is a need, which is still not met bycurrent systems. It is the demand for highly current data (suchas those demanded for disaster warning or damage assessment

K. R. Sridhara MurthiExecutive DirectorAntrix Corporation, India

It is noteworthy thatthere is a need, which isstill not met by currentsystems.

applications in near real time or less than24 hours turn around). Future will see thefiling of this gap.

In terms of spectral diversity of sensingsystems, a significant capacity will beadded by the radar imaging systems,which are currently being developed bydifferent agencies.

India’s RISAT, COSMOS-Sky Med of Italyand a host of other systems with lowweight technology will begin to provideradar data in different frequencies andpolarizations obtained through sensorslike SAR. While these aim at both civilianand security related applications, challenges related to technologies for data handling, merging and informa-tion extracting and equally complexissues like data access policies need to beover come. Technologically speaking,another area of challenge and promise isthe domain of hyper spectral sensing.While a few systems are being planned orunder development, including in India,the application research and availabilityof data need a quantum jump.

A major effort is needed in the develop-ment of sensors which can measure thedynamics of physical and chemical char-

acteristics of atmosphere and oceans.Similarly tremendous challenges is alsoinvolved in the field of modeling. For itspart, Indian space programme is address-ing in a major way development of a vari-ety of sensors mounted on space plat-forms to study and gather data on land,water and atmosphere.

These missions not only aim to improveupon the capabilities of multispectral,panchromatic and other sensors, but alsowould include new sensors such as hyperspectral sounder, rain radars, altimeters,infrared sensor systems and microwaveradiometers, scatterometers, and so on.These will go a long way in both diversi-fying and further resolving spectral capa-bilities, improved coverage and betterturnaround.


Fig. 1 Simulated CARTOSAT-2 Imagery (Scale 1:2400)

Fig. 2 Part of Denver, USA from Resourcesat-1 ( IRS-P6) L4- Mx

2006 was a significant one for the commercial remote-sensing industry, especially in the United States.

It saw the launch of high resolution satellites by Israel andKorea, a dramatic increase in the visibility of on-line searchengines using geospatial imagery and the consolidation of theUS commercial remote-sensing industry. Regional tensions con-tinued to fuel interest in remote sensing, as North Korea testeda nuclear device and Iran announced its development of nuclearcapability. Demand for geospatial information grew as manynations realized its benefits in helping plan for growth andurban development. India and China are two prime examples.Demand also increased as nations realized how useful geospa-tial information and remote sensing were in disaster relief, inthe prevention and also the recovery phases.

From our vantage point, the consolidation of the US industry isa very favorable development. GeoEye is the new company thatwas formed when ORBIMAGE purchased Space Imaging in Jan-uary 2006. As a result of the combination, GeoEye formed thelargest constellation of U.S. commercial earth-imaging satel-lites, including IKONOS, OrbView-3, OrbView-2 and soon to belaunched GeoEye-1. 2007 will be equally dramatic for the USindustry. Both U.S. companies that fly high-resolution imagingsatellites will launch new and more capable systems. Our next-generation imaging system, which is fully funded, is on trackand on budget for a launch in spring 2007, will have the highestresolution of any commercial imaging system--0.41-meterspanchromatic and 1.65-meter multispectral.

US TRENDSAlthough I do not want to fall into the trap so common to USbusinessmen of seeming US-centric, it is obviously the market Iknow best so I will begin there. Consolidation has brought anumber of benefits to both GeoEye in particular and to the USmarket in general. GeoEye combined Space Imaging andORBIMAGE to form a very strong company with an unmatchedconstellation of commercial imagery satellites, the world’slargest archive of commercial satellite imagery, and anadvanced photogrammetric production capability.

The consolidation of the US industry has strengthened the

industry. The market, at least in the US, could not support threeAmerican companies. In addition, the consolidation eliminatedthe uncertainty that had clouded the industry’s outlook.

As a result of strong US Government funding, the favorableimpact of the consolidation, and our strong financial perform-ance, GeoEye was able to borrow the funds necessary to supportits NextView program and the acquisition of Space Imagingfrom the private market. The successful launch of the next gen-eration satellites by both US companies is important in main-taining Wall Street’s confidence in the industry.

Our next-generation imaging system is fully funded, is ontrack and on budget for a launch in spring 2007. This satellite --financed in part by a $435 million dollar NextView contract withthe National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) -- will havethe highest resolution of any commercial imaging system--0.41-meters. It will collect multispectral imagery at 1.65-meter reso-lution. Similar to the IKONOS satellite, the imagery will be pan-sharpened so we will be able to produce 41-centimeter colorimagery. It’s noteworthy that our competitor will only be ableto offer black and white imagery from their next-generationsystem that will be launched after ours, based on the currentanticipated launch schedules. Spatial resolution, geolocationaccuracy and large-area coverage are the three specificationsthat commercial and government customers desire most. Withour constellation of satellites, GeoEye has the competitiveadvantage to deliver these comprehensive offerings. Besidesunsurpassed spatial resolution, GeoEye will be able to offerproducts with 3-meter (CE 90) accuracy, which means that endusers can map natural and man-made features in stereo towithin three meters of their actual locations on the surface ofthe earth without ground control points. This will be the bestaccuracy the commercial industry has ever offered. As one Euro-pean government official remarked, accuracy at that high levelwill be ‘revolutionary.’ As far as imagery collection, in thepanchromatic mode the satellite will be capable of collecting upto 700,000 square kilometers in a single day and in the multi-spectral mode 350,000 square kilometers per day.

SEARCH ENGINESA trend which began in the US but has affected the industryglobally is the dramatic rise in the distribution of geospatialinformation by commercial search engines. The search engines -such as Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth, and Yahoo - havecreated a tremendous awareness of geospatial technologies andsatellite imagery. Mapquest was launched in 1996. It is hum-bling to think just a little more than 10 years ago we had nonotion of using the Web for geospatial applications. I have abackground in investment banking, communications and thecable television industry. It took 38 years for the radio to attract

Matthew O’ConnellChief Executive OfficerGeoEye


Remote Sensing

50 million listeners; 13 years for televisionattract 50 million viewers and only FOURyears for the Internet to attract thatmany users. No one could have predictedthe rapid rise of the Internet. One greatadvantage our industry has is thatgeospatial products can easily flow overthe Internet since they are both based ondigitized pixels of information.

In early 2001, IKONOS satellite imageryof the Maha Kumbh Mela religious cere-monies was shown on the evening newsaround the world. It brought to televisionviewers a very powerful image of what30 million people gathered in one loca-tion really looks like. Without the Internetthat imagery could not have so quicklybeen delivered to ABC News after beingimaged by IKONOS.

DISASTER RELIEFThe on-line search engines have provento be particularly useful in helping dis-seminate information in response to nat-ural disasters. Disasters occur all over theworld. When they do, local communica-tions are disrupted, so the Internet is avery valuable tool. In December 2004, weprovided imagery to the U.S. governmentand relief agencies after the devastatingtsunami struck countries around the Indi-an Ocean basin. Satellite imagery is anideal tool to better prepare for such disas-ters and then more effectively respondonce disaster strikes. In the U.S. theIKONOS satellite collected over 46 thou-sand square kilometers of imagery afterHurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coastin the summer of 2005. We also support-ed relief efforts after the earthquake inPakistan.

During the past year, discussions beganin earnest about collecting geospatialinformation before a disaster strikes. Thebest use of geospatial information andimagery is when the industry can provide“Before and After” information. An excel-lent example is the imagery of the effectof the tsunami Madras that IKONOS and

OrbView-3 collected, which clearly showsthat the tsunami washed away a largenumber of coastal dwellings.

GLOBAL TRENDSThe tremendous advances in the remote-sensing field are one of the truly remark-able achievements of our modern infor-mation economy. The trend towardgreater access and availability of datacontinues unabated with a growingnumber of applications. The industryholds great promise. Asia has a largenumber of remote sensing users acrossthe region including Japan, Korea, Chinaand most importantly India. India hasbeen one of the leaders in developing andutilizing remote sensing technologies.With its large land mass, covering morethan 3 million square kilometers with14,000 km of land borders and 7500 kilo-meters of coastline, India recognized ear-ly the need to better manage, map andmonitor this large amount of territory.India is a leader in using the power of GISand the Web to help solve many pressingnatural and man-made issues. On a gov-ernment-to-government basis, Indo-UScooperation in civil space dates back tothe beginning of the Indian Space Pro-gram. And over all these years India haskept a key focus on what space technolo-gy can do for societal benefit. The firstMemorandum of Understanding (MOU)between India’s Department of Space andNASA was in 1997 with a focus on jointresearch in earth and atmospheric sci-ences and scientific data sharing. Indiawas one of the first countries to establisha Landsat satellite receiving station. Therelationship in space has continued withthe reciprocal visits of heads of state andthe formation of a joint working group oncivil space. Most recently the NASAAdministrator visited India in May 2006to continue the dialogue. Top officials inthe Indian government have a keenunderstanding of the benefits of com-mercial remote sensing. In 2007 we plan

strengthen our presence in India and takeadvantage of the knowledge of GIS with-in government, industry and academia. Agreat starting point for this effort is atMap World Form in Hyderabad. Indiawith its varied natural resources hasoperationalised the use of remote sensingand GIS techniques both in Governmentand commercial markets.

Applications include monitoring sur-face and ground water resources, snowmelt runoff, agricultural applications forestimating crop acreage and yield predic-tion, forest resources mapping, urban andland use planning, environmental map-ping, disaster and risk management forfloods, earthquakes and landslides andmany other uses. Also, land borders andcoast lines can be mapped and monitoredover time for critical national securityapplications.

THE FUTUREIt is predicted that the early decades ofthis new millennium will present daunt-ing challenges to the international com-munity. According to a recent US govern-ment report, by 2015 the world’s popula-tion will hit 7.2 billion with 95% of thegrowth occurring in developing nations.There will be many mega cities with pop-ulations of 10 million or more and threebillion people will live in water-stressednations. As these conditions develop, weforesee a need for more current and accu-rate geospatial information so criticaldecisions can be made to manage issuesaffecting humanity and preserve thechanging face of our planet. In 1900 theAmerican magazine, Ladies Home Jour-nal predicted that by the end of the cen-tury, “Flying machines will carry power-ful telescopes that beam back to Earthphotographs as distinct and large as iftaken from across the street.”. That morethan 100 year old prediction has cometrue. Now it’s up to governments andindustry to make the best use of the tech-nology for the betterment of mankind.


For the past three years Roger Longhorn and I havebeen writing a book on GI Policy. We have explored

access and charging models, and we have taken the perspec-tive of evidence and societal realities within which to assessthe often polarised viewpoints of the ‘free data’ or ‘chargefor data’ communities. We have written about the realitiesfacing data producers in an environment of difficult govern-ment finances.

With Max Craglia I have examined human rights issues relatingto access to data, in effect critically evaluating the ‘free data areour right’ scenario. Let’s be direct here -I would like nothingmore for all data to be free, but the economics of achieving thisare complex. At the very least I believe in making data freelyavailable, even if there is a charge, and examples below showthe effects of data restrictions on a GI market.

I personally live in a nation with a hybrid attitude to the priceof access to ‘public resources’. Currently, and it is importantly tosay currently because the UK Government in December 2006announced that it is considering privatising some data produc-ing agencies, we have free access to museums and art galleries,we have free access to some national mapping data throughonline Web services (such as www.multimap.com orwww.streetmaps.com). We need to pay license fees to accessOrdnance Survey Digital Data, we can access basic weatherforecasts free (www.metoffice.com), but would be expected topay for local detailed long-range weather forecasts. I can accessGoogle Earth free of charge and scan detailed imagery in borderareas that are the subject of severe information censorshiparound the globe, and that can give me preferential access toinformation over citizens within those companies.

Nothing in these observations is particularly new, for we havebeen writing about them for many years. We are clear in ourview that any GI/SDI initiative must be user-led, not (as somany seem to be) producer-led. What we have tried to do as wehave written the book is to identify common conceptual themesthat link both the ‘free data’ and the ‘charge for data’ perspec-tives, we use the analogy of the ‘free lunch’. It goes like this: “All

data are paid for, but the income streams can be along a range ofdirect to indirect funding”. Even ‘free data’ is paid for by some-one, and if you buy me a free lunch, the cost of it is borne eitherby you as the ‘producer’ or by a ‘funder’, perhaps your businessor employer. There may be altruistic motives, where I donatetime, and possibly advice, and in that context there is both atangible and intangible resource exchange.

What happens when a resource is made freely available? In anideal world the cost of consuming the resource is met adequate-ly by those who fund the production of the resource, demandand supply are balanced. However, since most governmentfunding for free resources is finite, it can become very difficultfor the funding to meet the demands of very elastic demand. Inthe UK the current Government overturned charging, andrecent statistics indicate that museums saw an 84% increase invisits. However, they have to service this increase in visits (anda museum visitor is not a zero-sum resource consumer) throughcentral government grants. The grants are, as ever, subject topolicy and financial volatility, and the associated risk is thatthere now is both less to invest with the reliance on a centralgrant from government, and also that funding may make muse-ums funding-driven, and less user-led.

We have examined a number of scenarios regarding nationalmapping and the production of GI. In all of them it is clear thatthere is no point having any business model if the dissemina-tion model is not sensitive to market needs. Some, but not all, ofthe scenarios are listed here. The first scenario we could call a‘governmental process monopoly’. An example of this is theEgyptian Survey Authority (ESA) which has a monopoly on themapping part of land registration. It currently is computerisingits mapping, and this is being carried out largely as an adminis-trative process with maps of considerable vintage being digi-tised, without a clear update strategy. When we were asked tolook at a business plan for market take-up of the maps it becameclear that the market had moved beyond ESA to operate inde-pendently of the national data provider. Utilities, Municipali-ties, Telecoms and Antiquities sectors all had digitised nationalmapping independently of ESA, and were updating and main-taining the data using their own investments in areas such as


Geographic Information: Emerging Business Models

Pricing Policy

Professor Michael BlakemoreIDRA Ltd. and University ofDurham, UK

surveys and aerial photography. The out-come of the process monopoly operatingwithout clear market engagement, is thatthe only sector without effective access toupdated mapping may be the govern-ment of Egypt.

This experience seemed not too differ-ent to the scenario of ‘driven by dogma,without resources being adequate formaintenance and enhancement’. Oneexample for this would be US NationalMapping, where the US Geological Sur-vey was both dependent on the centralgovernment grant, and also had no realis-tic ability in the past to raise significantexternal income, dissemination occurredwithin the dogma of freedom of informa-tion, free information, and no copyrightcontrol. Recent attempts to ‘Weave aNational Map’ noted how areas of USGSnational mapping had become very out-dated. This led to the attempt to ‘weave’national coverage with other data own-ers (private sector, states, cities etc.) con-tributing their much more detailed andupdated coverage, in itself an acknowl-edgment that the national mappingorganisation no longer maintained map-ping information that was fit for purpose.

The third scenario could be termed the‘commodification with partial marketdomination’. Here the Ordnance Surveyof Great Britain (OSGB), with its very highquality, detailed, and updated informa-tion, navigates a difficult path betweenthe demands of government to fullyrecover costs and to pay a dividend backto the Treasury, and to set fees that areacceptable to core user groups (Utilitiesand Local Government, for example) whoare mandated by law to use OSGB geo-graphic information. In addition, thegrowing commercial re-use of OSGBinformation has led to market conflictswith companies such as IntelligentAddressing. There is an inevitable risk that as OSGB seeks to diversify its revenue base, it may create commer-cial products that compete with those

produced by commercial companies,leading to fears of unfair competition.This has led to critical comments by theOffice of Public Sector Information(www.opsi. gov.uk) about OSGB’s prac-tice towards such commercial companies.Both scenarios two and three are classicnational mapping agencies at either endof the spectrum ofthe ‘free or fee’data policy. How-ever, we are not inany way sayingthat to achievehigh quality youhave to charge.OSGB has benefit-ed from a richlegacy of datacapture andmaintenance, andUSGS may wellhave built andmaintainedequivalent high-quality mapping in theUSA if its funding base had been ade-quate, and it has been organised in a radically customer-focused manner.What would have been the scenario ifUSGS had experienced a Google Earth scenario of ‘privatisation of the full business model’.

Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/ )is a wonderful paradox. I use it, but paynothing. It allows me to view imagery ofthe border areas of India and Pakistanthat would not be permitted to me bythose countries’ official information sup-pliers. This led to concern by the IndianGovernment about high-definition databeing available for sensitive areas in Del-hi. Using Google News (www.news.google.com). I can access media contentfrom around the world at no costs. Whatis the commercial logic, for example, thatI have to pay to receive a printed copy ofthe UK Guardian Newspaper, yet can readthe content free of charge on the Web(www.guardian.co.uk)? What becomes

clear as the business model is unpacked,is that it is subject to rapid changes instrategy. Content that was free one daybecomes accessible through a gatewayprocess the next: you may have to pay, toregister your details before accessing con-tent, or watch an advertisement. Contentproviders can, and do, fail, and research

into the media industry shows how frag-ile the funding streams are. So, in the end,both the production of government geo-graphic information, and commercialproducers, suffer from the same uncer-tainties of income streams. Where theyalso are similar is in the area of customerfocus. Businesses fail because they arenot providing the products needed bycustomers, at the right price, at the righttime. On that basis the Egyptian SurveyAuthority could be regarded as a ‘failed’business, kept alive only by a residualpublic subsidy as the market makes itsown adjustments and collects data itself.A significant challenge, therefore, to theSurvey of India and the implementationand maturing (for I hope that this is a doc-ument that changes and grows) of theNational Map Policy, is to manage thecomplexities of moving a huge, conserva-tive, bureaucracy at a speed that has anychance of meeting market needs. Lessonselsewhere show that if this is ignored, themarket simply moves away.


Business model isunpacked, anythingwhich was free one daybecomes accessiblethrough a gatewayprocess the next: youmay have to pay

Desktop to EnterpriseBob MorrisPresident and CEOLeica Geosystems GeospatialImaging, USA

Large organizations worldwide, including govern-ment agencies and private enterprise, have spent

years building data and applications for individuals, proj-ect teams, departments, offices and geopolitical regions.

With advances in geospatial technologies, they can preservethese past investments while moving into a comprehensiveenterprise solution ultimately improving the decision-makingprocess. Geospatial data and information products are derivedfrom image sources such as aerial photography, commercialsatellite imagery, military satellite imagery, etc. Consequently,enterprises maintain large repositories of image data. The chal-lenge they face is finding cost-effective and efficient ways tomanage spatial data stores (comprising imagery, vector data,maps, thematic and statistical information) and assemble thesedata sets into a manageable form (geospatially referenced) tointegrate with other business systems, such as an ERP, CRM, orPermitting Solution.

Traditionally, these geospatial data were available only totechnical personnel for engineering design, environmentalanalysis, land use planning, disaster planning, forest manage-ment, and other tasks. And there was some resistance to open-ing the geospatial vault to others—concern that data would belost or misused.

However, as organizations retool for the future, they’ll recog-nize the value of providing data visualization and analysis capa-bilities to non-technical users, such as farmers, planners, realestate and insurance agents or policy makers. These users areproficient in their own fields but not necessarily ready tobecome remote sensing, photogrammetric or GIS experts.

The enterprise approach broadens the importance and use ofgeospatial data beyond traditional users and thrusts it intomainstream IT. Do it right, and reap the rewards. Do it poorly,and more time, money and resources will be consumed.

MEETING THE NEEDS OF EVERYDAY USERSOur industry is moving to help non-technical users performsophisticated information extraction tasks without being

trained on the behind-the-scenes science that makes it possible.This process starts with a base commercial geospatial informa-tion product, but employs modules specific to an industry thatcan be further customized by the customer’s IT departmentwith specific forms, processes and shortcuts.

A forester who wants to find the height of trees at a certainlocation could use the customized application to select the areaand data by following logical workflow prompts. The datawould be located wherever it resides in the enterprise and dis-played. The forester would select from the data choices to createa thematic map. The application could even automaticallyselect the best source data for the task (such as tree heights),simplifying the task even further.

In this scenario, data is managed and cataloged at the enter-prise level and made available to users throughout a network(hardwired or wireless). Each user isn’t logging onto a generalspatial application, but an industry and task-specific applica-tion. This shortcut to intelligent data and maps will change howorganizations use spatial data, broadening the user base andamplifying return on investment.

Geospatial developers and service providers have done thistype of customization for years for their customers. Now, wecan deliver focused, commercial vertical-market applicationsthat work inside an enterprise.

This holds tremendous promise of increased productivity andcompetitive advantage, making enterprise resources availableto clients using (comprehensive applications), thin (web-browsers) or mobile clients (GPS, PDA). For example, a forester inArizona and a forester in Georgia could use their web browser tolink to USDA Forest Service data that could be stored anywherein the agency network. As a result of cataloging all data hold-ings, an enterprise server would know where imagery residesand select and present it based on the user’s specific area ofinterest and criteria. The cataloging, storage and deliveryprocess remains transparent to the end users since it’s all han-dled by the enterprise.

This approach more effectively manages the core issue ofextracting meaningful data from imagery so it can be easily cat-aloged, stored and delivered.


Enterprise GIS

KEEPING DATA SECUREData sharing within an enterprise meanshaving intelligent security features. Likean Enterprise Resource Planning System,the geospatial enterprise software mustsupport layers of security. This featurelets the manager or IT professional assignviewing, data management, informationextraction and data revision privileges.

A sophisticated (fine-grained) securitymodel that subtly controls levels of accessis a key element in deploying an enter-prise system. Organizations want endusers to have as much information aspossible while protecting data fromaccess and change by unauthorized users.At some government agencies requiringhigh levels of security, customized appli-cations and specific data are loaded ontoa computer when the user signs in. Whenthe user signs off, they are wiped fromthe workstation. That same level of secu-rity is now demanded by many largeorganizations that need to provide full,but monitored, access to spatial data. Thisis a priority for geospatially focused com-panies like ours that are building securitymodels with subtleties in how users canaccess and use enterprise data.

Data crawling and cataloging is impor-tant to enterprise users. Whether it’s anational mapping agency maintainingand producing a digital land base, stateand local government agencies, utilitycompanies or a large architectural/engi-neering/construction firm, data can bemaintained at various locations thou-sands of miles apart. With advanced datacrawling technologies, the user directsthe software to intelligently discover andcatalog geospatial data.

Data crawling describes the searchcapability to “crawl” an enterprise’s net-work to discover and present relevantinformation so users don’t have to manu-ally search through directories and filenames on the network to find the dataneeded for a specific geospatial applica-tion. Based on standards-compliant

metadata, the technology seeks outstrings of metadata or headers matchingthe search criteria (like an origin point),and immediately flags datasets or webservices matching the criteria. The appli-cation could even automatically selectthe best source data for the task, such as alayer of tree heights to plan the harvest ofa forest.

This eliminates the need for every userwithin the organization to discover dataacross the network every time a geospa-tial process needs to be performed ondata. This makes it possible for users withlittle formal training in spatial softwareuse to access and use spatial resources.

The next logical step is creating infor-mation from the data. Most GIS systemscreate data--shape files, coverages, rasterimages, and land cover datasets. Butwhat users really need is informationgenerated from that data (i.e. vectors, fea-tures, change detection, etc.), rather thanthe data itself. This requires integratingthe GIS and spatial systems with otherbusiness systems, creating dynamic, on-demand reporting systems. In otherwords, marrying the worlds ofGIS/geospatial with reporting, email, dis-semination and enterprise delivery systems.

Thus, the result is not data products butinformation that integrates GIS and busi-ness statistics. If the forester wants toknow what the financial potential is for atree stand at a specific time, he wouldselect the area of interest (the tree stand)and select the information product(financial potential). The geospatialenterprise server application would dis-cover the best datasets required to pro-duce that information based on an intelli-gent rules-based engine and process thedata to create the necessary output. Theresult could be delivered as a formattedreport and even sent by email as a PDFwith the geospatial information embed-ded with statistics and other non-spatialinformation. Embedded information

could indicate, for example, the readinessof the data for use in the project. Rawdata could be indicated with red dotswhile georeferenced data would havegreen. The user would prompt the systemto determine ‘location conflict’ for thatarea of interest. The system would auto-matically seek the original data it needsto perform the task and present theresults as a visual information productalong with the associated statistics.

As a final step, the data is downloadedinto a formatted report or other commu-nication tool. These formats would bedelivered to industry standards for modi-fication by the customer’s IT departmentor users, to make them specific to a com-pany or agency. Their use ensures reportswill be written to standards, are easy tocreate and modify, and, most important,are enablers of efficient decision-making.

Our industry grew from the paper anddigital map generation, to the 3D genera-tion, to today’s email-FedEx-Instant Mes-senger-SMS world. In this competitive “Iwant it now” era, we have to be interop-erable, open and work with other busi-ness systems and deliver TRUE enterprisesolutions that address the decision-mak-ing needs of all users in an organization.


• Enables better communication and collaboration among various entities inthe enterprise

• Enhances workflow for greater efficien-cy in producing accurate information

• Reduces total cost of ownership of software deployed across the enterprise

• Increases ROI through single, focusedapplications (like Web applications) thatscale to support multiple users

• Integrates geospatial technologies with other enterprise solutions to bettermanage resources and assets

• Defines security as a function of dataaccess and data processing based onrules, groups and profiles.

Traits of Modern Geospatial Software

OSGIS RisingFrank WardermanPresidentOSGeo

In recent years Open Source GIS (or OSGIS) has beenincreasingly visible in industry news and events,

but does this reflect a meaningful change? And whatis the relevance to ordinary organizations usinggeospatial technologies?

The term "Open Source" or "Free" software refers to softwarewhich is provided with source code, and permissive licensesallowing users to duplicate, modify, and redistribute the soft-ware without cost. The details of the freedoms required to qual-ify as open source are defined by the Open Source Initiative atopensource.org.

Open source has played a significant, though not always veryvisible role in the development of GIS technology. Examplesinclude the GCTP and PROJ.4 projections libraries, widely used inproprietary and free software. File format libraries such aslibtiff, libpng, and libjpeg are also very widely used throughoutthe industry. GRASS GIS was one of the original full featured GISsoftware packages, and has been influential through it's nearly25 year history. Since the late 1990s the UMN MapServer webmapping application has become popular, and taken a substan-tial role in the web mapping space. In 2003 the first worldwideMapServer Users Meeting was held with roughly 100 attendees.Since then this meeting has grown into an annual conferencecovering a growing number of open source packages with2006's FOSS4G Conference in Lausanne Switzerland attractingover 500 people for an event focused exclusively on open sourcegeospatial technologies.

The new century has also seen the growth of integration andservices companies organized primarily around use of opensource technology. DM Solutions Group, Intevation Gmbh,CCGIS, and Camptocamp SA are some substantial examples.There are also many large and small consulting, integration andservices organizations using open source as part of their soft-ware mix, even if it is mostly out of sight.

Essentially all proprietary GIS software vendors are usingsome Open Source GIS components in their products. Whether afew very low level components like libgeotiff, or larger scale use

of libraries such as GDAL/OGR. The authors GDAL library hasbeen used by vendors as largeas Google, Microsoft, and ESRI, aswell as medium sized players such as Safe Software, Cadcorp,Delorme and SRC. The most dramatic example of open sourcetaking a large role with proprietary software vendors is thisyears announcement by Autodesk that they have released theirnew generation MapGuide as open source.

This ties in closely with the other sign of the increasingimpact, and relevance of open source software in the geospatialarena. The launch of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation(OSGeo). The foundation was launched in early 2006 with eightopen source software projects including the previously men-tioned GRASS, MapGuide Open Source, MapServer andGDAL/OGR. The foundation provide supports, and promotionfor open source geospatial solutions.

OPEN SOURCE BENEFITSI may have convinced you that something is happening, but is itrelevant to your organizations needs? Let me list a few key rea-sons why OSGIS is attractive to many organizations. Opensource is malleable. When necessary the the source code, docu-mentation and interfaces can be changed to meet local needs.This includes fixing bugs, translating interfaces, and adding crit-ically needed features.

Open source is agile. An open source component can be down-loaded, and tried out quickly, often in only minutes, avoidingthe a need for license key negotiations, or worst of all the dread-ed "procurement process". Open source is portable. Many pack-ages can be built for Win32, Win64, Linux and Unix on a varietyof hardware, Mac OS X, and various mobile platforms. Opensource is transparent. When necessary the algorithms at thecore of critical analyzes can be reviewed. Open source is free.Avoiding costly software licensing leaves more financialresources for staffing to get the actual work done, data acquisi-tion and hardware purchases. Budgets are not subject to arbi-trary changes in vendor licensing schemes, and solutions can bereplicated to more seats without the software budget ballooning.

The benefits can be summarized as giving control to the organ-ization, instead of putting it in the hands of a software vendor


Open Source

whose interests are not always in com-plete alignment with the organization.

PRACTICAL ISSUESHaving made a pitch for why open sourcecan be an important part of your soft-ware mix, lets review the caveats, andrisks associated with use of Open Source.The first problem is that identifying anappropriate piece of OSGIS software for apurpose can be challenging. Open sourceprojects don't have multi-million dollaradvertising budgets and booths at allmajor trade shows, so it falls to the userto do some investigation to find appropri-ate technology. A first round review ofoptions might involved Google searchesand seeking referrals from others in thefield. The freegis.org web site is also avaluable directory of open source geospa-tial projects.

Determining whether a given packagemeets your needs will require at leastsome poring over web site materials, andlikely installing and preliminary use ofthe software package. After backgroundresearch, consider asking for some adviceon the project mailing list. Before makinga long term commitment to use an opensource product, it is wise to evaluate thematurity of the product and the vitalityof the community.

A mature product will be in use by mul-tiple organizations for a purpose similarto your own. This gives some assurancethat the software is appropriate andready for the task. Signs of maturityinclude multiple releases, reasonablycomplete documentation, and indicationsthat bugs are being resolved over time.

A healthy project community givessome assurance that the software willcontinue to improve, and that problemscan be resolved. Signs of project vitalityinclude regular software releases, activityon project mailing lists and that an activebug database. There are lots of projectsout there that were a nice idea, but neverreached a useful level of completeness.

There are also many projects which arepotentially useful, but have been aban-doned by their developers. These proj-ects might still be useful for a specificpurpose, but caution should be usedbefore committing to them.

Proprietary software vendors, or inte-grators providing software to end cus-tomers must also pay close attention tothe licenses used for open source pack-ages. Some licenses, such as the GPL (GNUPublic License) are designed to maximizesharing of source code and are generallyincompatible with mixing with propri-etary source code into a single final pro-gram. Other open source licenses such asthe MIT/X license put very few restric-tions on how the source code can bemixed into an existing application.

End user organizations who do notredistribute software can be comfortablewith any approved open source license.The open source licenses are the assur-ance that organization can do whateverthey need with the software.

OSGIS software will often require aninvestment in staff skills development.This will minimally include time toreview a variety of documentation and toexperiment with the software. It mayalso involve participation in project mail-ing lists, learned related software pack-ages, and attending conference work-shops. To take full advantage of OS GISflexibility it can also be helpful to havesome modest software developmentcapacity - at least the ability to build soft-ware from source, and to script in lan-guages such as PHP, or Python.

If an organization is going to dependheavily OSGIS software, it is difficult toestablish expertise in all aspects internal-ly. It is often important to identify appro-priate outside partners. In some cases thismight involve outsourcing a large projectto an integrator or services organization.In others it may be establishing a consult-ing and support relationships with out-side organizations or individuals to sup-

port internal staff. Healthy OSGIS projectcommunities often include individualdevelopers, or consulting companies thatare prepared to offer professional sup-port, training and software developmenton an as needed or long term basis. Ulti-mately many of the above factors aresimilar to concerns that apply to propri-etary software. The need to review prod-uct maturity, and vitality. The need forskills development, and an external sup-port relationship. But in the open sourceworld, more of the onus is on the organi-zation to search out appropriate optionsrather than sit back and listen to the pitchfrom vendor salespeople.

STEPS FORWARDFor an organization considering some useof OSGIS technology, there are a few stepsthat can get you started.

Spend some time experimenting withopen source packages. Get a feel for someof the packages in your area of interest.

Given OSGIS a chance for new projects.This might mean giving Open source ori-ented consultants and integrators achance to participate in RFPs, or in houseevaluation of open source alternativesbefore buying a proprietary package.

Plug into the community. Browse web-sites, join mailing lists, and watch forOSGIS activities at OSGIS specific confer-ences like FOSS4G 2007 or general confer-ences like Map World Forum.

Open source GIS gives progressiveorganizations an opportunity to buildinternal capabilities, improve flexibilityand accomplish more in a budget con-strained environment.


Grass6.1 GIS Manager

Perspective on Interoperability and StandardsThe success of the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) movement isbeing illustrated by government orgganizations at all levels.

These organizations are aligning on a core set of common poli-cies, practices, and standards to improve geospatial data shar-ing to address important social, environmental and economicissues. We are seeing SDI being embraced within the business,academic and research communities as well. Standards Devel-opment Organizations (SDOs) have been working together toaddress the requirements for technical interoperability to meeta range of government, business, research and consumer needs.

The OGC continues to grow in membership, and our more than335 member organizations have collaboratively produced anumber of important interoperability standards that have beenaccepted in the marketplace and that are stimulating improvedsharing and application of geospatial data worldwide. ThroughOGC based web services, important and up to date geospatialinformation can remain with the organizations responsible fordata maintenance and quality, while being accessed whenneeded by authorized users for integration with other informa-tion and applications necessary for decision making.

To spur continued advancement of interoperability, a strongenvelope of policy is being implemented at all levels of govern-ment to align the market for rapid mobilization of standards-based technologies in support of critical programs. Initially as aresult of strong government involvement in SDO processes, andas a result of advocacy work in their agencies, policies are beingestablished around the world that encourage technologyproviders to deliver standards based technology solutions thatcan be rapidly inserted into systems and enterprises in supportof critical social, environmental and economic programs. Wellinformed agencies and organizations have learned to be consis-tent in how they demand interoperability from the market-place. The emphasis, of course, is on products that implementstandards developed in SDOs. The maturation of this new stan-dards focused policy environment could not happen without arobust and open partnership between the public and privatesectors in standards development.

OPPORTUNITIESOur industry has entered a period of rapid change and growth, and opportunities are abundant and obvious, particular-ly with the emergence of the “Geospatial Web”. Geospatial Webrepresents the convergence of many technology and businessfactors:

• People like maps, and people think and act spatially. As con-sumers become familiar with location services, demand for theseservices grows. As Google has shown, providing user-friendlyinterfaces to services that deliver tailored information derivedfrom useful data can be a winning combination that providesinfrastructure for many derived services.

• Standards are now available for discovering, accessing andusing geospatial data and services on the Web. The standardsmake it easy for Web developers to provide real time content andWeb feeds, and thus the number of Web based geospatialresources is growing rapidly.

• Enterprises need to integrate geospatial content and servicesinto enterprise workflows. Enterprise architectures (EA) based onopen standards and the Web are rapidly replacing older ways ofthinking about enterprise information systems. To ensure thatEnterprise Architectures in the US easily accommodate geospa-tial information and services, an interagency effort in the US fed-eral government led to the creation of a Federal Enterprise Archi-tecture (FEA) Geospatial Profile – a roadmap of geospatial bestpractices to be used consistently across government to assureinteroperability. Similar efforts are underway in – and between –both public and private sector enterprises around the world.

• The Geospatial Web is a logical extension of the emerging“Semantic Web”. A decade of attention in geospatial community togeospatial semantics has prepared our community for rapid adop-tion of Semantic Web technologies as they become available.

• In the OGC’s Sensor Web Enablement activities, the standardsfoundation has been laid for discovery, access, integration andapplication of real-time location data and sensor data. Thesestandards are new and are just beginning to be deployed in themarket. We anticipate their widespread market acceptance in thenext few years, as open, global Information Technology standardsand a variety of Web / wireless connected sensor devices andnetworks continue their parallel ascent.

CHALLENGESAmid these opportunities, our community also faces importantchallenges in a number of areas:

• The OpenGIS Geography Markup Language (GML) Specifica-tion and the OGC Web Services that use GML provide anextraordinarily comprehensive foundation for Geospatial Webapplications. But application developers need to learn the trick ofkeeping their applications simple with GML profiles and applica-tion schemas.

• Though GML has opened the door to technical solutions, usersare not yet fully capable of handling the semantic differencesbetween data collections. Better semantic processing tools andautomated methods for dealing with diverse collections of spatialdata will help reduce the complexity of information synthesis andapplication for decision-making. Ultimately, successful develop-ment and deployment of technical standards and tools in thesemantics area will unleash a tremendous amount of productivesemantic standards activity within and between “information com-munities,” groups of people who share a common geospatial fea-


Interoperability

Mark ReichardtPresidentOpen Geospatial Consortium

ture data dictionary (including definitionsof feature relationships) and a commonmetadata schema.

• The needs of the consumer market(what we call the “mass market”) for light-weight standards that can be easilyadapted for consumer as well as businessand government usage is a major area ofconcern for OGC members. GeoRSS, astandard developed outside of the OGCby a small group of experts, includingOGC staff, members, and non-members,can be used for news feeds, weatheralerts, earthquake monitoring, photo shar-ing, database update alerts, traffic alerts,and so on. GeoRSS is an informationmodel that allows for expressing locationas part of an RSS feed. The informationmodel allows for multiple encoding serial-izations. It includes just four geometries:point, line, polygon, and box. One version,“GeoRSS GML,” is a very simple GMLapplication schema. Another version,“GeoRSS Simple,” focuses on terseness,but at the expense of eliminating coordi-nate systems other than GPS-style lati-tude-longitude. The need for attentionand balance between the needs for sim-ple and complex open standards will con-tinue to grow, and OGC members haveresponded to this challenge by formalizingan official working group to address massmarket requirements.

• There is growing social need and marketpressure for convergence of geospatialfeatures and geoprocessing with urbandesign/construction features and pro-cessing. Having reached a threshold ofprocessing speed, memory and band-width that makes it technically feasible for multiple urban stakeholders to shareand integrate, in real time, large transfersof diverse types of data for routine 3Dvisualization, modeling and analysis,what’s needed is reconciliation of stan-dards. This has begun, and the OGC is animportant participant in this collaborativeactivity.

SDO COLLABORATIONAll of the above challenges depend oncontinuing and growing cooperationbetween SDOs to address spatial issuesacross the IT standards “stack”. OGC, asthe world’s main source of open geospa-tial standards, represents the geospatialcommunity in many standards forums.Here are some of the results:

• OGC’s partnership with ISO TechnicalCommittee 211 (TC211) Geomatics hasresulted in approval of the OpenGIS

Specifications for Simple Features andWeb Map Server (WMS) as ISO stan-dards. Geography Markup Language(GML), 19111 Update on Spatial Refer-ence Systems (SRS), Web Feature Ser-vice (WFS) and Feature Encoding (FE)are at various stages in a process thatwill result in these OGC standardsbecoming ISO standards.

• The IETF’s Presence Information DataFormat (PIDF) Location Object (LO)(PIDF-LO) (RFC 4119) extends PIDF toallow the encapsulation of location infor-mation within a presence document.Without PIDF-LO, the network cannotprovide sufficient Presence Service forapplications such as instant messaging.A GML PIDF-LO Shape ApplicationSchema developed by the IETF is now anOGC best practices paper.

• The IETF’s Internet draft locationenabled Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)Location Conveyance describes howuser location information is transferedfrom one SIP entity to another SIP entity.Without this, there is no way to inform thenetwork of the terminal's location. TheSIP recommends use of PIDF-LO - GMLas the mechanism for encoding geodeticlocation.

• The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) MobileLocation Platform (MLP) API uses GML2.1.2 for specifying coordinate referencesystems and 2-D Geometry.

• OGC members have approved a GMLprofile very similar to GeoRSS GML(“GeoRSS Pro”) for use in OASIS stan-dards, including the Common AlertingProtocol (CAP), Hospital AvailabilityExchange (HAVE), and Emergency DataExchange Language (EDXL).

Advancement of consistent geospatialinteroperability across the standardsstack is an important challenge, and stan-dards consortia and de jure SDO’s areincreasingly aware of this.

They know that OGC offers both thenecessary expertise and the necessaryorganizational process to facilitate stan-dards harmonization involving geospa-tial matters.

OPPORTUNITY FOR ORGANI-ZATIONS WORLDWIDEPublic and private organizations aroundthe globe have much to gain from contin-uing advancement of geospatial stan-

dards and interoperability. The OGC pro-vides a global and ultimately socialprocess to identify, prioritize, adopt andmaintain standards. Users and providersof geospatial technologies, services andinformation need to continue to worktogether to identify new interoperabilitychallenges for SDOs to address. There is acritical role for user organizations in thestandards process: If we don’t get therequirements stated correctly, and if wecannot convince the market to align,standards won’t happen.

The OGC members recognize the needto further globalize membership, and toensure that the Consortium's processesaddress regional interoperability issues.This is happening in Europe, as the Euro-pean members define their regionalrequirements technical and institutionaland organize to see that the OGC processmeets these requirements. We welcomeinput from GIS Development readersregarding how we can better positionOGC in Asia. Open standards are an assetfor all. Users benefit by increasing theirplug and play interoperability, improvingtheir ability to share and apply geospatialinformation, and reducing their systems’lifecycle costs. Technology providers ben-efit by enabling their products and servic-es to be compatible with a broad, interna-tional marketplace.


Fig. 1 The “complexity hierarchy” of geometrystandards for the “mass market.”

GMLSimple Feature Level 0

GeoRSS GML

GML PointProfile

Point

MultiPoint, MultiLine,MultiPolygon

Polygon with holes

Polygon

LineEnvelope

This perspective looks at the current global agenda in terms ofthe UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and their rele-vance to the global geospatial community.

Issues such as tenure security, pro-poor land management,and good governance in land administration are all key issues tobe advocated in the process of reaching the goals.

The MDGs represent a wider concept or a vision for the future,where the contribution of the geospatial community is centraland vital. This relates to the areas of providing the relevant geo-graphic information in terms of mapping and databases of thebuilt and natural environment, providing secure tenure sys-tems, and systems for land valuation, land use managementand land development. The work of the surveyors and geospa-tial experts is about infrastructure investment both in physicaland technical terms, which make other decisions better andmore reliable. The perspective also looks at the future especiallyin terms of technology development and the strategic directionfor developing the Geospatial Reference Systems (GRS) and theSpatial Data Infrastructure. These future directions are highlyrelevant since GRS underpins all geospatial data including fun-damental geospatial data sets for the cadastre, topography, geo-physics, environment, natural resources, transport, utilities andemergency management.

FACING THE GLOBAL AGENDAThe areas of surveying and land administration are basicallyabout people, politics and places. It is about human right,engagement and dignity, policies and good government, andplaces in term of shelter, land and natural resources. By takingthis approach FIG, as the overall global organization of land pro-fessionals, pursue sustainable development in both an econom-ic, social, governmental, and environmental sense. The areas ofsurveying and mapping, spatial information management,cadastre and land management provide a basic platform forpoverty eradication and development. This is why FIG is deeplycommitted to achieving the MDGs.

The MDGs form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s coun-tries and all the world’s leading development institutions. TheUnited Nations Millennium Summit, September 2000, estab-

lished a time bound (2015) and measurable goals and targets forcombating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmentaldegradation and discrimination of women. These goals are nowplaced at the heart of the global agenda.

The MDGs is a powerful concept towards development, securi-ty and human rights for all. Land professionals such as survey-ors play a key role in this regard in terms of providing some ofthe fundamental preconditions for development. These precon-ditions are also embedded in the Millennium Declaration andspelled out in the targets and indicators for achieving the MDGs.

It is obvious that the MDGs address some of the most funda-mental issues of our times. It is also obvious that only a few ofthese issues relate to the work and the world of the surveyingcommunity. But in any case, as stated by Kofi Annan (UN,2005c) “We will not enjoy development without security, wewill not enjoy security without development, and we will notenjoy either without respect for human rights. Unless all thesecauses are advanced, none will succeed.”

FIG, as an international NGO recognized by the UN, shouldmake the world understand the important contribution of sur-veyors in this regard and cooperate with the UN agencies suchas UNDP, UN-HABITAT, FAO, and the World Bank to optimizethe outcome of our common efforts. FIG should identify theirrole in this process and spell out the areas where the global sur-veying and geospatial profession can make a significant contri-bution. Issues such as tenure security, pro-poor land manage-ment, and good governance in land administration are all keyissues to be advocated in the process of reaching the goals. Mea-sures such as capacity assessment, institutional and humanresource development are all key tools in this regard.

SURVEYING AND LAND ADMINISTRATIONLand administration systems (LAS) provide a country’s infra-structure for implementation of its land-related policies andland management strategies. The term Land Administrationrefers to the processes of recording and disseminating informa-tion about the ownership, value and use of land and its associat-ed resources. Such processes include the determination of prop-erty rights and other attributes of the land that relate to its val-


UN Millennium Development Goals: Relevance for Geospatial Community

Surveying and Mapping

Prof. Stig EnemarkPresident of the InternationalFederation of SurveyorsFIG, Denmark

ue and use, the survey and generaldescription of these, their detailed docu-mentation and the provision of relevantinformation in support of land markets.

The importance of capacity develop-ment in surveying and land administra-tion at the organizational level has beenusefully quantified in Great Britain (1999)by research that found that approximate-ly £100 billion of Great Britain’s GDP(12.5% of total national GDP, and onethousand times the turnover of OSGB)relied on the activity of the OrdnanceSurvey of Great Britain. Less exhaustivestudies in other European countries havepointed to similar figures. The impor-tance of geographic information contin-ues to grow, with a range of SDI initia-tives at local, national, regional and glob-al level, so there is reason to believe thatthe figures would be increased ratherthan reduced if the GB study were to berepeated today. With these very signifi-cant numbers, as well as the centralimportance of sound land management,the importance of solid, sustainableorganizations in the field of surveyingand land administration is clear.

FACING TECHNOLOGYDEVELOPMENT Technology development is the major

driving force in changing the face of thespatial information world. The GPS tech-nologies for measuring have revolu-tionised the traditional surveying disci-pline and the high resolution satelliteimagery tends to revolutionise the map-ping discipline. The database technolo-gies for storage of large data sets and theGIS technologies for data management,analysis and manipulation arguablyhave had the greatest impact on the spa-tial information environment. And in thefuture the communication technologiessuch as the WWW and the Internet willbecome the focus of attention for view-ing and using spatial data. This techno-logical development is considered furtherbelow with a special focus on the Geospa-tial Reference System.

The Geospatial Reference System (GRS)defines how latitudes, longitudes andheights are measured and enables accurate location of features anywhereon earth. Traditionally, a national GRShas been realized through the geodeticnetwork, which involves placement ofPermanent Survey Marks and carryingout surveys to generate accurate lati-tudes, longitudes and heights for thosemarks.

A global trend during the last decadehas seen Continuously Operating Refer-ence Stations (CORS) using Global Satel-lite Navigation Systems (GNSS) technolo-

gy complementing and/or replacing Per-manent Survey Marks as a means of real-izing and delivering the GRS. This point atsome strategic directions for the develop-ment of GRS:

GRS WILL BE MORE WIDELY USEDThe growth in the use of Global SatelliteNavigation Systems (GNSS) in manyapplications and increasing requirementfor accuracy means that future users ofthe Geospatial Reference System will bemuch more diverse than the traditionalusers in Surveying and Mapping applica-tions. The use of GNSS in asset manage-ment applications is also growing. Thesenew classes of users will require new andinnovative approaches to the delivery ofthe Geospatial Reference System.

GRS WILL BE MORE COLLABORATIVESuch a collaborative approach withinclude more attention to standardsdevelopment, institutional frameworkand capacity building issues. This will require more collaboration withmanufacturers, suppliers, users andresearchers. There will also be a contin-ued and growing need for intrastate,interstate and international collaborationon standards, best practice and compati-ble infrastructure.


Fig. 1 A Global Land Management Perspective.

• Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• Goal 2: Achieve universal primaryeducation

• Goal 3: Promote gender equality andempower women

• Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

• Goal 5: Improve maternal health

• Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malariaand other diseases

• Goal 7: Ensure environmental sus-tainability

• Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development

GOALS

GRS WILL BE INCREASINGLYMORE ACCURATEThere is a strong and continuing trend forusers to demand more and more accuracyfrom the Spatial Data Infrastructure ingeneral (e.g. a more accurate DigitalCadastral Data Base or higher resolutionimagery). This trend is unlikely to slow inthe next decade. As the fundamentalunderlying framework for all spatialdata, the Geospatial Reference Systemneeds to be at least one order of magni-tude more accurate than the require-ments of the most demanding users.These high expectations of the GeospatialReference System are especially true forusers with so-called safety of life criticalor liability critical applications, whoexpect accuracy with very high levels ofreliability.

High levels of accuracy and reliabilityare also critical in applications with highlevels of automation. All of thesedemands will require a commitment tocontinuous accuracy improvement in theGeospatial Reference System to meet thechanging requirements of the mostdemanding users.

GRS WILL BE MORE DIGITALThe Geospatial Reference System willmove from being delivered in an ana-logue way (based on Permanent SurveyMarks in the ground) to more digitaldelivery mechanisms e.g. in real time viamobile phones.

This technology is in its early stages ofevolution and over time a better under-standing of orbits and atmosphericeffects, along with many more satelliteswill allow more reliable, more accurateand more efficient positioning. In anycase, future strategies for the GeospatialReference System will need to balancethis ongoing issue of an analogueapproach of marks in the ground com-pared to a digital approach.

GRS WILL BE MORE MULTI-DIMENSIONALIn the past the Vertical (1-Dimensional)and Horizontal (2-Dimensional) parts ofthe Geospatial Reference System havebeen considered as quite separate. This1D+2D approach needs to give way to atruly 3D approach. Dealing with changein the time dimension will require fur-ther evolution from a 3D to 4D GeospatialReference System.

TRENDS AND DIRECTIONS IN SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE (SDI)The directions in the context of the GRScould also be usefully applied to discus-sion of the Spatial Data Infrastructure(SDI) more generally.

The above trends could be expandedupon in the context of the SDI to alsoinclude, for example:

• SDI will be more mobile;

• SDI will be more live;

• SDI will be more intelligent;

• SDI will be more potentially intrusive

Governments worldwide are movingforward in relation to creating policiesand initiatives which open up some of

their information to the public. However,what is lacking is the ability for industryto engage directly with these whole-of-government/cross-agency initiatives.There is a need to create an infrastructureor enabling platform that provides thelink between government and privateindustry and from which applicationsand services can be leveraged and valueadded, and thereby providing the abilityto grow the private sector and spatialinformation industry as a whole. This isin line with the vision of spatiallyenabling government and requiresdesigners to appreciate the differencebetween data and information.

FIG and the global geospatial communi-ty need to be ready for such develop-ments. FIG intends to meet that challengethrough increased corporate efforts in theyears to come.

FACING THE FUTUREFIG is committed to both flying high andkeeping the feet on the ground. By “flyinghigh” I mean that we need to have a bigvision e.g. in contributing to solving theglobal challenges especially with regardto poverty reduction and in respondinge.g. to the Millennium DevelopmentGoals. As the leading international NGOon land issues this is our core globalresponsibility.

At the same time we need to keep our“feet on the ground”: we must serve theneeds of our members associations andthe individual surveyors and make surethat they get benefits from our globalactivities and from the work of our tech-nical commissions.

We can promote this through providingan international forum for professionaldevelopment and innovation in allaspects of surveying, and by terms ofcapacity building, events and publica-tions, and standards and guidelines. Theoverall aim is to strengthen the linksbetween the global agenda and the sur-veying grass roots.


FIG is commit-ted to solve the global challengesespeciallywith regard to povertyreduction and in responding tothe MDGs.

Q. What is the changing scenario in using GeoSpatial database in

the industries keeping in view the New Mapping Policy?

A There is a lot of misunderstanding about mapping policyand how it gets translated on the ground. The new policy is astandard policy that can serve GIS industry by providingauthentic and liable information.

Earlier 1:50,000 was a standard base but it had the limitationsof highly generalized data sets because of which the attributesto be attached could not be specific. It was a very general form ofGIS which could be used. In the present situation, SoI is prepar-ing Industry Standard data set which is more meaningful andwhich is most useful when utilized for urban applicationswhere GIS can play a major role. So, there is a paradigm shift inGIS and its applications.

Q. Does Survey of India play any role in infrastructure develop-

mental projects of the government?

A Definitely, SoI has a major role to play in infrastructure proj-ects of the government. Mainly we look at development ofinfrastructure and provide the data base which is a basicrequirement in each and every application. Before handing overany project to a private industry we look at partners who canaccess the data from SoI and make it more meaningful for infra-structure projects. The partners can be from government organ-izations or private industry.

Today, the government is showing interest in promoting thegeospatial sector. For any infrastructure project, we will not gowhole hearted to complete that, instead we will provide basedata and look forward to partnership with industry or othergovernment organization, to provide consultancy and valueaddition to infrastructure development.

Q. Is there any partnership between private industry and SoI?

A Presently so many navigation systems are looking forwardfor help from the government to launch navigational applica-tions. Our main focus is on urban applications where the indus-try is developing generic applications that can be used for emer-gency management, traffic control etc. The industry should alsolook at how clear they are about the whole concept of applica-

tions. The coming five to six months will be very crucial inassessing how industries and government complement eachother. The industry is still facing problem of doubts and hesita-tions as for as the government is concerned.

Q. Is there any policy that says how frequently maps of SoI should

be updated?

A Three years back we took a decision to complete updation of1:50,000 maps on a project mode. Before March-2007, SoI willbe able to complete updation of maps with ground reality.About 60% of the survey is already completed that covers thewhole country at 1:25,000 scale. Within next five years, majorparts of the country will be covered in 1:10,000 scale, which is agoal of SoI. We are using imageries of IRS-1C and CARTOSAT forupdation of topographic maps. SoI will no longer have any out-dated information in the next five years.

Q. What is your vision on usage of maps five years down the lane?

A The government made an announcement about using SoIgeospatial data base for its application needs. For the past fiveyears, changes have been rapid. The changes in next two yearswill be much more rapid. We have targeted 400-500 towns to becovered at very large scales. It needs much more dedicationfrom the mapping agencies to get the data updated.

Q. How important is GIS education in schools?

A It is very much essential in education. It will play a fantasticrole as far as school and educational institutions are concerned,because, in future, no subject is going to be abstract.

The scenario of education has completely changed and onecan associate subject with virtual reality through GIS. For that,one can consider an example of Google Earth. GIS education isextremely helpful in revealing the spatial relationships with theenvironment. The awareness on limitations of the GIS data setshould also be taught to prevent the applications being used forwrong usage.

Q. Which are the areas where research and development is needed

in GIS and Remote Sensing?

A With reference to GIS in the earlier days a person was just auser of data and the data was not updated frequently. Tomor-row every user is going to become a data generator. As a result,data will get more and more populated.

So, in order to maintain the quality in data there is a need forAutomated Check and Validation System with Real Time bases.If automated check and correction system is developed, then user will get a chance to choose appropriate data set. Thisis the area where GIS and Remote Sensing users should work onin future.


Surveying and Mapping

Maj. Gen. M Gopal RaoSurveyor General of IndiaIndia

Educational ServiceChains for Capacity forthe GI-communityMartien Molenaar

Rector ITC, The Netherlands

The new opportunities offered by the modern technolo-gy, the new concepts of the role of government and the

evolving new (global) economy have a fundamental impacton the development of (national) geo-data infrastructures.

Within the modern evolving information society new businessand Geo-ICT environments are emerging which force GI-providers to develop new business strategies. Further moreuntil twenty years ago production processes for geo-data, ormaps, were quite stable and the relatively slow development ofmapping technology and concepts allowed time horizons forinvestments in the order of 15 to 25 years. Presently the develop-ment of technology requires a time horizon for investments inhardware of 3 to 5 years and concepts for information productsand services have to be adjusted every 7 to 10 years.

Consequently there is a continuous pressure on GI-providersand users to adjust their Geo-ICT strategies, to develop new Geo-ICT architectures and to adjust their organizational structure.The new business strategies require the elaboration of scenariosanticipating the opportunities offered by the new technologyand by the development new GDIs. These scenarios should alsoconsider new paradigms for the definition core or reference dataand for the new products and services that should be providedand for the required technological infrastructure. Hence, thepermanent capacity development of entire organisations isrequired. That means that “lifelong learning” is not only rele-vant for professionals, but also for their organizations.

THE ROLE AND CHARACTER OF CAPACITYDEVELOPMENTCountries with a weak economy encounter great problems inthe face of the present process of globalisation (Molenaar 2005,Taskforce on Higher Education and Society 2000). They oftenlack the governmental, economic and educational strength tokeep pace with these developments and defend their own inter-ests. It is in this context that Capacity Development is requiredAccording to the EOCD definition the objective of CapacityDevelopment is to improve the ability of people, organizations

and society as a whole to manage their affairs successfully.Education and training of individuals is an important compo-

nent, but the goal of capacity building is to simultaneouslyshake up the organizations that will employ them. Here weshould distinguish two different categories of situations forcapacity development involving higher education:

a.In the first category CD aims at strengthening educational insti-tutes (mainly higher education) as such. This includes theimprovement of educational staff and materials, curricula, educa-tional methods, management of education and quality assurance.

b.For the second category education might be an importantmeans, but the real objective is the strengthening of (public andprivate) professional and/or governmental organizations andNGO’s etc. In this case CD will focus on the needs of the targetorganization(s).

In both cases the aim of CD is to strengthen organizations andinstitutions and to strengthen through them civil society atlarge. In general capacity development focuses on a sustainableprovision of professional capacity and organizational and insti-tutional strengthening. Three levels for capacity developmenthave been recognized in (UNDP, 2003) i.e. the individual, theorganizational and the systemic level. Here we will also consid-er three levels, but these relate to human resources develop-ment (which relates to the individual level of UNDP) and organi-zational strengthening and/or institutional strengthening(which both relate to the organizational level of UNDP). HumanResource Development (HRD) is by far the largest component ofthese activities. Mid career professionals have to be trained oreducated to upgrade their knowledge and competences in GItechnology and applications through short training courses ordegree programs degree programs.

The second major activity in the context of CD is direct knowl-edge transfer, often project based, to organizations to help themimplement new technology and to use that for the developmentof new information products and services. Here we talk aboutknowledge valorization where scientific knowledge is madeoperational to support these organizations with the introduc-tion of new working methods and procedures which ultimatelymay result in strucutural adjustments of their Geo-ICT architec-ture (Figure 1).


Capacity Building

They should have good understandingof how technological, institutional andmarket developments affect the develop-ment of geo-information products andservices. They should be able to formulateGeo ICT strategies (Figure 1) to securetheir institutional position and mandatesin this field and to sustain their relevance.A profound knowledge of technologicaltrends should therefore be complement-ed with a deep insight in the role thatgeo-information plays in the context ofintegrated spatial assessment, and policyand decision making. The evolution ofGDIs is a given context. Good under-standing of and anticipation on this evo-lutionary development is an importantprerequisite for the formulation of strate-gies for GI-providers and users.

At the institutional level organizationsshould be aware of the new roles of gov-ernment, the new economic and marketconditions and thus their changing busi-ness environment (Figure 1). This meansthat not only technology oriented profes-sionals are required but also staffs thatcan formulate, design, manage and nego-tiate with other organisations and gov-ernment in order to address organisation-al and institutional issues in support ofthe acceptance of technological solutions(Georgiadou and Groot, 2002). Manyorganizations especially in lesser devel-oped countries consider capacity devel-opment as a cost factor; they only initiate

activities when they can find externalresources for financial support. Theseorganizations should be aware of thefact that capacity development shouldbe seen as an investment to improvetheir performance and to secure andincrease their revenues. With a differentbudgeting regime they will be able to bemuch less dependent from externalfunding arrangements to provide for theresources for capacity development. Therecent developments in Tanzania areinteresting where capacity building hasbeen treated as a necessary investmentto increase revenues through animproved land registration. So it is nolonger a matter of costs but rather aninvestment with calculable returns.

THE DELIVERY OF CAPACITYDEVELOPMENT SERVICES

PARTNERSHIPS IN CAPACITYBUILDING Educational services can be provided byindividual institutes but more and morewe see the development of partnershipsin this context; these form an importantvehicle for the category a of capacitydevelopment of the previous chapter.Such partnerships require substantialinvestments by the partners in staff time,material provisions and institutionalarrangements; these investments areonly worthwhile when these partner-ships are sustainable. A distinctionshould be made here between academic,institutional and financial sustainability:

The “academic sustainability” refers tothe capability of the partners to continu-ously upgrade contents of the joint pro-grams in correspondence with the relatedprofessional, scientific and market devel-opments. This generally requires embed-ding in a research environment; thereforejoint education activities should be com-plemented joint research. With “institu-tional sustainability” refers to the institu-tional or legal setting of a partnership, i.e.

the official mandate and legal position ofthe partners. They should be embeddedin existing frameworks of higher educa-tion. “Financial sustainability”: one of thebasic principles of the joint education ini-tiative of ITC is that partners will eacharrange funding of their own share in theactivities from their own regularresources available in their home coun-tries. The student-related expenses arejointly pursued from a variety of fellow-ship- and scholarship programs.

These partnerships should be based on along-term cooperation rather then a proj-ect based cooperation. That implies thatthere should be a sustainable demand foreducation and training.

Most of the joint programs within theGI-NET consisting of ITC and its non-Euro-pean partners (Molenaar 2005, Molenaarand Beerens 2005) do have a bilateralstructure where students visit the part-ners for the different educational mod-


Fig. 1 Three levels for capacity developmentfor GI-organizations

Fig. 2 ITC’s partnerships for joint education.

Fig. 3 GI-NET developing from a spider to anetwork structure

Business & Geo-ICT envionmentInstitutional Setting

BusinessStrategy

Geo-ICTStategy

Organisationalinfrastructure

Geo-ICTarchitecture

ules when following the program.Presently the policy of joint programs isbeing relaxed in the sense that partner-ships can also be based on agreements forthe transfer of credit points; this meansthat partners do not have a joint pro-gram, but they accept that students fol-low educational modules of the partneras part of program at the home institute.

In the near future better use will be madeof distance learning approaches providedby developments of IC-Technology sothat the traveling of students might bereduced.

NETWORKS AND DECENTRALIZED SUPPLYCHAINS FOR EDUCATIONALSERVICESPartnerships should be established for along term and partners generally partici-pate in more then one partnership; thismeans that there is an opportunity to up-scale these bilateral partnerships intomultilateral regional or even global net-works. This is a policy that ITC presentlydevelops to improve the accessibility ofits educational services, especially forcapacity building.

In the context of globalization of educa-tional services these networks can be thebase for the development of decentral-ized supply chains for education services,

see (Friedman 2005). This would meanthat the partners in the network have dif-ferent competences and fields of expert-ise which can be combined into one edu-cational program or course. Students willthen be served by these partners for thedifferent components of their program.

ICT will provide tools for mutual sup-port of the lecturers at the differentnodes. But we should certainly alsoexplore possibilities to go beyond theclassical setting of courses where stu-dents have regular face-to-face contactwith their teachers and develop e-learn-ing and blended learning approaches. Thedifferent nodes of the network can thencontribute to the development and sup-port of such courses. The nodes can havea regional focus and give regional sup-port to the course participants and alum-ni by arranging regional seminars andworkshops. But because they participatein a network with the global extent theywill make a 24/7 service support possible.

Many organiza-tions especiallyin lesser devel-oped countriesconsider capac-ity developmentas a cost factor

Q. What are the techniques that are being used in Field Surveying?

What sort of software is used?

A National Hydrographic Office has a fleet of eight modernoceangoing survey ships fully equipped with latest hydrograph-ic, oceanographic, geomagnetic and sea gravity sensors capableof undertaking surveys from the coastal waters to the deepoceans. The department uses state of the art technology for col-lection of data and the equipment suite of the ships consists ofgeodetic GPS receivers, Differential GPS, multibeam swathsounding systems, single beam echo sounders, sided scansonars, Doppler current profilers, deep ocean casts, sea gravime-ters, magnetometers, etc. All the sensors on board are integratedto a data logger. Modern processing softwares are installed onboard to sift and process that data so that it can be assessed forcompleteness and quality. National Hydrographic Office andsurveying ships have been primarily using CARIS GIS softwaresince 1994.

Q. What are the latest developments in the field of GIS based

Hydrographic Information System?

A The Hydrographic Information System is used to generatethe Digital Terrain Models (DTM), contour generation, EEZ conti-nental shelf demarcation, coastline change detection, ElectronicNavigational Charts (ENCs), Additional Military Layers (AML). Inaddition to this, NHO is in the process of implementing FieldSurvey Database (FSDB) where all the hydrographic data wouldbe archived at single place and the source database providesseamless and non-redundant storage and maintenance of spa-tial and non-spatial data used for all hydrographic products.

Q. What kind of manpower is available for National Hydrographic

Department (NHD) to carry out surveys?

A The NHD is part of the Indian Navy and the personnel man-ning the ships are trained as per the standard naval trainingpolicy. The officers join the hydrographic specialization aftercompleting the basic training mandatory for naval officers. Wehave officers being directly recruited into the Hydrographiccadre as well as specialist training at National HydrographicSchool, Goa.

Q. What kind of collaboration does the National Hydrographic

Organization (NHO) have with Survey of India and other interna-

tional surveying agencies?

A NHO shares a healthy and working relationship with theSurvey of India. Though the areas of responsibility of both theorganizations are markedly different, NHD has been sharinginformation, data and resources. On many occasions the NHDhas carried SoI teams in the Andaman and Nicobar islands. Like-wise the SoI too has offered help when sought for. In the inter-national context India is a member of the International Hydro-graphic Organisation (IHO) based at Monaco. NHD is in a num-ber of committees of the IHO.

Q. What kind of efforts are going on in the field of NSDI? How much

has been achieved so far?

A During the 23rd meeting at Hyderabad NHO proposed anapproach for modeling a reference architecture for Indian NSDIpilot using Reference Model of Open distributed Systems withspecial reference to interoperability standards for NHOs Enter-prise GIS initiatives. UKHO has developed as scheme to encode S57 data in GML format and this format will allow any interestuser view ENC data through just an Internet browser. This inci-dentally happens to be the de-facto data exchange standard forNSDI’s.

Q. What is the role of GPS in NAVAREA warning (coastal warning)?

Are there any plans to club warning systems of naval forces with

civilian warning systems?

A The GPS is a world wide positioning system, which can giveposition anywhere anytime. The NAVAREA/Coastal Warningssuch do not have any direct relation with the GPS. However,since GPS is omnipresent, geographic orientation of warningsand dangers do help in avoiding them. The warnings broadcastare common for all. Navy is not involved in tsunami warning.There are other organizations that have been tasked with theonus of reporting tsunami warnings by placing ocean buoys.The Navy helps in maintenance/monitoring of these buoys.

Q. Are the survey MoUs, similar to the one with Maritius, being

planned with other countries? How are they beneficial to India?

A India is one of the advanced countries in the world in so faras Hydrography is concerned and a leader in the Indian Oceanregion. NHD has received requests from Maldives to set up theirhydrographic infrastructure, train their personnel, assist in sur-veys, etc. Other than MoUs with Mauritius, there have beenrequests from Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Seychelles for surveys.These have definitely been beneficial for the goodwill that theyhave generated, towards India, in these countries.


Interview

Rear Admiral B R Rao NM, VSMChief HydrographerGovernment of India

56 G I S D E V E L O P M E N T : A S I A PA C I F I C

Q. What is Autodesk Developer Network all about?

A ADN is Autodesk’s partner programme where we collabo-rate with the professional software developers working withAutodesk’s proper technologies to provide Autodesk’s Softwaresto its partners. In ADN, we already have 2900 partners world-wide in almost every country with 500 partners in Asia in spe-cific. It will be helpful for us to develop the one to one relation-ship with our partners/customers.

Q. Isn’t the royalty required to join Autodesk Developer Network

will be a drawback for the developers in the developing countries?

A Since, it is a programme in which we are working with soft-ware developers, the royalty varies from 400$ to 5000$ depend-ing on the products required by the Partners. The royalty isneeded because we want to make sure that we are workingwith those people who really want to work with us.

Q. Why is there a difference in the number of partners in Asia and

the rest of the world?

A We agree, there is a difference in the number of partnersbetween Asia and the rest of the world. But, there has been a lotof improvement in the number of partners from Asian countriesduring the last three years, who are showing interest to workwith Autodesk. Earlier we had only 18 to 25 partners in countrieslike China and India, but today it has been increased to 45 to 60and is expected to reach 70 to 80 in coming years.

Q. How do you compare the popularity of boxed product with a cus-

tomized one?

A Half of Autodesk customers have add-on applications. But itdepends on the country we are working in. If our product is notable to meet the needs of a particular region or country, our localpartners help in filling that need. Autodesk’s Map Guide is anexample where this can be seen. Most of the times it depends onthe customer needs, the geographical or regional need for whichour partners most of the times help out the customer.

Q. What is the strategy of Autodesk in particular to Indian Geospa-

tial market?

A We have supporters in India who have helped Autodesk toenter into Geospatial and manufacturing area in a very big way.We have so many opportunities to grow in India with the grow-ing Indian economy. Presently we have around 46 partners forADN in India, which will be increased to 60-70 during the nextyear. In the future the partners and the Autodesk business inIndia will be focused with a new strategy.

Q. Does Autodesk has any future plans releasing products that sup-

port various raster applications?

A Autodesk also have software products like Autodesk Map3D, which are supporting various raster formats for the user towork with the advanced capabilities. The things are changingnow with Autodesk being used for diverse applications.

Q. Piracy is a very big issue these days? How has Autodesk planned

to tackle this?

A It is our prime job to protect our products from piracies.Since we have regional offices in almost every country, we areplanning to tackle this in a hierarchical way, like country-by-country and region-by-region with the help of the local Govern-ments and the local people. Slowly but surely we will be able toavoid the issue of piracy.

Q. Coming to the interoperability issues how do you compare

Autodesk products with others?

A Interoperability for a GeoSpatial product (open source tech-nology) is about allowing someone to use data in a specific for-mat ( data) from a number of available choices anywhere and atany time. It is a kind of importing and exporting of data in theGeospatial world.

By looking from the customer’s point of view, the import andexport of data is going on well with the Autodesk products. Ithink the Autodesk products are working well with *.dwg fileswith *.dwx being a provision for all the publishing products of Autodesk, it allows the user to share the data with other formats.

INTERVIEW

J A N UA R Y 2 0 07

“Interoperability is like import andexport of data in geospatial world”

Jim QuanciDirector, Autodesk Developer Network, Autodesk Inc., USA

GeoSAR_ad5_20.5x27cm.indd 1GGe 1o 1 5//5//11 51/5/5/


In evolving economies across the globe, Geographi-cal Information Systems (GIS) or GeoSpatial Indus-

try has played an important role in the defence andinfrastructure development of the state. In the recentyears with the changing geo political scenario acrossthe world it has become a critical tool for growth of thenation.

India is a very large market for GIS services and products andthis is expected to turn into a very big opportunity when thecountry’s mapping policy is further opened up for private com-panies to participate. Once this happens this would help compa-nies to own map data, which can be then used for variousGeoSpatial applications across different user segments. Wehave seen from our experience, that to remain profitable, com-panies venturing into any IT business, and in particular intospecialised segments like the GeoSpatial business, one needs tofocus on key aspects such as Knowledge Management, PeopleOrientation, Quality and Relevance to Customer.

Knowledge management at Rolta is driven by a significantrole for investment in R&D enabling the company to develop in-house intellectual property rights (IPRs) that uniquely addresschallenges in an ever-changing business environment. Thecompany frequently undertakes research to enhance and devel-op additional products in its various lines of business. Rolta hascontinuously renewed competencies through training, crosstraining and skill updation. As a result, after each project has

been successfully completed, its best practises are pooled andtranslated into a comprehensive training program imparted tothe other engineers. This makes all subsequent projects better inquality and quicker in execution.

Rolta invests continually in providing specific technology anddomain specific training to its employees. This not only leads tomarket positioning for high-value services, but also contributesto employee satisfaction and retention. It teaches engineers arange of technology skills; it makes them undergo rigorous cer-tifications conducted by independent bodies recognised world-wide. This builds not only their proficiencies but also their cred-itability. Rolta has survived in a business where technologieshave changed with speed because it has intelligently plannedand migrated its competencies from one technology to anotherin the shortest possible time.

Rolta’s success is based on a total commitment to quality stan-dards that are in line with the most demanding internationalbenchmarks in the industry. It actively works at achievingexcellence in its offering to customers. At Rolta quality is invest-ed in every aspect, services, processes, methodologies and workenvironment. At Rolta, quality is much more than just certifica-tions. It is an attitude; a way of life and it is the presence of com-plete environment of quality consciousness and of clear mecha-nisms to achieve the same. This helps Rolta derive increasedbusiness from its existing customers and also attract new cus-tomers.

Rolta understands that each customer is unique and there isno one technology or solution that meets all requirements. Rol-ta uses its domain knowledge to address the specific needs andrequirements of customers, providing them with a sound, singlepoint comprehensive solution. Rolta’s domain knowledge repre-sents a unique assimilation of qualified industry experiencedprofessionals, extensive project experiences, technology frompartners and in-house developed methodologies and tools. Roltamaximises customer satisfaction through the prudent leverageof rich domain knowledge and a specialised infrastructure, cul-minating in raising productivity within customer environ-ments by going beyond standard deliverable.

This is an extraordinary time to be in this business. We aretoday at the threshold of a new era of change sweeping theglobe. I personally feel that the companies which can differenti-ate themselves from the ‘me too’ bandwagon are bound to besuccessful. Any company, which has a unique ability to planintelligently and migrate competencies in the shortest possibletime, enables it to thrive in this business environment whereirrelevance is often a greater threat than obsolesce. In today’scompetitive marketplace companies who can intelligentlyleverage its accumulated knowledge work better, faster andsmarter thereby derive better ROIs.

Kamal K SinghChairman and ManagingDirectorROLTA Group of companies

Industry

This is an extraordinarytime to be in this business. We are todayat the threshold of a newera of change sweepingthe globe.

Copyright © 2006 Leica Geosystems. All rights reserved. ERDAS IMAGINE is a registered trademark and exclusive property; IMAGINE Enterprise Loader, IMAGINE Enterprise Editor and IMAGINE AutoSync are trademarks. Geospatial Imaging Chain is a trademark, service mark and property of Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging, LLC.

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