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R.N.I No - UPENG/2010/34153 Registration no: UP/GBD-136/2011-13 YOUR GEOSPATIAL INDUSTRY MAGAZINE
Page 28 www.geospatialworld.net DECEMBER 2012 VOL 03 ISSUE 05 ISSN 2277 - 3134
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GEOSPATIAL TECHNOLOGIES ENABLING VALUE MAXIMISATION PRE-CONFERENCE DIALOGUE FORUMS • Monetising Geospatial Value and Practices for National Developmental Goals • Monetising Geospatial Value and Practices for Business Enterprises
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Newsmakers 2012: The year that was
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Abbas Rajabifard President, GSDI Association
Greg Bentley CEO, Bentley Systems
Juergen Dold President, Hexagon Geosystems
Preetha Pulusani Chief Strategy Officer, Rolta Group
Aida Opoku Mensah Director - ICT Division UN Economic Commission for Africa
Prof Ian Dowman First Vice President ISPRS
Kamal K Singh Chairman and CEO Rolta Group
Shailesh Nayak Secretary Ministry of Earth Sciences Government of India
Bryn Fosburgh Vice President Trimble
Jack Dangermond President, Esri
Mark Reichardt President and CEO Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.
Vanessa Lawrence CB Director General and CEO, Ordnance Survey, UK
Derek Clarke Chief Director-Survey and Mapping & National Geospatial Information Department of Rural Development & Land Reform, South Africa
Josef Strobl Director, Centre for Geoinformatics, University of Salzburg, Austria
Matthew M O'Connell President and CEO GeoEye
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EditorSpeak
Of promises and rethinking ecember is the time to look back on the year that was and take stock of the 12-monthold predictions. In January 2012, I had ended my editorial musings as follows: the time has come for the earth observation industry to take a closer look at itself. In particular, it has to find out why it remains the preserve of governments. Short-term quick fixes are not the answer. It requires some out-of-the-box thinking.
D
Looking back, we see that there have been some very significant events in the area of earth observation in 2012. An NRC report warned of the decline in US EOS capabilities; at the same time Forecast International estimated the remote sensing market to cross USD 17 billion by 2021. UK gave a significant boost to its space industry and so did the European Union after a hiccup to its EO plans. India launched its 100th mission and also its most complex state of the art EO satellite, RISAT. The DigitalGlobeGeoEye pasodoble ended with DigitalGlobe acquiring the latter for USD 900 million; an indirect result of the US government's decision to cut its spending on EO data. Clearly, governments continue to have a direct say in the investment decisions related to earth observation. Further, there is no sign of any significant out-of-the-box thinking in the industry. Rio+20 saw some significant moves. For the first time, earth observation and geospatial technology obtained a strong political backing at the international level. The final document of the conference mentions the importance of geospatial systems. It is up to the geospatial community to rise to the challenge of helping to realise 'The World We Want.' The UN-GGIM is now tasked with seeing through some of the recommendations. There are many opportunities for the geospatial industry; but the start-up seems to have been hit, as have many other activities, by the persistent downturn in the markets due to recession in the US and Europe. The silver lining is a predicted CAGR of 9.2 per cent for GIS and related technologies in the first half of this decade.
Prof. Arup Dasgupta Managing Editor arup@geospatialmedia.net
The technological elements that hold promise for geospatial data analysis, storage and delivery are big data analysis, the cloud and mobile devices. These technologies have evolved very rapidly and have made their mark in other IT areas. Their assimilation in geospatial systems have begun and is picking up speed. These technologies require a rethinking of deployment and application strategies in SDI but most governments are continuing to support older technologies and models. It is therefore no wonder that SDIs continue to stutter along over budget government projects. The regulatory regime also experienced some turmoil as the call for open data became more vociferous. Most countries, including India, relaxed norms for data access but technology continued to confound lawmakers. The lesson that denial in the age of Internet, social media and personal computing does not work is yet to sink in. Will 2013 be a breakthrough year for geospatial systems? Will we come to terms with Geospatial Artha?
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NEWSMAKERS 2012
M E RG E RS & ACQU ISITIONS M E RG E RS & ACQU ISITIONS M E RG E RS & AC
It was a year of M&As with over 20 key acquisitions across the geospatial industry, led by DigitalGlobe’s USD 900-million takeover of GeoEye
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Geospatial World I December 2012
RS & ACQU ISITIONS M E RG E RS & ACQU ISITIONS M E RG E RS & ACQU ISITIONS M E RG E RS & ACQU ISITIONS
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I N DUSTRY TR E N DS Technology genres like cartography, remote sensing, GIS and GPS are growing individually but they need to come together to create geospatial music. Ola Rollen, President and CEO, Hexagon
Setback to EO industry, Envisat goes silent In a big blow to earth observation (EO) industry, ESA's Envisat, the world's largest earth-watching satellite for civilian use, stopped sending data to earth in April this year. The EO satellite was declared dead by the ESA on May 9. Realising the urgency, scientists are planning to launch the GMES Sentinel satellites, which are planned to replace Envisat, as soon as possible. The landmark Envisat mission has been in orbit twice as long as it was designed for. Also, ESA announced the retirement of its GIOVE-B experimental navigation satellite. Paving way for Europe's Galileo constellation, GIOVE-B is gradually raising its orbit at the end of its four-year mission. "Since the first Galileo satellites have joined them in orbit and have proven to be operating extremely well there is no longer any role left for these experimental satellites," said Valter Alpe, managing the GIOVE satellites for ESA.
Financial crisis shrinks space exploration space... A challenging economic environment has resulted in global budgets for space programmes reaching a plateau.
$70 bn Global budgets for space programmes $10 mn Invested by 53 countries in space applications and technologies
42 Countries investing in space programmes $43 bn US spending in 2011, first decline since the mid 1990s Funding trends in various areas
$40 bn Civil programmes $30 bn Defence space programmes $10.9 bn Human spaceflight $9 bn Earth observation & meteorology
10
US EO missions hit by budget shortfalls, launch failures
$8.4 bn
Budget shortfalls, launch failures and end of long running missions have caused a decline in US earth observation (EO) capabilities over the last five years, a trend that could undermine the nation's ability to monitor natural disasters and climate change. A report, published by the National Research Council (NRC), says that lack of satellite-based earth monitoring technologies "will have profound consequences on science and society." As a consequence, the ability to measure and understand changes in earth's climate and life support systems will also degrade. The new report finds that although NASA responded favorably and aggressively to the survey, the required budget was not achieved, greatly slowing progress.
exploration
Satellite communications
$6 bn
Science and
$3.2 bn Satellite navigation
$2.4 bn Space security
Source: Euroconsult
Geospatial World I December 2012
I N DUSTRY TR E N DS Countries are increasingly being mapped by their people, with 187 out of 192 countries being mapped by their people. Phone is becoming the computer of tomorrow. Michael Jones, Chief Technology Advocate, Google
Euro 10-bn boost to European space activities
... but satellite launches stay in orbit The fate of the satellite launch market for the next 10 years looks bright.
1,075 Satellites to be built worldwide by 2021 $198 bn Revenue to be generated from launch 710 Satellites expected to be ordered by govts. 66% Share of government funding 800 Satellites launched in the past 10 years. 85% Future govt satellite demand dominated by just six countries — US, Russia, Europe, Japan, China and India
36%
The increase in revenues from manufacture and launch of these satellites
120 Satellites likely to go into orbit each year 260 EO satellites to be launched from 42 countries 75% New commercial orders will be replacements of ageing spacecraft
100
Spacecraft
launched in 2011
Geospatial World I December 2012
In an environment of budget constraints and economic crisis, the European space activities and programmes got a big a breather of EUR 10 billion in November. Ministers from the European Space Agency's 20 member states and Canada secured investments for the detailed definition studies of the new launcher Ariane 6 and the continuation of the development of Ariane 5 ME adapted, with the goal to develop as many commonalities as possible between the two launchers. These activities are funded for two years with a decision on the continuation of both launchers to be taken in 2014. Britain's contribution to the ESA will increase by around 30 per cent to EUR 240 million a year over the next five years, as the government seeks to spur growth in the space sector.
US defence dept’s use of g-tech to touch USD 3.2-bn by 2017 The dependence of the US military on GIS technology is increasing more than ever. The US military is increasingly using geospatial products and services to make quick decisions about operations order, placement of installations and gathering of intelligence. A new research from Frost & Sullivan estimates that Department of Defense (DoD) spending on geospatial products and research will reach USD 3.21 billion by 2017. This amount would be significantly higher if classified spending were publicly accessible. However, geospatial data requires exploitation by qualified intelligence analysts who are being inundated with large quantities of raw data. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is developing technologies that will automate and streamline some initial analysis functions to speed up the exploitation process.
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NEWSMAKERS 2012 I N DUSTRY TR E N DS GIS is evolving into a new platform: cloud GIS. This is making geographic understanding pervasive. Cloud GIS integrates all types of geospatial data, models, and applications and makes them available as web maps. The cloud is agile and flexible. Jack Dangermond, President, Esri
Global slowdown gives an upward push to GIS
Remote sensing tech breaks out of defence, intelligence
The economic crisis has proved to be a boon in disguise for the global GIS market, which is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.2 per cent over the period 2011-2015. Many non-manufacturing industries have started to adopt GIS technology at a rapid rate as they see these customised solutions as a way of surviving in this competitive business environment, says a report by TechNavio. Although industry-specific GIS solutions are currently available, customers also expect company-specific GIS solutions. Customised GIS applications and solutions offer numerous opportunities. The public sector continues to drive the market and is expected to retain its dominant role even as governments and military bodies are increasingly investing in GIS to enhance national security infrastructure.
The remote sensing technology has been witnessing increasing interest from various industries even though defence, intelligence and security sectors continue to be a key growth driver for the market, say analysts at market research firm TechNavio. Consumer electronics and automobile industries are increasingly adopting RS technology to enhance their offerings with advanced features. TechNavio has even forecasted that the global RS technology market will grow at a CAGR of 6.74 per cent over the period 2011-2015. One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the need for improved understanding of the earth system. As a result, the government sector is the major end-user of remote sensors.
Big data creating bigger opportunities Big data is just getting bigger. Today, it has become as essential to businesses as land, labour and capital, says a report by Capgemini. The use of big data has improved businesses' performance, on an average, by 26 per cent and the impact will grow to 41 per cent over the next three years. As majority of companies (58 per cent) claim they will make a bigger investment in big data over the next three years, the area is expected to create 4.4 million IT jobs globally, of which 1.9 million will be in the US, says a study by analyst firm Gartner. “Every big data related role in the US will create employment for three people outside of IT, so over the next four years a total of 6 million jobs in the US will be generated by the information economy,� said Peter Sondergaard, Senior VP and global head of research, Gartner.
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Jorge Mauro Barja Arteiro, Topocart
Visit iFlyUltraCam.com to see the Topocart video.
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P OLICY The US will join Europe and other nations in developing an international code of conduct for space operations. A code of conduct will help maintain the long-term sustainability, safety, stability and security of space by establishing guidelines for the responsible use of space. Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State
NGA vision redefines the power of geointelligence
Land administration systems back on track
In an era of fiscal austerity and increasingly complex challenges, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) must anticipate tomorrow's threats to position itself for the future. Setting the future course of action of the agency, NGA released its strategic goals and objectives for the next five years. The strategy aims to ensure the geospatial intelligence discipline is a key contributor to US integrated intelligence operations in support of multiple mission areas, including military and intelligence operations, intelligence analysis, homeland defence and humanitarian and disaster relief.
After a long wait of five years, the 'Land Administration Domain Model (LADM)' was approved as an official International ISO Standard on November 1. This is a milestone in the development of land administration systems as there is an urgent need worldwide for proper standards in land information, both for initial data acquisition and for data maintenance and information exchange. The standard provides an abstract, conceptual model with four packages related to parties (people and organisations); basic administrative units, rights, responsibilities, and restrictions (ownership rights); spatial units (parcels, and the legal space of buildings and utility networks); and spatial sources (surveying), and spatial representations (geometry and topology).
Standards to promote spatial data sharing across defence forces Recognising the importance of sharing geospatial data across multinational ground forces, the US Army in collaboration with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and US Marine Corps (USMC) is working to establish the GroundWarfighter Geospatial Data Model (GGDM) as the ground-warfighter National System for Geospatial-Intelligence standard. The GGDM will serve as one of the core components of the Army Geospatial Enterprise. The purpose of the effort is to reduce stovepipes, lower costs, simplify acquisition and accelerate transition of technology as part of a standard and shareable geospatial foundation. A roadmap is being established for transitioning Army ground-warfighter systems and geospatial data to the GGDM.
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P OLICY
ISRO creates history with 100th launch The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) made history as it launched its 100th indigenous mission on September 9 this year. The space agency's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) successfully launched two foreign satellites, SPOT 6, a French remote sensing satellite and PROITERES of Japan. This launch is hailed as the first allcommercial launch by ISRO. Speaking to Geospatial World, Devi Prasad Karnik, spokesperson, ISRO, said, "Apart from Image courtesy: ISRO revenue generation, this launch has enabled ISRO to build up its credibility among foreign customers. With this launch, ISRO has strengthened its position as a sought-after commercial launcher."
Galileo, EGNOS missions get a lifeline
At a time when governments are reeling under tremendous space budget constraints, the European Commission earmarked around EUR 7.9 billion to complete the EU's satellite navigation infrastructure over a seven-year period. The industry committee members of the European parliament approved the new legislation in September to ensure Galileo and the EGNOS programmes could be funded and operated from 2014 to 2020. The EU wants to ensure that from 2014 key services such as police and ambulance services continue to operate in times of crisis and are free. So must the Safety of Life Service, a European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) programme, which will be fully available later and will make air navigation safer.
Maps are becoming apps. Today, data is a commodity and apps must be readily available to users; for users nowadays are tech-savvy customers, collaborators, contributors and creators. Barry Barlow, Director, Online Geoint Services, NGA
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I N NOVATIVE TECH NOLOG I ES Cloud, mobile and social technologies are reshaping design workflows. We are moving to a world where the computing centre of the world is really where you are. I'll never [again] be in the position of saying I'll email you those files when I get back to the office. Carl Bass, President and CEO, Autodesk
New system measures quake scale in minutes
Keeping an eye from the sky on volcanoes
Aftershocks and delay in prompt evacuation after a huge earthquake often leads to more casualties and damages. To address this, the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan, in association with Tohoku University, has developed a Image courtesy: N ASA new GPS-based quake scale estimation system which Some 20 quakes of magnitude can estimate the scale of 6or greater rocked aJpan after March 11, 2011 quake. h Te crustal movement within largest aftershock was a minutes. This is much faster magnitude 7.1 quake that than the system widely used struck less than an hour after the main shock. now that takes more than five hours to do so. For instance, at the time of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the Japan Meteorological Agency initially announced its magnitude was 7.9, but drastically revised it to 9.0 two days later. The new system could have estimated the preliminary magnitude of the quake at 8.7 and helped save lives.
Hope is here on volcanoes too. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) data can be used to monitor volcanoes. Tiny changes on the ground cause changes in the radar signal and lead to rainbow-coloured interference patterns in the combined image, known as a 'SAR interferogram'. Movement of magma underground may cause deformation of the surface above, thus enabling InSAR to monitor volcanoes. An article, 'Monitoring Volcanoes', published in Science refers to a study of over 440 active volcanoes in 16 developing countries and reveals that 384 have rudimentary or no monitoring, including 65 volcanoes identified as posing a high risk to large populations. In response, the European Space Agency claimed that earth-observing satellites such as Envisat can detect unrest on currently unmonitored volcanoes.
Off-the-shelf smartphone to help soldiers on battlefield Smartphones just got smarter this year. University of Missouri (MU) researchers have developed a new software using smartphone GPS and imaging abilities that determine the exact location of distant objects as well as monitor the speed and direction of moving objects. The software could eventually allow smartphone-armed soldiers to target the location of their enemies. "On the battlefield, a soldier needs a rangefinder, compass, GPS and other tools to do reconnaissance before calling in an air strike. With our software, the soldier can have all those instruments in one device that can be purchased off the shelf. When the soldier returns from war, he can use the same software to protect their family by clocking a speeder near his children's school," says Qia Wang from MU.
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I N NOVATIVE TECH NOLOG I ES
EU plans to map Internet censorship around the world
After years of decades of research, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may have brought the world one step closer to autonomous robotic vehicles. MIT researchers have developed a fixedwing plane that can travel at high speeds while dodging obstacles and manoeuvring through tight spaces without GPS. The aircraft is able to navigate itself by using on-board sensors, a laser and a basic Intel Atom processor. For it to truly be autonomous and work in the real world, researchers need to equip the plane with the ability to map its own environment. Using an algorithm for determining its "state" its location, physical orientation, velocity and acceleration the plane was able to complete a seven-minute
Keeping track of reports about denial of Internet freedom and surveillance initiatives could be a
Image courtesy: MIT
Autonomous plane flies indoors without GPS
flight at 22 miles per hour during tests. It covered three miles of distance and managed to avoid obstacles despite coming a few centimetres within them.
Image courtesy: Reporters without borders, an G NOfor freedom of expression and information
difficult task. But soon there could be a solution at hand. The European Union (EU) will launch a global monitoring system that will help chart digital repression by mapping the Internet's 'cyber geography' in near real-time. The European Corporate Security Association (ECSA) will attempt to visualise up-to-date intelligence about the state of the Internet across the world. It will show content filtering, blocking, or other disruptions to the Web, among other things. ECSA could prove to be a vital resource, particularly if it is opened up for free public use.
More and more content is getting geo-referenced and displayed on a map. So, there is enormous growth in the usage of geographical information systems and data. We are licensing our content to smartphone makers and developing our own mobile applications. Harold Goddijn, Founder & CEO, TomTom
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I N NOVATIVE TECH NOLOG I ES The question I keep asking myself is with all of this technology have we really taken the steps forward that we should have? Simply being faster and simply being cheaper is not enough. The idea is to use the technology and be transformational and be better than we have been before.
Image courtesy: MIT
Steve Berglund, President & CEO, Trimble
Wear a gadget, map your surroundings
New navigation system could give GPS a run for its money
Sandy-like hurricanes can still wreak havoc but relief may come quicker and easier now. To help emergency responders coordinate disaster response, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have built a wearable sensor system that automatically creates a digital map of the environment through which the wearer is moving. In experiments, a student wearing the sensor system wandered the MIT halls and the sensors wirelessly relayed data to a laptop in a distant conference room. Observers in the conference room were able to track the student's progress on a map that tracked movements. The prototype sensor also includes a stripped-down Microsoft Kinect camera and a laser rangefinder.
GPS can soon become a thing of past. UK defence firm BAE Systems has developed a new positioning system, Navigation via Signals of Opportunity (NAVSOP), which could complement or even replace current technologies such as GPS. NAVSOP relies on the same signals used by mobile phones, TVs, radios and Wi-Fi rather than navigation satellites. NAVSOP could help find victims inside buildings during a fire and locate stolen vehicles hidden in underground car parks, claims BAE Systems. It could also be used in a war if the SatNav system was turned off. It would also be useful to the military in case one side deliberately switches off GPS to prevent its adversary from locating its units.
Phones in space: Nanosatellites to ride Android In a technological breakthrough, NASA's team of engineers at Ames Research Center have developed nanosatellites powered by Android smartphones. Expected to be launched this year itself, the devices are cube-shaped miniature satellites — smaller and lighter, measuring about 4 inches and weighing less than 4 pounds. Being built with off-theshelf hardware, which is reducing the cost of each prototype to USD 3,500, the nanosatellites can be operated by cellphones, which provide the operating system and the communications capabilities. NASA says it has already built two types of these smartphone satellites.
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Geospatial World I December 2012
Creating your own map from maps published by other users is just one of many ways to take advantage of the rich collection of data and resources ArcGIS Online makes available to you. SM
Welcome to the new frontier in geographic information systems.
30-day free trial: esri.com/gswagol Copyright Š 2012 Esri. All rights reserved.
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FOR A B ETTE R WOR LD Basic essential data which emerges from Planet Earth must be available free of cost across the board to anybody who wishes to use it. This is one thing that needs to be agreed upon if we really want to make use of data in a substantial way. Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Communication and IT, India
NASA tries to penetrate the thick and thin of oil spill
A network of networks for crisis response
Two years and billions of dollars in cleanup operations after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the coast is far Image courtesy: DigitalGlobe from clear. In a P was fined USD 4.5 bn for Gulf of B bid to improve Mexico oil spill response operations to such environmental disasters in future, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology have developed a method to use specialised NASA 3D imaging radar to characterise the oil in case of spills. The team used Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar which characterises an oil spill by detecting variations in the roughness of its surface and, for thick slicks, changes in the electrical conductivity of its surface layer. UAVSAR's high sensitivity and other capabilities enabled the team to separate thick and thin oil for the first time using a radar system.
Online technology communities step up to gather, process and share crucial information resources to help aid agencies on the ground in times of emergencies such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake or Hurricane Sandy. In view of the fact that volunteer communities often are adept at exploiting online technologies and crowdsourcing methods to turn new sources of raw data into useful intelligence, MapAction, CrisisMappers and GISCorps have teamed up with the United Nations to form Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN). The Network aims to provide a better linkage between formal humanitarian organisations and the online technology communities in disaster situations. For example, blending analysis of satellite imagery with mobile phone traffic data may offers ways to detect movement of displaced people across a disaster zone. DHN is aimed at reducing "data noise" and providing better access to priority information for aid agencies.
Global mineral map to aid in mining explorations This could be handy for mining companies reeling under soaring exploration costs. Scientists at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), in collaboration with those from Japan and USA, have developed the world's first continent-wide suite of mineral maps. The new suite of maps will enable mining companies to increase the efficiency and viability of their exploration efforts. The mineral maps show information about rock and soil mineral components and provide a Google-like zoom to view images from thousands of kilometres wide to just a few kilometres. The maps were generated from a 10-year archive of raw Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection data collected by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Japanese government's Space Systems.
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FOR A B ETTE R WOR LD
Open atlas to track renewable energy sources
Global group to improve emergency mapping
With diminishing energy resources, the calls for use of alternative sources like solar radiation and wind power are getting shriller. However, understanding where and when these renewable energy sources are available is essential for their effective exploitation. In order to make this data available globally, the first atlas for solar and wind energy has been launched by the Inter-
Earth observation satellites and imagery are increasingly being used to map and support disaster and emergency relief operations. Global cooperation, best practices, shared technical standards and protocol are, therefore, needed to improve satellite-based emergency mapping. To support this vision, an International Working Group on satellite-based emergency mapping (IWGSEM) was formed by approximately 20 representatives from different space agencies. The IWG-SEM aims to establish best practices between emergencymapping programmes (like International Charter, Sentinel Asia and GMES Initial Operations Emergency Management Service) to enable better collaboration and capacity coordination, with a view to also define jointly a set of professional standards for emergency mapping and data use.
Oce completed, the atlas will give analysis of wind and solar n potential at any geographic scale and real-time calculation of specific indicators, e.g. O 2 C reductions, investment, market and employment volume
national Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). The atlas provides open access to information about where solar and wind energy can best be exploited and is set to accelerate the development of renewable energy sources. Existing maps and data collections of solar and wind energy resources are limited, claims IRENA.
Governments and private sector should work together to make accurate, authoritative, reliable geospatial information readily available to support national, regional and global development. Paul Cheung, Director, United Nations Statistics Division
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FOR A B ETTE R WOR LD We need to explore how geospatial technology can help the bottom of the pyramid. Creating a sustainable development model for the 3 billion rural people involves linking data, information exchange and proper dissemination." Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, former President of India
Waste no more! Roadmap to solve garbage crisis
Seabed map to explore potential of European waters
Health experts and environmentalists increasingly concerned about the billions of tonnes of waste produced worldwide can rest easy. The Clinton Global Initiative has launched the Foundation for Sustainable Waste Resources. The first initiative of the foundation will be to partner with organisations, companies and
Oceans and seas that surround Europe offer new opportunities for growth and jobs. To best tap this potential, the EuroImage courtesy: Subsea World pean Commission (EC) has proposed to create a digital seabed map of the European waters by 2020 by collecting all existing data into one coherent database accessible to everyone. The new seamless multi-resolution digital seabed map of European waters will be of the highest resolution possible, covering topography, geology, habitats and ecosystems. "The European economy can benefit from a more structured approach to marine knowledge. This can improve the competitiveness of those working on our seas and coasts by EUR 300 million per year. It can generate new opportunities worth another EUR 200 million a year,� said, Maria Damanaki, Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries.
NGOs to create an interactive global map of global waste sites and systems. The map will be created through development of a platform using IT, GIS, databases and mobile applications. Existing databases and sources will be merged and uploaded into a single database. The foundation will identify locations of significant amounts of waste and then work with the waste management industry, including collectors, developers and governments to find ways to convert that waste into valuable resources.
Strengthening space technology for disaster response Space-based technologies and solutions are increasingly being used for risk assessment, mitigation and preparedness phases of disaster management. As the global community learnt from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, space technologies have a central role to play in providing early warning to communities that are at risk. Recognising the importance of such technologies, Asia-Pacific countries launched a five-year campaign aimed at promoting greater use of space technology and GIS for improved disaster risk reduction and management as well as to minimise the environmental costs of economic growth in the region. To achieve this, the Asia-Pacific Years of Action aims to increase relevant activities at the national, sub-regional and regional levels, while building on efforts to strengthen regional cooperation in applications of space technology and GIS.
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INTERVIEW
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Sustainability is key to mining
Prof Józef Dubiñski is a professor by profession, miner at heart and environmentalist in his beliefs.. A strong propagator of the idea sustainability in mining, Prof. Dubiñski, who is also the chairma an of the World Mining Congress, has been at the forefront calling for use of better technology to address environmental pollution and safety hazards in mining.
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What are the activities of Central Mining Institute? Central Mining Institute (CMI) is one of the largest research and development institutes in Poland. Our main activities are in the mining area, not just restricted to coal mining but also includes other mineral resources such as copper, silver and lignite deposits. We are also involved in carrying out scientific research in mining. Another important part of our activities is environmental engineering because during the past few decades, mining activities in Poland have led to large-scale environmental pollution. Besides, it is also important to spread environmental engineering and knowledge to other countries in the world. For example, safety in mines is one of our leading branches of activity and we share this knowledge with China, Russia, Vietnam and other countries where mining is undertaken on a large scale.
Apart from its knowledge sharing and research activities, does CMI also offer educational mes and training modules? programm
Prof Józef Dubiñski
Yes, we offer specialised courses for mining engineers, including PhDs and post-graduate programmes. We have a strong scientific staff of 15 professors and around 100 PhD doctors. Geosciences is another strong area of our activities, which includes geology, geophysics, surveying and geodesy. In Poland, mining is concentrated in urban areas and convincing citizens about safety is a major challenge. Besides, the damage caused to infrastructure is also an issue. This is a serious condition for the mining industry as these activities will not be possible in future without acceptance of the citizens.
General Director, Central Mining Institute, Poland
Geospatial technology is applied widely in mining and
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related activities. How is CMI trying to encourage the use of this technology? Spatial technology is an integral part of our activities because mining as an activity creates different types of data. This data not only includes geological problems but every measurement made in the mining process creates some kind of data. The database needs to be visualised and analysed as it plays a vital role in making decisions for managing various processes. In Poland, mining geophysics is not only used for the preliminary recognition of deposits in geological conditions but also in classifying mining seismicity, because there are mines with strong seismicity due to high-level depths. Gathering data about shocks is extremely important to prevent a catastrophe. This is an area where geospatial knowledge is widely used.
CMI is actively involved in international projects. What aken with are the various kinds of activities underta your international partners? We have signed agreements with various institutions and organisations around the world. For example, China has been our partner for more than 30 years. We have signed agreements with the China Research Coal Institute and the China University of Mining and Technology in Beijing where our main area of activity is mining safety. China has been at the receiving end of a number of mine-related disasters in the past, and thus we are trying to build strong cooperation in this regard. We produce a seismological apparatus that China is buying. A new area of our activity is underground classification as the use of classical methods of exploration is very expensive. Besides, classical methods also result in low efficiency of resources.
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Spatial technology is an integral part of our activities because mining creates different types of data. The database needs to be visualised and analysed as it plays a vital role in making decisionss for managing various processes.
Safety is a major aspect in mining activities. Do you see the role of geospatial technology in ensurring greater safety? Safety is an extremely important aspect, particularly in countries where underground mining is conducted because it is a rather dangerous activity. There are many kinds of data, such as data about seismicity and mission control, which should be elaborated in a form that permits quick decision making. Certain analysis about mining safety should be based on very reliable data obtained from measurements and this can be elaborated by geospatial technology.
Since the inception of the World Mining Congress in gy 1958, how has the usage of science and technolog evolved in mining processes? The World Mining Congress (WMC) was established in 1958 by Polish professor Boleslaw Krupinski. At that time, Europe was divided into two — the capitalist and socialist parts. Such a divide made it difficult to establish a contact between
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mining engineers and technicians. Therefore, the idea to establish WMC was aimed at removing this gap and also to share mining knowledge, particularly in the area of higher efficiency of mining technologies. Another objective was to spread mining knowledge to countries where such knowledge was low. For example, while Great Britain, France, Germany and Poland had very high knowhow of mining operations, China, Ukraine and India were just beginning to gather such knowledge. Thirdly, it also worked to develop solidarity between members of the mining society as it was very important to create a regional institution before mining could develop around the world. Each meeting of the WMC has a motto, which aims to implement something new in the mining activity. For example, the next meeting is scheduled in Montreal, Canada in August 2013 and is aimed at mapping the future advances in mining.
For the past several years, each meeting of the WMC has concluded with a declaration that directs mining activities in not only the host country but also in the 50-odd participating countries. Firstly, there is the problem of rationale exploitation of resources. Secondly, we have to ensure environmental protection to obtain social acceptance of mining activity. Besides, education is another major challenge because there is a severe shortage of mining engineers in many countries around the world. Apart from this, we also promote innovation in mining as it is very important for future mining to be smart and intelligent so that processes can be automated and miners do not have to undertake dangerous tasks. Each meeting of the WMC is followed by a meeting of the International Organising Committee where each participating country makes a short report about execution and fulfilment of the WMC declaration.
Over the past 50 years, how successful has WMC been in spreading awareness about the es in science and latest advance technology?
Information exchange is one basic needs to ensure cooperation between nations. Is WMC looking in this direction?
separate newsletter of the WMC to ensure adequate information exchange. However, this is a little difficult to accomplish because a number of countries around the world already have their own specialised journals and participation of WMC members is very important in this regard. For example, before the Congress in New Delhi, a journal was published by an engineers' society in India, which was dedicated to the problems of WMC and the new technologies in Poland, India and China. Besides, the WMC publishes the proceedings of the each meeting, which are also available on its website.
As the chairman of WMC, what is your advice for the mining sector in the backdrop of an ecosystem hich is getting fragile and at a wh time when environmental security and safety are getting more ant than before? importa I think the mining industry is set to take off in future and there are a lot of factors that support this notion. However, mining managers and the mining society should take great care for sustainability as it is one big challenge for us. Economy, in my opinion, does not dominate the environmental and social aspects because societies around the world will not accept this activity if the safety level is low or when there are damages on the surface. Therefore, I think that sustainability in mining is a big challenge because raw mineral resources are non-renewable and will get exhausted if exploited without any rational reasons.
There is a proposal to publish a
Geospatial World I December 2012
COVER STORY/UAE
Powering growth, empowering economy
Geospatial technology has been one of the major factors behind UAE's growth in the last few years but the awareness level is still not enough to take it to the next level ensing the opportunity that geospatial technology presents towards national building, empowering industries and realising development goals, UAE has been at the forefront of its adoption and implementation. From construction and infrastructure to utilities,
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cadastre and land registry to local government, defence to oil and gas, the seven-emirate federation has its users spanning across verticals, making it one of the pioneers in use of geospatial technology in the region. However, promoters and propagators of the technolo-
Geospatial World I December 2012
this growth on to the next level. Thus, it becomes vital that the monetary and non-monetary benefits of geospatial technology be highlighted, so as to provide a catalyst that can accelerate the overall growth and development of this technology. Most government organisations in the UAE have implemented geospatial technology widely in their functioning and have made huge investments in acquiring the necessary hardware, software, human resources and other required infrastructure. Besides, UAE's Vision 2021 and vision plans of various emirates in the country mandate implementation of the latest technologies for developmental activities. Huge funds have also been earmarked for towards this, thus giving geospatial industry in UAE a platform to further mature and realise its true potential during the next few years.
G-tech driving UAE economy
gy in UAE are often faced with the same kind of challenges as their counterparts in other parts of the globe. Apart from the common constraints, the most challenging aspect perhaps is demonstrating the enormous value of this technology to the decision makers. While geospatial technology has been one of the major factors behind UAE's growth for several years, experts believe that the level of awareness is still not up to a point that can take
Geospatial World I December 2012
Geospatial technology plays a crucial role in the overall functioning of most organisations in UAE and offers various advantages such as reduction in project costs, time saving, increased accuracy and efficiency, improved customer service and safety, and a better quality of life for the citizens. These advantages make it a major force that improves a country's economy. "Geospatial technology promotes the economy in a number of ways," says Neil Gyte, Enterprise Geo Lead Emerging Markets at Google. "Infrastructure development, planning and sustainability require huge amounts of geospatial inputs. Besides, there is a lot of commerce and trade that passes through UAE, and geospatial technology is used for facilitating movement of goods. It also helps people to research online before they make a decision, such as finding the shortest route between point A and point B. All these things have a substantial impact on the economy." Dr Oualid (Walid) Ben Ali, Assistant Professor, Head of MIS Department, relates economic development to the quality of life. "Geospatial technology helps us to save money, save time and save lives. For example, the Abu Dhabi police have extensively implemented GIS in their functioning. In emergency situations, their patrol cars can reach an incident spot in the shortest time, which means saving time and lives. A good economy is where we add quality to the lives of the people and that is exactly what the technology helps us to do," says Dr Ali, who is
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also the founder and director of the GIS centre at the University of Sharjah.
An eye on future: g-tech for growth and development
G-tech in user organisations According to the book Fundamentals DEPARTMENT of Spatial Information Systems, "about OF MUNICIPAL 80 per cent of all urban decisions DUBAI AFFAIRS AL AIN, made by state and local governments MUNICIPALITY ABU DHABI involve a spatial component either directly or implicitly, demanding a process based on geographical data." strength of GIS division strength of GIS division This only highlights the importance of geospatial technology and reiterates Providing data to various departments Providing timely and accurate data to its role as a major driver for user for research, analysis or projects in a various departments in the municipalstructured manner; improved cusorganisations. ity; providing data to other governtomer service; automatic retrieval of ment organisations for their projects; Describing how geospatial techplot details in land ownership and improved customer service; reduction nology plays a crucial role in dealing building permits department. in time and cost of projects. with environmental issues, Anil Kumar, Director, Environment Information Management, Environment Agency, Abu Dhabi, says, "This techSHARJAH nology has enabled us to achieve cost ELECTRICITY & efficiency in much of its activities. It WATER has been quite pervasive and allows us ETISALAT AUTHORITY to make better decisions." He points out that his organisation looks at the value of this technology from an overstrength of GIS division strength of GIS division all perspective of providing a clean and safe environment to Abu Dhabi's curEditing, viewing and modification of Developing, deploying and maintainelectricity, water, gas and fibre optic rent and future generations. "Any ing GIS applications for departments networks; providing GIS data to all in Etisalat; simplifying network operadamage caused to the environment users within the organisation; improvtions and increasing customer satiscould have huge cost implications and ing customer service. faction; optimising fibre network, roll GIS helps us to take adequate measout new services in a timely manner. ures to mitigate or minimise the harmful impact on the environment." Nader Assad Bin Taher, Asset Performance Department Manager, Abu ting that it can sometimes get a bit challenging to impleDhabi Sewerage Services Company (ADSSC), is also ment, Bin Taher says geospatial technology is the future. upbeat about the role of geospatial technology in the Ibrahim Seif, Senior Software Specialist at Etisalat overall functioning of his organisation. "This technology is explains how one of the largest telecom companies in the a major driver as it is sustaining the very existence of region is using this technology to improve its functioning: ADSSC and improving our business reputation immensely. There are several factors such as automation of "Our applications are helping Etisalat in automating the processes, paperless data storage, improvement in probusiness process, speeding the planning process and ductivity and efficiency that work in this direction." Admitproviding critical information for the decision makers to
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ABU DHABI SEWERAGE SERVICES COMPANY
ENVIRONMENT AGENCY, ABU DHABI
8 strength of GIS division
16 strength of GIS division
department relies on soil information for different types of building permits such as villas, towers or high-rise buildings. Drainage, sewerage and irrigation departments have their complete networks standardised by the GIS department which will help them maintain their pipes and avoid any crisis, he points out.
Hurdles on the road
There are several challenges that hamper the growth of geospatial tech2.72 mn USD (approx 10 mn investments in GIS per year. Figure nology in the country. AED) investments in GIS per year includes direct & indirect investment Lack of awareness: While UAE has Responding to technical queries no scarcity of resources, lack of awareWildlife conservation by understandraised by the technical services ness among the users and policy making habitat; water conservation by team and the customers; provide ers often proves to be a big hindrance tracking ground water status; forestry operational updates in terms of in getting the right resources at the management and prevention of capturing, monitoring and maintaining right time and right place. It is this desertification; protected area delinthe asset register; stakeholder major issue which gives rise to associeation; permits for new construction. management. ated challenges such as lack of trained staff, budget constraints, lack of cooperation and software/hardware issues. Dr Ali accepts that lack of awareness is the biggest challenge. While SHARJAH FUJAIRAH geospatial technology has been impleMUNICIPALITY MUNICIPALITY mented in various departments across UAE, not everyone is aware of its benefits. "There is no dearth of facilities in strength of GIS division the UAE, so awareness is by far the strength of GIS division biggest challenge. For geospatial tech0.54-0.81mn USD (AED 2-3 Investments and activities of nology to realise its full potential, the mn) investments in GIS a year. Figure top organisations in UAE in need is to create more awareness includes direct & indirect investment geospatial technology amongst users, developers and policy makers," he says. Lack of trained staff: It is a problem help them in taking wise and effective decisions for netplaguing most user organisations in the UAE. More spework development based on customer information." cialised courses in the field could improve the situation at Town planning and municipal authorities are using the grassroots level. "We have a lot of universities in UAE this technology to the fullest. "Planning department plans but only a handful have started courses to educate the various facilities based on demographic information, for students about this technology. This has to change. In example, building mosques in areas with the highest Canada, US and the European countries, GIS is a part of density of Muslim population," says Adib Al Madani, Head the curriculum," says Dr Ali. Nader Bin Taher of the of GIS Data Section at Dubai Municipality. The building ADSSC feels one of the most important challenges facing
4 mn USD (approx AED 15 mn)
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“We need the geospatial community to collaborate with the universities. So, while we prepare future geospa tial professionals, the industry can support us in the form of hardware, software, data and organising geospatial events.� Dr Oualid (Walid) Ben Ali University of Sharjah
Budget constraints: Lack of funding has resulted in delays or cancellation of a number of geospatial projects in the recent past. While funds have been hard to come by in some cases owing to the economic downturn, lack of awareness has been the actual reason on most occasions as funds were diverted to other less-important areas. Lack of budget is especially a problem for some of the smaller emirates, and the provision of low-cost data and other resources will help a great deal in consolidating their GIS infrastructure. An important aspect behind arranging the budget required for a GIS project is the support of the decision makers. Therefore, it becomes vital that the top management be educated about the benefits of geospatial technology in numerous areas of economic development, planning, infrastructure, city management etc. Software: Different departments in the UAE use different kinds of GIS software. This gives rise to the issue of compatibility between various software and the resulting wastage of time, efforts and money. Incompatibility issue also gives rise to the problem of data exchange between various organisations. A third aspect of the challenge is the low level of software penetration at the university level where students can get a hands-on experience even before landing up a job. In a lot of developed countries, geospatial software is provided to educational institutes at low prices but that is missing in UAE. Lack of cooperation: Noncooperation issue may arise between two organisations or amongst various departments in an organisation and leads to the problem of sharing of data and information. All this results in wastage of time and delays a project.
his organisation is the internal capacity of the GIS team. "A lot of our staff is coming from non-GIS background, which presents us with the challenge of taking them from a nascent stage to a professional level." Agrees Abdulhakim Abdulkarim Malik, Director of the GIS section at Dubai Municipality. "Lack of quality employees is a major challenge. You can find plenty of people who are IT experts but it is extremely difficult to find people who are well versed in GIS." Another issue is a majority of GIS people belong to the expatriate community. When these people leave at the end of a project, it creates a void that is sometimes extremely hard to fill. Besides, there is also a problem of migration of trained staff to the private sector for better pay packages. Data: Data is the fundamental requisite for all kinds of geospatial activity and is another area that concerns the champions of the technology in UAE. While the data available may sometimes be outdated or incomplete, data sharing mechanisms also need to be strengthened a great deal. Besides, the openness of data is another aspect that needs immediate attention. Capacity development Google's Gyte says there is still not Hurdles for growth of geospatial A study conducted by a private firm a enough data that is open and available technology in UAE couple of years ago concluded that to the public. Although progress has there is an acute shortage of geospatial professionals in been made in the last 2-3 years on this front, a lot of it is UAE and the government/private sector in the country still kept by the government and it often takes weeks or requires around 800-1,000 GIS experts to bridge this even months for users to get their hands on data "If you divide. While there is a need to strengthen the skills of make data available to the people easily, it enables more existing staff, new geospatial professionals should also innovation and openness," he says.
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be groomed by empowering the education system. “Awareness is critical to ensure Besides, positive government policies in this direction spread of geospatial technology. Stronger cooperation is required can also help to fill the void. between government organisations "There are some good university programmes already because everyone has different in the UAE. The need is to provide education and awaretypes of data, which should be ness to the business leaders around the benefits of exchanged seamlessly.” geospatial technology," explains Gyte. Capacity building Abdulhakim Abdulkarim Malik has to be at two levels: at the grassroots level in terms of Dubai Municipality education in schools and universities; and in terms of making businesses and decision makers aware of the benefits of geospatial data and technology so that there could be more investment in people, skills etc. Besides, but will also help the students in familiarising themselves the industry should also partner with universities to prowith the latest technology. "While the government is supmote the technology at the basic level. "Companies porting us by providing the required data, it is impossible around the world have internships. It to teach GIS without software and hardhelps students bridge the gap between ware," adds Dr Ali. academic GIS and business GIS and turns Government initiatives them into real professionals," adds Gyte. While there is little support in terms of Most educational institutes do not of all urban d e c i s i o n s m a d e capacity building from the private sechave the necessary funding to acquire by state and local tor, the government is doing its bit in the the infrastructure required for imparting governments form of creating favourable policies and quality GIS education and help the involve a spatial organising training sessions. The UAE students in the form of scholarships. c o m p o n e n t government's Emiratisation Scheme Funding from private companies in the either directly or encourages local people to take up key form of free software and on-the-job implicitly positions and also rewards departments training opportunities for students can with the highest number of Emiratis. For help tackle this challenge and thus creexample, 99 per cent of employees in ate real geospatial professionals. the GIS department at ADSSC are UAE nationals. "We need the geospatial community to collaborate Highlighting the government's favourable policies for with the universities," says Dr Ali. "This way, while we the promotion of geospatial technology, Dr Ali says, "Last prepare future geospatial professionals, the industry can year, the Abu Dhabi government asked a private company support us in the form of hardware, software, data and to organise a free training seminar for the locals. Another organising events and seminars related to geospatial initiative is to send the locals abroad for GIS training. The technology." Having free software licences for the univergovernment spends a lot of money for training people." sities will not only be good marketing for the companies However, a policy to push software providers to provide free software licences to universities and schools would do a world of good for the overall growth and develop“Environmental damage could have huge cost implications and ment of the technology in the region. geospatial technology helps us to take adequate measures to mitigate The way forward the harmful impact.” While there are a lot of problems facing the growth of geospatial technology in UAE, most of those challenges Anil Kumar can be met by implementing simple strategies. CommerEnvironment Agency, Abu Dhabi cial geospatial companies can contribute to the promotion of the technology by conducting joint research proj-
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Name of project
Implementing agency
My Location
Dubai Municipality
Dubai Soil Map
Dubai Municipality
Enviroportal
Environment Agency — Abu Dhabi
Air Quality Monitoring
Environment Agency — Abu Dhabi
Maintenance and Development of Water and Electricity Network
Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority
eServices Portal
Al Ain Municipality
Important geo-enabled projects taken up by departments
project in many phases instead of doing it at one go. We have also decided to cancel or put on hold projects that were not critical. On non-cooperation issues, we approached higher authorities." Anil Kumar of Abu Dhabi Environment Agency is of the opinion that the technology has to be simplified in order to ensure its penetration to the basic level. "GIS is a technology for the specialists as you need to have a certain level of expertise to be able to operate GIS applications. It needs to be simplified like what Google Maps has done by bringing GIS to the layman." He says the lack of advanced data visualisation capability also needs to be looked into. Another major drawback is the ability to handle real-time data — most of the GIS software currently available is unable to manage data from real-time monitoring networks.
ects with schools, higher education institutes and government departments. Gyte lists access to data, lack of awareness at the executive level and Internet connectivity in terms of data speeds as some of the major obstacles facing the growth of geospatial technology in UAE. "A major step forward towards overcoming these Conclusion challenges would be to allow more comAlthough spatial technology in UAE is at a mercial data providers to cooperate in the fairly advanced stage, it is still a fair way region. Most of the western countries have short of realising its true potential. Lack of commercial data providers and products awareness is a key challenge and even Number of GIS can be built on top of that data collection. experts required government organisations that have impleThis is still limited in this part of the by govt/private mented the technology in every part of world," he says. sector in UAE functioning are not using it in the most Nader Bin Taher explains how ADSSC optimal way with the latest technologies countered the challenge of shortage of and standards. Another aspect that needs trained personnel. "We started an internal attention is the spread of the technology, which is uneven education system and also organised special training across the country. While Dubai and Abu Dhabi are opersessions with official training providers. We also send our ating at an advanced stage, some of the other emirates employees to exhibitions and conferences where they can are lagging behind and need to act fast to catch up. Howlearn about the latest technology. However, the best ever, the challenges facing the growth of geospatial techapproach is to put them through actual projects." nology in UAE are in no way impenetrable and can be Abdulhakim Abdukarim Malik shares his experience overcome by private sector cooperation and implementaon how Dubai Municipality tackled the issue of budget tion of favourable policies by the government. Strong constraints and non-cooperation. "We divided a particular cooperation and coordination is required between government organisations because everyone has different types of data, which should be exchanged between all the “One of the important challenges facing us is the internal capacity of departments. the GIS team. A lot of our staff is "Awareness is critical for both users and policy makfrom non-GIS background, and we ers, and we are still way behind in comparison to cities have to take them from a nascent like Singapore and Taiwan and need a lot of hard work to stage to a professional level.” reach there," signs off Abdulhakim Abdukarim Malik. Nader Assad Bin Taher Abu Dhabi Sewerage Services Company Vaibhav Arora
8001,000
Assistant Editor, vaibhav@geospatialmedia.net
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Geospatial World I December 2012
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er applications utilise a network architecture in which the components can be geographically "distributed". There are providers of services called servers and service requesters called clients. Typically, clients and servers run on separate computer systems that communicate over a network (as in cloud computing), but both the client and
Geospatial World I December 2012
server may reside in the same system. A client initiates a session with a server, invoking a software programme, and the server runs the programme and returns a result. With the advent of the Web, clients such as Mosaic and Netscape began offering access to ordinary users — via open standards — to applications (Web services) running on servers. Users don't need to know or care where the servers are located. Web services are accessible through a simple http request. As long as users have Internet access, they have access to these applications. Open standards such as HTML, http, and URIs enabled this leap into the cloud. As the US National Institute of Standards and Technology points out, cloud computing provides "convenient, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction". The key driver for cloud computing is economies of scale. The modern day, very large data centres offer an advantage of at least six times over small data centres in terms of economies of scale. Cloud computing is not so much a technology as it is a business model designed to provide customers with the maximum amount of storage, transaction processing and analysis at minimal cost, while also relieving customers of expensive and time-consuming tasks related to purchasing and maintaining computing resources. And the bargain includes new capabilities
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and trends, such as a proliferation of mobile devices and apps that have access to virtually unlimited storage and processing. In addition to financial savings, cloud computing's efficiencies translate into reduced carbon footprints and natural resource use.
Why put geospatial processing in the cloud
They reduce their costs and they are freed from maintenance and upgrade responsibilities. Together, they can afford to acquire new capabilities, perhaps apps that run on an unlimited number of mobile devices. Elasticity means that the capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned. For example, what if all the planning department workers in a region suddenly sat at their desks or picked up their notebook computers to perform the same task on the same data layer. Assuming the data centre has thousands of computers available and is perhaps able to spillover demand to a partner data center, the planning department workers will experience no slowness in response.
Two key aspects of cloud computing that are especially relevant to geospatial cloud computing are resource pooling and elasticity. In cloud computing, resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers with resources that are dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. A consumer might, for example, work in a municGeo-apps and the ipal planning office in a suburb of a geo-cloud large city. The city might have a GIS Cloud plays an important role in and many layers of data "in the innovation, because the time to marcloud" and the planner has access to ket for ideas is these through a much faster Web browser. Two key aspects when new comThe city might of cloud computing panies do not host the GIS that are especially need to invest modules and relevant to geospatial time and money data layers in its e cloud computing are in providing basic own data centre resource pooling and computing infraor it might host elasticity structure. A prothem with a fusion of Webcompany that based map owns and mainbrowsers, GPS-enabled applications, tains data centres. The planning in-car navigation services, high resooffice doesn't need to own the softlution earth imaging systems and ware and no one in the planning mobile smart phone location applioffice needs to know the location or cations have tremendously expanded ownership of the servers providing the geospatial market and the averthe resources. Perhaps the city age person's awareness of "maps in makes its services available to all of computers". According to a recent its suburbs, and the suburbs pool survey of more than 400 mobile their (much reduced) GIS budgets to developers by IT industry market help pay for the shared resource.
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lock-in, that is, customers want to be able to choose services and switch from one to another on short notice. Standards enable multiple cloud providers, including niche providers, to work together to deliver value-added solutions. They enable cloud providers to more easily meet the varied needs of different customers and they give customers the flexibility to do business with a new cloud provider without excessive effort or cost.
Early notion of cloud
Standards help location app developers
research firm Evans Data, 54 per cent of developers working on applications for mobile devices are including location-based and mapping services in their apps. This activity, along with other upward trends in the geospatial world, produces tremendous volumes of geospatial data, much of which resides economically in the cloud.
Standards add value in the cloud environment Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has beenworking to develop standards that enable geospatial content sharing and integration of geospatial services into IT infrastructures and solutions. Some of the geospatial applications and platforms currently offered as cloud-based Web services are dependent on proprietary interfaces and encodings, but most of these applications and platforms also depend on open interfaces and encodings. Openness fosters innovation, expands markets and creates new opportunities and efficiencies
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for both providers and users.
Standards reduce value chain anxiety Geoprocessing services hosted at the software-as-a-service (SaaS) level on the cloud can, if they implement OGC standards, enable other services to link to and thus "bind" to them, and vice versa. Cloud lends itself to such "service chaining". Service chaining supports flexible creation of geospatial information value chains. It has been observed that customers like the idea that cloud computing lends itself to rapid configuration and reconfiguration of value chains in a "cloud ecosystem". Geospatial cloud providers will want their services and data to be useful to as many customers as possible, so standard interfaces and encodings are beneficial to service providers. Both customers and providers may want to be able to mix and match services of many kinds. Providers also understand that their customers want the freedom to avoid
Developers of simple location apps can avoid headaches if they encode latitude/longitude pairs using the OGC GML Point Profile. Passing a coordinate pair is simple, but if communication with other geoprocessing services is planned, it is wise to use a standard. The importance of other standards for geoprocessing service communication becomes obvious from a quick study of the multiple technologies for representing spatial information — raster, vector, triangulated irregular networks, point clouds, computer-aided design Euclidean geometry and others. There are many different proprietary interfaces, encodings and formats used in the vendors' geographic information systems (GIS), location services, earth imaging, facilities management and navigation products. However, in the recent years, the industry has made dramatic progress in implementing OGC standards and related ISO standards.
GIS or not Prior to the wide use of OGC's geospatial interface and encoding
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standards, most geospatial information was confined within GIS and earth imaging systems, their specialised spatial databases and the networks of users who used software from the same vendor. Now, there is an exploding need for spatial data and simple kinds of spatial services, such as "Get a map", "Where am I?", "Where is the nearest pizza shop?", and "Is it safe to dig here?" These services are now typically provided without a GIS, and they are well served by cloud services that can immediately scale to handle a large number of transaction. Through widespread implementation of standards, geospatial data and geospatial processing have become, to a considerable degree, just another part of the world's information infrastructure.
What is needed now The cloud is based on a standards framework for service-oriented architectures that provides for "publish availability of service, find service, bind to (invoke) service". What is missing here are a few other steps, such as "Get data provenance", "Agree", "Authenticate", and "Encrypt/Decrypt". The growth of the market and social utility of geospatial technology depend on stakeholders working together to develop standard ways of communicating this kind of information. The "Publish" activity needs to be able to provide metadata describing, for a particular service or data resource, details about authentication, authorisation, confidentiality, integrity, non-repudiation, protection and privacy. Servers need to be equipped to manage these issues,
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Today's geospatial cloud
and owners of data and services need the tools and understanding necessary to configure controls based on the yet-to-be-developed standards. The OGC Geo Rights Management Domain Working Group (GeoRM DWG) has produced the Geospatial Digital Rights Management Reference Model, which provides the foundation for "agreement management" that will bring us closer to full realisation of geospatial cloud applications. The mission of the GeoRM Working Group is to coordinate, and mature the development and validation of work being done on digital rights management for the geospatial community. The OGC Security Domain Working Group and the OGC GeoXACML Standards Working Group are forums for discussing topics and developing standards related to authentication, access control and secure communication. The OGC Workflow Domain Working Group addresses geospatial workflow issues, including security
and licensing issues such as data encryption, authentication, and provenance tracking. In the OGC, users of spatial technologies define interoperability requirements like those above and users work with providers of spatial technologies to turn those interoperability requirements into encoding and interface standards and also best practice documents that provide guidance in using the standards. Member organisations from the public and private sectors each assign one or more experts to participate in the testbeds, interoperability experiments and working groups that contribute to the development of standards. From the standpoint of the individual member organisation and the world community, this is an extremely efficient way to reduce costs, develop new business and accomplish societal goals. Carl Reed Executive Director, Standards Program and CTO, Open Geospatial Consortium
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GOVERNANCE
Riding on cloud to touch the grassroots lCoud computing is an opportunity f or the geospatial community to improve e-participation of citiz en services and increa se service delivery while driving people towards a sustainable e-society
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he latest advancements in technology today are a ral analysis of environment, demographics and developboon for crafting effective governance systems, mental aspects. which is expected to transform the way governance SDI-based applications reaches up to the grassroot level. A strong political will With SDIs, government agencies can considerably enables governments to go for major changes in existing improve functionalities of many applications. The geoporpolicies, practices and perspectives, thereby helping it tal concept is a typical Web-based interface mechanism envisage exemplary systems. to make information accessible from SDIs. Geoportals GIS has established itself as a catalyst to any e-govercan enable government agencies and businesses to nance framework. The basic requirement for any governreach out to citizens by offering spatial data, information ment to effectively operate and disseminate information services and tools to support analysis and decision lies with spatial data infrastructures (SDIs). Gone are the making. days of analysing information from databases alone. SpaGeoportals also enable design of self-service portal tial databases provide another key element — location. applications such as City GIS with a number of functions The perspective of governments is always location-speto help citizens in their day-to-day life. City GIS Portals cific since the strategies and development plans are usuusually comprise of driving directions, public transport, ally based on such details. finding locations, Fundamental benefits of SDIs as finding emergency part of the ICT framework are services, schools varied and include effecand other points of tive ways of informainterest. OneMap of tion and Singapore and the resource manPhilippine Geoportal agement, transare typical examples. formation in the Integrated inciway governments dent reporting portal work, reaching out to is another useful grassroots through application to enable innovative citizen serviccitizens to report different es, saving capital, operatypes of incidents. Typicaltional and resource manly, multiple types of inciagement costs, and supdents can be brought into one porting spatial and tempoSome citizen-centric reporting services
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Geospatial World I December 2012
single application so that citizens can have single interface to report any kind of incident with ease. Some of the citizen-centric reporting incidents can be related to emergency, security, public transport, public works, child labour etc. Every incident will have spatial reference, hence locating the incident on map always helps the respective agency to quickly respond to and address the incident. Mobile and tablet applications are the latest trends and they are very convenient to report incidents on the spot along with evidence, either by way of photographs or video clips.
How the cloud helps
SDI for business and private sector Geospatial data also supports the private sector in its decision-making purposes. Most government agencies have an understanding with other agencies to leverage the geospatial database prepared by the agencies, where spatial data and geospatial technologies are core for their operations. The private sector cannot invest heavily on the spatial database and may like to consume or subscribe data prepared by other government or private agencies at reasonable cost. The private sector has many applications to exploit the rich information available with SDIs. Some of the key applications areas include proximity analysis and location analytics; analysis of business locations, competition, supply and demand; market planning and campaigns; territory design for sales/distribution channels; demographic analysis and customer segmentation and tracking and tracing of mobile resources/assets. Private companies from various business lines such as supply chain, insurance, merchandise, real estate etc. can leverage the geospatial data in their applications. The real justification for SDI investments can be achieved by offering data services to a wide audience to exploit the data usage comprehensively. Healthy exploitation of the data offered leads to self-sufficiency and balance at both ends.
Technology trends and solutions The world is evolving with sweeping improvements in technologies connected with the Internet, computing,
Geospatial World I December 2012
mobility and storage aspects. Technology and research firm Gartner has consistently named cloud computing in the top 10 strategic technology trends for the last three years. Cloud computing involves server-based applications that expose services called software-as-a-service (SaaS) that interact with a variety of clients over the Web or on a private network. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is being used for enterprise applications, and combined with cloud hosting, can be an ideal platform to deploy SDI kind of applications. The advantage of the powerful GIS server software available in the industry today, combined with rich features available in Web 2.0 and complying with open geospatial standards, gives a great opportunity to improve e-participation of citizen services, increase service delivery, offer feedback mechanism and drive people towards sustainable e-society. Geospatial applications are evolving towards a SaaS model to reach out to the public. The nature of geospatial applications is such that they usually comprise a set of software tools to perform analysis to obtain required spatial data. Based on this combined proposition, a new term called 'GIS-as-a-Service (GaaS)' can be defined to make it proprietary for the geospatial community. Cloud computing helps government agencies to downsize their IT departments since the cloud platform providers offer infrastructure and also resources for operational maintenance of IT applications.
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Cloud platforms and providers worldwide Leading the pace among the cloud infrastructure providers worldwide are Amazon and Microsoft. Other players such as IBM, Citrix, Verizon, Google, Yahoo and VMware have also come up with their cloud offerings. Esri provides ready-to-use ArcGIS Server AMIs (Amazon Machine Images) to quickly set up GIS applications on affordable servers that will run in the Amazon Cloud. Amazon EC2 Jumpstart package provides installation, configuration support and technology transfer on a number of standard topics for setting up the Esri ArcGIS Server on Amazon's cloud platform. Microsoft’s cloud offering is Windows Azure, classified as "public cloud" covering both Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). SQL Azure is an SaaS from Windows Azure to offer database instances to the cloud users. GIS databases are classified at different levels, depending upon their access privileges to users, such as private, semi-private and public. There are combinations of databases that can be implemented in multi-tenant architecture for public data and instance-per-organisation architecture for classified applications (semi-private). Further fine-tuning is required for private instances. Esri has been offering SaaS in a web-centric model to expose maps and geographic information through open, webaccessible interfaces, primarily REST and JSON, but also SOAP and some other types. The Web-centric architecture of Esri can be termed as truly flexible as it supports other capabilities that work both on-premises in private clouds as well as off-premis-
Cloud computing VS onsite infrastructure
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Key characteristics
On-premise/on-site hosting
Cloud hosting
Capital expenditure
High costs — barrier for entry
Minimal costs — ease of entry
Operational expenditure
Medium costs — dedicated resources/vendors required to manage
Minimal costs — resources can own multiple installations
Multi-tenancy
Restricted for private use by the agency or shared with limited number of user base
Enables sharing of resources and costs among large pool of users
Reliability
Very high cost of redundancy to create multiple sites for each agency
Can be enhanced by way of multiple redundant sites — cost can be distributed
Scalability
Consumes time and high cost for upgrades
Massive scalability and on-demand provision
Security
Private and classified data is secured
Loss of control over certain sensitive data
The private sector should be encouraged to consume map services hosted on private and public clouds for their business applications
es in hosted ones. The Singapore Land Authority has creatively implemented the same model by hosting Onemap at their on-premises private cloud, and cloud computing was leveraged for additional computing capacity to extend to a larger user base. This kind of hybrid hosting model is appropriate for SDIs since the security of the data need not be compromised by setting up database at private cloud.
Ideal choice for governments Cloud computing is an opportunity for the geospatial community to creatively host applications in private, public cloud platforms and/or hybrid platform models. The hybrid platform models are an ideal proposition for SDIs, and geoportal applications in the interest of security for classified database instances also combine the benefits of both platforms. Citizen-centric self-service map portals and geo-mashup applications are the best ways to reach out to the public at large. The private sector should be encouraged to consume map services hosted on private and public clouds for their business applications. It helps in sustenance of the SDI programmes in terms of its maintenance costs and planning subsequent advancements. High capital expenditure required for building massive infrastructure for SDIs is sometimes an entry barrier and the availability of skilled IT resources to manage the critical applications may be another concern for local government agencies. Cloud computing is an ideal choice for local governments to offer citizen-centric map portals and geo-mashup applications with the help of hybrid models. The on-site infrastructure of state/federal governments, in combination with computing capacity from cloud platform, together can be used to offer mashup applications. Murahari Ponugoti, Kailash Agarwal NIIT Technologies Pte. Ltd, Singapore
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CASE STUDY / CANADA
The parcel puzzle How an energy provider has developed a single-source, province-wide, seamless and consistent parcel layer that improves internal support for geospatial applications and decision making across the company
anitoba Hydro is a major energy provider for the Canadian province of Manitoba. In early 2010, under the direction of Manitoba Hydro's Geospatial Data Services, a team of consultants from Martin Newby Consulting Ltd and staff from Esri Canada set out to design, develop and create a parcel base map. The project team used multiple Esri data models and worked with more than 850 existing disparate parcel datasets to create a parcel base map that now provides Manitoba Hydro with an integrated and consistent parcel feature.
M
As a first step, the team performed a gap analysis to identify where the 850 source datasets could and could not provide the framework required to support the data model. The datasets came from the City of Winnipeg, the Province of Manitoba and Manitoba Hydro's internal archives; data for aboriginal land and parkland came from Natural Resources of Canada. The analysis phase identified various data issues — gaps in the spatial extent, limited original survey distances and bearings (coordinate geometry attributes), lack of true circular arcs, inadequate aggregate representations (plan boundaries), poor topology and a gamut of attribute inconsistencies. The team devised solutions to address each condition with a primary objective in mind — build the fabric using the best available data without redrafting existing plans of survey.
Tool development: Building the puzzle Manitoba Hydro's Geospatial Data Service steam selected Safe Software's Feature Manipulation Engine (FME) to
Geospatial World I December 2012
The completed property parcel puzzle supports internal GIS applications
provide a repeatable process for integrating datasets from source providers into the parcel fabric, a feature class developed by Esri. FME has the capability of transforming multiple data sources and formats in various ways. A parcel fabric is a dataset for the storage, maintenance and editing of parcels. It is created under a feature dataset and inherits its spatial reference from the feature dataset. Each of the 850 puzzle pieces was transformed from a source state into an individual, consistently format-
Case Study
Data modeling: Reviewing puzzle pieces
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Transforming the parcel puzzle pieces
ted staging file geodatabase. The staging file geodatabase provides interim means to check data prior to loading into the parcel fabric. It also allows flexible workflows, such as reprocessing either single or multiple source datasets or performing a provincial refresh. Twenty unique workspaces were developed to manipulate the 850 different datasets in a modular style. Once the staging file geodatabases are prepared, loading to the parcel fabric can be done using out-ofthe-box functionality of ArcGIS. But to enhance the loading process with quality control and automation, a customised loader was developed.
Case Study
Data integration: Fitting the puzzle pieces
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In total, more than 850 datasets from the four source providers were ultimately integrated into the cadastral fabric. In some cases, the data providers supplied known spatial accuracy statements, datums and projections. In other situations, spatial accuracy and georeferencing details became another puzzle to solve. Martin Newby’s team of geomatics technicians has integrated over 400,000 plans of survey for the Province
The ability to improve and tighten the horizontal spatial accuracy exists as core functionality wiithin the cadastral fabric data model
of Alberta over the past 13 years. The spatial alignment of a particular site in northeast Manitoba conflicted with the surrounding parcel data. The team used 1:60,000scale orthoimagery to validate that this parcel dataset required a shift and rotation. A custom Adjustor FME workspace was built to address situations where adjustment algorithms are used to spatially conflate data and edge match with surrounding datasets. The source data required dramatic adjustment to better fit the surrounding spatially accurate data. CAD data from Manitoba Hydro's internal archives presented a unique challenge. Over the course of many years, these site-specific survey drawings had been drafted using custom AutoCAD software, and it was presumed that the content structure was uniform. However, a comprehensive data review revealed that various layer structures and standards were used that would require extensive effort to normalise. Many of Martin Newby’s custom batch programmes and interactive tools provided an efficient means to clean CAD data that had various topological and geometry issues such as undershoots, overshoots, duplicates, zero-length lines, and invalid elements. An extensive manual cleaning effort was required in situations where line work was scattered among various layers.
The finished puzzle Within nine months, beginning with a team start-up meeting in February and ending with the first parcel fabric delivery in October 2010, Manitoba Hydro was able to see its initial objective realised. The utility successfully created a key GIS dataset — the Property Parcel Fabric — which enabled the growth of GIS applications to support internal business units. Now, Manitoba Hydro's Geospatial Data Services team can easily and readily maintain the parcel fabric with the integration of new source datasets. The tools and workflow developed support this repeatable process. Further enhancements, such as the collection and use of ground control, will result in increased spatial accuracy. The ability to improve and tighten the horizontal spatial accuracy exists as core functionality within the cadastral fabric data model. Source datasets available at present have limited inherent ties to control, but with subsequent fieldwork and the additional mapping and integration of plans of survey, the survey control within the fabric can be strengthened and more fully populated.
Geospatial World I December 2012
MARITIME SECURITY
ODA: An Imperative Maritime Domain Awareness is important in ensuring safety and security in waters. However, MDA in itself is not enough and needs to be integrated with Oceanic Domain Awareness for effective and complete maritime knowledge
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odern naval strategy is fundamentally based on various means to locate potential enemy forces across the oceans, a problem complicated by the vastness of the maritime environment, the huge number of legitimate users, and the wide variety of means by which an enemy can exploit the oceans to his advantage. Oceans are complex medium whose nature provides ample opportunity for an enemy to avoid detec-
Geospatial World I December 2012
tion — weather, sea states and coastal land masses, all present considerable challenges to modern sensors. Peacetime economic use of the seas complicates this problem enormously. Oceans are the world’s foremost (and most unregulated) highway, home to a vast and wide variety of international neutral shipping that possess no apparent threat. Determining an enemy in such a crowded and complex environment is difficult during conven-
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tional war or in an asymmetric conflict such as the global war on terror.
geographic area represented by the maritime domain. Although many factors are conWHAT IS MDA sidered in MDA, its core process is It is the asymmetric nature of terrorultimately monitoring vessels and ism that forms the core of Maritime the vessels’ cargo, crews and pasDomain Awareness (MDA). In a consengers to rapidly generate geoventional naval war, the enemy is locating information on vessels of relatively well-defined and almost interest. This is an analytical universally a combatant. Pursuit of process that includes tracking, data GWOT, where literally any vessel base searches for unknown linkages could be a potential enemy or and anomaly detection. Fundamenweapon carrier, or when any martal to this is the detection, monitoritime event can have an impact on a ing, tracking of vessels. This tracknation’s security, demands a much ing process comprises five elements higher level of awareness than that designed to focus on a narrow area normally required in a conventional of tactical dimension where threats naval conflict. This is recognised by can be identified and isolated nameMonitoring oceans involves the formal definition of MDA as ly; maritime surveillance, detection, surveillance from land as well as articulated by the US government. tracking, classification and identifiabove- and below-earth surface According to the National Security cation and targeting. Targeting Presidential Directive 41, 2004, Maritime Domain Awareinvolves interpreting detection and identification of inforness is “the effective understanding of anything associatmation fused with intelligence to sort vessel intentions ed with the global maritime environment that could and determine risk. impact the security, safety, economy or environment of As there is no single high value unit to protect MDA, the US.” This is accomplished through integrating intelli‘layers’ are expanded to include an entire coastline with gence, surveillance, observation and navigation systems. the overall goal of coordinated surveillance. Unlike traditional naval operations, it is apparent that STRATEGIC MDA the goal of MDA is far more than looking for potential marThe US has the 2,000 NM limit of the Maritime Detection itime enemies. The implications of “anything associated” and Identification Zone. It is based on the legislated 96with the maritime environment that can impact the securihour notification requirement for foreign vessels entering ty, safety, economy or environment, go far beyond a classic US ports. A vessel travelling 20kts will arrive at its destimaritime threat. As per the US interpretation, these nation in roughly 96 hours. The MDIZ’s aim is to gather include smuggling of people or dangerous cargoes, piracy, more timely information on the vessel as it approaches proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, identification closer to the US coast. When entering the MDIZ, obtainand protection of critical maritime infrastructure, oil spills, ing position of vessels every four hours is a norm, while weather or such environmental concerns. in territorial waters the goal is to obtain positional data The global nature of MDA activities occurring overevery three minutes. There are many systems that could seas and in foreign ports is very much a part of MDA. For provide a high degree of surveillance and tracking data, example, if a cargo is loaded in Aden and its ultimate but the actual fusion of this data remains a problem destination is India (via several other international ports), area. In order to derive a comprehensive MDA picture, the loading, transport, security and all matters associatinformation needs to be fused, correlated, and analysed; ed with that container would be part of MDA, which must and for it to be relevant to national security, it must be therefore be exercised over all oceans worldwide. Putting designed to operate cohesively at tactical, regional and in place an effective MDA is a herculean task — viewing strategic levels. the range of potential security challenges and enormous
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Geospatial World I December 2012
At the national level, maritime strategy is critical for long-term planning, operational insight and providing national decision makers with support to establish priorities, determine strategies of interdependent organisations, allocate national resources and determine level of overall maritime threat. Strategic MDA requires a broad perspective and capabilities at the highest levels of analysis, intelligence and policy. It requires the realignment of bureaucracy and the re-tasking of national assets towards the overall goal of global awareness. A centre for strategic MDA must have experience in multi-organisation operations and procedures that can transcend the gap between the military, law enforcement and regulatory agencies that are a part of MDA.
OCEANIC DOMAIN AWARENESS Scientific study of the oceans originated in the US essentially as a function of national security. Navy operations successfully addressed many challenging naval requirements; but oceanographic inquiry in support of naval needs also triggered unexpected results. In many instances the knowledge of the oceans that was acquired through directed studies - and through complementary lines of inquiry that were enabled by tools developed for naval oceanographic research - further impacted national security in ways that were not anticipated and which tran-
scended tactical and operational significance and could be considered of more strategic consequence. The primary impetus to the rapid development of oceanography during its 20th century days as a science is without doubt the submarine and the fundamental changes that occurred when naval warfare became truly three-dimensional. Prosecuting submarines was feasible principally through the transmission of underwater sound, actively by sonar to echo-locate targets and passively by hydrophones and triangulation. The scope of oceanographic efforts in the pursuit of submarine opened all oceanographic disciplines (physical, chemical, biological and geological oceanography) to increased investment, research effort and importantly, to integration. Twentieth-century oceanography was fundamentally a security-based endeavour to reduce the opacity of the oceans to anti-submarine warfare in WWI, WWII and the cold war, and harness that opacity for offensive submarine operations along with a host of other security based naval concerns. Fundamental progress in basic knowledge of the ocean sciences has occurred due to advances in sensor technologies. Understanding of plate tectonics and sea floor spreading was discovered during large scale mapping of the sea floor after the World War II. This led to the revamping of theories of evolution and structure of the earth. Subsequently, the investigation of mid-ocean ridges carried out by submersibles and towed deep sea
vehicles led to detection of many unknown forms of life in the hydrothermal vents and microbes below the seabed at great depths. In the past, ocean geologists, physicists, biologists and chemists have used an array of tools, from deep-sea drilling to instrumented buoys, to improve their understanding about the role the ocean plays in controlling longer-term climate change and weather. Scientists have started a long-term exploration of the chronological variations in ocean systems both for very short and prolonged time periods. Advances in technologies that have spurred this study are primarily based on: • Availability of new sensors which can be placed and report about chemical, biological and physical characteristics. • Advances in computers and software that has enabled storing, retrieving and manipulating large volumes of sensor data. Realtime availability of data to number of research communities for interpretation, modelling, simulation and prediction. • Advances in telecommunications through undersea cables and satellites allowing real-time control of sea based sensors and transmission of bulky sensor data.
CONCLUSION MDA needs to be integrated within ODA for completeness of maritime knowledge, the lack of which can lead to serious consequences as has been brought out in a recent assessment of naval exercises and weapon firings in the US, where it was found that over 90 per cent of them were affected adversely due to imperfectly assessed or little known environmental factors. In an actual conflict, these would have led to mission failures. This along with the sinking of HMS Bounty off North Carolina due to the recent cyclone SANDY when it was 160 miles away from the eye of the storm, only underpins the gaps in oceanic knowledge that need to be bridged and the fact that ODA is an enabler for the future.
MDA’s core process is monitoring vessels, cargo, crews and passengers to rapidly generate geo-locatting information on vessels of interest
Technologies must be developed to enhance data collection in all weather conditions to support high-spatial resolution and near real-time forecasting throughout the open ocean and coastal zone. Providing accurate and comprehensive environment information needs expanding observation networks to monitor, record and present real-time surface-monitoring data (for example, high-frequency, coastal-based radars). This expansion will require advancing sensor and technology
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development, particularly for autonomous and persistent observations, as well as for long-term observing systems; expanding real-time or near real-time data collection on environmental variables by incorporating observational capabilities of ships of opportunity; and enhancing automated and autonomous bottom-mapping capabilities for change detection to improve survey scheduling. Data collected by the observing systems must be accessible through a comprehensive national data network, either through a single system or a distributed network. Developing this network will require new methodologies that address gaps in data collection, sharing and interoperability of technologies, and should permit integration of existing research into operational systems (for example, systems providing real-time navigation data to vessels). This network should be able to link with other databases such as those focussing on ecosystem data, and developed in accordance with international standards for data exchange. The national data network will also provide the data needed for models simulating multiple scenarios to understand potential impacts, weather events or man-made disruptions on marine operations, and to support restoration plans. The coast and open ocean are critical domains for the security of a nation with sea as boundaries.
RAdm Dr S Kulshrestha (Retd)
daddykuls@gmail.com
Geospatial World I December 2012
January 21 - 22
January 21 - 23
January 22 - 24
January 24 - 25
Workshop on CityGML Paris, France
DGI Conference 2013 London, UK
India Geospatial Forum 2013
Geodesign Summit California, US
http://goo.gl/UitFz
http://goo.gl/Fcl6c
Hyderabad, India
http://geodesignsummit.com
www.indiageospatialforum.org
MARCH
FEBRUARY
JANUARY
Mark your calendar 2013
February 4 - 6
February 11 - 13
February 25 - 27
Second high level forum on GGIM Doha, Qatar
International LiDAR Mapping Forum Denver, US
Esri Federal GIS Conference Washington DC, US
http://ggim.un.org
http://www.lidarmap.org/ILMF.aspx
www.esri.com/events/federal/ index.html
March 5 - 7
March 9
March 11 - 12
March 13 - 14
Mekong Environmental Symposium 2013 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Land Surveyors Conference Marysville, US
European Smart Grid Cyber London, UK http://goo.gl/gY2Nf
http://goo.gl/JRemK
http://lsaw.org/calendar_details.ph p?eventid=101
Middle East Geospatial Forum 2013 Doha, Qatar
March 13 - 15
March 14 - 16
March 24 - 28
GEOINFORMATIK 2013
IGU Conference on Geoinformatics for Biodiversity Haryana, India
ASPRS 2013 Annual Conference Baltimore, US
http://goo.gl/ch81M
http://goo.gl/jXxEy
Heidelberg, Germany http://geoinformatik2013.de/index.p hp/en
http://www.megf.org
Geospatial World I September 2012
Out of this world? With their bizarre coloured surfaces and unusual landscapes, these stunning photographs look like they were taken on an alien planet, or they belong to a modern art gallery. But these are in fact aerial photographs, captured from a Cessna light aircraft over Iceland. Russian photographer, Andrey Ermolaev, flew around 4,300 miles above the Nordic nation's most spectacular vistas to capture these shots. Andrey had to hold his camera steady as he flew up to 75mph at between 80 and 150 metres above the ground shooting out of a window.
Courtesy: Daily Mail
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Geospatial World I December 2012
www.Bentley.com/Map/GW
Data courtesy City of Quebec
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ADVANCING GIS FOR INFRASTRUCTURE © 2011 Bentley Systems, Incorporated. Bentley, the “B” Bentley logo, Bentley Map, and MicroStation are either registered or unregistered trademarks or service marks of Bentley Systems, Incorporated or one of its direct or indirect wholly owned subsidiaries. Other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
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