Spatial Roundtable

Big Data—A Banking Boom or Bust?

2012-01-17T08:01:18Z

Location-based insight

Business data is growing at such a rate that many organizations can become overwhelmed by the big data problem. A recent McKinsey, IDC, and Department of Labor Statistics analysis [PDF] of data in business found that financial/securities organizations have 3.8 petabytes per firm—that’s more than 400 million gigabytes, or about 12.5 million iPads, per company! Banking comes in a distant second with 1.9 PB. This puts big data found in financial services companies into perspective since this is even greater than most communications and media companies’ average of 1.8 PB.

What does this mean? Your bank has more data than that cable news show you watch, the media service you stream into your office, or all the words the national financial journal you read has ever printed—combined. Big data in banking is really, really big. In fact, it is equivalent to a quarter of the entire global hard disk capacity manufactured in 1995.

Financial services companies are trying to make sense of what they have—to get to the facts, connect the dots, and get some actionable business intelligence. Yet the very nature of big data makes it hard to understand. Financial institutions store almost everything, including financial transactions, social media messages, customer histories, demographic trends, and economic indicators. The whole sector is trying to get better answers and shorten the business cycle. However, for many companies, the answers just lead to more questions; business intelligence becomes just another data point, and the whole cycle starts again.

Location analysis and GIS are a powerful way to connect people to place, transactions to actions, responses to trends, and customers to both where they do business and what kinds of business they do. Location analysis is converting big data into packets of insight, gaining understanding from intuition, and demystifying questions so they may be properly understood for the first time. From fraud detection to branch optimization, and customer loyalty to product segmentation, location analysis is helping shift the advantage of big data in favor of financial services companies. The only question now is how many will seize the opportunity and put location analysis and GIS on the front line of the big data battlefield.

Where do you think location analysis and GIS can best help the financial services sector overcome the scourge of big data?

Can Government Improve Its Image?

2011-12-12T08:12:37Z

Restoring trust in government

The growing distrust and poor image associated with government continue. As a result, I see citizens asking more and more questions of their government and wanting leaders to hear their voices. The citizens I hear are speaking loudly and growing in number. They want to know how their tax dollars are being allocated. They want to find out if corruption in a neighboring jurisdiction is also happening in their backyards. In the absence of effective government forums, disruptive apps are providing a place for these citizens to communicate with each other.

On the other hand, there are those who question whether the need is real. Colleagues have said to me, “Citizens really do not want to participate in government. They elect individuals to take care of their communities so they do not have to think about it.” Others add that citizen engagement is a nuisance that will increase workloads and raise expectations. These same groups view soliciting public input as providing more ways for citizens to complain.

Perhaps I am becoming tainted by the company I have been keeping lately, but the reality is that citizens want to know whether government is going to be there when and where they want to interact. Diminishing is the notion that government can get by with merely communicating information to citizens without providing an effective way for them to respond. Delivering transparency, accountability, and engagement to citizens can provide an opportunity to restore trust in government; however, that no longer means just hiring someone to do the job. Instead, it is about providing the opportunity for others to validate or comment when the need arises or a passion is stirred. Worldwide, governments are grappling with how to achieve this openness.

It is clear that there are many options, ranging from information websites to town hall meetings to social media, that can be used to meet the demand for more transparency and accountability. The question becomes, “Which is the most effective?” Even with all these choices, governments are turning to the GIS technology that they have had in their organizations for years. Governments in places such as Singapore, Boston, New York, Corpus Christi, and San Francisco have seen great success and proved that citizens respond positively to location-centric civic engagement apps because they show how government activity relates to people in their communities. GIS provides a transparent solution that engages citizens, demonstrates accountability, and fosters collaboration. However, we are beginning to see a bit of a slowdown as the process becomes more bureaucratic.

The proof and technology exist to create a more open government, however, the debate continues.

Can GIS bridge the gap between government agencies that are reluctant to open up and citizens that want to participate?

GeoDesign for Climate Change Adaptation

2011-11-14T02:11:49Z

Designing a more sustainable future

The earth’s climate is changing, leading to serious problems for humanity in areas such as food security, health, and public safety.

As our environment changes around us, we need to adapt swiftly. But where do we start? Should we reinforce or rebuild existing structures? Or should we abandon existing settlements and relocate the population in some cases? And how can mass rebuilding/relocation efforts be best accomplished from human, environmental, and economic perspectives?

GeoDesign is a framework for understanding the complex relationships between human-designed settlements and the changing environment, for quickly planning ways to adapt existing communities and build new ones in a more sustainable manner. This methodology helps us assess risk, identify change, create synergies, develop strategies, adapt to change, and monitor the results. GeoDesign takes an interdisciplinary, synergistic approach to solving the critical problems of future design—to optimize location, orientation, and the features of projects at local and global scales.

By bringing social, environmental, agricultural, meteorological, and other sciences into a common geographic perspective, people can better see the optimal solutions needed for planning and building our future. Governments, NGOs, businesses, and communities already use the GeoDesign approach to minimize climate impacts, increase resiliency, predict cause and effect, calculate sustainability capacity, rank risk levels, allocate resources, and prioritize action.

By incorporating geographic technologies, such as visualization and modeling, into analysis of community development, people can intelligently answer far-reaching design questions such as these.

The GeoDesign framework lets us design and test various alternatives, thereby helping us make the most educated and informed decisions for adapting humankind to a rapidly changing environment and world. It acknowledges the inseparable relationship between humans and nature and lets us take an active role in designing where and how we live.

How can GeoDesign best be applied to climate adaptation in the next 15 years?

Facing the Challenge of Aging Infrastructure

2011-10-17T07:10:44Z

The right tool for the job

In 2009, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave America’s infrastructure a “D.” When most of America’s infrastructure was originally built, the country was in a growth mode and engineered every specific project to be optimal before moving on, not always understanding the mechanics of the complete system—how the various projects or components worked together and how they affected each other at a more regional scale. To add to this complacency, underground infrastructure also suffered from the adage “out of sight, out of mind.” Today, with our limited budgets and declining workforce, we are experiencing the results of this oversight. We understand that infrastructure decays due to in situ conditions and operational extremes, material degradation and manufacturing defects, and dynamic loads not taken into account in the original design. We now know that skipped maintenance schedules shorten the life expectancy of our assets. Entire systems are being brought down by their weakest links.

A fundamental premise to asset management is understanding specific infrastructure performance metrics and derived useful life from an empirical review of failure history and condition assessment due to aging. The power of GIS technology comes alive when you extrapolate the performance of the known assets of your entire system, allowing you to define and understand the scope and magnitude of your aging infrastructure. It can show you what you don’t know. Once the problem is defined, it can be funded, engineered, and rehabilitated in a prioritized fashion.

Many GIS tools can be used to face this challenge. The spatial nature of distribution, collection, and transportation systems mandate a GIS-centric approach to your asset inventory. Spatial algorithms built into GIS can help you understand the causal effects of external factors on your infrastructure, both man-made and natural. Enterprise GIS is now reaching out beyond the office to field crews with mobile solutions and extends your workforce into the citizenry with smartphone applications. These help improve the accuracy (field markups) and define the events (work orders) occurring on your asset inventory. The next GIS implementation phase for public works departments is secure cloud computing, with its ability to lower costs through managed application use and data sharing. GIS is the right tool in preparing for our future.

How are you leveraging GIS to get a better grade on the next ASCE report card?

LightSquared: Man-Made Solar Flares?

2011-09-12T09:09:51Z

High-accuracy GPS is at risk

Solar flares are naturally occurring explosions that occur on the sun’s surface from energy, suddenly released, that is stored in twisted magnetic fields. Solar flares produce a burst of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum and disrupt some electromagnetic instruments on earth. The sun is currently at the peak of an 11-year cycle of solar flares. You may have noticed GPS interference while out on the job recently. Solar flares are the probable cause of this interference.

Unfortunately, solar flares aren’t the only thing that can interfere with your GPS signal. Planned interference from LightSquared, a broadband company, is on the horizon. LightSquared proposes to build 40,000 high-powered transmitters to deliver wireless 4G service to the majority of the United States. Combined with a satellite that provides Internet access, the transmitters will serve the entire country. The wireless portion of this spectrum is adjacent to one of the two frequencies that high-precision GPS units depend on. GPS is designed to receive very weak signals transmitted from orbiting satellites. The signals produced by the proposed LightSquared ground stations are over a billion times stronger than GPS receivers were designed to receive, which will cause great interference with the high-accuracy GPS tools of many trades. This interference will render GPS unreliable in many industries that rely on GPS; its broad impact will affect such industries as precision farming, aviation, construction machine control, and public works, to name a few.

If you are unfamiliar with this serious issue, you may want to watch two videos that were filmed at the inaugural Survey Summit, held in July 2011. The first is of LightSquared’s Jeff Carlisle, and the second is from Trimble’s Pete Large, who also represents the Coalition to Save Our GPS. Each gentleman does an excellent job of explaining his side’s position on the issue.

Despite independent tests demonstrating that the LightSquared network essentially destroys the ability to use high-precision GPS, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has given LightSquared a waiver permitting the company to continue through the permitting process. Unlike solar flares, which occur naturally and only interrupt GPS occasionally, the implementation of the man-made LightSquared network may eliminate high-accuracy GPS as we know it.

How will your investment in high-accuracy positioning be compromised, and what can you do to protect it?

The Changing Face of Mapping Organizations

2011-08-15T07:08:23Z

Riding the wave of new technologies and trends

The map, chart and data production (MAPS) industry is being revolutionized by changes in technology, societal trends, and the mapping community itself. This wave of change is not only reshaping the MAPS industry landscape, but providing new opportunities.

Mapping has evolved from manual methods, to computer assisted cartography on workstations, to map publishing software on PCs and now to database-driven cartography that can be accessed by a variety of devices including mobile phones, tablets, notebook PCs, and personal digital assistants.

Society is changing and so are its expectations of what a map is and how it should be used. Consumers expect to receive their desired online content quickly and easily, including maps. People are beginning to expect maps with all their apps from driving directions and Point Of Interest searches, to multi-model way finding and 3D map visualization.

The MAPS industry has experienced a 50% drop in production of paper maps, charts and atlases in the last decade, and another 50% drop is expected in the next five years. However, the number of maps generated online has increased substantially in this time. This increase can be found in electronic maps and derivative map and data products for the web and mobile devices. Business is booming in these areas and smart MAPS organizations understand this is where the growth opportunities are. Providing the right map to consumers accessing web and mobile devices is the key to harnessing new business opportunities.

Some MAPS organizations are riding the waves of change, tapping into their core mapping competencies and revolutionizing their organizations, while others are not adapting to these changes and have been washed away. The turbulent MAPS community itself can provide opportunites to savvy MAPS organizations partnering to find synergies and strengthen their collective businesses.

What strategies and resources are organizations employing to leverage changes in technology, social trends, and the mapping community?

Improving the Claims Management Process

2011-07-18T09:07:17Z

Integrating intelligent maps

As the single largest expense for P&C carriers, the claims management process is a focal point in driving improved customer satisfaction and increased underwriting profits. In fact, a recent study by Deloitte shows that a single percentage point improvement in claims costs could return significant savings for insurers.

If this is true, then what can be done to improve costs? The answer: build a workflow based on intelligent maps.

Think about the process of managing the response to a catastrophic weather event. Animated weather maps track the storm’s path and intensity only. Once the storm makes landfall the information about the impact and severity may be available, but there is no way to accurately gauge the true area or understand the extent of the damage that has occurred.

Today, responding to customers who have had a loss is dependent on receiving their calls. Adjuster assignments are scheduled based on the order a call is received instead of the more efficient manner of proximity to the location of the adjuster’s last visit. This lag in action can add time to the process. The additional time often times drives higher costs and can increase customer dissatisfaction.

Insurers who have built their claims management workflow on intelligent maps are achieving significantly better results. Real-time event tracking and geocoded customer points, integrated on a map using GIS, simplify and improve the accurate identification of customers in the impact area. Customer information that is stored in the map is used before the event to make reverse 911 calls, plan triage support, and calculate maximum potential loss in real-time. Intelligent maps both in the office and on an adjuster’s mobile device efficiently route customer visits. Mobile maps also give adjusters access to location information, such as “before” photos that improve their effectiveness at the loss site. Maps embedded in dashboards in the back office provide easy to use tools the leadership team needs to effectively staff, manage performance and identify potential fraud. The integration of intelligent maps in the claims process holds the key achieving a percentage point improvement in claims costs or more.

Will using GIS and intelligent maps provide what claims organizations need to make significant improvements in claims costs?

Citizen Engagement: Applied Gov 2.0

2011-06-13T07:06:05Z

Reinventing government

Ever since Tim O’Reilly captured our imagination with the term “Government 2.0,” the world has scrambled to understand its true meaning. Some dismissed the idea as a passing fad. But much like Al Gore’s “Reinventing Government” initiative, it moved us toward an ideal. Early Gov 2.0 efforts sought to define this concept and understand how it could alter the reinvention of government. Since Gov 2.0 is grounded in Web 2.0 technology, startups and traditional companies explored how they could fit into the grand scheme of things. The concept was given a boost when politicians as high ranking as President Obama challenged governments to enhance civic engagement. Could we turn even large cities like Singapore, Boston, or Seattle into communities whose citizens have a strong role in shaping the future?

Gov 2.0 is driving this generation’s version of “reinventing government.” Concepts like transparency, accountability, and open data are all being explored, but the strongest movement impacting our daily lives on a personal level is the rise of citizen engagement. So far, it focuses primarily on leveraging social technologies to connect governments with their constituents. It’s being driven by those looking to disrupt government in the name of progress, including technology startups, social activists, non-profit organizations, and businesses seeking a competitive edge.

The platform for Gov 2.0 is geographic information systems (GIS) technology – the same technology cities and counties use to build map data, perform analyses, and increase operational efficiency. Projects throughout the world have already demonstrated GIS’s ability to engage citizens. Many civic leaders reacted to the concept of citizen engagement tools with concern that they would just open up government to more criticism. When Gov 2.0 applications began to prove their effectiveness, leaders’ concerns shifted toward what they perceived as a high cost of implementation. Now, they’re realizing that engaging the public through these tools may just be the catalyst for solving key challenges they can’t otherwise resolve via tax-funded efforts. Today, citizen engagement applications enhance a variety of government-citizen interactions involving public information, requests for service, public reporting, citizen as a sensor, unsolicited public comment, and even volunteerism. I suspect these are just the beginning stages of geo-centric citizen engagement.

What do you think the next applications of geo-centric citizen engagement will be?

Accessing Historical and Current Remotely Sensed Data

2011-05-16T09:05:13Z

Managing data for internal and public use

It was the military and large corporations such as oil and mineral exploration companies that first saw the value in imagery. This launched a new industry bent on acquiring the most accurate, highest resolution imagery with newer satellites, aerial sensors, photogrammetric equipment and specialized software, to help interpret the images.

Availability of imagery is no longer the problem—accessibility is. The flood of imagery data is overwhelming. In response, users have shifted their work habits to include tools that help them get their jobs done easier and faster. Because of the size of imagery, most users are demanding access to the data over the web or from a cloud in near real-time, but they don’t want to be forced to download it. They are using technology, like image services, that let them work with data from their desktop, browsers and SmartPhones.

Managing the data becomes another concern. When the volumes of data grow into the terabyte range, it becomes tricky to manage and provide fast access. Storage and network bandwidth become an issue. Experts in this field are looking towards cloud solutions to help them manage large volumes of imagery, and technologies that enable them to disseminate large quantities of data to anyone who needs it in a timely manner.

Imagery is no longer a black box mystery; it is now used by everyone as a tool to help them understand the world around them. As we go forward, citizens and non-remote sensing experts are expecting they will be able to understand what their government, environmental scientists and news reporters are talking to them about because they will demand to see the proof, using imagery.

The amount of historical and current remotely sensed data is growing exponentially, and the only way to get ahead of the curve is to have the right tools that simplify everyday tasks while maximizing access.

How are you improving access to historical and new imagery in your organization?

Spatial Analysis Helps Utilities Manage Risk

2011-04-18T09:04:34Z

Creating a better risk model

When dealing with the complex infrastructure of an electric, gas or water utility system, things often go wrong. Things go wrong because there are so many factors that can contribute to a problem. Utility operators face an enormous task. They must gather accurate and timely data, understand the relative importance of each factor, and determine relative risk of damage to the system. Once utility risk is understood, a rational mitigation and investment strategy can be developed. Most utilities are able to prioritize maintenance and replacement projects based on factors such as equipment age, and the history of maintenance, operation, and failure.

Despite such measures, unexpected things happen. In the event of an outage or leak, you will often hear experienced field workers say, “I knew this water main would burst,” or “I suspected this transformer would fail,” and “That gas main has always been troublesome.”

The problem is this: Some of the factors that often contribute to system failure or add risk of failure are not systematically built into the utility risk model. What these experienced workers are doing is a form of spatial analysis in their heads.

Experienced workers know that a pole at the bend of the road is more apt to be hit by a car than a pole along a straight-a-away. A transmission line that crosses a river or canal has a higher risk of being damaged due to river-way traffic. A direct buried cable is more likely to fail if it has experienced a deep freeze followed by a fast thaw if it is buried in rocky soil. While crucial infrastructure information is often known by employees, it is hard to quantify in a risk model. The key to better risk management is a risk model with spatial analysis that reaches both within and outside the utility.

Utilities can now access all kinds of information online and easily incorporate it into a risk model using GIS. We must look to web-based data sources, and take advantage of geo-enabled handheld devices to help build a better risk profile. In addition to internal data, utilities have access to a wide variety of information related to weather, soil, flood patterns, hazards, newsfeeds, and more. Sources include predictive and measured data as well as social media data.

Further, a utility can update its risk model to include information from those experienced workers who have a qualitative understanding of the company’s infrastructure vulnerabilities. Most of this information is spatial in nature, and can be collectively organized on a GIS platform for risk analysis. GIS has the most convenient way of presenting the results of the analysis--in the form of an interactive map that can be viewed over the web, in the field, and from the desktop.

How can GIS technologies and spatial analysis be more readily employed by utilities to enhance their risk models?

Matching Your Home to Your Lifestyle

2011-03-14T01:03:50Z

The perfect home may be a hot spot away

Ocean breezes; able to walk to shops and public transport; stunning mountain views. These aren't phrases for advertising a holiday getaway—they are descriptions used to sell houses I've bought.

In the U.S., we've been accustomed to buying homes based on their physical characteristics instead of our lifestyle and neighborhood preferences. While the number of bedrooms and the size of the garage are important features, more and more people want their dream home to truly reflect their needs, aspirations and social connections.

“Lifestyle search” is one of the fastest growing ideas in residential real estate that promises to match the best properties with the right owners. Using neighborhood attributes, from demographics to the location of schools and other civic and social amenities, lifestyle search uses spatial analysis to match buyers’ desires to the best property.

Searching in this manner is hyper-local and smart because it supplements the realtors knowledge with local information and the latest socio-demographic statistics. Any factor or variable can be considered and the outcome weighted by how desirable or undesirable each is to a person’s need.

Want to live within two miles of the best school, within walking distance to a park but away from the highway or noisy industrial area? Lifestyle search will find an ideal location by combining all the options and desires, then highlighting the best candidates using hotspot analysis, which compiles this large amount of information and visually shows which locations meet the most criteria.

Thanks to real estate apps, lifestyle search is changing how people think about buying a house. Home buyers (and realtors?) now have the ability to instantly understand neighborhoods, compare like homes and search based on location. It is no wonder these apps are some of the most popular downloads on smart phones.

Some experts have commented that lifestyle search is really just an extension of the analysis that has been going on in commercial real estate for a decade or more. Even so, empowering everyone with better tools to help make a decision about the most important financial investment of their lives has to be a good thing.

Do you think lifestyle search and smart phone apps will change the way we buy homes?

Safer Roads Through Effective Traffic Safety Management

2011-02-14T07:02:48Z

Empowering safety engineers

U.S. efforts to improve traffic safety have delivered considerable progress over the last five years. From 2005 to 2009, traffic fatalities have declined over 21%. The fatality rate has dropped from 1.46 fatalities per 100 million miles traveled, to 1.13 - the lowest rate since 1954. While this success can be attributed to a variety of factors, the focus on safety by State Departments of Transportations (DOT) and State Offices of Public Safety certainly deserves some of the credit.

I believe there are four key areas where GIS has, and will continue to assist safety engineers in reducing traffic crashes and fatalities:

Data Collection: It is still the case that capturing the accurate location of crash information remains a challenge for many states. It’s not uncommon for there to be a multi-year backlog for taking textual descriptions from police accident reports, and assigning accurate locations to the crash record. And yet, the collection of crash location data is paramount to the downstream analysis that helps safety managers understand the causes of these crash hotspots. GPS and GIS can provide the tools for the responding officer to accurately collect this information at the scene, and have it seamlessly incorporated into their crash reports. We must be more aggressive in adopting and implementing this kind of technology in the field.
Data Management: It is not enough to have our crash data geo-coded and displayed on a one-dimensional map. Safety analysts need access to a wealth of other information, such as traffic volumes, roadway characteristics, pavement and weather conditions, and even video-logs, all assembled into multi-year crash databases for use by analysts. GIS can supply the integrative framework to bring that data and its telling information into a comprehensive database for complex analysis.
Spatial Analysis: While a number of states have implemented impressive crash database solutions, less have taken full advantage of spatial statistics to perform more comprehensive crash analyses. GIS has the capability of uncovering spatial relationships in crash data that cannot be discovered through traditional statistical techniques. Today, many spatial statistical tools are now built into GIS software, and available to analysts to build complex models in a relatively straightforward fashion.
Data Dissemination: State DOTs have a statutory responsibility to submit an annual report describing the top five percent of their highway locations with the greatest safety needs. Almost all states meet that requirement with a descriptive table, but only three state DOTs include a simple map to accompany their reports. GIS technology can breathe life into these reports by demonstrating current safety improvement projects and initiatives, viewable by the public via the web. In this manner, GIS provides a powerful way for communicating the DOT’s current initiatives and successes to the traveling public. And the public itself can use this information to alter its own driving habits and behaviors.

These are ways that safety managers can achieve even greater success in the future.

What are the ways that GIS and other geospatial technologies are working to improve safety in your organization?

Opening the Redistricting Process to Citizens

2011-01-18T09:01:28Z

If you build it, will they come?

If one questioned the general public about redistricting, as a Pew survey did in 2006, one would find only modest awareness of the topic and generally negative opinions of the current process. This comes as no surprise to those who observed the 2010 elections and follow trends in open government and transparency. Citizens are less inclined to trust their elected officials than ever before, and the redistricting exercises this spring may provide further grounds for discontent.

A number of groups have sought to address the lack of public engagement in elections and promote transparency in redistricting. Legislation to transfer the task of redistricting to a board of appointed citizens was proposed in several states and adopted by Arizona and California. But does a transfer of responsibility for redistricting, with its inherent power, satisfy the public’s growing expectations for transparency and inclusion? A number of interest groups propose citizens be granted access to the same data and redistricting tools legislators would use. Texas, Georgia, and Florida did this in 2000 and plan to again, at no small expense. To what effect?

If a redistricting tool were built that allowed citizens to construct plans, will redistricting bodies

Have the ability or capacity to review plans and public comments made electronically?
Be able to balance the particular laws for their states as well as and Sections 2 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act, with what the public sees as a logical plan?
Be able to determine or measure the public value of providing tools that engage citizens and provide transparency?

Can GIS technology help states engage their constituents in the redistricting process while accounting for its complex regulations and rules?

Supporting Economic Gardening through GIS

2010-12-13T02:12:23Z

Are we ready to embrace our communities?

We often think of economic development in terms of big investment and attracting new businesses by focusing on “outside-in” growth strategies. This is referred to as “economic hunting,” which seeks a quick fix to replace lost jobs and offers relocation incentives and tax breaks to businesses outside the region. But what about growing and nurturing our local businesses from within? Economic gardening has emerged as a successful model for supporting local communities and providing conditions to grow and prosper. Although the concept is fairly new, its application is not. Economic gardening builds on the notion of business retention and expansion that has been in place for many decades.

Sustaining economic recovery through growing local small and midsized businesses is the key ingredient to economic gardening. By focusing on activities that promote the growth of businesses that already exist in the community and capitalizing on the community’s existing assets and resources, this “inside-out” growth strategy aims at improving the local and regional business climate. Creating healthy economic conditions conducive for sustainable growth means empowering local businesses and entrepreneurs with appropriate resources and opportunities.

Three main components are identified as core elements of a successful economic gardening model. These include local infrastructure improvement, providing a platform for connecting various businesses and organizations, and acquiring and sharing critical information about market constraints and opportunities. Accurate data and spatial information are key to furthering an economic gardening agenda. Many governments implementing the economic gardening approach are using GIS to identify and map business opportunities. Thus, business owners have the information they need to make good decisions about activities such as where to establish a new location or who their customers are and the best way to market to them. GIS has proved to be a critical component in pursuing economic revitalization.

There are plenty of examples where this economic model worked effectively—most notably in the City of Littleton, Colorado. Its success in generating new jobs without incentives encouraged many other communities to follow in its footsteps. Paying attention to the quality of economic growth rather than quantity is a successful model for addressing the economic downturn. It is incumbent on developers to embrace this model to keep up with the new wave of economic development.

Are economic developers ready to take on the challenge of promoting healthier economic development through mindful application of GIS technology?

National Data Providers Respond to Critical Issues

2010-11-13T07:11:37Z

Doing more with less

National mapping, charting, and data production (NDP) organizations are being asked to respond to issues and events with timely, relevant GIS data provided through spatial data infrastructures (SDIs).

The value of authoritative geographic data was recognized in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit (officially called the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro). In addition, geographic information was determined to be a critical component in meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Recently, organizations such as the Group on Earth Observations and the UN Economic and Social Council Statistics Division have emphasized the importance of authoritative data in addressing trans-national issues. The goals of these organizations are similar and can be aggregated into the following areas:

Economic/societal benefits
Environmental sustainability
Security monitoring

Professional geospatial societies are also partnering with NDP organizations to promote authoritative geographic information. For example, the Joint Board of Geospatial Information Societies, a coalition of 10 geospatial professional societies, recently released a booklet titled Geoinformation for Disaster and Risk Management: Examples and Best Practices [PDF] illustrating the importance of geographic information to decision makers.

NDP organizations deliver the base authoritative data, geographic analysis, and Web services required to address national issues guided by their goal: better livelihood through increased economic and social opportunity, better use of resources, and improved security. The results, along with the data, are served to stakeholders through SDIs that are increasingly dynamic and accessible across all platforms including on servers, mobile devices, the Internet, and the cloud. Although NDP organizations have seen significant staff cuts and reduced budgets and have had to do more with less, they continue to demonstrate their strategic value in helping solve national issues, justifying their need for sustainable funding.