2006 December 7

This issue sponsored by

ESRI

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Editor's Introduction

This week I report on a company that makes GPS-based tracking devices, for overt or covert use; I continue my systematic reporting on GIS shops in the Portland area, with the second part of a profile of GeoNorth, the consulting company behind several public GIS implementations in that area; and I feature a guest editorial on spatial thinking. Plus, my usual round-up of news from press releases.

— Matteo

Trackstick GPS Data Logger: Geospatial Surveillance Made Easy

Threats to our privacy continue to multiply. They include technologies routinely justified as ways to improve public safety, increase efficiency, and deliver new services, such as:

  • surveillance cameras in stores, at airports, on traffic lights, in stadiums, etc., often coupled with face-recognition software
  • digital photos collected by DMVs
  • high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery
  • information on our purchases, collected at the point-of-sale—whether it be a physical cash register or a virtual, on-line one
  • other kinds of data mining—from lone dumpster divers to large server arrays
  • automated toll collection services
  • warrant-less interception of phone calls and e-mail
  • software that secretly records key strokes
  • data collection by software companies, on-line service providers, and search engines.

Our "reasonable expectation of privacy" is not just eroding; it is being swept away by a landslide.

For years I fought a quixotic battle against the inclusion of GPS on the above list and the use of such phrases as "GPS tracking device" in the popular media. Tracking, I pointed out, is only one of many applications of GPS. Real-time tracking—of a person, vehicle, or other asset / target—requires coupling a GPS receiver, which computes its position and usually displays it to the user, with a radio transmitter, to convey the position data to a monitoring center. Until recently, covert use of GPS for tracking was so rare, costly, and technically challenging that most people did not need to worry about it.

Now, however, small, affordable, GPS data loggers with long battery life are changing the equation. Pretty soon, it will no longer be paranoid to check in your backpack or briefcase or under your car's dash to make sure that someone—a business competitor, a jealous spouse, a cop, or a robber—hasn't hidden there a GPS data logger, with or without the ability to transmit that data in real time. Heck, one can buy a small, GPS-enabled cell phone, subscribe to one of several available tracking services, hide the phone in a vehicle's glove compartment, and track that vehicle for many hours before the battery dies (or the driver discovers the device and throws it in a ditch).

Read more …

GIS Shops in the Portland Area: GeoNorth, Part 2

Following up on last week's profile of GeoNorth, here is the second part of my interview with Marshall Payne, Principal and Northwest Operations Manager and one question I put to Reggie Wilbanks, Senior Solutions Architect.

  1. How would you characterize GeoNorth's role in Portland's rich GIS environment? Are you are the developers who assist public agencies get to the next level?

    "Pretty much, yes. We like working with our customers and see them grow and do more on their own. We don't necessarily like to be in a position where they are 100 percent dependent on us, because I don't think that that is healthy either. We take a lot of time to try to really understand what it is that they are trying to do—what their capabilities are, what their long-term constraints might be, in terms of budget or staff—and try to come up with a solution that is easy to maintain, that will not become a burden, and that can grow with them as they grow. Demystifying the technology a little bit."

  2. These agencies have their own developers, including some good ones…

    "Some do, some don't. Sometimes, like in this case with the City of Portland, we work cooperatively with their development staff. In other cases, we work with organizations that develop and maintain data, but that is pretty much where it stops. As demands and pressures are created by internal users needing that information, there is usually a gap. It may be a skill gap, it may be a resource gap. They just simply don't have the time."

  3. And they don't have enough on-going need for fulltime developers to hire any.

    "That's right. You get the job done, and then you don't have to have that FTE on staff just to make that happen."

Read more …

Spatial Thinking: Literacy for the 21st Century, by Phil Cruver

The author is a serial entrepreneur who has been CEO of two public companies and is currently President of KZO Networks.

We live in a visual world where we think and dream in pictures and symbolic images. When we read, we transform the words into mental pictures. Several millennia ago, visual imagery began taking a backseat to more efficiently produced words and numbers. With the advent of Gutenberg's printing press a little more that 500 years ago, words and numbers began to rule by allowing the average person to communicate in this new mass medium. New printed media, in the form of sentences and paragraphs, outstripped traditional technologies for mass-producing paintings, carvings, and other forms of visual communications.

As literacy proliferated, the written word and numbers further overshadowed the visual image in all aspects of education, religion, and commerce. However, humans are not efficient at processing text and numbers—which in the digital economy are increasingly more prevalent. The profundity of the old adage, "a picture is worth a thousand words" promises redemption for this new era. The pendulum is swinging back for the broadband Internet to provide the pipes for the proliferation of multimedia supplanting text and numbers. It's ironic and incongruous that high-tech, digital visualization technologies may facilitate this generation returning to their ancient biological roots in order to deal with a modern data-rich world.

Read more …

News Briefs

Please note: I have culled the following news items from press releases and have not independently verified them.

  1. CONTRACTS & COLLABORATIONS

    1. The ACT Planning and Land Authority (ACTPLA), responsible for planning in Canberra and the Australian Capital Territory, has selected Geomatic Technologies to develop and implement a Mapping, Address and Routing System. Read more …

    2. Alltel, America's largest wireless network, has announced that the Samsung SCH-u520 will be available exclusively at Alltel retail stores and at shopalltel.com beginning December 7. Read more …

    3. East View Cartographic (EVC) has announced the completion of a project to create a 30 meter digital elevation model (DEM) of the Akureyri Airport in Iceland. Read more …

    4. GDC, a UK provider of GIS, will work in partnership with the UK's foremost crime prevention partnership, Greater Manchester Against Crime (GMAC), to develop an Enterprise version of its GeoReveal Studio 2.0. Read more …

    5. Gloucestershire Police has selected Cadcorp SIS - Spatial Information System and the Cadcorp SIS OS MasterMap to NTF Exporter to support their migration to OS MasterMap digital map data, while retaining the use of its existing digital mapping/GIS facilities. Read more …

    6. The City of Omaha, Nebraska's Public Works Department has chosen Varion Systems, the software development and value-added reseller division of GeoAnalytics, Inc, to implement Azteca Systems' Cityworks. Read more …

    7. The City of Gäevle, Sweden, has implemented Cityworks, by Azteca Systems, Inc., within its energy department — Gäevle Energy AB. Read more …

    8. ESRI demonstrated the full suite of its GIS technology and solutions available to law enforcement and homeland security professionals at the 2006 International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Conference. Read more …

    9. The CGIAR WorldFish Center in Malaysia is utilizing the decision support tools within the IDRISI GIS and Image Processing software to delineate recommendation domains for aquaculture development within the particular context of alleviating poverty and improving livelihoods of small-scale farm households. Read more …

    10. Sunstar Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in Pinellas County, Florida, has deployed an advanced GIS solution that helps the county ambulance service provide more accurate and expedient emergency planning and response. Read more …

  2. PRODUCTS

    1. Garmin International Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd., has announced the availability of the Garmin LBS Toolkit, a flexible location-based service platform that can serve as the engine behind third party LBS applications. Read more …

    2. With the release of Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, and Ethiopia, LeadDog Consulting completes the collection of current, accurate, and detailed map datasets of the countries that comprise the Horn of Africa. Read more …

    3. CSI's Hemisphere GPS division, a global manufacturer of GPS products, has introduced its new SBX-4 differential GPS (DGPS) beacon module. Read more …

    4. On December 11, Chaos systems AB will release the 9th version of Topocad; the CAD-system for survey, mapping, design, and GIS. Read more …

  3. CONFERENCES & TRAINING

    1. Airborne 1 Corporation, a provider of LiDAR services, rentals, and software worldwide, is offering private training on LiDAR data production and related software applications. Read more …

    2. NIIT-GIS Ltd. (ESRI India) will host the Second Annual ESRI Asia-Pacific User Conference in New Delhi, India, January 18-19. Read more …

    3. A free ESRI online seminar will demonstrate the power of ArcGIS Server 9.2 technology to quickly build Web-based mapping applications and publish geographic data as maps and globes for use on the Internet. Read more …

  4. OTHER

    1. The City of Euless, Texas, IT Department recently created several simple, but powerful, GIS Web mapping applications. Read more …

    2. Samara State Aerospace University, in Russia, has won the contest for innovation programs under the "Education" national project. Read more …

    3. By November 15 the Academic Fedorov research ship had passed the English Channel and entered the Bay of Biscay, heading for the Antarctic land per the program of the 52nd Russian Antarctic Expedition. Read more …

    4. Global Imaging Technologies (GIT) has announced an initiative to make digital mapping cameras available worldwide. Read more …

    5. Pictometry International Corp., a provider of digital, aerial oblique imagery and measuring software systems, has announced several new technical advancements of its software that were recently introduced at its FutureView User Conference. Read more …

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Matteo Luccio, Editor
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