This is a topic we have looked into from a strategic perspective, only to find that things change faster than anticipated. Opinions on the two environments ( Oracle Spatial and Google)  are many – and we have some self deduced guidelines for deciding which  is better given specific circumstances.

So … stay tuned for more on this , or drop an email to spatialint@gmail.com if you need a raw version of our guidelines in advance of a formal post on this topic.

The New Jersey Times posted a very relevant article on this topic today. Those who have been in mapping and GIS business for a while are no strangers to proprietary data formats and being boxed in by vendor choices. The frustrations born out of the struggle with proprietary data formats – also the struggles of ESRI’s competitors  – partially motivated to the establishment of what is now known as the Open GIS Consortium (OGC).

Having been in some of the smoke-filled rooms where strategies for increased GIS market-share were being hatched , and where concerns about fostering innovation in geospatial technologies were front and center in deliberations , it is interesting to observe the Google-effect on the geospatial industry.

There are those that have bought fully into the cloud computing paradigm ( ala Google and SalesForce) , there are those that are on the fence, and then there are others that are still skeptical of the Google-like cloud computing paradigm.

The internet is well populated with discussions on the terms-of-use and data / content ownership as it relates to the various SaaS and could computing business models. Not getting into this in this post other than to say that those who are on the fence and those who are sceptical are so in part due to a lack of trust in the providers and purveyors of cloud based solutions and services – especially of those who rely on content to attract traffic to their sites.

The recent revelations about the Chinese attack on Google’s system are not helping to convince the skeptics to jump on the cloud.

One of the concerns we continue hearing is that technology providers make it easy to get data into their systems , but , oh boy ,  just wait until you want to access it from a competing system, or migrate to a competor’s system.  So – sounds like somebody at Google is paying attention to this concern:  The Data Liberation Front

We are going to keep an eye on this evolving front – especially from a geospatial pespective -  suggest that you may want to do the same. With the enormous volumes of content in the Google databases , the very commercial use of this content, and with the multiple products they have, it will be very educational to follow the realization of The Data Liberation Front’s mission , which is:

“Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products. Our team’s goal is to make it easier to move data in and out”

So – follow this development at the blog and on Twitter @dataliberation.

Some food for thought:  Freeing the flow of data in and out of Google may just pressurize others to free the flow out of their systems – and in doing so that outflow may just be a data flow into Google.  Hmmmm….. Your thoughts ?

Some of features in the new release that caught our attention are listed below. They peeked our interest because we see immediate application of these in the systems that we develop and support. Note that we are copying liberally from the documentation.

The list:

“WFS Themes
Web Feature Service (WFS) features can now be viewed through MapViewer’s WFS themes. These themes support the parsing and caching of WFS capabilities, and the use of feature conditions and queries. WFS theme support also works with Oracle
Maps; for example, you can display a WFS theme as an interactive feature of interest (FOI) layer.”

“Multiple Rendering Styles for a Single Feature
Previously, a feature could be rendered by only one rendering style. You can now use multiple rendering styles when rendering a theme’s features. For example, you can shade a polygon with a color style while also plotting a pie chart on top of it, without
defining two themes.”

“Heat Map Support
MapViewer now supports heat maps, which are two-dimensional color maps of point data sets.”

“Displaying Google Maps and Bing Maps Tiles as Built-in Map Tile Layer
Applications can now display Google Maps tiles or Microsoft Bing Maps tiles as a built-in map tile layer. Internally, the Oracle Maps client uses the official Google Maps or Bing Maps API to display the map that is directly served by the Google Maps server.”

“Image-Less Polygon Themes with FOI Layers
You can now base a feature of interest (FOI) layer on an image-less polygon theme, causing FOI images not to be rendered if the theme is already rendered as part of the base map. This feature can result in much faster performance with polygon layers.”

“Enhanced Redline Tool
The redline line tool can now be used to create polyline, polygon, and point geometries. The redline line tool also supports an editing mode, in which you can move an existing redline point or line segment, remove a redline point or line segment, or add a redline point or line segment programmatically”

When time permits we’ll post some more on this new version of 11.1.1.2. Need to get back to upgrading to the new version and getting heat maps deployed for many different and interesting uses ….

Drop a comment if you would like to …  We’d love to hear your experiences and thoughts on this Oracle technology. ( We obviously like it …)

• EPSG: 3857
• EPSG:3785

Could not find these – so before I conclude that blogger.com does not offer these features – I am posting this blog so that someone who may know blogger.com better can point me in the right direction. Anyone ?

For those with an interest in some of the downstream mash-up technologies that can consume such information , check out Ushahidi.

” Ushahidi is a free and open source project with developers hailing from Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Malawi, Netherlands and the USA working on it …..”

Also check out FrontlineSMS:

“FrontlineSMS a free, open source software that turns a laptop and a mobile phone into a central communications hub. Once installed, the program enables users to send and receive text messages with groups of people through mobile phones ….”

Pre-event and post-event imagery of Haiti is being made available by Digital Globe. Details are here.

Digital Globe says that they will make post-earthquake imagery available it becomes available.  The US Government – and others with satellite imaging assets are also collecting  imagery.

At least one GlobalHawk drone has also been tasked to obtain advanced imagery over the  disaster area.

Quoting from the US Air Force’s press release:

“The Global Hawk, a high-altitude, long-endurance aircraft, is equipped with an integrated sensor suite to include synthetic aperture radar, electro-optical and medium-wave infrared sensors.

“(The imagery) will help to characterize what regions of the country were hit hardest by the earthquake, and we can provide that imagery to our intelligence unit on base,” said Lt. Col. Mark Lozier, a 12th RS operations officer. “They’ll exploit the imagery and send it back to the requesting end user.”

Not only will the Global Hawk’s advanced imagery provide an overall assessment of the damages, it will also help expeditiously direct aircrew flying into Haiti to deliver crucial supplies to those affected by the earthquake.

“In effect, you get to look at what we know is damaged, and what we know is still serviceable,” Colonel Lozier said. “We can take a look at airfields to assess, right now, whether or not we will be able to get airlift in there with aid. We don’t have to wait for a ground team to get in there and make on-site decisions.”

The long range and endurance of the Global Hawk will allow flexibility in meeting mission requirements during the ongoing relief mission in Haiti.

“One of the ideal aspects of the Global Hawk for this purpose is its high altitude; we can stay airborne 27 to 28 hours,” Colonel Lozier said. “We will be using most of that time to stay on station over in Haiti during most of daylight hours to image most of everything that we can with the highest fidelity.”

This is not the first time the Global Hawk has been used to assist in a humanitarian crisis. In 2007 the imagery from the Global Hawk was used to assist California firefighters battling blazes in Southern California.”

In November 2009 the UK Prime Minister and the Communities Secretary John Denham announced announced that in April 2010 the public will have more access to the Ordnance Survey maps. This is in support of a  Government drive to open up data to improve transparency.

By releasing some of its data, the Ordnance Survey seeks to ensure that is at the heart of digital innovation in Britain.

Quoting the Chairman of Ordnance Survey, Sir Rob Margetts:

“As Chairman of Ordnance Survey, I am delighted that the Prime Minister and John Denham have today made these proposals about releasing for free some of Ordnance Survey’s data to support innovation, accountability and growth. I  also very much welcome the commitment made by Government to contribute to the cost of this. This on-going commitment is fundamental to maintaining the sustained quality of Ordnance Survey’s data that has made the organisation a world leader in its field. The Board of Ordnance Survey will work very closely with Government, as well as our customers, partners and others to ensure that the proposals are fully developed for consultation and implementation next year.”

Some observations:

1. Note that not all for the OS’s data is being released, ie. “… releasing for free some of Ordnance Survey’s data to support innovation, accountability and growth. ”
   • Free data will include:
     • Data relating to electoral and local authority boundaries.
     • Postcode areas would be released for free re-use, including for commercially use.
     • Mid-scale digital mapping information would also be released for free re-use.
   • The highest-specification Ordnance Survey products and services (read more accurate and detailed) – typically used by property developers or utility companies - would be charged for on a cost-reflective basis.
2. The Government – therefore the UK taxpayers – are contributing to the cost of making selected data available.
3. The British Government realises the economic potential of this decision:  The information that will be released will enable others to  reuse it in different and more imaginative ways than may have originally been intended by the Ordnance Survey. The estimates suggest that releasing the data could generate as much as a billion pounds for the UK economy – of which we think a large part result from  innovators who will use this to geospatially enable existing solutions and bring new solutions to the market at lesser cost.
4. One would think that the data would still be branded as OS Data – this would go a long way to allay one of the big challenges every web conscious consumer faces:  The Information Reliability concern.

Keep an eye on this …. The OS is an influential player in the geospatial community – especially within the EU, former British Colonies and the Commonwealth. This strategy may well spread out into the OS’s sphere of influence.

Knowing the OS has a substantial systems re-engineering efforts ongoing – with an Oracle Spatial back-end , as does the US Bureau of Census , and the Dutch Cadastre – should not be lost on us either.

To vote you must have a valid ID document and show it at the polling station.   In an attempt to curb voter fraud  , the ID document – and your hand or finger – is marked after you have been credentialed at polling station.

In any land transaction – if it involves you personally as a party in such transaction – your national ID number has to be recorded in the contract and registration documents.

After returning from such counties , I always wonder why we do not wonder why this does not exist in the US yet. Our naturalized US Citizen friends ponder this question very frequently.  I am certain that this has been asked and discussed in the media and by others before  – have however not taken the time to research such past contemplations.

In discussions we have heard some of the following reasons why not:

• Privacy Concerns.
• Government Control Concerns.
• We have State Driver’s Licences.
• States’ Rights.
• If it is a federal mandate , then the Federal Government must provide the funding – and they do not.
• Political Issue – the lack of such identification benefits a political party.
• Is a social security card not sufficient ?

It is interesting to observe the continued innovation in the private sector in this regard.  Very detailed information about anyone can readily be obtained through credit bureaus and other private / non-government institutions – without a national identification system being place.

One has to conclude that aggregated information about individuals are valuable to commercial enterprises – so there is a need.  So some questions then:

1. If the commercial sector finds value in this – especially for use in risk mitigation – why not Government as well ?
2. Has the capability and information available through the private sector replaced the need for the Federal Government to pursue a National Identification program ?

Thoughts  ? …..