W - Geoinformatics

Magazine for Surveying, Mapping & GIS Professionals
3
April/May
2 0 1 2
Volume 15
● Geomarketing ● Big Data
● TomTom ● Luxembourg’s INSPIRE Geoportal

W
We
e’
’ve Got
e ve
o You Covered
10 years of Leadership in Europe
www.euspac
uspaceimag
maging.com
agilit
y
capabilit
flexibili
bility ity
Charles de
Gaulle Airport, France , April 2010, 50 cm,
natural al colour. Imaged by WorldView-2 satellite.

GeoInformatics is the leading publication for Geospatial
Professionals worldwide. Published in both hardcopy and
digital, GeoInformatics provides coverage, analysis and
commentary with respect to the international surveying,
mapping and GIS industry.
GeoInformatics is published
8 times a year.
Editor-in-chief
Eric van Rees
evanrees@geoinformatics.com
Copy Editor
Frank Artés
fartes@geoinformatics.com
Editors
Florian Fischer
ffischer@geoinformatics.com
Huibert-Jan Lekkerkerk
hlekkerkerk@geoinformatics.com
Remco Takken
rtakken@geoinformatics.com
Joc Triglav
jtriglav@geoinformatics.com
Contributing Writers:
Florian Fischer, Huibert-Jan Lekkerkerk, Henk Key,
Karen Richardson, Ian Masser, Stuart Proctor,
Armin Grün, Oliver Giehsel, Pete Davie,
Philippe van den Berge.
Columnists
Steven Ramage, Matt Sheehan.
Finance
finance@cmedia.nl
Marketing & Sales
Ruud Groothuis
rgroothuis@geoinformatics.com
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Sander van der Kolk
svanderkolk@geoinformatics.com
ISSN 13870858
© Copyright 2012. GeoInformatics: no material may
be reproduced without written permission.
Navigating Airports and
Oceans
Readers of this magazine might have noticed a shift in the topics of articles over
the last two or three years, and it’s not coincidental, the geospatial market has
changed dramatically. Not only has technology driven this change, but what I’m
referring to here is the rapprochement of geospatial companies with the consumer
market – one might as well speak of a blur between the consumer market and
geospatial market. Of course, geospatial is something ‘different’ and a unique
selling point of software, products and data, but the once ‘so clearly visible’
distinction between spatial and non-spatial just isn’t valid anymore.
It’s all too easy to mention Google as the main reason for change, but its focus on
data rather than maps has been important and continues to be important (more
on this below). The other way around, this vision doesn’t exclude the notion that
maps are not powerful by their own means – they represent data and are, therefore,
an information source by themselves, and a powerful one at that. Explanatory
motives, for a large area of interest outside of the geospatial market, have been
big IT infrastructures, data and devices aimed at the consumer market to allow
individuals to use geospatial technology as a way to organize or leverage daily
life by themselves – as well as governments and enterprises.
A recent and promising example of this is smartphone apps for travelers. An article
in The International Herald Tribune (March 12, 2012) discussed how smartphone
apps ease the stress and legwork for airline travelers by offering them
mobile apps to navigate the airport, assist with check in, track flights and monitor
luggage. With half of all travelers carrying smartphones, this has to be an interesting
market to follow in the coming years. The last line of the article offers possibilities
for map providers worldwide, where it says that the travel industry is still in
the crawl stage when it comes to mobile applications. This is illustrated by the fact
that as yet, there are very few airport navigation maps available, and the ones
that do exist, tend to be pretty basic.
Another recent initiative mentioned in the mass media is Seaview, a
science project in which Google, among others, is involved (see
seaview.org). What it offers is comparable to Google Street View,
but from an underwater perspective, with features such as panoramic
images of The Great Barrier Reef. The uses are multiple:
science for example is provided with data on underwater life,
which can be used to study wildlife and climate change from
behind a computer. By offering the imagery to consumers,
Google has played yet another great trump card in an
effort to lure a larger audience to its site and/or services.
Just as what happened with Google Maps, this
will offer business opportunities for the future – probably
most of all for tourism. I’d be interested to know how
geospatial companies will react to this new move from
Google.
Enjoy your reading,
P.O. Box 231
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E-mail: services@geoinformatics.com
GeoInformatics has a collaboration with
the Council of European Geodetic
Surveyors (CLGE) whereby all individual
members of every national Geodetic
association in Europe will receive the
magazine.
Eric van Rees
evanrees@geoinformatics.com
Photography: Bestpictures.nl
3
April/May 2012

C o n t e n t
At the cover:
This is a satellite image of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant almost a
year after an earthquake and tsunami caused significant damage at the
facility. The image was taken on February 2, 2012. Source: DigitalGlobe
A r t i c l e s
Everyday Geomatics 10
An INSPIRED Country 18
Storm season has started 24
Regional and local SDIs in Europe 28
Early wake up call 32
UAV Flight over Singapore 34
Geomarketing 38
The Navigation and Location Ecosystem 42
VGI as Big Data 46
N e w s l e t t e r
The First Day of the European Surveyor and GI 6
Interview with Danko Markovinović, CLGE 7
The GNSS Application Congress in Prague 2012 8
I n t e r v i e w
Eye on Earth 14
C o l u m n s
PPP’s and International Open Standards 23
Mobile – Transforming the Work Place 48
C a l e n d a r / A d v e r t i s e r s I n d e x 50

On the first of March 2012, a
24
new EU system for forecasting
space weather went live and
with a new sunspot maximum
expected around 2013, some
would say it was none too
soon.
This Photograph shows a
10
motorcycle equipped with
a GNSS antenna
accomplishing a
bicycle-race.
18
For its INSPIRE geoportal, a
number of different software
solutions are used, in order to
translate disparate geographic
data into the INSPIRE standards.
Geomarketing analyses yield
38
insights into the factors that
determine a company's
success, the exploitation of
regional potential and
locations that offer favorable
conditions.
TomTom’s strategy is centered
around the insight that
navigation use cases will be
42
‘fit for use’ and may not
always be device specific.
34
For the first time Singaporean
authorities have given permission
for a photogrammetric
UAV mapping/modeling flight
over an important area of the
city.
14
Professor Jacqueline McGlade
is Executive Director of the
European Environment
Agency (EEA), located in
Copenhagen, Denmark. She
has been
promoting the Eye on Earth
program around the world.
APIs from popular geo-social
applications like Foursquare
provide big data with
geographical context.
These data – also termed
Volunteered Geographic
Information – are a valuable
46
information base for real-time
geodemographics for user
profiling.

N e w s l e t t e r
A Report on the Event
The First Day of the European
Surveyor and GI
CLGE took the initiative to launch the first day of the European Surveyor and GeoInformation. Hereafter
we give a short report. Future will show how this event will develop and where it will lead the
profession.
Carlo des Dorides in front of an interested audience of 300 + Surveyors, gathered in the main conference
room of the Belgian Royal Military Academy, Brussels (source: Marcel Ponthier)
Jean-Yves Pirlot, CLGE President, calls for a joint international week of surveyors, to be organized every
year. Talks with FIG will start soon (source: Alain Boon)
5March 2012 saw the first
day of the European Sur -
veyor and GeoInfor ma tion.
Coincidently, it was the occasion
to honour the first of a long series
of famous surveyors. For 2012,
the CLGE General Assembly gathered
in Tallinn in September 2011,
had chosen Gerardus Mercator.
The 500th anniversary of the birth
of Mercator on this very day, gave
an excellent opportunity for a
splendid celebration. The size of
the event was only possible with
the help our long-time partner
Trimble and the very professional
support given by the Belgian Royal
Military Academy.
In presence of Philippe Busquin,
Minister of State, former EU
Commissioner for Research and
President of the Belgian Mapping
Agency NGI, distinguished speakers
have described the live, the
work and the legacy of our illustrious
predecessor.
M. Carlo des Dorides, Executive
Director of the European GNSS
Agency, gave a remarked keynote
CheeHai Teo, FIG president, and Michelle Camilleri, CLGE secretary general, unveiling the Mercator
memorial plate (source: Alain Boon)
speech about the future of Galileo,
its use for the high precision sector
and the excellent collaboration that
was established between CLGE and
his Agency.
The FIG president CheeHai Teo has
honoured the European Surveyors
of his presence. He not only gave
an interesting speech about his
view on the role of the surveyor in
modern society but he also unveiled
the artwork about Mercator – by
the Belgian artist Arianne Weyrich
– that will adorn the House of the
European Surveyor and Geo Infor -
mation from now on.
In the same time a lot of other celebrations
were held in the CLGE
member countries. We will report
about some of these events in the
following issues of GeoInformatics.
This kind of activities will of course
be repeated every year now, to
raise the profile of the European
Surveyor.
The presentations of that day are
available on www.clge.eu.
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April/May 2012

N e w s l e t t e r
Vice-President for Geodesy and GI, Director of the Croatian State Geodetic Administration
Interview with Danko Markovinović, CLGE
GeoInformatics: Mr. Mark ovi no -
vić, you’re the CLGE Vice-Presi -
dent in charge of Geodesy and
GI, what does this mean
CLGE has a bureau, composed by President
Jean-Yves Pirlot (BE), Secretary General Michelle
Camilleri (MT) and Treasurer Dieter Seitz (DE).
There are also three ordinary Vice-Presidents:
Pierre Bibollet (FR), Rudolf Kolbe (AT) and Leiv
Bjarte Mjøs (NO). They share the traditional
tasks of our organization, oriented towards the
Education, Professional Practice and European
Affairs. The board has the opportunity to
appoint additional VP, in charge of developments
of special interest. The previous Treasurer,
René Sonney (CH), was always insisting on the
importance of GeoInformation and the outstanding
role CLGE should play in this field. This was
visionary. A few years later it became evident
that CLGE could not remain inactive in these
matters, hence my recent nomination.
It suffices to think about new topics such as
Galileo, EGNOS, GNSS, GIS, INSPIRE, NSDI,
ESDI,… to be convinced that something is going
on. We know of course that Surveyors have an
important role to play in the European Geodetic
Infrastructure but everybody isn’t aware of
what’s an evidence for us.
But there are so many organizations
already active in geodesy
and GI. What’s the added value
of CLGE
You’re right. We do not want to duplicate what
FIG, IGA and EuroGeographics as well as the
European National Mapping and Cadastral
Agencies are doing, of course not.
We want to be active in the political field, anticipate
new regulations and stimulate better pan
European Cooperation.
For instance, we think that there’s a lack of coordination
when it comes to the European
Geodetic Infrastructure. Although a certain level
of scientific and technical coordination exists,
we are convinced that it should be improved. In
the field of CORS, a lot of people managing the
different networks will say that the existing cooperation
based on the results of EUREF and bilateral
talks are sufficient. However, this cooperation
is not homogeneous over the whole
European continent. Moreover, cooperation can
always be improved.
If we take Nord Rhein Westfalen (NRW) and
Rheinland Pfalz, two neighbouring German
Länder for instance, their cooperation is very
good, within SAPOS. The cooperation between
Danko Markovinović
Jean-Yves Pirlot chairing the High Precision and Agriculture GNSS
Applications panel (Courtesy of GSA – Peter Gutierrez)
NRW and Flanders is probably good as well,
but undoubtedly it could be even more effective
to come on the same level than within SAPOS.
Does EUREF have the same possibilities
Wouldn’t it be interesting to give EUREF and or
Euro Geo gra phics or any other Agency such a
task In the field of the use of the true ETRS 89,
wouldn’t it be interesting to oblige or at least
encourage member states to use it What about
the example of EUPOS uniting central and East
European states These are only some examples
of questions that we are pondering for the time
being.
Do you think that your questions
are heard
We are uniting 36 member states with close to
100.000 individual professionals. Of course,
as we always say, this is still a very small number
when compared to the European population
but you will not deny that within the GI community
our association has a respectable size.
In front of the European Geodetic Infrastructure
one can think of us as a huge user group.
During the Galileo Applications Congress in
Prague, end of January 2012, the Executive
Director of the European GNSS Agency, Carlo
des Dorides, has heavily insisted on the cooperation
of his agency, with organisations such as
ours. My answer is: “CLGE is ready to take its
responsibilities”.
As we’ve stated during the Umeå seminar, held
on 22-23 June 2011, CLGE is willing to provide
a platform via which this tremendous user
group can voice its needs and remarks about
existing or lacking services.
Indeed, CLGE seems to have
close contacts with GSA, tell us
more about it.
We are very proud about our cooperation with
this Agency. It is the first time that the policy started
under our previous President, Henning
Elmstroem (DK), has achieved really tangible
results. We have to anticipate professional developments
and not endure them passively.
First GSA has asked us to conduct a study with
them about the penetration of EGNOS (the
European Geostationary Overlay System). Then
they’ve appointed some of our experts to assist
them in writing a market report about GNSS.
Finally, President Pirlot, had the honour to chair
one of the sessions of the Galileo Applications
Congress 2012, in Prague [see our inset].
We feel that eventually we’ve raised profile
towards the European Bodies in charge of
Geodesy and GeoInformation. However, the
way to appear on the radar of the European
and national politicians with the intensity we
would deserve is still long, I am afraid.
INSPIrE is an enormous initiative,
isn’t it Can you really take part
in the game
We are aware of the size of INSPIRE and do not
want to play Don Quixote. We know that the
NMCA’s and EuroGeographics are very deeply
involved in these topics. We do not want to interfere
with them. Bear in mind that we are representing
the profession as a whole. It means that
we unite civil servants, academics as well as
publicly appointed and private surveyors.
Knowing this, it makes no sense trying to compete
with the employers of many of our members.
As a matter of fact our current president is
Deputy Director General of the Belgian
Mapping Agency and I was recently appointed
as Director General of the Croatian State
Geodetic Administration. We would never
destroy during weekends what is painstakingly
Latest News Visit www.geoinformatics.com April/May 2012
7

N e w s l e t t e r
built during the week… No, CLGE wants to
liaise with the professionals from the different
sectors and only intervene when we’ve a real
added value.
I’ve mentioned our ideas about the Geodetic
Infrastructure. Another example is in the initiative
we’ve taken to define new measurement
code for the surfaces of buildings. This was the
missing link within INSPIRE and we’re happy that
we’ve helped to raise awareness about that fact.
What are the prospects
I’ve reported about what we’ve done. It’s a good
start but we have to go on, pushing for more
cooperation at the state level and CLGE playing
its role as a user group.
However, we feel that other tasks are awaiting
us.
Especially in Western Europe we are facing
problems in recruiting youngsters. We have to
increase our presence in political discussions
about academic issues. For CLGE, the geodetic
engineers need a solid initial education completed
with a trustworthy Continuous
Professional Education.
At several occasions CLGE has underlined the
absolute need of a Master diploma completed
with a one or two year traineeship as well as
an additional examination, when it comes to
cadastral surveyors. This does not mean that
Geodetic Technicians are of no use, of course
not!
But the technical field (geodetic infrastructure,
GNSS, …) is yet another domain implying this
high level education for the surveyors taking
responsibilities in that aspect.
Moreover, sufficient proportion of Master students
should access the PhD studies, to ensure
the preservation of high level knowledge, especially
in Geodesy.
The offer of high level geodetic education is
declining, at least in several western European
countries whereas the number of students is also
vanishing in the last years.
Thus, there is an urgent need to react.
And the prospects with the
European Commission
We’re still eager to interact with the European
Commission as well. About my speciality, we
think that Article 26 of the Services Directive
gives room for quality management and quality
certification initiatives.
A lot to do, huge challenges but there’s a saying
that we follow “One need no hope in order
to undertake, nor success in order to persevere”.
But, as we have hope and experience some success,
it’s even easier to go on.
The GNSS Application Congress in Prague 2012
On 26 and 27 January, the CLGE president took
part in a high level congress about the future of
GNSS in Europe.
In his report, Jean-Yves Pirlot insisted on the very
good organisation ensured by the Czech host.
He had the honour to chair a session about
GNSS applications for the High Precision and
Agriculture segment.
During this session, the meeting room was totally
full. It could even have been a bit larger but
on the other hand the high attendance has
shown the interest for this section.
The attendants were invited to take a very active
part in the discussion and they did it above all
expectations. Even at the end of the session, discussions
went on for a long while, despite the
lunch going on in the hall…
Following remarks or conclusions can be drawn:
• In the farming sector, EGNOS is perceived
as a valuable tool that has still a relevant
growth potential. Moreover this potential
should absolutely be exploited since the
diminishing land resources and growing population
will require getting the full intelligence
out of the sparse number of available m².
• EGNOS is also perceived as a genuine
democratisation, reducing the hurdle newcomers
have to take.
• Without surprise, the applications/services
are very important and our session has
shown several successful examples as well
as a candidate application that could easily
find solutions.
• There was clear demand from the farming
sector to channel research activities in universities
and institutions towards high added
value applications (work in the logistic applications,
consider GNSS solutions combined
with other sensors, …).
• This confirms the need of a better communication
between the stakeholders of given
user segments, here the agricultural sector.
We definitely have to take on board farmers,
vendors, suppliers, SW and HW developers,
Universities, Research centres, …
• Similar groups could be formed for other
user segments, for instance the Surveying
community.
• Galileo is eagerly awaited by some actors
of the Farming sectors whilst others are wondering
what the benefit will be. However,
buyers currently always ask if devices are
Galileo compatible. Some farmers esteem
that since money was diverted from agricultural
subsidies to the European GNSS programme,
they are entitled to earn the
• The very high precision sector also awaits
Galileo to improve the availability of GNSS.
• Both sectors would like the European authorities
to take into account the numerous
ground based augmentation systems that
exist across Europe. Coordinating these, frequently
public initiatives, would be an additional
asset for the user segments when operating
at borders or in international projects.
• CLGE should be regarded as a strong user
community available for cooperation with the
GSA and other relevant authorities, especially
when it comes to voice the needs remarks
and suggestions about existing or missing
services.
First STEP in professional live
CLGE has developed an initiative called First STEP (First Students and Trainees Exchange Programme).
We are looking for companies willing to take part in this effort by offering traineeship or student
jobs for 2012 and 2013.
Pease read the advertisement in the First STEP section of our website www.clge.eu or contact
Michelle Camilleri for additional information (michelle.camilleri@clge.eu).
If you want to know the
latest |news about CLGE on
twitter, follow “CLGEPresident”.
In the last issue of GeoInformatics (2012-2) we’ve provided
a lot of short news. This was an invitation to follow
us on Twitter.
8
April/May 2012

A r t i c l e
10
April/May 2012

A r t i c l e
Everyday Geomatics
Its spring, and traditionally during this season a series of classic bicycle races are organized. These
classic events are one-day professional races which run mostly in Western Europe, and are held roughly
at the same time of the year and preferably on the same track. Some of them have been fixtures on
the international calendar for decades, dating back to the 19th century.
By Henk Key
Five of these classic races are called “the monuments of cycling” and they are generally
considered the oldest and most prestigious.
• Milan - San Remo (Italy), nickname “La Primavera”, first run 1907.
• Tour of Flanders (Belgium), nickname “Vlaanderens mooiste”, first run 1913.
• Paris – Roubaix (France), nickname “Hell of the North”, first run1896
• Liège – Bastogne – Liège (Belgium), nickname “La Doyenne”, first run 1894
• Giro de Lombardia (Italy), nickname “Race of the falling leaves”, first run 1905
All of these races attract a huge number of spectators, with hundreds of thousands along the
course and millions at home watching the race on their television screens, all in need of the
same information, where are they now Who is in the lead What are the margins
And that's were Geomatics comes in
During the race, the competitors are accompanied by numerous cars and motorcycles transporting
mechanics, team managers, officials, journalists, VIPs etc., from the starting point to
the finish line. Most of these cars and motorcycles are equipped with track and tracing
devices based on GNSS technology. The actual location is transmitted to a control room,
and time differences between the frontrunners and pursuers are calculated and displayed on
TV screens at home to keep the fans informed.
Having seen the potential in this type of geoinformation, the authorities are now using this
data for a variety of situations. For example, crowd management. It is a great advantage
knowing an accurate ETA (estimated time of arrival) because within an hour after the bicycle
racers cross the finish line tens of thousands spectators will leave the area almost at the
same time, causing an enormous traffic jam which has to be controlled.
This photograph shows a motorcycle equipped with a GNSS antenna accomplishing a bicycle-race. (Photo © Rob Hendriks)
Latest News Visit www.geoinformatics.com
11
April/May 2012

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I n t e r v i e w
A Global Environmental Cloud Platform
Eye on Earth
Eye on Earth is a global public information service for sharing data and information from diverse
sources. It is an example of cloud technology that facilitates interaction. It includes official data mandated
by countries and data from many other sources. Professor Jacqueline McGlade is Executive
Director of the European Environment Agency (EEA), located in Copenhagen, Denmark. She has been
promoting the Eye on Earth program around the world. In this interview, McGlade talks about the Eye
on Earth program, its users and contributors, as well as the technology and data sharing paradigms
behind it.
By Eric van Rees
14
April/May 2012

I n t e r v i e w
The living facade at the European
Environment Agency (source: EEA)
The European Environment Agency (EEA)
is an agency of the European Union and
its task is to provide sound, independent
information about the environment. As such,
it acts as an information source for both policy
makers, politicians and the general public
in 32 member countries and seven cooperating
countries, to ensure that decision
makers and the public are kept informed
about the state and outlook of the environment.
Information about the environment is
gathered from many different sources – for
example, governments, satellite observations,
sensor stations and citizens themselves.
An example of how the EEA informs the public
is by using Eye on Earth, a global public
information service for sharing data and
information from diverse sources. It is an
example of cloud technology that facilitates
interaction, and includes the official data
mandated by countries and allows citizens
to contribute their observations. For example,
users can view a map with air quality
or water quality and compare the rating from
the Agency with that of others. The data is
displayed on a map where it was gathered,
with crowd sourcing data shown where
available. In this way the EEA hopes to bring
data from many different sources into one
place.
First of all, the system is unique in that it combines
the work of the Agency, a European
Union body, and many countries that are
contributing data to the Agency, as well as
citizens. McGlade: “We designed a system
that was really accommodating two-way traffic
for citizens and not only taking into
account that they were there, but that they
could generally indicate something important
about their environment and then give them
something that would engage them.”
This means that citizens can see the effects
of environmental policy as well as notice
where action should be taken if things are
bad, such as poor air quality or high noise
levels. By bringing information into the public
eye and engaging countries within Europe
and outside, the EEA has a powerful instrument
with Eye on Earth to engage citizens
as well as local and national governments,”
says McGlade. “This engagement represents
the way governments think they should be
working, certainly in Europe. And then on
the other side, showing that they are really
recognizing that people want to know how
their taxpayer money is being spent, if governments
are doing a good job and taking
into account their citizens comments.”
Health issues
To engage citizens, the Agency chose topics
for inclusion in Eye on Earth that affect
people’s daily lives, such as air quality and
bathing water. McGlade explains that the
EEA covers many different topic areas, and
many of them have a geospatial underpinning.
Also on Eye on Earth, air quality is
covered by AirWatch. McGlade: “Air quality
is extremely important because we have
large scale models from the top of the atmosphere
down to the surface, and those models
are used to supplement the monitoring
stations. At this stage we’re fairly good at
being able to give the user an estimate for
air quality, no matter where you are in the
Pan-European region.”
WaterWatch covers designated bathing
water sites, both inland and coastal, a topic
that has huge public interest. NatureWatch
will be about invasive alien species, as well
as protected areas. NoiseWatch covers a
big health issue: “People want to know if
15
April/May 2012

I n t e r v i e w
Prof. Jacqueline McGlade and Environmental expert Axel Volkery at
the Arctic Team Challenge in Greenland (source: EEA)
they are exposed to nighttime noise in the
area where they live. This is now known to
have long-term effects, not only on a person’s
physical health, but also on their mental
health.”
Crowd sourcing as early warning
Eye on Earth makes use of both ‘authoritative’
data and crowd sourced data. The collection
of authoritative data is rather
straightforward: “For example, we have a
station that's part of a monitoring network
and has a quality assurance on it that’s part
of a regular procedure. So a country will
have to collect data and then send it to us,
we check it and then we publish it.”
But many countries have very strong financial
pressures, people are being let go
which means that there's huge pressure on
the monitoring networks. At the same time,
there’s a growing interest by the general
public to get involved, and that’s where
crowd sourcing comes in: people who want
to get involved can buy cheap sensors to
monitor the environment, and then share
this data via Eye on Earth.
“Crowd sourcing supplements the quality
assurance undertaken by the instruments
and intensifies, as well as extends, the sampling,”
says McGlade. “We see that crowd
sourcing, in its own right, is important. It tells
us where people are interested, it tells us
hotspots, so we get not just that they are
there but they actually tell us a lot about
what's happening when they are there
through a text messaging system that’s
linked to our own system. It gives us a richer
diversity and a more rich data source
than the simple instrument that's just measuring.”
Although crowd sourcing mainly happens
in convocations, people will also use
it when they go out in their free time: they
go to protected areas and then want to tell
people what's happening on the ground.
“These are remote regions, so of course you
don't always have an observing station in
place.”
As well as being a kind of confirmation that
people are out there and participating,
crowd sourcing could in fact be an interesting
early warning, since quite often people
are detecting poor air quality before the
instruments do. McGlade: “The one thing
that can be detected by many people who
are very sensitive to air quality because of
breathing disorders, is ozone. So when
there's an ozone event, which is very dangerous
for people with breathing disorders,
it usually precedes a heat wave, and what
we can see in certain places is that the population
will already sense a drop in air quality
before the instrument actually picks it up.”
Data exhaustion
It so happens that when a local environmental
issue is reported, such as bad air quality,
people go to the website and start downloading
data immediately. A server activity
heat map shows the intensity of what’s being
downloaded, as a result of what people
notice through social media or the press.
16
April/May 2012

I n t e r v i e w
“As well as being an early warning system,
it shows what people will react to as well,”
says McGlade.
This approach means data needs to be timely,
and this is something the EEA watches
very carefully. McGlade: “We will need to
improve on what we have done in the past.
It’s no good if politicians are standing up
saying they’ve got the latest report on air
quality, and it’s data from two years ago.
This is not an acceptable way for science
and the environment movement to be working.
That’s why we really went for this
approach, to try to speed up the way in
which we would gather information, quality-ensured
and make it available.”
This approach does not differ from the way
employment statistics are put together every
month. So in a way what the EEA does is
nothing new: “There are instantaneous figures
collected on a weekly and a monthly
basis. They are published and then they’re
revised after a three-month period, they’re
revised again after a six-month period and
then they become, so to speak, gold-plated.
And in fact that’s exactly what we’re trying
to do in the environment.”
The idea was to give people an early sign
or trend, or if things are going up or down
and then gradually, through the EEA’s internal
processes and quality assurance that
countries have, to make this data more
authoritative. However, the approach had
some unforeseen positive consequences,
says McGlade: “What we’re seeing is that
the near real-time monitoring that we’ve put
in place is giving us a tremendous insight
into events that we weren’t previously aware
of, or weren’t picking up. That’s why we are
trying to augment the use of telephones and
cameras by the general public, so that a
mobile phone could easily be a noise monitor.
And that’s essentially the point: we’ve
had to radically review the way in which
information is used by decision makers.”
Geographical scope
Although the EEA covers its 32 member
states, the EEA also works with other countries,
organizations and volunteers.
McGlade: “Since it’s the only thing in town
that combines this enormous cloud computing
capacity together with the kinds of tools
and with a rich content, many countries and
many organizations are saying that they
want to come on board and display their
information and to use it for their own citizen
processes. Singapore and China for
example are already well on the way to
doing near real-time data processing.”
McGlade thinks the EEA is right at the front
of a wave of how people will begin to perceive
the ability to bring the program on,
helped by the fact that technology is so
much cheaper and much more available
than before. In remote areas like Turkey for
example, the idea is to place monitoring
devices such as ruggedized devices, all
along the borders with Iran and Iraq.
Because it’s such a large area, the EEA has
also targeted Russia and Central Asia.
McGlade: “We helping to extend good data
gathering practices in Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, the Caucasus
and also North Africa, which means
Morocco, Algeria, Niger, Tunisia, Israel,
Palestine and Egypt.”
Bringing on new member states fits in with
the tradition of the agency, helping them put
in place strong environmental legislation
and monitoring. McGlade: “It has been
politically long-decided that the environment
is a top priority for working in the neighborhood,
including the Arctic, because we have
many cross-boundary environmental issues,
for example water, air, waste, nuclear
power plants, all in the neighborhood of
Europe.”
There are various programs in which volunteers
can participate, and there’s no shortage
of public interest. And often, once they
participate, they come back and stay in the
programs: “There are various not-for-profit
organisations, where people spend time to
learn and then they have a huge return rate.
There are communities like Citizen Science
and voluntary participation. I could point to
a thousand people today who say ‘sign us
up, we’d like to be a citizen observer,’ or
‘we’d like our group to be onboard,’ and
so on. There is no shortage of people who
actually want to be involved. The most
impressive thing about where we’ve got to
with technology is that now there is a way
to do that.”
The EEA acts as a beneficiary of all of this,
and can supplement its assessments with a
lot more information than before. They’re
also learning how to use this information to
make sure it has some meaning. McGlade:
“It’s not without its problems, to be honest,
but what I’m hoping is that there’ll be more
academic interest. The research community
still remains a little stand off-ish. They are
still constrained by the authoritative role that
they hold when they receive a research
grant.” This, however, seems to be a matter
of time, as science institutes are now starting
to encourage people who utilize information
that has already been collected.
The cloud
Eye on Earth is an example of cloud technology.
McGlade: “We went into the cloud
with our eyes open and discovered that
there was nobody there. So that has been
quite an interesting journey, to actually
encourage our colleagues in the countries
and others that working in the cloud is the
next step. Working in the cloud means that
we can adopt a model that says that you
can handle huge amounts of traffic simultaneously
for images, pictures, raster maps
and everything.”
To make this happen, the EEA teamed up
with both Microsoft and Esri: with Microsoft
for the Azure platform, with Esri for GIS
tools. McGlade: “We use SQL Server and
a marketplace called Dallas, so we can combine
geospatial data with point data and
many other forms. We’ll use the Esri tools,
such as ArcGIS Online, to not only enable
GIS professionals but actually the general
public, to work with us. We hope that many
layers of society will then just use it not only
as a repository for information, but as a way
to make new knowledge, which previously
they have never been able to do.”
The website of the European Environment Agency:
www.eea.europa.eu
The website of Eye on Earth: www.eyeonearth.org
Latest News Visit www.geoinformatics.com April/May 2012
17

A r t i c l e
Luxembourg’s INSPIRE Geoportal
An INSPIRED Country
One area where Luxembourg is excelling is in complying with the Infrastructure for Spatial Information
in Europe (INSPIrE) Directive. For its INSPIrE geoportal, a number of different software solutions are used,
in order to translate disparate geographic data into the INSPIrE standards. Luxembourg’s SDI (LSDI) was
created not solely to respond to the INSPIrE obligations but to meet the need for a more coordinated
and organized approach to a national geodatabase.
By Karen Richardson
Luxembourg's web mapping platform brings
Luxembourg's spatial data to the general public in an
easily discoverable manner.
Luxembourg is a magnet for tourists ready
to lose themselves in its medieval castles,
lush forests, highland, and valleys.
Although the country, which is nestled in the
northern Ardennes mountain range, contains
only 2,598 square kilometers and has a
population of less than half a million, the
people of Luxembourg take pride in keeping
abreast with their larger neighbors in
Europe.
One area where Luxembourg is excelling is
in complying with the Infrastructure for
Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE)
Directive. Compliance with INSPIRE, which is
required by all countries in the European
Union (EU), establishes a Europe-wide spatial
data infrastructure (SDI). INSPIRE was first
brought into force in 2007 and is a crucial
driver for the development of SDIs in Europe.
Since INSPIRE’s inception, Luxem bourg has
met all of the directive’s milestones. For its
INSPIRE geoportal, Luxem bourg uses a combination
of software, including Esri’s ArcGIS
and ArcGIS for INSPIRE, open source products,
Oracle as the database, and Safe
Software’s FME, to translate disparate geographic
data into the INSPIRE standards.
EU member states must report annually to
the INSPIRE governing body on a number of
indicators for monitoring the implementation
and use of their spatial information infrastructure.
The information Luxembourg, like
all EU member states, must provide to the
commission includes a list of spatial datasets
and services belonging to those infrastructures.
This is not an easy task, considering
the complexity and need for all data in
INSPIRE Annexes I, II, and III to work seamlessly
together.
ArcGIS for INSPIrE
INSPIRE involves the participation of organizations
that operate at several levels, including
local, municipal, and national, to “connect
the dots” by integrating the core INSPIRE
network with other national and departmental
SDIs, building new constituent networks,
and meeting the needs of a wide range of
users. Sharing, discovering, and using existing
spatial datasets and services is bringing
benefits not only to Europe and its member
18
April/May 2012

A r t i c l e
Map layers including basemap data, infrastructure and communication, land cover and environmental, biological and geological
data are all available through the Luxembourg SDI geoportal.
states through INSPIRE, but also helping individual
organizations improve their efficiency
and effectiveness, as well.
Many organizations desire a solution to
streamline their entire workflow from data
collection and quality assurance to management
and sharing of their organization’s
assets for INSPIRE. Organizations may also
want to use data and services provided by
other organizations via INSPIRE, as well as
other SDIs. These functions require a fluid
SDI that connects, selects, uses, and shares
geospatial resources provided on the web—
regardless of the SDI organizational level or
geographic scale. The challenge is to find
sustainable solutions that avoid multiple
efforts and disconnected workflows between
enterprise solutions and sharing platforms.
INSPIRE-compliant data and services. ArcGIS
for INSPIRE is fully integrated with solutions
for content sharing, application development,
information products creation, and
delivery tools for sharing, making these
accessible virtually everywhere.
Getting Their ACT Together
Luxembourg’s SDI (LSDI) was created not solely
to respond to the INSPIRE obligations but to
meet the need for a more coordinated and
organized approach to a national geodatabase.
Before implementing the LSDI, data
sharing was difficult even among closely related
administrations and services because data
was in many different formats and methods
of access. More and more public authorities
needed maps to make informed decisions,
and the demand for GIS, web mapping, and
data exchange was on the rise, pushing government
staff to create a more organized and
centralized approach to data management.
The response was the creation of an interdisciplinary
and interministerial task force to
take care of the LSDI. The group is led by the
Administration of Cadastre and Topography
(ACT), which is responsible for creating and
maintaining most of the geographic data
available in the country. This includes the
cadastral map and its subsets, the different
topographic and cartographic maps and
databases, the digital terrain model, and the
official national orthophoto layer. ACT
ensures that use of public geodatasets is optimized
for government users and there is eas-
Esri has addressed this challenge through
the release of ArcGIS for INSPIRE, a product
specifically engineered to create and share
Cadastral - Cadastral parcels and buildings for the country of Luxembourg.
Latest News Visit www.geoinformatics.com
19
April/May 2012

A r t i c l e
Mapping for Everyone
The geoportal, which is the backbone of
Luxembourg’s IT infrastructure, runs on a
farm of 60 clustered virtualized machines
and 12 physical servers. The machines are
connected to a storage area network with
12 terabytes of data available. While
Luxembourg manages many more geodatasets
than those that are INSPIRE specific,
all datasets and services that are relevant to
INSPIRE are contained in the country’s geoportal;
metadata catalog. The data can be
viewed using the geoportal map viewer,
accessed and downloaded through Open
Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC), web
services; and ordered online through the
geoportal’s shop module.
The web mapping platform brings LSDI’s
data to the general public. The portal is simple
to understand and contains basic functions
for people to use including pan, zoom,
and search. The speed of the data display
is comparable to other popular map portals
and has been a huge success —more than
1,400 hits a day, resulting in more than four
gigabytes of traffic and an average of 200
PDFs printed each day.
All metadata is managed using the online
metadata editor and validator of the ACT’s
geoportal and is compliant with INSPIRE. The
metadata editor is available to every stakeholder
so anyone can create and define the
metadata of the datasets and services being
defined, keeping the metadata in compliance
with INSPIRE.
Geoportal metadata - The geoportal is the back of Luxembourg's IT infrastructure and provides access to all datasets and services
relevant to INSPIRE.
ier access to geodata, forming a better basis
for decision making.
ACT staff wanted to use open source software
but found that by using ArcGIS for INSPIRE, the
tasks of service configuration and data model
construction had already been completed for
them. Using FME, all data could be transformed
into INSPIRE specifications and easily
loaded into ArcGIS. Using this finely tuned
solution, Luxembourg was able to meet its
legal deadline and look forward to delivering
all download and transformation services
required of it before the deadline of
November 2011. According to ACT staff,
ArcGIS for INSPIRE allowed them to implement
INSPIRE view and download services with the
least possible effort. Without ArcGIS for
INSPIRE, staff feel they may not have met their
deadline.
A Coordinated Future
Since it was first implemented, LSDI has
helped resolve many problems the country
had in creating accessible, authoritative
geodata. Today, stakeholders meet regularly
to discuss, decide, and collaborate on
how to meet obligations derived from the
INSPIRE Directive. Since the geoportal was in
place before the INSPIRE Directive was put
into force, many necessities had already
been realized and were operational. This
included INSPIRE compliance, web services,
view services, and a centralized metadata
editor, for example.
Since Luxembourg is smaller than most of its
EU counterparts, fewer political bodies have
had to be involved; this, and the implementation
of ArcGIS for INSPIRE, allowed the
country to move forward more quickly than
others. A long tradition of cooperation
among the ministries responsible for geodata
makes implementing and sharing geodata
more straightforward. For all the datasets
required thus far by INSPIRE, metadata exists
and is fully compliant. Although the datasets
themselves are not yet compliant with INSPIRE,
they are expected to be in the future, according
to the INSPIRE timeline.
Over the next several years, Luxembourg
officials will find, create, and identify new
datasets to add to the list of INSPIRE datasets
that are available; modify the datasets for
better or more complete compliance; and
continue to adapt access to the data.
Karen Richardson, Esri writer.
Links:
www.geoportal.lu
http://map.geoportal.lu
INSPIRE Web Viewer - Built with ArcGIS Viewer for Flex, users can browse Luxembourg's data holdings.
20
April/May 2012

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Bosnia and
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Bulgaria
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Croatia
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Czech Republic
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Denmark
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Estonia, Latvia,
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hnit-baltic.lt
Finland
esri-finland.com
France
esrifrance.fr
F.Y.R.O.M.
gisdata.hr
Germany
esri-germany.de
Georgia
geographic.ge
Greece and Cyprus
marathondata.gr
Hungary
esrihu.hu
Iceland
samsyn.is
Israel
systematics.co.il
Italy
esriitalia.it
Malta
geosys.com.mt
Moldova
trimetrica.com
The Netherlands
esrinl.com
Norway
geodata.no
Poland
esripolska.com.pl
Portugal
esri-portugal.pt
Romania
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Russia
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Slovak Republic
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Switzerland
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Turkey
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Ukraine
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UK/Ireland
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Copyright © 2012 Esri. All rights reserved.

C o l u m n
PPP’s and International Open Standards
The theme of Geospatial World Forum 2012, to be held in Amsterdam April
23-27, is 'Geospatial Industry & World Economy'. This column focuses on OGC
‘s activities during the event and public-private partnerships in general.
Geospatial World Forum 2012 will include a session
called “Exchange Forum – Public-Private
Partnerships for SDI”. The goal of the Exchange
Forum is to bring together industry leaders from across the
world to assess key challenges and opportunities for Public
Private Partner ships (PPP) related to Spatial Data
Infrastructures (SDIs).
This forum will feature twenty-four speakers, including four
who are actively involved with the OGC: Steven Ramage
from the OGC; Rob van de Velde, a member of the OGC
Board of Directors and also Director, Geonovum, the
Netherlands; Dr. R Siva Kumar, an OGC Director Emeritus
and also CEO, National Spatial Data Infrastructure, India;
and Ed Parsons, a member of the OGC Planning
Committee and also Geospatial Technologist, Google.
Among the main conference's Key Speakers are: David
Schell, an OGC Director Emeritus and the Founder of the
OGC; Jacqueline McGlade, an OGC Director and
Executive Director, European Environment Agency; Steve
Hagan, an OGC Director and Vice President of
Development for Server Technologies at Oracle
Corporation. In addition, Dr. Vanessa Lawrence CB, an
OGC Director and also Director General and Chief
Executive Ordnance Survey Great Britain; and Mark
Reichardt, CEO and President, OGC, will be among the
conference's Chairpersons and Moderators.
Two other OGC Directors are also speaking at the conference:
Dr. Christopher K Tucker, Chairman and Chief
Executive Officer, The MapStory Foundation and a former
geospatial software entrepreneur and executive; and
Francois Robida, Deputy Head Information Systems &
Technologies, BRGM, France.
I mention these names with their public sector and private
sector titles to illustrate that the Open Geospatial Consortium
(OGC) is a key Public-Private Partnership in the geospatial
technology industry. During my presentation I will explain
some of the activities involving the OGC, including emerging
activities specifically relating to organizations involved
in PPP, such as the European Commission Future Internet
Public-Private Partnership Programme (FI-PPP) and the Tele -
com munication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) of the United
Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
PPP’s
The OGC was founded to bring public and private sector
industry actors together to develop standards, best
practices and relationships that support improved sharing
of geospatial resources, both data and processing
resources. The speakers listed above will be talking about
the challenges the OGC has overcome and the opportunities
the OGC has successfully embraced on behalf of
its many stakeholders.
Everything the OGC does is based on consensus and collaboration,
two key elements of any Public Private
Partnership.
One of the main reasons the OGC has been so successful
is that we have focused on technical interoperability,
and technical interoperability supports other kinds of interoperability.
Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) confront the
need not only for technical interoperability, but also social,
institutional, cultural, and linguistic interoperability. SDIs
face political and educational challenges, and they face
the challenge of getting individuals to use technology differently.
These are all difficult to address, but the OGC
gives them a “leveraged lever”: The OGC's efforts to
enable technical interoperability have been highly leveraged
by the continual advances in information and communications
technology, and technical interoperability
serves as a powerful lever for solving all of the other interoperability
challenges.
Networking is key
Today, many people in our industry understand that buying,
selling and sharing geospatial information requires
open standards for software interfaces and encodings,
but this was not so obvious twenty years ago. In the mid-
1990’s, the OGC provided a forum for hypercompetitive
software vendors to sit down together and begin discussing
how they might all benefit from improved flow of
data and client/server communication. Major institutional
users of geospatial software discussed how they might all
benefit from a new way – not the market and not government
regulation – to influence the vendors' software development
plans.
Like most Public Private Partnerships, in the OGC the partners
determine the partnership's vision, mission, goals
and objectives. Board and staff serve as facilitators and
networkers.
Networking is key. The OGC has benefited from the growing
global appreciation of the value of networks: business
networks, social networks, and everything-as-a-network:
Economies, professions, bureaucracies and academic disciplines
all have nodes, connections, hubs and so on. SDIs
– and standards organizations -- depend on these human
networks as well as digital ones. As David Schell has said,
“Interoperability seems to be about the integration of information.
What it’s really about is the coordination of organizational
behavior.”
Steven Ramage, Executive Director,
Marketing and Communications Open
Geospatial Consortium (OGC).
C O L U M N
Latest News Visit www.geoinformatics.com April/May 2012
23

A r t i c l e
GNSS Update
Storm season has started
On the first of March 2012, a new EU system for forecasting space weather went live and with a new
sunspot maximum expected around 2013, some would say it was none too soon. The new system
should help satellite operators prevent damage to their satellites. The forecasts are available on the
internet (http://fp7-spacecast.eu/). Over the next two years Spacecast will try to improve the forecasts.
By Huibert-Jan Lekkerkerk
Meanwhile the strongest
solar storm in the past
eight years passed in
January 2012. The effect on GPS
was very small however. The
storm was rated at 3 on a maximum
scale of 5, nowhere near as
strong as those seen in
2000/2001.
GPS
It is rumored that the clock on one
of the two IIF satellites currently in
orbit has a problem. Although not
seen as a problem to the user (a
result of back-up clocks), it may shorten the design life of the satellite.
This could impact the budgeting for GPS. At the moment the US budget
for 2013 is under scrutiny but it seems that satellite navigation, including
GPS, is escaping cutbacks. The plan for GPS III is therefore still on
track with a first launch planned in 2014. In January this year, a contract
for EUR 181 million was awarded to Lockheed Martin for building
the third and fourth GPS III satellites securing at least the first four
satellites.
Part of the budget is research into the possibility of launching more
than a single satellite per missile launch. At the moment launch costs
are very high and launch vehicles scarce. This could potentially threaten
the renewal of GPS satellites, which, considering the age of the current
satellites, will need to happen in the years to come. A further budget
allocation is requested for the Wide Area Augmentation System as
well as for the alternative to GPS, the Alternative Positioning, Navigation
and Timing (APNT) system.
LightSquared
No money has been scheduled to go to testing. In the past year a lot
of money was spent in that area due to interference testing with
LightSquared. The situation with LightSquared has
changed considerably. A US House committee is
looking into the procedures followed by US federal
agencies in the conflict and has sent out
requests to the agencies informed to supply them
with all available information and communications.
One of the agencies under investigation is
the Federal Commission on Tele com muni ca tions
(FCC), which initially issued the permit to
LightSquared.
The FCC as well as the National Tele com muni -
Galileo control segment (source: www.esa.int)
Compass/Beidou-2 satellite (source: www.gpsworld.com)
cations and Information Admini -
stration (NTIA) have concluded that
there is at the moment no viable
means to mitigate the interference
effects. As a result, the permit
issued to LightSquared was suspended.
In the meantime, Light -
Squared is considering a lawsuit
against this latest ruling by the
FCC. At the same time the main
investors of LightSquared have
filed a lawsuit against the FCC.
Another result of the discussion
around the FCC and LightSquared
is that the US government has been
asked to develop GPS receiver standards that would prevent future
interference from similar systems operating near or adjacent to the GPS
bands.
Glonass
There is rumor of an agreement between the Russian economics ministry
and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, concerning a EUR 9
billion program for further development in the period 2012-2020.
Roscosmos an nounced in early February that it expects to spend around
EUR 500 million this year. Plans include the launch of three additional
satellites in the first half of 2012. The complete plan includes provisions
to have a total of 30 satellites in space by 2020, of which the majority
should be the next generation Glonass-K type. The Glonass-K satellite
launched last year has yet to be set active and is currently undergoing
tests.
Galileo
The Galileo ground segment is now ready and has reached one of the
most isolated places in the world, the Kerguelen Islands. However, this
will not be the loneliest place for very long as a sensor station is planned
for Jan Mayen, an island in the Arctic Ocean belonging to Norway.
Other stations are located on Reunion Island
(Indian Ocean) and New Caledonia (Pacific).
These locations with a tropical climate are more
a challenge to the electronics than that they are
to their human operators.
An agreement has been reached with OHB system
AG (Germany) to build another eight Galileo
satellites at a cost of EUR 250 million. Other
agreements ask for the modification of the Ariane
5 launcher, which will carry four satellites at a
24
April/May 2012

A r t i c l e
Sensor station at Jan Mayen (source: www.esa.int)
time. The modified launcher should be available
in the second half of 2014 and will operate
together with the Soyuz launcher currently used.
The Soyuz launcher can handle two satellites at
a time.
With the new contract, the total number of satellites
will come to 22. Together with the four ‘In
Orbit Validation’ satellites to be built this will
bring the total up to 26 satellites, almost enough
for a full constellation of 30 satellites. This is a
Top side for launch vehicle for Compass/Beidou-2 satellite
(source: www.gpsworld)
big improvement over the earlier plan to launch
only 18 satellites as a result of budget overruns.
Compass
On February 24/25 China launched yet another
Compass/Beidou-2 satellite into space. This
is the fifth geostationary satellite of the Beidou-
2 constellation.
Huibert-Jan Lekkerkerk hlekkerkerk@geoinformatics.com
is a freelance writer and trainer in the fields of positioning
and hydrography.
Latest News Visit www.geoinformatics.com April/May 2012
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A r t i c l e
Theory and Practice
Regional and local SDIs in Europe
This article considers the findings of some recent projects in Europe that highlight the importance of
regional and local spatial data infrastructures. The discussion is divided into three main sections. The
first of these sets out a theoretical framework for the evaluation of regional and local SDIs based on
the notion of multi level governance. The second reviews the findings of three recent European initiatives
that have considered some of the experiences of regional and local SDIs in Europe while the third
and final section considers the implications of these findings for future SDI development.
By Ian Masser
smaller jurisdictions should be neatly contained
within larger ones while others may
define a small segment of a larger area as is
the case with a site of special scientific interest
within a National Park. Unlike type 1 governance,
there is no limit to the number of jurisdictional
levels as each case is designed to
respond flexibly to new needs and circumstances.
Figure 1: Patchwork quilt or collage (Source: Masser 2010, 85, Esri Press)
Introduction
Spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) have traditionally
been assumed to exist at the national
level. But SDIs also have to operate at the sub
national level not only because they have to
meet local and regional needs but also
because they are an integral part of any
national SDI. The article considers the findings
of some recent projects in Europe that highlight
the importance of regional and local spatial
data infrastructures in the context in the
implementation of the INSPIRE Directive. The discussion
is divided into three main sections. The
first of these sets out a theoretical framework
for the evaluation of regional and local SDIs
based on the notion of multi level governance.
The second reviews the findings of three recent
initiatives that have considered the experiences
of regional and local SDIs in Europe
while the third and final section considers the
implications of these findings for future SDI
development.
Theoretical framework
The notion of multilevel governance provides
a useful theoretical framework for the analysis
of SDIs at the regional and local levels.
Originally developed by Liesbet Hooghe and
Gary Marks from a study of EU policy, the
concept of multilevel governance raised some
important questions about the role, power and
authority of states. In the process it identified
two different types of multi level governance
that are also appropriate for the analysis of
regional and local SDIs. The key features of
these two types are summarised in Table 1.
Type 1 governance describes jurisdictions at
a limited number of hierarchical levels. These
jurisdictions are essentially general purpose
in that they bundle together many different
functions such a housing, education, roads
and environmental affairs. Membership of
such jurisdictions is usually territorial in terms
of nation, region or community and they are
characterised by non intersecting memberships
between different jurisdictions at the
same level. In other words, a citizen may
belong to only one of these jurisdictions at
each level in the hierarchy. An important feature
of these jurisdictions is that they are tend
to be stable for periods of several decades or
more. In essence, every citizen is located in a
Russian Doll of nested jurisdictions where there
is only one relevant jurisdiction at each level
of the administrative hierarchy.
Type 2 governance, on the other hand, is composed
of specialised task specific jurisdictions
such as school catchment areas, watershed
management regions, and travel to work
areas. It is fragmented in nature with every
piece fulfilling its own function. There is no
reason with respect to type 2 governance why
This distinction between the two types of multilevel
governance is graphically illustrated in
Figure 1. This shows that the SDI that emerges
from the type 1 process will have many features
in common with a patchwork quilt of similar,
but often quite distinctive components
(Masser, 2010, p. 84-86). This is particularly
useful where SDIs participants are closely related
to administrative regions with similar functions
in the hierarchy. Type 2 governance
reflects the collage analogy which is based on
the notion of a picture that is built up from different
materials. This is most useful where the
participants such as transportation and environmental
agencies straddle administrative districts.
This is the case in most thematic SDIs.
review
A number of European initiatives have collected
information about regional and local SDI development
in the last four years. The main findings
of three of these are summarised below.
The Advanced Regional Spatial Data
Infrastructures Workshop
The primary objectives of the Advanced
Regional Spatial Data Infrastructures workshop
that was organised by the Joint Research
Centre at Ispra in May 2008, were ‘to review
the state of progress, analyse the different
organisational models established with local
and regional stakeholders, and assess the
social and economic impacts of the regional
SDIs (http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu). The
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A r t i c l e
Table 1: Types of multi level governance (Hooghe and Marks, 2003, p. 236)
work of 11 regional/subnational SDIs from
seven European countries was presented at
the workshop: Lombardy and Piedmont in
Italy, Catalonia and Navarra in Spain,
Flanders and Wallonia in Belgium, North
Rhine Westphalia and Bavaria in Germany,
Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom,
Brittany in France and Vysocina in the Czech
Republic.
The report edited by Max Craglia and
Michele Campagna on the findings of the
workshop drew attention to the regional
dimension of SDIs and showed ‘that they are
not just an intermediate level from global to
local, subservient to the higher administrative
authority...(and that) in some instances as in
Italy, Spain, Belgium and Germany they are
the key building blocks of the national SDIs,
with the national level providing a thin layer
on the regional infrastructures. The workshop
also highlighted the efforts that the regional
SDIs had made in involving local authorities
in their operations through many different
kinds of organisational arrangement which
built up and maintained relationships and trust
between different levels of government. These
levels of government are also closer to large
nummbers of potential SDI users in conection
with the operational services provided regional
and local governments.
The eSDI-Net+ project
This Thematic Network aimed to promote
cross-border dialogue and stimulate the
exchange of best practices on sub national
SDIs in Europe. It was co-funded by the
eContentplus Programme and coordinated by
the Technical University of Darmstadt in
Germany. The project started in September
2007 and ended in August 2010
(www.esdinetplus.eu).
It brought together a substantial number of SDI
players and created a range of opportunities
for the exchange of ideas and experiences
between the different stakeholders involved in
the creation of SDIs throughout Europe. In the
process it collected information about more
than 200 working solutions using a unique
SDI assessment methodology developed by
the consortium.
Between the last half of 2008 and the first half
of 2009 12 workshops were held which covered
all the European countries. These resulted
in 135 submissions for the Best Practice
Awards and twelve outstanding SDIs from 9
European countries were invited to the Awards
ceremony in Turin in November 2009.
Awards were made with respect to the following
categories: technology, (3 awards), organisational
and institutional aspects (3 awards),
user involvement (2 awards), and thematic
SDIs (4 awards).
Only three of the 12 selected SDIs had been
featured in the JRC workshop (Catalonia,
Lombardy and North Rhine Westphalia) and
only one other SDI (Rioja in Spain) related to
a similar type of administrative region. Two
others (Forth Valley in Scotland and the Centre
Regional de Information Geo grap hique for
Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur) were collaborative
ventures between a number of local
authorities. X Border GDI was a collaborative
venture involving four Dutch provinces, three
Belgian provinces and 12 districts (Kreis) from
Germany in a densely populated border
region while Portugal’s Sistema Nacionale de
Informacao Geo grafica had played an important
role in modernising local government.
Some 43 out of the original 135 submissions
fell into the thematic category. These submissions
came from various kinds of type 2 governance
structures. The National Land and
Property Gazetteer and the National Street
Gazetteer in England and Wales were highly
decentralised initiatives that provided a consistent
platform for nearly 500 local authorities
to develop various thematic applications.
The French SIG Pyrenees created bespoke
solutions for each of five groups of professional
users from agriculture, forestry, climate,
economy and spatial planning respectively
while the Danish Spatial Planning System
sought to eliminate duplication in the reporting
of the 30,000 local plans prepared by the
98 municipalities in Denmark. The last award
in this category was made to Digital Norway,
a nation-wide program for multi level governmental
co-operation with respect to the establishment,
maintenance and distribution of digital
geographic data.
The best practice awards raised some important
questions about the nature of SDIs. While
some presentations dealt with the classic case
of a SDI that has been translated from the
national level of the type 1 administrative hierarchy
to the regional level the thematic SDIs
that were limited to single application fields
fell into the type 2 category of multi level governance.
The findings of the eSDI-NET+ project also
drew attention to the importance of taking the
dynamics of SDI development into account in
future research. Many of the subnational SDIs
considered in the project began life as relatively
straightforward GIS applications which
have steadily evolved over time into SDIs.
The EUROGI/eSDI-Net+ initiative
In the closing stages of the eSDI-NET+ project
it was agreed that the European Umbrella
Organisation for Geographic Information
(EUROGI) should take over its work to ensure
the long-term sustainability of the investment
of the European Com mission. Future activities
included the maintenance of the website and
the updating of the SDI database. It was also
agreed that EUROGI should undertake further
rounds of best practice awards at about two
year intervals.
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29

A r t i c l e
The second round of awards was an noun ced
during summer 2011 and the awards ceremony
took place in Brussels in October. Some
46 submissions from 13 European countries
were made for these awards using the SDI
self assessment framework devised during the
original project. Most of these came from
regional or municipal bodies although there
were also seven submissions from thematic
SDIs. The seven award winners included three
thematic SDIs. (www.eurogi.org/downloads/file/77-presentation-eurogi-esdi-netawards-2011-chairman-jury-presentation-ianmasser.html#10)
The submissions of two of these award winners
highlight the extent to which they have
evolved since the two earlier studies. The
National address gazetteer hub for England
and Wales has replaced the two gazetteers
that appeared in the Turin awards. This
50/50 publically owned joint venture by the
Ordnance Survey of Great Britain and the
Local Government Association provides a single
definitive spatial database that resolves
more than ten years of conflict between competing
bodies. GeoBretagne has also evolved
as a partnership between public bodies at
the local, departmental and regional level in
Brittany since it was set up in 2007 that
makes geographic information available to
everyone for use without any restrictions.
Only two regional SDIs featured among the
other award winners: Brittany, and the
autonomous Portuguese region of Madeira.
The latter won the networking award for its
Infraestrutura Regional de Informacao which
involves the collaboration of a large number
of public agencies as well as the district
authorities on the island. Awards were also
made to two local SDIs: IDEZar, the SDI for
the city of Zaragoza in Spain, is the outcome
of a collaborative agreement between the city
council and the University of Zaragoza to
make the spatial data services of the city
council available for all users as part of its
open data policy, while the county of Cieszyn
SDI in Poland demonstrates what can be
done with limited resources to facilitate the
sharing of information between the county
and its 12 component districts.
The geoportal of the Swiss confederation
shared the technology award with the
Cieszyn SDI. This involved the establishment
of a publically accessible national platform
for geographic information services by the
Federal Office for Topography (swisstopo)
based on the concept of infrastructure as a
service which is based on access rather than
ownership. The sustainability category was
won by the Property Council in the Ministry
of Finance of the Dutch government who have
created a SDI for staff from eight different
organisations to facilitate the management of
government land holdings throughout the
country. This SDI provided an internal service
for more than 300 government officials.
An important outcome of the last two projects
is an online database which contains details
of 124 SDIs from the first round of submissions
and data about all 46 submissions from
the latest round (www.esdinetplus.eu/
best_practice/database.html). These provide
a valuable resource for further analysis.
Evaluation
The findings of this analysis suggest that that
the theory of multi level governance offers a
useful framework for the evaluation of regional
and local SDIs and that the distinction
between Type 1 and Type 2 types of governance
explains the difference between SDIs
based on administrative areas and thematic
SDIs. The properties of each type of gover-
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A r t i c l e
nance are worth examining in more detail with reference to their impacts
on SDI development.
The most striking feature of the regional and local SDIs reviewed above
is their diversity in practice. Each SDI reflects the cultural diversity of the
organisations that are involved and the institutional environment that
surrounds them. There are also important differences in the emphasis
that is given to particular SDI components in practice. Some SDIs are
very much technology driven while others place greater on facilitating
user involvement. Other criteria identified during the eSDI-Net+ selection
process included sustainability, networking facilities, and organisational
characteristics. The lists of award winners also include a SDI that
straddles the borders of three different countries and a SDI that is only
available to government officials from a limited number of government
departments via an intranet facility.
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There are also considerable differences between the thematic SDIs
which are linked to specific applications. The range of potential applications
in the SDIs reviewed above includes fields such as addressing,
agriculture, climate, economy, emergency management, forestry and
spatial planning and this is by no means an exhaustive list.
Another important feature of the SDIs under review is their dynamism.
According to the theory of multi level governance this is something that
might be expected in the case of thematic SDIs but it is also a feature
of more conventional SDIs as can seen from the example of
GeoBretagne. The size of the geographic areas that are involved also
varies considerably. The population of North Rhine Westphalia (more
than 18 million), for example, is more than that of the majority of the
27 national member states in the European Union.
Given the findings of the analysis it is also necessary to address the
question as to what constitutes a SDI. Most current definitions follow
more or less along the lines of that in the SDI Cookbook (www.gsdidocs.org/GSDIWiki/index.php/Main_Page)produced
by the Global
Spatial Infrastructure Association. This states that ‘the term “Spatial Data
Infrastructure” (SDI) is often used to denote the relevant base collection
of technologies, policies and institutional arrangements that facilitate the
availability of and access to spatial data. The SDI provides a basis for
spatial data discovery, evaluation, and application for users and
providers within all levels of government, the commercial sector, the nonprofit
sector, academia and by citizens in general.’
All the SDIs reviewed meet the requirements of the general definition with
one possible exception. The SDI developed by the Dutch Property Council
provides only an internal service for government officials. However, it
can be argued that this SDI should be included as it facilitates the work
of more than 300 officials from eight different organisations.
The findings of the analysis suggest that longevity is a useful indicator
of a successful SDI as some of the reviewed SDIs have developed
over periods of twenty years or more. This points to the need
for more case studies that trace the factors that led to the evolution
of particular SDIs over time and in some cases force them to reinvent
themselves to respond to changing circumstances. The findings
of these studies could make an important contribution to the implementation
of the INSPIRE Directive.
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Ian Masser retired as Professor of Urban Planning at ITC in the Netherlands in 2002.
Educated in geography and town planning at Liverpool University Ian received his PhD in 1975 and a LittD
in 1993 from the same University. His most recent books, ‘GIS worlds: creating spatial data
infrastructures (ESRI Press 2005) and ‘Building European SDIs’ (ESRI Press 2007, second edition 2010),
deal with SDI policy issues, governance and institutional networking.
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RIEGL LMS GmbH, Austria RIEGL USA Inc. RIEGL Japan Ltd.
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A r t i c l e
Getting up early to scan
Early wake up call
The Kintai Bridge – in Japanese Kintai-kyo is a historical wooden arch bridge, in the city of Iwakuni,
Japan. The bridge was built in 1673, spanning the beautiful Nishiki river in a series of five wooden
arches.
By Stuart Proctor
Declared a National Treasure in 1922,
Kikkou Park, which includes the
Kintai bridge, is one of the most popular
tourist destinations in Japan. Tourists
request online visits to the bridge as well.
The only practical way to capture this historical
reality is using a scanner; Topcon’s GLS-
1500.
Scanning the bridge and its details has been
a project that took time. It has been hard to
measure accurate data as the many people
cossing it cause obstructions and vibrations.
The only way to ensure minimum disturbance
is by scanning from 5 o’clock in the
morning until the first tourists arrive; repeating
this a several days in a row. ScanMaster
then processed the data quickly resulting in
a fantastic 3D model of Kintai Bridge. The
model can now be seen on various tourist
websites.
First published in InPosition, September 2011,
www.inposition.eu.
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April/May 2012

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A r t i c l e
A Pilot Study
UAV Flight over Singapore
For the first time Singaporean authorities have given permission for a photogrammetric UAV mapping/modeling
flight over an important area of the city. In the context of the SEC-FCL (Future Cities
Laboratory) project a pilot study is conducted with the goal to generate a high quality 3D city model of
the NUS campus from UAV images. 800 images were needed to cover the area. Data processing is in
progress.
By Armin Gruen
UAVs – Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have
recently become a strong focus of attention,
since fairly inexpensive platforms,
navigation and control devices and sensors for
instantaneous digital data production have
become available.
Nowadays many groups worldwide are
engaged in UAV- related R&D. Beyond that,
these devices are increasingly finding their way
into a great variety of practical applications.
Low altitude UAV systems are small, of low to
moderate cost, very flexible in terms of use and
image acquisition (vertical, oblique and quasiterrestrial
imaging modes) and the images are
instantly available for on-line processing. Also,
the ability to fly below a layer of clouds makes
them usable in cases where other platforms with
optical sensors like standard surveying aircraft
will fail. They constitute thus a most flexible data
acquisition platform.
There are many diverse systems in use, ranging
from fairly big, heavy, long-range and thus
expensive drones to small, inexpensive platforms.
For obtaining flight permissions a number
of factors like weight, size, radio frequency,
remote control equipment, experience and
certifications of operators, redundancies, safety
measures during flight, object distance from
next airport and military facilities, etc. play a
key role. In general it can be said that the lighter
(and thus less dangerous) the platform, the more
readily permissions are given. Sometimes it
takes a long time to obtain those permissions.
We have experienced cases where permissions
from up to six agencies/groups had to be
obtained. Singapore ranks among the more
restrictive countries worldwide as far as access
to certain kind of geodata is concerned.
Falcon-8, ready for take-off, in
front of the CRISP satellite
image receiving station
Simulation Platform
The author is engaged as Principal
Investigator on the Simulation Platform of the
Future Cities Laboratory (FCL). FCL was estab-
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April/May 2012

A r t i c l e
Image block as produced with UAV (800 images)
data about the city in innovative and dynamic
ways.
NUS area of UAV image coverage
Aerial image data collection
These tasks require a vast amount of very
diverse data, which in many cases may even
not be available yet. In this context of data
acquisition our UAV activities must be viewed.
We selected the Campus of NUS (National
University of Singapore) as a pilot project for
demonstrating our modelling capabilities and
also using it as a testbed for new algorithmic
developments. Since neither aerial images nor
LiDAR data are accessible over Singapore
and satellite image data is not of sufficient resolution
for our purposes we decided to employ
a UAV for aerial image data collection.
lished by ETH Zurich and Singapore’s
National Research Foundation (NRF). It is run
under the auspices of the Singapore-ETH
Centre for Global Environmental Sustain ability
(SEC). Collaborating academic partners
include the National University of Singapore
(NUS), Nanyang Technological University
(NTU), and the École Poly tech nique Fédérale
de Lausanne (EPFL). The Future Cities
Laboratory (FCL) is a trans-disciplinary
research centre focusing on urban sustainability
in a global frame. It is the first research programme
of the Singapore-ETH Centre for
Global Environmental Sustain ability (SEC). It
is home to a community of over 100 PhD, postdoctoral
and Professorial researchers working
on diverse themes related to future cities and
environmental sustainability.
The Simulation Platform, as one of nine
research modules, provides for services and
research for future planning environments. It
supports design and decision making processes
and examines how to effectively deal with
the growing volume of urban-related data. It
investigates new techniques and methods for
the acquisition, organization, retrieval, interaction,
and visualization of such data. It will
propose techniques for designers, decisionmakers
and stakeholders to access necessary
As platform we selected the Falcon-8 octocopter
from Ascending Technologies, a system
which had proven its suitability under other
project conditions and which was available
on very short notice. The system comes with
autopilot and stabilizer, such that we can produce
very accurately overlapping images
even under non-ideal conditions. The camera
offered by the company is a Sony NEX-5 with
16 mm fix lens, and a 1.11”
CMOS chip delivering 14.2 Mpixel. Figure 1
shows the Falcon-8, ready for take-off, in front
of the big satellite antenna of the CRISP receiving
station. CRISP is the Center for Remote
Latest News Visit www.geoinformatics.com April/May 2012
35

A r t i c l e
UAV image over NUS sports facilities
Imaging, Sensing and Processing of NUS,
receiving various high-resolution satellite
images. For other areas of Singapore we also
used high-resolution satellite stereo images
(IKONOS, WorldView-2) for producing 3D
city models.
Figure 2a shows the project area, Figure 2b
the photogrammetric block layout, as flown.
The project area consists of a topographically
significant hilly structure with about 75 meter
height differences, some very high-rise buildings
(beyond 60 m above ground) and a
great variety of different objects (buildings,
roads, water tanks, swimming pool, sports
facilities, strong tropical vegetation, etc). The
total block of 1.6 sqkm may not sound like a
big area, but in light of the given constraints
we had to collect ca. 800 images, taken in
form of 42 local sub-blocks, consisting of maximal
5x5 images each. These constraints
were:
• Flying height above ground not more than
150 m (communication contact and agency
ruling). Given a camera constant of 16
mm this resulted in an image scale of 1:
9500 and a ground pixel size (footprint)
of 5 cm.
• Stay within a ca. 200 m horizontal radius
(communication contact, avoidance of disturbing
signals, avoidance of obstruction
of line-of-sight)
• Battery life less than 20 minutes. In fact,
for safety reasons we never went beyond
15 minutes flying time (including takeoff/climbing
and landing)
• For occlusion avoidance the large height
differences (buildings, trees) caused us to
fly 80% forward and 60% sideward overlap.
With an image ground coverage of
216x144 sqm this resulted in local blocks
of a maximal size of 25x25 images (5
strips at 5 images each). Thus we collected
42 such sub-blocks.
The CMOS sensor-based images turned all
out to be fine with the exception that the Sony
lens suffered under relatively large colour
refraction, causing non-linear un-sharpness
towards the image perimeters and under
strong unsharpness effects in the image corners
at small f-stop numbers (e.g. at f/3.5).
Figures 3a and b show images over the
sports facilities and the University Hall. Since
we had very short exposure times (1/500
sec) even flying tennis balls can be distinguished.
After image acquisition we are now entering
the phase of data processing, which will consist
of the stages GCP (Ground Control Point)
determination by GPS, tie point measurement
by image matching, geo-referencing by bundle
triangulation, semi-automated model generation
by CyberCity Modeler, including
DTM generation, texture mapping and computer
object integration (e.g. for bushes,
trees, etc.).
Outcomes
In summary, our experiences indicate that if
it has to be flown under the mentioned constraints
even this relatively small area caused
too many take-off standpoints, local flights
and too many images. For general modeling/mapping
projects the small image format
(14 Mpixel compared to 529 Mpixel of
a conventional aerial image) is still a serious
setback. This factor 38 in the number of
images is an unpleasant fact, which can
only be overcome if higher flying heights
can be used and if ground resolution of the
UAV images is sacrificed.
We also experienced a number of problems
with the Falcon-8 (collecting some images
without command, failure of automatic camera
exposure towards the end of the mission,
some gross errors in GPS coordinates,
UAV image over University Hall
etc.), which shows that this is still not a very
robust and reliable technology and needs
more time to mature.
Therefore we should not consider UAV platforms
as being competitive to standard aerial
imagery per se, but rather as a complimentary
device, which in many well-defined
cases (small area size, lack of availability
of surveying aircraft, lack of accessibility,
cost savings, etc.) may be clearly advantageous.
Also, recently the interest in security-related
applications and disaster monitoring has
grown considerably. During a crisis (e.g.
industrial accidents, natural disasters like forest
fires, floodings, tsunamis, earthquakes),
there is an urgent need for on-line and realtime
information on the actual situation.
UAVs are excellent devices to be used for
that.
In addition we also have experienced great
success with using UAVs in class work. The
Bachelor and Master students of the
Geomatics curriculum of ETH Zurich have
been using this technology in regular labwork.
They can follow in a hands-on fashion
the whole process of flight planning,
image data acquisition and data processing.
They do have control about all steps of
the process. This has an enormous educational
value and serves as a motivation
booster.
Prof. em. Dr. Armin Gruen, Principal Investigator on the Simulation
Platform of the SEC-FCL project (Singapore-ETH Centre for Global
Environmental Sustainability - Future Cities Laboratory), 1 CREATE
Way, CREATE Tower, Singapore, agruen@geod.baug.ethz.ch
The Future Cities Laboratory (FCL): www.futurecities.ethz.ch
36
April/May 2012

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A r t i c l e
A Location-planning Case Study
Geomarketing
Geomarketing analyses yield insights into the factors that determine a company's success, the exploitation
of regional potential and locations that offer favorable conditions. How this works is explained
below using the example of a customer of ours who is a brand-name manufacturer and retailer. The use
of geomarketing to optimize our customer's branch network involved 60 stores in Spain and was subsequently
extended to include five additional countries in which GfK GeoMarketing’s customer is active.
By Oliver Giehsel
Analysis of success factors
The operating costs of a location are immense: Expenses related
to rent and three employees for a retail space of only 30m 2
amount to approximately EUR 145,000 per year, or much higher
for a top retail location. Additionally, the rental contract period is
usually ten years. A poorly performing location can therefore cost a
company an enormous sum over this period and consume resources
that could be channeled into better locations.
Methodology:
• Analysis and evaluation of existing locations
• Identification of the factors most critical to success
• Use of resulting insights to better manage the branch network
(expansion, consolidation, relocation) and outfit the various
branch sites.
Our customer manufactures high-quality brand-name products that
he sells in retail spaces overseen by specialty consultants in highquality
shopping venues. However, the 60 stores in Spain exhibit
widely varying turnover performance. The customer therefore wants
to determine the most important success factors for existing and future
locations in order to sustain and build upon his leading position in
a very competitive market.
GfK GeoMarketing was charged with the task of evaluating the existing
locations and defining success factors and suitable regions for
new locations. The customer gave us access to the following information
to facilitate this task:
• Addresses and sales areas of the locations
• Turnover data for each branch location
• Number of sales personnel/consultants and length of time with
the company
• Information on purchasing frequency, sales receipts and postcodes
of customer loyalty card holders
• Store locations and operating hours
We imported this data into our geomarketing solution RegioGraph
and carried out a geographic and statistical analysis. This resulted
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A r t i c l e
in the following insights into the
most important success factors of
the stores:
• Smaller sales areas generate
less turnover per m 2 – however,
the average sales area productivity
typically stops increasing at
a sales area threshold of 35m 2 .
• There is a clear correlation
between the number of sales personnel/consultants
and the
amount of generated turnover as
well as the experience level of
the personnel (i.e., length of
employment).
• An analysis of the geographic
distribution of customers reveals
that the average distance to the
preferred branch location is 1 2
km – beyond this distance the
number of customers quickly
decreases to 0. However, the
distance to a branch location
does not impact visitation frequency or the average amount of
turnover generated by customers.
Catchment area analysis
for each store according to this
information, offering sales personnel
at over-represented locations a
transfer to a new location. The statistical
reduction of the number of
sales consultants per store from 3.4
to 2.7 yields an annual per-store
saving of EUR 21,000 with regard
to personnel costs (calculated based
on an average sales consultant
income of EUR 30,000). Taking into
account all 60 stores, it amounts to
an annual saving of EUR 1.26 mil.,
which can be channeled into the
running of 13-15 new locations.
Tapping new potential
The next step involved locating
unexploited potential for the company:
A geomarketing approach
was again used to select suitable
new locations for expansion. GfK
GeoMarketing analyzed the statistical
trends and relationships in the vicinity of particularly successful
branch locations.
Even these initial insights revealed enormous optimization potential
with regard to the planning of new branch locations and managing
of existing locations.
Savings potential
In the future, our customer only wants to rent locations with a sales
area between 30 and 35m 2 : The analysis revealed that it's not worth
seeking out larger spaces than this and that smaller spaces have too
little drawing power. The current average shop space among the
60 stores is 37 m 2 . If this space can be reduced to an average of
34 m 2 over the course of the coming years, it would result in rentbased
savings of EUR 5,400 per store, assuming a mid-range rent
of EUR 150/month/m 2 . This amounts to an annual rental savings of
EUR 324,000 for all 60 locations (over the course of the ten-year
rental contract period, this corresponds to approximately EUR 3.2
mil.). The ideal number of sales consultants for a store with the optimal
retail space of 34 m 2 is three. The customer intends to outfit each
store with at least two sales personnel with many years of experience.
The company can now adjust the number of sales personnel
• The retail factors of the locations in question were
examined.
This revealed that proximity to multiple well-known brand-name clothing
companies was a success factor – the presence of at least five
brand-name companies within a walking distance of seven minutes
had a positive effect on our customer’s sales area productivity. The
first success criterion with regard to potential locations is therefore
achieving proximity to the greatest number of well-known clothing
manufacturers within a walking distance of seven minutes from a
given store site. Further insight into the critical success factors for the
branch locations was gained by taking into account the GfK Retail
Turnover values for the postcodes in question. This market data study
reveals the regional turnover for stationary retail. Together these factors
led to the conclusion that our customer has limited drawing
power of his own accord and must therefore exploit potential in
already successful retail locations. If the stipulated per-store coverage
and profit margins were to be achieved, it became clear that
locations should only be established in cities with more than
100,000 inhabitants or retail turnover that is at least 20 percent
Latest News Visit www.geoinformatics.com
39
April/May 2012

A r t i c l e
above the national average.
This served as the first selection
criterion for new locations.
The next step entailed
filtering for cities in which a
new location would not occasion
a cannibalization effect
among already existing
branch locations in nearby
large cities. The basis of this
filtering process was an evaluation
of the drawing power
of existing and potential locations
using the geomarketing
software RegioGraph and the
integrated Huff model, which
allowed for a gravity analysis
of the locations under
review.
• The pre-selection of
possible locations within
a given city entailed a
socio-demographic comparison
of the most successful
existing locations
with the potential locations.
The socio-demographic profile
of the successful existing
locations revealed aboveaverage
purchasing power
within a 12 km catchment
area of each branch location
as well as a younger average
age that corresponds to our
customer's target group of
women aged 20 to 35yrs.
The potential locations were
then ranked according to the degree to
which they fulfilled this ideal socio-demographic
profile. Preferred locations within
the cities under review were identified at the
street-segment level using GfK Geo Marke -
ting's socio-demographic data.
• Our customer was then able to
begin searching for suitable retail
real estate objects in the pre-defined
selection areas. GfK GeoMarketing
then carried out on-site evaluations
of these locations in order to assess
their long-term suitability as well as
additional site- and object-specific
criteria.
Success criteria such as the layout of a given
real estate object, the ease with which customers
can move toward and through the
location and the potential threat posed by
competitors in the immediate vicinity can
only be evaluated on-site by experienced
retail and real estate experts. As a final step,
GfK Purchasing Power 2012 Spain
our customer received a thoroughly re -
searched and detailed evaluation of each
selected location, complete with recommendations
for how to proceed.
Given the annual costs of an optimal location
of approximately EUR 142,000 (rental
of retail space of 34 m 2 and personnel costs
for 2.7 employees), it became clear that
focusing exclusively on locations with high
potential would substantially increase the
return-on-investment and average turnover
for all branch locations.
It's harder to foresee the long-term outcome
of the company's market strategy. However,
it's clear that only companies that strategically
plan their branch networks with an
emphasis on long-term sustainability will
have a chance of succeeding in a competitive
market. Geomarketing is much more
than an optimization tool – in fiercely competitive
markets, a geomarketing approach
helps companies secure continued growth
by minimizing investment risks.
Geomarketing has companywide
applications
The objective data on the available potential
in the vicinity of the branch locations
also provides vital support for the company's
controlling and marketing divisions,
serving as a point of reference for optimizing
all sales and marketing activities.
Applications range from setting realistic
turnover goals for each location, determining
fair performance goals for employees
and targeting advertising and mailings within
the catchment areas of each branch location
to planning specialized point-of-sale
campaigns at selected locations with a high
target group affinity.
Oliver Giehsel, retail consultant, GfK GeoMarketing
Oliver Giehsel has been with GfK GeoMarketing since 2008.
He advises retail customers with regard to expansion endeavors
both in Germany and throughout Europe.
Tel. +49 (0)7251 9295165
o.giehsel@gfk-geomarketing.com
Internet: www.gfk-geomarketing.com/retail
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A r t i c l e
The Future of Navigation
The Navigation and Location
While TomTom is best known for portable navigation devices (PND), the company also delivers software,
content and services across automotive OEM and smartphone platforms. TomTom’s strategy is
centered around the insight that navigation use cases will be ‘fit for use’ and may not always be
device specific. For example, an individual may use their built-in OEM system for daily use, a PND for
extended driving in a different vehicle and a smartphone application for ad hoc journeys. All of these
use cases are complementary to one another – it won’t necessarily be the case that one form factor
will ‘win’ at the expense of the others.
By Pete Davie and Philippe van den Berge
Navigation and vehicle information
is accessed and shared through the
cloud across multiple platforms:
the desktop computer, the smartphone
and the vehicle.
The ecosystem gets more interesting
when we consider how these different
devices can interact with each other.
For example, a user may plan their route
while in front of their desktop computer at
home and then send that route to their invehicle
or smartphone device. Or a user
may perform a local search function on their
smartphone but then send the results of the
search to their PND or car device for routing.
As navigation evolves to include even
more detailed pedestrian and indoor content,
the use case may include routing in the
car until the vehicle is parked and then
seamlessly ‘handing-off’ the route to a smartphone
app to guide the user to a final destination
in a mall or an airport.
The success of this ecosystem is dependent
on several factors. Connectivity, both deviceto-device
and via a server (cloud-based), is
a fundamental requirement – both for the
ability to offer live services, and for interaction
within the ecosystem.
The Smartphone
Because smartphones are always connected,
they have an immediate advantage
(although some barriers like dead zones,
roaming costs, etc. do exist). In addition to
connectivity, smartphones offer the benefits
of portability, convenience, and easy integration
with other apps on the phone such
as calendars, social networks and other
location based services. The downside to
smartphones is that the navigation experience
can easily be interrupted by all the
other things we use our phones for (including
phone calls!). Additionally, the smaller
screen size and smaller speaker can be
drawbacks for some users.
The PND
The obvious advantage of the PND is it is a
device dedicated to one thing – delivering
an optimal navigation experience. With a
PND, distractions are minimized, screen
size is optimized, speakers are of a higher
quality, and easy to use windscreen mounts
are included. If the device is connected, the
same live services available on smartphone
platforms are also available to the PND user.
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A r t i c l e
Ecosystem
The TomTom app for the iPhone
and iPad provides smart and easy
navigation on a smartphone or
tablet, offering portability,
convenience and integration
with other apps.
The OEM Solution
The OEM solution builds on the PND advantages
but delivers them in a solution integrated
in the vehicle – no mount on the
windshield, no battery issues to worry
about, always on, quick GPS fixes. Addi -
tionally, the software can be deeply integrated
with the vehicle drive train for
advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS)
functionality, eco-routing, etc.
Hybridisation
Recently we’ve started to see a hybridisation
of form factors. Fast cycle times and
innovation on consumer devices are forcing
OEMs to think differently. The PND is a platform
tailored to giving a consumer the best
possible navigation experience. It is easy to
use, upgradable and portable. The benefits
a PND maker can bring to the car are clear:
specialized knowledge of the navigation
experience, maps, navigation software and
services. Car manufacturers have discovered
these benefits and are developing builtin
navigation systems which are better
aligned to the current offering in the consumer
electronics industry, often in partnership
with navigation specialists.
Smartphones are a bit of a different story.
The direct benefits of allowing smartphones
to communicate with built-in navigation or
infotainment systems are less evident.
Smartphones are extremely feature rich,
allowing a consumer to access a wide
range of applications. OEMs are asking
themselves which features will add value
to the in-car experience. Clearly music and
navigation are regarded as essential and
therefore often found well integrated in the
infotainment system. The question remains:
what can a smartphone bring to the driver
that an infotainment system cannot, should
not or will not It is safe to assume that car
manufacturers can bring any functionality to
the car, but at what price If music and navigation
are becoming native applications on
infotainment systems, then perhaps the
added value of solutions like Mirrorlink are
restricted to a series of mostly less relevant
applications.
Let’s take a closer look at Mirrorlink, a solution
that is currently gaining traction as a
possible contender for an industry standard
on how to complement infotainment systems
with smartphone functionalities. Mirrorlink
facilitates a connection between the in-car
system and a smartphone, allowing an OEM
to control the access of smartphone features.
The success of Mirrorlink will be determined
by several factors. Perhaps one of the most
important is adoption of the technology by
both OEMs and smartphone manufacturers.
Secondly, seamless communication between
the two is paramount in the user-experience.
It is this communication that has the potential
to become a thorn for smartphone integration
solutions such as Mirrorlink, as not
one consumer would be willing to lose the
smartphone user-experience by porting the
screen on a car HMI and therefore sacrificing
functionalities.
There are two additional key contributions
that smartphones can make in the car. First
and foremost is bringing connectivity to the
car, perhaps helping the car industry to
solve the dilemma of how to bring connectivity
to the car without high costs, for the
OEM or the driver. Using the driver’s data
plan is not attractive because network
providers are struggling to keep up with
data usage and are therefore looking into
either limiting data usage or using aggressive
pricing strategies to limit it. Secondly,
with connectivity come new business models
and revenue streams such as dynamic
map updates and other navigation related
content. The key question here is who will
have control of this part of the connected
car eco-system
The added value smartphones can bring to
the car might be limited due to current smartphone
adoption or the speed at which the
car industry can adopt standards like
Mirrorlink. The convergence of consumer
electronics and the automotive industry will
bring forward new and exciting products
that will only enhance the in-car experience
for drivers hopefully making it more enjoyable
and safe.
The Future of Navigation
The future of navigation is right now. As navigation
becomes ubiquitous, the eco-system
Latest News Visit www.geoinformatics.com April/May 2012
43

A r t i c l e
informed and safe way in touch with all
those around you. The standard of navigation
has been set, but being able to incorporate
everything relevant to the driving
experience in real-time in a way that does
not compromise the user-experience will set
the standard for the future of navigation.
Figure 3: Live services, including real time traffic, provide drivers with a more informed experience.
of connected content and services people
use for navigation will ripen and bring exciting
new business models. Navigation has
impacted the life of many drivers, at first by
allowing drivers to find their destinations
without getting lost, but as the industry
evolves navigation will not only be about
getting from A to B, but doing it in an
With over 20 years of providing the best
navigation experience, TomTom is uniquely
positioned in being able to offer content
(maps), services (traffic) and software (navigation,
routing) across multiple platforms,
either in bundled solutions or as standalone
products and services. Easy integration of
these components into a broader navigation
and location ecosystem will be a unique selling
point and competitive advantage for
TomTom as the company continues to innovate
and execute on its goal of delivering
the best navigation experience regardless
of the platform.
Pete Davie, Product Manager at TomTom
Philippe van den Berge, Product Manager at TomTom
Internet: www.tomtom.com
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April/May 2012

A r t i c l e
A New but Delicate Geographic Data-Source
VGI as Big Data
APIs from popular geo-social applications like Foursquare provide big data with geographical context.
These data – also termed Volunteered Geographic Information – are a valuable information base for
real-time geodemographics for user profiling. But big data are not always better data. With regard to
geodemographic analysis, big geographical data hold obstacles in terms of reliability and validity that
require a more comprehensive understanding of the genesis of VGI.
By Florian Fischer
What is Big Data
In recent years databases in enterprises
have grown bigger and bigger. Mobile
phones tracking and logging their users’
behavior, social media applications and an
increasing number of interconnected sensors,
create more and more data in increasingly
shorter periods of time. This valuable
data is called big data. It has been one of
the hot buzzwords in 2012 so far. In earlier
years it has been a painstaking and costly
task for companies to gather information
about their customers. Now big data provides
a plethora of data that is too big and
moves too fast for their conventional enterprise
databases. However, big data provides an
information base that can reveal insights into
user behavior and the world in which the customers’
needs and moves are highlighted. As
with consumer analytics, big data might
enable new products and functionalities, such
as Amazons’s famous book recommendation
functionality provided by analysis of its internal
purchases database.
Users help maintaining TomTom’s road database with MapShare
VGI as Big Data
Many geoweb applications are valuable
sources for big data with a geographical context,
which is particularly interesting for geodemographic
analysis in industry, science and
administration. The combination of geodatabases,
geolocation technologies and
mobile media advances the collection of big
locational data about anyone, anywhere and
at any time. Companies use geodemographics
for analyzing and visualizing customers,
target groups and lucrative sales regions for
their goods and services. Mostly big geographic
data is user-generated geographic
data that is incorporated into institutionalized
processes and frequently defined by the term
Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). In
this case users are considered as volunteers
who help mapping agencies to collect geographic
information. This way of crowdsourcing
achieves a cost-reduction for the maintenance
of geo-datasets of public mapping institutions
and private companies. These
organizations have recognized the potential
of VGI and attempt to attract volunteer users.
TomTom MapShare and Google MapMaker
are prominent examples.
Shifting the Scope of
Geodemographics
Concurrently the APIs of Twitter, Foursquare,
Gowalla, Flickr, Facebook Places, Google
Places and Yelp provide access to extensive
geographical datasets that have been generated
by their users. User activities consign geographic
data that involve patterns of behavior,
opinions and preferences, everyday
sensitivities and specific needs and distresses.
The use of this type of geodata shifts the scope
of geodemographics from a rather static view
of households to a real-time view of the individual,
location and action-space, enabling
the anticipation of consumer needs and realtime
consumer response. In this case VGI
becomes a commodity as its social patterns
of production are analyzed and applied for
social and economic decision-making processes
and the data-driven mass customization
of goods and services.
Not-so-Volunteered Geographic
Information actually
One might still speak about VGI in this
case, however I assume that the users’ actual
intention is to communicate, navigate or
find a friend or a restaurant, and not to
maintain a dataset for their own geodemographic
profiling by third parties. Thus
terming it involuntary geographic information
(iVGI) would be more appropriate.
And that is the crux of the matter. With
regard to the quality requirements on geodata
aspects of mapping institutions, the
very nature of the production of VGI arouses
irritation and mistrust amongst many GIS
practitioners who are concerned with certainty,
accuracy and inferior map quality. But the
enormous potential of VGI leads to an increasing
acceptance by practitioners. In the last few
years they have begun to address issues like
coverage, quality and credibility of VGI in
order to advance the results of analysis. While
quality assessment of data aspects is essential
to supplement the activities of mapping institutions,
there is a more profound need for understanding
VGI data and its genesis for reliable
results in the context of geodemographic analysis.
VGI is a biased source of information
which is produced by interest-specific communities
and their conceptions of space.
A New but Delicate Data-Source
It becomes apparent that the arbitrary use of
VGI datasets for geodemographic analysis on
general patterns of spatial behavior is not a
matter of validity, regarding the requirements
of representativeness and generalizability of
standardized empirical research. Distilled
from one or more geo-social applications, VGI
datasets rather reflect the characteristics of
specific online communities of interest but do
not necessarily fulfill the qualities of a random
population sample. Due to the lack of knowledge
about the motives, conditions, contexts
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April/May 2012

A r t i c l e
Tourist density and flows calculated from Flickr database
and socio-economic characteristics of the
users, VGI datasets hardly allow for a reliable
interpretation of who and what the analysis
represents, let alone a generalization. Equally,
this is an issue of big data in general, as
Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford indicate:
“claims to objectivity and accuracy are misleading.”
This representational gap arises
from a de-contextualization in the course of
transforming geo-social cooperation in online
communities into VGI datasets. The primary
intentions of the users are not to become a volunteer
for data collection but to share, communicate
and collaborate with other users. But
a pure focus on the data aspects will ignore
the rich human element. It leads to a context
deficit for VGI data that hampers the interpretation
of geodemographic analyses and
requires an understanding of the properties
and limits of a dataset. Therefore, we need to
know where data is coming from. We should
be less concerned with data accuracy and
more concerned with the contextual conditions
by which the user generates VGI.
Not an Issue of Data Collection
Solely
Thus a demand arises for a comprehensive
understanding of the volunteer in VGI. So far,
research concerning motivation has provided
some insight into the little-known user for reliable
computational geodemographic analyses.
However, it is restricted to the understanding
of what users’ collect, who collects
in terms of demographics and socio-economic
characteristics, and what is the individual
gratification for collecting VGI.
Thereby, current VGI research employs a concept
of the user as a producer that oversimplifies
the complexity of human dealings with
geo-social applications. Current VGI research
is too limited to issues of data-collection, since
the practice of VGI emerges from various individual,
social and cultural entanglements.
Hence, the conceptualization of geographic
information should be central in order to
expand research from issues of data-collection.
VGI is created outside the professional practices
of the GIS sector but uses its technological
foundation. The introduction of social software
has brought about a broad
differentiation in the characteristics of geographic
information by the numerous everyday
interests and contexts of GIS lay users.
Practices of production are not administratively
institutionalized but shaped by individual
negotiations, authority and interests in the
online community. Norms and rules emerge
from the bottom up on the structural level of
an online community. They are often rather
informal but are a subject of negotiation
amongst the users.
Considering VGI a Perpetually
Unfinished Artifact
For this reason, the production of VGI
becomes a side effect of ongoing networked
geo-communication between users and a perpetually
unfinished artifact. Scholars from various
disciplines propose to understand geomedia
as communicative practice and not just
by means of an information processing technology
or a pure sender-recipient relationship.
Beyond that, the challenge to engage with networked
geo-communication as a whole and
how people construct meaning from the use
of geomedia, denotes an approach towards
a social theory of geographic information.
That said this change of thinking appears to
be essential in order to understand the genesis
of VGI for reliable analyses and its underlying
geospatial ontologies for decision making
processes in science, administration and
industry.
Florian Fischer, GIS Editor and Research Assistant at the Austrian
Academy of Sciences, Institute for GIScience in Salzburg, Austria. He
has a blog with small essays on the Geographic Information Society,
Locative Media, Geobrowsers and the like:
www.ThePointOfInterest.net
Links:
Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford (2011):
Six Provocations for Big Data.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1926431_code
1210838.pdfabstractid=1926431&mirid=1
Fabien Girardin (2008): 3D geospatial visualization of tourist density
and flows.
www.girardin.org/fabien/tracing/flows/
Urban Tick Project at CASA.
www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/casa
Movement Tracking via Twitter at CASA
Latest News Visit www.geoinformatics.com April/May 2012
47

C o l u m n
Mobile – Transforming the Work Place
The mobile market remains consumer led. The various app stores are dominated
by gaming apps. Just like in the early days of the Internet, business
has been slow to adopt mobile technology. Yet mobile has the potential to
transform the work place. Let’s look at some ways mobile will improve how
we work.
Matt Sheehan is Principal and Senior
Developer at WebmapSolutions. The company
build location focused mobile applications
for GIS, mapping and location
based services (LBS). Matt can be
reached at matt@webmapsolutions.com.
C O L U M N
Simplifying Work Flows
The mobile revolution now under way is beginning to
transform the geospatial mobile market. Hardware
prices have dropped dramatically. Android, iOS are
vastly improved mobile platforms. And custom geospatial
mobile apps are now being written which simplify
work flows.
Canned application like ArcPad and CartoPack are
excellent software packages, offering a complex array
of mobile functionality. But suppose to complete our
tasks we only need a sub-set of this functionality. It is
now possible to move away from ‘Swiss army knife’
mobile software bundles, to light-weight custom mobile
apps which provide specific functionality.
Collaboration and Sharing
A common question we are asked by clients is “How
do we share geospatial field data with office workers
in real, or near real, time”. Let’s step back for a
moment. Map annotation tools are common on the
geoweb. The Esri Flex viewer for ArcGIS includes a
very nice widget which allows users to add shapes,
lines and text to a map. The widget also allows users
to store this data as a text file, and open/render these
text files. Thus one users annotation can be shared
with others. Extend this to mobiles. An engineer is
coordinating building work with owners and contractors.
She is on site using an Android Galaxy tablet
mobile annotation app; the equivalent of the tool in
the Flex viewer for ArcGIS. Her annotations file is
being shared with her office based boss in near real
time. This form of sharing and collaboration is now
quite possible. Combine this type of data sharing with
text and video conferencing software and you have
some very powerful decision making solutions.
Data Collection
Pen and paper remain the most common way we
record data when in the field. Maybe throw in a paper
map to mark the spot; ‘broken pipe here’. If we are
really sophisticated we might resort to an automated
phone system, along with a bewildering selection of
menus; ‘for broken pipe select 2′. For visual records
we carry a digital camera – “photo 1 is broken pipe
1 marked on map, with notes on said pipe somewhere
in my notepad”. You get the idea. Laptops are sometimes
used. Hardly very convenient. Reassembling this
data when back in the office, then finding it at a later
48
date, is often a painful, time consuming task. Those
days may soon be gone. Using your smartphone or
tablet, a simple mobile app will allow users to pull up
a map, makes notes, take pictures. Then link the data
and upload it to a central GIS or database.
Search and Discovery
Last week a water pipe broke in the street of the parents
of a friend. The resulting geyser drew a crowd.
City engineers were soon on the scene. It was
5:30pm. Tracing and shutting all valves feeding the
broken pipe was the engineers challenge. Out came
a 2″ thick book which was thumbed through by the
chief engineer. Orders and directions were barked,
between more thumbing. By 6:30pm all valves had
been closed saving, only just, two basements from
flooding. Let’s imagine a different scenario. The chief
engineer on arrival pulls out his iPad, instead of his
thick book. He opens a geospatial mobile app,
adding water pipe and related layers to a map viewer.
He then runs a query based on current location,
close to the broken pipe, against these layers. A GIS
processes the query and returns the locations of all
valves required to be shut. These are then displayed
on the map, and shared with the crew. Imagine the
improvement in time and efficiency following this second
scenario. We now have this technology.
Organisation and Coordination
Mobile apps will dramatically improve both the organization
and coordination of field workers. As an
example, CityWorks is a GIS-centric asset management
system. Work tickets are at the heart of their system.
So ticket generation (a bulb needs replacing at
xy street), ticket distribution to field crews (fix bulb at
xy street), feedback/updates (light fixture broken
needs fixing before bulb replacement can take place),
associated information (picture/notes on light fixture),
generation of new or related work orders (light fixture
needs fixing at xy street). Freeance Mobile is a mobile
app which connects to the CityWorks system, allowing
field workers to access and share data related to
new and existing work orders.
As happened with the Internet, widespread business
adoption of mobile will change dramatically the computing
landscape. But more importantly, mobile will
transform the work place we know today.
April/May 2012

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C a l e n d a r 2 0 1 2 /
A d v e r t i s e r s I n d e x
April
23-27 April Geospatial World Forum 2012
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Internet: www.geospatialworldforum.org
25-27 April The European Navigation Conference
Gdansk, Poland
Internet: http://enc2012.org
25-27 April VI International Conference “Remote
Sensing - the Synergy of High Technologies”
ATLAS PARK-HOTEL, Moscow, Russia
Internet: www.sovzondconference.ru/2012/eng
May
01-02 May MapInfo Professional Advanced Level
Training Course
CDR Group, Hope, Derbyshire, U.K.
E-mail: sales@cdrgroup.co.uk
Internet: www.cdrgroup.co.uk/train_mi3info.htm
06-10 May FIG Working Week 2012 - Knowing to
manage the territory, protect the environment,
evaluate the cultural heritage
Rome, Italy
Internet: www.fig.net/fig2012
07-09 May 4th International Conference on
Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis - GEO-
BIA 2012
Windsor Barra Hotel and Conventions, Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil
E-mail: geobia2012@dpi.inpe.br
Internet: www.inpe.br/geobia2012
08-10 May 2nd International Conference and
Exhibition on Mapping and spatial Information
(ICMSI 2012) and 19th National Geomatics
Conference
National Cartographic Center (NCC), Teheran, Iran
E-mail: icmsi2012@ncc.org.ir
Internet: http://conf.ncc.org.ir
14-17 May Global Geospatial Conference 2012
(GSDI 13 World Conference, GEOIDE Annual
Scientific Conference and Canadian Geomatics
Conference)
Québec City Convention Center, Québec City, Canada
Internet: www.gsdi.org/gsdiconf/gsdi13
14-18 May 8th Taipei International Digital Earth
Symposium (TIDES 2012)
Taipei, Taiwan
Internet: http://deconf.pccu.edu.tw/2012TIDES/en-welcome.html
15-17 May 2012 GE Energy: Digital Energy
Conference
Tivoli Marina Vilamoura, Algarve, Portugal
E-mail: tone.ytrehus@ge.com
Internet: www.registrationassistant.com/emeai12
21-24 May 32nd EARSeL Symposium “Advances
in Geosciences”
Mykonos Island, Greece
Internet: www.earsel.org/symposia/2012-symposium-
Mykonos/index.php
22-23 May European User Meeting 2012 for laser
scanning and 3D Documentation
Schloss Sihlberg, Zurich, Switzerland
Internet: http://user-meeting.faro.com/information
22-23 May MapInfo Professional Foundation Level
Training Course
CDR Group, Hope, Derbyshire, U.K.
E-mail: sales@cdrgroup.co.uk
Internet: www.cdrgroup.co.uk/train_mi2info.htm
23-24 May Taza GIS_Days, International
Symposium of GIS users
Taza, Morocco
E-mail: hassan.tabyaoui@usmba.ac.ma
Internet: https://sites.google.com/a/usmba.ac.ma/tazagis-en/home
28-30 May Maptek Users Conference
National Wine Centre, Adelaide, Australia
Internet: www.maptek.com/australia_2012
28-30 May Introduction to GIS
Newcastle University, Newcastle, U.K.
E-mail: ceg.cpd@ncl.ac.uk
Internet: www.ncl.ac.uk/cegs.cpd/cpd/giscourses.php
28 May-02 June 5th International Conference BAL-
WOIS 2012 on Water, Climate and Environment
Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia
Internet: www.balwois.com/2012
29-31 May MundoGEO#Connect LatinAmerica
2012
Frei Caneca Convention Center, São Paulo, Brazil
Internet: http://mundogeoconnect.com/2012/en/
30-31 May Intermediate GIS
Newcastle University, Newcastle, U.K.
E-mail: ceg.cpd@ncl.ac.uk
Internet: www.ncl.ac.uk/cegs.cpd/cpd/giscourses.php
30 May-02 June Geodetic Science and Technology
Conference EUROmatyka2012
Poznan University of Technology / LOS Puszczykowo,
Poland
E-mail: biuro@euromatyka2012.pl
Internet: www.euromatyka2012.pl
June
01 June Spatial Analysis
Newcastle University, Newcastle, U.K.
E-mail: ceg.cpd@ncl.ac.uk
Internet: www.ncl.ac.uk/cegs.cpd/cpd/giscourses.php
03-09 June 10th Annual Summer Institute on
Geographic Information Science:”Interoperability
360”
Florence, Italy
E-mail: info@vespucci.org
Internet: www.vespucci.org
04 June FME World Tour
Barcelona, Spain
E-mail: fme@conterra.de
Internet: www.conterra.de/fme/worldtour/index_es.shtm
05 June FME World Tour
Madrid, Spain
E-mail: fme@conterra.de
Internet: www.conterra.de/fme/worldtour/index_es.shtm
04-07 June HEXAGON 2012
Las Vegas, NV, U.S.A.
Internet: www.hexagonconference.com
06 June FME World Tour
Düsseldorf, Germany
E-mail: fme@conterra.de
Internet: www.fme-wt.de
11 June FME World Tour
Berlin, Germany
E-mail: fme@conterra.de
Internet: www.fme-wt.de
11 June Mobile GIS
Newcastle University, Newcastle, U.K.
E-mail: ceg.cpd@ncl.ac.uk
Internet: www.ncl.ac.uk/cegs.cpd/cpd/mobilegis.php
12-13 June MapInfo Professional Advanced Level
Training Course
CDR Group, Hope, Derbyshire, U.K.
E-mail: sales@cdrgroup.co.uk
Internet: www.cdrgroup.co.uk/train_mi3info.htm
13-14 June Geo Maritime
London, U.K.
E-mail: geomaritime@wbr.co.uk
Internet: www.geo-maritime.com
17-23 June 12th International GeoConference
SGEM 2012
Congress Centre Flamingo Grand, Albena, Bulgaria
E-mail: sgem@sgem.org
Internet: www.sgem.org
18-22 June 4th International Conference on
Cartography and GIS
Black Sea Summer Resort, Albena, Bulgaria
Internet: www.cartographygis.com/4thConference/Index.html
19-20 June MapInfo Professional Foundation Level
Training Course
CDR Group, Hope, Derbyshire, U.K.
E-mail: sales@cdrgroup.co.uk
Internet: www.cdrgroup.co.uk/train_mi2info.htm
19-21 June GeoSummit
Bern, Switzerland
Internet: www.geosummit.ch/de/index.html
20 June FME World Tour
Munich, Germany
E-mail: fme@conterra.de
Internet: www.fme-wt.de
21-23 June G-spatial EXPO 2012
Pacifico Yokohama, Yokohama, Japan
Internet: www.g-expo.jp/en/index.html
25-28 June 14th International CARIS User
Conference
Vancouver, Canada
Internet: www.caris.com/caris2012
Please feel free to e-mail your calendar notices to: calendar@geoinformatics.com
Advertisers Index
CHC www.chcnav.com 37
DATEM www.datem.com 30
ERDAS www.erdas.com 13
European Space Imaging www.euspaceimaging.com 2
Esri www.esri.com 21
Exelis www.exelisvis.com 52
FOIF www.foif.com.cn 9
HEXAGON 2012 www.hexagonconference.com/geo 12
Leica Geosystems www.leica-geosystems.com 33
Microsoft UltraCam www.iFlyUltraCam.com 22
Optech www.optech.com 26, 49
Ordnance Survey www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk 25
Pacific Crest www.pacificcrest.com/adl 41
Racurs www.racurs.ru 44
Riegl www.riegl.com 31
Spectra Precision www.spectraprecision.com 54
SuperMap www.supermap.com 27
Topcon www.topcon.eu 51
50
April/May 2012

PROTECTION WITH POWER
Tracking · Security · Remote
Firmware-Software Updates
300 m Communication
grafit-werbeagentur.de
ES Series
www.topcon.eu
OS Series

The environment is changing.
The climate is changing.
Your software can’t stay the same.
ENVI from Exelis VIS allows you to make geospatial imagery and data central components
of your environmental studies and project decision making. Enabling you to process large
volumes of data quickly, accurately analyse complex geospatial imagery and even produce
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Customise your own solution or work with our Professional Services Group to develop the
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With the most recent and upcoming releases of ENVI, SarScape and E3De, now is the ideal
time to talk to Exelis VIS.
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You can meet our experts at the forthcoming conferences in April: Geospatial World Forum 2012, Amsterdam,
booth number 12 | European Geosciences Union General Assembly, Vienna, booth number 28 | European
Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar (EUSAR 2012), Nuremberg, booth number 5 | Forums ESRI France,
Toulouse, Nantes, Lille, Rennes | ESRI Italy User Conference, Rome
All rights reserved. E3De, ENVI and IDL are trademarks of Exelis, Inc. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. ©2012, Exelis Visual Information Solutions, Inc.