Survey of key GI players within Europe - EC GI & GIS Portal

This survey and report is closely related to these GINIE reports:
• The Survey and Analysis of National GI Associations;
• The Analysis and Capacity Building Report of the National GI associations;
• The Final Report and the Recommendations for Action resulting from the GINIE Data Policy
Workshop;
• The Survey of Pan European GI Organisations (Sep 2003);
• The GINIE consultation document and reports on the ABGI.
General information
A synopsis of this report and all of the above mentioned reports will feed into the GINIE final
Conference report that will be prepared and printed during September and October 2003 in time for
the final GINIE conference that will take place in Brussels on the 13 th & 14 th November 2003, which
will be targeted at up to 100 politicians and senior decision makers within the EC. Information
regarding the GINIE project can be obtained from the web site: http://www.ec-gis.org/ginie/
Definitions
What do these words mean – “the key GI players in Europe”? The last part is perhaps the easiest
part; for the purposes of this survey the countries which have been included in this definition of
Europe are those listed in the “scope” section above. The more difficult elements are “key players”
and “GI”.
Taking GI to begin with, not everyone’s idea of GI is the same. Most experts agree that GIS
technology includes hardware, software and digital spatial data. They also agree that GIS generally
includes query, analysis and graphic display and output capabilities. But because GIS is suited to a
range of applications, users and disciplines, people in the industry rarely agree on the definition of
GIS. It is even difficult to agree on a name for the technology; it can be geographic information
systems, desktop mapping, spatial information systems, geographical information systems or even
geomatics. Defining the GI industry as a whole is even more complex. Many technologies and
products are often included as part of the industry definition even though they don't meet many GIS
definitions. Part of the reason is that GIS can be considered a subset or superset of other things such
as image processing, computer-aided design, database software or computer cartography. Because
of their similarity to GIS and their usage in getting data into and out of a GIS, many of the companies
that develop "GIS-related" products tend to be included in GIS industry statistics 1 . In the past there
have been examples of differing descriptions of the GI market because of the different definitions of
the organisations included. For example leading industry analysts Daratech and Dataquest differed
over their estimation of the worldwide 1994 GIS software market between $505 Million (Daratech Inc)
and $759 Million (Dataquest Inc). Much of this difference was due to their respective approaches to
defining GIS, with Dataquest including, for example, CAD based systems that were excluded by
Daratech. Both sets of research are valid, but start from different assumptions. These days it is even
more difficult to define the boundaries, when for example there are new internet service providers
distributing a vast breadth of data content which may include “where is the nearest” mapping services
or real time traffic information – it may not be GIS but is it part of the GI industry?
Even if we can narrow down the definition of GI it is almost impossible to establish scientific criteria for
the definition of a key player. For this report it has been decided that “key players” should describe
the organisations which are the most important or influential in the supply of GI products and services
in each country. This is very difficult to establish though. How does one determine importance or
influence – by annual sales? – but then what about the many national mapping organisations which
may dominate the supply of mapping data in a country but only recover a certain percentage of their
costs? Large staff numbers might indicate a large volume of work but does that equate to influence?
We shouldn’t forget the part played by the “Free GIS” Software community, with its products, services
and orgasnisations (for example GRASS). And as already discussed there are many types of
organisations in the GI market – data providers, software vendors, database engineers, on-line service
providers... there are national organisations, and then there are pan-European or global players. To
take an example from France, in terms of their significance how can you differentiate between the
importance of French GIS software such as Geoconcept v the US IBM hardware on which it is running
v its US Microsoft operating system v the public sector IGN-F mapping data and the private sector
1
Geoplace.com: when is a GIS not a GIS?
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