Slashgeo

Geospatial Trends of the Last 4 Years?

posted by Satri on Monday June 15, @01:11PM        Permalink  Trackback URI  Slashdotthis  Diggthis  Del.icio.us
from the Rip-van-Winkle-of-GIS-here dept.

Roger the Shrubber writes "Right then, I discovered this site just now and would love to gain some idea and maybe URLs, of how the industry has changed within the last 4 years. Why? I used to be a dedicated GIS nut until 4 years back when the newer profession of "Stay at Home Dad" took over my life... Potted GIS history: started out on a VAX mainframe GIMMS system from Edinburgh Uni way back when, then MSc GIS Leicester, UK 1990 on to TYDAC SPANS and flew on to Saudi Arabia where I spent 5 years mapping biotopes in the Gulf. I met my wife in Mongolia through GIS — we were working on a project in Ulan Bataar and she came along and stole my students. Mind you she was better than me! Just as I faded out of the field, the subject of neogeography emerged and became for me an interesting antidote to the corporate security obssessed GIS envionments in which I have worked. I'd heard then of OpenStreetMap in the UK and have recently noted how it has spread even to my adopted homeland of Germany. I was an early fan of GRASS starting at Version 4.0 — in those days it came on an unwieldy large Sun tape! As I contemplate a return to the field after years in the wilderness, can anyone give me brief ideas or URLs regarding the trends in the last few years, notably in neogeography?"

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Reviews: Geospatial Top 10 of 2008 [+]

Two sources talk about their geospatial top 10 for 2008, Vector One Magazine and Directions Magazine. The V1 Mag top ten: "Geographic Design, RapidEye Launched, Digital Cities Pilot Program, Completion of NEXTMap Europe, Bentley V8i, ArcGIS Online Open APIs, EU Gives Final Approval of GALILEO Satellite System, Undersea Mapping, Obama Becomes President, OGC Spatial Data Quality Working Group." The DM article's introduction: "I sat down to write my annual list of "10 events, ideas, themes, products, etc. that stood out over the preceding 12 months" but found it more difficult than usual. There were some things I "could" talk about (John King and the Magic Wall, the iPhone, geotagging as mainstream, warehouse appliances and XML databases), but they really weren't standouts. There were some "continuations" of existing trends (open source, cloud computing, Web 2.x/3.x) but again, nothing that shook the foundations of our industry. In the end, I deemed the list "lame." My editor-in-chief, Joe Francica, agreed with my description and noted a few things that I might have added (spatial regression, SQL Server 2008 with geo support, GeoEye-1), but even those felt like "more of the same." Don't get me wrong, I see progress, but nothing like the things I'd identified and felt strongly about in past years."

• Exponential multidirectional explosion

  (Score:2)

  by Satri (3) on Monday June 15, @01:24PM (#3212)
  ( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @05:07PM )

  Welcome back in geospatial! You're asking a difficult question, so much is happening in geospatial nowadays. I guess/hope that by reading (and contributing to!) Slashgeo you'll get a good idea of where the industry is now. To get you started, you can read the Top 10 trends of 2008 [slashgeo.org] and 2007 [slashgeo.org].
  
  FOSS4G can be considered mainstream now, with several geospatial open source software being "widely used" such as GDAL/OGR, OpenLayers, OpenStreetMap [slashgeo.org] and many more. You'll hear often about them here. Even GRASS GIS [slashgeo.org], that you mentioned, is still alive today and even easier than ever to use via the QGIS plugin [qgis.org].
  
  Neogeography [wikipedia.org] is obviously here to stay and in my opinion, it has positively influenced 'old-school' geography by forcing it to evolve.
  
  So much can be done with the help of geospatial technologies... have fun with the new tools around! :-)
  • Did we have a People's Revolution in GIS?

    (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Roger the Shrubber (2002) on Tuesday June 16, @05:06AM (#3215)

    Let me take you back to the days of old when GIS's were "territories", i.e., a VAX mainframe or latterly then a "sparcling (bad spelling pun intended) " Sun Workstation with a huge screen and an unwieldy huge Calcomp plotter which could churn out that amazing plot in a breathtaking two hours. I can remember huge turf wars breaking out then over who got time on it, who did what and who stole the credit for whatever it was that was produced. It was very top down and a bit "Soviet" in a way if you get my drift. Then I argued - I think it was on the old GIS-L (latterly comp.infosystems.gis) that the biggest move on the history of GIS in those days was the porting of Arc/Info to Windows NT, as NT was on more machines it helped to democratise GIS as did the ArcView interface to the data. My dream in those days was not ESRI Microsoft based however, but freer. That upstart Linux OS as it was in 1994 (you had to download each part of the Linux OS onto a 3.5" floppy!) was better with the GRASS GIS on it. all free. I tried to get my old Uni interested but they went corporate instead. I was the upstart geek then you see. Now step forward and out comes Google Earth. "Yeah I know about GIS I've got Google Earth on my computer" yet more people able to spatialise data. If you remember your old Burrough textbook a GIS is "a system capable of input, storing, manipulating and outputting data spatially referenced to the earth". Now the one word in that definition which set GIS people drooling was "manipulate" as the dream was a GIS which allowed one to map soil erosion, global warming, rainfall etc. However to my perception Google doesnt do that very well - correct me here if necessary. In my case the phrase "spatially referenced to the earth" set off in me a quest which led me into the realm of geodetics, i.e., projections, spheroids and datums. To this day this area of GIS is little understood but so vital.to everyday life. You've got an oilfield and your datum is wrong you are talking about a lost million barrels of oil. I understand the old school geographers don't like this new geography - is that right? Seems to me the definition of a GIS has changed and the goalposts have moved - we have to accept the new realities as the neogeo folks simply make geography exciting again. Then just as my career wet into eclipse along came the upstarts with yet more access for the masses. I like the neogeography thing and free software. OpenStreetMap for example is now huge to what it was. For those of us who remember the old days of GIS it feels like a breath of fresh air to me. With embedding the map data into mobile phones and GPS units now handheld (I navigated and scuba dived round a Arabian Gulf oilfield with a Magellan the size of an old housebrick on our boat) locational data has expanded exponentially all over the place. This can only be a good thing. Now if I want to go and work in the field of the new geography where - on earth (pun intended) - might I start?

    [ Parent ]
• info on neogeo

  (Score:1, Informative)

  by Anonymous Voxel on Tuesday June 16, @02:10AM (#3214)

  well, not sure if this is neogeo, but reading James Fee's blog (spatiallyadjusted.com) should bring you back into the universe. And you may also look into the the osgeo.org wepage and wiki.