Government Computer News
When X doesn’t mark the spot
With more agencies building geographic information systems, standards are key to making them work right
When it comes to government operations, perhaps nothing gets citizens’ attention like geographic information systems. The powerful combination of maps, imagery and geographically linked data has become key to everything from workaday tasks such as weather, crop and drought tracking, to the urgent needs of first responders and intelligence workers monitoring threats to homeland security. And that’s just the beginning.
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The definition of GIS has expanded far beyond matching maps to data points.
Increasingly, agencies are combining map information with real-time information and enterprise data to create new, location-based services and applications. Plus, the need to push timely, accurate information to people in the field is driving a new generation of GIS-enabled devices and intricate, Web-based collaboration tools that incorporate geospatial data.
Building or incorporating GIS into your agency’s IT infrastructure, however, requires a working knowledge of the emerging standards that will allow you to share data with another group’s systems and your own applications.
The Google effect
The world of GIS and geospatial intelligence applications—programs that relate location-based data to maps or satellite imagery—has never been more accessible to government agencies of all stripes, thanks in part to commercial applications such as Google Earth.
Google Earth, available as a free download or in professional and enterprise editions, combines location-based information of all sorts into an orthogonal (straight-down) view or a 3D-perspective view.
Although Google Earth itself isn’t a traditional GIS, it’s quickly becoming a standard for location-based Web applications, along with its sibling, Google Maps. Organizations are using the technology to handle everything from tracking taxicabs to plotting crime trends. [For more on Google “mash-ups” that incorporate geospatial data, see our story on composite applications at GCN.com, Quickfind 663.]
In August, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency recognized Google for its contribution to relief efforts during Hurricane Katrina. Many private and public agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, used the company’s imaging and mapping technologies to track the storm, monitor relief operations and dispatch aid.
Another application of geospatial data is emerging on mobile phones in Japan: point-and-click geographic search tools based on a compass and a global positioning system within the phone.
The technology, developed by GeoVector Corp. of San Francisco, is available on commercial handsets from Sony Ericsson and uses a mix of terrestrial radio signals and GPS to fix a user’s location within 30 feet, even among tall buildings where satellite signals might be blocked.
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