CAD & GIS: How much mixing & unmixing is desirable?

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. "- Peter F. Drucker

At present it is accepted that usefulness of GIS has increased and thus dependence on GIS that has gone hand in hand with the rise of information technology. That dependence and the need for research and innovations on internet GIS, 3D visualization, location-based, time-specific acquisition, management, storage, and visualization of data is likely to increase as GIS, along with cell phones, laptop computers, and global positioning systems, goes wireless. Data from maps and hard copy records have transformed into information on the web.

Organizations involved in 2D data conversion/cleaning activities are finding it extremely difficult to position themselves as per the new GIS market dynamics mainly due to their existing expertise and their level of knowledge base. There is need to develop a confidence level among the CAD/GIS co.s to face a well informed client and adopt the new technology. Quality and quantity seldom go together in a industry where ever changing client requirements and strict delivery schedules interfere with the process automation that is very common in any production environment. Business process re-engineering now demands 5D solutions that can utilize GIS data to take care of their time and cost to justify the ROI on these projects.

Message: "Time to accept the grim Reality and raise the bar. The first step is to stop advertising 'outsourced data conversion jobs' as 'GIS Projects' to improve the manpower quality and overall standard of the GIS industry in India."

GIS in Real Estate

Cadastral GIS databases are key sources of information in many areas. Using geospatial solutions, data on land parcels, buildings and apartments concerning location, shape, ownership, value, legal regimes, land use and history of changes become valuable information for numerous categories of users. That information is vital for a society that strives for:

1. Municipal management services and good governance,
2. high quality planning and rapid economic development,
3. fair taxation,

GIS based solutions for cadastral information management and exchange link technical description of parcels, physical objects and encumbrances with registered legal relationship of properties and owners.

Land registration
Land registration guarantees security of ownership and other rights on land and objects on that land. It is also key mechanism of the society in turning property’s inherent market and usability capital value into money. GIS solutions for land registration support are proven in many countries for their reliability, innovation and integration with GIS technology.

Real estate valuation
Valuation of land has traditionally been understood under cadastral records creation and management in many countries through history. It is used for taxing purposes, but also for mortgages in bank and for asset management in governments and large companies.
Use of GIS solutions in land valuation enables the value assessment function of government to be concurrent with spatial data that is relevant to the valuation model. GIS adds value to land valuation models by placing added value on property that has.

Information sharing
In the value chain of the cadastral information the highest added value comes with distributing the data efficiently and timely to the end users in the form that suits their needs. Obviously it is Internet in these days that GIS solutions use primarily for distribution of the cadastral information.

GIS: From Tool to Technology

GIS community has seen the evolution of GIS from large databases of mapping information stored on a mainframe, accessible by a few highly trained specialists, to a distributed network of specialized databases tied together and made accessible to unlimited numbers of people via the Internet.

The old GIS term no longer encompasses all of the tools and technologies used in this more modern world. In essence, "geospatial" is "geographic information systems" brought into the new millennium (Daratech Report, 2004). Geospatial technologies capture, store, manage, integrate, displays, analyze and otherwise assist in the interpretation of this data in its entire context for better decision-making. This broader definition recognizes that engineering data from CAD systems, billing information from ERP systems, facilities management and many other types of enterprise content must be brought together with the traditional spatial data from a GIS in order to efficiently make decisions.

In just the past three years the GIS market has changed radically, and a technology that was once considered too specialized to fall within the domain of the IS department has become just another enterprise technology, such as CRM or ERP.

GIS is a relatively mature technology with a knowledgeable and dedicated user community. This sector has generated an extraordinary community of talented and passionate GIS technologists, a dynamic vendor community, a variety of user groups, meaningful standards activities, and informative industry magazines and events. I believe these activities have served our community well and will continue to serve us into the future.

History & Geography of Google Earth

In June 2005, Google launched its Google Earth tool, powered by Keyhole Technology from Keyhole, a company that Google acquired last year. Google Earth is a standalone application that's essentially an enhanced and upgraded version of its Keyhole 3D satellite imagery product. The underlying Keyhole technology includes tens of terabytes of aerial images spanning the globe.

Currently, Google Earth has only medium resolution images for most parts of the world। For about 38 US cities, Google Earth has high-resolution images that permit 3-D ‘walkthrough’ capability. Information can be overlaid over ‘layers’ so that themes (hospitals, hot-spots, restaurants and libraries) can be separated into layers and super-imposed only when needed.

DEVELOPMENT

Google has launched an impressive number of geospatial applications since the purchase of Keyhole. Google Earth utilizes broadband streaming technology and 3D graphics on web, much like a videogame, enabling users to interactively explore the world. Important timelines are as:

Google Local – March 2004 beta site released

Keyhole Acquisition – October 28, 2004

Google Maps – February 2005

Google Maps Imagery Layer – April 2005

Mobile Google Local – April 13, 2005

Google Earth – June 27, 2005

PRODUCTS: Google Earth is free for all Google users. There is also a Google Earth Plus that allows GPS devices to be connected and Google Earth Pro for businesses. One of the key features of Google Earth Pro is its GIS import capabilities.
OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS: MSN Virtual Earth, MapQuest, NASA WorldWind, Wikimapia, ESRI ArcGIS Explorer

FEATURES

Key features of Google Earth include:
3D buildings in major cities across the United States
3D terrain showing mountains, valleys, and canyons around the world
Integrated Google Local search to find local information such as hotels, restaurants, schools, parks, and transportation
Video playback of driving directions
Tilt, rotate, and activate 3D terrain and buildings for a different perspective on a location
Easy creation and sharing of annotations among users

APPLICATIONS

The application is a "console" with controls allowing you manipulate 3D satellite imagery of the Earth in a viewer directly above the controls. Google Earth has three primary search features: Fly To, Local Search and Directions। People are making their own maps, like the OpenStreetMap project, and "mashups" have been born - where maps are customised with data for practical and frivolous purposes.

Accuracy: good if you do not zoom-in too much। Remember the old axiom that says all maps lie because all maps lie flat.

Geoinformatics in India: Lessons from the Past

Talent Crunch: Is GIS too difficult?

GIS has been traditionally a field where main focus was on data and data related services. GIS is more difficult than IT due to it multi-disciplinary nature and it has become part of packaged IT-centric solutions. Broadly it encompasses the Domain expertise along with knowledge of software, database, surveying and many more to count. Minds of the GIS personals are not programmed to understand the seriousness of terms like “Total Solution Provider”. Academias as well as industry throughout this sub-continent have failed in taking this responsibility. The result is the acute talent crunch in the field of GIS. At present we need to develop a breed of real GIS professionals who can understand the client requirements, visualize the problems and their solutions in advance and thus deliver in time and ensure client satisfaction.

We have very few problem solvers at present. Solving problems is a high-visibility process; preventing problems is low-visibility. This is illustrated by an old parable:
In ancient China there was a family of healers, one of whom was known throughout the land and employed as a physician to a great lord. The physician was asked which of his family was the most skillful healer.
He replied, "I tend to the sick and dying with drastic and dramatic treatments, and on occasion someone is cured and my name gets out among the lords."
"My elder brother cures sickness when it just begins to take root, and his skills are known among the local peasants and neighbors."
"My eldest brother is able to sense the spirit of sickness and eradicate it before it takes form. His name is unknown outside our home."

This is a problem in any business, but it's a particularly difficult problem in the IT & ITES industry. Quality related problems are often not as readily apparent as they might be in the case of an industry with some physical products.

Additionally, many organizations are not able to determine who is skilled at fixing problems, and then reward such people. However, determining who has a talent for preventing problems in the first place, and figuring out how to incentivize such behavior, is a significant challenge esp in the smaller co.s where thrust is on labour intensive activities and most of the persons in the management have grown up with time (experience the name we give to our mistakes) within the organization without any proper background and knowledge. Such persons can never appreciate the views of a person who thinks ahead of them and thus hamper the talent nurturing and fail in creating the pool of good people necessary to produce quality work in any setup.

Effective Knowledge Sharing

"The greatest secret to winning shared thinking is having the right people around the table."

Research by Wharton management professor Martine Haas and Morten Hansen, professor of entrepreneurship at INSEAD, indicates that knowledge sharing efforts often fail to result in improved task outcomes inside organizations - and may even hurt project performance. In practice, according to Haas, the types of knowledge shared and the design of the organization's project teams are likely to influence the success or failure of a knowledge-sharing effort.

While part of the challenge is to use knowledge appropriate for the task, Haas notes that organizations also face the problem of setting up teams in ways that help them take full advantage of the knowledge they use. As the researchers note in their paper, many project teams in knowledge-intensive organizations operate in environments than can interfere with their ability to perform well because they are characterized by overload, commitment, lack of knowledge at right level leading to ambiguity and politics.

These characteristics create problems when teams attempt to obtain and use knowledge from other parts of their organization. "In overloaded environments, project teams face a multitude of possible issues to address and solutions with which to address them, and as a result of ambiguity, there is little way to know which problems and solutions to select," Haas says. "Beyond these problems, multiple stakeholders may have personal agendas and interests in the team's selections that may actually work at cross-purposes with the team's own efforts."

In ambiguous situations, meanwhile, team members face multiple interpretations of the information, know-how and feedback they obtain, and they must engage in a continuous process of sense making to construct meaning from these inputs. The level of prior work experience possessed by team members may also create absorptive capacity that facilitates the assimilation, interpretation and application of new knowledge. Additionally, prior experience tends to help team members move up their own learning curves, helping them to build on past successes and avoid past mistakes when they interpret and apply external knowledge.

Haas argues that an organization's project teams should be given sufficient autonomy to make their own decisions. "While many outsiders who provide information, know-how and feedback to team members do not attempt to influence the team unduly, others may promote their own agendas and interests through distortion or manipulation," she says. "If a team cannot buffer itself against efforts to excessively influence its decisions, its project may be derailed by these external agendas and interests."

Overall, research by Haas and Hansen suggests that organizations that care about knowledge sharing must look beyond intermediate goals - such as promoting knowledge capture, search and transfer. Haas and Hansen's research has identified three dimensions of task performance - work quality, time savings and signals of competence - that are often critical to the productivity of knowledge work.

The first key implication is that it is unsafe to assume that more knowledge sharing is always better. In fact, using too much of the wrong type of knowledge can harm project performance if the manager or team leader himself is not aware about the intricacies of the project. The design of a project team affects its ability to achieve the desired advantages of knowledge sharing.

Message: Avoid brain storming sessions if there are not enough experts in the team because "If a message can be interpreted in several ways, it will be interpreted in a manner that maximizes damages." - Second Law of Organizational Communication

Building & Maintaining the LBS Data

Traditionally, location-based applications have included resource finders, roadside assistance, and asset tracking. Now, personal-locator applications are also gaining popularity. Their success is largely due to the early introduction of pure LBS devices like Global Positioning System (GPS) Locator with PDA, Cell phones and even wristwatches.

The two most prominent position-location technologies are cell-phone triangulation and the use of GPS satellites. Other emerging technologies include digital television (DTV), ultra wideband (UWB), and WLANs.

Spatial and locational intelligence is incorporated through attributes in topologically correct network dataset for LBS. These are;
Ø Basic attributes for GIS applications
Ø Advanced attributes for Routing
Ø Turn-by-turn features for guidance

LBS data is used in three basic types:
Ø National coverage
Ø Street Level data
Ø Demographic data

Pre-requisite:Geometry
Ø Geometry
Ø Features
Ø Basic topology

Pre-requisite:Basic Attributes
Ø Street names
Ø Land cover type
Ø Road classification

This information is sufficient to prepare low-end desktop and Internet GIS applications but not for advanced routing and transportation systems.

Advanced requirements
Advanced Attributes are required by routing applications with advanced speech enables PC and Internet applications. Introduction of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) will create demand for ultra-precise maps with new safety-related features and attributes.

Ø Near-term (2004-2006):
o Speed limit advisor
o Curve speed warning
o Stop sign warning
Ø Mid-term (2007-2011):
o Curve speed control
o Stop sign control
o Forward collision warning
o Lane departure warning
o Traffic signal warning


These features and attributes help in turn-by-turn navigation,
Ø In-car
Ø Though WAP/PDA
Ø Telematic service

The LBS datasets are organised and structured according to ISO TC-204-N-34, which ensures that they can be used with all advanced technology platforms.

LBS and GIS integrate one or more of the following technologies:
Ø Mobile devices
Ø Global Positioning Systems (GPS)
Ø Wireless communications for Internet GIS access


LBS MARKET IN INDIA
The global market for GPS devices is 10,000 crore. The Indian market is now at 50 crore, but it has potential to grow to 2,000 crore in the next three to four years.

Make A Difference: Join the Movement

"Excellence has always been achieved by those who dared to believe that something inside them is superior to the circumstances."

GIS Champions: Without Champions GIS goes nowhere

Identify a “GIS Champion” by the following qualities and traits :

Inclusive with a varied knowledge base and good Spatial Aptitude (High SQ)
Knowledgeable even then curious to know more about the emerging technologies
Always able to look at the big picture
Looks for consensus but dares to clear ambiguity due to misinterpretations by the team
Involved in projects from the beginning (even doing dirty work)
Confident, unafraid of change; a change-master
Enthusiastic about the challenges
Communicator
Mentor (when required)
Satisfied with knowing that better decisions are being made as the result of GIS
Sees organizational benefits of GIS, not personal
Looks forward to Monday morning.

Strategy to create GIS Champions:

Understand the limitations of CAD and expectations from GIS
Hire qualified staff, provide training to interested staff
Encourage positive organizational changes to accommodate "Real GIS experts"
Look for the people with a winning “GIS Personality”
Trash the decade old assumption that "Anyone can learn GIS (read it CAD)".
Identify the group of pretenders and halt their train of excuses ASAP. Root-cause of most of the project failures and poor performance is lack of learning, underestimation of client expectations and application of second (& third) hand knowledge.
Don’t give up when there are setbacks.