Land Surveying and Cartography > Technological Evolution - Threat Or Opportunity?

In the land information market, technological evolution always appears to some suppliers as a threat to their existence or the way they perform their services.  Contrarily, some users consider such evolution as an opportunity to get faster, reliable and cost effective services or products, not necessarily in this order. I believe that both points of view share true and false interpretations. Consumers – as I refer to users in this paper – not suppliers, are those who are indeed responsible for the market to...

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GIS and Remote Sensing > Google and Aerial Survey

Aerial and satellite images are largely available for viewing in the Internet through programs such as Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth and NASA World Wind. This recent availability is impacting the land information market and benefiting the market as whole.  How many of us, including those closely involved with the matter, have been amazed at the ease of viewing our own house and places that we once could only see in post cards and other travel photographs? -> Opening screen of NASA World Wind Alt...

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Land Surveying and Cartography > Structural Constraints in Open Source Software Development and their Public Policy Implications

1. Introduction The development of open source software (OSS) has received a substantial attention recently. Following the successful examples of projects such as Linux, Apache and Perl, there has been a substantial interest by policy-makers and researchers on the dynamics of the production of open source software (Benkler 2003). A topic of particular interest is the adoption of open source software systems in developing nations, as a means of reducing licensing costs and of promoting indigenous technologic...

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GIS and Remote Sensing > Leveraging GIS for Utility Enterprise Information Management

Introduction During the past 10 years, as a result of addressing the need for better resource use and increased efficiency from integrating disparate applications, we have witnessed the emergence of integrated enterprise applications in the IT realm. That has resulted in the rise of Chief Information Officers (CIOs), who have catalyzed the maturation of IT environments by seizing control of the acquisition, deployment and support of IT whose requirements for integrated and interrelated systems have necessitat...

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Land Surveying and Cartography > GPS Ricoh 500SE And Nikon Coolpix P6000

Digital photographs were something obtained only by orbital satellites, such as Landsat and Spot. Today, photos taken with compact or SLR digital cameras are found in an ever increasing number of applications. In a survey made in the USA and Europe in 2008, 27% of the respondents informed to have between 1,000 and 5,000 digital photographs, while 11% claimed to have more than 10,000 digital photos. The geo-referencing of digital photographs was also done only for geospatial imagery, such as those acquired b...

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Land Surveying and Cartography > Interview: Chris Andrews

InfoGEO: How Digital Cities can help in the global warming and climate change? Chris Andrews: A ‘digital city’ is a collaborative environment created around a detailed 3D model that allows stakeholders from the public, city government, construction, and business communities to work together in a way that is both engaging and meaningful to understand how policy and proposals could impact the urban environment by experiencing the future of the city before it becomes real. Central to Digital Cities is the conc...

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GIS and Remote Sensing > An Embedded Approach to GIS and WMS Integration

A GIS is “a computer-based system for managing and analyzing information with a geographic (i.e., spatial) reference.” More specifically, a GIS is a collection of hardware, software, data, and procedures that operate in concert to capture, manage, analyze, maintain, and display information that has spatial reference to the real world. If information can be tied to a map, it has a spatial reference. More than 85 percent of a typical organization’s information needed to support its business is spatially-related...

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GNSS and Location Based Services > Reference Frame for South and Central America - SIRGAS

International Association of Geodesy Sub-commission 1.3b Reference Frame for South and Central America (SIRGAS) Report July - April 2005 Published on IAG-Commission 1 Bulletin No. 19, pp. 22-23 (2005) Chair: L.P. Fortes (Brazil) Vice-Chair: E. Lauría (Argentina) SC1.3b-WG1: Reference Frame – C. Brunini (Argentina) SC1.3b-WG2: Geocentric Datum – A. Hernandez (México) SC1.3b-WG3...

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GIS and Remote Sensing > The International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing - ISPRS

Priorities and Progress 2004 - 2008 What is ISPRS? The International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing is a non-governmental organisation devoted to the development of international cooperation for the advancement of photogrammetry and remote sensing and their applications. The Society's scientific interests include photogrammetry, remote sensing, spatial information systems and related disciplines, as well as applications in cartography, geodesy, surveying, natural, Earth and engineering scien...

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GIS and Remote Sensing > Frameworks for Sustainability of GIS and Earth Observation

Introduction Earth observation and GIS technology can undoubtedly be considered as one of the great successes of the use of advanced information technology for the improvement of mankind. The capabilities provided by satellite imagery, digital maps, and associated information have transformed our ability for understanding the forces that shape the geographical space. In developing nations, many of whom lack strong traditions on cartography and mapping, these technologies (referred collectively in this paper ...

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Land Surveying and Cartography > Interview: Michael F. Goodchild

Michael Frank Goodchild is a British-American geographer. He is currently a professor of geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He moved to Santa Barbara in 1988, as part of the establishment of the National Center for Georgraphic Information and Analysis, which he has directed for nearly 20 years. Goodchild became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002, and received the Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal in 2003. InfoGEO: In your article entitled Geographic Inform...

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GNSS and Location Based Services > Towards Geo-Accounting

By Ian Foster Google Earth, you’ve all seen it, zoomed in on your post-code, marvelled at the technology behind it. You have a talking GPS map in your car to find your way to that elusive customer. Great applications, but don’t you get the feeling that maps could be doing more for our profession? You have post codes for 99% of your customers, suppliers and shareholders. You know where your property & plant are, maybe even have a location code against your major stock and work in progress items, thinki...

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GIS and Remote Sensing > Enterprise GIS Eliminates “Geographic Information Chaos” in Medellín, Colombia

Founded in 1616 by Spaniard Francisco de Herrera Campuzano, the Municipio de Medellín is situated in a valley in the northern part of the Andes Mountains. Its economy was initially based on gold mining and agriculture. As the second largest city in Colombia, Medellín now has a well-established manufacturing base supported by a population in excess of 2.5 million. Medellín's planning department acquired its first ESRI ARC/INFO license more than 21 years ago. Since that time, the use of geographic informatio...

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GIS and Remote Sensing > GISVM

A lot has been said about virtualization, especially with the increase in the processing capacity of computers, but virtualization is simply the process which, through the sharing of hardware, allows the user to run various operating systems on the same machine, whether it be a server or a desktop. Figure 1. Example of how a virtual machine works Each virtual machine created in this way is a complete operating environment, as safe and totally isolated as if it were an independent computer. In a virtualized...

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GNSS and Location Based Services > Performance of GPS in surveys within the coast of Paraná state (Brazil)

ABSTRACT The objective of this article is to present the performance of GPS in surveys within the coast of Parana State (Brazil). Such surveys began in 1996 because of the lack of previous available data and the need of better control over the coast of Parana State and its conformations. Among the GPS surveys that have ever been accomplished within such area it should be mentioned: the monitoring of the shoreline, in some parts in retreat or in progradation; the precise positioning of vessels, of artificial...

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GIS and Remote Sensing > Spatial Data Warehousing

Spatial data warehousing may not be a new concept to many organizations, especially those involved in product marketing, demographic analysis or market segmentation. For other organizations such as construction or engineering, this may not be the case. As the lines of organizations began to blur and cross functional data became more important, the reality that many information technology systems developed over years and decades did not peacefully coexist. This was a challenge when faced with the need to unlea...

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GIS and Remote Sensing > Making International Collaboration Work in Earth Observation: A View from Brazil

1 Introduction International co-operation is one of the key issues in civilian earth observation (EO) programmes. Given the globalised nature of data collection for earth observation satellites, the “public good” contribution of most programmes, and the high cost of building and maintaining a remote sensing programme, it is natural to expect that most satellites would be based on extensive international collaboration, involving governments and private companies. As stated by one of the EO industry leaders, “...

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