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Convergence Bring
Exciting Opportunities
Dr. David Hastings
Space Technology Applications, UNESCAP, Bangkok, Thailand
hastingsd@un.org
The geospatial community
finds itself in exciting
times, as the first decade
of the 21st century advances. Whether
one's interest is in business development
and profit, technological innovation, or
benefits to society, the opportunities for
any individual, public or private organization
to contribute to, and gain from
spatial technologies is unprecedented.
To some degree, this can be considered
the result of several convergences:
- towards higher spatial, temporal and
spectral resolution of satellite and other
source data;
- towards new collaborative software
/product/service development and
support models (including public-private
and private-private partnerships);
- towards new means of creating and
distributing digital products (and reaching
large numbers of customers - who
are not always ready to pay large sums
for products/services); and
- towards new means of obtaining
revenue.
Let's look at each of these convergences,
in turn:
Higher spatial, temporal and spectral resolution of satellite and other source data
With the impressive proliferation of
relatively high resolution satellite
imagery, available gratis through
maps.google.com, wikimapia.org, multimap.
com, maps.live.com and other
Web sources, the average person can
now see what recently cost geoinformatics
professionals heavily in terms of
hardware, software, and data.
These services have quickly built user
awareness of such imagery. They are
also increasing the areas covered by relatively
high resolution imagery. A few
months ago, I found that such imagery
was available for the parts of the Cook
Islands that I had planned to visit on
vacation. I could plan hiking, snorkeling
and other adventures, and well
imagine the logistics of my vacation.
Several Web mapping services like
these encourage customizations.
Indeed, several such customizations
have been done. So anyone has an
opportunity to customize a service of
their own, using these innovations as a
basis.
New collaborative software/product/service development and support models (including publicprivate and private-private partnerships)
Background
Much early Geoinformatics development
was first accomplished in govern
mental and academic institutions characterized
by relatively open policies on
usage and enhancement. Many academic
institutions and governmental
research and development (R&D) laboratories
separately developed data and
software for their internal use. Some
software or data by government
researchers or academicians was
exchanged freely, though some wound
up with copyright claims by their institutions.
Some such software packages,
or their fundamentals, were commercially
adopted by entrepreneurs who
placed copyright claims on resultant
products.
Many commercial datasets and software
packages were relatively expensive,
which limited their use resulting
in limited revenues for the developers,
and impeded technological and business
opportunity in countries dependent
on such expensive foundations for
their businesses. In this climate a few
companies prospered or at least survived,
and perhaps gave dreams of
prosperity to others - but for every success
came many failures.
More recently, software and data
development has bifurcated. With the
recent founding of the Open Source
Geospatial Foundation (www.osgeo.
org), a critical mass of open-source
geoinformatics software developers,
integrators, and distribution mechanisms
is evolving. An increasing number
of individuals and businesses have
been able to make businesses in the
broad open-source environment -
where the geoinformatics sector is also
now beginning to grow. Some governments
are considering moving to opensource
and creative commons forms of
intellectual property protection, in
order to better stimulate developmental
and business climates in their
domains.
PARTNERSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
If you get an opportunity to partner
with a government entity on a geospatial
technology development project, I
doubt that that entity would object to
your proposal to do so within the opensource
environment - unless that entity
wants to own the rights itself, and keep
them from the public. On the other
hand, if you work with a company that
is used to the proprietary model of software
development, you may face a
challenge if you propose to go opensource.
Yet there are advantages of
going open-source. If you successfully
engage with the user community, they
will support each other (yet you can
provide services also, and be paid for
them if you like).
NEW MEANS OF CREATING AND DISTRIBUTING DIGITAL PRODUCTS
With the Web, software and products
are now increasingly distributed
online. One may also integrate a number
of elements developed by others
into a holistic product, to serve online.
For instance, you can combine hotel
booking (in Thailand, for example,
r24.org provides a back end to your own
travel agency, should you wish to run
one); bookings for air, rail and bus tickets
and rental cars; tourism guide materials
prepared by yourself or others
(such as by linking to wikitravel.org or
tripadvisor.com); spatial data from
sources like those mentioned in above
(first) Section; and your own enhancements
to create your own super Webbased
travel service.
You can obtain revenue by commissions
(e.g. with a service as r24.org) or
from guest house operators, or through
means described just below.
NEW MEANS OF OBTAINING REVENUE
If estimates and forecasts are
correct, the amount of revenues earned
from low-cost click-through revenue
earnings for spatial data services
like Google maps soon will reach one
hundred thousand million US dollars
annually. With vehicles like Google
AdSense (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
AdSens), "anyone", "anywhere" can pursue
services that can generate revenues,
without high subscription
charges.
CONCLUSION
As we can see, convergences in technological
advances, and in ways of working
together, are creating immense
opportunities for developing new products
and services that are enhanced by
geospatial technology. These can
include business-to-business services,
consumer products, and developmental
services that bring increased prosperity
to the businesses, the middle class and
even the poor.
In the latter case, services that help
build markets for rural communities
(including education, health, and marketing
of products or tourism where villagers,
not merely outside business
interests, gain work and revenues) can
become a win-win situation for all concerned.
Most countries have economic
centres, and also economic backwaters
which however have yet unmarketed
cultural, historical, or other potential
wealth if they can be brought into the
economy in a mutually beneficial and
sustainable manner. Geospatial technologies,
and other information and
communication technologies, can be an
asset in, and an ally to, such efforts.