Building a More Effective
Geospatial Workforce
and User Community
Dr. Duane F. Marble
The Ohio State University &
Oregon State University, U.S.A.
geographer@oregonfast.net
Problems based in geography
have challenged
humanity for most of our
existence. For thousands of years useful solutions
to spatial problems proved elusive and
often their resolution was not only difficult
but was attained, if at all, only at the most
basic and pragmatic levels.
Better, more useful solutions would
have required spatial data that were
not available as well as spatial analytic
approaches that were unknown or
poorly understood. In those limited cases
where both basic spatial analysis
tools and spatial data were available,
the solutions generated often lacked
both scope and accuracy and the activity
was labour intensive.
NEW TOOLS AND CONCEPTS FOR DEALING WITH OLD PROBLEMS
The explosive
recent growth in
utilization of
geospatial tools
and spatial data
that has touched
nearly every sector
of the global
economy has
been driven by
dramatic increases
in the capabilities
of the tools
available for geographic
analysis
coupled with the
increased availability
of large
quantities of better spatial data. This
sea change in our ability to solve geographic
problems was closely linked to
parallel conceptual and technological
developments occurring in computer
science and other areas of science.
When applied by geographers, scientists
and engineers focusing upon spatial
problems, these developments provided
a springboard to massive
improvements in the scope and depth
of not only our analysis tools but in our
basic spatial concepts (such as explicit
attention to questions of space-time
dynamics) as well. These new capabilities
encouraged, in turn, the development
of greatly improved primary spatial
data acquisition capabilities
(remote sensing, GPS, etc.).
Providing answers to old questions
frequently generates new and more
complex questions as our understanding
of spatial processes unfolds and the
existence of the new questions then
stimulates still further tool development.
The developing pattern of this
strong interaction between spatial
tools and the identification and solution
of problems was identified two
decades ago (Marble, 1990) and
remains a major factor in the development
future of today's geospatial
industry.
GEOSPATIAL AS AN UMBRELLA VIEW
The growth in our ability to identify,
understand and solve increasingly
complex spatial problems has created a
substantial demand for highly qualified
personnel in all areas of what, in
the United States - and increasingly
elsewhere - is referred to as the geospatial
industry. The term geospatial is
used in an attempt to define the complex
industry that has developed to
jointly service the increasing demand
for large volumes of high-quality spatial
data and the sophisticated tools
used to store, manipulate, visualize and
analyze these data. With these tools
available, the geospatial industry has
put into general use a host of specialized
practical applications, in both the
private and governmental sectors,
involving solutions to complex spatial
questions in areas ranging from agriculture
to petroleum engineering, and
from archaeology to genetics.
A major problem in responding to the
increased demand for additions to the
geospatial technical and professional
workforce lies in the current "fuzzy"
nature of the "geospatial industry" definition
that creates multiple problems
of inclusion and exclusion of specific
occupations and activities. These problems
are discussed in detail elsewhere
(Marble, 2005), but basically it is very
difficult to satisfy this demand when,
collectively, we have only a vague
notion of who we are and what - in the
aggregate - the workforce is currently
doing. This is also a major roadblock
when attempting to forecast what
form the industry may take and what
the nature of its workforce requirements
will be in coming years. However,
despite this, there are some pervasive
and significant problems present
within today's geospatial workforce
that need to be recognized and
addressed in the hope of diminishing a
significant negative factor in the industry's
development and operation.
PROBLEMS WITH EXISTING WORKFORCE
A major difficulty hampering the
geospatial industry arises out of the
myopic views of many individuals and
organizations within the industry.
While they may have a vague feel for
the geospatial industry as a whole,
their narrow focus is largely upon their
own limited part of it. While this is partially
a reflection of the "fuzzy" nature
of the industry, there are some specific
operational aspects that can be
addressed. For instance, on the one
hand, those in the geospatial workforce
whose main concern is with primary
spatial data acquisition can reduce the
utility of these data by not understanding
the way that the resulting spatial
data is to be used. For instance, an early
digital representation of the U.S. highway
system assigned attributes to the
network links in the database that
reflected the road classifications used
in the topographic maps created by the
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The
response of professional highway engineers
(when the project was made
known to them after much of the database
had already been created) was
that the database was useless, not
because it was digital or spatially inaccurate,
but because the link attributes
utilized had no relation to those that
were of use in highway planning and
maintenance activities.
We can also see that those primarily
concerned with the use of spatial data
display a lack of awareness, and indeed
indifference, to the nature of the data
that they are using. For instance, the
tax agency who invested heavily in the
development of a taxation procedure
for rural properties based upon spatial
data taken from maps of widely different
scales and time periods. When
questioned about problems of accuracy
and the utility of the result, the developers
response was "the computer lets
us use any scale we want and any digital
spatial data that we want". They
were completely confusing "what they
could do" with "what they should so"
with respect to both their basic requirements
as well as with respect to the
spatial data they were using.
As these examples illustrate, and
there are others, there is a major problem
within elements of the geospatial
workforce relating to what we may call
breadth of view. This expresses itself in
a failure to understand the integrated
and interdependent nature of the activities
and products of the geospatial
industry. The failure of some in the
workforce to recognize and respond to
these substantial interdependencies
diminishes the overall effectiveness of
the geospatial industry. This problem
also surfaces within many elements of
the geospatial user community who
have consistently displayed an amazing
ability to simultaneously overestimate
and underestimate the current
capabilities of the industry in setting
forth their requirements and in using
the geospatial tools available.
Over the last several decades the
geospatial industry has developed an
impressive scientific and technological
basis for its activities and this will continue
to significantly develop as time
passes. The total scope and depth of the
knowledge required to encompass this
has passed the ability of any single
individual to comprehend. However, it
is incumbent upon each individual in
the geospatial workforce to clearly
comprehend and understand those scientific
and technological components
that directly impact their own activities.
In reality, this understanding must
extend to at least one level above this
since the extra depth is necessary for
the individual to be truly effective and
capable of dealing with the inevitable
scientific and technological changes
they will face during their career. Some
components of the geospatial workforce
have failed to meet this challenging
requirement and, as a result, they
are finding themselves ill-equipped to
deal with the inevitable changes that
are coming.
This second, widespread, geospatial
workforce problem may be summarized
as one of inadequate depth of
knowledge within portions of the
geospatial workforce. One of the nastier
symptoms of this problem is that it contributes to an inability to utilize, and in
many cases even identify, the full
potential of what the geospatial industry
is already providing. If there are
existing tools and concepts that the
individual worker has not encountered
(or does not understand if they have),
then he or she cannot make use of
them! If there is no clear understanding
of the tools and data being used, the
problems being addressed, and the concepts
that underlie them, then the
geospatial worker in not in a position to
perform effectively. This problem can
impact workers at all levels of the
geospatial workforce with even
research scientists encountering difficulties
arising out of a lack of knowledge,
for instance, of how advanced
computational approaches could be
effectively employed to overcome certain
obstacles.